Nipper (9 page)

‘Oh you dirty bastard! Charlie, where’s that fucking mutt?’

I try to pull the cover over Bonnie’s head but she is as stiff as a board and shaking like a leaf.

‘Charlie, I’ll not ask you again. That cunt has shit all over the lobby and I’ve just stood in it.’

Dad falls asleep in a pair of shorts every night in front of the two-bar electric council-issued fire, so I know he never has any socks on. I imagine Bonnie’s shit squelching through his toes and it makes me feel sick – not just out of nausea but also anxiety about how he will react – but it also makes me laugh inside at the same time. I think I’m laughing because of nerves and because one of us is about to become a sparring partner. I just hope he’ll take it out on me and not on Bonnie.

The bedroom door opens and a big dark figure stands filling the doorway. ‘Bonnie, come here!’

She doesn’t move; she just pushes her head into my chest with her ears pointing backwards, shaking with fear.

‘Bonnie here!’

‘Dad, I’ll clean it.’

‘Shut yir fucking mouth or I’ll rub yir nose in it.’

Bonnie still hasn’t moved, so he walks across towards my bed and puts his hand under the covers and grabs her by the tail, dragging her out of my bed.

Her claws are desperately trying to hang onto the piss-stained bed sheets as she yelps at me, looking for me to pull her back in. I just freeze as he drags her out of the room and closes the door. I want to help her but my body has frozen and isn’t listening to my head.

Help her, yi coward
, I keep saying to myself.

I jump up out of bed and put my ear against the door. I can hear Bonnie screaming like a baby that needs feeding and Dad’s voice, very sharp and fast, saying things like, ‘Do yi like the taste of yir own shit, do yi! Go on eat it yi bastard, fuckin’ eat it.’

I feel like busting out of the door and rubbing his face in the shit, the cruel bastard, and I’m now looking around the room wondering what I can hit him with to stop him hitting my friend, my sister from a different species.

The noise suddenly stops so I run back into bed and jump under the covers. The door opens and then closes again after Bonnie has been thrown back into the room, covered in her own shit. She jumps up on my bed and scrambles under the
covers beside me, covering me in it as well, but I don’t care as she is shaking like a leaf and I have to protect her. The door opens again and I think, here we go, it’s my turn now.

Dad walks over to the bed and tips it upside down, so that Bonnie and I both fall onto the floor, and I try to drag the mattress on top of us both so he can’t get a clear shot. The door closes again and I can hear the floorboards in the hall creak as he walks back towards the living room. You could hear a pin drop, if it wasn’t for Bonnie moaning and her teeth chattering together.

The smell is horrible as I have landed on top of her in a kind of spoon position, and all the shit he has rubbed on her is wafting in my face, but I don’t dare move as I think we’re both safe under there. Bonnie never budges either; it’s like she’s thinking exactly the same as me.

We must have lain there for about three and a half hours and Bonnie has now calmed down and is trying to lick my face.

‘Stop it, girl,’ I say in a calm voice. ‘Cut it out.’

She is getting more playful as the ordeal recedes and when I smile and laugh at her, that’s her cue to start hamming it up. I push the mattress up with my back and place it softly back on the bed and get the cover off the floor and try to remake it. Bonnie still never moves but her ears have come forward again and her tongue is hanging out the side of her mouth; she’s panting a bit as I think she is now relaxing after holding her breath for the past three hours.

I stupidly decide to go and apologise to Dad, so I pull on some tracksuit bottoms, open the bedroom door and walk through to the living room.

Dad is sitting with his back to me, swaying in the chair, smoking his Regal King Size fag and guzzling his vodka and Coke. The table is all sticky where he’s missed the glass while pouring vodka in it. He’s watching a wildlife programme on gorillas and I’m half tempted to say, ‘Do you miss your real family?’ but I stop myself just in time. I have a habit of speaking my mind – a lot of people say it’s cheek, but I prefer to be known as honest.

As I walk in, Dad snaps, ‘What do yi want?’ without looking away from the television.

‘I’m sorry for what Bonnie’s done, Dad.’

‘What has Bonnie done, Charlie?’

‘She did the toilet on the floor.’

Don’t tell me he’s forgotten already, I’m thinking.

