The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel

by Rachel Joyce

  He had written,

  Dear Maureen,

  Please find enclosed my debit card, etc. I am going to walk without so many things. If I keep it simple, I know I can get there. I think of you often.

  H.

  She climbed the slope to the front door without noticing that she had feet.

  Maureen stowed the wallet in his bedside drawer, beneath the photographs of herself and David. The postcard she pinned to Rex’s map.

  “Oh Harold,” she said softly. And she wondered if, despite the increasing distance between them, he somehow heard.

  Harold and the Walk

  IT HAD NEVER been such a beautiful May. Every day the sky shone a peerless blue, untouched by cloud. Already, the gardens were crammed with lupins, roses, delphiniums, honeysuckle, and lime clouds of lady’s mantle. Insects cricked, hovered, bumbled, and whizzed. Harold passed fields of buttercups, poppies, ox-eye daisies, clover, vetch, and campion. The hedgerows were sweetly scented with bowing heads of elderflower, and wound through with wild clematis, hops, and dog roses. The allotments too were burgeoning. There were rows of lettuce, spinach, chard, beetroot, early new potatoes, and wigwams of peas. The first of the gooseberries hung like hairy green pods. Gardeners left out boxes of surplus produce for passersby, with a sign: HELP YOURSELF.

  Harold knew that he had found his way. He told the story about Queenie, and the garage girl, and he asked strangers if they would be so good as to help. In return, he listened. He might be offered a sandwich, or a bottle of water, or a fresh set of plasters. He never took more than he needed, and gently refused lifts, or walking equipment, or extra packages of food to keep him going. Snapping a pea pod from a curling stem, he ate it greedily, like sweets. The people he met, the places he passed, were all steps in his journey, and he kept a place inside his heart for each of them.

  After the night in the barn, Harold continued to sleep outside. He chose dry places, and was always careful not to upset things. He washed in public lavatories, fountains, and streams. He rinsed his clothes where no one was watching. He thought of that half-forgotten world lived in houses and streets and cars, where people ate three times a day, slept by night, and kept each other company. He was glad they were safe, and he was glad too that he was at last outside them.

  Harold took the A roads, B roads, lanes, and tracks. The compass quivered northward and he followed. He went by day or by night, as the mood took him; mile after mile after mile. If the blisters were bad, he bound them with duct tape. He slept when the need for it came, and then he returned to his feet and walked again. He went under the stars, and the tender light of the moon, when it hung like an eyelash and the tree trunks shone like bones. He walked through wind and weather, and beneath sun-bleached skies. It seemed to Harold that he had been waiting all his life to walk. He no longer knew how far he had come, but only that he was going forward. The pale Cotswold stone became the red brick of Warwickshire, and the land flattened into middle England. Harold reached his hand to his mouth to brush away a fly, and felt a beard growing in thick tufts. Queenie would live. He knew it.

  And yet the strangest part in all this was that a driver might overtake him, and briefly observe an old fellow in shirt and tie, perhaps a pair of yachting shoes, and see no more than another man, off down the road. It was so funny, and he was so happy, so much at one with the land beneath his feet, he could laugh and laugh with the simplicity of it.

  From Stratford he made his way to Warwick. South of Coventry, Harold met a convivial young man with soft blue eyes, and sideburns that curled below his cheekbones. He told Harold his name was Mick and bought him a lemonade. Proffering his beer glass, he toasted Harold’s courage. “So you put yourself at the mercy of strangers?” he said.

  Harold smiled. “No. I’m careful. I don’t hang about in city centers at night. I avoid trouble. But on the whole the kind of people who stop to listen are the kind of people who are going to help. There have been one or two moments when I was afraid. I thought a man on the A439 was going to mug me, but he was actually about to offer me an embrace. He had lost his wife to cancer. I misjudged him because he was missing his front teeth.” He saw his fingers against the lemonade glass, and how dark they were; the nails chipped and brown.

