The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel

by Rachel Joyce

  “At the goose? No. Throw a stone for the dog.”

  “I’d rather hit the goose.”

  Harold ushered Wilf away, and pretended he hadn’t heard that either.

  They talked about Queenie Hennessy, and the small kindnesses she had shown. He described how she could sing backwards, and always liked a riddle. “I don’t think anyone else knew those things about her,” he said. “We told one another things we probably didn’t tell other people. It’s easier when you’re traveling.” He showed the presents he carried for her in his rucksack. The boy particularly liked the paperweight from Exeter Cathedral that glittered when he tipped it upside down. Sometimes Harold found Wilf had taken it from his rucksack and was playing with it, and had to remind him to take care. In turn, Wilf produced further souvenirs. A piece of flint, a spotted guinea-fowl feather, a stone hooped with rings. Once he produced a small garden gnome with a fishing rod that he promised he had found in a bin. Another time he appeared with three pints of milk, insisting they were going free. Harold warned him not to rush as he drank, but the boy did and was sick after ten minutes.

  There were so many offerings, Harold had to leave them behind when Wilf wasn’t looking, taking care to hide them from the dog, who was inclined to retrieve the pebbles at least and return them to Harold’s feet. Sometimes the boy turned to shout about something new he had found, and Harold’s heart flipped over. It could so easily be David.

  Harold and the Pilgrims

  Dear Queenie,

  There has been a surprising turn of events. So many people ask after you.

  Best wishes,

  Harold

  PS. A kind woman at the post office has not charged me for the stamp. She also sends her regards.

  ON HAROLD’S FORTY-SEVENTH day of walking, he was joined by a middle-aged woman and a father of two. Kate suggested she had recently suffered great pain but wished to leave it behind. She was a small woman, dressed in black, who marched with her chin thrust out and slightly upwards, as if she were struggling to see beyond the brim of a floppy hat. Sweat beaded her hairline, and wet half-moons hung beneath her sleeves.

  “She’s fat,” said Wilf.

  “I don’t think you should say that.”

  “She’s still fat.”

  The man called himself Rich, short for Richard; surname Lion. He had been in finances but had got out of the business in his mid-thirties. Since then, he had been “winging it.” Reading about Harold’s journey had filled him with a hope he had not experienced since he was a child. He had packed only a few necessaries and set off. He was a tall man, like Harold, with an assertive voice that had an adenoidal ring. He wore professional boots, camouflage trousers, and a kangaroo-leather bush hat that he had bought online. He carried with him a tent, a sleeping bag, and a Swiss Army knife for emergencies.

  “To be honest with you,” he confided, “I made a big mess of my life. I got laid off and after that I had a bit of a breakdown. My wife left me, and took the kids.” He struck the ground with the sharp blade of his knife. “It’s the boys, Harold. I miss them so much. I want them to see I can do something. You know? I want them to be proud of me. Have you thought about going cross-country?”

  As the newly formed party made their way to Leeds, there were discussions about the route. Rich suggested they should avoid cities and make for the moors. Kate felt they should continue along the A61. What did Harold think? they asked. Uncomfortable with conflict, Harold suggested they were both good ideas, as long as they got to Berwick. He had been alone for so long he found it tiring to be constantly in the company of others. Their questions and their enthusiasm both moved and slowed him. But since they had chosen to walk with him and support Queenie’s cause, he also felt responsible for them, as if he had asked them to join, and, as a consequence, must listen to their different needs and secure their safe passage. Wilf sulked at Harold’s side, hands dug in his pockets, complaining his trainers were too small. Harold had the feeling he used to have with David, wishing he could be more companionable, and fearing that his insecurity might look like arrogance. It took over an hour to find somewhere everyone agreed they were comfortable enough to sleep.

