B006TF6WAM EBOK

by Rachel Joyce

  Harold had done the same job as a sales rep for forty-five years. Keeping himself apart, he worked modestly and efficiently, without seeking either promotion or attention. Other chaps travelled and accepted jobs in senior management, but Harold had not wanted either. He made neither friends nor enemies. At his request, there was no farewell party for his retirement. And even though one of the girls in admin had organized a quick whip-round, few of the sales team knew much about him. Someone said they’d heard once that Harold had a story, but didn’t know what it was. He finished work on a Friday, and returned home with no more to show for his lifetime’s employment than a fully illustrated Motorist’s Guide to Great Britain and a voucher for Threshers. The book had been placed in the best room, along with all the other things that no one looked at. The voucher remained in its envelope. Harold was teetotal.

  Gnawing hunger woke him with a start. The mattress had both firmed up and moved overnight, and an unfamiliar rod of light fell across the carpet. What had Maureen done with the bedroom, that its windows were on the wrong side? What had she done with the walls, that they were lightly sprigged with flowers? It was then that he remembered; he was in a hotel just north of Loddiswell. He was walking to Berwick because Queenie Hennessy must not die.

  Harold would have been the first to admit that there were elements to his plan that were not finely tuned. He had no walking boots or compass, let alone a map or change of clothes. The least planned part of the journey, however, was the journey itself. He hadn’t known he was going to walk until he started. Never mind the finely tuned elements; there was no plan. He knew the Devon roads well enough, and after that he would simply head north.

  Harold plumped his two pillows, and eased himself to a sitting position. His left shoulder was sore but otherwise he felt refreshed. He had enjoyed his best sleep in many years; there had been none of the pictures that regularly came to him in the dark. The quilt covering his body matched the floral fabric of the curtains and there was a stripped antique-pine wardrobe, below which were parked his yachting shoes. In the far corner stood a sink, beneath a mirror. His shirt, tie and trousers were folded small as an apology on a faded blue-velvet chair.

  A picture surfaced of his mother’s dresses scattered through his childhood home. He didn’t know where it had come from. He glanced at the window, trying to have a thought that would smudge the memory. He asked himself if Queenie knew he was walking. Maybe she was thinking about that even now.

  After the phone call to the hospice, he had followed the rising and turning of the B3196. Clear in his direction, he had passed fields, houses, trees, the bridge over the River Avon, and endless traffic had passed him. None of these made any real impression, except as one thing less between himself and Berwick. He had taken regular breaks to calm his breathing. Several times he had to adjust his yachting shoes and mop his head. On reaching the Loddiswell Inn he had stopped to quench his thirst, and it was there that he spoke with the satellite-dish salesman. The chap had been so bowled over when Harold confided his intentions that he clapped Harold on the back and told everyone in the bar to listen up; and when Harold offered the briefest outline (‘I’m going to head up England until I hit Berwick’), the satellite-dish chap roared, ‘Good on you, mate.’ It was with those words in mind that Harold had rushed out to telephone his wife.

  He wished she could have said the same thing.

  ‘I think not.’ Sometimes her words sliced down on his before they had even reached his mouth.

  After speaking to Maureen, his steps had grown heavier. You couldn’t blame her for what she felt about him as a husband, and yet he wished it were otherwise. He had arrived at a small hotel, with palm trees growing at a lopsided angle as if cowering from the coastal wind, and enquired about a room. He was used to sleeping alone, of course, but it was a novelty to be in a hotel; when he worked for the brewery, he had always been home by nightfall. Closing his eyes, he had slipped into unconsciousness almost as soon as he was lying down.

  Harold leaned against the soft upholstered headboard and crooked his left knee, clasping the ankle in his hands and drawing it up as far along his leg as he could, without losing balance and keeling over. He slipped on his reading glasses for a closer inspection. The toes were soft and pale. A little tender around the nails, and in the bulbous joint at the middle, and there was a possible blister on the way at the top of his heel, but considering his years and his lack of fitness, Harold was quietly proud. He performed the same slow but thorough inspection of his right foot.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said.

