by Sally Hyder
‘Try not to let your imagination run away with you,’ advised Andrew, the voice of calm.
The driver accelerated hard enough to send the truck hurtling forward, away from the precipice and on into Gyantse. From there, we hitched a ride west to Tingri, lying flat in the open back of a lorry like fugitives. It was exciting, even though the journey seemed to take forever. Every so often the driver would stop, enjoy a few more bottles of beer and gamble with the householders who had provided the refreshment. Arriving with blackened faces from the exhaust, safe but sore, we felt like real adventurers now.
‘Come on, Sally. Just a bit further!’
The aim was to get to Rombuk monastery. At 5,000 metres above sea level, it’s the highest monastery in the world. By now we were a group of seven. Together, we hired a couple of yaks and a guide and stayed in yak-skin tents, which have a hole in the top to allow smoke from the yak-dung fires to escape. We drank yak tea (or ‘yuck tea’, as it came to be known). Made from tea, salt and yak butter, unless drunk very quickly it congeals on your tongue. The climb was slow and hard work; we all suffered forms of mild altitude sickness but one of our group actually had to go back as he was clearly unwell and the only cure is to descend. At one stage we had to cross a roaring river via a crumbling stone bridge that I was convinced would collapse beneath our weight. Otherwise, there was just silence and fluttering prayer flags, the rumble of prayer wheels (wooden wheels reputed to accumulate wisdom and good karma as they spin) and the occasional flap of bird wings. It’s a desert region: food is hard to come by and there is no green, just mile upon mile of rocks and Everest shrouded in mist in the distance, drawing us ever closer.
Arriving at Rombuk monastery is unexpected: after a two-day walk up the valley, you turn a corner and the ridge flattens out. There it is, clinging to the side of the Everest valley like a beleaguered fortress. The monastery is still inhabited by a community of monks and nuns whose lives are dedicated to God and survival. With their lined, weathered faces and faded tunics, they seem to belong there on the mountainside. We stayed in a platform hut built on dried mud, with Tibetan rugs and the best loo with a view I’ve ever encountered. From there, you could see Her Majesty. The monks also operate an efficient black market currency exchange and charged an extortionate amount for their eggs, which just goes to show everyone has to survive somehow.
As soon as we arrived at the monastery, I looked at Andrew and knew from his set jaw and gleaming eyes that he’d decided to go on. Now the plan was to get to North Everest Base Camp: just seven kilometres of rocky terrain with heavily loaded rucksacks away. After a fitful night’s sleep on a hard floor and more green tea, we set out the next morning.
‘Just a bit further, Sally.’
CLICK!
I took a photo to remember the spot, the exhaustion and the sheer elation of being on top of the world (well, almost!). Here’s Andrew in his Harris sweater knitted by my dad (we had one each) and walking boots. He looks every bit the gentleman explorer – no different, in fact, to George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale Everest in the 1920s from the Tibetan side. Mallory gave the infamous answer to the question, ‘Why did you climb it?’: ‘Because it’s there.’
Only Andrew’s white-framed sunglasses (oh, so eighties!) give the decade away.
We reached the British Base Camp in the afternoon. This turned out to be a bunch of scruffy huts and more prayer flags, looking ragged; there was a cairn and tents and provisions. I had expected posh tents but they didn’t look any different to the ones we saw when walking the Munros. Yet despite the low-key nature of the camp, our moment of arrival still stands out as the most exhilarating of my life: to be there on the flanks of Everest (and not on the Nepalese side on a guided tour) and all down to our own initiative and resources was a remarkable feeling.
Unloading our rucksacks, we tried to take it all in. We were so close to Everest that the view was obscured by whiteness; it was hard to connect where we were with the myths and expectations surrounding the world’s highest mountain – she was every bit as powerful as the place she holds in our imagination. No wonder men sacrifice their lives for her, I thought, cupping a hand over my eyes to avoid the glare.
I sat down.
‘No, come on,’ said Andrew. ‘I want to go a bit further!’
‘Right now?’
‘Yes.’
I stood up.
‘OK, that’s far enough,’ he said, half an hour later. ‘I want a photograph of us with Everest in the background. Can you take a photo?’ He gave the camera to our new friend Peter, a Canadian mountaineer. ‘Actually, take loads!’
