Max the Miracle Dog

At times, where the path became too steep or technical, I have to turn and shuffle down on my hands and knees. I even slide a few yards on my backside. Max keeps a close eye on me throughout. He doesn’t wander off, or lose himself to a noise or smell. Every time I look around for my dog, I find his watchful expression that has become so important to me as well as that blessed stick clamped between his jaws!

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, aware that he could probably race down this mountainside in no time at all. ‘If I make it to the campsite in one piece, I promise you an ice cream at the earliest opportunity.’

I smile to myself. Max may not understand, but that dog has a taste for a vanilla scoop like no other.

As the gradient becomes less challenging, we begin to pass people on their way up. Some are dressed in mountaineering gear, others have set out in deck shoes and board shorts. It’s a mixed bag of ability and age, but it lifts my spirits whenever we pass anyone. They probably wonder why a man in his forties is moving like a geriatric, with what they must assume is an assistance dog at his side. All I know is that Max and I have achieved something that would have been impossible for me only a short time ago. So, despite the odd look of concern, I come down that mountain carrying a huge sense of pride.

By the time we clamber back over the stile and clear the forest path to the campsite, that pride has transformed into euphoria. My cheeks are wet with tears as we pass through the entrance. Rather than head for our pitch, I steer Max towards the river so we can cool off. If it had been bracingly fresh at the summit, the heat of the day has pooled at ground level. What’s more, if there’s one thing Max likes in this world more than anything else, that’s the chance to get wet.

Minutes later, having coaxed the stick from Max, I watch him launch after it from the bank, his tail rotating in excite ment. All I can do is shield myself from the splash, cheer, clap and recognise that without this dog, I wouldn’t be here at all. As I gingerly follow my best friend into the river, I realise I am lucky to be alive to enjoy such simple pleasures that make this life so precious.

4

Into the Wild

One day, when I was 13, my dad summoned me round to his place. It was unusual for him to want to see me beyond agreed visits. Even when I did spend time there, his only interest wasn’t in talking to me, but mocking my stepdad. I just knew that something was up.

‘I’m moving away,’ he told me soon after I arrived, and placed his arm around my stepmother. ‘We’re emigrating to Australia.’

‘Oh,’ was all I could say in response. ‘Right.’

I felt no sense of elation or relief that this would spell an end to being fearful of my own father. Just then, I wasn’t particularly sorry to see him go either. After years of putting up barriers so I couldn’t be hurt, I just looked at him blankly. I nodded as he explained that life just hadn’t been the same since rolling the van, but felt nothing at all.

‘We’ll be having a going away party,’ he said, like this would make everything better. ‘I hope you can join us.’

Once the news had sunk in, I did start to think that I would miss him. I associated the outbursts of anger and the threat of punishment with the smell of alcohol on his breath, but that wasn’t a permanent state. When my dad wasn’t drinking, I reminded myself, he could be alright. We shared the same sense of humour and at times I felt like he really cared for me. Sober, he could talk to me on a level, as if he recognised that I was no longer a kid. While his older sons were long gone, it struck me that this was his way of making up for lost time. In fact, as he made preparations to pack up and begin a new life, he began to look ahead with me in mind.

‘One day, perhaps you can join me,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a business up and running. We can work together and when I’m gone, it’ll all be yours. Every last penny, son. You can have it all.’

As someone with no clear goals or even a belief that I could be ambitious, this sounded like an invitation I couldn’t ignore. Dad stressed that now was not the right time to be taking me with him, and besides, the custody terms prevented any such move halfway across the world. All the same, he made a solemn promise that when the right opportunity presented itself, I could join him on the other side of the world in making this fresh start.

