The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel

by Rachel Joyce

  Over the years, she had asked David many times if she could have done more; but he had reassured her. After all, it was she who had underlined suitable vacancies in the jobs section of the newspaper. It was she who had fixed the doctor’s appointment and driven him there. Maureen remembered how he dropped the prescription into her lap, as if it were nothing to do with him. There was Prothiaden for the depression and Diazepam to decrease anxiety, and then there was Temazepam if he still couldn’t sleep at night.

  “That’s an awful lot,” she had said, scrambling to her feet. “What did the doctor say to you? What does he think?”

  He had shrugged and lit another cigarette.

  But at least after that there had been an improvement. She listened out at night but it seemed he was sleeping. He no longer got up to eat breakfast at four in the morning. He no longer went for night walks in his dressing gown, or filled the house with the sick-sweet smell of his roll-ups. David was certain he would find a job.

  She saw him again the day he decided to interview for the army, and took it upon himself to shave his scalp. There were curls of his long hair all over the bathroom. There were nicks in the skin where his hand had trembled and the razor slipped. The barbarity inflicted on that poor head, that poor head she loved to distraction, had made her want to scream.

  Maureen lowered herself onto the bed, and dropped her face in her hands. What more could they have done?

  “Oh Harold.” She fingered the coarse tweed of his English gentleman’s jacket.

  An urge came over her to do something completely different. It was like a shock of energy right through her, forcing her once more to her feet. She took out the shrimp garment she had worn for the graduation and hung it at the center of the rail. Then she took Harold’s jacket and arranged it on a hanger beside the dress. They looked lonely and too apart. She scooped up his sleeve, and draped it over the pink shoulder.

  After that she paired each of her outfits with one of his. She tucked the cuff of her blouse in his blue suit pocket. A skirt hem she looped around a trouser leg. Another dress she wrapped in the embrace of his blue cardigan. It was as if lots of invisible Maureens and Harolds were loitering in her wardrobe, simply waiting for the opportunity to step out. It made her smile, and then it made her cry; but she didn’t change them back.

  She was interrupted by the sound of Rex’s Rover drawing up outside. Soon afterwards, she was aware of a scraping sound from her front garden. Lifting the net curtains, she found he had marked rectangles of turf with string and posts, and that he was cutting into them with his spade.

  He waved up at her. “If we’re lucky, we might be in time for runner beans.”

  Wearing an old shirt of Harold’s, Maureen planted twenty small shoots and tied them to bamboo stakes without damaging their soft green stems. She patted the soil at their roots, and watered them. At first she watched in fear, lest they be pecked by seagulls or killed by a May frost. But after only a day or so of constant watching, her worry subsided. In time, the plants thickened at the stems, and grew new leaves. She planted rows of lettuce, beetroot, and carrots. She cleared the rubble from the ornamental pond.

  It was good to feel the soil inside her nails, and to nurture something again.

  Harold and the Decision

  “GOOD AFTERNOON. I am ringing about a patient called Queenie Hennessy. She sent me a letter just over four weeks ago.”

  On the twenty-sixth day, and six miles south of Stroud, Harold decided to stop. He had retraced the five miles to Bath, and kept walking from there for a further four days along the A46, but the mistake he had made about his direction deeply disturbed him, and the going was hard. Hedgerows reduced to ditches, and dry stone walls. The land opened out, and stretched to the left and right. Giant pylons marched as far as he could see. He observed these things but felt no interest as to why they occurred. Whichever way he looked at it, the road was something that never stopped, and never yielded its promise. It took every scrap of himself to keep moving when he knew in his heart he could not make it.

  Why had he wasted so much time, looking at the sky and the hills, and talking to people, and thinking about life, and remembering, when all along he could have been in a car? Of course he couldn’t do it in yachting shoes. Of course Queenie couldn’t keep living, just because he’d told her to do so. Every day, the sky hung low and white, lit by a silvery spoke of sunlight. He lowered his head so that he would not see the birds swooping overhead, or the traffic passing in a flash. He felt more lonely and left behind than he would have done up a faraway mountain.

  In making his decision, he wasn’t only thinking of himself. There was Maureen too. He missed her more and more. He knew he had lost her love, but it was wrong to walk out and leave her to pick up the pieces; already he had caused her too much sorrow. And there was David. In the days since Bath, Harold had felt a painfully long distance from him. He missed them both.

  Finally there was the money. The guesthouses had been cheap, but all the same he couldn’t afford to keep spending like this. He had checked his account at the bank, and been shocked. If Queenie was still alive, and if she was interested in a visit, he would take the train. He could be in Berwick by the evening.

  The woman on the other end of the line said, “Have you rung before?” He wondered if she was the same nurse with whom he had left his original message. This voice was Scottish, he thought, or was it Irish? He was too tired to know.

  “Could I talk to Queenie?”

  “I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t.”

  It was like hitting a wall he hadn’t seen. “Is she—?” His chest was smarting. “Is she—?” He couldn’t say it.

