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

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       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’ СКАЧАТЬ