The Nipper: The heartbreaking true story of a little boy and his violent childhood in working-class Dundee

Dad is on the dole but works as a roofer-come-chimney sweep – obviously illegally, but he never gets caught as the social never come into our area. I don’t think they really give a monkey’s about poor areas, as they have nothing to gain from them. The only people that knock on the door are debt collectors, people in suits looking for Dad. I’m turning into the best liar in Scotland, as Dad will send me to the door to tell them stories about him being at the hospital, or at the dentist. Then I’ll come back into the living room, where Dad will be kneeling under the windowsill, looking out of a tiny gap in the curtains.

‘They believed me, Dad.’

‘Keep yir fucking voice doon, yi half-wit,’ he’ll whisper. Then he’ll start the questioning, once they’re out of sight.

‘What did they want? What did you say? Then what did they say?’

I’m six years old by this time and I never really pay attention to what they’re saying. I am more concerned about keeping them from pushing past me.

Between the age of five and seven, I learn how to keep on the good side of Dad. I will tell lies for him, keep lookout for men in suits when I’m out playing, and run to the shops for anything he needs. But I never know when he’s going to give me a beating and they’re getting worse. The first one he ever gave me – that meant I missed my first day at school – was just a taste of things to come. But today he takes it to a whole new level.

Dad has asked me to go and pick up his family allowance. He gives me the book for me to take to the post office and I then have to hand it over to the woman who’ll tear a page out and give me his money. On this particular morning I am waiting in the queue among all the old biddies and single mums, right behind an old man in his sixties who has obviously lost control of his bowels, and must have eaten sprouts this morning. The air is toxic around me, and my height isn’t helping at all. He smells like my neighbour’s dog after it rains.

‘Next please!’

Great, my turn. Thank God that windbag has gone – the air is so rife from his farts I can hardly see. I pull the book out of my pocket and hand it to the woman behind the counter.

‘There yi go, misses.’

She is peering at me over her National Health glasses, with a plaster in the middle holding them together.

‘Thank you son!’

She’s now looking closely at the cover of the book.

‘What’s up with your dad’s book?…All this black stuff on it, did he drop it?’

‘No he left it in his pocket when he was sweeping chimneys.’

The place instantly goes silent. Well, how am I to know he isn’t supposed to be working and claiming dole at the same time?

The woman behind the counter starts laughing. ‘You’re lucky I know your dad. You should be more careful who you say that to.’

Then all the people in the queue start laughing as I skip out of the door thinking I’m some kind of comedian. But I soon realise that Dad has a completely different sense of humour to me. I get back to the house white-knuckled from holding the money extra tight so I don’t drop it, then go into the kitchen and hand it to Dad.

‘There you go, Dad – sixty-nine pounds and thirty-eight pee.’

‘What took yi so long? Yi’ve been fucking ages!’

‘There was a massive queue, Dad, and some old woman was paying loads o’ bills.’

‘I’ll go mi fucking self next time.’

Don’t ask me to explain it, because I don’t have a clue why my mouth opens and blurts out this next sentence. Maybe it’s in case someone else tells him what went on, and then I wouldn’t get a chance to explain myself.

‘The woman asked in the post office why your book was black, and I told her it was soot from when you were sweeping chimneys, but she laughed!’

‘Yi stupid little bastard!’ I see his face change into a piercing, threatening stare as he puts his cup down on the kitchen worktop. I’ve never seen anyone’s pupils go so big and black, I can see myself in them as he takes a step towards me, grinding his fanglike teeth.

‘Come ’ere, yi little fucker.’

I walk backwards up the hall towards the living room with my hands up. ‘Sorry Dad, sorry Dad, sorry Dad. Please I’m sorry.’

‘Yi’re sorry, are yi?’ he says, walking towards me. Then boot! He kicks me right in the bollocks. I fall to the floor. Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! all over me, then he drags me up by the hair and throws me face-first into the wall. I fall onto the settee backwards screaming.

‘Please stop, Dad, I’m sorry.’ The egg on my forehead from the force of my face hitting the wall is now visible when I look up. ‘Dad, I’ll never do it again, I’m sorry, please, please, please – I’m sorry.’

I am now on my back with blood pouring down my face and into my eyes.

‘If yi say I’m sorry once more I’ll smother yi, yi little snivelling cunt. Shut it or I’ll stop yi breathing.’

