Nipper (11 page)

‘Ah shut yir puss you two,’ someone pipes in.

‘Wha er you talkin’ ti, yi prick?’

‘Oh are yi goin’ ti start trouble we a drink on yi again?’

‘Keep yir fuckin nose oot o’it, it’s fuck all ti dae we yo.’

It calms down for a minute and then Dad starts up again.

‘Dinna try and embarrass me again in front o’ company or I’ll belt yir puss.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Jock. Forget aboot it.’

‘Ney wonder, fuckin’ half-wit.’

‘Wha’s a fuckin’ half-wit?’

The next moment four fully grown paralytic Scotsmen are in what looks like a scrum, falling over the settee and television, knocking over the plants and sending a table full of drinks flying as they all go through it.

Meanwhile I’m standing there, a nine-year-old kid, leaning against the door with someone’s can of Export, dying to join in. And with Hatchy’s wife screaming, ‘
Stop it yi fucking idiots, there’s kids here
.’

It’s more of a wrestling match than a fight – every man for himself. They are that drunk that by the time it has all calmed down they never have a clue about what they’ve just been kicking lumps out of each other for.

‘
Get oot this fucking hoose the lot o yi!
’ screams Hatchy’s wife who is going mental, but nobody’s listening. They just put the music back on – it’s ZZ Top – open another can and start trying to dance around all the broken glass, ’cause every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man.

It’s now three in the morning and Dad decides that he has to get home. He gets up off the couch, checking his pockets for the car keys and swaying from side to side then back and forward, eyes half-closed and a line of blood on his white shirt pocket from earlier, someone else’s I think.

‘Come on, Charlie, get your coat.’

Everyone else is sleeping except Hatchy.

‘I’ll get you a taxi, Jock,’ he says.

‘No, no, no, no. I’m alright, I’m alright, I’ve got transport.’

Dad’s slurring his words even more now as it’s getting later and he’s getting more tired.

‘I’m off, come on Charlie.’

‘See ya Hatchy,’ I say with a yawn.

‘See ya, wee man.’

I walk behind Dad as he sways from side to side, walking in the opposite direction from where his car is.

‘Dad, it’s this way.’

‘I ken war my fucking car is.’

He obviously doesn’t as it’s right outside the door on the left and he’s turned right, but I’m not gonna argue.

‘Some bastard’s moved my car. I parked it over here.’

‘It’s back there, Dad look.’

‘I canna believe some bastard’s moved my car,
bastards
.’

He turns around and I just shuffle behind him and follow on again. It’s absolutely freezing. Dundee in the winter is bad enough but at three in the morning it’s like the North Pole. I remember one of Dad’s mates saying when he was young, he woke up with an ice cube in his bed and when he threw it in the coal fire it made a fart noise. I’ve always thought that was hilarious.

We get in the car and all the windows are covered with ice. It’s like being in an igloo with a drunk bear. It takes Dad ages to get his key in the ignition and I’m getting colder by the minute but I can’t say anything because any remark from me could set him off. After about five minutes of silence and me blowing mist out of my mouth to keep myself entertained, Dad turns around to me with his left eye closed, trying to focus.

‘What, do you want to fucking drive?’

I never say anything as I’ve managed to learn when to speak and when not to speak, depending on how drunk he is.

He turns away again and hallelujah – the key goes in and the car starts. The windows are covered in ice and I still can’t see a thing. He turns the wipers on and shouts, ‘We have liftoff.’

I try not to laugh just in case he actually thinks he is in a plane, as we might as well be in a submarine for all he knows.

‘Turn the heaters on, I canna see a fucking thing.’

I’m not surprised with all the scotch and vodka you’ve been drinking
.

Then he starts singing, ‘Can yi hear the Rangers sing, I canna see a fucking thing woowoooo!’

He’s actually lost the plot
, I think. I switch the heaters on and the window wipers are going full speed.

‘Your lights, Dad.’

‘I’m no fucking daft,’ he says, turning the wipers back off. That’s his attempt at putting the lights on.

No you’re not daft, that will help you see in the dark, you stupid plonker
.

Luckily I don’t say this out loud. Eventually the window starts to clear and he finds the lights. He’s looking more and more wobbly as time goes on, probably down to the fact that we’ve been in the car for fifteen minutes and not even moved an inch. I’m freezing and getting a bit tired myself as I hardly slept the night before.