  A few plasters. A good breakfast. He’d be ready. He imagined the nurse telling Queenie that he was walking, and that all she had to do was keep living. He could see the features of her face as if she were sitting in front of him: her dark eyes, her neat mouth, her black hair in tight curls. The picture was so vivid he couldn’t understand why he was still in bed. He must get to Berwick. He rolled his legs to the edge of the mattress and poked his heel towards the floor.

  Cramp. The pain roared up his right calf, as if he had just stepped on an electric current. He tried to pull his leg back under the quilt but that made it even worse. What was it you were supposed to do? Point the toes away? Or flex them up? He hobbled out of bed and danced the length of the carpet, wincing and crying out. Maureen was right; he’d be lucky if he got as far as Dartmoor.

  Clinging to the windowsill, Harold Fry peered at the road below. It was already rush hour and traffic was speeding in the direction of Kingsbridge. He thought of his wife making breakfast at 13 Fossebridge Road and wondered if he shouldn’t go back. He could fetch his mobile, and pack a few things. He could look up the AA map on the internet, and order some walking essentials. Maybe the travel book he had been given for his retirement, and never looked at, would offer useful suggestions? But planning his route would involve both serious consideration and waiting, and there was no time for either of those things. Besides, Maureen would only give voice to the truth he was doing his best to avoid. The days when he might expect her help or her encouragement, or whatever it was he still wanted, were long since gone. Beyond the window, the sky was a fragile blue, almost breakable, flecked with wisps of cloud, and the treetops were bathed in warm golden light. Their branches swung in the breeze, beckoning him forward.

  If he went home now, if he even consulted a map, he knew he would never go to Berwick. He washed quickly, dressed in his shirt and tie, and then he followed the smell of bacon.

  Harold hovered outside the breakfast lounge, hoping it might be empty. He and Maureen could pass hours without saying a word, but her presence was like a wall that you expected to be there, even if you didn’t often look at it. Harold took hold of the doorknob. It shamed him that after all those years at the brewery, he was still shy about a roomful of strangers.

  He swung the door open and so many heads swivelled to shoot a look at him that he remained glued to the handle. There was a young family, dressed in holiday clothes, a pair of older ladies, both wearing grey, and a businessman with a newspaper. Of the two remaining free tables, one was in the centre of the room and the other was in the far corner, beside a potted fern on a stand. Harold gave a small cough.

  ‘Top of the morning to you,’ he said. He didn’t know why; he hadn’t a drop of Irish blood in him. It was the sort of thing his old boss, Mr Napier, might have said. He hadn’t a drop of Irish blood in him either, but he liked laughing at people.

  The hotel guests agreed that it was indeed a fine morning, and returned to their English breakfasts. Harold felt conspicuous standing up but thought it would be rude to sit when no one had invited him.

  A woman in a black skirt and top rushed through a pair of swinging saloon doors with a laminated sign above them: KITCHEN. NO ENTRY. She had auburn hair that she had somehow or other puffed up, the way women could. Maureen had never been one for blow-drying. ‘No time for beautification,’ she’d say under her breath. The woman delivered poached eggs to the two grey ladies and said,
‘Full breakfast, Mr Fry?’

  With a stab of shame, Harold remembered. This was the same woman who had shown him to his room the night before. This was the woman whom, in a fit of exhaustion and elation, he had told he was walking to Berwick. He hoped she had forgotten. He tried to say, ‘Yes, please,’ but he couldn’t even look at her now and the words came out as more of a tremble.

  She pointed to the table in the centre of the room, which was the one he had been hoping to avoid, and as he moved he realized that the odd sour smell that had been dogging him all the way down the stairs was in fact himself. He wanted to rush up to his room and scrub himself all over, but that would look rude, especially since she had asked him to sit, and he was now doing so. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Both?’ said the waitress. She gave him a patient look. Now he had three things to worry about: that even if she couldn’t smell him, or remember about the walking part, she still might think him senile.

  ‘Tea would be very kind,’ said Harold.

