The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

by Rachel Joyce

  The pilgrims set up camp, but Harold no longer sat with them while they cooked or planned the next day’s route. Rich had begun hunting for rabbits and birds, which he skinned or plucked and cooked over the flames. The sight of the poor animal, stripped and skewered, made Harold tremble. Besides, there was a hungry wildness in Rich’s eye these days that reminded him of both Napier and his father, and alarmed him. Rich’s PILGRIM T-shirt was smeared with blood. He had taken to wearing a string of small rodent teeth round his neck. They put Harold off his food.

  Tired and increasingly empty, he would stroll through the oncoming night while the crickets creaked and stars pricked the sky. This was the only time he felt free, and connected. He thought of Maureen and Queenie. He remembered the past. Hours could pass and they would seem both like days and no time at all. Returning to the group, some already sleeping, some singing by the campfire, he would feel a cold wave of panic. What was he doing with these people?

  While Harold was out of the way, Rich called a private meeting. He had grave concerns, he said. They were difficult to voice, but someone had to; Queenie couldn’t hang on for much longer. In light of this, he suggested that a reconnaissance party, led by himself, should take an alternative, cross-country route. “I know this is hard for everyone because we love Harold. He’s been a father to me. But the guy is slowing down. His leg’s bad. He wanders off for half the night. And now this fasting. He’s not the man he was—”

  “He’s not fasting,” objected Kate. “You make it sound religious. He’s just not hungry.”

  “Whatever he’s doing, he’s not up to the journey. You’ve gotta call a spade a spade. We need to think how we can help.”

  Kate sucked something stringy and green from a back tooth. “You do talk crap,” she said.

  Wilf yelped with hysterical laughter and the subject was dropped, but Rich sat very quietly for the rest of the evening, slightly apart from the group, chipping at a stick with his penknife, splintering it and sharpening it to a piercing point.

  Harold was woken the following morning by shouts. Rich’s knife had gone. After a thorough search of the field, banks and hedgerows, it was clear that Wilf had gone with it. And so, he discovered, had the glittering paperweight for Queenie Hennessy.

  The gorilla man reported news that Pilgrim Wilf had set up a Facebook page. It already had over a thousand Likes. There were personal anecdotes about his walk, and the people he had saved. There were several prayers. He promised his fans there were more stories to come in the weekend papers.

  “I told you he was no good,” said Rich across the campfire. His eyes pinned Harold through the dark.

  Harold was deeply troubled by the boy’s disappearance. He walked apart from the group and scanned the shadows for signs. In towns, he stared into pubs and gangs of young men, searching for Wilf’s gaunt, sickly face, or listening out for that infuriating yelp of a laugh. He felt he had let the boy down, and that this was how it always was with Harold. Once again, he slept badly at nights, and sometimes he did not sleep at all.

  “You look tired,” said Kate. They had moved a little distance from the group and were sitting in a brick tunnel by a stream. The water was still and thick, more like green velvet than fluid. Further along the banks, there was water mint and cress, but Harold knew he’d lost the interest in picking it.

  “I feel a long way from where I began. But I also feel a long way from where I am going.” He gave a yawn that seemed to shudder up through his whole body. “Why do you think Wilf went?”

  “He’d had enough. I don’t think he was evil or anything like that. He’s young. He’s flaky.”

  Harold felt someone was talking to him at last without frills, as in the early days of his walk, when no one had expectations, including himself. He confided that Wilf had reminded him of his son, and that Harold’s betrayal of David sometimes pained him these days even more than his betrayal of Queenie. “When my son was little, we realized he was clever. He spent all his time in his room, doing schoolwork. If he didn’t get top marks, he’d be in tears. But then his intelligence seemed to backfire on him. He was too clever. Too lonely. He got into Cambridge and he started drinking. I was such a no-hoper at school, I was in awe of his intelligence. Failure was about the only thing I was good at.”

