The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel

by Rachel Joyce

  Harold felt that he had become the focus of attention without anyone wanting to say it. Even setting down his teacup was something he could see only from outside himself, and it made a clank that startled him as it hit the saucer. Meanwhile the smell was, if anything, getting worse. He berated himself for not thinking to run his socks under a tap the night before; this was what Maureen would have done.

  “I do hope you don’t mind my asking,” piped up one of the old ladies, turning to catch his eye. “My friend and I have been wondering what it is you are going to do.”

  She was a tall, elegant woman, older than himself, and wearing a soft blouse with her white hair pinned from her face into a plait. He wondered if Queenie’s hair had lost its color. Whether she had grown it like this woman, or cut it short like Maureen. “Is that frightfully rude?” she said.

  Harold assured her it wasn’t, but to his horror the room was silent again.

  The second woman was altogether plumper, with a string of round pearls at her neck. “We have a terrible habit of listening to other people’s conversations,” she said. She laughed.

  “We really shouldn’t,” they said to the guests in general. They spoke with the same cut-glass loud accent Maureen’s mother had used. Harold found himself squinting in an effort to find the vowels.

  “I think a hot air balloon,” said one.

  “I think a wild swim,” said the other.

  Everyone looked expectantly at Harold. He took a deep breath. If he heard the sound of the words coming from his mouth enough times, maybe he would feel like the sort of person who could get up and do something about them.

  “I am walking,” he said. “I am walking to Berwick-upon-Tweed.”

  “Berwick-upon-Tweed?” said the tall lady.

  “That must be about five hundred miles,” said her companion.

  Harold had no idea. He had not yet dared to work it out. “Yes,” he agreed, “although it’s probably more if you are hoping to avoid the M5.” He reached for his teacup and failed to pick it up.

  The family man in the corner glanced toward the businessman and his lips buckled into a grin. Harold wished he hadn’t seen but he had; and they were right, of course. He was ridiculous. Old people should retire and sit at home.

  “Have you been training for long?” said the tall lady.

  The businessman folded over his newspaper and leaned forward, waiting for the reply. Harold wondered if he could lie, but knew in his heart he wouldn’t. He also felt that the women’s kindness was somehow making him more pitiful, so that instead of feeling certain he felt only shame.

  “I’m not a walker. It’s more a spur of the moment decision. A thing I must do for someone else. She has cancer.”

  The younger hotel heads stared, as if he had broken into a foreign language.

  “Do you mean a religious walk?” said the plump lady helpfully. “A pilgrimage?”

  She turned to her friend, who quietly began to sing “He Who Would Valiant Be.” Her voice rose, pure and certain, while her slim face pinkened. Again, Harold wasn’t sure if it was for the benefit of the room in general or her friend; but it seemed rude to interrupt. She fell silent and smiled. Harold smiled too, but this was because he had no idea what to say next.

  “So she knows you’re walking?” said the family man in the far corner. He wore a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt and his arms and chest sprouted curls of dark hair. He leaned back expansively, rocking on the back legs of his chair, the way Maureen used to reprimand David for doing. You could feel his doubt all the way across the breakfast lounge.

  “I left a telephone message. I also sent a letter.”

  “That’s all?”

  “There wasn’t much time for anything else.”

  The businessman pinned Harold with his cynical expression. It was clear he also saw straight through him.

  “There were two young men who set out from India,” said the plump woman. “It was a peace march in 1968. They went to the four nuclear corners of the world. They took tea and asked the heads of state that if ever they were on the verge of pressing the red button, they should brew a pot first and reflect.” Her friend nodded her head brightly.

  The room seemed hot and closed in and Harold longed for air. He stroked the length of his tie, reassuring himself of his own presence, but he felt he was all the wrong shape. “He’s awfully tall,” his Aunty May had said of him once, as if this were something you could rectify, like a leaking tap. Harold wished he had not talked to the hotel guests about the walk. He wished no one had mentioned religion. He didn’t object to other people believing in God, but it was like being in a place where everyone knew a set of rules and he didn’t. After all, he had tried it once, and found no relief. And now the two kind ladies were talking about Buddhists and world peace and he was nothing to do with those things. He was a retired man who had set out with a letter.