‘No, what has Bonnie done, Charlie?’

His voice is raised and I know this is one of his games. He wants me to say
shit
so he can waste me for swearing, not that he needs an excuse.

In for a penny in for a pound, I think, as I know very well what games he will play at different levels of being pissed.

‘Bonnie shit on the floor, Dad.’

Oh! Oh! Here it comes.

‘Correct Charlie, now go and clean it.’

It’s weird but I think he wants me to swear, I think he finds it funny or something. Anyway I reverse out of the living room and go to the kitchen to get a cloth and some hot soapy water in a basin. I clean and scrub the carpet until it’s gleaming. Meanwhile my face and neck are still covered in dog shit and Bonnie and my bed are in the same state.

I have to clean Bonnie first as she’s bound to jump all around the house and I’ll be cleaning for the next year. So I go into my bedroom.

‘Come on, girl, bath time!’

Bonnie hates having a bath so I have to pick her up under her front legs with the back of her shit-covered head in my face.

I run a bath and get Bonnie cleaned and then wrap her in a towel and lock the bathroom door so she doesn’t run around soaking everything while I’m in the bath. Next minute,
bang, bang, bang
on the door.

‘What the fuck yi doing in there?’

‘I’m in the bath, Dad.’

‘Don’t use all the fucking hot water, OK?’ he says in a slurred voice.

Bonnie goes down on the floor with her ears back again and looks at me. ‘It’s OK, girl,’ I say quietly, ‘come here.’

She crawls across the floor like a sniper along the ground, not taking her eyes off me as he creaks back up the hall.

‘Good job cleaning the carpet,’ he slurs again.

Good job cleaning the carpet, you fucking weirdo. A few hours ago you wanted to kill me and my dog
.

My anger’s already getting bad at this stage of my life as I have taken that many beatings and all-night question sessions that I’m ready to explode.

Each time I go to Bonnie’s aid after Dad has beaten her, Bonnie will strangely lift her left paw and lick my hands so that I can clean her eyes. The paw thing always confuses me – it’s like she’s making sure that I know he’s beaten her. Maybe she’s showing me that it’s mentally affecting her too. I do what I think she wants me to do at the time though: I lick the paw that she’s held up and it seems to make her feel better every time. She’ll sit looking at me while I clean her eyes, her tail brushing the cold floor, knowing now that she is safe again. It isn’t just a one-way thing – I help Bonnie to make the pain go and she does the same thing for me.

When I get home from school I’ll get changed and then get Bonnie and take her out with me everywhere I go. Whether I’m playing football, hanging around the shops or even just sitting in a friend’s back garden, people will ask me to show them what Bonnie would do if I was being attacked.

I have this party piece where I’ll grab a tree or a metal lamppost and scream as if I were being attacked. Bonnie will stop whatever she’s doing and come sprinting across the park and pounce on the tree, ripping the bark off, and if it’s the lamppost you can hear her teeth clanging into the metal as
she has it in a bearlike grip. It’s a bit like watching a grizzly bear as when she’s up on her back legs, the sheer height of her with her long black hair makes her look huge.

Bonnie also plays football with us – well, the game never lasts more than two minutes with her, which is normally the time it takes her to get hold of the ball. She tries to pick the ball up and run with it but her massive jaws and teeth will pierce through it like pins puncturing a balloon.

Bonnie and I also go to this place called Clatto Park at least four times a week. It’s a big reservoir with two little islands in the middle with swans living on them most of the year. We both love it up there, Bonnie with her swimming and diving and me with the fresh air and watching people fishing. It’s like a different world for us both.

Dad buys the cheapest, most horrible dog food on the planet. I honestly don’t know how Bonnie keeps it down as it would easily knock a fly out sick, but Dad says it’s the best value for its size. I think, in that case why don’t you eat it then? Give Bonnie your dinner and you eat dirt cheap dog food on toast. As soon as you open a can you can smell it from outside in the garden. The smell’s a cross between sweaty feet and herring. The actual food’s meant to be rabbit, but it’s more like one-year-old road kill.