  “And you really believe you will make it to Berwick?”

  “I don’t push it and I don’t hang about. If I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it stands to reason that I’m going to get there. I’ve begun to think we sit far more than we’re supposed to.” He smiled. “Why else would we have feet?”

  The young man licked his lips, as if he was savoring the taste of something that was not yet in his mouth. “What you’re doing is a pilgrimage for the twenty-first century. It’s awesome. Yours is the kind of story people want to hear.”

  “Do you think I could trouble you for a packet of salt and vinegar crisps?” said Harold. “I haven’t eaten since lunchtime.”

  Before they parted, Mick asked if he might take Harold’s photograph on his mobile phone: “Just to remember you.” Concerned the flash might upset several local men playing darts, he said, “Could you manage it outside where I can get you on your own?”

  He told Harold to stand beneath a sign that pointed northwest toward Wolverhampton. “It’s not where I’m going,” said Harold, but Mick said that the small detail wouldn’t show up, what with the dark.

  “Look at me as if you are shagged out,” said Mick.

  Harold found this came very easily.

  Bedworth. Nuneaton. Twycross. Ashby de la Zouch. Through Warwickshire, the western fringes of Leicestershire and into Derbyshire; on he went. There were days when he covered over thirteen miles, and others where the built-up streets confounded him, and he walked fewer than six. The skies turned from blue to black to blue. The soft hills rolled between the industrial cities and towns.

  It came as a surprise when he reached Ticknall that two hikers stared point-blank. South of Derby, a cab driver passed Harold with his thumbs up, and a busker wearing a purple jester’s hat stopped playing his accordion and grinned. In Little Chester, a golden-haired girl offered him a box of fruit juice, and hugged his knees, full of joy. A day later, in Ripley, a group of morris dancers appeared to put down their beers and cheer.

  Alfreton. Clay Cross. The silhouette of the crooked spire of Chesterfield announced the start of the Peak District. At a drop-in coffee morning in Dronfield, a man offered Harold his willow cane, and squeezed his shoulder. Seven miles on, a shop assistant in Sheffield pressed her mobile into his hand so that he might ring home. Maureen assured him she was well, although there had been a small problem with a leaking showerhead. After that she asked if he’d seen the news.

  “No, Maureen. I haven’t seen a paper since the day I set off. What is it?”

  He couldn’t be sure but he thought she gave a small sob. Then she said, “Well, you’re the news, Harold. You and Queenie Hennessy. You seem to be all over the place.”

  Maureen and the Publicist

  AFTER HAROLD’S STORY was reported in the Coventry Telegraph, there was not a morning in Fossebridge Road that passed without event. It had come on a slack news day. Mentioned on a phone-in radio program, it was taken up by several local newspapers, including the South Hams Gazette, where it was given the front three pages. It was then reported in one or two of the nationals, and suddenly no one could get enough. Harold’s walk became the theme of Thought for the Day on Radio 4, and spawned leading articles about the nature of the modern pilgrimage, quintessential England, and the pluck of the Saga generation. People talked about it in shops, playgrounds, parks, pubs, parties, and offices. The story had caught the imagination, just as Mick had promised his editor it would, although as it spread its details began to shift and grow. Some people reported that Harold was in his early seventies, others that he had learning difficulties. Sightings were made of him in Cornwall and Inverness, as well as Kingston upon Thames and the Peak District. There was a handful of journalists wa
iting on Maureen’s crazy paving, and a local television crew lodged beyond Rex’s privet hedge. If you had the wherewithal, you could even follow his journey on Twitter. Maureen hadn’t the wherewithal.

  What shocked her most when she looked at his photograph in the local paper was how changed he had become. It was just over six weeks since he had set out to post his letter but he looked unfeasibly tall, and at ease with himself. He still wore his waterproof jacket and tie, but his hair tangled in a mop on top of his head, a mottled beard sprang from his chin, and his skin was so dark she had to keep staring at the photograph to find traces of the man she thought she knew.

