by Rachel Joyce
‘That doesn’t mean we talk,’ she said. ‘They’d only been here six months when his wife died. Besides, I don’t need to talk to other people. I have you, love.’
David said that while of course this was true, it might do Rex some good if Maureen came clean. She couldn’t keep hiding the truth for ever. She was about to say she missed him, when he told her she should do it right away.
‘Will I see you soon?’ she said. He promised she would.
Maureen found Rex in his garden, where he was trimming the borders of the grass with a blade in the shape of a half-moon. She stood at the fence that divided their gardens, slightly lopsided because of the slope, and asked in an airy way how he was getting along.
‘Keeping busy. That’s the best you can hope for. How’s Harold?’
‘He’s good.’ Her legs were trembling. Even her fingers felt light. She drew a new breath, like starting a fresh paragraph. ‘The fact is, Rex, Harold isn’t at home. I’ve been lying. I’m sorry.’ She smothered her lips with her fingertips, forbidding further words. She couldn’t look.
In the beating silence, she heard the lawn edger being laid on the grass. She felt Rex’s presence as he drew close. There was a smell of mint toothpaste as he said softly, ‘Did you think I didn’t realize something was up?’
Rex held out his hand and placed it on her shoulder. It was the first time anyone had touched her in a very long time, and the relief was so intense that grief came shuddering up through her body, and tears slanted her cheeks. She had thrown away everything.
‘Why don’t you come over, and I’ll put the kettle on?’ he said.
Maureen had not stepped inside Rex’s house since Elizabeth’s funeral. In the intervening months, she had imagined there would be a felting of dust and a general level of mess, because these were not things men noticed; especially when mourning. But to her astonishment the surfaces shone. Potted cacti stood at intervals along the windowsill, so regular it was as if he had measured them with a ruler. There was no pile of unopened letters. No muddy steps on the mushroom carpet. It even looked as if Rex had bought himself a length of plastic protector and laid it down as a path from the front door, because she was certain it wasn’t there when Elizabeth was alive. Maureen checked her face in the circular mirror, and blew her nose. She looked pale and tired, and her nose glowed like a warning light. She wondered what her son would say about her weeping in front of a neighbour. She tried so hard not to cry when she talked to David.
Rex called out from the kitchen that she should wait in the sitting room.
‘Are you sure I can’t do anything to help?’ she said, but he insisted again that she should make herself comfortable.
The sitting room, like the hall, was so quiet and undisturbed Maureen felt her presence was an intrusion. She made her way to the mantelpiece and glanced at the framed photographs of Elizabeth. She had been a tall woman with a bovine jaw, a gravelly laugh and the distracted look of a guest at a cocktail party. Maureen had never said this to anyone except David, but she had always felt a little overpowered by Elizabeth. She wasn’t even sure she liked her.
There was a rattling of cups and the door nudged open. She turned and found Rex at the doorway with a tray. He poured the tea without spilling and had even remembered a jug of milk.
Once she started, it surprised Maureen how much she had to say about Harold’s walk. She told Rex about Queenie’s letter, and his sudden decision to leave. She told him about the visit to the locum, and her shame. ‘I’m frightened he won’t come back,’ she said at last.
‘Of course he’ll come back.’ Rex’s voice, slightly milky at the consonants, came with such simplicity she was immediately reassured. Of course Harold would come back. She felt a sudden lightness and wanted to laugh.
Rex passed her a cup. It was delicate china, set on a saucer that matched. She pictured Harold making coffee, the mug full to the brim so that you couldn’t lift it without spilling it first and scalding your hand. Even that seemed funny.
She said, ‘At first I thought it might be a mid-life crisis. Only, being Harold, he’s doing it rather late.’ Rex laughed; a little politely, she felt, but at least the ice was broken. He offered her a plate of party cream biscuits and a napkin. She took a biscuit. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.
‘Are you sure Harold can do this walk?’ he said.
‘He’s never done anything like it in his life. Last night he stayed in the house of a young Slovakian lady. He didn’t even know her.’