Dad sometimes puts Bonnie on a metal chocker chain to take her to the shops when he goes for his vodka, Coke and cigarettes. I don’t know why but somehow Bonnie always gets fed, even though her food’s disgusting, as Dad’s always
sober when he feeds her around 2 p.m. I’m just unlucky that he’ll wait until I get home before he flips his lid. Anything I do will set him off, even something as simple as not closing the garden gate on my way in – it’s like he hates me and wants to pay me back for his childhood.

Bonnie is growing up fast and getting bigger and wiser. When I am getting a hiding she will quietly growl and show her teeth until he batters her and then I’ll scream at him not to hit her, at which point he’ll switch his attention back to me.

It’s like a plan between us, me and Bonnie. We both try to get him exhausted so he’s too knackered to keep going. It sometimes works, as he’ll sit down and drink more vodka and get more pissed, and then fall over the table or settee trying to swing a punch. Then he’ll just fall asleep where he lands and I’ll take Bonnie out of the back garden for the loo then upstairs, back in the house and into my room where she cuddles up to me like a human.

The next day the usual will happen, the bedroom door will open and the usual rubbish will spill out of his lying, scarred face.

‘I’ll never drink again, son! I’m really sorry.’

Then he’ll walk back out and I’ll think,
One day you’re going to die
.

Me and Bonnie look at each other with smirks on our faces as we know we’re both getting bigger and he’s getting weaker.

Some nights I will stand over him while he’s sleeping, thinking of a way to kill him. Then the fear of him surviving will kick in, and I go back to bed, annoyed with myself for not doing it. He’s in that much of a state some nights with drink, I am surprised he never kills himself by choking or pulling the electric fire onto himself, as he always falls asleep on the floor next to it.

I
t’s a warm, windy summer in Dundee. The year is 1985, I’m nine and Bonnie is just one year old by now and the bond between us is like no other. I know now why they call dogs ‘man’s best friend’.

It’s about 4.30 p.m. and I’ve been home from school for about an hour and Dad’s in the kitchen cooking stew in a massive pressure cooker. He makes a huge pot of stew so it will last all week; he’ll spend his last £10 on all the ingredients and the rest goes on a supply of vodka and coke to last until Monday book day. He will also go and sweep a few chimneys if he’s mega skint and needs voddy, as he calls it.

I pray every night that he’ll fall off the roofs and break his neck, so I can watch him die. But he never does; he’ll come home, black as the ace of spades, and wash his face, hair and
hands in the kitchen sink before he has a bath. When I ask him why he does that, he tells me, ‘If I don’t it will leave a tidemark around the bath.’

The wallpaper is hanging off the wall, I’m thinking. The bathroom carpet is covered in piss where you’ve missed the bowl, and you’re worried about a black ring going around the bath. Another one of your strange habits.

I’ve headed downstairs to see my pals outside in the close. Bonnie is upstairs in my room having a sleep and Dad is cooking dinner and reading the paper in the living room. One of the neighbours has asked him to come round to their house to take a look at something that needs fixing as he’s quite handy at DIY. He’s gone about five minutes and then goes back home to check on the stew.

When he gets to the kitchen Bonnie goes running past him and into my room, as she knows what she has done. I don’t see Dad’s reaction but I can hear him scream from outside, ‘
Noooo, you fucking bastard! no! no! no!
’

My heart sinks.
What have I done?
I run upstairs to find out what’s going on. When I get to the door I hear, ‘Yi’re gonna fuckin’ die, come here!
Get in there!
’

I open the door and the kitchen door slams up the hall on the left. He has dragged Bonnie into the kitchen and I can hear a metal clanging noise over and over again and a yelpy, squealing noise from Bonnie every time the metal clangs. I know he is hitting Bonnie so I run into the kitchen to see what’s happening.

Whack!
He turns the frying pan on me. I bounce back off the wall and look down in the corner at the dog. He has burst Bonnie’s face open with the frying pan. Her eye has blood coming out of it, and her paws are bent under her body. Her jaw is twitching up and down and she’s blinking rapidly.

‘Please, Dad, stop! You’re gonna kill her.’

‘
What are we gonna eat the rest of the week?
’ he screams at the top of his voice.

‘I’ll find something, Dad. Please don’t kill her.’

But by this time he has noticed all the blood running down my face, as the frying pan blow has split the bit between my eyes open just above my nose. I can feel something warm running down my face but I think it’s hot fat from the frying pan.