My mum, of course, interpreted his offer very differently. She saw it as a direct provocation, a means of disrespecting all the hard work she had done in raising me. Mum refused outright to let me discuss his proposal with her. In fact, she even forbade me from going to his leaving party. That really upset me. Despite living in fear of my dad for so long, I wanted to believe that he had changed. Compared to the way I viewed my stepfather, I was always looking for chinks of light in the picture I painted of my dad. He was quite the showman when he wanted to be; he could make people laugh or talk things up to fully engage them. I always held out hope that he could peel away the drinking and the behaviour that went with it like a villain suit he no longer needed. It could be that easy, or so I thought, for him to reveal the man I wished he could be. After the offer he had made, I figured his farewell party would be my chance to restore our relationship as father and son before the time came when we could be together again. By then, however, my mother was so enraged by his decision to just fly away and leave us that her final word on the subject drove a wedge between us.

‘You’re just like him!’ she snapped at me once. ‘Good for nothing and useless!’

‘Well, maybe I am!’ I raged back at her, and I meant it. Not only was I my father’s son, I just didn’t feel as if I was capable of shining at anything.

By now, my grades had flat-lined. While my brothers had gone to grammar school, I just wasn’t good enough to follow in their footsteps. They used to joke and call me thick and I took that to heart. For me, the classroom was a place where I would sit in quiet confusion and simply tune out. Maths was a case in point, and just undermined my self-confidence even further. I enjoyed some lessons, like geography, and looked forward to playing sports like rugby because that meant being part of a team. Even so, as the terms ticked by I came to accept that I would never be academically minded. The only subjects where I showed a glimmer of promise were practical ones like metalwork and woodwork. I found that I was quite good at putting things together, and by extension, taking them apart to see how they worked. I liked breaking things down into component parts, especially if something wasn’t working properly. Unfortunately, I never thought to do the same thing to myself, and figure out what was essentially making me so unhappy. Instead, I carried on finding ways to lock in my feelings so that nobody knew what was really going on inside my heart and mind.

As a teenager, it was girls who came close to finding a way in. While I struggled to trust anybody with my emotions, I enjoyed going on dates with someone I liked so that we could get to know each other a bit better. At the same time, it wasn’t me who eventually shut down on them; it was my stepfather who ensured that any blossoming romance would be killed off with a single visit to my house. If I invited a girl back for tea, proud as punch that someone would be interested in me, he would basically just blank her completely. Even if we walked in to find him in a good mood, his face would fall as soon as he saw that I had female company. He wouldn’t look around, even after I had introduced her or she made efforts to talk to him. I wanted to die of embarrassment. It was as if my stepfather had spotted a chance for me to be happy and killed it stone-dead. As a result, any blossoming romance I might have had with a girl just ended with an excuse to go home early and then a distancing from me because, frankly, my stepfather was toxic.

Over the years, his attitude towards me didn’t soften one bit. Even when I was a young man, he still set about threatening and intimidating me in the same way that he did when I was a bewildered little boy. While my dad’s propensity to reach for his belt had tapered as I developed, and he’d begun to talk to me rather than tell me off, my stepfather considered my growing physical presence to be a direct threat to his authority. With his ever-tightening rules, constant gripes and threats, he left me feeling as if I was taking up too much space in the house and effectively eating away at the food budget. Being older, and with a little more independence, I just found more reasons to stay out of his orbit, which is where the Army Cadet Force came to my rescue.

I joined up because it was just something a lot of my friends had done. The idea of being out in the fresh air twice a week, toying with rifles and tents, certainly appealed to me. Plus, I thought I might make some new friends. I just hadn’t anticipated that it would be so fulfilling. Within a short space of time, I was attending not only to fit in but because I loved every aspect of the experience.

Every session was an opportunity for me to join young people who shared a similar love of being outdoors. We wore the same uniform, so everyone was equal, in a disciplined but fun environment in which the rules were something to respect rather than fear. As cadets, we were given the opportunity to master new skills and supported in this by both leaders and peers. We went on several training exercises and shared experiences that really helped me to come out of my shell.