  “The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry” read the caption. The article described how a retired man from Kingsbridge (also home to Miss South Devon), in walking to Berwick without money, phone, or maps, was proving himself a hero for the twenty-first century. It ended with a smaller photograph captioned “The feet that would walk five hundred miles,” and showed a pair of yachting shoes similar to Harold’s. Apparently they were enjoying record sales.

  The trail of blue thread crept its passage on Rex’s map north from Bath, in a route that touched Sheffield. She calculated that if he kept going at this pace, he might reach Berwick within weeks. And yet despite his success, despite also the flourishing of her garden, and the friendship with Rex, not to mention the letters of support that arrived from well-wishers and cancer victims every day in the post, there were times when Maureen felt bereft. They seemed to come at her from nowhere. She could be making a pot of tea, and suddenly the solitariness of her single cup would make her want to scream. She never told Rex, but on those occasions she returned to the bedroom, drew the curtains, and, lying under the duvet, she wailed. It would be so easy to stop getting up. To stop washing. To stop eating. Being alone required such constant effort.

  Out of the blue, a young woman rang Maureen to offer her services as a PR representative. She said that people wanted to hear her side of the story.

  “But I don’t have one,” said Maureen.

  “What do you think of what your husband is doing?”

  “I think it must be very tiring.”

  “Is it true there are marital difficulties?”

  “I’m sorry, who did you say you are?”

  The young woman repeated that she worked in human relations. It was her job to present the general public with the most sympathetic picture, and to protect her clients. Maureen interrupted to ask if she minded holding for a moment. There was a photographer standing on her bean plants, and she needed to tap at the window.

  “There are many ways I can help,” said the young lady. She mentioned emotional support, breakfast television interviews, and invitations to B-list parties. “You only need to name what you want, and I can arrange it.”

  “That’s very kind but I’ve never been a party animal.” Some days she didn’t know which was madder: the world inside her head, or the one you read about in the papers and magazines. She thanked the girl for her generous offer. “I’m not sure that I need help, though. Unless, of course, you do ironing?”

  When she told Rex, he laughed. She remembered how the publicity girl hadn’t. They were drinking tea in his front room because Maureen had run out of milk, and there appeared to be a small group of fans waiting outside the garden for news of Harold. They had brought gifts of Dundee cake and hand-knitted socks, but, as she had already explained to several fans, she had no forwarding address.

  “One journalist called it the perfect love story,” she said quietly.

  “Harold isn’t in love with Queenie Hennessy. That’s not what his walk is about.”

  “The publicist asked if we had problems.”

  “You have to have faith in him, Maureen, and in your marriage too. He will be back.”

  Maureen studied the hem of her skirt. The stitching had come loose, and a section flapped free. “But it’s so hard to keep believing, Rex. It actually hurts. I don’t know if he still loves me. I don’t know if he loves Queenie. Some days I think it would be easier if he were dead. At least I’d know where I stood.” She glanced up at Rex, and paled. “That was an awful thing to say.”

  He shrugged. “It’s all right.”

  “I know how much you miss Elizabeth.”

  “I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone, but I still keep looking. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It’s like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it’s there and you keep falling in. After a while, it’s still there, but you learn to walk round it.”

  Maureen bit her lip and nodded. After all, she had known her share of grief. It struck her again what tumult the human heart continues to feel. To a young person passing Rex in the street, he would look like a helpless old man. Out of touch with reality, and all spent. Yet, beneath his waxen skin, and inside his portly frame, there was a heart that beat with the same passion as a teenager’s.

  He said, “Do you know what I most regret about losing her?”

  She shook her head.

  “That I didn’t fight it.”

  “But Elizabeth had a brain tumor, Rex. How could you have fought that?”

  “When the doctors told us she was dying, I held her hand and gave up. We both did. I know it wouldn’t have made any difference in the end, but I wish I had let her see how much I wanted to keep her. I should have raged, Maureen.”