Andrew had taken off his ski-jacket. His lips were chapped and his nose, like mine, was striped with sunblock. He came and joined me in front of the camera. Together, we blinked in the sun and I relaxed into the pose. Then all of a sudden, he dropped down on one knee.
‘Andrew?’
I watched him rummage in the camera case hanging from his neck then I looked over his shoulder towards the craggy face of Everest and its snow-covered slopes.
He can’t have planned this in London.
‘Will you marry me?’
I burst out laughing. As he pushed a diamond and ruby ring over my finger, I started to weep with happiness.
I had waited so long to be asked and now when I least expected his proposal and it couldn’t have been further from my mind, there it was. Insane. In the space of a few hours, all my dreams were coming true. My next thought was, get the ring back in that box before you lose it!
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Yes!’
That night we celebrated our engagement at Base Camp with the British expedition teams who had failed to scale the Northeast ridge as the bad weather had come in. The men were tired and gruff. It felt so exciting to be there, eavesdropping on their stories, that I didn’t appreciate how disappointed they must have felt at not succeeding. One of their group was part of the mountain rescue team in Glencoe and another belonged to the Guinness family. With them were the Sherpas, quite extraordinary men who get themselves and everyone else up Everest, carrying loads, while more often than not inadequately equipped or reliant on the teams to equip them. For me, it was a glimpse into a world I would never see again.
Meanwhile, I twisted my engagement ring round and round my finger. During the trip, I’d lost so much weight that my fingers had shrunk and it didn’t fit: the ruby glinted, blood red, in the firelight. We drank whisky and ate the Scottish food provided for us by the team: tinned mince and peas followed by Dundee cake. After months of rice, the food was too rich and we were all violently sick.
Once I’d recovered, I called Mum on the UK team’s satellite phone (there were no mobile phones in those days).
‘Andrew’s asked me to marry him.’
‘What is the terminal moraine like?’ came the reply.
Mum’s a geography teacher – well, she was then – and she’s crazy about mountains. My laughter echoed around the world, distorted by the thousands of miles between Tibet and Scotland. We spoke to Dad then rang Andrew’s parents. All were relieved to hear from us and also happy with our news. The evening was as unexpected as life itself. We listened to the mountaineers’ stories and felt blissfully tired and full of whisky.
I have a photograph of Andrew on bended knee and me in sunglasses, my hair in a ponytail, looking like the happiest couple on earth.
Next morning, the rest of the tourist group left Base Camp to begin their descent but we stayed put. The British expedition team lent us a tent. We wanted to celebrate our engagement and they, perhaps to alleviate their gloom, were happy to have us there. They were all a bit depressed: the anti-climax of failing to reach the summit after years of preparation and expectation must have been hard to bear. When it was time to leave, we thumbed a ride with the team to the main road. The truck driver was a maniac and the Sherpas jumped out of the back of the truck. I remember thinking, if they’ve jumped out we’re entitled t
o be scared but there was no way we could escape.
We had planned to continue through to Nepal but the road was blocked due to the earthquake and so we ended up with a two-day drive, again hitched. Back in Lhasa we bought some Lux soap from the Friendship Store and took long, hot showers. I’ve never felt so clean in my life! To this day the smell of Lux, that pungent chemical perfume, takes me back to then: clean, safe and the proud owner of a sparkling ring.
Two months later, non-violent forms of protest broke out in Lhasa with demonstrations led by monks and nuns. At long last the Tibetans’ struggle for independence became associated with demands for democracy and human rights. By 1989, Tibet was closed to foreigners, martial law had been declared and Chinese soldiers were positioned on rooftops. We’d got there just in time.
To be able to enjoy the adventures of each day in the knowledge that we had made this new commitment to each other was bliss. We sent postcards of Everest as engagement announcements, which much to everyone’s amusement arrived home after us. Our wedding invitations were sealed with cut outs of Everest surrounded by a gold wedding ring, embossed in gold. On the day itself we served Everest-shaped chocolates with coffee (‘Qomolungma chocolates’, as written on the menu).
Memories of our four-day trip to Everest remain part of our marriage: they’re part of our commitment to each other and the world.
