Nipper (4 page)

‘Put yir coat on and wi’ll go an git thum.’

‘Are you aff yir hade?’

‘What are yi on aboot, if yi want them back, lets git thum.’

‘It’s Jock Mitchell, yi maniac, ir you mad?’

‘Jock Shmock – come on, git yir coat on.’

Mum is now petrified. Even saying his name sends shivers down her spine. Blake walks back in with her coat as Mum looks at him in amazement.

‘If we go up there, promise me you winna let him hit me.’

‘He winna go near yi, come on.’

All Mum can think is that Dad will batter Blake, just like he’s battered her. And as no one has ever helped her before, she is now brainwashed into thinking he is more powerful than the devil. Even so, this is too good an opportunity to let pass, so she jumps in the car and heads off on her latest mission to get Tommy and me back. All the way up there in the car she keeps asking Blake, ‘Are yi sure yi kin fight now? What if he hits me? What if he’s got a gun?’

Blake just turns and smiles. ‘He winna lay a finger on yi, trust me.’

They stop outside the house, get out of the car, then open the front door and walk in. Mum is now digging her nails into Blake’s arm and shaking uncontrollably with fear, as Dad walks out of the kitchen and sees them standing there.

‘What the fuck ir you dain’ in meh hoose, and wah the fuck is he?’

‘Never mind wah eh am,’ says Blake. ‘Get yir bairns, Sarah.’

Mum is now trembling with fear at the sight of Dad. ‘I canna, he’s gonna hit me.’

‘You go near they bairns and I will hit yi,’ Dad snaps.

‘Do ya think so?’ Blake snaps back.

Dad has walked back into the kitchen and comes out again holding a knife.

‘What di yi think yir awa ti dae we that?’

‘Fuck all, I’m fixin’ a plug.’

The next minute Dad is sat back in the armchair with a broken jaw; Blake never gives him the chance to use the knife. As Dad has looked down, probably preparing one of his fly moves, Blake has booted him in the chin.

‘If you ever pull a knife on me again, ya prick, I’ll kill ya,’ says Blake.

‘The bairns are in the room. Eh dinna want this gittin’ oot o’ hand,’ says Mum, who’s starting to panic.

Tommy and I are upstairs asleep but the commotion wakes us up and we hear everything that’s going on.

Mum is now confused at the situation, as she has never seen this side of Dad. He is now on the receiving end for a change. But she’s still watching him like a hawk as this could be one of his tricks. And he still has the knife in his hand.

‘Come back the mornin’ and yi’ll git thum back. Dinna wake thum up now.’

‘Smack his puss, Sarah, fir a’ the hidings he gave you. It’s aright, he winna touch yi.’

‘No let’s get oot o’ here in case the police ’ave been phoned.’ She just wants out of there now, as she still doesn’t think Dad’s going to take what has just happened quietly.

They head off in the car and wait till the next morning to go back, but by that time Dad’s long gone. He has taken us to Aunt Helen’s house at the bottom of Lawhill (I play there with her kids, my cousins) and has then driven to hospital to get his jaw wired up. Mum only finds this out when she goes to my Nan’s house looking for us, as she’s greeted with a mouthful for what Blake did to Dad. I find that a bit weird as Nan knows what Dad’s like from past experience. I suppose blood is thicker than water.

Mum split up with Blake a couple of years later but as the tug of war between her and Dad continued, with Tommy and me being the rope they were pulling on, I never really got to know him.

In retaliation for Dad’s attempt on Mum’s life when she was pregnant with Bobby, there was an attempt on Dad’s life, when he was run over by a car as he walked out of a local pub. Dad got off lightly – just a few bruised ribs and minor injuries to the hip and shoulder which soon healed. He also had a twelve-inch gash to his leg which scarred it for life. He always claimed that Blake had something to do with this, but I think he just wanted to have another excuse to bully Mum.

He managed to snatch me again when I was approaching my third birthday and this time he headed over to the Isle of Man on the ferry, with me in tow…

I’m standing on the boat with him and it’s cold and windy and I don’t know whether I’ll see Mum or Tommy again. I’m fishing off the side of the boat and catch a conger eel with this orange rope handline, given to me by Dad to keep me amused. It nearly pulls me into the water and the rope cuts through my hand…It’s amazing that all of these fishermen have the best rods, reels and bait but catch nothing, and I have this silly little handline and I hook a thirty-pound conger
.