  To his relief the waitress nodded and disappeared through her swing doors, and the room fell briefly silent. He adjusted his tie and placed his hands in his lap. If he sat very still perhaps the whole thing might go away.

  The two grey ladies began saying something about the weather, but Harold didn’t know if they were speaking to one another or the guests in general. He didn’t want to appear rude, but neither did he want to appear to be eavesdropping, so he tried to appear busy. He studied the sign on his table, NO SMOKING, and then he read the one at the window: WOULD GUESTS KINDLY REFRAIN FROM USING MOBILE PHONES. He wondered what had happened in the past that the owners felt the need to prohibit so many things.

  The waitress reappeared with a teapot and milk. He let her pour.

  ‘At least you have a nice day for it,’ she said.

  So she did remember. He took a sip of tea but it scalded his mouth. The waitress was still hovering beside him.

  ‘Do you do this sort of thing often?’ she said.

  He was aware of a tense stillness in the room that caused her voice to amplify. He glanced briefly up at the other guests, but none of them was moving. Even the potted fern seemed to hold its breath. Harold gave a small shake of his head. He wished the waitress would move on to someone else, but nobody seemed to be doing anything except looking at Harold. As a small boy he had been so afraid of attention, he crept like a shadow. He could watch his mother applying lipstick or staring at her travel magazine without her knowing he was there.

  The waitress said, ‘If we don’t go mad once in a while, there’s no hope.’ She briefly patted his shoulder, and at last she retreated through the forbidden swing doors.

  Harold felt that he had become the focus of attention without anyone wanting to say it. Even setting down his teacup was something he could see only from outside himself, and it made a clank that startled him as it hit the saucer. Meanwhile the smell was, if anything, getting worse. He berated himself for not thinking to rinse out his socks under the tap the night before; this was what Maureen would have done.

  ‘I do hope you don’t mind my asking,’ piped up one of the old ladies, turning to catch his eye. ‘My friend and I have been wondering what it is you are going to do.’

  She was a tall, elegant woman, older than himself, and wearing a soft blouse with her white hair pinned away from her face into a pleat. He wondered if Queenie’s hair had lost its colour. Whether she had grown it like this woman, or cut it short like Maureen. ‘Is that frightfully rude?’ she said.

  Harold assured her it wasn’t, but to his horror the room was silent again.

  The second woman was altogether plumper, with a string of round pearls at her neck. ‘We have a terrible habit of listening to other people’s conversations,’ she said. She laughed.

  ‘We really shouldn’t,’ they said to the guests in general. They spoke with the same cut-glass loud accent Maureen’s mother had used. Harold found himself squinting in an effort to find the vowels.

  ‘I think a hot-air balloon,’ said one.

  ‘I think a wild swim,’ said the other.

  Everyone looked expectantly at Harold. He took a deep breath. If he heard the sound of the words coming from his mouth enough times, maybe he would feel like the sort of person who could get up and do something about them.

  ‘I am walking,’ he said. ‘I am walking to Berwick-upon-Tweed.’

  ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed ?’ said the tall lady.

  ‘That must be about five hundred miles,’ said her companion.

  Harold had no idea. He had not yet dared to work it out. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘although it’s probably more if you are hoping to avoid the M5.’ He reached for his teacup and failed to pick it up.

  The family man in the corner glanced towards the businessman and his lips buckled into a grin. Harold wished he hadn’t seen but he had; and they were right, of course. He was ridiculous. Old people should retire and sit at home.

  ‘Have you been training for long?’ said the tall lady.

  The businessman folded over his newspaper, and leaned forward, waiting for the reply. Harold wondered if he could lie, but knew in his heart he wouldn’t. He also felt that the women’s kindness was somehow making him more pitiful, so that instead of feeling certain he felt only shame.

  ‘I’m not a walker. It’s more a spur of the moment decision. A thing I must do for someone else. She has cancer.’

  The younger hotel faces stared, as if he had broken into a foreign language.

  ‘Do you mean a religious walk?’ said the plump lady helpfully. ‘A pilgrimage?’

