Nipper (14 page)

Yes of course – we get captured.

As Tommy, fifty other kids and myself stand at the shops on the brink of vomiting from all the sugar, a hand tightly grabs the top of my arm – the arm carrying the treasure chest. I turn slowly and to my horror it’s a copper and across the road, marching towards us with her sleeves rolled up, is Mum, not looking impressed one bit. I look at Tommy and he
puts his finger up to his lips on the sly. I know exactly what he means: let him do the talking and agree with everything he says.

We stand against the wall while the police are talking to Mum. They’re talking for ages, and I’m thinking, if I run now I’ll make it back to St Mary’s, but then my dad will find out so I’ll have to stay and face the music. The police get back in the car and Mum walks towards us. You can see her blood is turning purple underneath. She doesn’t even look like herself.

‘Shift, you pair of idiots,’ she hisses.

Oh God, I hope Mum is not as bad as Dad
, I think. I’m suddenly very scared but Tommy puts his hand on my shoulder.

‘Don’t worry, wee man,’ he whispers. ‘It’ll only last two minutes at the most.’

We get upstairs into the house and Mum sends us to the bedroom.

‘Get in there now and lie on the bed face down.’

What the hell is gonna happen now?
I think. Whatever Tommy says, I’m getting more terrified by the second.

Me and Tommy are now lying face down next to each other.

‘What are you smiling for?’ I say.

‘Wait and you’ll see, Charlie boy. Wait and see.’

Mum comes back into the room with this pink cotton belt off her jacket and gives us five each, then leaves the room and tells us to get out of her sight. I hardly feel a thing.

Tommy’s been telling the truth: it has only lasted two minutes and the relief I’m feeling is ridiculous. I can’t believe my luck: when I don’t do anything I nearly get killed and when I do cause mayhem and steal I hardly get touched. What a crazy world. I just pray that Mum will never tell Dad.

I go back home to Dad on the Sunday. Mum drops me off at five in the evening.

‘I’ll see you next week when you come up here,’ I tell Tommy.

‘No you won’t,’ says Mum firmly. ‘You can’t see each other next week for what you’ve both done.’

I think that’s fair enough as she hasn’t told Dad, but I’m still gutted, to say the least. It means I’ve got another two weeks of purgatory to get through with Dad, counting down the days until I can see Tommy again. I never thought I’d feel like this about him, and never has my sentence at home with Dad seemed to drag on longer as the seconds and minutes tick by, and all the time I know that at any moment the beatings will start up again and my purgatory will turn once more to hell.

I
t’s eight in the evening and I’m watching TV. I’ve had my bath for school, all my homework’s done, and I’m still thinking about what happened the day before, glad that the nutcase doesn’t have a clue what I’ve been up to.

‘I’m nipping to the shops.’

‘OK, Dad.’

‘Make sure you brush your teeth before I get back.’

‘OK, Dad I will.’

The front door slams. I can tell he hates me spending time with Mum, probably in case I tell her what he’s been doing to me. He’s off to get his bottle of kick the dog – or vodka as other people know it. I haven’t seen Bonnie all weekend and when I got home earlier she was jumping all over me as I came in the door. I could tell that he’d been hitting her, as there were little trails of wet patches on my bedroom floor
where she had pissed herself with fear. I hate leaving her but Dad won’t let me take her to Mum’s as he’ll have nobody to kick the shit out of.

He comes home fifteen minutes later, as he’s had to walk because he’s been banned from driving until about the year 3000 due to constant drink driving and crashes. He doesn’t care though because every time they threaten to jail him the social work department and his legal-aid lawyer will play the single-parent stress card – and where would I go if he went to jail?

Put me in jail, I’ll do the time as long as Bonnie can come with me.

The door opens. ‘Have yi brushed yir teeth?’ ‘Yep,’ I say brandishing my nashers. He sits in his chair next to the fire.

‘Go an’ get me a tumbler, the long one, not the whisky one.’

I know exactly which one he means – I’ve seen it a million times. I hop up off the couch in my Paisley pattern pyjamas and holly socks and go to get his glass.

‘Get yirself a glass and I’ll give yi some Coke.’

Yes! A treat. He’s being all right with me. ‘OK.’

