Nipper (24 page)

As for Tommy, fortunately for him, two or three of his friends have persuaded him not to go straight round to Dad’s house as he would have certainly killed him at this point. Even so his anger still festers and although it’s weeks later, he does go round to Dad’s house and the battering he gives him leaves Dad unrecognisable immediately afterwards, just as it had left me on many occasions. But I no longer care whether Dad’s beaten up or not. The damage has been done and he’s now out of my life.

After that, if he ever does cross my mind, it’s like a distant memory of a nightmare which I’d rather forget. But if I really think I’ve got him out of my head and flushed away all the damage he’s done to me over the years, I’m fooling myself.

I’m getting a lot of people coming up to me saying, ‘Alright Tommo, how’s things?’ People in town call me Tommo and
women sit on my knee in the middle of a club when I’ve never even met them before.

‘Alright Tommo, I’ve not seen you since school.’

Tommo’s my older brother Tommy’s nickname. Although he’s two years older than me, we look so alike that people who’ve known him for eighteen years can’t tell the difference. None of us in the family can see it but everyone else says we look like twins. He’s even fallen out with his girlfriend because two girls run up to him in town and squirt him in the face with pump-action water pistols.

‘That’s for not speaking to us in Buddies.’ Then they run off and leave him to explain what he’s been doing in an under-eighteens nightclub. He’s in the doghouse until he introduces me to her one day. I walk out from behind her when they’re talking.

‘Jesus Christ, there’s two of them,’ she gasps, accidentally spitting her can of Coke all over me.

When Buddies isn’t on I go into town with Tommy to all the over-eighteen pubs. He knows all the doormen and we get in everywhere, no problem. We just hate the fact that Bobby’s too young to come with us, and so does he.

‘I canna wait till I’m sixteen. This is a load o’ shite.’

He’s the only one that can get away with swearing in front of Mum as he’s invented codewords in case he gets caught. He’ll say things like ‘Shut yir fucking puss’ really quickly and Mum will shout, ‘What did you just say?’

‘I’m just telling Charlie he should have got the bus.’

Bobby has me in stitches. He has this mad giggle, ‘Teehee teehee’ and there’ll be slavers running down his chin and bubbles coming out of his nose. He’ll say stuff under his breath to Mum and then go into fits of laughter if she catches him. Mum just laughs at him, as he’ll have Tommy and me on the floor pissing our sides.

Bobby is funny and really good-natured, although if you wind him up, he can blow – and Tommy knows exactly what buttons to push. One Christmas Mum gets Bobby a six by three foot snooker table. We’re all having a laugh playing each other at Winner Stays On in the living room. Bobby’s just beaten Tommy and I’m on next, but Tommy can’t resist winding him up, as brothers do. He keeps lifting the table leg when Bobby’s taking his shot and all the balls keep rolling down one side of the table.

‘Stop it, yi dick,’ Bobby snarls.

Tommy’s drinking a can of beer as we’re going into town later in the evening and he’s decided to have a couple before we go. Bobby’s a bit wound up that he can’t go so now’s probably not the best time to push his buttons. But Tommy lifts the table leg again.

‘Mum, you better tell him ti fuckin’ stop it.’

He’s obviously ready to pop.

‘Right, Tommy,’ says Mum. ‘Stop annoying ’im, that’s enough.’

Tommy leans back to take a drink from his can after making faces at him behind Mum’s back when all of a sudden,
whack
, the beer goes everywhere. Bobby has swung his snooker cue straight into Tommy’s face.

‘You little bastard,’ he shouts.

Mum jumps in the middle and Bobby’s now standing laughing, ‘Ha, yi never seen that coming did yi!’

‘I’ll get yi back fir that, yi wee prick.’

I’m now laughing at his face, as Bobby looks really smug with his snooker cue still held like a baseball bat. If Tommy wasn’t drinking his can at that point, I think his new nickname would have been ‘Gummy!’

Tommy sits back down and half laughs. ‘There’s sumin’ rang wi you, di yi ken that? There’s sumin’ rang wi your can,’ he says, bursting into tears of laughter.

