by Rachel Joyce
Had she ever asked herself where he was? How he was doing?
He saw the reflection of her face in a compact mirror as she painted on her red lips. She did it with such care, he had felt she was trapping something behind the colour.
A wave of emotion swelled through him as he recalled catching her eye once. She had stopped what she was doing so that her mouth was left half Joan and half mother. With his heart beating so hard it made his voice flutter, he had summoned the courage to speak. ‘Please will you tell me? Am I ugly?’
She had burst out laughing. The dimple in her cheek was so deep he could imagine slipping his finger into it.
It wasn’t meant to be funny. It was from the heart. But in the absence of all physical affection, her laughter had been the next best thing. He wished he had not torn her only letter to shreds. Deer son. It would have been something. It would have been something too to hold David in his arms, and promise him things get better. He felt nothing but anguish for the things that couldn’t be undone.
Returning to his sleeping bag before dawn, Harold found a small bundle beneath the zip, containing a heel of bread, an apple and bottled water. He wiped his eyes and ate the food, but still he didn’t sleep.
As the profile of Newcastle dominated the horizon, tensions rose yet again. Kate wanted to avoid the city altogether. Someone else had bunions and needed a doctor, or at least first aid. Rich had so many thoughts on the nature of the modern pilgrimage that the gorilla man needed a new notebook. Flummoxing them all, Harold asked the group if they might make a detour via Hexham. He produced from his jacket pocket the business card of the man in the hotel where he had spent his first night. It was creased with time, and furry at the edges. But even though those first few days of his walk had almost broken him, he remembered them with envy. They held a simplicity that he felt he was in danger of losing, if he had not lost it already.
‘Of course I can’t make you come with me,’ said Harold, ‘but I will stick to my promise.’
A further secret meeting was called by Rich. ‘I can’t believe I’m the only one who’s man enough to say it. But you lot can’t see the wood for the trees. The guy’s falling apart. We can’t go to Hexham. It’s over twenty miles in the wrong direction.’
‘He made a promise,’ said Kate, ‘just as he made one to us. He’s too polite to renege on that. It’s rather English, and very endearing.’
Rich flared. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, Queenie is dying. I vote we form a splinter group and push straight up to Berwick. He’s suggested it himself before now. We could be there in a week.’
No one expressed an opinion, but in the morning Kate discovered a lot of campaigning had taken place in the night. Whispered conversations in tents, and over the dying embers of the fire, had confirmed Rich’s opinion: they all loved Harold, but it was time to break free. They looked for the old man but he was not to be found. They packed up their sleeping bags and tents, and were gone. Apart from the smouldering embers of a fire, the field was so empty she could almost doubt any of it had happened.
Kate found Harold sitting by a river, throwing stones for the dog. His shoulders were hunched as if a weight pressed down on him. It shocked her, how old he suddenly looked. She told him Rich had persuaded the gorilla man to go ahead, and that they had taken the well-wishers and what was left of the journalists. ‘He called a meeting and gave some story about you needing a break. He even squeezed out a few tears. There was nothing I could do. But people won’t be fooled for long.’
‘I don’t mind. To tell the truth, it was getting too much.’ The swallows were skimming the water, turning vertically on their wings. He watched them a while.
‘What will you do next, Harold? Will you go home?’
He shook his head, but it was a heavy gesture. ‘I’ll make the trip to Hexham and then I’ll head up from there towards Berwick. Not long now. What about you?’
‘I’m going home. My ex has been in touch. He wants us to have another go at it.’
Harold’s eyes moistened in the morning light. ‘That’s good,’ he said. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. She wondered briefly if he was thinking of his wife.
From there, their arms took the opportunity to catch hold of the other’s body. Kate didn’t know if it was she who was holding on to Harold or the other way round. He was bone inside his pilgrim T-shirt. They remained in an odd half-embrace, a little off balance, until she broke free and wiped her cheeks.