I come back in, sit down and watch some party political programme with him. I never have a clue what these men in suits are going on about but Dad seems to think he’s in the studio with them. He shouts stuff at one of the suits who’s wittering on and says things like, ‘You fucking tell the Tory
bastard’ and ‘What have yi got to say aboot that, yi back-peddling bastards – answer the fucking question.’

Then he’ll turn to me. ‘Did you see that twat? I fucking hate people that answer a question with a question.’

I just agree and say, ‘Yeah, why did he no’ just answer him, Dad?’

‘Because, Charlie, he’s a right honourable wanker.’

For years to come I find myself calling the people who live in the TV the same thing, especially when I’m watching football. It’s just one of many bizarre sayings that Dad comes out with. Another one is ‘That Maggie Thatcher’s got a puss like a welder’s bench.’ I always think she’s got a lot of cramps in her face.

It’s now about 11.30 at night and I’m getting a bit tired but I never dare ask if I can go to bed. I wait until he says, ‘Go to yir bed’ or he falls asleep, as I’ve learnt over the years that if I ask to go to bed the next line will be, ‘Is there something up with my company, you ungrateful cunt. I let you stay up and that’s the thanks I get.’

I can read him like a book eighty per cent of the time. He’s now getting to that wobbly drink stage, when he suddenly turns around and looks at me, one eye straight and staring, the other looking towards his crooked nose.

‘What did you tell yir mum the day,’ slurring his words, sitting on the edge of his chair facing the telly but looking sideways at me with his elbows on his knees, all his fingers clasped together.

‘Nothing, Dad, I never really seen her over the weekend. Me and Tommy were out playing all weekend.’

‘
Fucking liar
, what are yi?’

‘I’m not lying, Dad.’

‘
Shut
the fuck up, liar, you speak when I tell you to speak. Did you hear me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Only speak when I tell you to speak.’

I don’t say another word as he lifts his vodka glass towards his mouth. He looks like a warped life-size version of a character in
Thunderbirds
, his body and arms and head bobbing and shifting like somebody’s controlling them with strings. Then he puts the drink back down.

‘What’s this shit we’re watching?’ He can’t even see the TV and right before my eyes he seems to be switching from one character to another. He’s like a cross between the drunken, swearing Father Jack from
Father Ted
and Parker from
Thunderbirds
.

‘Change the fucking channel, you liar. Where’s my Coke, have you drunk all my fucking Coke?’ Then he’s mumbling, ‘Greedy bastard, what a greedy bastard.’

His head is starting to dip towards his knees, swaying a little from side to side, then all of a sudden it shoots up and he’ll stare sideways at me.

‘I thought I told you to change the channel.’

Then he dips his head back down again and mumbles some more.

I watch him for about an hour and a half, waiting for him to fall asleep so I can get to bed, but every time I move, his head comes back up. He leans his cheek on his right hand, and takes a swig every ten or fifteen minutes. I look over to the corner and see Bonnie looking at me, not taking her eyes off me, waiting on me to go to bed so she can come with me. That dog is terrified of Dad, but she never leaves me alone with him when he’s that drunk. It’s like maybe she’s got a plan to maul him, knowing that he won’t remember. I swear that dog is brighter than a lot of humans I know.

I finally go to bed about four in the morning after I’ve waited to make absolutely sure that he’s asleep, and Bonnie jumps on my bed before I get in. I turn all the lights off in the house but leave the fire on deliberately in the hope that Dad will roll over during the night and pull it on top of himself. But it never happens – not when I try to make it happen, that is.

He does manage to do it to himself once, though. I’m lying in bed one night asleep and I hear an almighty scream, which wakes me up. The fire in the living room is an electric two-bar fire with a metal grid over the front to stop you touching these red-hot heating rods; Dad has taken the grid off to light his roll-ups on it. He forgets to put it back on and falls asleep drunk on the floor with a pair of skin-tight green football shorts on that look more like women’s hot pants.

Well, they soon become hot pants, as he rolls over in the night and burns two massive lines through his shorts and his arse cheek. I’m under the covers with my hand over my
mouth as I’m never that good at holding in my laughter. Even Bonnie doesn’t bark – I think she actually knows what’s happened as well.

