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

As we walk past, she turns to us. ‘Lads, do you think I’m fit, couldn’t I be a film star?’

‘No, love,’ Calum replies, quick as a flash, ‘you’ve definitely got a face for radio.’

Her face turns purple and she proceeds to chase us down the corridor for the next two minutes so we’re late for the next class.

He has so many one-liners. Like the one he deals out to Claire Clark, a lovely, big girl, who’s always taking the mick out of me and Calum. Claire’s got a really pretty face but she’s a little overweight. She’s told everyone in school that Calum dresses up in his mum’s clothes at the weekend and the whole school has been slagging him off for days, so Calum makes up a rumour that Claire has been hit by a taxi and when the police came, they asked the taxi driver why he hit her. The taxi man replied, ‘I never had enough petrol to go around her!’

He tells this joke in front of about fifty people and I take to my heels before he has a chance to finish, as I know what’s coming. It is hilarious and Claire sees the funny side of it after we both get out of hospital.

I’m joking; we couldn’t offend Claire if we tried, as we’re like the Three Musketeers. She wouldn’t let anyone else talk to her like that, but with Calum and me it’s different. In school the three of us hang around together except when football is being played at lunchtime. She goes with the girls – skipping or swapping photos of Boy George or Duran Duran, or whatever it is they do. Claire’s mum and dad split up when she was young and her mum was an alcoholic like my dad. But Claire’s mum never beats her – she just doesn’t bother to look after her. It’s called neglect. I’m not saying that’s not as bad as what happened to me and Calum – it’s just a different kind of abuse.

At school it’s an amazing adventure just walking from one class to another, people tripping each other up and hitting each other with water balloons, but it’s not like at home – there’s never any violence. In class we play pranks on each other. The one I like best is tying people’s rucksacks to those all-in-one tables and chairs. They’re made out of metal and wood, and the chair and desk are welded together so that if you tie someone’s bag straps around the metal bar when they have their backpack on, they’ll stand up and end up in a heap on the floor, entangled in the furniture. I don’t know why I find it so funny or even why I do it, but that’s my party piece. Everyone has their own, and that’s mine.

One of the effects of the nightly torture sessions – the beatings and interrogations that go on into the early hours of the morning – is that I fall asleep a lot when I’m at school. I don’t pay attention – it’s not important to me compared with what’s going on at home, and as the teachers are quite strict I often get into trouble. I’m always messing around. But I have to be careful at school not to cross the line – if I get expelled or excluded I’ll be in for it at home.

As for my bruises, a couple of teachers do ask, ‘What happened to yir face?’

‘Oh, I was playing on the monkey bars and fell off.’

I’m a great liar as Dad has taught me to lie. I’ve become an expert through having to tell stories to the debt collectors and anyone else who comes to the door.

‘Just get rid of them,’ Dad would say.

I’m never bulled at school and I never bully anyone else either. I hate bullies as that’s what my dad is, and any kind of bullying behaviour makes me see red. I do play practical jokes on other kids though.

It can be quite dangerous messing about in school, as there’s a fine line between getting the cane or belt from a teacher and Dad being called in. I had to learn very quickly what I could get away with and what’s over the line. When Dad’s been called up to the school, it always ends in near death experiences, so when the headmaster calls him up on this occasion I’m not looking forward to it one bit.

I have been arguing with the Janitor constantly about who’s best – Dundee United or Dundee. Obviously it’s Dundee United but the Janny is a Dundee fan and can’t handle the fact that a seven year old knows so much about football and I don’t think it helps that the headmaster walks past and hears me tell him, ‘Dundee have never won anything, they are shite.’

That’s only one of the words I’ve picked up from Dad over the last few years. I go home that day expecting to be kicked around the house for the next few hours. Sitting in my room getting changed out of my school clothes I think, he’s just told the headmaster he will deal with me at home, I’m in for it now!

But a calm voice comes from the living room. ‘Charlie, can yi come through here, son?’

That doesn’t sound like the normal tone. What’s going on? I’m feeling very confused as I walk down the Hall of Imminent Death, the dark corridor that leads to the living room. I often think of it as my long walk of fear to the execution chamber, at the end of which is the Electric Chair. That’s the chair I have to sit on in the living room while Dad interrogates me for hour after hour until I can’t think any more and I feel like I’m going mad. I call it the Electric Chair because after four or five hours of questioning my head often feels like it has been fried.

‘Don’t worry aboot what happened the day.’

Wait a minute! I think, where’s the camera? Surely Jeremy Beadle’s going to jump out in a minute and then they’ll both kick the shit out of me.

