Nipper

by Mitchell, Charlie

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ she says instantly.

  ‘Don’t be crazy, you can’t leave university.’

  ‘I don’t care about uni, I just want to be with you.’

  ‘It’s your life! And I don’t want to be responsible for ruining it.’

  She’s crying now. ‘It’s my life, you can’t make decisions for me, I’m coming with you.’

  I have never had someone love me so much that they would give up everything to be with me. I don’t know if it’s me being selfish or lonely or even flattered but I eventually agree and promise to look after her.

  There’s still the issue of telling Sophie’s parents and we have to travel back to Cheshire to break the news that I, some nutcase from Scotland, am taking their precious little girl away to a foreign country for the summer.

  I have never met two nicer people in my life. Her dad reminds me of Tom Sellick, the one in Three Men and a Baby – a proper family man who loves his wife and kids, and even though his daughter is getting involved with someone who he probably thinks is the worst thing to have happened to her, he still supports her in any decision she makes and in my eyes that’s true love from a real father. Even though we’ve never met before and he doesn’t know me, he gives me a big hug and says, ‘You’ll look after my daughter.’

  Her mother is an older version of Sophie looks-wise and her parents seem to be equal in every decision in life they make. Sophie’s happiness seems to be the main agenda in their life even though I still get a feeling that they personally think I’m not right for their daughter. But whatever makes Sophie happy is good enough for them. I only hope I can live up to their expectations as I still have very mixed feelings about where my life is going.

  * * *

  So off I go again, only this time I have a girlfriend to look after – and I find it hard to look after myself. We move to another part of Spain, but then things go downhill really fast. While I’m out looking for a job I leave Sophie at a hostel for a couple of hours and tell her to keep the door locked as there are always weirdos and thieves living in those kinds of places.

  When I get back Sophie is crying.

  ‘I went to the toilet and I was only gone for two minutes.’

  ‘What’s happened, what is it?’ I’m now really panicking.

  ‘Everything’s gone. Travellers’ cheques, credit cards,’ she sobs. ‘Everything’s been stolen.’

  Luckily I have the passports in my pocket. But yet again my new life seems to have turned to disaster and this time I’ve dragged Sophie into my constant run of bad luck.

  I get a job bringing people into a club and one night I’m offered some ecstasy. I’m soon back into my own selfish ways, forgetting the promise I made Sophie’s father. This isn’t because of my difficult childhood, this is down to my weak, addictive personality.

  I’m out in the clubs all night, hours after she’s given up and gone home, back to whatever apartment we’re staying in. Sophie’s watching me as I literally try to kill myself with drugs and drink, and my raging temper keeps flaring at the slightest provocation. I’m on a self-destruct mission and Sophie hasn’t a clue how to deal with it at such a young age. I can’t look after myself and will never let anyone get too close, so what chance does an eighteen year old have of changing me, even with the love she seems to feel for me?

  I’m still too young to be in a relationship, or at least I think I must be. I still don’t trust anybody and find it very hard to believe that somebody that age loves me. I don’t want somebody tagging along when I’ve got all this baggage and I don’t want to hurt her. And finally, to be really honest, I think so little of myself I don’t think she can be worth much if she cares about someone like me. I can’t trust myself so why should she trust me? It’s like that old Groucho Marx joke, ‘I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member.’

  We break up even though it feels as though our relationship has hardly even begun. After just one month of living together she’s moved out. I don’t even know who finally ends it, me or her. All I know is that I’m a disaster zone and if she’d stayed with me any longer I would have dragged her down with me.

  Why am I doing this? Why can’t I accept love from someone who I know is the best thing in my life? These are questions I ask myself again and again in the following days and weeks, while I have another drink in another bar and snort another line of coke.

  After eight months of this mayhem and misery Sophie goes back home to England. She’s out of my life for good.

  I can hardly believe it. I’ve thrown away my one chance of happiness. I don’t even want to think about it and I try to tell myself I’m better off on my own. I’ve always been a loner at heart, I say to myself, and I don’t need anyone else.

  I’m like the Littlest Hobo, the lone wolf. I’m like my dog Bonnie, except that she was trusting and loyal. I’m like Dad in a way that I hate – I’ll turn on anyone who shows me love and destroy everything in my path.

  A few weeks later I leave Spain and go to see some lads from Tyrone in Ireland that I have met up with during this period.

  I just can’t settle anywhere or with anyone. I’m destined to be a loner, pushing my body to the limit and leaving a trail of destruction behind me.

  When I arrive in Ireland in 2000 at the age of 24 I make a promise to myself never to take drugs again or drink alcohol to the extent I have been for the past few years. And this time I mean it.

  If my time with Sophie has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to be that guy who doesn’t trust anyone or let anyone get close to him. Sophie made me want to change: if I can’t live with myself how would I ever be able to live with anyone else?

  Over the next three years in Ireland my life is turned around. I’m back playing football, going to the gym, and I make a lot of good friends. I have the odd hiccup – I’m completely drug-free but there’s still the very occasional night out in town when I get drunk – but nothing major, as I have truly started learning to control my fists and my anger.

