The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (10 page)

Dear Maureen, Writing this from a bench beside the cathedral. Two chaps are doing street theatre, though they seem to be in danger of setting themselves on fire. Have marked my position with an x . H
.

Dear Queenie, Do not give up. Best wishes, Harold (Fry)
.

Dear Girl in the Garage (Happy to Help), I have been wondering whether you pray? I tried once but I was too late. I am afraid that did it for me. Kind regards, The man who was walking
.

PS. I am still doing it
.

IT WAS MID-MORNING
. A crowd had gathered around two young men who were eating fire outside the cathedral to the accompaniment of a CD player, while an old man dressed in a blanket rooted through a bin. The flame-eaters wore dark, oily clothes and had tied their hair in ponytails; there was something shambolic about their act, as if it might go wrong at any time. They asked people to stand back, and then they started juggling flaming batons, while the crowd gave a nervous clap. The old man seemed to notice them for the first time. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd and stood between the two men, like a piggy in the middle. He was laughing. The two young men yelled at him to move away, but he began to dance to their music. His movements were jerky and unrefined; suddenly the flame-eaters seemed both slick and professional. They switched off their CD player and packed away their things, and the crowd diluted to a few passers-by, but the old man danced alone outside the cathedral, his arms outspread and his eyes closed, as if both the music and the people were still present.

Harold wanted to get on with his journey, but equally he felt that the old man was performing for the benefit of strangers and that, as the only one remaining, it would be discourteous to abandon him.

He remembered David jiving at the holiday camp in Eastbourne, the night he won the Twist prize. Embarrassed, the other contestants had peeled away, leaving only this eight-year-old child with his body jiggering so fast, it was impossible to tell whether he was happy or in pain. The compère began a slow clap, and made a joke that rang through the dance hall, so that everyone roared. Bewildered, Harold had smiled too; not knowing in that moment how to be anything so complicated as his son’s father. He glanced at Maureen and found she was watching, her hands to her mouth. The smile dropped from his face and he felt nothing but a traitor.

There was more. There were David’s school years. The hours in his bedroom, the top marks, the refusal to allow his parents’ help. ‘It doesn’t matter he keeps to himself,’ Maureen would say. ‘He has other interests.’ After all, they were loners themselves. One week David wanted a microscope. Another it was the collected works of Dostoyevsky. Then it was
German for Beginners
. A bonsai tree. In awe of the greed with which he learned new things, they bought them all. He was blessed with an intelligence and opportunities they had never had; whatever they did, they mustn’t let him down.

‘Father,’ he would say, ‘have you read William Blake?’ Or, ‘Do you know anything about drift velocity?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I thought as much.’

Harold had spent his whole life bowing his head to avoid confrontation, and yet, spilled from his own flesh was someone determined to hold his eye and have it out with him. He wished he had not grinned the night his son jived.

The old man stopped dancing. He seemed to notice Harold for the first time. Throwing off his blanket, he gave a low bow, sweeping the ground with his hand. He was wearing some sort of suit, though it was so dirty it was hard to tell which was shirt and which jacket. He rose again, still gazing directly at Harold. Harold checked behind him in case the old man was looking at someone else, but other people were shooting past, avoiding connection. The person the old man wanted was undoubtedly him.

He moved towards the old man, slowly. Halfway he got so embarrassed he had to pretend he had something in his eye, but the old man waited. When they were maybe a yard apart the old man held out his arms, as if embracing the shoulders of an invisible partner. There was nothing for it but for Harold to lift his own arms and do the same. Slowly their feet fumbled a passage to the left and then to the right. They weren’t touching but they danced together, and if there was a smell of urine and possibly vomit, it was also true that Harold had smelt worse. The only sound came from the traffic, and the crowds.

The old man drew to a halt and bowed a second time. Moved, Harold ducked his head. He thanked the old man for dancing, but the old man had already picked up his blanket and was limping away, as if music was the last thing on his mind.

