Nipper (23 page)

I don’t care; these ten minutes are nothing compared to the twelve-hour sessions I’ve had to endure throughout my childhood.

But pretty soon I know he’s all right and I haven’t broken his eardrum and he can hear perfectly well, as he changes tack. He now wants me to feel sorry for him.

‘I know I’ve been a horrible dad to yi,’ he says, ‘but I’m dyin’, son.’

Now he’s wheedling for my sympathy and talking in this pathetic tone of voice just like Albert, the old geeser in
Steptoe and Son
, but I’m not prepared to play this game.

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I couldn’t give a shit. You’re not going to fucking turn this around. You want me to feel sorry for you?’

‘I’m just tellin’ yi, that’s all. I’m dyin’.’

‘Well good luck to you. If you’re fucking drinking yourself to death, you’ve only got yourself to blame.’

‘Yi ken what yi’re granddad was like with me—’

‘I couldn’t give a shit. If I ever have kids I’d never hit them. You hit gran, you nearly battered my mum to death, you nearly killed me, you turned my childhood into a living hell, and you want me to feel sorry for you because you’re drinking yourself to death? You’re just nothing and the quicker you do that the better. I couldn’t really care less if you died or not.’

‘Ah well, you’ve got the right to say that, son.’

That’s it. I’d had enough. I walk out.

Over the last two or three years I’ve rehearsed this moment in my mind many, many times. I’ve planned to replicate every single thing he has done to me over the years, and to give him the whole lot in one night. I’ve wanted to kill him, as I have been preparing myself for going to prison for a couple of years now. I’ve been thinking of sticking a knife in his heart and pouring a kettle of boiling water over his face when he was sleeping. It’s never the thought of jail that has stopped me – it’s the thought of him waking up and catching me on the way into the living room.

As I told you, I nearly did kill him when I was twelve, so I’m very confused now as to why I’m holding back, compared to what I’ve planned for him in my head, as he’s relatively weak and really drunk.

Well, for one thing, biting is not my style. I’m not an animal like him. The punches I give him are actually fairly halfhearted: even though I’m wound up I can still control myself. So you could say I’ve stored up more anger by not letting go on him.

But even though it isn’t who I want to become, I guess it’s inevitable – I have walked outside and left Dad lying on the sofa in the same position he used to leave me, and knocked on the neighbour’s door and told them he might need an ambulance.

I’m sitting on the fence outside my house, contemplating my next move, wondering if I should go back in and finish him off or wait for the police to come and have a go at them, as my blood is now pumping.

But inside I’m feeling completely numb. No fear, no panic, nothing. Then I look down at my fingers and see that my hands are shaking and I start to realise that my whole body is trembling.

It’s then that it hits me. The nightmare is over. The nightmare that began when I saw him, or dreamt I saw him, dragging my mum around the room by her hair, the nightmare that came alive when I became the object that was dragged around the room – for years and years and years.

And now it’s finally ended. I’m free of Dad and that hellhole. I hardly register the fact that I’m sobbing and crying as I decide to give Mum a ring, tell her what’s happened and ask her what I should do next, as she’s the one person who’s hated him as much as I do.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s Charlie.’

‘Hi son, what ir yi up ti?’

‘I’ve just done mi dad in.’

‘Brilliant son,’ she says, without hesitation. ‘Good lad, you can come and live over here.’

She’s really excited because she’s wanted me to come back and live with her for years, and she’s been waiting so long for this day to come. She’s tried many many times to say to Dad that if he couldn’t cope, she’d have me, but he’s always refused point blank – ‘Fuck off, yi’ll never get Charlie’ – or ignored or stonewalled her. But I only find that out after this phone call.

‘Just leave yir stuff and come straight here. We can get it later.’

Suddenly a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I will be able to live a normal life. I’ve seen those movies in which prisoners finally get to walk out of the prison gates at the end of their term, but I never thought it would happen to me.

I’m so looking forward to living with Tommy and Bobby, as we’ve become really close in the times that we’ve visited each other. I haven’t really got to know Bobby well before this
time as Dad didn’t want to have anything to do with him because he wasn’t his son, but during the last few months we’ve started to get to know each other – he’s quickly becoming the younger brother I’ve never had and we’re bonding like never before.