‘That blue nose cunt disnay hey a clue, never let dickheads like that tell yi that Dundee are better than United, but if I ever catch you swearing like that again I’ll rattle yir arse!’

I’m standing in front of him waiting for the punchline, then the punch, but nothing happens. I think it must be another one of his mind games to see if I’ll bite but I get off scot-free. YEEHAA!

Brilliant! I think, if I ever get in trouble again, I’ll tell Dad that they’ve been slagging off Dundee United and I’ve had to defend them. Then he’ll fly downstairs in his steel toecap boots, and kick lumps out of anybody who says a wrong word.

What a strange, strange man. He doesn’t even tell me off, let alone batter or torture me. Maybe he’s been smoking something funny and has forgotten what I actually did. Or maybe the sicko just loves Dundee United that much. As he’s always telling me, my grandfather used to play for them and Dad could have signed too, but he passed up on the offer because he didn’t want any help from my granddad to become a professional footballer. I suspect it was more down to the fact that he was too violent on the pitch. I believe he went for trials with Norwich and some other English clubs but his temper always got the better of him, and managers don’t like smart arses with bad attitudes.

Whatever the reason for his leniency, I’m off the hook for today. I have to count myself lucky, but then again, whoever deals out the lucky cards seems to be ignoring me most days of my childhood.

There are a few exceptions, though; I do have the occasional good times with Dad and with my family, which shine out like a beacon in the darkness of my miserable childhood.

Chapter Seven The Laughter that Hurts

At Christmas I’ll get a few presents, like a tracksuit or a football. If Dad has a girlfriend we go to hers for dinner. But some Christmases I’ve been battered so badly the night before that when I wake up in the morning I’ve found that Dad has torn the wrapping paper and the presents to shreds.

This doesn’t just happen once but on two or three occasions and each time I’m devastated. From all the excitement of Christmas Eve, peeping at the presents sitting under the plastic tree glowing with little red, yellow and blue lights, I haven’t been able to believe my eyes the next morning to find them hacked to bits. I often wonder if he does it deliberately so that he can watch the expression on my face change from the joy of anticipation to misery and disappointment.

And to add to my ever-growing confusion, I can never predict from one Christmas morning to the next whether I will find him crying and penitent, trying to put them back together again, or whether he will be sitting amongst the torn wrapping paper with a glass of vodka in his hand, waiting patiently to see the look on my face so that he can really twist the Xmas knife.

There’s only one really good Christmas and that’s when I’m seven. Dad says to me, ‘I’ll gi’ yi thirty-quid for clothes or I’ll get yi a bike, which is it?’

I’d love a bike but the thought of all that money for clothes, or anything else, is just too tempting so I pick clothes. By Christmas Eve I’ve picked the clothes I want – a light blue tracksuit from the Barnardo’s charity shop in Reform Street – and even have a bit of cash left over to spend on Mars bars and comics.

My favourite comic is the Dandy because it’s got Desperate Dan. My mouth always waters looking at his favourite food, cow pies. I also like football sticker albums, and will stand at the local shop swapping stickers with other kids trying to fill the book. So I buy a Beano and Dandy and a sticker album and The Observers Book of Wild Animals which I get from Barnardo’s for a pound. I love any wildlife books and I’m in love with white tigers even though I’ve never seen a real one.

On Christmas morning Dad gets me up. ‘Go and make me a cup of tea,’ he says.

I go into the kitchen and I can’t believe my eyes – there’s a brand new shiny red Raleigh bike – he’s got me both! And what’s more, we get through the day without him giving me a beating.

The longest I go without a beating is two days so the next day, Boxing Day, when I go out and play football and get grass on my new clothes he’s back on form, battering and torturing me for hours, asking me questions – sometimes the same one – over and over again.

And another thing: he confiscates the bike. I even think he only gave me it so he could take it away again. Once again I feel torn up, like those bits of wrapping paper he’s shredded. I’m shaking with fury and frustration yet I can’t show it to him so I go out and kick trees and lampposts, or if I’m playing football I smash the ball at anyone I’m playing with so hard they stare at me in surprise, but I don’t care. A few days later I get the bike back though. That’s when he’s feeling guilty the morning after he’s given me another battering.

The mental torture is always worse, I can take the physical punishment – he can smash a baseball bat over my head and it won’t hurt as much as if he’s got me in a corner, mentally torturing me. It’s hard to explain this except to say that bruises and cuts can heal, and it’s sometimes hard even to remember what the physical pain felt like a few days later when I’m at school. But the constant questions are like a corkscrew into my brain and my mind and my soul. They haunt me for days, weeks, sometimes months and even years, and I will hear his voice in my sleep, I can never seem to escape it. And then there’s the fear and frustration of not knowing what’s the best thing to do or say, to find the words that will make him stop, or at least not say something that will make him spin out the questioning for hour after hour.