  Kate laughed and her chin concertina’d into her neck. Despite her brusque manner, he had begun to find comfort in the stalwart bulk of her. She said, “I never said anything about this to the others, but my wedding ring disappeared a few nights ago too.”

  Harold sighed. He knew he had trusted Wilf against the odds, but somehow he had also trusted that there was a basic goodness to be found in everyone, and that this time he could tap into it.

  “It doesn’t matter about the ring. My ex and I just got divorced. I don’t know why I kept on wearing it.” She flexed her naked fingers. “So maybe Wilf did me a favor.”

  “Should I have done more, Kate?”

  Kate smiled. “You can’t save everyone.” She paused and then she asked, “Do you still see your son?”

  The question hurt. “No.”

  “I guess you miss him?” she said.

  Not since Martina had anyone asked about David; his mouth dried and his heart began to quicken. He wanted to describe what it feels like to find your boy in a pool of vomit and carry him to bed and mop him up and pretend in the morning you have not seen that. He wanted to say what it was like to be a child and find the man who was your father in the same manner. He wanted to say, What happened? Was it me? Am I the link here? But he didn’t. He didn’t want to burden her with so much. He nodded and said yes; he missed David.

  Gripping his knees, he pictured himself lying in his room as a teenager, listening to the silence that did not hold his mother. He remembered hearing that Queenie had left, and sinking to his chair because she had not said goodbye. He saw Maureen, white with hatred, slamming the spare-room door. He relived the last time he had visited his father.

  “I am terribly sorry,” the caregiver had said. She had Harold by his jacket sleeve and was almost tugging him out of range. “But he seems disturbed. Maybe you had better leave it for today.”

  Glancing over his shoulder as he hurried away, his final impression had been of a small man throwing teaspoons and yelling he had no son.

  How could he say all this? It amounted to a lifetime. He could try to find the words, but they would never hold the same meaning for her that they did for him. “My house,” he would say; and the image that would spring to her head would be of her own. There was no saying it.

  Kate and Harold sat a while more in silence. He listened to the wind in the leaves of a willow, and watched them flicker. Spikes of rosebay willowherb and evening primrose glowed in the dark. From the campfire came the sounds of laughter and shouts; Rich was organizing a nocturnal game of tag. “It’s getting late,” said Kate at last. “You need sleep.”

  They returned to the others, but sleep did not come. His head was still full of his mother, and trying to capture a memory of her that might bring comfort. He thought of the cold of his childhood home, and the smell of whiskey that was even in his school clothes, and the greatcoat that was his sixteenth birthday present. For the first time he allowed himself to feel the pain of being a child that is not wanted by mother or father. He ranged for many hours in the dark, under a sky lit with infinitesimal stars. Images passed through his mind of Joan wetting her finger to turn the page of a travel magazine, or rolling her eyes as his father’s hands trembled over a bottle, but nowhere could he find her kissing Harold’s head, or even telling him he would be all right.

  Had she ever asked herself where he was? How he was doing?

  He saw the reflection of her face in a compact mirror as she painted on her red lips. She did it with such care, he had felt she was trapping something behind the color.

  A wave of emotion swelled through him as he recalled catching her eye once. She had stopped what she was doing so that her mouth was left half
Joan and half mother. With his heart beating so hard it made his voice flutter, he had summoned the courage to speak. “Please will you tell me? Am I ugly?”

  She had burst out laughing. The dimple in her cheek was so deep he could imagine slipping his finger into it.

  It wasn’t meant to be funny. It was from the heart. But in the absence of all physical affection, her laughter had been the next best thing. He wished he had not torn her only letter to shreds. Deer son. It would have been something. It would have been something, too, to hold David in his arms, and promise him things get better. He felt nothing but anguish for the things that cannot be undone.

  Returning to his sleeping bag before dawn, Harold found a small bundle beneath the zipper, containing a heel of bread, an apple, and bottled water. He wiped his eyes, and ate the food, but still he didn’t sleep.

