B006TF6WAM EBOK

by Rachel Joyce

  ‘Nothing? Are you sure?’

  Another series of nods. His reticence was like a disease. It seemed to creep over Maureen too. She tugged her collar closer to her chin. She had expected him to be sad and exhausted; but that, she had assumed, would come from finishing his journey. This was a sort of apathy that sucked the life out of you.

  She said, ‘What about her presents? Did she like them?’

  ‘I left the rucksack with the nuns. I thought that was best.’ He spoke quietly and carefully, balancing on the words, but suggesting he was in danger at any moment of falling off into the crater of feeling beneath. ‘I should never have done it. I should have sent a letter. A letter would have been enough. If I had simply stuck with the letter, I could have—’ She waited but he stared out at the horizon. He seemed to have forgotten that he was talking.

  ‘Still,’ she said, ‘I’m surprised – after everything you did – that Queenie said nothing.’

  At last he turned and met her eye. His face, like his voice, was drained of life. ‘She can’t. She has no tongue.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Maureen’s gasp walloped the air.

  ‘I believe they’ve cut it out. Along with half her throat, and some of her spine. It was a last-ditch attempt to save her, but it hasn’t worked. The cancer’s inoperable because there are no operable bits of her left. Now she has a tumour growing out of her face.’

  He looked away, back towards the sky, with his eyes half closed, as if he was blocking out the external world in order to see more clearly the truth that was taking shape inside his head. ‘That’s why she could never talk to me on the telephone. She can’t speak.’

  Maureen turned once more to the sea, trying to understand. Far out the waves were flat, and metal-coloured. She wondered if they knew the end of their journey lay ahead.

  Harold’s voice came again. ‘I didn’t stop because there were no words for me to say. There weren’t when I first read her letter. Maureen, I’m the kind of man who thanks the talking clock. What difference was I ever going to make? How did I ever think I could stop a woman from dying?’

  A violent surge of grief seemed to force its way through him. His eyes crumpled shut, and his mouth opened, and he sat tall as his mouth emitted a series of soundless sobs. ‘She was such a good woman. She wanted to help. Every time I drove her, she brought something nice for the journey home. She asked about David, and Cambridge—’ He couldn’t finish. His body was shaking with it. His face twisted as fierce tears screwed up his eyes and his cheeks. ‘You should see. You should see her, Maw. It’s not fair.’

  ‘I know.’ She reached her left hand around Harold’s and held it tight. She looked at the darkness of his fingers on his lap; the blue ridges of his veins. Despite the strangeness of the last weeks, she knew this hand so well. Even without looking she knew it. She kept hold as he wept. He grew calmer; a quiet flow of tears.

  He said, ‘As I walked, I have been remembering so much. Things I didn’t know I’d forgotten. Things about David, and you and me. I have even remembered my mother. Some of the memories have been hard. But most of them have been beautiful. And I’m frightened. I’m frightened that one day, maybe soon, I will lose them again, and this time it will be for ever.’ His voice wavered. Taking a new, brave breath, he began to tell her all he had remembered; the moments from David’s life that had opened up for him like the most precious scrapbook. ‘I don’t want to forget his head when he was a baby. Or the way he slept when you sang. I want to keep all those things.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ she said. She tried to laugh, not wanting to continue with this conversation, although she could tell from the way he kept on looking at her that he wanted more.

  ‘I couldn’t remember David’s name. How could I have forgotten that? I can’t bear the thought that I might look at your face one day, and not even know you.’

  She felt pain pricking at her eyelids and shook her head. ‘You’re not losing your memory, Harold. You’re just very, very tired.’

  When she met his gaze, it was naked. He held her eye, and she held his, and the years fell away. Maureen saw again the wild young man who had danced like a demon all those years ago, and filled every vein of her with the chaos of love. She blinked hard, and wiped her eyes. The waves kept throwing themselves further and further up the shoreline. All that energy, all that power, crossing oceans, carrying ships and liners, and ending just a short distance from her feet, in a last flume of spray.