In a gift shop close to the cathedral, Harold bought a set of embossed pencils that he hoped Maureen would like. For Queenie, he chose a small paperweight containing a model of the cathedral that covered itself in glitter when he tipped it upside down. It struck him as strange but true that tourists bought trinkets and souvenirs of religious places because they had no idea what else to do when they got there.

Exeter took Harold by surprise. He had developed a slow inner rhythm that the fury of the city now threatened to overturn. He had felt comfortable in the security of open land and sky, where everything took its place. He had felt himself to be part of something bigger than simply Harold. In the city, where there was such short-range sight, he felt anything might happen, and that whatever it was he wouldn’t be ready.

He looked for traces of the land beneath his feet and all he found was where it had been replaced with paving stones and tarmac. Everything alarmed him. The traffic. The buildings. The crowds pushed past, shouting into their mobile phones. He smiled at each face and it was exhausting, taking in so many strangers.

He lost a full day, simply wandering. Each time he resolved to leave, he saw something that distracted him, and another hour passed. He deliberated over purchases that he hadn’t realized he required. Should he send Maureen a new pair of gardening gloves? An assistant fetched five different types, and modelled them on her hands, before Harold remembered his wife had long since abandoned her vegetable beds. He stopped to eat and was presented with such an array of sandwiches that he forgot he was hungry, and left with nothing. (Did he prefer cheese or ham or would he like the filling of the day, seafood cocktail? Or would he like something else altogether? Sushi? Peking duck wraps?) What had been so clear to him when he was alone, two feet on the ground, became lost in this abundance of choices and streets and glass-fronted shopping outlets. He longed to be back on the open land.

And now that he had the opportunity to buy walking equipment, he also faltered. After an hour with an enthusiastic young Australian man, who produced not only walking boots but also a rucksack, a small tent and a talking pedometer, Harold apologized profusely and bought a wind-up torch. He told himself that he had managed perfectly well with his yachting shoes and his plastic bag, and with a little ingenuity he could carry his toothbrush and shaving foam in one pocket, and his deodorant and washing powder in the other. Instead he went to a café close to the railway station.

Twenty years ago Queenie must have made her way to Exeter St David’s. Had she gone straight from here to Berwick? Had she family there? Friends? She had never mentioned either. Once, a song had come on the car radio and she had wept. ‘Mighty Like A Rose’. The male voice filled the air, steady and deep. It reminded her of her father, she said between gulps; he had died only recently.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘It’s all right.’

‘He was a good man.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You’d have liked him, Mr Fry.’

She had told a story about her father; how he played a game when she was a child where he pretended she was invisible. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ she’d be laughing; and all the time he’d look straight down at her, saying, as if she wasn’t there, ‘Come here this minute. Where are you, Queenie?’

‘It was so funny,’ she said, nipping the end of her nose with her handkerchief. ‘I miss him very much.’ Even her grief possessed a compact dignity.

The station café was busy. Harold watched the holidaymakers negotiating the small spaces between the tables and chairs with their suitcases and backpacks, and he asked himself if maybe Queenie had sat in this same spot. He pictured her, alone and pale, in her old-fashioned suit; her neat face staring resolutely forward.

He should never have let her go like that.

‘Excuse me,’ a gentle voice above him said, ‘is this seat free?’

He shook himself back to the present. A well-dressed man was standing to his left and pointing to the chair opposite. Harold wiped his eyes, surprised and ashamed to discover that once again he had been crying. He told the man that the seat was indeed free, and urged him to take it.

The man wore a smart suit and deep-blue shirt with small pearl cufflinks. His body was lean and graceful. His thick, silver hair was swept back from his face. Even as he sat he folded his legs so that the crease of his trousers fell in line with his knees. He lifted his hands to his lips, holding them there in an elegant steeple. He looked the sort of man Harold wished he had been; distinguished, as Maureen would say. Maybe he was staring too hard because after the waitress had delivered a pot of Ceylon tea (no milk) and a toasted teacake, the gentleman said with feeling, ‘Goodbyes are always hard.’ He poured tea and added lemon.

