by Rachel Joyce
The shops turned into homes, some built in pinky-grey Devon stone, some painted, others fronted with slate tiles, followed by cul-de-sacs of new housing. Magnolias were coming into flower; frilled white stars against branches so bare they looked stripped. It was already one o’clock; he had missed the midday collection. He would buy a snack to tide him over and then he would find the next post box. After waiting for a gap in the traffic, Harold crossed towards a petrol station, where the houses stopped and the fields took over.
A young girl at the till yawned. She wore a red tabard over a T-shirt and trousers, with a badge that said HAPPY TO HELP. Her hair hung in oily strips either side of her head so that her ears poked through, and her skin was pockmarked and pale, as if she had been kept inside for a long time. She didn’t know what he was talking about when he asked for light refreshments. She opened her mouth and it remained hanging ajar, so that he feared a change in the wind would leave her like that. ‘A snack?’ he said. ‘Something to keep me going?’
Her eyes flickered. ‘Oh, you mean a burger.’ She trudged to the fridge and showed him how to heat a BBQ Cheese Beast with fries in the microwave.
‘Good lord,’ said Harold, as they watched it revolve in its box behind the window. ‘I had no idea you could get a full meal from a garage.’
The girl fetched the burger from the microwave and offered sachets of ketchup and brown sauce. ‘Are you paying for fuel?’ she asked, slowly wiping her hands. They were small as a child’s.
‘No, no, I’m just passing. Walking actually.’
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘I’m posting a letter to someone I knew once. I’m afraid she has cancer.’ To his horror, he found that he paused before saying the word and lowered his voice. He also found he had made a small nugget shape with his fingers.
The girl nodded. ‘My aunt had cancer,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s everywhere.’ She cast her eyes up and down the shop shelves, suggesting it was even to be found tucked behind the AA road maps and Turtle Wax polish. ‘You have to keep positive, though.’
Harold stopped eating his burger and mopped his mouth with a paper serviette. ‘Positive?’
‘You have to believe. That’s what I think. It’s not about medicine and all that stuff. You have to believe a person can get better. There is so much in the human mind we don’t understand. But, you see, if you have faith, you can do anything.’
Harold gazed at the girl in awe. He didn’t know how it had happened, but she seemed to be standing in a pool of light, as if the sun had moved, and her hair and skin shone with luminous clarity. Maybe he was staring too hard, because she gave a shrug and chewed her lower lip. ‘Am I talking crap?’
‘Gosh, no. Not at all. It’s very interesting. I’m afraid religion is not something I ever quite got the hang of.’
‘I don’t mean, like, religious. I mean, trusting what you don’t know and going for it. Believing you can make a difference.’ She twined a strand of hair round her finger.
Harold felt he had never come across such simple certainty, and in such a young person; she made it sound obvious. ‘And she got better, did she? Your aunt? Because you believed she could?’
The strand of hair was twiddled so tightly round her finger he was now afraid it was stuck. ‘She said it gave her hope when everything else had gone—’
‘Does anyone work here?’ shouted a man in a pinstripe suit from the counter. He rapped his car keys on the hard surface, beating out wasted time.
The girl threaded her way back to the till, where the pinstripe made a show of checking his watch. He held his wrist high in the air and pointed to the dial. ‘I’m supposed to be in Exeter in thirty minutes.’
‘Fuel?’ said the girl, resuming her place, in front of cigarettes and lottery tickets. Harold tried to catch her eye but she wouldn’t. She had returned to being dull and empty again, as if their conversation about her aunt had never happened.
Harold left his money for the burger on the counter and made his way to the door. Faith? Wasn’t that the word she had used? Not one he usually heard, but it was strange. Even though he wasn’t sure what she meant by faith, or what there was left that he believed in, the word rang in his head with an insistence that bewildered him. At sixty-five he had begun to anticipate difficulties. A stiffening of the joints; a dull ringing in his ears; eyes that watered with the slightest change in the wind; a dart of chest pain that presaged something more ominous. But what was this sudden surge of feeling that made his body shake with its sheer energy? He turned in the direction of the A381, and promised again that at the next post box he would stop.