  He said, “A long time ago my friend and I worked together. It was my job to check the pubs were running smoothly. She was in the financial department. Sometimes we visited them together, and I gave her a lift.” His heart was pounding so fast that he felt unwell. “She did something for me and now she is dying. I don’t want her to die. I want her to keep living.”

  The nudity of his words took him by surprise, as if it were Harold himself who was wearing no clothes. He looked down at his lap, and the room fell once more into silence. Now that he had conjured her into his mind, Harold wanted to linger with the image of Queenie, but he was too acutely aware of everyone in the room scrutinizing him and doubting what they saw, and so the memory of her slipped away, just as the real woman had done all those years ago. Briefly he remembered the empty seat at her desk, and how he had stood beside it, waiting, not believing she had gone and wouldn’t come back. He wasn’t hungry anymore. He was about to step out for fresh air when the waitress swooped out of the kitchen, bearing a full fried breakfast. Harold ate all that he could but it wasn’t much. He chopped the bacon rasher and sausage into scraps and hid them in a tidy line beneath his knife and fork, like David used to; and then he retired.

  Back in his room, Harold attempted to smooth the sheets and floral quilt over the bed the way Maureen would. He wanted to clear himself away. At the sink, he dampened his hair and patted it to one side, and picked at the bits on his teeth with his forefinger. Reflected in the mirror, he could see traces of his father. It wasn’t just in the blue of his eyes but in the set of his mouth, slightly protruded, as if he were permanently storing something behind his lower lip, and in the expanse of his forehead where once there had been a fringe. He peered a little closer, trying to believe he could find his mother too but, apart from her height, she had left no trace of herself.

  Harold was an old man. Not a walker, let alone a pilgrim. Who was he hoping to fool? He had spent his adult life sitting in confined spaces. His skin stretched like a million tessellations over tendons and bones. He thought of all the miles between himself and Queenie, and Maureen’s reminder that the farthest he had ever walked was to the car. He thought too of the Hawaiian shirt laughing, and the businessman’s skepticism. They were right. He didn’t know the first thing about exercise, or Ordnance Survey maps, or even the open land. He should pay his bill and take the bus home. He closed the bedroom door without making any noise, and it was like saying goodbye to something he hadn’t even started. As Harold crept downstairs to the reception area, his shoes on the carpet made no noise at all.

  He was replacing his wallet in his back pocket when the door of the breakfast lounge burst open. The waitress emerged, followed by the two gray ladies and the businessman.

  “We were worrying you’d left,” said the waitress, smoothing her red hair and slightly out of breath.

  “We wanted to say bon voyage,” piped up the plump lady.

  “I do hope you make it,” said her tall friend.

  The businessman pressed his card into Harold’s palm. “If you make it as far as Hexham, you should look me up.”


  They believed in him. They had looked at him in his yachting shoes, and listened to what he said, and they had made a decision in their hearts and minds to ignore the evidence and to imagine something bigger and something infinitely more beautiful than the obvious. Remembering his own doubt, Harold was humbled. “That is so kind,” he said softly. He shook their hands and thanked them. The waitress nipped her face toward his and kissed the air above his ear.

  It was possible that as Harold turned to leave, the businessman snorted or even grimaced, and it was also possible that from the breakfast lounge came a shout of laughter, followed by a suppressed giggle. But Harold did not dwell on that; such was his gratitude, he heard and laughed with them. “I’ll see you in Hexham,” he promised, and threw a large wave as he strode toward the road.

  The pewter sea lay behind, while ahead of him was all the land that led to Berwick, where once again there would be sea. He had started; and in doing so Harold could already see the end.

