The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (8 page)

Harold was the only resident in the dining room, which was really a small front room with a three-piece suite pushed flat against a wall and a table for two positioned at the centre. It was lit by a lamp with an orange shade and smelt of damp. A glass-fronted cabinet exhibited a collection of Spanish dolls and dead bluebottles, dry as twists of tissue paper. The woman who owned the B&B said that the girl who helped was off. She spoke the word as if there were something unsavoury about the girl’s absence, as if she were maybe a piece of food that had to be disposed of. She put his breakfast on the table and watched him from the doorway, her arms folded. Harold was glad not to have to explain. He ate greedily and impatiently, staring out at the road beyond the window, and calculating how long it would take a man who wasn’t used to walking to cover the six miles to Buckfast Abbey, let alone the further four hundred and eighty plus to Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Harold read the words of Queenie’s letter, although he knew them now without looking.
Dear Harold, This may come to you as some surprise. I know it is a long time since we last met, but recently I have been thinking about the past. Last year I had an operation—

‘I hate South Brent,’ said a voice.

Surprised, Harold looked up. There was no one except him and the owner, and it seemed unlikely she had spoken. She was still leaning against the doorframe, with her arms folded, and jiggling her leg, so that her slipper dangled from her foot, on the verge of escape. Harold returned to his letter and his coffee, when the voice came again.

‘We get more rain in South Brent than anywhere else in Devon.’

Clearly it was the woman, although she still didn’t look at him. Her face remained fixed towards the carpet, her lips an empty O, as if her mouth were speaking despite the rest of her. He wished he could say something helpful but he couldn’t think what it might be. Maybe his silence or simply his hearing was enough, because she went on.

‘Even when it’s sunny I can’t enjoy it. I think to myself, Oh yes, it’s nice now, but it’s not going to last. I’m either watching rain, or waiting for it.’

Harold refolded Queenie’s letter and returned it to his pocket. Something was bothering him about the envelope, but he couldn’t find in his mind what it was; besides, it seemed rude not to give the woman his full attention, since she was evidently talking to him.

She said, ‘I won a holiday to Benidorm once. All I had to do was pack my suitcase. But I couldn’t do it. They sent me the ticket in the post, and I never opened the envelope. Why is that? Why, when the chance to escape came, couldn’t I take it?’

Harold frowned. He thought of all the years he hadn’t spoken to Queenie. ‘Maybe you were afraid,’ he said. ‘I had a friend once but it took me a long time to see that she was. It was actually rather funny because we first met in a stationery cupboard.’ He laughed, remembering the scene, but the woman didn’t. It was probably difficult to imagine.

She stopped the foot that had been swinging like a pendulum, and studied her slipper as if she had not noticed it before. ‘One day I will leave,’ she said. She looked across the drab room and caught Harold’s eye, and then at last she smiled.

Contrary to David’s predictions, Queenie Hennessy had not turned out to be a socialist, feminist or lesbian. She was a stout, plain-looking woman with no waist and a handbag tucked over her forearm. It was well known that Mr Napier considered women to be little more than ticking hormone bombs. He gave them jobs as barmaids and secretaries and expected in return the odd favour in the back of his Jaguar. So Queenie marked a new departure at the brewery, and one that Mr Napier would not have made, had anyone other than her applied for the job.

Her manner was quiet and unassuming. Harold overheard a young chap saying, ‘You forget she’s a woman really.’ Within a matter of days there were reports that she had brought an unprecedented order to the financial department. But this did not seem to stop the impersonations and laughter that now filled the corridors. Harold hoped she didn’t hear. He watched her sometimes in the canteen with her sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper. She had a way of sitting with the young secretaries and listening, as if she, or they, were not there at all.

It was when he picked up his briefcase to go home one evening that he heard a snuffling sound from behind a cupboard door. He tried to walk past, but the noise didn’t stop. He turned back.

Edging the door open, to his relief he had found nothing at first, just boxes of paper. Then the sound had come again, more like a sob, and he had discovered a squat figure, pressed against the wall, with her back to him. Her jacket tugged at the seam that ran the length of her spine.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ he’d said. He had been on the point of closing the door again and rushing away, when she had started to weep.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s I who should apologize.’ Now he was standing half in the cupboard and half outside it, with a woman he didn’t know crying into manila envelopes.