A fresh start is just what I need. A new life – away from the torture den.

When I move to Mum’s in Mill o’Mains, three miles away, I think it’s going be really hard, as I have to leave behind all the mates I have grown up with and moving to a new area is always a nightmare. Making friends, getting used to your surroundings and sharing a room with someone else – in other words, my big brother Tommy.

For the first few days I keep expecting there will be repercussions. Every time the phone rings I think it must be the police. I have visions of them arriving at Mum’s front door and taking me to the station for questioning. I see myself being forced into the back of a paddywagon, a hand pressed down on my head, followed by hours and hours of interrogation, just like Dad always subjected me to.

But it’s weird. Nothing happens at all. After about a week it dawns on me that there will be no comeback. It’s like I’ve had a toothache all my life and it’s suddenly gone. And then it occurs to me that there were never any repercussions all those years that Dad battered and tortured me – no one ever reported him: he virtually got away with murder, so why
would I imagine that my ten minutes of payback would land me in any kind of trouble?

And that’s when it hits me and I realise that I could have left to live with Mum years ago – ever since I got back in touch with her – and he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. He couldn’t snatch me back like he did when I was a two year old, and already I’m regretting the time that I’ve lost, the years that I’ve wasted being a prisoner of my fear.

As for Dad, I think he must know now that the game’s up, as far as he and I are concerned. He’s hardly going to press charges against me, not after all those years when I was his punchbag. He must know he can’t come after me, he must know that what I gave him was just a drop in the ocean of pain he inflicted on me over the years, and that I can easily deal out far more punishment if given the opportunity.

Occasionally I wonder,
Who’s Dad gonna batter now?
and I find out later that he’s met another woman – but she leaves after the first time he hits her. Clever move, love.

About a week after the Final Showdown he rings me at Mum’s.

‘That’s me and you finished,’ he says. ‘I can’t believe you did that to me.’

‘What! Are you fucking taking the piss?’ I explode.

There’s no shame, no remorse, not even any acknowledgement from him that he deserved it. Nothing. I’m the one who’s done something wrong as far as he’s concerned and therefore we should never speak again. Well, that suits me
fine. It suits me down to the ground. He’s out of my life and that’s the way I want it to stay.

My whole world seems to be turning around; things are totally different at Mum’s. We have regular meals – breakfast, lunch and tea.

‘Slow down, son,’ Mum will say to me again, just like she did when I was eight. ‘It’s like you’ve never seen food before.’

It’s the same old story. There were so many nights back at Dad’s that I never ate because if I got beaten early on before tea, ten hours later I just wanted to get to bed and catch some sleep. But this time I’m eating out of sheer joy. I’m alive and free!

I have never had so much sleep in my life than when I move to Mum’s. It’s like a luxury holiday – or what I imagine a luxury holiday might feel like.

And every minute, every second of the day I have to remind myself, I’m free – I’m finally free of that evil psychopath.

But the real truth is, I’m just about as free of Dad as a Dundee summer is from the snows of winter.

I
establish a new routine living at Mum’s. I start at a new school, Morgan Academy, although I’m not there for very long – only a month – but then again I wasn’t at Lawside half the time. I don’t know anybody and the only people who speak to me are friends of Tommy’s as we’re practically identical at this point. So I finally tell Mum there’s no point in my being there. I don’t even bother to say anything to any of the teachers. I just stop going. I leave school with no qualifications and no expectations, but I don’t care now as I’m free of
him
.

In any case I’d much rather find a job – any job – and be out in the real world.

I’m sixteen and have never really acquired any skills or a trade. I play football a lot and have fixed a few roofs and swept a few chimneys with Dad, but skills-wise I’m practically
useless. But as I’m bright, enthusiastic and have the gift of the gab, I soon get a job in a joke-cum-fancy-dress-hire shop in Dundee City centre. It starts as just Saturdays and soon turns full-time which suits me down to the ground. I’m in charge of hiring the costumes out and keeping an eye out for thieves, as I know most of them.