‘Please take care of yourself,’ she said. ‘I know you are a good man and that seems to give you a way with people. But you look tired. You need to look after yourself, Harold.’
He waited as Kate walked away. She turned several times to wave and he stayed in the same place, letting her go. He had walked too much with other people, and listened to their stories, and followed their routes. It would be a relief to listen again only to himself. All the same, as Kate grew smaller, he felt the wrench of losing her, and it was like a little piece of dying. She reached a break in the trees ahead and he was about to go, when she paused, as if she had lost her way or forgotten something. She began to walk back to him, very fast, almost running, and he felt a shiver of excitement because of all of them, even Wilf, it was Kate he had grown to love. But then she stopped again, and seemed to shake her head. He knew that for her sake he must keep standing and watching her go, a constant in the distance, until she had left him fully behind.
He threw a large wave, two hands beating at the air. She turned her back on him and met the line of trees.
He remained a long time, waiting in case she reappeared, but the air was still and did not bring her.
Harold removed the pilgrim T-shirt and retrieved his shirt and tie from his rucksack. They were screwed up, and very worn now, but it was like being himself again as he put them on. He wondered whether he should take it to Queenie as a further souvenir, but it didn’t feel right to carry something that had caused such dispute. Instead he slipped it in a bin when no one was looking. He found he was wearier than he had realized. It took Harold a further three days to reach Hexham.
He rang at the buzzer of the businessman’s apartment and waited all afternoon, but there was no sign of his host. A woman from another flat came down and explained that the businessman was on holiday in Ibiza. ‘He’s always on holiday,’ she said. She asked if Harold would like tea, or water for the dog, but he declined both.
A week after the split, reports came of the pilgrims’ arrival in Berwick-upon-Tweed. There were photographs in the newspapers of Rich Lion walking hand in hand with his two sons along the quay; and others of a man in a gorilla suit nuzzling the cheek of Miss South Devon. There was a brass band to welcome the party, with a performance by the local cheerleading troupe, and a dinner attended by local councillors and businessmen. Several Sunday papers claimed to have sole access to Rich’s diaries. There was talk of a film.
The pilgrims’ arrival was also covered on the television news. Courtesy of BBC Spotlight, Maureen and Rex watched footage of Rich Lion and several others delivering flowers to the hospice along with a giant basket of muffins, although Queenie was unable to receive them. The reporter added that sadly no one from the hospice was available for comment. She stood with her microphone at the edge of the drive. Behind her there appeared to be a neatly kept garden, with blue hydrangeas, and a man in a boiler suit raking grass clippings.
‘Those people didn’t even know Queenie,’ said Maureen. ‘It makes me want to spit. Why couldn’t they wait for Harold?’
Rex sipped a cup of Ovaltine. ‘I suppose they were impatient to get there.’
‘But it was never a race. It was the journey that mattered. And that man didn’t walk for Queenie. He walked to prove he was a hero and get his children back.’
‘I suppose in the end his was a journey of a kind,’ said Rex. ‘Just a different one.’ He replaced his cup carefully on a coaster, so as not to mark the table.
The reporter made a brief reference to Harold Fry
, and an image flashed up in which he was shrinking from the camera. He looked like a shadow: dirty, haggard, afraid. In an exclusive interview, Rich Lion explained from the quayside that the elderly Devon pilgrim was suffering from fatigue and complicated emotional issues; he had been forced to retire from the walk south of Newcastle. ‘But Queenie is alive. That’s the main thing. It was lucky me and the guys were there to step in.’
Maureen scoffed. ‘For heaven’s sake, he can’t even speak proper English.’
Rich clasped his hands together above his head in a gesture of victory. ‘I know Harold would be moved by your support.’ The jostling crowd of well-wishers cheered.
The report ended with a shot of the pinkish stones of the quay wall, where several council workers were removing placards that spelt out a slogan. One man worked from the beginning, the other man from the end, picking each letter up and sliding it into their van, so that all that was left was the message WEED WELCOMES HAR. Maureen snapped off the television, and paced the room.