Then we start moving. We drive out of the car park at about five miles an hour onto the main road at the back of Ardler and turn right towards Downfield Golf Course, passing the turning for the Timex Brae. Dad is now muttering away to himself, ‘And away we go.’ The car’s all over the road and Dad’s head is kind of bobbing up and then slowly falling down.

Shit
, I think,
he’s falling asleep
.

‘Dad, Dad! You’re falling asleep!’

He doesn’t respond.

‘
Dad!
You’re falling asleep,’ I shout a second time.

Nothing again, so I grab the wheel as we’re coming up to a massive bend to the right up the side of the golf course. I hold on for dear life while he takes forty winks with his foot planted on the accelerator.

I don’t know how I manage it, but I steer the car up past the Ardler multi-storey block and up towards Clatto Park. It’s a thousand metres and all the time I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘
Dad, wake up you’re in your car, Dad! Dad! Wake up!
’

I even muster the courage to elbow him in the side of the head – and that seems to do the trick.

‘Oh hello!’ he shouts as he wakes up, and looks at me all confused. ‘What the fuck’s going on!’

‘Look at the road, Dad, you fell asleep, you’re driving.’

He looks at my hand on the wheel then looks forward and puts his hands on the wheel.

‘Fuck me, I’m pissed,’ he says, turning right down into St Kilda Road and back towards St Fillans to the house, clipping wing mirrors all the way home.

Brilliant, I think, the fiasco’s over. My heart’s still pounding, and now he’s trying to squeeze the car into an eight foot gap. It takes him twenty minutes and he keeps nudging one car and then the other until he creates enough space for himself. He keeps saying, ‘Tell me when I’m close to the other car.’

He pushes the cars out of the way and there’s now exhaust smoke everywhere, and the noise of him revving is deafening.

We’ve spent fifty minutes doing a four-minute car journey and the cold air has sobered him up from being paralytic to that horrible cock-eyed stare he gives me when he’s pissed off. To make matters worse, Bonnie has pissed on the carpet, as she hasn’t been out all day or night and it’s now nearly four in the morning.

Dad walks into the kitchen and I go into the bedroom to check on Bonnie. She has her head squeezed under a six-inch gap under my bed with her body sticking out. I can hear Dad getting his vodka out of the cupboard and closing the fridge door where he keeps his Coke.

‘Charlie, get in here.’ His voice has changed to that horrible, familiar tone I dread. ‘Bring that fucking fleabag in here as well.’

‘Stay there girl,’ I say to Bonnie and close the bedroom door behind me and walk up the hall into the living room.

‘Sit over there.’

I walk over and sit on the couch.

‘Turn the TV on.’

I grab the remote and take it off standby and then sit back down.

He doesn’t say anything for five long minutes. He just keeps swaying and sipping his voddy.

‘What’s this shite you’ve put on?’ he hisses.

‘I don’t know, Dad, I’ll change it.’ I reach for the remote.

‘Leave it.’

Here we go, I think. But Bonnie’s safe – he’s forgotten about her.

‘Do yi ken something, yi’re no even my son, you live here but your Uncle Danny is your real dad. Yir mum thinks she’s got one over on me.’

He’s slurring his words and pouring more vodka from his half-empty litre bottle.

‘What are yi fucking looking at me for? It’s not my fault.’

I’m thinking,
I hope that’s true, you evil bastard
.

‘What are yi doing here anyway? You don’t live here. Nobody ever wanted yi, that’s how I got palmed off with yi. Jock the mug, he’ll look after somebody’s runt.’

Tears are running down my face. I feel like nothing, less than nothing, worse than I’ve ever felt. Like I’ve been shoved into the bottom of a deep well, and mud and dirt and filth and excrement have been shovelled on top of me. I can’t get any lower.

There’s a seething, burning rage in me, a mixture of anger and hurt, and I’ll never forget this moment. But I can’t challenge him to a scrap, even though I want to smash that vodka bottle and cut his throat with it. Dad sits forward in his chair and I know what’s about to happen. He starts by picking things up off the table and throwing them at me, the usual stuff like remote controls, lighters, ashtrays, ketchup bottles or salt containers that have been left from tea three days before.