I think Dad should have joined the army as he would have been the most persistent interrogation officer on the planet. One night with him and even Shergar would have come out of hiding, handed himself in, given himself up. OK, Jock, he’d say. You win. It’s like you said, I just did it for the publicity.

Once a year on New Year’s Eve, which is Hogmanay, my Gran and Granddad, Dad’s parents, have a family get-together at their house.

They live in Hilltown in Dundee in a semi-detached three-bedroom council house. Gran is small, with dark permed hair and very smooth clear skin; she’s always cooking in the kitchen and calling all her grandchildren the wrong name.

Granddad is quite reserved. He has funny one-liners but doesn’t really say much. He goes to the pub and plays dominos and bets on the horses. He has dark hair and dark skin, and is bow-legged from his football days. Nowadays he’s only five foot three.

All my uncles and aunts on my dad’s side come to these get-togethers – Dad’s three sisters and their husbands; his brother Danny with his girlfriend; and me and my eight cousins (six boys and two girls). The parties start at seven and go on until midnight, though occasionally they last until four or five in the morning.

We watch Scotch and Wry on telly – it’s a comedy sketch show with characters like Supercop, a bungling traffic policeman who stops cars that turn out to be driven by people like Batman. But the character I like best is this minister who has his water spiked with gin just before he starts giving a sermon and then gets completely drunk. It really makes me laugh, but it’s a funny kind of laughter as it hurts, probably because it makes me think of Dad – and that makes it even funnier and more painful at the same time.

After that’s over we count down the bells to Hogmanay. As the clock hits twelve Scottish music comes blasting out of the speakers and everyone bursts into their rendition of the Highland Fling: ‘Da da da da da da da, di di di di di di di, na na na na na na na’. All us kids will be firing party poppers at each other in the kitchen.

The grown-ups’ll be singing Scottish songs, like ‘Flower of Scotland’ and ‘Scotland the Brave’, or ‘Mull of Kintyre’, or ‘Donald Where’s Your Troosers?’ Then of course we all link arms and sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and eat Scottish shortbread and dance, jiving to rock ’n’ roll and knocking everything over. The girls, my cousins, will be doing their own dance routines, and all the adults get drunk.

Dad tries not to overstep the mark in front of the rest of the family at Gran’s house. He’s lippy but not nasty. But although he always starts the evening on his best behaviour, he’ll end up fighting with Uncle Grant, who’s a Protestant and a Mason. Dad hates Protestants nearly as much as he hates Masons.

Then someone will say, ‘Where’s Gran?’ and then we’ll wander around looking for her, although everyone knows where she is. She’s hiding in the airing cupboard, drunk every year, and we’ll find her sleeping in there after a few sherries.

We kill ourselves with laughter but when I think about it I realise that she probably hides in that cupboard a lot – she could even be doing it every night as she may be hiding from Granddad. Dad was the oldest of all his siblings. He’s told me that Granddad used to beat him and Gran up, and I’ve heard this from other members of the family. I’m fond of Granddad and don’t want to believe he could beat up Gran or Dad in the same way Dad beats me up, but that’s what Dad tells me.

I’ve also heard that Granddad used to take the fuse out of the electricity box so that Gran didn’t have any heating or light and then he’d lock Gran in all night and leave her without electricity while he went out to the pub. I find it almost impossible to believe, but he might be as clever and cunning as Dad.

There’s a small bar in the corner that Granddad will sit behind, ringing a gold bell and shouting ‘Last orders!’ every time he serves a drink. He’ll hit me on the back of the head with some peanuts and then look away smiling as if it isn’t him. I think it’s funny but it does make me wonder.

Sometimes when Dad’s drunk he’ll go on about how Granddad would take him out into the woods away from the rest of his family and then beat him up – but he also beat him up in the house as well – and finally threw Dad out of the house when he was twelve. Dad had to scavenge for food – he’s never tired of telling me that.

I suppose Dad may say this to make me think it’s normal – what he does to me – and when he’s sometimes very drunk and self-pitying, even to feel sorry for him. But although of course I have no way of judging whether it’s normal or not, there’s no way I’m going to feel sorry for him when he’s battering and torturing me every other night. But that doesn’t stop him from dishing out his hard luck story.