I always get on well with both of them but they’re always at each other. It must have been living together all those years. I try to spend equal amounts of time with each of them, but with Bobby being younger, Tommy and I are together a lot more.

After all, Buddies is only open once a week, and the pubs and clubs are every night.

After nine months or so of staying at Mum’s, I’m beginning to crave my own space as me and Tommy are becoming young men and privacy is non-existent with two people in a room. I go down to the social and tell them I’m homeless so I can get my own place and some independence.

They set me up with a grotty little bedsit in a shit hole of an area with junkies for neighbours. Mum helps me – she
scrubs the whole house, floorboards and all, with bleach and disinfectant and decorates the whole place as I don’t have a clue how to hang wallpaper, and then adds a woman’s touch with curtains and plants. We go to Dens Road Market, a massive indoor market in Dundee that sells secondhand everything. It’s an Aladdin’s Cave for tramps or for people that are skint. I get everything except the hall carpet.

From the moment I get that house my life is a rollercoaster. I’m going to raves as I love the music which is happy house. But they go on until seven in the morning and when you have a wild, obsessive streak like me, you don’t want to leave the dance floor. It’s the best place in the world for a lot of people, but not for me. By now I’m taking drugs as well as drinking. It starts with speed and I’m soon having everything that’s going. The very worst thing a person in my mental state can do at this point is to add any more confusion to a brain that is already volatile and unstable.

Some mornings I wake up, and my hands are cut or broken. I look out of the window and cars will be smashed up in the street, with someone’s wooden deckchair sticking out of a front windscreen. Other times I’ll come to myself in a party full of blokes that I used to fight with as a kid and not have a clue how I got there, or why. And all the time I tell myself that I’ve escaped my past, not realising that I’m dragging it along behind me like a set of invisible chains.

Tommy, Bobby and me are inseparable. It’s like we’re trying to make up for all the years we were apart and for all of
us the bad times and good times are mixed up together like a great big stew. And we do have great times together, like the night our three girlfriends, who are all in the Territorial Army, persuade us to sneak into their barracks.

I should have joined the army, as I could penetrate enemy lines undetected, no problem. I manage to escape capture twice, and when the women officers come to check on the girls, I’m hiding in a top bunk behind one of them who is only too happy to play along. Bobby, meanwhile, is trying to hide in a four-foot-high metal locker, while Tommy is squashed on the floor under a bed making loads of noise, and it’s becoming a game of cat and mouse between the army officers and us.

Suddenly the light goes on and the sound of laughter is deafening. I have to peek over this girl and see what’s happening. Everyone’s in stitches. As I look over her shoulder, to my amazement I see a white sheet in the middle of the floor standing, like a ghost. One of my two nutter brothers is obviously under it.

I lay my head back down, because if I start laughing I won’t be able to stop.

‘How did you find me?’ Tommy blurts out as the officer lifts the sheet. Well, stick a fork in me, I’m done. I get up from behind the girl, howling with laughter.

‘Where the hell did you come from?’

Bobby comes out of hiding as well.

‘That’s it, I’m calling the police.’

‘Aright luv, calm doon, we’re going this time. We’re just lookin’ fir him.’ Bobby turns and points at me.

I’m standing there in my boxer shorts with my hair all over the place.

‘You have two minutes to get your clothes on and get off these barracks, or I will call the police.’

We clear off sharpish as I’m already known to the police – we’re still fighting every week, wrecking people’s houses. Nothing phases us. Even when the police turn up we don’t care and treat them just like another Dundee gang that we’re fighting against. We’re a law unto ourselves and all reality has gone out of the window. The anger that Dad has planted inside me is spiralling out of control. During this two-year period my criminal record goes from idiot charges – like breach of the peace, the odd punch-up in town and theft of a fan – into an increasingly violent stream of assaults. I know we’re all heading for prison but it never seems to stop us. The only thing on my mind is to seek and destroy, and I think it’s the same for Tommy and Bobby.

In all my battles throughout this period I can never remember the faces of the people I fight with. All I can see is the face of my dad, Evil Jock. Every memory I have seems to go back to his face, that night I hit him back. Right through to the date of writing this, if when someone’s drunk they get a bit nasty, all I can see is Dad’s features coming through their face.