  Within two days, Rich had a problem with Kate. It wasn’t anything she had said exactly, he told Harold; it was more her manner. She behaved as if she thought she was better simply because she had arrived thirty minutes earlier. “And you know what?” said Rich. He was beginning to shout. Harold didn’t know. He just felt got at. “She drove here.” On reaching Harrogate, Kate suggested they should visit the Royal Baths to freshen up. Rich sneered but conceded he could do with spare blades for his knife. Not wanting either, Harold sat in the municipal gardens where he was approached by several well-wishers, asking for news of Queenie. Wilf seemed to disappear.

  By the time the group reconvened, a young widower whose wife had died of cancer was sitting beside Harold. The man explained he wished to accompany them and that in order to gather further public support for Queenie, he would like to do it in a gorilla suit. Before Harold could dissuade him, Wilf reappeared; although he seemed to have difficulty negotiating his passage along the pavement.

  “Jesus wept,” said Rich.

  They made their way slowly. Twice Wilf fell. It also transpired that the gorilla man could only be fed through a straw, and was prone to waves of grief accelerated by heat exhaustion. After half a mile, Harold suggested they should stop for the night.

  He lit the campfire and reminded himself it had taken at least a few days to find his own rhythm. It would be unkind to abandon them, when they had sought him out and made such a commitment to Queenie. He even wondered if her chances of survival would be greater, the more people there were who believed in her and kept walking.

  From this point, others joined. They came for a day, maybe two. If it was sunny, there could be a crowd. Campaigners, ramblers, families, dropouts, tourists, musicians. There were banners, campfires, debates, physical warm-ups, and music. People talked movingly about the loved ones they had lost to cancer; and also the things they regretted from their past. The greater the numbers, the slower they became. Not only must they accommodate the less experienced walkers, but they must also feed them. There were roast potatoes, garlic on sticks, beetroot in foil. Rich had a book about natural foraging and insisted on making hogweed fritters. The daily mileage dropped further. Sometimes it was no more than three.

  Despite its slowness, the group seemed sure of itself in a way that was new to Harold. They told themselves they were no longer an assortment of torsos and feet and heads and hearts but one single energy, bound by Queenie Hennessy. The walk had been an idea inside himself for so long that when other people pledged their belief in it he was touched. More. He knew it could work. If he had known before, he knew it now in a deeper way. They put up tents, unrolled sleeping bags, and slept beneath the sky. They promised Queenie would live. To their left curved the dark peaks of Keighley Moor.

  Within only a few days, however, tensions began to develop. Kate had no time for Rich. He was an egomaniac, she said. In return he called her a bitter cow. Then, during the course of one evening, both the gorilla man and a visiting student slept with the same primary school teacher, and Rich’s attempts to resolve animosity threatened to end in a punch-up. Wilf could not stop trying to convert fellow walkers to God, or asking for prayers to be said for Queenie, and this led to further aggravation. When an amateur walking group pitched up for the night, there were more disagreements: some argued that tents were not in the true spirit of Harold’s journey, some wanted to avoid roads altogether and head toward the more challenging Pennine Way. And what about roadkill? asked Rich, sparking off another round. Harold listened with growing unease. He didn’t mind where people slept, or how they walked. He didn’t mind what they ate. He simply wanted to get to Berwick.

  He was in it now with these other people. After all, they had suffered too in different ways. Wilf still got the shakes at night, and Kate often sat by the fire with te
ars shining on her cheeks. Even Rich, when he spoke of his boys, had to flap open a handkerchief and pretend he had hay fever. No matter how much he regretted their decisions to join him, it was not in Harold’s nature to let his companions down. Sometimes he broke free, and washed himself with water, or took lungfuls of air. He reminded himself there were no rules to his walk. He had been guilty once or twice of believing he understood, only to discover he did not. Maybe it was the same with the pilgrims? Maybe they were the next part of the journey? There were times, he saw, when not knowing was the biggest truth, and you had to stay with that.