So I don’t say another word. I just lie there like a dog on its back, with arms and legs in the air, sniffing and trying not to look at the massive egg-shaped bump on my forehead or say anything else that might start him off again.

‘Get up, idiot. NOW! Get up!’

‘Please Dad I’m sorry—’

‘What did I tell you about saying yir sorry?’ Smack! Smack! Bang! Bang! He just explodes again after pacing up and down the carpet, thinking about what it might mean for him to get caught by the social, I guess.

The beating goes on for around four hours. Dad covers my mouth to stop me screaming while smashing his head into my face and kneeing me in the groin. I can’t even catch a breath as his hand is covering my mouth and nose. When I try to roll off the couch to get his hand away from my mouth, we both fall onto the floor, where he keeps smashing my head with a shoe, while clumps of my hair that he has been yanking out of my head are all over my face, and are now itching the hell out of my nose. My head feels like it’s going to explode and my body is aching from the constant knee shots he is firing into it.

Suddenly he stops and gets up, walks out of the living room and into the kitchen, then comes back with a bottle of vodka and two litres of Coke. I feel like jumping through the window but we’re three floors up and if it doesn’t smash I know it will be ten times worse if I never get out.

‘Get oot my fucking sight.’

I don’t know whether I should move or if he is going to smash me on the way past so I just lie there, not moving from the position he left me, against the couch on the floor with my legs under the table.

‘If I have to tell yi again, fucking bed now.’

So I jump up and chance it. He stands up as I try to run past and gives me one more boot in the back, sending me head first into the edge of the open door. That white flash I see when my skull smashes against the door will send a shiver down my spine for the rest of my life – and as an adult I still have the little indentation on my forehead from that cracked skull.

I drag myself off the floor, stagger into my room and close the door, just making it as I fall down face first onto the bed.

Blood is now pumping out of my head and covering the bed cover. It’s about 9 p.m. and all I can hear is the lid from the vodka bottle being twisted back on, as I take the pillowcase off the pillow to press against my open wounds. I can hear the TV volume go down – he turned it up full blast earlier to drown out my screams. How nobody has come to the door this night I’ll never know; I could have been murdered and people would have just sat at home with the telly turned up, so they didn’t have to get involved. Bunch of cowards.

I stay up until about 5 a.m. waiting for round two, but it never comes. The pain is not the worst thing about tonight though; it’s waiting for the bedroom door to open that really gets to me. My eyes will start to close, and then I hear movement, or he’ll start singing along to music on the radio or one of his records at the top of his lungs.

Dad loves singing – especially if they’re sentimental songs and he’s drunk, and often when I hear them I’m crouched somewhere in the flat in pain and not daring to move. He’s got old albums from the Sixties like the Kinks and the Rolling Stones, Tamla Motown, the Supremes and Stevie Wonder; and cassettes from the Seventies – he’s always playing the Carpenters and Commodores and Abba; and then there’s new, modern 1980s stuff like Alison Moyet and Lionel Richie. These records are the soundtrack of my childhood years of battering and abuse.

I’m completely exhausted but for eight hours that night I watch the door handle, listening to the odd can blowing down the street, cats fighting out the back green, police cars and ambulances going past but none stopping. I think that maybe someone may have called them to come and get him, but I am never that lucky.

The next day Dad says nothing to me in the morning. I am off school again but this time he’s going to need a really good excuse as I’ll be needing at least two weeks to recover because of the mess I’m in. But he’s thought of something; I never find out what it is, but it works. He’s a brilliant liar, you see, and has everyone under some kind of spell for years to come. As a six year old I’m desperate to tell someone, but I can’t forget him telling me that if I ever tell anyone what’s going on, he’ll either kill me or my mum would get me – and she’s fifty times worse, according to him.

Dad has told me that my mum tried to smother me just after I was born and that’s why he had to keep stealing me off her. I’m finding it harder and harder to remember my mum so I’m starting to believe him – and I’ve had no contact with her or my brother Tommy since the day in the courtroom when I went off with Dad. He’s also told me that she might kill me if she gets her hands on me again, and I sort of believe this too.

At least I think I do. He can make me think yes is no, up is down, black is white. I sometimes don’t know what to believe. But I will end up believing what he wants me to believe just so that I can get some sleep.

Chapter Six The Three Amigos (#ulink_a59c1c98-5f6f-5f61-93b2-271e0204230b)