by Rachel Joyce
‘It’s nice to—’
‘Lovely to—’
They gave a laugh as if they didn’t know one another terribly well.
‘No, no—’ he said.
‘After you,’ she said.
It was like another collision, and they each retreated back to their drinks. She added milk to her cup but her hand shook again and the whole lot sloshed out in a rush. ‘Do people often recognize you, Harold?’ She sounded like a woman interviewing him for the television.
‘What gets me, Maureen, is how nice everyone is.’
‘Where did you sleep last night?’
‘In a field.’
She shook her head in awe but he must have misunderstood because he said in a rush, ‘I don’t smell, do I?’
‘No, no,’ she rushed back.
‘I washed in a stream, and then again by a drinking fountain. Only I don’t have soap.’ He had already finished his Mars Bar cake and was slicing open the complimentary scone. He ate food so fast he seemed to inhale it.
She said, ‘I could buy you some soap. I’m sure I passed a Body Shop.’
‘Thank you. That’s really kind. But I don’t want to carry too much.’
Maureen felt afresh the shame of not getting it. She longed to show him all her colours, and here she was, a suburban shade of grey. ‘Oh,’ she said, dipping her head. The pain rose, tightening her throat, making it impossible to speak.
His hand passed her a bundled handkerchief, and Maureen nipped her face into its crumpled warmth. It smelt of him, and long ago. It was no good. The tears came.
‘It’s just seeing you again,’ she said. ‘You look so well.’
‘You look well too, Maureen.’
‘I don’t, Harold. I look like someone left behind.’
She wiped her face, but tears were still leaking between her fingers. She was sure the girl at the counter must be looking, and the shoppers, and the ladies without their husbands. Let them. Let them all stare.
‘I miss you, Harold. I wish you would come home.’ She waited with her blood thumping up and down her veins.
At last Harold rubbed his head, as if he had an ache there or something he needed to dislodge. ‘You miss me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You wish I would come home?’
She nodded. It was too much to repeat it. Harold scratched his head again and then lifted his gaze to hers. She felt her insides pick up and spring over and over.
He said slowly, ‘I miss you too. But Maureen, I’ve spent my life not doing anything. And now at last I am doing something. I have to finish my walk. Queenie is waiting. She believes in me. You see?’
‘Well yes,’ she said. ‘I do see that. Of course I see it.’ She took a sip of tea. It was cold. ‘I just – I’m sorry, Harold – I don’t see where I fit in. I know you’re a pilgrim now and everything. But I can’t help thinking about myself. I’m not as selfless as you. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m no better than anyone else. I’m really not. Anybody can do what I’m doing. But you have to let go. I didn’t know that at the beginning but now I do. You have to let go of the things you think you need, like cash cards and phones and maps and things.’ He looked at her with his eyes shining, and his steady smile.
She reached again for her tea and remembered as it hit her mouth that it was cold. She wanted to ask if pilgrims travelled without wives as well, but she didn’t. She forced another of those jolly faces that seemed to hurt, and then she glanced towards the window where Harold’s dog was still waiting.
‘He’s eating a stone.’
He laughed. ‘He does that. You have to be careful not to throw it for him. If you do, he thinks you like throwing stones and he follows you. He doesn’t forget.’ She smiled again. This one didn’t hurt.
‘Have you given him a name?’
‘Just Dog. It didn’t seem right to give him anything else. He’s-his-own-animal sort of thing. I felt a name might sound as if I thought I owned him.’
She nodded, all out of words.
‘You know,’ Harold said suddenly, ‘you could walk with us.’
He reached for her fingers and she let him take them. The palms of his hands were so stained and calloused and her own were so pale and slight, she couldn’t see how these fingers had ever fitted together. Her hand lay in her husband’s, and all the rest of her was numb.