But maybe it would have been better if the captain had never saved me from being dragged overboard – or maybe drowning me is Dad’s plan…

His new life in the Isle of Man was cut short and he had to come back. I don’t know why we only spent a few months there. I think he got kicked off the island for some reason, but he never told me why we came back.

Finally, when I was around three and a half years old and my big brother Tommy was five, they settled the custody battle in court.

Tommy and I are sitting there between Mum and Dad in a big, gloomy wood-panelled courtroom in Dundee. There’s this musty smell of ancient wax polish, disinfectant and
broken lives. I don’t really know what’s going on but a man in a wig who I learn later is the judge seems to be in a hurry for us to leave, as he keeps snapping questions at Mum and Dad. Maybe he wants his lunch. Then suddenly he’s asking me who I want to live with, Mum or Dad.

By this time I’ve spent more of my life with Dad than I have with my mum and there doesn’t seem to be any choice. Besides I’m too frightened to say anything else.

‘Dad,’ I mumble nervously.

‘What’s he saying?’ says the judge.

‘He wants to be with me, Yi Honour,’ replies Dad, quickly and smartly.

Tommy has chosen Mum and in the next few minutes my childhood fate is sealed. The judge rules that I should live with Dad and Tommy should live with Mum. After all, it seems fair for both parents to have one kid each.

Mum’s crying and calling Dad a bastard and shouting something about access but Dad just says, ‘Yi can fuck off!’ and walks out of the courtroom, taking me with him.

‘Come with me, son. Come with me, son,’ Mum’s begging me as I follow my dad out. I feel stunned and miserable, and I’m trying not to listen too closely to her begging as it hurts too much. And even though I haven’t spent much time with my mum over the last few years and I don’t even feel I know her that well – she has already become a shadowy, distant figure in my life – I know I’m feeling that stab of pain in the pit of my tummy, a sense of isolation and terror, the same feeling
I had when Dad snatched me from the social security office and lay me in the middle of the traffic.

Only this time, I’m the one who’s chosen not to be with my mum and I don’t even know why, except that I’m too frightened of my monster-like dad to do anything else. And I’m worried that by choosing Dad over Mum, I’ve let her down. I’m thinking that the breakup of my parents’ marriage must be my fault. I was the one who told the judge that I didn’t want to go with my mum and so I must be the one who’s to blame for her going out of my life.

I have been stolen back and forwards five times before by Dad and Mum, but this time Dad’s stolen me for good. And this time I’ve let him steal me. I’ve chosen to live with him so I’m also to blame. But it’s Dad who’s won the tug of war – not me or Mum. Dad is an animal that Mum just can’t handle. With him, it’s like banging your head against a brick wall. No matter how hard you try, you can never win, and Mum has had the last bit of fight knocked out of her. She has her consolation prize: at least she’s got Tommy, her first born.

As for me, now that I’m with Dad full-time I keep trying to imagine what it would have been like if I had replied ‘Mum’ to the judge not ‘Dad’, and if I had managed to escape along with Tommy that time he wriggled free of Dad in town. It’s a hard thing to say but I’ve wished so many times that I had been the one to go with Mum, not Tommy.

I’m not yet four years old and I won’t see my mother and brother again for most of my childhood. Instead my
consolation prize is to look forward to years and years of physical and mental torture from my dad.

And my prison sentence has only just begun. The minimum term of my sentence is the whole of my childhood – though it may last much longer and could even be for life.

A
fter Dad takes me away from that horrible courtroom and now that he has complete custody over me, I know that I won’t see my mum again. I know this because Dad keeps telling me.

‘She’s washed her hands of yir for good this time, the fuckin’ bitch,’ he smirks and of course I believe him. How can I not believe him? How can I know that she’s crying for me every day? How am I to know that losing me is the worst thing that has ever happened to her and that she will spend the rest of my childhood years trying to get me back? I only find this out years later and by then the damage of our being torn apart has well and truly been done.

