When I’m at school and free of my jailer I put up a front to protect myself, so no one knows what’s happening at home. I clown it up and it’s like that Miracles song Dad sometimes plays and sings along to, ‘Tears of a Clown’. The only good thing I’ve got from Dad is that he can be very funny, and so can I. Dad loves playing tricks. He’ll brick up someone’s front door, or get his next-door neighbour’s washing, put brown sauce on it and put it back on their washing line, and I do similar things at school – when I manage to get there – like moving people’s chairs away before they sit down. Or when we’re in the canteen eating school dinner, I’ll unscrew the top of the salt cellar and leave it loose on top, so when someone sprinkles salt on their chips, it all falls out.
Dad’s been taking me to the pub from the age of five. If I go off to the toilet, by the time I’ve come back there’ll be a group of men surrounding him and he’s entertaining them all, telling them stories and laughing, the centre of attention. But he’s lousy at listening to other people. He’ll make a joke out of everything they say, even if it’s a serious conversation.
Having Dad’s sense of humour helps me right through my school years. Even in my first years at school, I get by with quips and practical jokes. Besides, just getting out of the house and away from Dad makes school a holiday. School’s a breeze for me – it’s a lark. I’m aided and abetted in this by my best friend Calum, who makes my time at school – when I do go to school, that is – about the only thing that makes life worth living for me.
Calum Patterson! A kid in exactly the same boat as me but it’s his mum who’s bringing him up alone and using Calum as a punch bag. We never really speak about our home life, but we just know even at a young age what each of us is going through. Calum is a short-arse like me. He’s a right Scottish-looking child, with a ginger bowl-cut hairdo and freckles, and even though he’s just a kid he has a boxer’s nose and bags under his eyes like me. Like me he wears Staypress trousers, and British Home Stores jumper and shirt from the social grant that all people on the dole receive. His tie is always wrapped around his head. When Karate Kid comes out Calum thinks that’s him, running past people screaming high-pitched noises like hiiiyyaa.
We both walk around school with ripped trousers and scuffed shoes from climbing up the drainpipe onto the school roof. If anyone kicks a ball up there, we’re the monkeys that will go and get it – well, we’re the only two daft and fearless enough for the job. Calum is a lot like me. The way that he always cracks jokes or makes up names for people by using their most noticeable features.
For instance, we call ginger Garry Copper Crutch; fat Paul is Rollo; Alec with the glasses is Specky Ecky; and Peter Humphrey is Bogey, after Humphrey Bogart. Compared with what we both go through at home, our lives in school are fantastic, brilliant – a world away from the torture dens we have to go back to at 3.30 p.m. It is somewhere we can be ourselves, without the pressure of watching every word we say in case we’re mauled.
One day Calum and I are walking along the corridor between classes when we see a girl from the year above us arguing with a boy about how good looking she is. I only catch the end of the conversation. ‘I’m nicer looking than your lass, she’s a pure minger.’
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?’