‘Yir grandfather, yi think he’s the bee’s knees, don’t yi, but yi don’t know what it was like. Yi’ve got an easy life. Yi’ve got a roof over your head.’

I think, yeah I wish I was out of the house at twelve.

But even so, I always get on well with Granddad. He tells me stories about when he played for Dundee United and I really look up to him.

Dad had a chance to go with Dundee United too, but because he was stubborn he said he didn’t want any help from my grandfather and didn’t want to be known as getting a game with the club because of his father, so at one point he went to England and had trials for a few English clubs. He tells me he even played some reserve matches for West Brom, but I don’t know what to believe any more as my brain is controlled by his way of thinking.

Gran was a professional dancer in the Pally in Dundee years ago. She was Irish and Granddad met her in Ireland when he was playing football for Glentoran Football Club in East Belfast in the 1950s. Granddad was a Glaswegian. Then later he signed for United. After he had finished as a professional footballer he worked as a hospital porter but he was still involved in Dundee United, and the players used to come to his house for dinner sometimes – John Clark, Kevin Gallacher and many more.

As Dad now manages the Dundee West Under-14s football team, we go up to Glenshee in the mountains every year with my cousin Shane and stay at the Spittal of Glenshee Hotel. Shane is six months younger than me and absolutely bonkers and hilarious at the same time. He has the kind of personality that means he has to say exactly what’s on his mind – he can’t hold things in for more than ten seconds at a time, and his laugh is infectious. When he starts, everyone does too. Such a likeable person.

There’s loads to do apart from playing football – hillwalking, golfing, horseriding, shooting, mountain biking and even hang-gliding, but Shane and I just enjoy larking around.

There’s also this little goalkeeper in our team called Willy. He wears old, worn but ironed pyjamas with creases in them and National Health glasses with Sellotape in the middle – he’s a right little geek and he’s useless in goal into the bargain. He must have let in about 15 goals a game – he’s a crap goalie, but at the same time a dead nice wee lad. A bit like Walter the Softie out of the Beano but harmless. In any case Dad doesn’t care how good his team is, he’s more interested in where they live as he has to pick them up or drop them off after a game.

I’m seven on this particular occasion when we go to Glenshee and the news has filtered out of the radio on the way up here that there’s a murderer loose in the mountains who has been going around killing people. It must be about half nine at night and there’s a man sitting at the bar with a mack on and a big handlebar moustache and hat, and Shane and I whisper to Willy ‘That’s that murderer!’

Willy’s shitting himself. ‘No, it’s not?’ he says, alarmed.

‘Yeah, that’s him. We’ve just seen his picture on the news.’

Another guy sitting near us hears what we’re saying and knows we’re winding Willy up, and says, ‘Cut it out, lads.’

But we ignore him and go on saying to Willy, ‘No, seriously, that guy – he’s definitely the murderer. Look at that moustache. I’ll bet he’s got an axe under that coat!’

Just then the guy turns and looks at us and takes off out of the front door of bar. Even though I know it isn’t him, the man scares me. He couldn’t have timed it any better as he stares back towards us as he leaves.

Meanwhile Willy’s in a blue funk. He tears off petrified in his PJs, while the barman looks on in shock at this skinny little ankle-biter whizzing past him like a skeleton on Pro-Plus. Willy’s eyes are even bigger than normal as a combination of pure blind panic and his thick milk-bottle glasses make him look completely demented.

The bunkhouse we’re all sleeping in has a room on each side of a corridor with bunk beds in every room, so Willy crawls in there with sheets over him as he’s now terrified. But we crawl along the floor in the dark towards his bed saying, ‘The murderer’s gonna get you! The murderer’s gonna get you!’

Shane’s one of those people who after you stop he’ll keep it going. He wound up this little lad Willy for hours and hours. Maybe it’s something in the family genes. Shane just enjoys spinning out a joke, while Dad enjoys spinning out the torture.

Anyway, Willy’s in his bunk bed and Shane goes up and sticks a football sock over his arm and puts it over the top bunk of the bed and grabs Willy’s mouth with it.

‘Ahhhhhhhhhh!’ Willy screams. He’s only wearing his Y-fronts and terry towelling socks, and he goes sprinting through the corridor past a shocked barman for a second time.

‘There’s a murderer! Phone the police!’ Willy screams frantically at the women in reception. ‘He’s in my room. Phone the police!’

At that moment we stumble in after him, laughing our heads off, and give Willy the good news – it wasn’t the murderer after all but his twin brother. Willy stares from one to the other of us in disbelief and then finally realises we’ve been winding him up all along.

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