  News about the pilgrimage continued to gather momentum as if it had acquired an energy of its own. Word had only to get round that they were approaching and everyone with an Aga began to bake. Kate narrowly missed injury from a woman in a Land Rover hell-bent on delivering a tray of goat’s cheese slices. Rich suggested over the campfire that Harold should begin each meal with a few words about what it meant to be a pilgrim. When Harold declined, Rich offered to speak instead. He wondered if anyone would care to take notes? The gorilla man obliged, although it was difficult to write with a hairy glove and he had to keep asking Rich to stop.

  The press also continued to run testimonies to Harold’s goodness. He did not have time to read the papers, but it seemed that Rich was more up-to-date. A spiritualist in Clitheroe claimed the pilgrim had a golden aura. A young man who’d been on the verge of jumping from the Clifton Suspension Bridge gave a moving account of how Harold had talked him down.

  “But I didn’t go to Bristol,” Harold said. “I went to Bath, and from there to Stroud. I remember it clearly because it was the point when I almost gave up. I never met anyone on a bridge. And I am certain I didn’t talk them down.”

  Rich claimed this was a minor detail. Petty, in fact. “Maybe he didn’t say he was about to commit suicide. But meeting you gave him hope. I expect you’ve forgotten.” Again he reminded Harold that he had to look at the bigger picture; no publicity was bad publicity. It occurred to Harold that even though Rich was forty, and therefore about the right age to be his son, he talked as if it was Harold who was the child. He said that Harold was cornering a rich market. You had to strike while the iron was hot. He also mentioned cherry-picking ideas, and singing from the same hymn sheet, but Harold was getting a headache. He had such a congestion of incoherent images in his mind—cherry trees and hymn sheets and steam irons—that he had to keep stopping in order to work out what exactly it was that Rich was talking about. He wished the man would honor the true meaning of words, instead of using them as ammunition.

  It was already early June, and Wilf’s estranged father gave a moving interview about the courage of his son (“He’s never even met me,” said Wilf). The council of Berwick-upon-Tweed commissioned placards and bunting, to welcome the pilgrims’ arrival. The owner of a corner shop in Ripon accused them of stealing several items, including whiskey.

  Rich called a meeting, during which in no uncertain terms he accused Wilf of theft and suggested he should be sent home. For once, Harold stood up and disagreed; but it pained him to be put in a place of confrontation and he saw he could not do it again. Rich listened with his eyes narrowed into slits so that Harold lost words mid-sentence. Rich finally conceded that Wilf should be given another chance, but he avoided Harold for the rest of the afternoon. Then half the group went down with stomach cramps and temperatures when the boy mistook some violently poisonous mushrooms for the friendly ones that looked disarmingly similar. Just as they were recovering, the abundance of red currants, cherries, and raw gooseberries in their diet brought on a compromising spate of diarrhea. The gorilla man was badly stung while taking notes for Rich when it transpired there was a wasp in his glove. For two days they did not walk at all.

  The horizon was a series of blue peaks that Harold longed to climb. The sun hung high in the eastern sky, leaving the moon so pale it looked made of cloud. If only these people would go. Would find something else to believe in. He shook his head, berating himself for his disloyalty.

  Rich informed the group that something was needed to distinguish the real pilgrims from their followers. He had the solution. He had been in touch with an old friend in PR who owed him a favor. The friend in turn had contacted the distributors of a health drink and they would be delighted to provide all official walkers with T-shirts with the word PILGRIM on the front and back. The T-shirts would be available in white and come in three sizes.

  “White?” Kate scoffed. “Where are we going to wash these things?”

  “White stands out,” said Rich. “And its image is pure.”

  “There speaks a man—and bollocks,” said Kate.

  The company would also provide a limitless supply of healthy fruit drinks. All they wanted in return was for Harold to be seen holding one as often as possible. As soon as the T-shirts arrived, a press call was organized. Harold was to be joined on the A617 by Miss South Devon for the photo shoot.

  Harold said, “I think the others should be in it too. They have made a commitment to the walk as well as me.”

  Rich said that clouded the message about faith for the twenty-first century, and also weakened the Queenie love story.

  “But I was never trying to make a point about those things,” said Harold. “And I love my wife.”