  “Are you the gentleman who was traveling by foot?”

  Harold swallowed something sharp. He said that yes, he was. He apologized.

  “Mr. Fry, Queenie had no family. No friends. When people have no one to stay for, they tend to pass quickly. We have been hoping for your call.”

  “I see.” He could barely speak. He could only listen. Even his blood was still and cold.

  “After you rang, we all noticed the change in Queenie. It was very marked.”

  He saw a body on a stretcher, stiff with not living. He felt what it was to be too late to make a difference. He said with a hoarse whisper, “Yes.” And then, since she said nothing, he said again, “Well, of course.” He slumped his forehead against the glass of the booth, followed by his palms, and closed his eyes. If only it was simple to stop feeling.

  The woman gave a fluttery noise, like a laugh, but it surely couldn’t be. “We’ve never seen anything like it. Some days she sits up. She shows us all your postcards.”

  Harold shook his head, not understanding. “I’m sorry?”

  “She’s waiting, Mr. Fry. Like you said she should.”

  A cry of joy shot out of him, and took him by surprise. “She’s alive? She’s getting better?” He laughed, not meaning to, but it grew bigger, spilling out in waves as tears moistened his cheeks. “She’s waiting for me?” He threw open the door of the kiosk and punched the air.

  “When you rang and told us about your walk, I was afraid you’d misunderstood the gravity of things. But, you see, I was wrong. It’s a rather unusual kind of healing. I don’t know how you came up with it. But maybe it’s what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.”

  “Yes. Yes.” He was still laughing. He couldn’t stop.

  “May I ask how the journey is going?”

  “Good. Very good. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I stayed in Old Sodbury. I also passed Dunkirk. Now I believe I am in Nailsworth.” Even that was funny. The voice was chuckling too.

  “One wonders where these names all come from. When should we expect you?”

  “Let me think.” Harold blew his nose, and mopped the last of his crying away. He looked to his watch, wondering how quickly he could get a train, and how many different connections it would take. Then once again he pictured the space b
etween himself and Queenie: the hills, the roads, the people, the sky. He saw them as he had done on that first afternoon, but now there was a difference; he placed the image of himself among them. He was a little broken, a little tired, his back to the world, but he wouldn’t let Queenie down. “In about three weeks. Possibly more or indeed less.”

  “Goodness.” The voice laughed. “I’ll tell her that.”

  “And tell her not to give up. Tell her I will keep walking.” He was laughing again because she was.

  “I’ll tell her that too.”

  “Even when she is afraid, she must wait. She must keep living.”

  “I believe she will. God bless you, Mr. Fry.”

  For the rest of the afternoon Harold walked, and into the dusk. The violent doubt he had felt before phoning Queenie was gone. He had escaped a great danger. There were miracles after all. If he had got on a train or in a car, he would be on his way, believing he was right, but all the time it would be wrong. He had nearly given up, but something else had happened, and he kept going. He wouldn’t try to give up again.

  The road led from Nailsworth, past the old mill buildings, and into the outskirts of Stroud. As it dipped toward the center, he passed a row of red-brick terraced houses, one with scaffolding and ladders and a dumpster of building rubble parked in the road. A shape caught his eye. On stopping and pushing aside several pieces of plywood, he found a sleeping bag. He gave it a shake to blow off the dust, and although it was ripped and the padding bulged like a soft white tongue from the hole, the tear was only superficial and the zipper was still intact. Harold rolled the sleeping bag into a bundle and walked to the house. There were already lights downstairs.

  When he heard Harold’s story, the owner called his wife, and they also offered a fold-up chair, a tea maker, and a yoga mat. Harold assured them the sleeping bag was more than enough.

  The wife said, “I do hope you’ll be careful. Only last week, our local petrol station was held up by four men with guns.”

  Harold said he was vigilant, although he had come to trust in the basic goodness of people. The dusk deepened and settled like a layer of fur on the outlines of the roofs and trees.

  He watched the squares of buttery light inside the houses, and people going about their business. He thought of how they would settle in their beds and try to sleep through their dreams. It struck him again how much he cared, and how relieved he was that they were somehow safe and warm, while he was free to keep walking. After all, it had always been this way; that he was a little apart. The moon drew into focus, full and high, like a silver coin emerging through water.

  He tried the door to a shed but it was padlocked. He rooted around in a sports field, but there was no proper shelter, and then a building under construction where the windows were secured with plastic sheeting. He didn’t want to go where he was not welcome. Swaths of cloud shone against the sky like a black and silver mackerel. The road and rooftops were bathed in softest blue.

  Following a steep hill, he came to a mud track ending in a barn. There were no dogs or cars. The roof was made of corrugated iron, and so were three of its sides, but the fourth had been secured by a sheet of tarpaulin, which was light against the moon. He lifted a lower corner and stooped to step inside. The air smelled both sweet and dry, and the silence was padded.