Quite simply, for the first time in my life I had found a family. It felt like I belonged and was welcomed in that tribe. I suppose I came to appreciate this more than most because it was something I had never truly experienced before. It certainly pointed me towards a career in the army, which I considered seriously for quite a while. What stopped me was the fact that any sense of purpose the cadets gave me just drained away whenever I headed for home.

Without fail, my stepfather would take one look at me breezing back through the door in my uniform and set out to remind me who was in charge. I might have been too noisy coming in, or brought mud in on my boots. One way or another, he would pick a quarrel with me and quickly escalate it. He used to enjoy watching the wrestling on television, with theatrical bouts between fighters with names like Giant Haystacks, Big Daddy and Kid Dynamo. I don’t know whether he saw himself in those guys, but given the opportunity, he’d pounce on me. It began when the wrestling was on one time. I had been sitting beside him on the sofa, tuned out from his running commentary about how he could do better, when suddenly he turned his attention to me. It was just play fighting, or so he said, but I didn’t like it from the start. Grinning at my protests, as if I’d reached an age where this kind of thing was acceptable, he’d twist my arm behind my back or pin me to the ground as if we were in the ring. Then slowly, over time, his idea of fun and games became a means of putting me in my place.

‘Kerry, you’re late,’ he said one time when I returned home from cadets.

My stepfather was in the front room, his attention turned from whatever he was watching on the box. I had just closed the front door behind me. I was also well aware of the time because my curfew had yet to begin.

‘It’s not quite eight o’clock,’ I said, and that was enough to bring him to his feet.

‘Look at you,’ he said, sizing me up and down. I was so proud of my cadet uniform, from my boots to my beret. It gave me a sense of identity that had nothing to do with living in this house. ‘Army boy.’

The way he levelled his gaze at me made me feel like he had just declared the start of a bout. All of a sudden, I felt quite alone. I glanced into the kitchen and up the stairs: there was no sign or sound of Mum. I guessed they were out on a late walk with Prince. It was just us in the house. The realisation made me want to reach for the door and walk right out again, but it was too late for that.

‘What are you watching?’ I said, hoping to distract him as I ducked around him for the front room. ‘Hey!’

My stepfather grabbed me forcefully by the scruff of my shirt and squared me round to face him.

‘Come on!’ he bellowed, practically nose to nose. ‘Don’t they teach you to fight?’

Before I could draw breath to remind him that cadets wasn’t about hand-to-hand combat, he had grabbed me in a headlock.

‘Get off!’ I yelled. ‘Leave me alone!’

Trapped under his arm, I felt just as gripped by shock and sheer humiliation. Even though I had grown, he was still bigger than me and just laughed when I struggled. I pleaded with him to let go, only for him to urge me to fight back like a man.

‘Do it, Kerry! Prove yourself to me, show me what you’re made of!’

If he still considered this to be a lark, I wasn’t laughing in any way. I’d had a great evening with the cadets, only to come back to this. If anything, it just trampled on my belief that I could be good enough to join the army. If I couldn’t deal with my stepfather, I thought to myself, what use would I be? Then, as I flailed and thrashed around that sense of helplessness in me turned to anger. In that moment, for the first time ever, I’d had enough. All I wanted to do was show him that he couldn’t push me about any more. I tried to swing him against the wall, but my stepfather just picked up on it. ‘Is this the best you can do? Is it? Is it?’

I wanted to lay that bastard on his back, but he simply had me pinned. Bent double, with my head trapped, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other to keep me contained. I gave it one more shot to break free. Then, choking back tears, I submitted. It felt so pointless to me just then, and summed up how I felt about my life.

For the more I struggled, desperate to be free, my stepfather just tightened his grip on me.

5

School of Life

At 16, I left school. I just saw no point in sitting in classrooms feeling 10 steps behind everyone else. At the time, national unemployment levels stood at a record high of three million. In walking out of the school gates for the final time, I was doing little to keep my options open. If anything, I saw it as the only path open to me.