‘I’m good at my job,’ she said.

‘Of course.’ He glanced down the corridor, hoping one of the younger chaps would appear and talk to her. He had never been very good with emotion. ‘Of course,’ he said again, as if saying it repeatedly would be enough.

‘I’ve got a degree. I’m not stupid.’

‘I know,’ he said, although, of course, this was not strictly true; he knew almost nothing about her.

‘Then why is Mr Napier always watching? As if he’s waiting for me to make a mistake? Why must they all laugh?’

Their boss was a mystery to Harold. He didn’t know whether the rumours about the kneecapping were true, but he had seen the man reduce the toughest landlords to jelly. Only the previous week Napier had fired a secretary for touching his desk. He said, ‘I’m sure he thinks you are a very good accountant.’ He simply wanted her to stop crying.

‘I need this job. It’s not as if the rent pays itself. But I’m going to resign. Some mornings I don’t even want to get up. My father always said I was too sensitive.’ It was more information than Harold knew what to do with.

Queenie dropped her head low, so that he could see the soft dark hairs at the nape of her neck. It reminded him of David, and he felt a rush of pity.

‘Don’t resign,’ he said, stooping a little and softening his voice. He was speaking from the heart. ‘I found it hard to begin with too. I felt out of place. But it will get better.’ She said nothing, and he wondered for a moment if she had even heard him. ‘Would you like to come out of the stationery cupboard now?’

To his surprise, he held out his palm for her and, again to his surprise, she took it. Her hand was soft and warm against his.

Outside the cupboard, she pulled it away quickly. Then she smoothed her skirt, as if Harold were a crease and she needed to brush him out.

‘Thank you,’ she said, a little coldly, although her nose was a violent red.

She walked away from the stationery cupboard with her back straight and her neck tall, leaving Harold feeling that he was the one who had behaved out of turn. He supposed she had stopped thinking about resigning after that, because he looked out for her at her desk every day and she was there, working alone and without fuss. They rarely spoke. In fact he began to notice that if he entered the canteen, she seemed to pack up her sandwiches and leave.

Morning sun spilled gold over the highest peaks of Dartmoor, but in the shadows the ground was still brushed with a thin frost. Shafts of light struck the land ahead like torches, marking his journey forward. It would be another good day.

Leaving South Brent, Harold met a man in his dressing gown who was leaving food on a saucer for the hedgehogs. He crossed the road to avoid dogs and further on he overtook a young tattooed woman bawling beneath an upstairs window: ‘I know you’re there! I know you can hear me!’ She paced up and down, kicking at garden walls, her body brittle with fury, and every time she appeared on the point of giving up, she returned to the foot of the house and yelled again: ‘You bastard, Arran! I know you’re there!’ Harold also passed an abandoned mattress, the entrails of a sabotaged fridge, several single shoes, many plastic bags and a hubcap, until once again the pavements stopped, and what had been a road narrowed itself to a lane. It surprised him how relieved he felt to be under the sky again, and hedged between trees, and the earth banks that were thick with ferns and brambles.

Harbourneford. Higher Dean. Lower Dean.

He opened the second packet of Rich Tea biscuits, dipping into the bag for them as he went, although some had an unfortunate grainy texture and a slightly sulphuric taste of washing powder.

Was he fast enough? Was Queenie still alive? He mustn’t stop for meals, or sleep. He must press on.

By the afternoon, Harold was aware of an occasional shooting pain along the back of his right calf, and a locking of his hip joints as he hit the downward slant of the hills. Even their upward slopes he took slowly, with his palms cupping the small of his back, not so much because he was sore as because he felt the need of a helping hand. He stopped to check the plasters on his feet, and replaced the ones on his heel where the blister had bled.

The road turned and rose and fell again. There were times when he could see the hills and fields and others when he saw nothing. He lost all sense of where he was in remembering Queenie, and imagining what her life might have become in the last twenty years. He wondered if she’d married? Had children? And yet from the letter it was clear she’d kept her maiden name.