Then he stands up and staggers towards me with a fag in one hand and his right hand clenched. I lie back on the couch and cover myself up, cringing from him, as the fag he’s smoking is getting closer and closer. He punches me in the thighs and ribs with his right hand, and all I can do is cover my face, and take the blows on the rest of my body. Then I feel this sting on my thumb, this horrible pain. He has tried to shove his fag into my eyes through my hands but he only catches my thumb, and all the sparks and the head of the fag go down my top and burn my chest.

I’m screaming in agony but that seems to make him worse. He definitely gets off on people cowering and screaming. I know for a fact he enjoys it. He keeps on going, smashing plants on my head, kicking me, punching me and dragging me around the room by the hair, kneeing me in the side of the head. There’s blood everywhere. I’m trying to drag myself behind the couch while he’s stamping on the back of my legs.

Then it stops. He’s having a breather and getting another drink of vodka.

I lie there in agony, trying to squeeze my smashed-up head between the couch and wall, a bit like Bonnie earlier. I feel his hand on my hair again, yanking me upwards. He is so pissed he falls backwards over the coffee table with me; I land on top of him looking up at the ceiling as if I’m lying on an operating table. I scramble up and stagger towards the door, pull it closed behind me, and then run into my room.

I close the bedroom door and try to drag the bed beside it to jam it shut, but my arms are aching and I can hardly stand from the stamps on my calves. I just managed to drag an old brown chest of drawers across the room and wedge it between the end of the bed and the wall. He’ll have to get a chainsaw to cut the door in half to get in here now.

I lie on the floor beside Bonnie in the corner of the room and she starts licking all the blood off my face and her ears stand up pointed at every sound Dad makes as he walks to the toilet past my door.

He’s back in the living room, bouncing off the walls, mumbling and singing to himself, playing ‘You Really Got Me’ by the Kinks on the record player – you got me so I can’t sleep at night. It’s really loud and he’s trying to sing along to Ray Davies, and it’s horrible. Sometimes it’s Sinatra, sometimes Lionel Richie, but it’s always horrible. How nobody
ever comes to my rescue even one night I will never know. Somebody must have heard at least one of the times.

Maybe people just get used to the sound of a dog barking at the moon in the middle of the night.

The next day around 9 a.m. I hear a movement in the living room. I can also hear a record needle skipping – you know when the arm and needle go to the middle when you don’t change the record. I can hear the floorboards creak as he comes up the hall.

Then I see the handle on the door go down but he doesn’t shout at me as he normally would. The handle just slowly goes back up. He must think I’m sleeping, but I didn’t sleep a wink last night, I just watched the door for hours and every time he got up to go for a pee I could feel my heart pounding through my blood-soaked top.

At the age of nine I’ve already more or less lost the will to live. Dad’s out of control and has stopped saying sorry the next day. I’ll wake up in the morning and he’ll still have a drink in his hand, with the music playing full blast. I think he’s turned into an alcoholic to block out all the bad things he’s done, as he can’t face reality. Drinking is never going to solve anything, but his plan is to drown his worries in a sea of vodka.

Occasionally there are moments of respite with Dad, times when I can even laugh with him, even though they are few and far between. Dad is a full-blown alcoholic by now, but
he always manages to get up the roofs the next day, as he’s still sweeping chimneys. Sometimes he takes me with him, and makes me hold the covers against the fireplace inside while he goes on the roof and sweeps it from the top. I chat away to all the old people about back in the day. Old ladies tell me stories of when they were young.

‘We had to climb up the chimney years ago.’

‘How did yi manage ti fit up there, misses?’

‘Not this chimney, we had bigger ones back then.’

I just stand there, biting my lip, trying to stop myself asking her – how it would be possible for a fourteen-stone woman to fit up an eight-inch gap.

Then Dad’s voice comes down the chimney: ‘OK!’

That means he has finished, and I can take the covers out to clean the soot. But one time, when I take them out and look in the fireplace, there’s nothing there! Not a bit of soot in sight.

Dad has come down from the roof and walks into the room where I’m standing.

‘It’s empty, Dad.’

‘What di yi mean, it’s empty?’

‘There’s nae soot in it, Dad.’

Suddenly there’s a knock at the front door and the woman who owns the house goes to get it. Dad’s looking at me with a smirk on his face, as he has now realised what he’s done. I can hear a shout from down the hall, as the woman opens the door.