Max the Miracle Dog

Whatever had caused them to go to war like this, I was caught in the middle. I had never seen Dad this furious before, while Mum screamed and hammered on the door so forcefully I wanted to cover my ears.

‘Give me my boys!’ she yelled. ‘Kerry!’

I tried to pull my dad away, but I was only little and had never felt so useless. Mum even tried to climb in through the kitchen window, but he just pushed her back.

‘Mum!’ I cried hysterically, ‘I want Mum!’

It was a fight I will never forget, and one that saw my parents’ marriage end in wreckage. Mum moved out that day and took me with her, while my two brothers stayed with Dad. There was no negotiation or calm conversation, I just threw myself on Mum at the first opportunity while Dad just vowed that it was over between them.

With a suitcase packed in a hurry, we went to stay with her parents in Penrith. They were old school about marriage, and failed to understand why she and my dad could even consider separating as an option. Still, they took us in. When my mum stopped crying she kept telling me that she loved me and that everything would be okay. I was barely eight years old, however I had seen and heard things that just undermined my place in the world. I’d spent more of my life in South Africa than here, and now that happy boy on the beach had all but disappeared into the past. At such a young age I just struggled to process what was going on. On the one hand I was told not to worry, and on the other, it was just there under the surface all the time.

The fight I had witnessed turned out to be the opening conflict in a horrible, messy divorce. As children, we became weapons in a war. What’s more, my older brothers resented the fact somehow I managed to stay with Mum and left them behind. They just made me feel guilty when I saw them, as if I had let them down. At the same time, life at my grandparents’ house wasn’t easy. While I felt deeply unsettled at being uprooted without warning, my grandmother had Parkinson’s disease. I had no understanding of what that meant, of course. I just saw the symptoms: the tremors, sense of detachment and the slowness of movement, and with no explanation, she scared me. I couldn’t relax in the house, fearing she might creep in at any moment. We were also some distance from the countryside. Living in a built-up area just wasn’t the same. At times when I needed space, I had nowhere to go.

The only saving grace was my grandfather and his outside interests. He had an allotment nearby, which was his pride and joy. While he had spent most of his life in my grandmother’s shadow, he came into his own with a spade in his hand, and I found his knowledge mesmerising. He showed me how to grow vegetables from seed in his greenhouse, plant them out at the right time and care for them as they grew. In summer, we’d sit outside to eat tomatoes picked straight from the vine. I’d make a complete mess of mine, but the taste and that fresh, tangy aroma was bewitching. My grandfather also loved to play lawn bowls. He spent a lot of time at the club opposite the railway station in Penrith. I have fond memories of just watching a game shape up and feeling like I was on his team. He was a really good player as well. When he died some years later, his ashes were scattered on the green there.

As well as my grandfather’s allotment, the bowling club became another place where I could go to escape from the house. It also took my mind off the sense of longing I felt every time I thought about my brothers and my dad. Mum was doing her very best for me, of course, but with the divorce going through, she had her issues. It was just a confusing time. If I went back, Dad would try to score points against Mum, and she would do the same when I returned. Over time, the relationship between them just broke down completely, while my brothers continued to give me a hard time about living apart from them. I felt I had to make it up to them somehow and badgered them to help me find parts for a big go-kart we used to play with in Cape Town. It had been shipped back in several sea chests, but bits had gone missing en route. They didn’t want to know, much to my dismay, and yet all I wanted was to fix things.

‘Mum,’ I said one day, and it took me all the courage I could muster, ‘I want to be with my brothers.’

Quietly, on the inside, I imagined hearing this from her youngest son must have broken her. But from where I was sitting across from her at supper one day, she offered me a brave smile and then promised she’d see what could be done. In reality, as my parents had stopped speaking to each other, they couldn’t come close to an amicable agreement. The matter was dragged into the divorce proceedings and ended up going to court. It meant I had to sit in stuffy side rooms with solicitors and a panel of strange people asking me questions about who I wanted to live with.

By now, it was clear that my mum didn’t want me to leave her. That made it so hard for me to speak up and say that’s what I wanted to do. I felt like I was letting her down, but they asked me to be honest and so I did as I was told. There was no way I could make everyone happy; all I could do was be truthful and the hard fact was that I felt miserable away from my brothers. In lots of ways, when the court made the decision for me to rejoin them, it just made things so much worse between my parents. I moved back to the terrace, and while I found more life there, my mum didn’t like it all. She started accusing Dad of manipulating me behind her back, and he lashed out in return with similar force. They would talk badly about each other to me, and I just found it confusing and upsetting.

I was a primary school kid and the two people who were supposed to take care of me were at war with each other. All trust between them had completely broken down and I was caught in the middle. I had wanted to be with my brothers, but frankly, they were rarely at home. I couldn’t blame them, given the way Dad spoke about Mum. In fact, soon after I moved back, my older brother fell out with him. He left to join our mother, before turning 18 shortly after that and striking out on his own. Surrounded by upset and conflict, I found myself back in a world of my own with Rex and the farm animals for company and adventures to be had across the countryside trails.