Moments from their marriage passed through her head, like a series of photographs. She saw him creeping out of the bathroom on their wedding night; the nakedness of his chest so beautiful she had gasped out loud, and caused him to dive straight back into his jacket. There was Harold at the hospital, gazing at his new baby son, and stretching out his finger. She saw too all those images in the leather albums that over the years she had cleaned from her memory. They passed through her mind in a flash, recognizable to no one but herself. She sighed.
It was all so far away, and there were so many other things lodged now between them. She saw herself and Harold twenty years ago, side by side in their sunglasses and unable to touch.
His voice parted the blanket of her thoughts. ‘What do you think? Do you think you might come, Maureen?’
She eased her hand from Harold’s and pushed back her chair. ‘It’s too late,’ she murmured. ‘I think not.’
She stood but Harold didn’t, so that she felt she was already out of the door. ‘There’s the garden. And Rex. Besides, I don’t have my things.’
‘You don’t need your—’
‘I do,’ she said.
He chewed his beard and nodded, but without looking up, as if to say I know.
‘I better get back. Rex says hello, by the way. And I brought you some plasters. As well as one of those fruit drinks you like so much.’ She slid them into the neutral spot on the table midway between herself and Harold. ‘But maybe pilgrims don’t use plasters?’
Harold leaned back to slip both her presents into his pocket. His trousers hung loose at his hips. ‘Thank you, Maureen. They’ll come in very handy.’
‘It was selfish of me to ask you to give up your walk. Forgive me, Harold.’
He sunk his head so low she wondered if he had fallen asleep on the table. She could see down his neck to the soft white skin of his back, where the sun hadn’t reached. She felt a shiver shoot straight through her, as if she were seeing him naked for the first time. When he lifted his head and met her eye, she blushed.
He spoke so softly, the words were part of the air. ‘I’m the one who needs forgiveness.’
Rex was waiting in the passenger seat with coffee in a polystyrene cup, and a doughnut wrapped in a serviette. She sat beside him, and took small gulps of air to stop more weeping. He offered her the drink and the food, but she had no appetite.
‘I even said I think not. I can’t believe I said that.’
‘You have a good cry.’
‘Thank you, Rex. But I’ve cried enough. I’d prefer to stop now.’
She dabbed her eyes and glanced out at the street, where people were going about their business. All around her there seemed to be men and women; old ones, young ones; walking apart, or together. The coupled world looked so busy, so sure of itself. She said, ‘Years ago, when Harold and I first met, he called me Maureen. Then it changed to Maw, and that was how it was for years. These days it’s Maureen again.’ She touched her mouth with her fingers, pressing for silence.
‘Would you like to stay?’ said Rex’s voice. ‘Talk to him again?’
She twisted the key in the ignition. ‘No. Let’s go home.’
And as they pulled away, she saw Harold, this stranger who had been her husband for so many years, with a dog trotting at his side, and a group of followers she didn’t know – but she didn’t throw a wave, or hoot the horn. Without fanfare or ceremony or even a proper goodbye, she drove away from Harold, and let him walk.
Two days later, Maureen woke to a bright sky full of promise and a light breeze that played at the leaves. The perfect washing day. She fetched
the stepladder and took down the net curtains. Light, colour and texture fell over the room as if they had been trapped in the space behind the nets all along. The curtains were white and dry within the day.
Maureen folded them into bags and took them to the charity shop.
24
Harold and Rich
SOMETHING HAPPENED AFTER Harold walked away from Maureen. It was as if a door closed on a part of him that he wasn’t sure he preferred to leave open. He no longer took pleasure in imagining the welcoming party of nurses and patients at the hospice. He could no longer visualize the end of his journey. The going was slow and troubled with so much argument that it took the group almost a week to cover the stretch from Darlington to Newcastle. He lent Wilf the willow cane and never got it back.
Maureen had said she missed him. She wanted him home. He couldn’t get that out of his mind. He found excuses to borrow mobile phones and ring.
‘I’m fine,’ she would say. ‘I’m good.’ She would tell him about a moving letter that had arrived in the post, or a small gift; or maybe she would describe the progress of her runner beans. ‘But you don’t want to hear about me,’ she’d add. He did, though. He wanted that so much.
