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

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.

I go to school with my toes hanging out of the front of my trainers, wearing hand-me-downs that Dad has got from jumble sales or charity shops. I wear the same trousers for three or four years so the bottoms end up halfway up my shins. Most people are like that and I don’t feel like I stick out. In any case I don’t really care what other people think. When you’re getting what I’m getting at home that’s the last thing on your mind.

Besides, I love school. I try to have as much fun as I can when I’m at school. I walk through the school gates thinking ‘joy’ and enter into a different, safer world where the nightmare of the previous night’s beating can seem like a lifetime ago – something that happened on another planet and not even to me but to my twin brother – and unfortunately that affects my performance at school because everything that goes on within the school gates is sheer light relief as far as I’m concerned. There’s nothing they could possibly do or say that would have been able to control me, or would put fear into me in comparison with what happens at home.

I’ve got a picture of myself in a little white shirt and striped red school tie – not my normal clothes I wear for school but they look good in the photo. I’ve just started school and I’m grinning from ear to ear. I’ve got this Edward Scissorhands pudding-bowl haircut – my hair’s light brown and matted – and my face is a little red. That’s partly because of freckles and partly because it’s still swollen from a beating Dad gave me a couple of nights before. I’ve got styes in both eyes and a cold sore on my mouth, and if you look closely you’ll see my eyes aren’t as happy as my grin would make you think.

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.