Despite the turbulence that engulfed my parents, we did have what seemed like good times. At the end of the week, Dad would come home from work and take us all out to the pub with him. He’d pick us up in his transit van and we’d drive out for the evening. We were too young to join him at the bar. Instead, we’d wait inside the van or in the beer garden and he would bring us a shandy each and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. It felt like a treat, even if we had effectively been left to our own devices. In my eyes, it was a taste of normal family life. What we didn’t begin to recognise, until one evening when a roadside breathalyser tested positive, was that our dad had a drinking problem.

It happened one evening during the week. Dad was on a call-out to service an appliance at a big hotel overlooking Ullswater. On the spur of the moment, he’d decided to take my middle brother and me with him. All day, a storm had been brewing, and as daylight faded on the drive out, so the wind picked up and the rain came down. From the lake road, we looked out across a body of water that looked like hammered metal. Normally, accompanying our father on a job like this, we’d have played down by the shore. By the time he had parked and scuttled into the hotel with his toolkit, the storm was so intense that it felt like we were under siege.

My brother had bagged the front bench. I was just sitting amongst all the electrical junk in the back, which wasn’t much fun at all. Bored and fractious, we bickered about cracking open the windows to stop the van from steaming up. Over an hour later, when Dad finally hurried out of the darkness with his collar turned up against the downpour, he was quick to bellow at us to behave. I don’t know whether he’d been offered a drink on the job or had brought his own supplies. Either way, he shouldn’t have slotted the key into the ignition, fired up the engine and the headlights, and set off back along the lake road. It was a bumpy ride in the back at the best of times. That night, as the wipers struggled to maintain a clear view ahead, I found myself sliding around as if we were at sea.

‘Dad,’ I appealed to him at one point as we followed a bend just a little too quickly for my liking.

Sliding this way and that, but restrained by his seat belt, my brother giggled to himself. Without that luxury, I failed to see the funny side.

‘It’s the weather,’ our father reasoned, as if that was to blame for his driving, and then scolded my brother for laughing.

I didn’t dare say any more after that. With just the glow from the dashboard to cut through the darkness, I anchored myself as best I could in the back. Every time we cut through standing water on the road it would crash against the chassis, which my father sought to drown out by cranking up a song on the radio. The crooning sounded completely at odds with the ferocity of the storm. It was all I could hear, in fact. Minutes later, when the van skipped onto two wheels and then left the road, my first thought was that a bolt of lightning had struck us. The noise was deafening, from scraping metal to fragmenting glass, while the vehicle rotated onto its roof and then by another 90 degrees like a sticking drum in one of my dad’s machines.

When the van came to rest in the road, with the radio still playing but a sense that the world had tipped onto its side, Dad was quick to call out to us both. Shaken and bruised, and miraculously spared from serious injury, we crawled out of the wreckage in turn. I was last to make my way through the buckled frame where the windscreen had once been. As I did so, I picked out the rear-view mirror that had been smashed from its moorings. Dad reached in to help me out. As my brother sobbed behind him, all I could see were scratches and concern on his face. I showed them the mirror, shocked to the core but desperate for everything to be alright.

‘This will look great on our go-kart,’ I declared.

3

Hard Times

The accident resulted in a driving ban for my father. More immediately, such a narrow escape for us all shook our family to the core. Sadly, it didn’t bring my parents any closer. As soon as Mum learned what had happened, she went straight to court and contested that our dad wasn’t fit to look after us. Until that moment, my middle brother and I had never once questioned whether our father’s drinking was an issue. At the hearing, our mother claimed it was more than an isolated incident. From that moment on, I started looking at my dad in a different light whenever he had a beer, which seemed to be more frequently at home after he lost his licence.

Mum also had other pressing reasons to have us back. Shortly after the accident, my dad started seeing a woman from the local shoe repairers, who would quickly become our stepmother. Through my mother’s eyes, her arrival in his life saw us sidelined. We were frequently left to feed ourselves and wore dirty school uniforms held together with safety pins. At the same time, whenever we saw her, Mum stopped being a shadow of her former self and began to sparkle once again. It wasn’t long before she introduced me to the man who would become my stepfather. He seemed nice, and clearly made her happy, so that was alright by me. As the relationship duly developed, they even found a place to live together in Penrith. It all helped her case when she argued that her boys would be better off living with her.

So, along with my middle brother, I went back to live with our mother. Once the divorce came through and Mum remarried, it really did seem as if she was creating a new chapter in our lives. In some ways it was a honeymoon period for us all. Had I been a little older, I would have known that it would always come to an end.

