The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (22 page)

It was his fault, she’d complained at the time; he should have checked the arrangements. It was nervousness that made her lash out. They had waited for over two hours, but it was the wrong place after all. They missed the whole ceremony. And even though David apologized when they bumped into him coming out of a pub (you could excuse him for that; it was a day of celebration), he also failed to meet them for the punting trip he had promised. The couple had made the long drive from Cambridge to Kingsbridge in silence.

‘He said he’s going on a walking holiday,’ she said at last.

‘That’s good.’

‘Just as a stopgap. Until he gets a job.’

‘That’s good,’ he said again.

Tears of frustration had caught like a solid lump in her throat. ‘At least he has a degree,’ she fired. ‘At least he can make something of his life.’

David returned home two weeks later, unexpectedly. He didn’t explain why he was back so soon, but he carried a brown holdall that clunked as it hit the banisters and he often took his mother aside to ask her for money. ‘University took it out of him,’ she’d say, to excuse his failure to get up. Or she’d say, ‘He just needs to find the right job.’ He missed interviews; or he went to them, but forgot to wash and comb his hair. ‘David is too clever,’ she’d say. Harold would nod in that easy way of his, and she’d want to shout at him for appearing to believe her. The truth was, their son could barely stand up straight most of the time. There were moments when she stole a glance at him, and she wasn’t even convinced he had graduated. With David, you could look back and there were so many inconsistencies that even the things you thought you knew began to unravel. And then she would feel guilty for doubting her son, and blame it instead on Harold. At least David has prospects, she’d say. At least he has his hair. Anything to throw Harold off balance. Money began to disappear from her purse. First coins. Then notes. She pretended they hadn’t.

Over the years, she had asked David many times if she could have done more; but he had reassured her. After all, it was she who had underlined suitable vacancies in the jobs section of the newspaper. It was she who had fixed the doctor’s appointment and driven him there. Maureen remembered how he dropped the prescription into her lap, as if it were nothing to do with him. There was Prothiaden for the depression and Diazepam to decrease anxiety, and then there was Temazepam if he still couldn’t sleep at night.

‘That’s an awful lot,’ she had said, scrambling to her feet. ‘What did the doctor say to you? What does he think?’

He had shrugged and lit another cigarette.

But at least after that there had been an improvement. She listened out at night but it seemed he was sleeping. He no longer got up to eat breakfast at four in the morning. He no longer went for night walks in his dressing gown, or filled the house with the sick-sweet smell of his roll-ups. David was certain he would find a job.

She saw him again the day he decided to interview for the army, and took it upon himself to shave his scalp. There were curls of his long hair all over the bathroom. There were nicks in the skin where his hand had trembled and the razor slipped. The barbarity inflicted on that poor head, that poor head she loved to distraction, had made her want to scream.

Maureen lowered herself on to the bed, and dropped her face in her hands. What more could they have done?

‘Oh Harold.’ She fingered the coarse tweed of his English gentleman’s jacket.

An urge came over her to do something completely different. It was like a shock of energy right through her, forcing her once more to her feet. She took out the shrimp garment she had worn for the graduation and hung it at the centre of the rail. Then she took Harold’s jacket and arranged it on a hanger beside the dress. They looked lonely and too apart. She scooped up his sleeve, and draped it over the pink shoulder.

After that she paired each of her outfits with one of his. She tucked the cuff of her blouse in his blue suit pocket. A skirt hem she looped around a trouser leg. Another dress she wrapped in the embrace of his blue cardigan. It was as if lots of invisible Maureens and Harolds were loitering in her wardrobe, simply waiting for the opportunity to step out. It made her smile, and then it made her cry; but she didn’t change them back.

She was interrupted by the sound of Rex’s Rover drawing up outside. Soon afterwards, she was aware of a scraping sound from her front garden. Lifting the net curtains, she found he had marked rectangles of turf with string and posts, and that he was cutting into them with his spade.

He waved up at her. ‘If we’re lucky, we might be in time for runner beans.’

Wearing an old shirt of Harold’s, Maureen planted twenty small shoots and tied them to bamboo stakes without damaging their soft green stems. She patted the soil at their roots, and watered them. At first she watched in fear, lest they were pecked by seagulls or killed by a May frost. But after only a day or so of constant watching, her worry subsided. In time, the plants thickened at the stems, and grew new leaves. She planted rows of lettuce, beetroot and carrots. She cleared the rubble from the ornamental pond.

It was good to feel the soil under her nails, and nurture something again.

18

Harold and the Decision

‘GOOD AFTERNOON. I
am ringing about a patient called Queenie Hennessy. She sent me a letter just over four weeks ago.’

On the twenty-sixth day, and six miles south of Stroud, Harold decided to stop. He had retraced the five miles to Bath, and kept walking from there for a further four days along the A46, but the mistake he had made about his direction deeply disturbed him, and the going was hard. Hedgerows reduced to ditches, and drystone walls. The land opened out, and stretched to the left and right. Giant pylons marched as far as he could see. He observed these things but felt no interest as to why they occurred. Whichever way he looked at it, the road was something that never stopped, and never yielded its promise. It took every scrap of himself to keep moving when he knew in his heart he could not make it.

Why had he wasted so much time, looking at the sky and the hills, and talking to people, and thinking about life, and remembering, when all along he could have been in a car? Of course he couldn’t do it in yachting shoes. Of course Queenie couldn’t keep living, just because he’d told her to do so. Every day, the sky hung low and white, lit by a silvery spoke of sunlight. He lowered his head so that he would not see the birds swooping overhead, or the traffic passing in a flash. He felt more lonely and left behind than he would have done up a faraway mountain.