  As the profile of Newcastle dominated the horizon, tensions rose yet again. Kate wanted to avoid the city altogether. Someone else had bunions and needed a doctor, or at least first aid. Rich had so many thoughts on the nature of the modern pilgrimage that the gorilla man needed a new notebook. Flummoxing them all, Harold asked the group if they might make a detour via Hexham. He produced from his jacket pocket the business card of the man in the hotel where he had spent his first night. It was creased with time, and furry at the edges. But even though those first few days of his walk had almost broken him, he remembered them with envy. They held a simplicity that he felt he was in danger of losing, if he had not lost it already.

  “Of course I can’t make you come with me,” said Harold, “but I will stick to my promise.”

  A further secret meeting was called by Rich. “I can’t believe I’m the only one who’s man enough to say it. But you lot can’t see the wood for the trees. The guy’s falling apart. We can’t go to Hexham. It’s over twenty miles in the wrong direction.”

  “He made a promise,” said Kate, “just as he made one to us. He’s too polite to renege on that. It’s rather English, and very endearing.”

  Rich flared. “In case you’ve forgotten, Queenie is dying. I vote we form a splinter group and push straight up to Berwick. He’s suggested it himself before now. We could be there in a week.”

  No one expressed an opinion, but by the morning Kate discovered a lot of campaigning had taken place in the night. Whispered conversations in tents, and over the dying embers of the fire, had confirmed Rich’s opinion: they all loved Harold, but it was time to break free. They looked for the old man but he was not to be found. They packed up their sleeping bags and tents, and were gone. Apart from the smoldering embers of a fire, the field was so empty she could almost doubt any of it had happened.

  Kate found Harold sitting by a river, throwing stones for the dog. His shoulders were hunched as if a weight pressed down on him. It shocked her, how old he suddenly looked. She told him Rich had persuaded the gorilla man to press ahead, and that they had taken the well-wishers and what was left of the journalists. “He called a meeting and gave some story about you needing a break. He even squeezed out a few tears. There was nothing I could do. But people won’t be fooled for long.”

  “I don’t mind. To tell the truth, it was getting too much.” The swallows were skimming the water, turning vertically on their wings. He watched them a while.

  “What will you do next, Harold? Will you go home?”

  He shook his head, but it was a heavy gesture. “I’ll make the trip to Hexham and then I’ll head up from there toward Berwick. Not long now. What about you?”

  “I’m going home. My ex has been in touch. He wants us to have another go at it.”

  Harold’s eyes moistened in the morning light. “That’s good,” he said. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. She wondered briefly if he was thinking of his wife.

  From there, their arms took the opportunity to catch hold of the other’s body. Kate didn’t know if it was she who was holding on to Harold, or the other way round. He was bone inside his PILGRIM T-shirt. They remained in an odd half embrace, a little off balance, until she broke free and wiped her cheeks.

  “Please take care of yourself,” she said. “I know you are a good man and that seems to give you a way with people. But you look tired. You need to look after yourself, Harold.”

  He waited as Kate walked away. She turned several times to wave and he stayed in the same place, letting her go. He had walked too much with other people, and listened to their stories, and followed their routes. It would be a relief to listen again only to himself. All the same, as Kate grew smaller, he felt the wrench of losing her, and it was like a little piece of dying. She reached a break in the trees ahead, and he was about to go, when she paused, as if she had lost her way or forgotten something. She began to walk back to him, very fast, almost running, and he felt a shiver of excitement because of all of them, even Wilf, it was Kate he had grown to love. But then she stopped again, and seemed to shake her head. He knew that for her sake he must keep standing and watching her go, a constant in the distance, until she had left him fully behind.

  He threw a large wave, two hands beating at the air. She turned her back on him and met the line of trees.

  He remained a long time, waiting in case she reappeared, but the air was still and did not bring her.

  Harold removed the PILGRIM T-shirt and retrieved his shirt and tie from his rucksack. They were screwed up, and very worn now, but it was like being himself again as he put them on. He wondered whether he should take it to Queenie as a further souvenir, but it didn’t feel right to carry something that had caused such dispute. Instead he slipped it in a bin when no one was looking. He found he was wearier than he had realized. It took Harold a further three days to reach Hexham.