  Harold and the Barman and the Woman with Food

  IT WAS A perfect spring day. The air was sweet and gentle and the sky stretched high, an intense blue. Harold was certain that the last time he had peered through the net drapes of Fossebridge Road, the trees and hedges were dark bones and spindles against the skyline; yet now that he was out, and on his feet, it was as if everywhere he looked, the fields, gardens, trees, and hedgerows had exploded with growth. A canopy of sticky young leaves clung to the branches above him. There were startling yellow clouds of forsythia, trails of purple aubrietia; a young willow shook in a fountain of silver. The first of the potato shoots fingered through the soil, and already tiny buds hung from the gooseberry and currant shrubs like the earrings Maureen used to wear. The abundance of new life was enough to make him giddy.

  With the hotel behind him, and few cars on the road, it occurred to Harold how vulnerable he was, a single figure, without his mobile phone. If he fell, or if someone sprang out of the bushes, who would hear his cries? A cracking of branches sent him scurrying forward, only to look back, with his heart wildly beating, and discover a pigeon regaining its balance in a tree. As time passed and he found his rhythm, he began to feel more certain. England opened beneath his feet, and the feeling of freedom, of pushing into the unknown, was so exhilarating he had to smile. He was in the world by himself and nothing could get in the way or ask him to mow the lawn.

  Beyond the hedgerows, the land fell away to his left and right. A small copse of trees had been shaped by the wind into a quiff. He thought of his own thick hair when he was a teenager, slicked to a peak every day with gel.

  He would head north toward South Brent, where he would find modest accommodation for the night. From there, he would follow the A38 to Exeter. He couldn’t recall the exact mileage, but in the old days he would allow a comfortable hour and twenty minutes for the drive. Harold walked the single-track lanes, and the walls of hedgerow were so dense and high, it was like journeying through a trench. It surprised Harold how fast and angry cars seemed when you were not in one. He took off his waterproof jacket and folded it over his arm.

  He and Queenie must have driven this way countless times, and yet he had no memory of the scenery. He must have been so caught up in the day’s agenda, and arriving punctually at their destination, that the land beyond the car had been no more than a wash of one green, and a backdrop of one hill. Life was very different when you walked through it. Between gaps in the banks, the land rolled up and down, carved into checkered fields, and lined with ridges of hedging and trees. He had to stop to look. There were so many shades of green Harold was humbled. Some were almost a deep velvety black, others so light they verged on yellow. Far away the sun caught a passing car, maybe a window, and the light trembled across the hills like a fallen star. How was it he had never noticed all this before? Pale flowers, the name of which he didn’t know, pooled the foot of the hedgerows, along with primroses and violets. He wondered if, all those years ago, Queenie had looked out from her passenger window and seen these things.

  “This car smells of sugar,” Maureen had said once, pulling at the air with her nostrils. “Violet sweets.” He had taken care after that to drive home at night with the windows open.

  When he arrived in Berwick, he would buy a bouquet. He pictured himself striding into the hospice, and Queenie sitting in a pleasant chair by a sunny window, waiting for his arrival. The nursing staff would stop whatever they were doing and watch him pass, and the patients would be cheering, maybe even clapping, because he had come such a long way, of course; and Queenie would be laughing in that quiet way of hers, as she took the flowers in her arms.

  Maureen used to wear a sprig of blossom or an autumn leaf in the buttonhole of her dress. It must have been just after they were married. Sometimes, if there wasn’t a button, she’d slide it over her ear, and the petals would fall into her hair. It was almost funny. He hadn’t thought of that in years.

  A car slowed and drew to a halt. It was so close Harold had to crush his body into the nettles. The windows lowered. There was loud music, but he couldn’t see the faces. “Off to see your girlfriend, Granddad?” Harold gave a thumbs-up, waiting for the stranger to pass. His skin fizzed where it had been stung.

