by Rachel Joyce
He spoke slowly, as if he were trying to remember the right words. ‘Your husband thinks he is going to save his former colleague?’
‘Yes.’
‘From cancer?’
‘Yes.’ She was beginning to feel impatient. She didn’t want to have to explain; she wanted him instinctively to understand. She was not here to defend Harold.
‘How does he think he will save her?’
‘He seems to believe the walking will do it.’
He scowled, creating further deep lines towards his jaw. ‘He thinks a walk will cure cancer?’
‘A girl gave him the idea,’ she said. ‘A girl in a garage. She made him a burger as well. Harold never eats burgers at home.’
‘A girl told him he could cure cancer?’ If this appointment continued for much longer, the poor boy’s face would be all over the place.
Maureen shook her head, trying to restore order. She was suddenly very tired. ‘I am worried about Harold’s health,’ she said.
‘Is he fit and well?’
‘He is slightly long-sighted without his reading glasses. He has two crowns either side of his front teeth. But it’s not that which worries me.’
‘Yet he believes he can cure her by walking? I don’t understand. Is he a religious man?’
‘Harold? The only time he calls on God is when the throttle goes on the lawn mower.’ She gave a smile, to help the locum realize she was being funny. The locum looked confused. ‘Harold retired six months ago. Since then he has been very—’ She broke off, hunting for the word. The locum shook his head, indicating he didn’t have it. ‘Still,’ she said.
‘Still?’ he repeated.
‘He spends every day in the same chair.’
At this the locum’s eyes lit up and he gave a nod of relief. ‘Ah. Depressed.’ He lifted his pen and snapped off the lid.
‘I wouldn’t say he was depressed.’ She felt her heart quickening. ‘The thing is, Harold has Alzheimer’s.’ There. She had said it.
The locum’s lips parted, and his jaw gave a disconcerting clunk. He returned the pen to his desk without reapplying the lid.
‘He has Alzheimer’s, and he’s walking to Berwick?’
‘Yes.’
‘What medication is your husband on, Mrs Fry?’ The silence was so solemn she shivered.
‘I say Alzheimer’s,’ she said slowly, ‘but it’s not diagnosed as yet.’
The locum relaxed again. He almost laughed. ‘Do you mean that he is forgetful? That he has senior moments? Just because we forget our mobile phone doesn’t mean we all have Alzheimer’s.’
Maureen gave a tight nod. She couldn’t decide which irritated her most; the way he batted the term senior moments in her direction or the patronizing smile he was now showing her. ‘It’s in his family,’ she said. ‘I recognize the signs.’
From here, she gave a brief account of Harold’s history; how his father had returned from the war an alcoholic, prone to depression. How his parents had not wanted a child, and his mother had packed her suitcase, never to return. She explained that his father had taken up with a succession of women until he showed Harold the door on his sixteenth birthday. After that, the two men had remained estranged for many years. ‘Then, out of the blue, a woman rang my husband and said she was his stepmother. You’d better fetch your father, she said; he’s mad as a hatter.’
‘This was the Alzheimer’s?’
‘I found him a nursing home but he was dead before he was sixty. We visited several times but his father shouted a lot, and threw things. He had no idea who Harold was. And now my husband is going the same way. It isn’t just forgetting things. There are other symptoms.’
‘Does he substitute words with inappropriate ones? Forget entire conversations? Does he leave things in strange places? Suffer rapid mood swings?’
‘Yes, yes.’ She gave an impatient flick of her hand.
‘I see,’ said the locum, chewing his lip.
Maureen smelt victory. She watched him carefully as she said, ‘What I want to know is – if you, as a doctor, thought Harold was putting himself in danger by walking, could he be stopped?’
‘Stopped?’
‘Yes.’ Her throat felt stripped. ‘Could he be forced to return home?’ The blood beat so hard through her head it hurt. ‘He can’t walk five hundred miles. He can’t save Queenie Hennessy. He must be made to come back.’