Since living with Mum, Bobby and I have started going to an under-eighteens disco called Buddies in Braughty Ferry, a posh area outside Dundee. I didn’t know I had a sense of rhythm as I’d never danced before or even been near a club. I expect I’ve got it from Gran who, you may recall, was a professional dancer in the Pally in Dundee years ago. But when I get out onto Buddies’ dance floor, I discover I can simply close my eyes and my body moves of its own accord. I feel like I’m somewhere up in the sky amongst the clouds with music blasting down from heaven – like God’s having a rave and has only invited me.

Wee Bobby’s a brilliant dancer as well, and we’re quickly making up our own moves: from the minute we walk into Buddies until the last song we’re stuck to the dance floor. We make up dances like playing golf, basketball, picking berries, stamping our feet, walking around the whole club, while loads of other people follow us, a bit like a conga line, stamping their feet. I feel like the Pied Piper. It’s amazing, people are friendly, and I’ve quickly become the centre of attention. It’s as if I’ve finally found my reason for being born.

There’s one girl who’s like a female version of me – but only in a dance sense: she’s like a mermaid – long blonde curly hair, lovely skin and she has her own dress style. Well, she has style – she’s from Broughty Ferry, the posh area where Dad asked for hot water and a teabag. We end up dance partners for about a year and I never ask her out in case it ruins the thing that we have, as dancing is now more important to me than anything. It’s like that relationship John Travolta has with his dancing partner in
Saturday Night Fever
– apart of course from the white suit!

I’m starting to win all the competitions in Dundee. There’s Buddies, Fat Sam’s and the Coconut Grove, a massive club that stages competitions for young people all over the East Coast. It seems like I’ve sorted out all the bottled-up anger and aggression and moved on from the trauma of my childhood. But that’s very far from the truth: I haven’t really moved on at all, nor have I got over it. I’ve simply blanked it out, locked it away deep down inside me. It’s hardly surprising. I’m finally physically free of Dad and my life with him, and the last thing I want to do is think about him or what he did to me. I just want to make up for lost time – the joy, fun, freedom and good times.

Since leaving Dad I’ve put him out of my mind, but now that I’m winning all these competitions I keep getting this urge to let him know, just like when I wanted him to be proud of me playing for the Lawside first team at Tannadice that time when my Maths teacher robbed me of the chance. Finally, on impulse, I go and see him.

He acts like he’s doing me a huge favour letting me in the house and when I finally tell him that I’ve won a dance competition at the Coconut Grove – I’m third best in Scotland in the Under-16s – he doesn’t even sneer about it, he simply turns it round to him.

‘Ah, yi got that off me!’

Even now he still won’t give me credit for making something of myself and I realise that even if I had scored the winning goal that day at Tannadice it wouldn’t have made any difference because his life was all about him.

This is my first visit to him since the Final Showdown – and, as it turns out, the last for many, many years. But Tommy goes to see him again – and it’s one visit that Tommy later tells me Dad won’t forget in a hurry. And it happens as a result of my falling asleep at a party.

During the time I’m living at Mum’s Tommy’s introducing me to his circle of friends and I’m adjusting to normal life, away from Dad. One night we go to a party at the house of one of Tommy’s friends. After a fantastic evening I fall asleep sitting up on the arm of a chair. Around ten o’clock everyone decides to go into town to continue the party but Tommy doesn’t want to leave me so he asks one of his friends to wake me up.

I open my eyes to see fifteen people staring at the floor trying not to look at me and I have no idea why. I then hear Tommy shouting, ‘That fucking bastard, I’m going to kill him!’ and then the front door slams. I have no idea what’s happened as three of his friends run after him.

Later, on the way into town in a taxi, someone tells me the truth. When they were trying to wake me up and my eyes were still closed, I put my hands up to defend myself and I was shouting in terror, ‘No, Dad, please, no Dad!’

My reaction told Tommy and his friends everything they needed to know about Dad and what he’d done to me. Of course I’m embarrassed and humiliated that I have been exposed in this way. And even though I’ve had my revenge on Dad it brings it home to me how mentally damaged and traumatised I still am.