‘On the phone again?’ Rich would ask, with a grin but no empathy.
He accused Wilf of stealing again and privately Harold was afraid he was right. It was painful to keep defending the boy, when he knew in his gut he was as unreliable as David. Wilf didn’t even hide his empty bottles. It could take an embarrassingly long time to wake him, and as soon as he was on his feet he complained. Trying to protect him, Harold told the others the old injury on his right leg was playing up. He suggested longer periods of rest. He even suggested they might like to go on ahead. No, no, they chorused; Harold was the walk. They couldn’t possibly do it without him.
For the first time, he felt relief on reaching the towns. Wilf seemed to snap alive again. And seeing other people, looking into shop windows, thinking about what he didn’t need, offered Harold distraction from his own doubts about what had happened to his journey. He didn’t know how he had created something that had grown beyond his ability to keep hold of it.
‘A guy offered me a shitload of money for my story,’ said Wilf, sprinting up beside him. He had the jitters again and smelt of whisky. ‘I said no, Mr Fry. I’m sticking with you.’
The pilgrims set up camp, but Harold no longer sat with them while they cooked or planned the next day’s route. Rich had begun hunting for rabbits and birds, which he skinned or plucked and cooked over the flames. The sight of the poor animal, stripped and skewered, made Harold tremble. Besides, there was a hungry wildness in Rich’s eye these days that reminded him of both Napier and his father, and alarmed him. Rich’s pilgrim T-shirt was smeared with blood. He had taken to wearing a string of small rodent teeth round his neck. They put Harold off his food.
Tired and increasingly empty, he would stroll through the on coming night while the crickets creaked and stars pricked the sky. This was the only time he felt free, and connected. He thought of Maureen and Queenie. He remembered the past. Hours could pass and they would seem both like days and no time at all. Returning to the group, some already sleeping, some singing by the camp fire, he would feel a cold wave of panic. What was he doing with these people?
While Harold was out of the way, Rich called a private meeting. He had grave concerns, he said. They were difficult to voice, but someone had to; Queenie couldn’t hang on for much longer. In light of this, he suggested that a reconnaissance party, led by himself, should take an alternative, cross-country route. ‘I know this is hard for everyone because we love Harold. He’s been a father to me. But the guy is slowing down. His leg’s bad. He wanders off for half the night. And now this fasting. He’s not the man he was—’
‘He’s not fasting,’ objected Kate. ‘You make it sound religious. He’s just not hungry.’
‘Whatever he’s doing, he’s not up to the journey. You’ve gotta call a spade a spade. We need to think how we can help.’
Kate sucked something stringy and green from a back tooth. ‘You do talk crap,’ she said.
Wilf yelped with hysterical laughter and the subject was dropped, but Rich sat very quietly for the rest of the evening, slightly apart from the group, chipping at a stick with his penknife, splintering it and sharpening it to a piercing point.
Harold was woken the following morning by shouts. Rich’s knife had gone. After a thorough search of the field, banks and hedgerows, it was clear that Wilf had gone with it. And so, he discovered, had the glittering paperweight for Queenie Hennessy.
The gorilla man reported news that Pilgrim Wilf had set up a Facebook page. It already had over a thousand likes. There were personal anecdotes about his walk, and the people he had saved. There were several prayers. He promised his fans there were more stories to come in the weekend papers.
‘I told you he was no good,’ said Rich across the camp fire. His eyes pinned Harold through the dark.
Harold was deeply troubled by the boy’s disappearance. He walked apart from the group and scanned the shadows for signs. In towns, he stared into pubs and gangs of young men, searching for Wilf’s gaunt, sickly face, or listening out for that infuriating yelp of a laugh. He felt he had let the boy down, and that this was how it always was with Harold. Once again, he slept badly at nights, and sometimes he did not sleep at all.