  I’m now working as a barman in a seriously posh hotel in Balls Bridge in Dublin, the Herbert Park. I’m enjoying life again, like the times when I was younger with Tommy and Bobby.

  I hardly ever have any arguments with anyone – except on a football pitch. Referees are the new enemy, but you can always shake hands at the end as it’s now about passion and not violence.

  The only problem at this time is something that has been eating me up inside for the past three years. It’s the guilt and remorse I still feel – guilt over what I have done to Sophie and remorse that I have thrown it all away.

  My guilt keeps nagging away at me – for taking Sophie out of her university course, for promising her a life I would never be able to give her and for being so selfish. I should have stopped her coming with me back to Spain as I was in no fit frame of mind to have someone to look after when I couldn’t even take care of myself.

  After all this time, I still miss her. I can’t seem to get her out of my head, and the memory of her seems to follow me around; every day. I look around and there’s a heartache following me.

  She’s been the only good thing I can remember from this hazy part of my life. I still love her and every woman that I am with knows it as well. If I have arguments with any woman I’m seeing, I’ll compare them to Sophie.

  ‘Sophie wouldn’t do that, Sophie would never have said that.’

  It’s driving me crazy as I have done something worse than Dad ever did to me. I have broken a young girl’s heart.

  I never have a number, any address or any idea of where Sophie might be living, and I have no idea whether she would talk to me again even if I did find her. I just want to talk to her to apologise for the pain I have caused her. I also pray every week that she is happy and that she’s found someone to take care of her.

  And I’m always thinking, maybe I’ll meet someone like Sophie again. And if I can get myself back to normal and if it happens again, I won’t b
low it this time.

  I’m older and wiser – though not that much older or wiser – but maybe because of what I’ve been through, when people look at me they seem to know that I’ve had a hard life just by talking to me. I seem a lot older than my 27 years. It’s obviously to do with my upbringing: even at 21 when I moved abroad people always thought of me as older. But now, if there’s any kind of violence around me, I walk away. I want to be a different person. I’m doing it for myself. And for someone like Sophie who might come into my life. I’m doing it for her, that person.

  I’m out in town in Dublin. It’s around two o’clock in the afternoon, and me and Bjorn, a friend from Sweden, are shopping for clothes. We’ve given up hope of finding anything as the shops are beginning to close up for the day. I look at my watch and then have to step to the side so as not to bump into people coming in the opposite direction.

  As I look up to apologise, I see her standing there in front of me, about six inches away – and my heart explodes.

  She is holding hands with a guy but we are now staring at each other in shock.

  I can’t believe it – her beautiful face only inches from me. Then she lets go his hand as we lunge at each other. I’m squeezing her harder than I have ever held anyone in my life.

  ‘Sophie!’

  ‘Charlie!’

  Everything around me has disappeared. I stand back to have another look at her, still holding her hands.

  ‘How are you, what are you doing here?’

  By this time her boyfriend must be thinking, Who the hell is this?

  ‘I’m on a weekend break! Oh! This is Steve.’

  I shake his hand – well, squeeze as he’s standing with my Sophie. We talk very briefly then say our goodbyes. I walk in one direction, she goes the other.

  I can’t think. I can’t see straight. And my heart is still pounding out of my shirt.

  ‘Who was that, Charlie?’ asks Bjorn.

  ‘The woman I should be married to.’

  ‘Oh! Was that the Sophie?’

  ‘Yeah that was her!’

  ‘I didn’t know before what you meant when you said you were stupid, but stupid is the wrong word – I would say insane!’

  ‘Thanks for that, mate.’

  I still can’t believe I’ve seen her and let her go without telling her I’m sorry, but I’m glad she’s OK and looking fantastic.

  Actually, she’s looking incredible. I just can’t believe how incredible she looks.

  As I walk along the road my head is all over the place.

  ‘Why don’t you go and find her,’ Bjorn says. ‘Tell her how you feel.’

  ‘No, she’s with someone. Just leave it, mate—’

  ‘Charlie!’

  I feel someone jump on my back and wrap their arms around me.

  It’s Sophie – she has come back to find me.

  I can’t help it. I start to cry.

  ‘Sophie, I still love you, I’m sorry. I was an idiot. I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘I still love you as well,’ she says.

  I’m sobbing now and so is she, and we’re kissing and hugging and wild horses couldn’t tear us apart.

  I feel at this moment that my life has turned full circle and my heart wants to burst with happiness. I do have some unanswered questions about my time on this planet still, like: Who is the guardian angel that keeps saving me? Who keeps answering my prayers? Who controls my fate? Is it my angel from above and why in this year, on this month, on this day, at this time, in this place do we end up six inches from each other?

  I will probably never know but for me I don’t care. My Sophie is here.

  And to be honest with you, the only time in my life I’ve felt as good as this was when Dundee United beat Barcelona at Tannadice.

  Epilogue

  We walked over to a hotel and chatted about how much we had missed each other, and how sorry I was for what I had done, still holding on to each other’s jackets, in case someone stole the other one away. She had told Steve that she had to be alone for a minute and came and found me.