While I had little by way of self-confidence, I wasn’t lazy. I wanted to work, if only so I could earn enough money to stand on my own two feet and get away from my stepfather. With no plan to speak of, or faith in my abilities, I headed for the local job centre. It was a grim, desolate experience. I joined a queue, filled in forms, and then sat across from a man who worked his way through my answers like his mind was on other matters. Despite this awful introduction to working life, I left with appointments for two interviews.

The first one took place at a poultry processing plant. The job, I learned, involved plucking feathers from freshly slaughtered chicken carcasses as they swung by suspended from hooks. I may not have known what I wanted to do with my life, but I understood myself well enough to be sure this wasn’t for me. The smell of the place was suffocating, the tedium second to none, but above all, I just felt uncomfortable with the fact that the chickens arriving at the plant in crates on the backs of lorries had lived such miserable lives.

I headed for my second interview with similar reservations. It was with a local butcher, who was looking for an apprentice. Before I arrived, having turned my back on the poultry plant, I felt like my world was caving in on itself. Was I good for nothing else but this? I asked myself, on checking my reflection in the shop window. I looked smart, but felt wretched, and during the interview, I felt as if the old butcher was sizing me up like a slab of meat. I could’ve cried, but kept my composure and looked him in the eye as he told me all about the family business. I did register the fact that he was big on animal welfare. Everything that came into the shop, so he said, was carefully sourced, and that struck a chord with me. I listened with interest, in fact, even though I had already decided that he was just going through the motions with me.

Back home, I told my mum all about my day. She understood about the poultry factory and made us a cup of tea as I brought her up to speed on my chat with the butcher.

‘It doesn’t sound so bad,’ she said, despite the fact that I had been so down about it. ‘We’d get free meat for one thing!’

I wasn’t sure if she was joking, but we shared a chuckle all the same. I was dreading the return home of my stepfather, who would no doubt find some fault in the way I’d presented myself and then pick a fight about my prospects.

As it turned out, by the time he appeared I could happily report that I was in full-time employment.

The knock at the front door came soon after the shops on the high street closed for the day.

‘Is your boy here?’ I heard a familiar voice ask my mother when she opened up. I joined her at the door, and for a moment failed to recognise the old man without his apron and hat. Then he saw me, and beamed. ‘There’s an apprenticeship waiting for you, Kerry, if you want it?’

I couldn’t think of what I had done to impress the butcher. I honestly thought he would have written me off. Just then, any doubts I had about working in the shop evaporated. It was such a rare thing for me to feel valued and so I seized the opportunity. Even better, on arriving for the first day of my apprenticeship, the butcher decided to set me to work in the back room. I had been so worried about standing behind a counter. That would have meant dealing with people and I didn’t feel cut out for that at all. Even the thought of greeting a customer made me feel sick. So, it came as a surprise and a huge relief when he asked me to follow him through a door and stationed me at a steel-topped table with a radio for company. There, with a selection of knives in a block, he then set about teaching me the basics of butchery.

In his view, I had the job nobody else in the shop relished. That old butcher worked me hard. He had high standards, too, and I was eager to please him with the quality of my work. So, whenever I made mistakes, I was determined to learn from the experience and made a point of asking for advice as well as appraisal. In many ways, working with knives took me back to my time alone in the woods. I enjoyed the craftsmanship involved. Yes, I was doing all the horrible things that nobody else fancied, but I made it mine. For almost a year, I could tie on my apron for a day’s work knowing that I wouldn’t get any grief from people around me. There was banter from the butcher and his assistants, of course, and constructive criticism as my apprenticeship progressed, and that was fine by me. Basically, that back room was my kingdom. Then, one Tuesday morning, a member of staff fell sick without cover.

‘Kerry, put your whites on and come in the shop today.’

How I froze when the old butcher put his head around the corner to tell me this.

‘What?’

‘We need help behind the counter.’