  She considered all the things that must happen from here. There would be regular visits to the GP. There might be colds that turned to pneumonia. There would be blood tests, hearing tests, eye tests. Maybe, God help them, there would be operations, and periods of convalescence. And then, of course, there must also follow a day when one of them was alone for good. She shivered. Harold was right; it was too much to bear. To have come all this way and discovered what it was you wanted, only to know that you must lose it again. She wondered if they should drive home via the Cotswolds, and stop a few days; or maybe take a detour and go to Norfolk. She’d love to return to Holt. But maybe they wouldn’t. It was all too big to contemplate, and she didn’t know. The waves fell over, and over, and over.

  ‘One day at a time,’ she murmured. She moved close to Harold and lifted her arms.

  ‘Oh Maw,’ he cried quietly.

  Maureen held him tight until the grief passed. He was tall, and stiff, and her own. ‘You dear man.’ She groped for his face with her mouth and kissed his salty wet cheeks. ‘You got up, and you did something. And if trying to find a way when you don’t even know you can get there isn’t a small miracle, then I don’t know what is.’

  Her mouth trembled. She cupped his face in her palms; they were so close now that his features lost distinction and all she could see was the feeling she had for him.

  ‘I love you, Harold Fry,’ she whispered. ‘That is what you did.’

  31

  Queenie and the Present

  QUEENIE STARED AT the blurred world and found something she had not seen before. She narrowed her eye, willing it into focus. A pink shining light that somehow hung in the air, twisting, and every now and then sent a myriad of colour across the wall. It was beautiful for a while and then to keep hunting for it was too tiring and she let it go.

  She was almost nothing. Blink a moment, and she’d be gone.

  Someone had come, and now they had gone. Someone she liked. It wasn’t the nuns, although they were all kind. It wasn’t her father, but it was another good man. He had said something about walking, and that was right, she remembered; he had walked. But she couldn’t remember how far he had come. Maybe it was from the car park. She had a pain in her head, and she wanted to call for water, and she would do that, in a moment, but just for now she would stay here, lying very still and easy at last. She would sleep.

  Harold Fry. She remembered now. He had come to say goodbye.

  Once she had been a woman called Queenie Hennessy. She did sums, and wrote with an impeccable hand. She had loved a few times, and she had lost, and that was all as it should be. She had touched life, played with it a little, but it is a slippery bugger, and finally we must close the door, and leave it behind. A frightening thought for all these years. But now? Not frightening. Not anything. She was so tired. She dropped her face against her pillow, and felt something opening like a flower in her head, as it grew heavy.

  There came a memory long forgotten. It was so close Queenie could almost taste it. She was running down the stairs of her childhood home, in her red leather shoes, and her father was calling her, or was it the good man, Harold Fry? She was rushing, and laughing because it was so funny. ‘Queenie?’ he was calling. ‘Are you there?’ She could see the shape of him, tall against the light, but he kept calling her and casting his eyes everywhere except where she stood. The breath caught with a knot in her chest. ‘Queenie!’ She longed for him to find her at last. ‘Where are you? Where is that girl? Are you ready?’

  ‘Y
es,’ she said. The light was very bright. Even behind her eyelids, it was silvery. ‘Yes,’ she called, a little louder so that he would hear. ‘Here I am.’ Something twisted at the window and showered the room with stars.

  Queenie parted her lips, hunting for the next intake of air. And when it didn’t come, but something else did, it was as easy as breathing.

  32

  Harold and Maureen and Queenie

  MAUREEN TOOK THE news quietly. She had booked a double room, close to the seafront. They had eaten a light meal, and afterwards she had run Harold a bath and washed his hair. She had shaved his chin carefully and moisturized the skin. As she trimmed his nails and rubbed his feet, she told him all the things she had done in the past which she so regretted. He said it was the same for him. He seemed to be coming down with a cold.