‘You look tired,’ said Kate. They had moved a little distance from the group and were sitting in a brick tunnel by a stream. The water was still and thick, more like green velvet than fluid. Further along the banks, there was water mint and cress, but Harold knew he’d lost the interest in picking them.
‘I feel a long way from where I began. But I also feel a long way from where I am going.’ He gave a yawn that seemed to shudder up through his whole body. ‘Why do you think Wilf went?’
‘He’d had enough. I don’t think he was evil or anything like that. He’s young. He’s flaky.’
Harold felt someone was talking to him at last without frills, as in the early days of his walk, when no one had expectations, including himself. He confided that Wilf had reminded him of his son, and that Harold’s betrayal of David sometimes pained him these days even more than his betrayal of Queenie. ‘When my son was little, we realized he was clever. He spent all his time in his room, doing schoolwork. If he didn’t get top marks, he’d be in tears. But then his intelligence seemed to backfire on him. He was too clever. Too lonely. He got into Cambridge and he started drinking. I was such a no-hoper at school, I was in awe of his intelligence. Failure was about the only thing I was good at.’
Kate laughed and her chin concertina’d into her neck. Despite her brusque manner, he had begun to find comfort in the stalwart bulk of her. She said, ‘I never said anything about this to the others, but my wedding ring disappeared a few nights ago too.’
Harold sighed. He knew he had trusted Wilf against the odds, but somehow he had also trusted that there was a basic goodness to be found in everyone, and that this time he could tap into it.
‘It doesn’t matter about the ring. My ex and I just got divorced. I don’t know why I kept on wearing it.’ She flexed her naked fingers. ‘So maybe Wilf did me a favour.’
‘Should I have done more, Kate?’
Kate smiled. ‘You can’t save everyone.’ She paused and then she asked, ‘Do you still see your son?’
The question hurt. ‘No.’
‘I guess you miss him?’ she said.
Not since Martina had anyone asked about David; his mouth dried and his heart began to quicken. He wanted to describe what it feels like to find your boy in a pool of vomit and carry him to bed and mop him up and pretend in the morning you have not seen that. He wanted to say what it was like to be a child and find the man who was your father in the same manner. He wanted to say, What happened? Was it me? Am I the link here? But he didn’t. He didn’t want to burden her with so much. He nodded and said yes; he missed David
.
Gripping his knees, he pictured himself lying in his room as a teenager, listening to the silence that did not hold his mother. He remembered hearing that Queenie had left, and sinking to his chair because she had not said goodbye. He saw Maureen, white with hatred, slamming the spare-room door. He relived the last time he had visited his father.
‘I am terribly sorry,’ the carer had said. She had Harold by his jacket sleeve and was almost tugging him out of range. ‘But he seems disturbed. Maybe you had better leave it for today.’
Glancing over his shoulder as he hurried away, his final impression had been of a small man throwing teaspoons and yelling he had no son.
How could he say all this? It amounted to a lifetime. He could try to find the words, but they would never hold the same meaning for her that they did for him. ‘My house,’ he would say; and the image that would spring to her head would be of her own. There was no saying it.
Kate and Harold sat a while more in silence. He listened to the wind in the leaves of a willow, and watched them flicker. Spikes of rosebay willow herb and evening primrose glowed in the dark. From the camp fire came the sounds of laughter and shouts; Rich was organizing a nocturnal game of tag. ‘It’s getting late,’ said Kate at last. ‘You need sleep.’
They returned to the others, but sleep did not come. His head was still full of his mother, and trying to capture a memory of her that might bring comfort. He thought of the cold of his childhood home, and the smell of whisky that was even in his school clothes, and the greatcoat that was his sixteenth-birthday present. For the first time he allowed himself to feel the pain of being a child that is not wanted by mother or father. He ranged for many hours in the dark, under a sky lit with infinitesimal stars. Images passed through his mind of Joan wetting her finger to turn the page of a travel magazine, or rolling her eyes as his father’s hands trembled over a bottle, but nowhere could he find her kissing Harold’s head, or even telling him he would be all right.