  We exchanged numbers, said our goodbyes and kept in touch for the next six months. I was over the moon. Sophie finished with Steve when she got home, and started visiting me in Ireland as she had now become an air hostess, and had free flights to everywhere. She could see that I’d stopped taking drugs and stopped drinking so we decided to start afresh, all over again. A clean slate, as if we had just met.

  The first time Sophie visited me in Dublin, we went out for a meal, then a drink, catching up on lost time. I told her how sorry I was for what I had done to her; how things had changed in my head. I wasn’t that aggressive thug I used to be.

  We had a good night, talking about what we had been up to for the past few years. She kept commenting on how different I looked and how calm I had become, as she knew me as hyperactive, someone who would be running around a dance floor, who never sat and had a serious conversation for two minutes. And I wasn’t looking around the room any more, waiting for trouble. When we had a dance now, my eyes were fixed only on her.

  I made another life-changing choice after that. I was going to move back with Sophie, as she had been the one making all the sacrifices up until then. I wanted to prove to her that I was as much in love with her as she was with me.

  But before we could move on with our lives there was one thing I needed to do. I had decided to go back to Scotland to see Dad, and to let Sophie meet him too. I flew into Liverpool airport and arranged to meet Sophie at Preston Station. We couldn’t risk meeting in Chester in case I was spotted by one of her family as our being back together was still top secret. Her parents only knew me as the guy that broke their little girl’s heart.

  Then I took her to see the man who had made my childhood a misery and who turned me into the monster I used to be. She was curious what he was like as I had told her everything that he had done to me. I think she was a bit scared too, but that was outweighed by anger.

  He’s still living in that semi-detached in St Fillans Road, the one I walked out of after I beat him up for the first and last time.

  But he isn’t the big strong man I remember – he’s now a frail old man with grey hair, a bit wobbly on his legs, with an old-looking face. He’s changed his bottle of vodka for cider now, and the house smells of old people, a musty kind of smell. My reaction is different to what I thought it would be. I kind of feel sorry for him, as he has clearly tried to drink himself to death, probably because of all those years of guilt. I’m glad I never killed him back then, as he has done a better job of it to himself than I could ever have done.

  He isn’t as threatening as I remember him either. After chatting, mainly small talk, we decide to watch a video on the VCR and choose Braveheart, one of his favourites – and still one of mine, to be honest.

  As he sits on the floor watching the movie, he’s crying, ‘Look what they English bastards did to oor women and kids. Bastards, fuckin’ bastards!’

  ‘Watch yir mooth, Dad. Sophie’s English.’

  ‘Sorry son. She’s aright.’

  I think he has run out of anger and is now depressed beyond belief. Drink does that to you. Drugs are illegal but alcohol has probably ruined more lives than anything else on the planet and it’s still available over the counter. I spent my childhood witnessing first hand the effects of what alcohol did to my dad and what he then did to me in turn.

  But I think Sophie is quite shocked at the fact that he is so small and weak, as she is expecting some huge evil man. She has seen me take on three or four lads at a time, and this grey-haired old man is nothing compared to them. Sophie’s anger has turned to pity too, and she’s gazing at me with a sad look on her face.

  ‘Is he OK?’

  Dad is now swaying from side to side and shaking.

  ‘Don’t you worry aboot me pal, just dinna use all mi toilet roll,’ he chuckles away to himself. At least his hearing is still OK.

  I don’t know what I’m expect
ing from him. Maybe I think he’s going to apologise for what he did to me all those years ago. But he can hardly remember yesterday, never mind my childhood.

  Or maybe I think that seeing him again will help me come to terms with all that rage in me, even if I have calmed down over the last two or three years. But seeing him now only leaves me with a sense of pity. Not for him – he’s way beyond feeling sorry for. And not for myself – I’ve exhausted all my self-pity in too many late nights in Spanish bars.

  But pity for the waste of it all – all those years when he and I could have been happy together, when he could have been a real dad to me like Sophie’s dad, caring for his children, cherishing their lives, and happy for their existence, instead of what he’s turned into – a shrunken shell of a man, consumed by his own anger, and demented and destroyed by years of addiction to alcohol. And when he couldn’t vent all his rage on Mum, me, Bonnie and all his girlfriends, he’s probably turned it all in on himself.

  He just sits there drunk, trying to make a joke of everything on his own, in his three-bedroom house. Tommy has gone up to see him, to try and get him to stop drinking. But Dad doesn’t care any more; he just wants to die.

  It’s sad really; he chose the wrong road and I nearly did too. I guess he wasn’t as strong as I was after all. Maybe he couldn’t handle the things his father did to him. Or maybe he just didn’t care. And I’m not hanging around to find out. It’s all far too late to make any difference anyway.

  I don’t feel guilty for saying what I said the night I walked out of his house when I was sixteen, when I told him I didn’t care less if he lived or died. When I was less than four years old I was in a tug of war between my mum and my dad. I told the judge I wanted to be with my dad. It was a bad choice, but then again, four-year-old kids aren’t very good at multiple-choice tests. And besides, I paid the price for my bad choice for years and years to come. But hey, that’s life.