He was leaving Kingsbridge. The road narrowed into a single lane, until the pavement disappeared altogether. Above him, the branches joined like the roof of a tunnel, tangled with pointed new buds and clouds of blossom. More than once he had to crush himself into a hawthorn to avoid a passing car. There were single drivers, and he supposed they must be office workers because their faces appeared fixed as if the joy had been squeezed away, and then there were women driving children, and they looked tired too. Even the older couples like himself and Maureen had a rigidity about them. An impulse to wave came over Harold. He didn’t, though. He was wheezing with the effort of walking and he didn’t want to cause alarm.
The sea lay behind; before him stretched rolling hills and the blue outline of Dartmoor. And beyond that? The Blackdown Hills, the Mendips, the Malverns, the Pennines, the Yorkshire Dales, the Cheviots, and Berwick-upon-Tweed.
But here, directly across the road, stood a post box, and a little way beyond it a telephone booth. Harold’s journey was over.
He dragged his feet. He had seen so many he’d lost count, as well as two Royal Mail vans and a courier on a motorbike. Harold thought of all the things in life he’d let go. The small smiles. The offers of a beer. The people he had passed over and over again, in the brewery car park, or on the street, without lifting his head. The neighbours whose forwarding addresses he had never kept. Worse; the son who didn’t speak to him and the wife he had betrayed. He remembered his father in the nursing home, and his mother’s suitcase by the door. And now here was a woman who twenty years ago had proved herself a friend. Was this how it went? That just at the moment when he wanted to do something, it was too late? That all the pieces of a life must eventually be surrendered, as if in truth they amounted to nothing? The knowledge of his helplessness pressed down on him so heavily he felt weak. It wasn’t enough to send a letter. There must be a way to make a difference. Reaching for his mobile, Harold realized it was at home. He staggered into the road, his face thick with grief.
A van shrieked to a halt and then skirted past. ‘You stupid fucker!’ yelled the driver.
He barely heard. He barely saw the post box either. Queenie’s letter was in his hands before the door of the telephone kiosk had closed behind him.
He found the address and telephone number, but his fingers shook so hard he could barely tap the buttons to enter his pin code. He waited for the ringing tone, and the air hung still and heavy. A trickle of sweat slid between his shoulder blades.
After ten rings there was at last a clunk, and a heavily accented voice: ‘St Bernadine’s Hospice. Good afternoon.’
‘I’d like to speak to a patient, please. Her name is Queenie Hennessy.’
There was a pause.
He added, ‘It’s very urgent. I need to know that she’s all right.’
The woman made a sound as if she was breathing out a long sigh. Harold’s spine chilled. Queenie was dead; he was too late. He clamped his knuckle to his mouth.
The voice said, ‘I’m afraid Miss Hennessy is asleep. Can I take a message?’
Small clouds sent shadows scurrying across the land. The light was smoky over the distant hills, not with the dusk but with the map of space that lay ahead. He pictured Queenie dozing at one end of England and himself in a phone box at the other, with things in between that he didn’t know and could only imagine: roads, fields, rivers
, woods, moors, peaks and valleys, and so many people. He would meet and pass them all. There was no deliberation, no reasoning. The decision came in the same moment as the idea. He was laughing at the simplicity of it.
‘Tell her Harold Fry is on his way. All she has to do is wait. Because I am going to save her, you see. I will keep walking and she must keep living. Will you say that?’
The voice said she would. Was there anything else? Did he know visiting hours, for instance? Parking restrictions?
He insisted, ‘I’m not in a car. I want her to live.’
‘I’m sorry. Did you say something about your car?’
‘I’m coming by foot. From South Devon all the way up to Berwick-upon-Tweed.’