Maureen’s words rang through the silence. She placed her hands on her knees, palm against palm, and then she tidied her two feet one beside the other. She had said what she had set out to say, but she wasn’t feeling what she had set out to feel, and needed to impose physical order on an uncomfortable emotion that was swelling inside her.
The locum grew still. From outside she heard a child crying, and wished to goodness someone would pick it up. He said, ‘It sounds as if we have a strong case for getting the police involved. Has your husband ever been sectioned?’
Maureen rushed from the doctor’s surgery, sick with shame. In explaining both Harold’s past and his walk, she had been forced to see things for the first time from his point of view. The idea was insane and completely out of character, but it wasn’t Alzheimer’s. There was even a beauty in it, if only because Harold was doing something he believed in for once, and against all the odds. She had told the locum she needed time to think, and that she was worrying over nothing; Harold was just a little senior. He would be home soon. He might even be there already. She had ended up with a prescription for low-dosage sleeping tablets for herself.
As she walked towards the quay, the truth came as bright as a light snapping on through the dark. The reason she had stayed with Harold all these years was not David. It wasn’t even because she felt sorry for her husband. She had stayed because, however lonely she was with Harold, the world without him would be even more desolate.
Maureen bought a single pork chop and a yellowing bunch of broccoli at the supermarket.
‘Is that all?’ said the girl at the check-out.
Maureen couldn’t speak.
She turned into Fossebridge Road and thought of the silence of the house that lay waiting for her. The unpaid household bills, in their neat but no less intimidating pile. Her body grew heavy, her feet slow.
Rex was trimming the hedge with clippers as she reached the garden gate.
‘How’s the patient?’ he said. ‘Getting better?’
She nodded her head and went inside.
12
Harold and the Cycling Mothers
STRANGELY, IT WAS Mr Napier who had teamed Harold and Queenie together all those years ago. He had summoned Harold to his wood-panelled office and told him he required Queenie to check the pubs’ account books on site. He didn’t trust the landlords, and wanted to take them unawares. Since the lady didn’t drive, however, someone was required to take her. He had thought carefully about the matter, he said, tugging on a cigarette; as one of the more senior reps, and also one of the few married ones, Harold was the obvious candidate. Mr Napier stood with his legs wide, as if by claiming more floor space he became bigger than everyone else, although actually he was a wily figure in a shiny suit, who barely reached Harold’s shoulder.
Harold had no choice, of course, but to agree. Privately he was anxious. He had not spoken to Queenie since the embarrassing episode in the cupboard. And besides, he had seen his time in the car as his own. He didn’t know if she would like Radio 2, for instance. He hoped she wouldn’t want to talk. It was bad enough with the chaps. He was uncomfortable with female things.
‘Glad that’s sorted,’ said Mr Napier. He held out his hand. It was disconcertingly slight and moist, like taking hold of a small reptile. ‘How’s the wife?’
Harold faltered. ‘She’s well. How’s—?’ He felt a cold panic. Mr Napier was on his third wife in six years; a young woman with high blonde hair, who had worked briefly as a barmaid. He didn’t take it kindly when people forgot her name.
‘Veronica is splendid.
I hear your boy got into Cambridge.’
Mr Napier broke into a grin. His chain of thought shifted on a sixpence; Harold never knew what was coming next. ‘All brain and no dick,’ he said, spitting out a shot of smoke from the side of his mouth. He stood, watching and laughing, waiting for his employee to come back at him, and knowing that he wouldn’t.
Harold lowered his head. On the desk stood Mr Napier’s prized collection of Murano glass clowns, some with blue faces, some lounging on their backs, others playing instruments.
‘Don’t touch,’ said Napier, and his forefinger shot out like a gun. ‘They were my mother’s.’
Everyone knew they were his prize possessions, but to Harold the figures looked misshapen and lurid, as if their limbs and faces had contorted like slime in the sun, and the colours congealed. He couldn’t help feeling they were mocking him, even these glass clowns, and felt a wave of anger lick deep in his belly. Mr Napier twisted his cigarette in the ashtray, and moved to the door.
