I’ve also got some other footwear – some sand shoes like plimsoles and a pair of monkey boots, shaped like a meat pastie in front, with stitching like an Eskimo had got his hands on them.
People I know go snowdropping – that’s nicking off other people’s washing lines – but they leave clothes on our washing line. I remember one of Dad’s mates saying, ‘Jock, if your house was burgled they’d probably leave you a fiver and their shoes.’
It isn’t just us that are skint though: everyone’s in the same boat. They joke about it bitterly in the pub. Dad sometimes takes me in there with him.
‘What will the nipper have?’ one of his drinking pals will say.
‘Charlie will have what I have,’ he replies, but then gives a broad wink.
I sip a Coca Cola while he drinks his vodka and I listen to them all trading hard luck stories and generally having a moan. One of Dad’s friends says that when he has a bath he’s so poor he has to wash the dishes in there with him to save on water, with all the bacon and eggs floating around in his lukewarm bathwater.
The men in the pub drink their pints and moan and groan about the English and the state of the world. The English they call bloody animals, the police are bastards, the vatman’s a pig, the taxman’s a cunt – as if any of them have ever paid tax or VAT in their lives. All Dad’s friends spend all day in the pub and most of that time is spent talking about the English, but I don’t think they’ve ever even met an Englishman. They seem to have it in for the English, though, mainly because of a woman called Maggie Thatcher.
Dad blames everything on Maggie Thatcher. I used to think she was the old witch at number 47, the one with the moustache who stabs every ball that goes in her garden. But now I know who she really is. She’s a burglar from another rough area, who comes out at night and steals everyone’s worldly belongings.
Chapter Two A Fairy Tale of Dundee
Before I say what happens next, I need to tell you how all this began. I still don’t understand most of what went on when I was two years old, but I’ve managed to piece together what happened from my mum and from other people who knew how it was.
The story began around 1972 in Dundee on the east coast of Scotland, when a sixteen-year-old girl called Sarah (my mum) – who had just left school – met a twenty-one-year-old lad called Jock (my dad) from St Mary’s in Dundee. Mum was beautiful with blue eyes, a pale freckled face and long blonde hair which she wore in a fringe. She came from a decent family and was the middle of six children – with four brothers and one sister.
He was a strong, handsome lad, of average height and powerfully built. He also had blue eyes, dark curly hair and tanned skin from time spent outdoors. He was a promising footballer – his father had played for Dundee United – and he had three sisters and one brother.
They had been introduced to each other by mutual friends at a house party and hit it off straight away. He was a live wire, always cracking jokes, never serious for a minute. He was instantly drawn to her: she was very pretty, warm and bubbly – she loved to laugh and to make other people laugh. They were quite similar people back then, and at first they looked like a match made in heaven.
In the late Sixties, early Seventies, Dundee was a very poor city. Everyone seemed to be unemployed and there wasn’t a lot of things to do. Money was scarce. But they never thought about problems like that as they had found true love. They dated for a couple of years and things were going fantastically. He was always the life and soul of the party, and she loved her life with him, as he always had her in fits of laughter with his childish antics.
They decided to move in together as they were both happy and life was a breeze. They got married quite quickly and moved to a derelict flat up a back alley off Hilltown, a big road that goes right through Dundee. The street – Arkly Street – was a row of terraced houses like Coronation Street, with a welder’s yard and scrapyard at the end. The roofs were crooked and had sunk over the years.
They stayed there for twelve months. The odd argument occurred, but as my Uncle Danny used to say (that’s my dad’s younger brother), ‘Show me a couple that doesn’t argue and I’ll buy you a pint – and that’s a lot coming from a Scotsman.’
Then Mum fell pregnant in March 1973 with her first child, Tommy, born in December 1973, and again two years later in late January 1975 with her second, Charlie – that’s me. I was born in November of that year.
In between those two years Mum started to notice a big change in Dad. He was getting more aggressive and argumentative towards her. He would get jealous for no reason at all, and had even taken to locking her in when he went out to the pub. She had seen him fighting with men in town some nights, but that was normal in Dundee at this time. Men sorted everything out with a punch-up at the end of the night if they had a grievance. That’s just the way it was.
But Mum never thought that Dad would ever turn his anger on her, as they were meant to love each other. And people that are in love don’t lift their hands to each other. Dad obviously had a different view of love, as he was now coming home drunk and beating her and accusing her of having an affair with anyone who looked at her. He was gradually turning into a possessive, aggressive control freak who needed professional help.
The level of the beatings and mental torture he was giving Mum was beyond belief. He would keep her up for hours, snapping questions at her like an interrogation agent, then kick and punch and sometimes bite her.
* * *
I have a recurring nightmare right through my early childhood. I’m hiding in the corner, crouched under a table, terrified. I see what he’s doing to her and I can see clumps of her hair on the floor.
‘Yi fuckin’ bitch, yi think yi can pull the wool over my eyes?’ He’s dragging my mum across the room by her hair, kicking her in the ribs and stomach. He’s pulling all her hair out and she’s screaming and whimpering, bent over in agony, desperately trying to defend herself.
I want to look away but I can’t and the scene is branded in my memory forever.
‘Please stop it, Jock, let me go. I hav’na done anything.’
‘I hav’na done anything. I hav’na done anything,’ he mocks. ‘Yir just the innocent victim, eh?’
‘Yi ken I am, Jock.’
‘Yir a fuckin’ liar, that’s what yi are.’
He punches her in the face and I can’t bear to hear her screams.
‘Now are yi gonna start tellin’ me what’s really going on, yi fuckin’ slut!’
‘Nothing, Jock, nothing’s going on.’
‘Nothing, eh? So who wiz that fella eyein’ ye up yesterday – Mr Fuckin’ Nobody I suppose, or scotch mist maybe?’
He’s now in such a rage that I put my hands over my ears. I want it all to stop.
‘It’s all right, Charlie,’ says Tommy, who’s crouched next to me. ‘It’s all right,’ he says comforting me. ‘Go back to sleep.’
That’s when I wake up…