But for me, as a boy of less than four years old, out of sight means out of mind. Besides, Dad has told me that if Mum gets her hands on me again she’ll try to kill me. She must be
worse than Dad, I tell myself. After all, how can I know otherwise? And very soon I simply stop thinking about her.

After Dad and Mum broke up when I was ten months old, Dad had a short stint at the single life before he met a woman named Mandy. She’s a really pretty woman from a big, well-known family in Dundee. By well known I mean that where we live in St Mary’s, Dundee, everyone seems to know everyone else, especially when people come from big families. Mandy has three kids from her previous unhappy marriage, one girl and two boys, Julie, Paul and Peter. We all live together when I’m young.

Paul, who’s the middle child and a year older than me, soon becomes my best friend, and our friendship continues for many years into adult life. And Julie and Peter will always be like a brother and sister to me.

By the time I’m five I’m already living in fear of what my dad will do to me. The first time he battered me was the night before what should have been my first day at school. I now look forward to the rare occasions when he leaves me with someone else when he goes off somewhere, and for a brief time I’m free from him, off the hook. Like the time he takes Mandy and her three kids to Blackpool and leaves me behind with one of the neighbours, so I can go and pick berries to make money over the holidays.

Although my memories of my mother are already growing hazy I remember how Dad used to beat her up and mentally
torture her, so in a way I’m not surprised when he carries on doing this in his relationship with Mandy.

Night after night I’m forced to listen to the thuds and moans coming through the wall, until I fall asleep. I have a good idea what’s going on, but I put the pillow over my head and cover my ears with my hands to block the noise out. I realise when I’m older that Mandy could have had anyone back then, as she was really good looking, but she ended up choosing a crazy aggressive thug with no morals or remorse for anything he did.

It’s hard to explain how this could come about but I know people think that Dad has a really funny personality when they first meet him – and when he’s sober. And the women he dates are led into a false sense of security by his happy-go-lucky attitude. But when he manages to get his feet under the table – once these women have let him into their lives and he’s installed in their houses – he’ll take to drinking and turn into an animal.

Even when I’m very young I know that he’s using drink as an excuse to unleash the sadistic side of his nature that he can hide very well if it suits him, and that he enjoys inflicting pain – physical and mental, on people who are weaker than him.

There are many, many nights when I get dragged out of bed at three or four in the morning because Dad has beaten Mandy, and if he leaves, I have to leave as well.

Dad is a very sneaky man where women are involved. It’s like he plans the beatings at certain times of the night, when
the world has gone to sleep. And he will mostly aim for areas that can be covered up with clothes the next day. You’d know when he’s really been pissed the night before because Mandy’s face will be in a hell of a mess. I look at her sometimes, sitting on the couch with black eyes or burst lips, while he’s whistling in the kitchen as if nothing has happened.

The bond that I have with Peter and Paul will never be broken. I may not see Paul for many years but I know he’s always there for me and we’re still like brothers when we meet up again. Mandy has always been there for me to talk to – but after she finally manages to get away from Dad I don’t really see her that much, as my face is probably a constant reminder of what she went through at his hands.

Dad did a lot of bad things to Mandy in her life, but there is one particular night that scares the life out of me, a memory that I’ll take to the grave. I’m staying in Mandy’s house, and Dad wakes all the kids up including me, and tells us to come downstairs and watch.

‘Everybody up, git up yi fuckers.’ He’s staggering around, pulling the bed covers off the beds. ‘GET UP!’

He turns and walks back out of the room, while the four of us jump out of bed and run downstairs, where I can hear Mandy crying and pleading.

‘No in front o’ the bairns, please.’

We find them in the bathroom, where he has filled the bath to the top, and has Mandy by the hair, pushing her head
under the water. We all realise at once that he’s trying to drown her and he makes no secret of it either.

‘Look at yir mum drooned.’

We all jump on his back and try to get him off. He pushes us away, but his rage seems to have subsided, as if he’s achieved what he wanted – to scare the daylights out of Mandy, and us children too.

He leaves Mandy in the water, blue faced and bruised, and wanders off to the kitchen. I stand there in shock as I think she’s about to die right in front of me. She eventually climbs out of the bath, shaken and shivering and hugging herself, grabbing a damp towel and retreating to her bedroom, as far away from him as possible.