In making his decision, he wasn’t only thinking of himself. There was Maureen too. He missed her more and more. He knew he had lost her love, but it was wrong to walk out and leave her to pick up the pieces; already he had caused her too much sorrow. And there was David. In the days since Bath, Harold had felt a painfully long distance from him. He missed them both.

Finally there was the money. The guesthouses had been cheap, but all the same he couldn’t afford to keep spending like this. He had checked his account at the bank, and been shocked. If Queenie was still alive, and if she was interested in a visit, he would take the train. He could be in Berwick by the evening.

The woman on the other end of the line said, ‘Have you rung before?’ He wondered if she was the same nurse with whom he had left his original message. This voice was Scottish, he thought, or was it Irish? He was too tired to know.

‘Could I talk to Queenie?’

‘I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t.’

It was like hitting a wall he hadn’t seen. ‘Is she—?’ His chest was smarting. ‘Is she—?’ He couldn’t say it.

‘Are you the gentleman who was travelling by foot?’

Harold swallowed something sharp. He said that yes, he was. He apologized.

‘Mr Fry, Queenie has no family. No friends. When people have no one to stay for, they tend to pass quickly. We have been hoping for your call.’

‘I see.’ He could barely speak. He could only listen. Even his blood was still and cold.

‘After you rang, we all noticed the change in Queenie. It was very marked.’

He saw a body on a stretcher, stiff with not living. He felt what it was to be too late to make a difference. He said with a hoarse whisper, ‘Yes.’ And then, since she said nothing, he said again, ‘Well, of course.’ He slumped his forehead against the glass of the booth, followed by his palm, and closed his eyes. If only it was simple to stop feeling.

The woman gave a fluttery noise, like a laugh, but it surely couldn’t be. ‘We’ve never seen anything like it. Some days she sits up. She shows us all your postcards.’

Harold shook his head, not understanding. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘She’s waiting, Mr Fry. Like you said she should.’

A cry of joy shot out of him, and took him by surprise. ‘She’s alive? She’s getting better?’ He laughed, not meaning to, but it grew bigger, spilling out in waves as tears moistened his cheeks. ‘She’s waiting for me?’ He threw open the door of the kiosk and punched the air.

‘When you rang and told us about your walk, I was afraid you’d misunderstood the gravity of things. But, you see, I was wrong. It’s a rather unusual kind of healing. I don’t know how you came up with it. But maybe it’s what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ He was still laughing. He couldn’t stop.

‘May I ask how the journey is going?’

‘Well. Very well. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I stayed in Old Sodbury. I also passed Dunkirk. Now I believe I am in Nailsworth.’ Even that was funny. The voice was chuckling too.

‘One wonders where these names all come from. When should we expect you?’

‘Let me think.’ Harold blew his nose, and mopped the last of his crying away. He looked at his watch, wondering how quickly he could get a train, and how many different connections it would take. Then once again he pictured the space between himself and Queenie: the hills, the roads, the people, the sky. He saw them as he had done on that first afternoon, but now there was a difference; he placed the image of himself among them. He was a little broken, a little tired, his back to the world, but he wouldn’t let Queenie down. ‘In about three weeks. Possibly more or indeed less.’

‘Goodness.’ The voice laughed. ‘I’ll tell her that.’

‘And tell her not to give up. Tell her I will keep walking.’ He was laughing again because she was.

‘I’ll tell her that too.’

‘Even when she is afraid, she must wait. She must keep living.’

‘I believe she will. God bless you, Mr Fry.’

For the rest of the afternoon Harold walked, and into the dusk. The violent doubt he had felt before phoning Queenie was gone. He had escaped a great danger. There were miracles after all. If he had got on a train or in a car, he would be on his way, believing he was right, but all the time it would be wrong. He had nearly given up, but something else had happened and he kept going. He wouldn’t try to give up again.

The road led from Nailsworth, past the old mill buildings, and into the outskirts of Stroud. As it dipped towards the centre, he passed a row of red-brick terraced houses, one with scaffolding and ladders and a skip of building rubble parked in the road. A shape caught his eye. On stopping and pushing aside several pieces of plywood, he found a sleeping bag. He gave it a shake to blow off the dust, and although it was ripped and the padding bulged like a soft white tongue from the hole, the tear was only superficial and the zip was still intact. Harold rolled the sleeping bag into a bundle and walked to the house. There were already lights downstairs. When he heard Harold’s story, the owner called his wife, and they also offered a fold-up chair, a Teasmade and a yoga mat. Harold assured them the sleeping bag was more than enough.

The wife said, ‘I do hope you’ll be careful. Only last week, our local petrol station was held up by four men with guns.’

Harold promised he was vigilant; although he had come to trust in the basic goodness of people. The dusk deepened and settled like a layer of fur on the outlines of the roofs and trees.

He watched the squares of buttery light inside the houses, and people going about their business. He thought of how they would settle in their beds and try to sleep through their dreams. It struck him again how much he cared, and how relieved he was that they were somehow safe and warm, while he was free to keep walking. After all it had always been this way; that he was a little apart. The moon drew into focus, full and high, like a silver coin emerging through water.

He tried the door to a shed but it was padlocked. He rooted around in a sports field, but there was no proper shelter, and then a building under construction where the windows were secured with plastic sheeting. He didn’t want to go where he was not welcome. Swathes of cloud shone against the sky like a black and silver mackerel. The road and rooftops were bathed in softest blue.

Following a steep hill, he came to a mud track ending in a barn. There were no dogs or cars. The roof was made of corrugated iron, and so were three of its sides, but the fourth had been secured by a sheet of tarpaulin, which was light against the moon. He lifted a lower corner and stooped to step inside. The air smelt both sweet and dry, and the silence was padded.