  Hay bales were piled one on top of the other, some low and others reaching as high as the rafters. He climbed up; it was easier to gain a footing in the dark than he had imagined. The hay creaked under his yachting shoes, and was soft beneath his hands. At the top he unrolled his sleeping bag and knelt to unzip the side. He lay very still, although it worried him that later his head and nose might feel the cold. Rooting through the rucksack, he found the soft wool of Queenie’s knitted beret. She wouldn’t mind his borrowing it. From the opposite side of the valley the house lights trembled.

  Harold’s mind grew limpid, and his body melted. Rain began to patter on the roof and against the tarpaulin, but it was a gentle sound, full of patience, like Maureen singing David to sleep when he was little. When the sound stopped he missed it, as if it had become part of what he knew. He felt there was no longer anything substantial between himself and the earth and the sky.

  Harold woke in the early hours before dawn. He eased himself up on one elbow and watched through the gaps, while the day fought against the night and light seeped into the horizon, so pale it was without color. Birds burst into song as the distance began to emerge and the day grew more confident; the sky moved through gray, cream, peach, indigo, and into blue. A soft tongue of mist crept the length of the valley floor so that the hilltops and houses seemed to rise out of cloud. Already the moon was a wispy thing.

  He had done it. He had spent his first night outside. Harold felt a rush of incredulity that quickly became joy. Stamping his feet and blowing into his cupped hands, he wished he could tell David what he had achieved. The air was drenched with such birdsong and life, it was like standing in rain. He rolled his sleeping bag tightly, and got back to his walking.

  He kept going all day, stooping for springwater when he found it, and drinking in palmfuls that tasted cold and clear. From a roadside stall, he stopped to buy coffee and a kebab. When he told the vendor about his walk, the man insisted he should not pay. His mother was in remission from cancer too; it was his pleasure to give Harold a meal. In return Harold offered the bottle of spa water from Bath. There would be more along the way. He passed Slad, where a woman with a kind face looked down from a top-floor window and smiled; and from there to Birdlip. The sun sparkled through the leaves of Cranham Woods and poured onto the beech carpet in a trembling filigree of light. He spent his second night in the open, making an empty woodshed his shelter, and the following day he made his way toward Cheltenham, with the Vale of Gloucester falling to his left like a giant bowl.

  Far away the Black Mountains and the Malvern Hills straddled the horizon. He could make out the roofs of factories, and the hazy outline of Gloucester Cathedral, and the tiny shapes that must be people’s houses and cars. There was so much out there, so much life, going about its daily business of getting by, of suffering and fighting, and not knowing he was sitting up there, watching. Again he felt in a profound way that he was both inside and outside what he saw; that he was both connected, and passing through. Harold began to understand that this was also the truth about his walk. He was both a part of things, and not.

  In order to succeed he must remain true to the feeling that had inspired him in the first place. It didn’t matter that other people would do it in a different way; in fact this was inevitable. He would keep to the roads because, despite the odd fast car, he felt safer there. It didn’t matter that he had no mobile phone. It didn’t matter that he had not planned his route, or brought a road map. He had a different map, and that was the one in his mind, made up of all the people and places he had passed. He would also stick to his yachting shoes because, despite the wear and tear, they were his. He saw that when a person becomes estranged from the things they know, and is a passerby, strange things take on a new significance. And knowing this, it seemed important to allow himself to be true to the instincts that made him Harold, as opposed to anyone else.

  These things made complete sense. Why then was there something remaining that troubled him? He slipped his hands in his pockets and jingled the loose change.

  The kindness of the woman with food came back to him, and that of Martina. They had offered him comfort and shelter, even when he was afraid of taking them, and in accepting he had learned something new. It was as much of a gift to receive as it was to give, requiring as it did both courage and humility. He thought of the peace he had found, lying in the sleeping bag in a barn. Harold let these things play in his mind while below him the land melted as far as the sky. Suddenly he knew. He knew what he must do in order to get to Berwick.

  In Cheltenham, Harold donated his washing powder to a student going into the launderette. Passing a woman from Prestbury who c
ouldn’t find her key in her bag, he offered his wind-up torch. The following day, he gave his plasters and antiseptic cream to the mother of a distressed child with a bleeding knee, and also his comb by way of distraction. The guide to Britain he handed to a bewildered German couple who were lost near Cleeve Hill and, since he knew the plant dictionary by heart, he suggested they might like that too. He rewrapped the gifts for Queenie: the pot of honey, the rose quartz, the glittering paperweight, the Roman key ring, and the wool hat. He parceled up the recent souvenirs for Maureen and took them to a post office. The compass and the rucksack he kept, because they were not his to give away.

  He would make his way to Broadway, via Winchcombe; from there to Mickleton, Clifford Chambers, and then Stratford-on-Avon.

  Two days later, Maureen was coiling her bean plants against stakes when she was called to the gate to receive a parcel. Inside she found a new selection of gifts, as well as Harold’s wallet, watch, and a postcard showing a woolly Cotswold sheep.