‘Good heavens.’ Rex cupped his hand under his chin to catch the crumbs from a pink wafer. ‘I hope he’s all right.’
‘I’d say he seems very full of it.’
They smiled and fell into a silence that seemed to set them apart so that they gave another smile, politer this time.
‘Maybe we should go after him,’ said Rex, ‘to check he’s all right. I’ve got petrol in the Rover. I could make sandwiches and we might head straight off.’
‘Maybe.’ Maureen bit her lip, thinking this through. She missed Harold almost as much as she missed David. She wanted to see him very much. But when she imagined the next part, where she caught up with her husband, she floundered. How would she feel, if he didn’t want her after all? If he really was leaving for good? She shook her head. ‘The truth is, we don’t talk. Not any more. Not properly. The morning he left, I was nagging him about white bread and the jam, Rex. The jam. It’s no wonder he walked off.’ She was sad again. She thought of their cold beds, in separate rooms, and the words they shared, which skimmed the surface and meant nothing. ‘It hasn’t been a marriage for twenty years.’
In the silence, Rex lifted his cup to his mouth, and Maureen did the same. And then he said, ‘Did you like Queenie Hennessy?’
It wasn’t the question she was expecting. She had to swallow her tea very quickly, and it washed a rogue crumb of ginger nut with it, causing her to cough. ‘I only met her once. But that was a long time ago.’ She patted her chest, easing the passage of the biscuit. ‘Queenie disappeared very suddenly. That’s all I remember. Harold went to work one day and when he came back he said there was someone new in accounts. A man, I think.’
‘Why did Queenie disappear?’
‘I don’t know. There were rumours. But it was a difficult time for me and Harold. He never said, and I never asked. It’s who we are, Rex. Everybody these days is spilling the beans about their darkest secrets. I look at those celebrity magazines at the doctor’s and my head reels. But that’s not how it was for us. We said a lot of things once. Things we shouldn’t have said. When it came to Queenie disappearing, I didn’t want to know.’
She hesitated, afraid she had confessed too much and unsure how best to continue. ‘I heard she had done something she shouldn’t have done at the brewery. Their boss was a deeply unpleasant man. He wasn’t one to forgive and forget. It was probably best all round that she disappeared.’ Maureen saw Queenie Hennessy as she had done all those years ago, on the doorstep of Fossebridge Road, her eyes swollen, and holding out a bunch of flowers. Rex’s sitting room seemed suddenly very cold, and she hugged her arms around her waist.
‘I don’t know about you,’ he said at last, ‘but I could do with a small sherry.’
Rex drove Maureen to the Start Bay Inn at Slapton Sands. She could feel the passage of the alcohol, cold at first and then almost burning, as it slipped down her throat and loosened her muscles. She told Rex it was strange to set foot in a pub again; since Harold had become teetotal, she rarely drank. They agreed that neither of them was in the mood for cooking, and ordered an early bar meal with a glass of wine. They made a toast to Harold’s journey and she felt a lightness in her stomach that reminded her of being a young woman, and in love for the first time.
Since it was still light, they walked along the spit of land between the sea and the ley. After the two drinks, she felt warm inside, and slightly indistinct at the edges. A pack of gulls flew with the wind. You could find warblers here, he told her, and grea
t crested grebes. ‘Elizabeth was never very interested in wildlife. She said it all looked the same.’ Sometimes Maureen listened and sometimes she didn’t. She was thinking of Harold, and replaying in her mind the scene where they had met forty-seven years ago. Strange how she had mislaid the details of that night for so long.
She had noticed Harold straight away. She couldn’t miss him. Jiving by himself in the middle of the dance floor, the flaps of his coat flying out like great dog-tooth-check wings. It was as if he were dancing something out that was locked inside himself. She’d never seen anything like it; the young men her mother introduced were all stiff partings and black tie. Maybe he had sensed her watching, even across that dark, throbbing hall, because he had stopped suddenly and caught her eye. He had danced some more, and she had continued watching. She was transfixed. It was the raw energy of him that moved her; the completeness of what he was. He had stopped again. Caught her eye again. Then he had threaded his way through the crowd, and halted so close she could smell the heat of his skin.