I’m building up a substantial portfolio in the police station and although I’ve managed to stay out of prison by the skin
of my teeth, it’s only a matter of time before the law catches up with me.

It’s early February 1997 and I’m in court for fighting in town, expecting another fine or probation. I’m sitting in the dock, thinking about what club to go to that night, and then I realise the guy’s talking to me.

‘The courts have given you ample warning about your behaviour. You seem to think you can go around doing as you please.’

I’m paying attention now, as no judge has ever spoken directly to me before.

‘I have no option but to remand you in custody for three months. Take him down.’

A
short while later I’m released from Perth Prison. Once out of the prison grounds and breathing in the fresh air, it dawns on me how sweet fresh air is. It’s early March and spring in Dundee is like winter everywhere else, but to me at this moment it’s like summer. I even imagine I can feel the sun on my face but of course it’s only the usual Dundee smog.

Even so it feels good to be alive and free. And getting out of this place reminds me of the day I walked out of Dad’s house for the last time – although of course I was in a much greater state of shock that time as my previous prison sentence had been so much longer. With time off for good behaviour I’d been incarcerated with that bastard for almost sixteen years.

Mum’s split up with her third husband by this time. I think Dale just wanted a quiet life; it was all too hectic with three
noisy lads there, and now Mum’s on her own again. As for me, I’m twenty-one with no job and no plans for the future, and to be honest, I’ve had enough. I have to get away from Dundee – and Spain seems like the answer. I tell Mum, Tommy and Bobby I’m leaving, sort out my passport and flight, and then I’m off.

Adios amigo, una grande cervesa por favor. Charli-eo is off-io
, as my old pal Calum Patterson might say.

Arriving in Benidorm in March the place is a ghost town, hardly anywhere is open and the weather’s worse than Scotland. I go into a bar and have a drink and stumble across a karaoke bar around the corner. There’s a lot more people in there, but I don’t care as I’m just exploring on my own, taking everything in. I go from place to place, having a drink in every bar I go into, sometimes two.

The following morning I wake up with this bright light in my eyes, like I’m on an operating table. My head feels like it’s in a vice. I open my eyes and the most beautiful picture is in front of me. It’s morning and I’m lying on the beach under an umbrella, beside a sun lounger – not on it – with the sun beating down on my face. I’ve never been anywhere so beautiful. This is my heaven.

I get up off the sand, dust myself down and start walking along the beach with boots, jeans and a jacket on from the night before. I think the storm has cleared the air as it’s boiling. Well, to me it is as I’ve just moved from Fridgeland.

I have a theory about Scotland: the reason it has so much crime and domestic violence is because the place is like a fridge freezer and nobody wants to go outside. The ones that do go out tend to have a punch-up to keep warm. Whoever invented Scottish weather has a very sick sense of humour.

Back in town I’m staggering a bit, and have to close one eye to focus on the road ahead, mainly because I’m tired from walking around all day and night – but also, of course, because I’m a little pissed. I can see two lads on the other side of the road walking up towards me. It sounds like they’re arguing. As they come closer I notice that one of them has his shirt ripped open and there’s blood all down his mouth and chest. I should just walk past but Good Samaritan Charlie decides to check if they’re OK.

‘Are yi aright mate?’

‘Do I look fuckin’ alright?’

‘What happened?’

‘Fuck off, you Scotch twat
,’ he says in a strong Welsh accent.

‘Nae wonder yir face is like that, yi cheeky cunt.’ I carry on walking down towards the beach.

‘Oi, arsehole, come back ’ere and say that.’

They’ve started to cross the road and walk down behind me. I can feel my blood boil at the fact that there’s two of them. If that bloke was on his own, I know I would have ignored him, but as I hate any kind of bullying, two against one like this will always get to me. I keep walking at first.

‘Yeah keep walking, you shitbag,’ the other one says, laughing with his mate. Then a bottle smashes on the ground just past me.

I stop walking and turn around.

‘Aright tough guy, let’s go.’ I start walking back up the middle of the road towards them. One of them, the bloke with his face still intact, starts bouncing in the middle of the road twenty yards away from me.