  After she had taken the call from the hospice, she reached for Harold’s hand. She told him exactly what Sister Philomena had said; that Queenie looked peaceful at the end. Almost childlike. One of the younger nuns believed she had heard Queenie call something just before she died, as if she were reaching for a person she knew. ‘But Sister Lucy is young,’ said Sister Philomena.

  Maureen asked Harold if he would like to be alone, but he shook his head.

  ‘We’ll do this together,’ she said.

  Already the body had been moved to a room beside the chapel. They walked behind the young nun, without speaking, because words at that moment felt too hard and too brittle. Maureen could hear the sounds of the hospice, the hushed voices, a brief peal of laughter, the slushing of water in pipes. From outside she briefly caught birdsong, or was it singing? She felt she had been swallowed by an inside world. At a closed door, they stopped and again Maureen asked Harold if he would like to be alone. Again he shook his head.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ he said, his blue eyes searching hers.

  She saw the panic in them, the anguish and the reluctance. And then it dawned on her, very suddenly. The only dead body he had ever seen was David’s, in the shed. ‘I know. But it’s all right. I’m here too. It will be all right this time, Harold.’

  ‘It was a gentle end,’ the sister said. She was a plump girl with a rosy bloom to her cheeks. Maureen was comforted that such a young, vibrant woman could care for the dying, and remain so full of life herself. ‘Just before she went, she gave a smile. As if she’d found something.’

  Maureen glanced at Harold and his face was so white he looked bled. ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘We’re glad it was peaceful.’

  The nun stepped away and then turned back, as if she had remembered more. ‘Sister Philomena asked if you would like to join us for evening prayer?’

  Maureen gave a polite smile. It was too late to become believers now. ‘Thank you, but Harold is very tired. I think what he most needs is rest.’

  Unperturbed, the young woman nodded. ‘Of course. We only wanted you to know that you are welcome.’ She reached for the handle and opened the door.

  Maureen recognized the smell of the air as soon as she stepped inside. It held an iced-over stillness, imbued with incense. Beneath a small wooden cross, the body that had once been Queenie Hennessy lay with her white hair brushed over the pillow. Her arms were stretched over the sheet alongside her body, and her hands were open, palms uplifted, as if she had willingly let something go. Her face had been tilted discreetly towards the pillow, so that the tumour was mostly hidden. Maureen and Harold stood beside her in silence, coming to terms once more with how utterly the life vanishes.

  She thought of David in his coffin, all those years ago, and how she had lifted his vacant head, and kissed him over and over, not believing that her wanting him alive wasn’t enough to bring him back. Harold stood beside her, with his fists clenched into balls.

  ‘She was a good woman,’ said Maureen at last. ‘She was a true friend.’

  She felt something warm against the tip of her fingers, and then she felt the pressure of his hand gripping her own.

  ‘There was nothing more you could have done,’ she said. And she was thinking now not only of Queenie, but David too. Though it had cleft them apart and plunged them into separate darkness, their son had after all done what he wanted. ‘I was wrong. I was very wrong to blame you.’ Her fingers squeezed on his.

  She grew aware of light, spilling under and above the door, and the sounds of the hospice, filling the emptiness like water. The room in which they stood had grown so dark that the details lost definition; even the shape of Queenie was dimming. She thought of those waves again, and how a life was not complete without meeting its closure. She would stand at Harold’s side as long as he wanted. When he moved, she followed.

  Mass was already under way as they closed the door on Queenie. They paused, uncertain whether to give their thanks or slip away. It was Harold who asked to stop a moment. The nuns’ voices rose, woven in song, and for one splendid, fleeting moment the beauty of it crammed her with something that felt like joy. If we can’t be open, Maureen thought, if we can’t accept what we don’t know, there really is no hope.

  ‘I’m ready to go now,’ said Harold.

  They walked along the seafront in the dark. The families had packed up their picnics and their chairs; only a few dog walkers were left, and some joggers in fluorescent jackets. They talked about small things: the last of the peonies, the day David started school, the weather forecast. Small things. The moon shone high, and cast a trembling copy of itself over the deep water. Far out, a ship travelled the horizon, its lights twinkling, and yet so slow its passage was not visible. It was full of life and activity that was nothing to do with Harold and Maureen.