Bonnie’s not just my best friend, my comforter and my constant companion. Through the bleak, bitter Dundee winter nights she’s the best blanket you could imagine. Having a long-haired German Shepherd that sleeps over you is like having a radiator attached to your legs and a bodyguard all in one.

Bonnie’s the thing that keeps me going, wanting to live, wanting to believe there must be a way out.

L
iving in St Fillans Road has been nothing short of a nightmare for me as a kid. I’m now aged ten and in the few short years I have lived there I have seen two of my friends being run over – one of them was Robbie, my cousin Shane’s best friend. I’ve witnessed two people on separate occasions jump out of the Ardler seventeen-storey block of flats, their mangled bodies splattered only ten feet from where I was standing.

The second one was a woman in her fifties who jumped out of her fifteenth-floor window. When she hit the floor her foot (with the slipper still on) landed right next to me, and the fire crew and ambulance men had to scrape her off the road with a shovel while I stood and watched.

Things like that stick in your mind as a kid, and add to many sleepless nights because of the nightmares.

My nightmares are sometimes so horrific that I will force myself to stay awake, dreading going to sleep. Some nights I even think it’s better to risk the torments of the living-room couch than to go to sleep. Most of the time, though, my living nightmare life with Dad is worse – and his behaviour can be even more unpredictable than my nightmares.

Seeing that woman on the floor makes me think,
Why did she jump? Was her husband torturing her? Did some evil bastard like Dad drive her to her death, as I’ve felt like doing for years?
The other person that jumped – well, there were actually loads that jumped – but the other one that I saw was a lad of twenty who had taken one too many drugs and thought he could fly. And same as my hamster, he definitely couldn’t.

It’s the noise more than anything that knocks me sick; the thud of a body hitting concrete is terrifying. I’m standing staring at his face squashed into the ground with a slight smile on it, thinking about how relaxed he looks. The police and firemen are trying to move all the screaming kids back, but I just stand there smiling back at him, and staring at how happy his face looks.

I hear a voice say, ‘Get that kid away, he’s in shock.’

I’m not in shock, I’m happy for him that his nightmare is over. I just wish to God mine could be too.

It’s strange, as everything and everyone around me seems either to die or have bad things happen to them and I think it’s only a matter of time before me and Bonnie go the same way, as I’ve been close to death a few times – obviously
because of Psycho Dad. And my own stupidity doesn’t help either, with the places I explore.

One day I’m in a car park between the first two multistorey blocks of flats – the seventeen-storey ones. There’s a top level and a bottom level and in the latter there’s an air vent kind of heating system, with silver boxlike vents that go all around the roof space of the car park. There’s a few access points with steel covers on the front so that you can climb up and crawl around the vents.

We take candles up because it’s pitch black and leave them for the next people that come. On this particular day I’m with my mate Calum Patterson, my old partner in crime. I climb into the vent first and light a candle, and Calum comes up behind me. I’m five yards in from him and can smell something in the vent. It’s the same smell as the night Bonnie got her nosed rubbed in her own shit, and it seems to get stronger as I crawl along.

‘Charlie?’

‘What, Calum?’

‘Have you stood in shite?’

‘No, Calum, I just forgot to brush my teeth this morning.’

‘If your breath smelt like that I’d seriously consider going to the dentist.’

‘Ha! ha!…
Ahhh!
’ I let out an almighty roar.

‘What is it, Charlie?’

‘Go back! Go back! I’ve just touched something’ fuckin’ hairy.’

‘What are you doing in here, Mum?’ Calum shouts.

This breaks me up. After I’ve got over my fit of laughter, I’m still trying to get that nutter to reverse as there isn’t enough room in the vent to turn around. It’s only about two foot square.

‘Go back, Calum, go back, I think it’s dead rats.’

‘It’s not the rats you wanna be scared of, it’s whatever killed them that worries me.’

‘Shut yir puss Calum and reverse.’

Well, the next thing I know, this roaring sound bellows up the vent.

‘What the fuck is that?’ Calum screams. The roar is deafening and we’re being sucked towards this massive thing that looks like an aeroplane propeller. It’s actually pulling us towards it. We never realised that this air vent thing actually works. We’re facing the wrong way, and can’t really see what’s going on behind us and the noise is deafening. Then the rat I put my hand on earlier comes scraping down the side of my face.