Chapter 3
The Axe Falls
On 16 September 1989 Andrew and I were married in the village of Aldbury, Hertfordshire. By this time, my parents had moved to the Isle of Harris, which I felt was too remote for the wedding and so I rang an old family friend, Margaret Kitson. In many ways, she was my surrogate granny. The retired schoolmistress of the old village school, she was in her eighties and had decided to learn Greek in order to read the Bible in Greek. She was a Christian with a youthful spirit, a zest for life and a fairy-tale cottage with low ceilings and creeping roses.
Margaret understood things in a way I’ve rarely encountered since. The most astute comment ever made about my relationship with Andrew came from her: she said that I prevent his feet from getting stuck to the ground and he stops me flying off altogether.
I’d always loved Aldbury. It’s a picture-postcard English village with a village green, stocks and a duck pond. We were married in the Saint John the Baptist church. A local lady called Sue did the flowers and followed my then-unfashionable request for a trailing bouquet and crowns of flowers, the inspiration being A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mum and Dad had purchased my dress from Jenners, the then-independent equivalent of Harrods in Edinburgh. I made the veil, embroidered with seed pearls, which was attached to the crown of ivy and roses in my hair. My bridesmaids wore green – I’d made their dresses, too. Two of the girls hadn’t been available for fittings and the dresses unfortunately gaped at the neckline so tissues were employed as stuffing. These came in handy when my grandmother had a nosebleed during the ceremony and hankies were produced from some rather unlikely places.
Our big day was everything we had hoped for: the sun came out and the setting was perfect, surrounded by family and friends. During the romantic carriage drive to the reception, Andrew and I remembered Everest and all it meant to us. The evening rang with the sounds of a ceilidh band, complete with caller, that I had managed to source. This type of dancing came as something of a surprise to our guests who were expecting the more predictable cheesy DJ and a few eighties’ hits but everyone danced the night away.
In his wedding speech, Andrew talked of our shared challenge of reaching Everest and how important it was to us. We spent our honeymoon in Venice. Not that I realised it before we left – the trip was to be a surprise for me. All I knew was that we nearly missed our ferry: that morning over a leisurely breakfast Andrew suddenly remembered our passports were with his best man, who was rowing on the Thames. A worried phone call (still no mobile phones) brought the news that Adam was too hung-over to row. Instead he met us at a service station en route to hand over the passports. Phew!
With balloons and decorations flapping from the car, we arrived at the ferry terminal and were motioned on across an empty boarding area. Talk about last minute! We stayed one night in a small village in France and then another on the banks of Lake Geneva in a small, eccentric Swiss guesthouse; I still didn’t know where we were headed. Eventually, we ended up in a sleepy little village called Chioggia over the bay from Venice, in a fisherman’s tavern, and were wonderfully spoiled by the locals. We then moved on to Sienna, Giglio (a lovely island) and Florence.
Marriage suited us. Andrew and I are both children of strong marriages. My parents (Robin and John) met when they were teenagers and despite their differences have sustained a commitment that’s still going strong; my in-laws’ marriage I often imagine as a rock in stormy seas.
After the excitement of the wedding and all the travelling the return to reality came as a jolt. That autumn Andrew bought a new suit, had a haircut and started work as a surveyor looking after investment property portfolios in London. The job was interesting and meant that he could follow his dream of working in the City. After working eight weekends in a row at the Hospice, however, I was tired of shifts. No stranger to change, I applied and got onto a health-visiting course. This included practical and theory tuition in affiliation with a GP’s surgery in Lewisham, which was around the corner from where we were living in Catford (otherwise known as Forest Hill). It started as soon as we got back from our honeymoon. In fact, I missed the first week of the course.
By the time I was five, I’d lived in four different houses. Since I’ve been married to Andrew (21 years as I write this), I’ve lived in just three: I like the permanence of home, I like feeling settled. Our first flat was a two-bedroom conversion in a large Victorian house in Catford with high ceilings and a mantelpiece. A little bit of back garden was accessible through the front door and down the side alley. We completed at the height of the property boom and were seriously hit by negative equity but it was all ours. I purchased oddments of carpet and some second-hand blue velvet curtains and filled the window boxes with peonies, geraniums, trailing lobelia, fuchsias and marigolds.