If my stepfather resented the fact that his new wife came with kids as part of the package, he didn’t keep it to himself for long. After a short time, it became clear to my middle brother and me that this new family figurehead considered us to be a nuisance. To begin with, he would fall silent in our presence, as if we were interrupting something, which just made us feel uncomfortable. It didn’t get any worse than that when my mother, who was just too enamoured with him to notice, was around. She worked in a restaurant, often through the evenings. That’s when things really began to change. Alone in the house with us, my stepfather made no attempt to hide his true feelings. When he didn’t just blank us completely, or mutter that we were in his way, he’d launch into profanities about our dad. It was as if he regarded him as responsible for the fact that his new life with our mother was weighed down by her boys. I couldn’t blame my middle brother when he turned 16, left school and announced that he was moving out. He’d found a live-in job at a hotel, which left me alone with a man who openly despised me.

‘You’re a good-for-nothing bastard, Irving,’ he would mutter, like my surname was some kind of curse.

Then came the house rules. My stepfather just seemed to introduce them at will in a bid to contain me. I wasn’t allowed to switch on the lights unless he was in the room because I’d be wasting his money. In the same way, the television was a luxury only he could afford. Come winter time, lighting the fire to keep warm was out of the question. If my stepfather was chilly, however, then he’d demand to know why I hadn’t got it going and then reprimand me until the house was an acceptable temperature. Life revolved around him alright. If he tolerated me under the same roof as him by the thinnest of margins, then it was on a seen-but-not-heard basis. Any kind of noise I made, from scraping a chair to sit down or causing the stairs to creak as I crept upstairs, would earn me a tongue-lashing. The control he exerted became increasingly stifling. It reached the point where I practically couldn’t even breathe in his presence. In short, it felt as if the sole purpose of his existence was to make me feel as unwelcome in his house as possible.

As a boy approaching his teenage years, all this affected me greatly. Inside the house, feeling like I didn’t belong and constantly on edge in case my stepfather turned against me, all I could do was go to a place in my head that shut it all down. As a result, I just took every opportunity to stay away. As long as I obeyed his evening curfew, and was home before eight o’clock without fail, I spent as much time outside as I could.

One year, my grandfather from Penrith presented me with a bike. I don’t know if he had a sense of how things were for me at home, but I leapt upon it as a chance to get away. The Raleigh Arena was a racer with drop handlebars. In those days it was popular with kids as a first grown-up bike, and I loved the freedom it gave me. I had learned to get away on foot from an early age, but this changed everything. No matter how bad things got at home, I could climb onto the saddle and pedal my way as far away as possible. To begin with, before I found my riding confidence, I would head for the paths around the school playing field and ride around the perimeter. Sometimes the caretaker would come chasing after me, which just made me all the more determined to keep going. Anything but break away and head back home before I was ready. I imagine I drove the poor man to distraction! He only got a break as I became more adventurous and took myself further afield. I probably only went a couple of miles, but to a young lad feeling this trapped, I felt like a bird with wings.

For some kids with troubled backgrounds, school can become a sanctuary. I wanted it to feel like a place of safety, somewhere I could be myself, but if it was raining on a school day, my stepfather would refuse to take me. As I plodded through the puddles, he didn’t even glance in my direction if he happened to pass. I’d just watch his car drive on by, so I suppose it’s no surprise that I struggled to fit in when I got there. It was tough, I think, to switch off the defences I had built to survive at home. In general, I just kept my own company and had a very small circle of friends. Even then it was a struggle to find common ground. Sometimes they would come into school talking about programmes they had all watched the evening before, like Grange Hill or Mork & Mindy, and all I could do was nod along and try not to feel left out. They knew about my stepfather and his treatment of me. But then if I ever dared bring anyone home, he might choose to be really nice. Much depended on his view of their intelligence. Having left school at 11, my stepfather basically regarded people who showed a hint of wit or brains as being a legitimate target for his scorn and condescension. If he deemed them to be unthreatening in that respect then he’d crack a joke with them, usually at my expense. He could even be funny and they would laugh. In a way that made it worse because they’d wonder what my problem was with him.

As the years ticked by, my stepfather continued his campaign of venom towards me. A couple of years after I started secondary school, though, my mother was given a puppy called Prince by my uncle. Prince was a black and white Sprocker, which is a mix between a Springer and Cocker Spaniel. It was great to have a dog again and finally have a fun, joyful companion. I would take Prince out on walks, and attempted to train him to sit, fetch, lie down and roll over. He was a smart dog, and my first introduction to the Spaniel breed. Alone with Prince, there was just something about the look he would give me that made me feel special. He depended on me for guidance, even if it was just a glance back at a fork in the woodland path to see which way I planned to turn. Nobody had ever turned to me like that before. On walks, it gave me a sense of purpose, and also a familiarity with dogs that would stay with me throughout my life.