‘But—’

‘But nothing,’ he said, cutting across any excuse I might have come up with, and then held my gaze for a moment. He knew this was my comfort zone, but as a business he needed me front of house. ‘Just be yourself, Kerry. You’re a decent young man, that’s good enough for me.’

A few minutes later, I emerged into the main shop with a face as pale as my butcher’s coat. Just then, it felt like I was on a front line. Anyone who walked through that door was a threat, it seemed to me. Thanks to years of being made to feel so worthless, I didn’t feel equipped to deal with people.

‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked when the butcher noted that my hands were trembling. ‘I don’t want to let you down.’

In response, before he could draw breath, the bell above the door signalled the arrival of the day’s first customer. A woman entered with a tartan shopping bag on wheels. The butcher greeted her warmly and then shot me a wink.

‘How can I help?’ I cleared my throat to start again, because my voice sounded tissue-thin. I had expected her to scowl at me, but the woman just smiled and asked for bacon rashers.

It might not seem like much, but for me, that day was a trial by fire. I didn’t relax until it was time to flip the sign on the door to signal we were closed. By then, I was exhausted but also elated. I had served a string of customers and found that I enjoyed it. Okay, I was scared, but that fear quickly vanished as soon as I greeted them and received a friendly reply. It helped that the counter formed a physical barrier, a line nobody could cross. All the same, that soon became invisible as I continued to serve. People weren’t monsters, as I had led myself to believe. Not everyone was like my stepfather or my dad. Nobody had set out to make me feel small or threaten some kind of punishment. Customers had treated me in the same way that I treated them and I had loved every minute.

That day was supposed to have been a one-off. As I’d made such an impression on the boss, however, he asked me to give it another shot the next day, and the day after that. Within a week, I was dividing my time between my duties in the back room and serving customers at the counter. Just like my introduction to butchery, once I’d overcome my fears I wanted to learn all there was to selling. It wasn’t just about being pleasant, but understanding the customer’s needs and learning how to meet them. That meant coming out of my shell and connecting with people, and it proved to be the making of me.

During my apprenticeship, and afterwards in what became a secure job for me, I found myself becoming more outward-looking. I had friends and joined them on evenings out in Penrith. Even as a teenager, I was tall and broad for my age. It meant I could drink in pubs and get into local nightclubs long before I turned 18. Going out after work also proved to be a good way to avoid spending any more time than I had to at home. At every opportunity, I tried to avoid my stepfather. Having reached an age where he could no longer impose a curfew, I just stayed out late enough to feel sure that when I crept home, he would be fast asleep.

In effect, I grew up in that butcher’s shop, turning from a shy boy to an outgoing young man who finally believed in himself. It wasn’t an instant transformation, and what confidence I gained was fragile, but outwardly, I learned how to project myself. I felt ready to make my mark in the world.

When my boss, the old butcher, announced his retirement, I knew it was time to move on. Having gained a reputation in my role, I quickly found a new position in a bigger shop. I had hoped it would provide me with new challenges, but after a short while I realised it wasn’t the same. I didn’t feel like I belonged as I had at the old place. It no longer seemed like family. Rather than risk a return to feeling unhappy, I took a temporary job as a warehouseman. It earned me enough money to pay my rent, which of course my stepfather insisted on, and to make the most of my evenings out with friends. I would come to drink like the best of them and survive on little sleep. At the same time, I learned to drive. Not only did that give me more independence from home, I found that I loved being out on the road. So, when an opportunity arose to apply for a role as a van driver for the local bakery, I jumped at it.

The job had perks, and not just free doughnuts. With no desire to spend time at home, it was the antisocial hours that appealed to me. I started work at three in the morning, delivering bread to homes and businesses around the region before the world woke up. My shift was also split. So, I’d return home for lunch, knowing my stepfather would be out, and basically, have the place to myself all afternoon. After a nap I’d be back on the road to pick up flour to deliver to the bakery, with enough time after I clocked off to sink a few pints with the lads before the pub shut.