On Christmas Eve we bought a Christmas tree that I decorated with red bows and white fairy lights. Andrew sat down. I sat on his lap and immediately fell fast asleep.
‘We need a dog.’
It was Saturday morning. We were drinking tea and deciding whether to do the South Downs or more decorating. The best thing about weekends in London was being able to head out to the country or go into town to visit the museums and the theatre.
‘I agree,’ said Andrew.
We had reached the dog-owning stage of our lives. Both of us were dog lovers. Growing up as an only child, I’d always been grateful for their company. For my sixth birthday, Mum and Dad gave me Sandie, a gun-shy Gun Dog, who proved to be a great companion and partial to crisps. I was eating a packet of crisps when we went to get her. Unsurprisingly, she came to sit at my feet and obviously I thought, she knows I’m her owner and that she’s mine. What a clever girl! She also loved hill walking as much as the rest of the family.
Sandie’s way of expressing her displeasure at being left at home was to collect all the shoes in the house and leave them in a pile, mercifully undamaged, in the middle of the living room. She also disgraced herself almost immediately by eating the gingerbread house that Mum had baked for my birthday. Six months later she made a foray into the Christmas cake. We soon learnt about Labradors and food!
When I was 13 years old, Mum found a stray outside my school. We took the dog to the police pound but in the ensuing conversation with the on-duty policeman decided to keep him. Mum wasn’t normally spontaneous but something about Shep made us fall in love with him. All black, he was possibly a Greyhound/Labrador mix, desperately thin and scared out of his wits; he had scabby paws, burns down one side and his ear had clearly been cut with scissors. The vet reckoned he had walked for miles. He might have been an unwanted Christmas present
, living rough until he showed up outside school. Once we’d taken him home, he slept for three days and ate everything we put in front of him. He was so malnourished the vet warned that he could die if he wasn’t carefully and gradually introduced to food.
Shep was a real rascal. Dad was convinced that had he been human he’d have worn a trilby and had a fag hanging from his mouth! He was also the most accident prone dog you could ever hope to meet: he caught his eye on the hook of the seat belt and ate a kilo of walnuts, which meant that he had to drink pints of liquid paraffin to get things moving. Mum reckons the South Downs haven’t recovered from the mounds he deposited there – he had serious bellyache for weeks!
Shep and Sandie became firm friends. This was surprising given Sandie loathed every dog she met. In retrospect, it was good old-fashioned respect for his elders on Shep’s part. The only exception to the rule was the single floor cushion that both dogs liked. If Shep happened to be on it, Sandie would charge to the front door, barking. This would lead to Shep getting up to investigate what all the noise was about. In a flash, Sandie would sneak over to take up residency on the coveted cushion.
Sandie died aged 14. By then, I was living away from home but I was devastated, as were my parents. Shep also went through a long period of mourning: he moped around the house, lost his appetite and generally looked glum.
Now that Andrew and I were committed to the search for a dog, autumn weekends were spent contacting local rescue charities. If you’ve ever been to a rescue centre or homing charity with the intention of getting a dog, you’ll know exactly what I mean when I say it’s an emotional rollercoaster: your heart races and the hairs on your arms stand on end. The chorus of lonely barks and whines, all those desperate faces, is like a magic formula – there’s no way you’ll be going home empty-handed.
A few weeks into the search one of the charities phoned to let us know that they had a suitable dog. He was living with a family who couldn’t have him anymore. Jet was a year old and black, with grey eyes. He was part Black Labrador. Oh yes, and he had only three legs. Now you might think he wasn’t an ideal dog, but again gut instinct told us he was the one. Jet was the first dog we met in our search and we knew he was right for us. He soon learned we loved him: he was our joker, he brought a lot of humour into our lives. We used to walk him in Beckenham Place Park or go for longer trips on the South Downs. His favourite game was playing tug. He could run so fast, he made heads turn. My God, was that a three-legged dog? You should have seen the expression on people’s faces. Often we’d take him up to the Isle of Harris to visit my parents. They had a new dog called Lucy (Mum had given him to Dad for his birthday). Lucy was the most timid of the litter but with my parents’ encouragement, she soon grew in confidence. She was an amazing dog, who knew the ways of the Island. Whenever we visited, Jet and Lucy played tug o’ war with a long piece of rope that they had found washed up on the shore.