I could never let on how involved I was with Prince. Had my stepfather found out, he would’ve got rid of him in the blink of an eye. In some ways, I came to consider Prince to be the heart of my family in that home. He didn’t judge me or make me feel bad, and while our mother always watched out for me, she just wasn’t aware of the bigger picture. She knew my stepfather could be difficult with me, but had no idea what he could be like when her back was turned.

Quite simply, every second under the same roof as my stepfather left me feeling isolated and inadequate. I just couldn’t tell Mum. He was just too important to her, after everything she had been through, though I failed to understand what she saw in him. Then again, it wasn’t all sweetness and light between them. When they fell out, they did so dramatically and made a poor attempt to hide it from us. Sometimes I would listen to their rows from my bedroom and silently urge her to leave him. Once or twice I even heard her scream at him that they would be better off apart. I just crossed my fingers, squeezed my eyes shut and hoped that she would appear at my door at any moment and ask me to pack my bags. Instead, whenever she did come to check on me, she’d observe that it looked like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.

‘What’s wrong?’ she would sometimes ask, whenever life with my stepfather became too much. ‘Why won’t you talk to me?’

I wanted to feel close to Mum, but never opened up to her about anything. Over time, I just learned to shut away difficult thoughts and feelings, and that’s how I felt safe. Besides, I had already broken her heart once. I was only young when I told her that I wanted to be with my brothers. This time I knew what revealing my stepfather’s true nature would do to her.

‘I’m fine,’ I would say instead. ‘It’s nothing.’

Through the years, many times I tried to tell my dad what life was like back home. I didn’t feel any need to put my worries into words, I just saw him as someone who might intervene. He didn’t get on with my stepfather, but when I hinted all was not well, he just told me to stay out of his way. I was disappointed, but also aware that Dad had issues of his own. Having rolled the van, his relationship with drinking slowly spilled into the light. Eventually, it became quite clear to me that he had a problem with alcohol. What’s more, he was one of those drinkers who becomes unapproachable when intoxicated. It also brought out an angry, impatient and sometimes violent streak in him.

Whenever I went to stay with my father and his new wife, I found myself living under threat of the belt. I didn’t have to step far out of line for him to reach for it, and my stepmother never stopped him. Sometimes, I could spend all day out in the woods and fields. I’d only go home for lunch if I knew that they were out for the day. Despite everything going on behind closed doors, I look upon that time in the wild with great fondness. I got up to all sorts, often on my own or sometimes with local kids from the farms. I learned to shoot air rifles and lit more campfires than I’ve had hot dinners. It’s a wonder I didn’t come to any harm, but frankly, it was safer than being in the house.

By the time I turned 16, I found myself gearing up to face the world as if I was wearing an invisible suit of armour. From the outside, I looked like I could take care of myself. On the inside, where nobody could see me, I was a lonely and insecure young man with little self-confidence. I was desperate to get away from my stepfather and leave my dad to his drinking habit. I just didn’t want to leave an area I had grown to love. Because outside the two suffocating houses I was supposed to consider home, the fells, lakes, trails and valleys of the Northwest were where I could breathe freely.

From the moment I set off with Max from the campsite at the foot of Ben Nevis, my focus was on reaching the summit. As a physical challenge, it was down to me to keep putting one walking boot in front of the other. As a leap of faith, however, I just focused on my dog in the belief that he would lead me there.

‘We did it!’ I say to Max as much as myself when we finally stand upon that highest point and look out towards the horizon. It seems hard to believe we are really here. It’s something I have thought about constantly since making the decision for us to come here – something that would have been unthinkable before I met Max. ‘We did it after everything we’ve been through.’

Conquering Ben Nevis is a milestone for any hiker. The German who joined us shortly after our arrival at the top looked thrilled to be there. Even so, he had no idea what a momentous achievement this was for us both. Having swapped pleasantries and taken photos, and also called my wife at work, I turn my attention to the descent. Looking at Max, who is busy exploring the scree, only one of us is feeling the effects of the climb. Even so, I can’t think it will be as challenging to make our way back down.

Within minutes of setting out, I realise how drastically I have underestimated the challenge.

When you’re living in constant pain, and then become tired and fatigued, that pain becomes much harder to manage. As Max and I make our way off the top, I have to think hard about every placement of my lead foot. I can’t afford to slip or slide. One false move would cause white-hot pain to shoot up my spine to my neck, and I know that could drop me to the ground in agony. Within a short space of time, exhausted by the efforts of the day, I begin to catch myself on the cusp of making mistakes. Instead of being loose and free, and able to react to any slip before it catches up with me, I just tense my body as if braced for the worst. As a result, with my footing becoming heavier, I sense the muscles in my neck go into spasm. Pain radiates into my jawline, which is excruciating. All I want to do now is get off that mountain, but there is no shortcut. It’s just me, my dog, and a sense of sheer determination.