  She turned to her friend, who quietly began to sing ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’. Her voice rose, pure and certain, while her slim face pinkened. Again, Harold wasn’t sure if it was for the benefit of the room in general or her friend; but it seemed rude to interrupt. She fell silent and smiled. Harold smiled too, but this was because he had no idea what to say next.

  ‘So she knows you’re walking?’ said the family man in the far corner. He wore a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt and his arms and chest sprouted curls of dark hair. He leaned back expansively, rocking on the back legs of his chair, the way Maureen used to reprimand David for doing. You could feel his doubt all the way across the breakfast lounge.

  ‘I left a telephone message. I also sent a letter.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘There wasn’t much time for anything else.’

  The businessman pinned Harold with his cynical expression. It was clear he also saw straight through him.

  ‘There were two young men who set out from India,’ said the plump woman. ‘It was a peace march in 1968. They went to the four nuclear corners of the world. They took tea and asked the heads of state that if ever they were on the verge of pressing the red button, they should brew a pot first and reflect.’ Her friend nodded her head brightly.

  The room seemed hot and closed in and Harold longed for air. He stroked the length of his tie, reassuring himself of his own presence, but he felt he was all the wrong shape. ‘He’s awfully tall,’ his Aunty May had said of him once, as if this was something you could rectify, like a leaking tap. Harold wished he had not talked to the hotel guests about the walk. He wished no one had mentioned religion. He didn’t object to other people believing in God, but it was like being in a place where everyone knew a set of rules and he didn’t. After all he had tried it once, and found no relief. And now the two kind ladies were talking about Buddhists and world peace and he was nothing to do with those things. He was a retired man who had set out with a letter.

  He said, ‘A long time ago my friend and I worked together. It was my job to check the pubs were running smoothly. She was in the financial department. Sometimes we visited them together, and I gave her a lift.’ His heart was pounding so fast that he felt unwell. ‘She did something for me and now she is dying. I don’t want her to die. I want her to keep living.’

  The nudity of his words to
ok him by surprise, as if it was Harold himself who was wearing no clothes. He looked down at his lap, and the room fell once more into silence. Now that he had conjured her into his mind, Harold wanted to linger with the image of Queenie, but he was too acutely aware of everyone in the room scrutinizing him and doubting what they saw, and so the memory of her slipped away, just as the real woman had done all those years ago. Briefly he remembered the empty seat at her desk, and how he had stood beside it, waiting, not believing she had gone and wouldn’t come back. He wasn’t hungry any more. He was about to step out for fresh air when the waitress swooped out of the kitchen, bearing a full fried breakfast. Harold ate all that he could but it wasn’t much. He chopped the bacon rasher and sausage into scraps and hid them in a tidy line beneath his knife and fork, like David used to; and then he retired.

  Back in his room, Harold attempted to smooth the sheets and floral quilt over the bed the way Maureen would. He wanted to clear himself away. At the sink, he dampened his hair and patted it to one side, and picked at the bits in his teeth with his forefinger. Reflected in the mirror, he could see traces of his father. It wasn’t just in the blue of his eyes but in the set of his mouth, slightly protruded, as if he were permanently storing something behind his lower lip, and in the expanse of his forehead where once there had been a fringe. He peered a little closer, trying to believe he could find his mother too but, apart from her height, she had left no trace of herself.

  Harold was an old man. Not a walker, let alone a pilgrim. Who was he hoping to fool? He had spent his adult life sitting in confined spaces. His skin stretched like a million tessellations over tendons and bones. He thought of all the miles between himself and Queenie, and Maureen’s reminder that the furthest he had ever walked was to the car. He thought too of the Hawaiian shirt laughing, and the businessman’s scepticism. They were right. He didn’t know the first thing about exercise, or Ordnance Survey maps, or even the open land. He should pay his bill and take the bus home. He closed the bedroom door without making any noise and it was like saying goodbye to something he hadn’t even started. As Harold crept downstairs to the reception, his shoes on the carpet made no noise at all.