The voice gave an exasperated sigh. ‘It’s a terrible line. What are you doing?’
‘I’m walking,’ he shouted.
‘I see,’ said the voice slowly, as if the woman had picked up a pen and was jotting this down. ‘Walking. I’ll tell her. Should I say anything else?’
‘I’m setting off right now. As long as I walk, she must live. Please tell her this time I won’t let her down.’
When Harold hung up and stepped out of the phone box, his heart was pounding so fast it felt too big for his chest. With trembling fingers, he unpeeled the flap of his own envelope and pulled out the reply. Cramming it against the glass of the kiosk, he scribbled a PS: Wait for me. H. He posted the letter, without noticing its loss.
Harold stared at the ribbon of road that lay ahead, and the glowering wall that was Dartmoor, and then the yachting shoes that were on his feet. He asked himself what in heaven’s name he’d just done.
Overhead a seagull cracked its wings and laughed.
3
Maureen and the Telephone Call
THE USEFUL THING about a sunny day was that it showed up the dust, and dried the laundry in almost less time than the tumble drier. Maureen had squirted, bleached, polished and annihilated every living organism on the worktops. She had washed and aired the sheets, pressed them, and remade the beds for both herself and Harold. It had been a relief to have him out of the way; in the six months of his retirement he had barely moved from the house. But now that she had nothing left to achieve, she was suddenly anxious and this in turn made her impatient. She rang Harold’s mobile, only to hear a marimba tone coming from upstairs. She listened to his faltering message: ‘You have reached the mobile phone of Harold Fry. I am very sorry but – he isn’t here.’ From the long pause he took in the middle, you’d think he was actually off looking for himself.
It was past five. He never did the unexpected. Even the usual noises, the ticking of the hall clock, the hum of the fridge, were louder than they should be. Where was he?
Maureen tried to distract herself with the Telegraph crossword, only to discover he had filled in all the easy answers. A terrible thought rushed into her head. She pictured him lying in the road, with his mouth open. It happened. People had heart attacks and no one found them for days. Or maybe her secret fears were confirmed. Maybe he would end up with Alzheimer’s like his father? The man was dead before sixty. Maureen ran to fetch the car keys and her driving shoes.
And then it occurred to her that he was probably with Rex. They were probably talking about lawn cutting, and the weather. Ridiculous man. She replaced her shoes by the front door, and the car keys on their hook.
Maureen crept into the room that had become known over the years as the ‘best’ one. She could never enter it without feeling she needed a cardigan. Once they had kept a mahogany dining table, and four upholstered chairs; they had eaten in here every evening with a glass of wine. But that was twenty years ago. These days the table was gone, and the bookshelves stored albums of photographs that no one opened.
‘Where are you?’ she said. The net curtains hung between herself and the outside world, robbing it of colour and texture, and she was glad of that. The sun was already beginning to sink. Soon the street lamps would be on.
When the phone rang, Maureen shot into the hallway and plucked up the receiver. ‘Harold?’
A thick pause. ‘It’s Rex, Maureen. From next door.’
She looked about her helplessly. In her rush to answer the phone, she had stubbed her foot on something angular that Harold must have left on the floor. ‘Are you all right, Rex? Have you run out of milk again?’
‘Is Harold home?’
‘Harold?’ Maureen felt her voice shoot upwards. If he wasn’t with Rex, where was he? ‘Yes. Of course he is here.’ The tone she had adopted was not at all her usual one. She sounded both regal and squashed. Just like her mother.
‘Only I was worried something had happened. I didn’t see him come back from his walk. He was going to post a letter.’
Devastating images were already firing through her mind of ambulances and policemen, and herself holding Harold’s inert hand, and she didn’t know if she was being completely foolish, but it was as if her head was rehearsing the worst possible outcome in order to pre-empt the full shock of it. She repeated that Harold was at home, and then before he could ask anything else she hung up. She immediately felt terrible. Rex was seventy-four and lonely. All he wanted was to help. She was about to call back, when he beat her to it and the phone began ringing in her hand. Maureen reassembled her composed voice and said, ‘Good evening, Rex.’