Now she had the moment in her mind, she saw it vividly: the way he stooped with his mouth towards her ear, and parted a small lock of her hair so that he could speak into it. The boldness of the gesture had sent prickles of electricity shooting the length of her neck. Even now she felt a distant fluttering under her skin. What was it he had said next? It was very funny, whatever it was, and they had laughed so much it brought on an embarrassing bout of hiccups. She remembered how the coat had swung as he strode to the bar to fetch a glass of water, and how she had not moved, waiting for him. In those days, it was as if the world only put its lights on when Harold was near. Who were those two young people who had danced and laughed so completely?
She grew aware that Rex had stopped speaking. He was watching her.
‘Penny for your thoughts, Maureen.’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘It’s nothing.’
They stood side by side, and looked out over the water. The sinking sun laid a red path from the horizon towards the shore. She wondered where Harold was sleeping, and wished she could say goodnight. Maureen stretched back her neck towards the sky, searching the dusk for the first sprinkle of stars.
15
Harold and the New Beginning
THE END OF the rain brought a period of wild new growth. Trees and flowers seemed to explode with colour and scent. The trembling branches of the horse chestnut balanced new candle spires of blossom. Umbrellas of white cow parsley grew thick at the roadside. Rambling roses shot up garden walls, and the first of the deep-red peonies opened like tissue-paper creations. The apple trees began to shake off their blossom, and bore beads of fruit; bluebells spread thick like water through the woodlands. The dandelions were already fluffheads of seed.
For five days, Harold walked without faltering, passing through Othery, the Polden Hills, Street, Glastonbury, Wells, Radstock, Peasedown St John, and arriving at Bath on a Monday morning. He averaged just over eight miles a day, and on Martina’s advice he stocked up on sunblock, cotton wool, nail clippers, plasters, fresh bandages, antiseptic cream, Moleskin blister protection and a slab of Kendal Mint Cake for emergencies. He replenished his supplies of toiletries, as well as washing powder, and packed them neatly in her partner’s rucksack, along with the roll of duct tape. Passing his reflection in shop windows, the man staring back at him was so upright and appeared so sure-footed, he had to look twice to check it was really himself. The compass pointed a steady north.
Harold believed his journey was truly beginning. He had thought it started the moment he decided to walk to Berwick, but he saw now that he had been naive. Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He had faced his shortcomings and overcome them, and so the real business of walking was happening only now.
Every morning the sun crept over the horizon, peaked and set every evening, as one day made way for another. He spent long moments watching the sky, and the way the land changed beneath it. Hilltops became gold against the sunrise, and windows reflecting its light were so orange you could think there was a fire blazing. The evening shadows lay long beneath the trees, like a separate forest that was made of darkness. He walked against an early-morning mist and smiled at the pylons poking their heads through the milk-white smoke. The hills softened and flattened, and opened before him, green and gentle. He passed through the flat stretches of the Somerset wetlands, where waterways flashed like silver needles. Glastonbury Tor sat on the horizon, and beyond that the Mendip Hills.
Gradually, Harold’s leg improved. The bruising turned from purple to green to a gentler shade of yellow, and he was no longer afraid. If anything, he was more sure. The stretch between Tiverton and Taunton had been full of anger and pain. He had wanted more than he could physically give, and so his walk had become a battle against himself, and he had failed. Now he followed a set of gentle stretching exercises each morning and evening, and rested every two hours. He treated the blisters before they became infected and carried fresh water. Taking out his wild-plant book again, he identified hedgerow flowers, and their uses; which bore fruit, culinary, poisonous or otherwise, and which had leaves with medicinal powers. Wild garlic filled the air with its sweet pungency. Once more, it surprised him how much was at his feet, if only he had known to look.