  Rich handed him a fruit drink and reminded him to hold the bottle with the label facing toward the camera. “I’m not asking you to finish it. I just want you to hold the thing. And did I say you’ve been invited to dinner with the mayor?”

  “I’m honestly not very hungry.”

  “You need to take the dog. His wife is something to do with animal welfare.”

  It seemed that people were taking offense if the pilgrims did not visit their town. The mayor of a resort in North Devon gave an interview claiming Harold was “white middle-class elitist,” and Harold was so shaken he felt the need to apologize. He even wondered if he would have to walk home, taking in all the places he had failed to pass en route to Berwick. He admitted to Kate the fruit drinks were playing havoc with his digestive system.

  “But Rich told you,” she said, “you don’t have to drink them. You can throw it away as soon as the photo’s taken.”

  He smiled sadly. “I can’t hold the bottle and remove the lid and then not drink it. I’m a postwar child, Kate. We don’t talk up our achievements, and we don’t throw things away. It’s how we were brought up.”

  Kate reached up her arms and gave him a damp hug.

  He wanted to return it, but he stood rather helpless in her embrace. Maybe that was another symptom of his generation? Certainly he looked at the people around him in their vest tops and their shorts, and wondered if he had become superfluous.

  “What’s troubling you?” she said. “You keep wandering off.”

  Harold straightened himself. “I can’t help feeling this is wrong. All the noise. All the fuss. I appreciate how much everyone has done but I don’t see any more how it’s going to help Queenie. We only covered six miles yesterday. And seven the day before that. I wonder if I should go.”

  Kate swung round very suddenly, as if she had received some sort of blow to her chin. “Go?”

  “Get back on the road.”

  “Without us?” she said. There was panic in her eyes. “You can’t. You can’t leave us. Not now.”

  Harold nodded.

  “Promise me.” She gripped his arm. The gold of her wedding ring caught the sunlight.

  “Of course I won’t go without you.” They walked on in silence. He wished he had not mentioned his doubts. It was clear she had no room for them.

  Yet despite his promise, Harold remained troubled. They had good periods of walking but—with illness and injury and so much public support—it took almost two weeks to cover sixty miles; they were not yet in Darlington. He imagined Maureen seeing pictures of him in the newspapers and he was ashamed. He wondered what she thought when she saw them. If she thought him a fool.

&n
bsp; One night, as supporters and well-wishers took out guitars and began to sing by the fire, Harold fetched his rucksack and slipped away. The sky was so clear and black, it throbbed with stars, and the moon was losing its fullness once more. He thought back to the night he had slept in the barn near Stroud. No one knew the real truth about why he was walking to Queenie. They had made assumptions. They thought it was a love story, or a miracle, or an act of beauty, or even bravery, but it was none of those things. The discrepancy between what he knew and what other people believed frightened him. It also made him feel, as he looked back at the camp, that even in the midst of them he was unknown. The fire was a glow of light in the blackness. Voices and laughter came to him, and they were all strangers.

  He could keep walking. There was nothing to stop him. Yes, he had made a promise to Kate but his loyalty to Queenie was greater. After all, he had everything he needed. His shoes. The compass. Queenie’s gifts. He could take a more indirect route, across the hills perhaps, and avoid people altogether. His pulse quickened as his feet drove forward. He could walk the nights. The dawns again. He could be in Berwick in weeks.

  Then he heard Kate’s voice, thin against the night air, calling his name, and the dog barking at her feet. He heard other voices—some he recognized, some he didn’t—all shouting “Harold” into the darkness. His loyalty to them was not the same as his loyalty to Queenie, but they deserved more than to be abandoned without so much as an explanation. Slowly he returned.

  Rich emerged out of the shadows just as Harold hit the circle of soft light from the fire. Rich stumbled toward him and bundled Harold in his arms.

  “We thought you’d gone.”

  His voice shook. He had maybe been drinking. There was certainly the smell of it. Rich clung so hard that Harold lost his balance and almost fell.