‘It’s me.’
Her composed voice rocketed sky high. ‘Harold? Where are you?’
‘I’m on the B3196. Just outside the pub at Loddiswell.’ He actually sounded pleased.
Between the front door and Loddiswell there were almost five miles. So he hadn’t had a heart attack and fallen into the road. He hadn’t forgotten who he was. She felt more indignant than relieved. Then a new terrible thought dawned on her. ‘You haven’t been drinking?’
‘I’ve had a lemonade but I feel brilliant. Better than I’ve felt in years. I met a nice chap who sells satellite dishes.’ He paused as if he was about to deliver portentous news. ‘I’ve made a promise to walk, Maureen. All the way to Berwick.’
She thought she must have misheard. ‘Walk? To Berwick-upon-Tweed? You?’
He appeared to find this very funny. ‘Yes! Yes!’ he spluttered.
Maureen swallowed. She felt her legs and her voice failing her. She said, ‘Let me get this clear. You’re walking to see Queenie Hennessy?’
‘I am going to walk and she’s going to live. I’m going to save her.’
Her knees buckled. She threw her hand out to the wall to steady herself. ‘I think not. You can’t save people from cancer, Harold. Not unless you are a surgeon. And you can’t even slice bread without making a mess. This is ridiculous.’
Again Harold laughed, as if this person they were talking about was a stranger and not himself. ‘I was talking to a girl at the garage and she gave me the idea. She saved her aunt from cancer because she believed she could. She showed me how to heat a burger as well. It even had gherkins.’
He came across as so sure. It completely threw her. Maureen felt a spark of heat. ‘Harold, you are sixty-five. You only ever walk to get to the car. And in case you haven’t noticed, you left your mobile phone.’ He tried to reply, but she sailed straight through him. ‘And where do you think you are going to sleep?’
‘I don’t know.’ The laughter had stopped and his voice sounded stripped away. ‘But it isn’t enough to post a letter. Please. I need to do this, Maureen.’
The way he appealed to her, and added her name at the end, childlike, as if the choice was hers, when clearly he had already decided, was too much. The spark of heat ignited to a bolt. She said, ‘Well, you head off to Berwick, Harold. If that’s what you want. I’d like to see you get past Dartmoor—’ The line was staccato’d with pips. She tightened her grip on the handset, as if it was a piece of him she was clinging to. ‘Harold? Are you still in the pub?’
‘No, a phone box outside. It’s quite smelly. I think someone may have—’ His voice cut off. He was gone.
Maureen groped her body into the hall chair. The silence was louder than if he had not phoned at all. It seemed to eat up everything else. There was no ticking from the hall clock, no humming from the fridge, no birdsong from the garden. The words Harold, Burger, Walk, rolled around her head, and in the midst of them came two more: Queenie Hennessy. After all these years. The memory of something long buried shivered deep inside her.
Maureen sat alone as the dark fell, while neon lights came on across the hills and bled pools of amber into the night.
4
Harold and the Hotel Guests
HAROLD FRY WAS A tall man who moved through life with a stoop, as if expecting a low beam, or a screwed-up paper missile, to appear out of nowhere. The day he was born his mother had looked at the bundle in her arms, and felt appalled. She was young, with a peony-bud mouth and a husband who had seemed a good idea before the war and a bad one after it. A child was the last thing she wanted or needed. The boy learned quickly that the best way to get along in life was to keep a low profile; to appear absent even when present. He played with neighbours’ children, or at least he watched them from the edges. At school he avoided attention to the point of appearing stupid. Leaving home when he was sixteen, he had set out on his own, until one night he caught Maureen’s eye across a dance hall and fell wildly in love. It was the brewery that had brought the newly wed couple to Kingsbridge.