‘I can sing “God Save The Queen” backwards,’ she told him once. And she did, while also sucking a Polo mint. ‘I can also do “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, and I have almost got “Jerusalem”.’

Harold smiled. He wondered if he had done so at the time. A herd of cows, chewing grass, looked up briefly, their mouths paused. One or two moved towards him, slowly at first but building to a trot. Their bodies looked too big for stopping. He was glad to be on the road, even though it was hard on his feet. The plastic bag with his shopping thumped against his thighs and dug white ridges into his wrists. He tried lodging it over one shoulder, but it kept careering back towards his elbow.

Maybe it was because Harold was carrying something too heavy, but he could suddenly picture his young son standing against the wood chip of the hallway, his new satchel dragging down his shoulders. He was wearing his grey uniform; it must have been the day he started primary school. Like his father, David loomed a good few inches over the other boys, giving the impression that he was older, or at least oversized. He had gazed up at Harold from his place against the wall and said, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ There were no tears. No holding on to Harold and not letting go. David spoke with a simplicity and self-knowledge that was disarming. In answer, Harold said – what? What had he said? He had looked down at his son, for whom he wanted everything, and been struck dumb.

Yes, life is terrifying, he might have said. Or, Yes, but it gets better. Or even, Yes, but it is sometimes good and sometimes bad. Better still, in the absence of words, he might have taken David in his arms. But he had not. He’d done none of those things. He felt the boy’s fear so keenly, he could see no way round it. The morning his son looked up at his father and asked for help, Harold gave nothing. He fled to his car and went to work.

Why must he remember?

He hunched his shoulders and drove his feet harder, as if he wasn’t so much walking to Queenie as away from himself.

Harold arrived at Buckfast Abbey before the gift shop closed. The square limestone profile of the church stood grey against the soft peaks behind. He realized he had come here before, many years ago, as a surprise for Maureen’s birthday. David had refused to get out of the car, and Maureen had insisted she would like to sit with him, and they had gone straight home without setting foot out of the car park.

In the monastery shop, Harold chose postcards and a souvenir pen, and briefly contemplated buying a jar of the monks’ honey but it was still a long way to Berwick-upon-Tweed and he wasn’t sure it would fit in his plastic bag, or survive the journey without the washing powder getting at it. He bought it anyway and asked for extra bubble wrap. There were no monks, only tourist parties. And there were more people queuing for the newly refurbished Grange Restaurant than the abbey. He wondered if the monks noticed, or minded.

Harold chose a large portion of chicken curry, and carried his tray to a window by the terrace, overlooking the lavender garden. He was so hungry he couldn’t scoop the food fast enough into his mouth. At the next table a couple in their late fifties seemed to be discussing something, maybe a map. They both wore khaki shorts, khaki sweatshirts, brown socks and proper hiking boots, so that sitting opposite each other at the table, they looked like male and female models of the same person. They even ate the same sandwiches and drank the same fruit drink. Harold tried but he couldn’t imagine Maureen dressing like him. He began to write his cards:

Dear Queenie, I have come approximately 20 miles. You must keep waiting. Harold (Fry)

Dear Maureen, Have reached Buckfast Abbey. Weather good. Shoes holding up, as are feet and legs. H
.

Dear Girl in the Garage (Happy To Help), Thank you. From the man who said he was off for a walk
.

‘Could I possibly borrow your pen?’ said the hiking man. Harold passed it and the man circled a point on his map several times over. His wife said nothing. Maybe she even frowned. Harold didn’t like to look too closely.

‘Are you here for the Dartmoor Trail?’ asked the man, returning the pen.

Harold said that he wasn’t. He was travelling to a friend by foot, with a very specific purpose. He shuffled his postcards into a neat pile.

‘Of course my wife and I are walkers. We come here every year. Even when she broke her leg we came back. That’s how much we love it.’

Harold replied that he and his wife also used to take the same holiday each year at a holiday camp in Eastbourne. There had been entertainment every evening, and competitions among the residents. ‘One year my son won the
Daily Mail
Twist prize,’ he said.