  ‘So many stories. So many people we don’t know,’ she said.

  Harold watched too, but his mind was full of other things. He couldn’t say how he knew it, or whether the knowledge made him happy or sad, but he was sure that Queenie would remain with him, and David too. There would be Napier, and Joan, and Harold’s father with those aunts; but there would be no more fighting them, and no more anguish for the past. They were part of the air he walked through, just as all the travellers he had met were part of it. He saw that people would make the decisions they wished to make, and some of them would hurt both themselves and those who loved them, and some would pass unnoticed, while others would bring joy. He did not know what would follow from Berwick-upon-Tweed, and he was ready for that.

  A memory came of the night all those years ago, when Harold had danced and spotted Maureen watching him across the crowd. He remembered how it felt to fling his arms and legs, as if shaking off all that had come before, while witnessed by such a beautiful young woman. Emboldened, he had danced more, even more crazily, feet kicking the air, hands like slippery eels. He had stopped and checked again. She was still watching. This time she had caught his eye and laughed. She was so full of it, her shoulders shaking, her hair slipping over her face, that for the first occasion in his life he had not been able to resist the temptation to stride through a crowd and touch a stranger. Beneath her velvet hair, the cushion of skin was pale and soft. She had not flinched.

  ‘Hello, you,’ he had said. His childhood was shorn away and there was nothing but himself and her. He knew that whatever happened next, their paths were linked. He would do anything for her. Remembering, Harold was filled with lightness, as if he were warm again, somewhere deep inside.

  Maureen pulled her collar up to her ears against the night. The town lights shone in the background. ‘Shall we turn back?’ she said. ‘Are you ready?’

  In answer, Harold sneezed. She turned, wanting to offer a handkerchief, but was met with a short gasp that was almost without sound. He smacked his hand to his face. The noise came again. It wasn’t a sneeze or a gasp. It was a snort. A snicker.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Maureen. He seemed to be trying very hard to hold something inside his mouth. She tugged at his sleeve. ‘Harold?’

  He shook his head. The hand was still plastered against his mouth. Out shot another sn
ort.

  ‘Harold?’ she said again.

  He held his hands either side of his mouth, as if attempting to straighten it. He said, ‘I shouldn’t be laughing. I don’t want to. It’s just—’ He let out a full-blown guffaw.

  She didn’t understand, but a smile was tugging on the corners of her mouth too. ‘Maybe we need to laugh,’ she said. ‘What is it that’s funny?’

  Harold took a deep breath to steady himself. He turned to her with those beautiful eyes of his and they seemed to shine through the dark. ‘I’ve no idea why I’m remembering this. But that night at the dance?’

  ‘When we first met?’ Her smile was beginning to make a noise.

  ‘And we laughed like kids?’

  ‘Oh, what was it you said, Harold?’

  A roar of laughter bowled out of him with such force he had to grip his stomach. She watched, her smile all bubbly now, ready to erupt; so nearly with him but not quite there yet. He had to bend over with it. He actually looked in pain.

  In between splutters, he said, ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t what I said. It was you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. I said hello and then you looked up at me. And you said—’

  She got it. She remembered. The laughter kicked up from her stomach and filled her like helium. She slapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Of course.’

  ‘You said—’

  ‘That’s right. I—’

  They couldn’t say it. They couldn’t get it out. They tried, but each time they opened their mouths it was so hilarious they were hit by a fresh wave of helpless laughter. They had to grip hands to steady themselves.

  ‘Oh God,’ she spluttered, ‘oh God. It wasn’t even very witty.’ She was laughing and trying not to, so that it came in sobs and squeals. Then another laugh whooshed up behind her like a huge wave, catching her unawares, and erupting into a violent hiccup. That made it even worse. They hung on to one another’s arms, and bent over, shaking with how funny it was. Their eyes were streaming; their faces ached. ‘People will think we’re having a joint heart attack,’ she roared.