As Harold passed, he added, ‘And keep an eye on Hennessy, will you? You know what those bitches are like.’ He tapped his nose with that forefinger, as if it was now the pointer to a shared secret, and not a gun, except of course Harold had no idea what he was talking about.
He wondered if, despite her aptitude, Mr Napier was already trying to get rid of her. His boss never trusted the people who were better than himself.
The first drive came a few days later. Queenie appeared at his car, gripping her square handbag, as if she was off on a shopping trip instead of an inspection of a pub’s account books. Harold knew the landlord of the pub; he was a slippery chap at the best of times. He couldn’t help feeling afraid for her.
‘I hear you’re driving me, Mr Fry,’ she said, slightly imperious.
They travelled in silence. She sat beside him, very neat, her hands tucked in a tight ball in her lap. Harold had never felt so conscious of how he took the corners, or pressed his foot into the clutch, or pulled at the handbrake when they arrived. He leapt out to open the passenger door, and waited as her leg slowly emerged and groped for the pavement. Maureen’s ankles were so slim they made him weak with desire. Queenie’s on the other hand were thick. Rather like himself, he had felt, she lacked physical definition.
When he glanced up he was mortified to find her staring straight back at him. ‘Thank you, Mr Fry,’ she said at last, clipping away, with the handbag wedged on her arm.
It therefore came as a surprise, when he was checking the beer levels, to find the landlord beetroot-faced and dripping sweat.
‘Fuck me,’ he said, ‘that little woman’s a demon. You can’t get a thing past her.’
Harold felt a small rush of admiration, touched with pride.
On the journey back, she was silent and still again. He even wondered if she was asleep, but it seemed rude to look, in case she wasn’t. He pulled into the yard at the brewery and she said suddenly, ‘Thank you.’
He muttered something awkward about it being a pleasure.
‘I mean, thank you for a few weeks ago,’ she said. ‘The time in the stationery cupboard.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Harold, meaning exactly that.
‘I was very upset. You were kind to me. I should have said thank you before but I was embarrassed. That was wrong.’
He couldn’t meet her eye. He knew, without looking at her, that she was biting her lip.
‘I was glad to help.’ He reapplied the poppers on his driving gloves.
‘You’re a gentleman,’ she said, spreading the word into two halves so that for the first time he saw it for what it meant: a gentle man. With that, she opened her door before he could do it for her, and stepped out of his car. He watched her pick her way across the yard, steady and neat, in her brown suit, and it broke his heart. The honest plainness of her. He had got into bed that night and silently promised that whatever Mr Napier had meant by his obscure remark, Harold would be true to it. He would look out for Queenie.
Maureen’s voice had sailed through the dark. ‘I hope you’re not going to snore.’
On the twelfth day, an endless bed of grey moved over the sky and land, bringing sheets of rain that smudged the colour and contours out of everything. Harold stared ahead, straining to find a sense of direction, or the break in the cloud that had so delighted him, but it was like looking at the world through net curtains again. Everything was the same. He stopped referring to his guidebooks because the gap between their sense of knowing and his own of not knowing was too unbearable. He felt he was fighting his body, and failing.
His clothes no longer dried. The leather of his shoes was so bloated with water, they lost their shape. Whitnage. Westleigh. Whiteball. So many places beginning with W. Trees. Hedgerows. Telegraph poles. Houses. Recycling bins. He left his razor and shaving foam in the shared bathroom of a guesthouse, and lacked the energy to replace them. Inspecting his feet, he was alarmed to discover that the burning in his calf had taken physical shape, and was a violent stain of crimson beneath the surface of the skin. For the first time, he was very frightened.
In Sampford Arundel, Harold phoned Maureen. He needed to hear her voice, and he wanted her to remind him why he was walking, even if she did it in anger. He didn’t want her to suspect the doubt he was suffering, or the difficulty with his leg, so he asked how she was, and also the house; and she told him they were both well. She in turn asked if he was still walking, and he said that he had passed Exeter and Tiverton and was on his way to Bath, via Taunton. Was there anything he wanted sending on? His mobile, his toothbrush, his pyjamas or spare clothes? There was a kindness in her voice, but he was surely imagining it.