He continued to send postcards to Maureen and Queenie, informing them of his progress, and once in a while he also wrote to the garage girl. On the advice of his guide to Britain, Harold noted the shoe museum in Street and took a look at the shop in Clarks Village, although he still believed it would be wrong to give up on his yachting shoes, having come so far. In Wells, he bought Queenie a rose quartz to hang at her window, and a pencil for Maureen that had been carved from a twig. Urged by several pleasant members of the WI to purchase a Madeira cake, he chose instead a hand-knitted beret in a Queenie shade of brown. He visited the cathedral, and sat in its chilled light, pouring like water from above. He reminded himself that centuries ago men had built churches, bridges and ships; all of them a leap of madness and faith, if you thought about it. When no one was looking, Harold slipped to his knees and asked for the safety of the people he had left behind, and those who were ahead. He asked for the will to keep going. He also apologized for not believing.
Harold passed office workers, dog walkers, shoppers, children going to school, mothers and buggies, and hikers like himself, as well as several tourist parties. He met a tax inspector who was a Druid and had not worn a pair of shoes for ten years. He talked with a young woman on the trail of her real father, with a priest who confessed to tweeting during mass, as well as several people in training for a marathon, and an Italian man with a singing parrot. He spent an afternoon with a white witch from Glastonbury, and a homeless man who had drunk away his house, as well as four bikers looking for the M5, and a mother of six who confided she had no idea life could be so solitary. Harold walked with these strangers and listened. He judged no one, although as the days wore on, and time and places began to melt, he couldn’t remember if the tax inspector wore no shoes or had a parrot on his shoulder. It no longer mattered. He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too. The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had done so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.
He walked so surely it was as if all his life he had been waiting to get up from his chair.
Maureen told him on the phone that she had moved out of the spare room and returned to the main bedroom. He had spent so many years sleeping alone, he was surprised at first, and then he was glad because it was the larger and more pleasant of the two and, being at the front of the house, enjoyed the wide
view over Kingsbridge. But he assumed this also meant she had packed his things and carried them to the spare room.
He thought of the many times he had looked at the closed door, knowing she had exiled herself completely beyond his reach. Some times he had touched the handle, as if it were a sentient piece of her.
Maureen’s voice crept under the silence: ‘I’ve been thinking of when we first met.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It was at a dance in Woolwich. You touched my neck. Then you said something funny. We laughed and laughed.’
He frowned with the effort of trying to picture it. He recalled a dance, but all he could see beyond that was how beautiful she had been, and how delicate. He remembered dancing like an idiot, and he remembered too her dark, long hair falling like velvet either side of her face. But it seemed unlikely he had been bold enough to walk across a crowded room and claim her. It seemed unlikely he had made her laugh and laugh. He wondered if she was mistaking him for someone else.
She said, ‘Well, I must let you get on. I know how busy you are.’
She was using the voice that she used for the doctor, when she wanted to show she wasn’t going to be an inconvenience. And then she said, ‘I wish I could think of what you said to me at the dance. It really was so funny.’ She hung up.
For the rest of the day, his mind was full of remembering Maureen, and how it was in the beginning. He thought of the trips to the pictures, and Lyons Corner House, and how he had never seen anyone eat so discreetly, shredding her food into the smallest of scraps before lifting it to her mouth. Even in those days he had begun saving for their future. He had taken an early-morning job on the rubbish trucks, followed by a part-time afternoon job as a bus conductor. Twice a week he did an all-night shift at the hospital, and on Saturdays he worked at the library. Sometimes he was so exhausted he crawled under the bookshelves and fell asleep.
Maureen had taken to getting the bus from outside her house and staying for the full trip to the terminus. He would issue tickets and ring the bell for the driver, but all he was seeing was Maureen, in her blue coat, with her skin like porcelain and those vivid green eyes. She took to walking with him to the hospital so that he’d be scrubbing down the floors and all he could think of was where she was; what she was seeing as she hurried away. She took to nipping into the library and thumbing through cookery books, and he watched her from the main desk, his head reeling with desire and the need to sleep.