‘They’re sweeping him under the carpet,’ she said. ‘They’re ashamed of putting their trust in him, and so now they have to make him out to be a fool. It’s shocking. He didn’t even ask for their attention in the first place.’
Rex pursed his mouth in thought. ‘At least people will leave him alone now. At least it’s just the walk and Harold.’
Maureen stared out at the sky. She could not speak.
25
Harold and the Dog
IT HAD COME as a relief to Harold to walk alone again. He and Dog took up their own rhythm, and there was no debating, no arguing. From Newcastle to Hexham, they had stopped when they were tired, and taken up when they were refreshed. They began to walk the dawns again, and sometimes the nights, and he was filled with renewed hope. He was happiest like this, watching the lights come on at the windows, and people going about their lives; unobserved, and yet tender for the strangeness of others. He was open once more to the thoughts and memories that played through his head. Maureen, Queenie and David were his companions. He felt whole again.
He thought of Maureen’s body against his in the early years of their marriage and the beautiful darkness between her legs. He pictured David staring out of his bedroom window so intently it was as if the outside world had robbed him of something. He remembered driving beside Queenie, while she sucked on mints and sang another song backwards.
Harold and Dog were so close to Berwick they must do nothing but walk. After his experience with the pilgrims, he was anxious to avoid public attention. In talking to strangers, and listening, he feared he had created a need in them to be carried and he hadn’t the strength for that any more. If he and Dog came to a built-up area and could not bypass it, they slept in fields on its fringes until dark, and then crossed in the early hours of the morning. They ate what they found in hedgerows, and bins. They picked only from the allotments or trees that looked uncared for. They still stopped to taste spring water wherever it bubbled up, but they troubled no one. Once or twice someone asked for his photograph, and he obliged, though he found it hard to look into the camera. Occasionally a passer-by recognized him and offered food. A man who was possibly a journalist asked if he was Harold Fry. But since he was careful to keep his head low, and since he stuck to the shadows and the wider spaces, people mostly left him alone. He even avoided his reflection.
‘I hope you feel better,’ said a graceful woman with a greyhound. ‘It was such a shame to lose you. My husband and I wept.’ Not understanding, Harold thanked her and moved on. The land heaved ahead and formed dark peaks.
Strong winds came from west to north, bringing rain. It was too cold to sleep. He lay rigid within his sleeping bag, watching patches of cloud as they skittered across the moon, and trying to keep warm. The dog lay against him in the sleeping bag. Its ribs were cavernous. He thought of the day David swam out at Bantham, and the fragility of his son against the coastguard’s tanned arms. He remembered the nicks in David’s skull where he had dug the razor, and how he used to haul David upstairs before he was sick again. All those times David had put his body at risk, as if in defiance of the ordinariness that was his father.
Harold began to shiver. It started as a tremble that caused his teeth to rattle, but seemed to gain momentum. His fingers, toes, arms and legs were shaking so hard they hurt. He looked out, hoping for comfort or distraction, but found no fellowship with the land, as he had before. The moon shone. The wind blew. His need for warmth made no impression. The place was not cruel. It was worse. It didn’t notice. Harold was alone, without Maureen or Queenie or David, in a place that did not see, shaking and shaking in a sleeping bag. He tried gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, but that made it worse. Far away foxes were cornering an animal, their anarchic cries cutting through the night air. His wet clothes stung against his skin, and stole the warmth from him. He was cold to the core. The only thing that would stop him shaking would be when his inner organs froze over. He no longer had the wherewithal to resist even the cold.
Harold was sure he would be better once he was back on his feet. But he wasn’t. There was no escaping what he had realized as he fought for warmth in the night. With or without him, the moon and the wind would go on, rising and falling. The land would keep stretching ahead until it hit the sea. People would keep dying. It made no difference whether Harold walked, or trembled, or stayed at home.