‘I’m all right,’ he said.
‘So you must almost be in Somerset?’
‘I’m not sure. I suppose I must.’
‘How many miles today?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe seven.’
‘Well, well,’ she said.
The rain beat the roof of the phone box, and the dim light beyond the windows was like something fluid. He wanted to stay, talking to Maureen, but the silence and the distance, which they had nursed for twenty years, had grown to such a point that even clichés were empty and they hurt.
At last she said, ‘Well, I must get going, Harold. Lots to do.’
‘Yes. Me too. I just wanted to say hello and everything. Check you were all right.’
‘Oh, I’m very well. Very busy. The days whizz by. I hardly notice you’ve gone. And you?’
‘I’m very well too.’
‘That’s all right then.’
‘Yes.’
Eventually there was nothing left. He only said, ‘Well, goodbye Maureen,’ because it was a sentence. He didn’t want to hang up any more than he wanted to walk.
He looked out at the rain, waiting for it to break, and saw a crow with its head bowed, its feathers so wet they shone like tar. He wished the bird would move, but it sat sodden and alone. Maureen was so busy she had hardly noticed Harold had gone.
On Sunday it was almost lunchtime when he woke. The pain in his leg was no better, and the rain was still falling. He could hear the world outside, going about its business; the traffic, the people, all rushing to other things. No one knew who or where he was. He lay not moving, not wanting to face another day’s walking, and yet knowing he couldn’t go home. He remembered how Maureen used to lie at his side, and he pictured her nakedness; how perfect it was, and how small. He yearned for the softness of her fingers as they crept their passage over his skin.
When Harold reached for his yachting shoes, they were paper thin at the soles. He didn’t shower or shave or inspect his feet, although putting them into his shoes felt like cramming them into cases. He dressed without thinking of anything because thinking would only lead to the obvious. The landlady insisted he could have a late breakfast, but he declined. If he accepted her kindness, if he so much as caught her eye, he was afraid he would cry.
Harold kept going from Sampford Arundel but
hated every step. He screwed his face against the pain. It didn’t matter what people thought; he was outside them anyway. He wouldn’t stop, though his body cried out for rest. He was angry with himself for being so frail. The rain drove at him in slants. His shoes were so spent, he might as well not be wearing them. He missed Maureen and could think of nothing else.
How was it that things had gone so wrong? They had been happy once. If David had caused a rift between them as he grew, it had been a complicit one. ‘Where’s David?’ Maureen might ask, and Harold would simply reply that he had heard the front door shutting as he cleaned his teeth. ‘Ah yes,’ she would say, to show it wasn’t a problem that their eighteen-year-old son had taken to wandering the streets at night. To voice Harold’s private fears would only compound hers. And the fact was she still cooked in those days. She still shared Harold’s bed.
But such unspoken tensions could not hide themselves for ever. It was just before Queenie’s disappearance that things had finally ripped open and splintered apart. Maureen had railed. She had sobbed. She had beat his chest with her fists. ‘Call yourself a man?’ she had howled. And another time: ‘It’s your fault. All this. It would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for you.’
It had been unbearable to hear those things, and even though she had wept in his arms afterwards, and apologized, they were in the air when he was alone, and there was no unsaying them. It all came from Harold.
And then it had stopped. The talking, the shouting, the catching his eye. This new silence was different from before. Whereas once they had wished to spare one another pain, now there was nothing left to salvage. She didn’t even have to give voice to the words in her head. He knew simply by looking at her that there was not a word, not a gesture, he could say or do to make amends. She no longer blamed Harold. She no longer cried in front of him; she wouldn’t allow him the comfort of holding her. She moved her clothes into the spare room and he lay in their marital bed, not going to her because she didn’t want him, but tortured by her sobs. Morning would come. They would use the bathroom at different times. He would dress and eat breakfast while she paced from room to room, as if he was not there, as if never keeping still was the only way to contain a person’s feelings. ‘I’m off.’ ‘OK then.’ ‘See you later.’ ‘Yes. OK.’