  He rang at the buzzer of the businessman’s apartment and waited all afternoon, but there was no sign of his host. A woman from another flat came down and explained that the businessman was on holiday in Ibiza. “He’s always on holiday,” she said. She asked if Harold would like tea, or water for the dog, but he declined both.

  A week after the split, reports came of the pilgrims’ arrival in Berwick-upon-Tweed. There were photographs in the newspapers of Rich Lion walking hand in hand with his two sons along the quay; and others of a man in a gorilla suit nuzzling the cheek of Miss South Devon. There was a brass band to welcome the party, with a performance by the local cheerleading troupe, and a dinner attended by local councilors and businessmen. Several Sunday papers claimed to have sole access to Rich’s diaries. There was talk of a film.

  The pilgrims’ arrival was also covered on the television news. Courtesy of BBC Spotlight, Maureen and Rex watched footage of Rich Lion and several others delivering flowers to the hospice along with a giant basket of muffins, although Queenie was unable to receive them. The reporter added that sadly no one from the hospice was available for comment. She stood with her microphone at the edge of the drive. Behind her there appeared to be a neatly kept garden, with blue hydrangeas, and a man in a boiler suit raking grass clippings.

  “Those people didn’t even know Queenie,” said Maureen. “It makes me want to spit. Why couldn’t they wait for Harold?”

  Rex sipped a cup of Ovaltine. “I suppose they were impatient to get there.”

  “But it was never a race. It was the journey that mattered. And that man didn’t walk for Queenie. He walked to prove he was a hero and get his children back.”

  “I suppose in the end his was a journey of a kind,” said Rex. “Just a different one.” He replaced his cup carefully on a coaster, so as not to mark the table.

  The reporter made a brief reference to Harold Fry, and an image flashed up in which he was shrinking from the camera. He looked like a shadow: dirty, haggard, afraid. In an exclusive interview, Rich Lion explained from the quayside that the elderly Devon pilgrim was suffering from fatigue and complicated emotional issues; he had been forced to retire from the walk south of Newcastle. “But Queenie is alive. That’s the main thing. It was lucky me and the guys were the
re to step in.”

  Maureen scoffed. “For heaven’s sake, he can’t even speak proper English.”

  Rich clasped his hands together above his head in a gesture of victory. “I know Harold would be moved by your support.” The jostling crowd of well-wishers cheered.

  The report ended with a shot of the pinkish stones of the quay wall, where several council workers were removing placards that spelled out a slogan. One man worked from the beginning, the other man from the end, picking each letter up and sliding it into their van, so that all that was left was the message WEED WELCOMES HAR. Maureen snapped off the television, and paced the room.

  “They’re sweeping him under the carpet,” she said. “They’re ashamed of putting their trust in him, and so now they have to make him out to be a fool. It’s shocking. He didn’t even ask for their attention in the first place.”

  Rex pursed his mouth in thought. “At least people will leave him alone now. At least it’s just the walk and Harold.”

  Maureen stared out at the sky. She could not speak.

  Harold and the Dog

  IT HAD COME as a relief to Harold to walk alone. He and Dog took up their own rhythm, and there was no debating, no arguing. From Newcastle to Hexham, they had stopped when they were tired, and taken up when they were refreshed. They began to walk the dawns again, and sometimes the nights, and he was filled with renewed hope. He was happiest like this, watching the lights come on at the windows, and people going about their lives; unobserved, and yet tender for the strangeness of others. He was open once more to the thoughts and memories that played through his head. Maureen, Queenie, and David were his companions. He felt whole again.

  He thought of Maureen’s body against his in the early years of their marriage and the beautiful darkness between her legs. He pictured David staring out of his bedroom window so intently it was as if the outside world had robbed him of something. He remembered driving beside Queenie, while she sucked on mints and sang another song backwards.