What began as a flat, subdued feeling grew over the hours into something more violently accusing. The more he dwelt on how little he mattered, the more he believed it. Who was he to go to Queenie? What did it matter if Rich Lion took his place? Every time he paused for breath, or rubbed at his legs to get the blood moving, the dog sat at his feet, watching with concern. It stopped straying from Harold’s path. It stopped bringing stones.
Harold thought of his journey so far; the people he had met, the places he had seen, the skies beneath which he had slept. Until now he had held them in his mind like a collection of souvenirs. They had kept him going when the walking was so arduous he had wanted to give up. But now he thought of those people, places and skies and he could no longer see himself among them. The roads he had walked were full of different cars. The people he had passed were passing other people. His footprints, however firm, would be washed away by rain. It was as if he had never been in any of the places he had been, or met the strangers he had met. He looked behind, and already there was no trace, no sign, of him anywhere.
The trees gave up their branches to the wind as fluidly as tentacles in water. He had made a mess of being a husband, father and friend. He had even made a mess of being a son. It wasn’t simply that he had betrayed Queenie, and that his parents did not want him. It wasn’t simply that he had made a mess of everything with his wife and son. It was rather that he passed through life and left no impression. He meant nothing. Harold went to cross the A696 in the direction of Cambo, and realized the dog was missing.
He felt a shower of panic. He wondered if the dog had been hurt, and he hadn’t noticed. He retraced his steps, scouring the road and the gutters, but there was no sign of the animal. He tried to remember when he had last registered its presence. It must be hours since they had shared a sandwich on a bench. Or was that the day before? He couldn’t believe he had failed even in this simple task. He was waving down cars, asking drivers if they had seen a dog, a little tufty thing about so high, but they sped away, as if he were dangerous. Catching sight of him, a small child clung to her car seat and sobbed. There was nothing for it but to retrace his steps towards Hexham.
He found Dog sitting in a bus shelter, at the feet of a young girl. She was wearing a school uniform, and had long dark hair that was almost the autumn colour of its fur, and a kind look about her. Stooping to pat its head, she picked up something by her shoe, and stowed it in her pocket.
‘Don’t throw the stone,’ Harold was about to call; but he didn’t. The girl’s bus drew up beside her and she got on it, followed by the dog. It looked as if i
t knew where it was heading. He watched the bus drive away, with the girl and the dog on it. They didn’t look back or wave.
He reasoned the animal had made its own decision. It had chosen to walk with Harold for a while, and then it had chosen to stop, and walk instead with the young girl. Life was like that. But in losing his last companion, Harold felt a further layer of skin had been ripped from him. He was afraid of what would come next. He knew he hadn’t got it in him to take much more.
The hours turned into days and he couldn’t remember how one was different from another. He began to make mistakes. He would set off with the first cracks of dawn, compelled to go towards the emerging light, regardless of whether or not it lay in the direction of Berwick. He argued with his compass when it pointed south, convinced it was broken, or worse, that it was deliberately lying. Sometimes he walked ten miles only to discover he had travelled a large looping circle, and was back almost where he had started. He took diversions to follow a shout or a figure, but they led to nothing. Near the crest of a hill, he saw a woman calling for help, but after an hour of climbing he found she was a dead tree trunk. He frequently lost his footing and stumbled. When his glasses snapped a second time, he left them behind.
Deprived of rest and hope, other things began to slip from him. He found he couldn’t remember David’s face. He could picture his dark eyes, and the way they stared, but when he tried to conjure up the fringe that flopped over them, he could see only Queenie’s tight curls. It was like fixing a jigsaw together in his mind, but without all the pieces. How could his head be so cruel? Harold lost all sense of time, and whether or not he had eaten. It wasn’t that he had forgotten; he no longer cared. He no longer took any interest in what he saw, or the difference between things, or their names. A tree was no more than another of the things he passed. And sometimes the only words in his head were the ones that asked why he was still walking when it would make no difference. A lone crow passed overhead, its black wings beating the air like a whip, and filled him with such inhuman fear, he went scampering for shelter.