  He sat bent over his cup of tea, as if in prayer. He didn’t look up. He repeated the words with a quiet intensity she had not seen in him before, so that his cup trembled on its saucer. His knuckles were pure bone. “I should have raged.”

  The conversation stayed with Maureen. She grew low again, and spent hours staring out of windows, remembering the past, but doing very little. She considered the young woman she had been, who was so sure she could be everything for Harold, and then she considered the one she had become. Not even a wife. She retrieved the two photographs she had found in his bedside drawer; the one of her laughing in the garden after they were married, and the one of David with his first pair of shoes.

  Something about the second image made her start. She had to look again. It was the hand. The hand supporting David as he balanced on one leg. A cold shiver slipped the length of her spine. The hand was not hers. It was Harold’s.

  It was she who had taken the photograph. Of course. She remembered now. Harold had held David’s hand while she fetched the camera. How had she blocked that piece of the past from her head? For years she had blamed Harold for never holding their son. For not giving him the love a child needs.

  Maureen went to the best room and pulled out the albums that no one looked at. The edges were felted with a layer of dust that she wiped with her skirt. Blotting back tears, she studied every page. They were mostly of herself and David, but tucked among them there were others too. He lay in Harold’s lap as a baby, while his father looked down at him, hands in midair, as if forbidding himself to touch. There was another of David sitting on his father’s shoulders while Harold craned his neck to balance him upright. There was David as a teenager side by side with Harold, the young man in black, and long-haired, the father in jacket and tie, both of them peering over the goldfish pond. She laughed. They had tried for closeness. Not in an obvious way. Not in a way that was everyday. But Harold had wanted it, and even David occasionally. She sat with the album wide open in her lap, and stared into the air, seeing not net curtains but only the past.

  She found again the day at Bantham, when David had swum out into the current. She watched Harold fiddling over his laces, and she thought of the years she had spent rebuking him. And then she saw the image through a new perspective, as if she had turned the camera and pointed it back on herself. Her stomach jumped. There was a woman at the water’s edge, shouting and waving her hands, but not running into the sea. A mother half mad with fright, but doing nothing about it. If David had almost drowned at Bantham, she had been equally to blame.

  The days
that followed were even worse. The photograph albums lay all over the floor of the best room because she couldn’t face putting them back. She put in an early-morning white wash and left it festering all day in the drum of the washing machine. She took to eating cheese and crackers because she couldn’t be bothered to heat a pan of water. She was nothing but the remembering.

  When Harold managed to ring, she could do no more than listen. “Goodness,” she would murmur. Or “Who’d have thought it?” He told her the places where he had rested, the log bunkers, toolsheds, huts, bus shelters, and barns. The words tumbled out of him with such vigor she felt ancient.

  “I take care not to upset anything. And I never force a lock,” he’d say. He knew the name of every hedgerow plant, and also its uses. He recited several, but she couldn’t keep up. Now, he told her, he was learning about natural navigation. He described the people he had met, and how they had fed him or repaired his shoes; even the addicts, drunks, and dropouts. “Nobody is so frightening once you stop and listen, Maureen.” He appeared to have time for them all. He was so bewildering to her, this man who walked alone and greeted strangers, that in turn she said mildly high-pitched things she regretted about bunions, or the weather. She never said, “Harold, I have wronged you.” She never said she had been happy in Eastbourne, or that she wished she had agreed to a dog. She never said, “Is it really too late?” But she thought these things all the time as she listened.

  Left alone, she sat in the cold light of the night sky and cried for what felt like hours, as if she and the solitary moon were the only ones who understood. It wasn’t even in her to talk to David.

  Maureen stared at the streetlights piercing the dark over Kingsbridge. The safe, sleeping world held no place for her. She couldn’t stop thinking of Rex, and how much he still raged for Elizabeth.