  On he went, one foot in front of the other. Now that he accepted the slowness of himself, he took pleasure in the distance he covered. Far ahead the horizon was no more than a blue brushstroke, pale as water, and unbroken by houses or trees, but sometimes it blurred as if the land and the sky had bled into one another and become matching halves of the same thing. He passed two vans, nose to nose, their drivers arguing over which of them should reverse to a passing point. His body ached for food. He thought of the breakfast he had not eaten and his stomach twisted.

  At the California Cross junction, Harold stopped for an early pub lunch and chose two rounds of ready-made cheese sandwiches from a basket. Three men coated in plaster dust, like ghosts, were discussing a house they were renovating. A few other drinkers glanced up from their pints, but this had never been his patch, and thankfully he knew no one. Harold carried his lunch and lemonade to the door, blinking at the onslaught of light as he stepped out into the beer garden. Lifting the glass to his mouth, a swell of saliva pooled his tongue, and when he dug his teeth into the sandwiches, the nuttiness of the cheese and the sweetness of the bread exploded onto his taste buds with such vigor it was as if he had never eaten before.

  As a boy, he had tried to chew without noise. His father didn’t like to hear him masticate. Sometimes he said nothing, only held his ears and closed his eyes, as if the boy were a pain inside his head; other times he said Harold was a dirty beggar. “Takes one to know one,” his mother would answer, screwing out a cigarette. It was nerves, he heard a neighbor say. The war had made people funny. And sometimes as a boy he had wanted to touch his father; to stand close beside him and know the feeling of an adult arm around his shoulder. Harold had wanted to ask what happened before he was born, and why his father’s hands trembled when he reached for his glass.

  “That boy’s staring at me,” said his father sometimes. His mother would swipe his knuckles, not hard but as if she were brushing off a fly, and say, “Leave off, sonny. Go and play outside.”

  It surprised him that he was remembering all this. Maybe it was the walking. Maybe you saw even more than the land when you got out of the car and used your feet.

  The sun poured like warm liquid on Harold’s head and hands. He removed his shoes and socks under the table, where no one would see or smell them, and examined his feet. The toes were moist and an angry crimson. Where the shoe met his heel the skin had become inflamed; the blister was a tight pod. He paddled the arches of his feet in the soft grass and closed his eyes, feeling tired, but knowing that he mustn’t sleep. It would be difficult to keep going if he stopped for too long.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Harold turned, afraid of finding someone he knew. It was only the landlord, partially eclipsing the sun. He was
as tall as Harold, but of wider build, dressed in a rugby shirt and long shorts, and those sandals that Maureen said looked like Cornish pasties. Harold returned his feet quickly to his yachting shoes.

  “Don’t let me disturb you,” said the landlord, rather loudly, and without moving. In Harold’s experience, publicans often behaved as if it was their responsibility to suggest there was a conversation happening, even in silence, and that it was hugely entertaining. “The nice weather makes people want to do something. Take my wife. First sunny day, she cleans out the kitchen cupboards.”

  Maureen seemed to clean all year round. Houses don’t clean themselves, she’d mutter. Sometimes she cleaned the bits she had just cleaned. It wasn’t like living in a house, but more a question of hovering over the surfaces. He didn’t say that, however. He merely thought it.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” said the landlord. “Are you visiting?”

  Harold explained that he was passing through. He had retired six months ago, he said, from the brewery. He belonged to the old days, when the reps drove out every morning and there was less technology.

  “So you must have known Napier?”

  The question took him unawares. Harold cleared his throat and said Napier had been his boss until he was killed in the car crash five years back.

  “I know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” said the landlord, “but he was a vicious sod. I saw him half kill a man once. We had to pull him off.”

  Harold felt a twisting in his gut. It would be better not to speak about Napier. Instead Harold explained how he had set off with the letter for Queenie, and realized it wasn’t enough. Before the landlord could point it out, he admitted he had no phone, walking boots, or map, and that he probably appeared ridiculous.

  “It’s not a name you hear much, Queenie,” said the landlord. “It’s old-fashioned.”