Harold explained that he was walking to a woman he had let down in the past. He hoped it was not a goodbye; he very much hoped his friend would live. He didn’t look the man in the eye, but focused instead on the toasted teacake. It was the size of the plate. The butter had melted like golden syrup.

The man sliced one half into slim soldiers and listened as he ate. The café was loud and busy; the windows so steamed they were opaque.

‘Queenie was the sort of woman people don’t appreciate. She wasn’t a dolly bird, like the other women at the brewery. She maybe had a little hair on her face. Not a moustache or anything. But the other chaps laughed. They called her names. It caused her pain.’ Harold wasn’t even certain he could be heard. He marvelled at the neatness with which the gentleman posted the teacake between his teeth and mopped his fingers after each mouthful.

‘Would you like some?’ said the gentleman.

‘I couldn’t.’ Harold raised both hands as if blocking the way.

‘I only want half. It seems a shame to waste the other. Please. Share it.’

The silver-haired gentleman took his cut-up pieces and arranged them on a paper napkin. He slid the plate with the intact half towards Harold. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ he said. ‘You seem a decent sort of man.’

Harold nodded because the teacake was already in his mouth and he couldn’t exactly spit it out again. He tried to stop the butter from running by scooping it up with his fingers, but it shot down his wrist and oiled his sleeve.

‘I come to Exeter every Thursday. I get the train in the morning, and I return in the early evening. I come to meet a young man. We do things. No one knows about this part of my life.’

The silver-haired gentleman paused to pour a fresh cup of tea. The teacake was lodged in Harold’s throat. He could feel the man’s eyes searching for his but he couldn’t possibly look up.

‘Can I go on?’ said the gentleman.

Harold nodded. He gave a gulp that sent the teacake squeezing past his tonsils. It hurt all the way down.

‘I like what we do, otherwise I would not come here, but I have also grown fond of him. He fetches me a glass of water afterwards and sometimes he talks. His English is not so good. I believe he had polio as a child, and sometimes it causes him to limp.’

For the first time the silver-haired gentleman faltered, as if he was fighting something inside. He lifted his tea but his fingers trembled when he steered the cup to his mouth, so that the liquid spilled over the rim and slopped on to his teacake. ‘He moves me, this young man,’ he said. ‘He moves me beyond words.’

Harold looked away. He wondered if he could get up but realized he couldn’t. He had eaten half the silver-haired gentleman’s teacake, after all. And yet he felt it was an intrusion to witness the man’s helplessness, when he had been so kind and appeared so elegant. He wished the man hadn’t spilled his tea, and that he would mop it up, but he didn’t, he just sat, bearing it, and not caring. His teacake would be ruined.

The gentleman continued with difficulty. The words were slow and spread apart. ‘I lick his trainers. It’s part of what we do. But I noticed only this morning that he has a small hole at the toe.’ His voice quivered. ‘I would like to buy him another pair but I don’t want to offend him. And yet equally I can’t bear the thought of him walking the streets with a hole in his trainers. His foot will get wet. What should I do?’ His mouth folded over itself, as if pressing back an avalanche of pain.

Harold sat in silence. The silver-haired gentleman was in truth nothing like the man Harold had first imagined him to be. He was a chap like himself, with a unique pain; and yet there would be no knowing that if you passed him in the street, or sat opposite him in a café and did not share his teacake. Harold pictured the gentleman on a station platform, smart in his suit, looking no different from anyone else. It must be the same all over England. People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that. Moved and humbled, he passed his paper napkin.

‘I think I would buy him new trainers,’ said Harold. He dared to lift his eyes to meet those of the silver-haired gentleman. The irises were a watery blue; the whites so pink they appeared sore. It tore at Harold’s heart, but he didn’t look away. Briefly the two men sat, not speaking, until a lightness filled Harold and caused him to offer a smile. He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was also his journey to accept the strangeness of others. As a passer-by, he was in a place where everything, not only the land, was open. People would feel free to talk, and he was free to listen. To carry a little of them as he went. He had neglected so many things, that he owed this small piece of generosity to Queenie and the past.