The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (32 page)

In a small café, Harold asked a waitress for a glass of water, and use of the bathroom. He apologized that he had no money. He waited patiently as the waitress’s eye took in his tangled hair, his ripped jacket and tie, and travelled down the length of his mud-soaked trousers, to land on his feet that were more blue duct tape than yachting shoe. Her mouth frowned and she glanced over her shoulder towards an older woman in a grey jacket who was talking to customers. This second woman was clearly the more senior. The waitress said, ‘You’d better be quick then.’ She ushered him towards a door, without touching any part of him.

In the mirror, Harold met a face he only dimly knew. The skin hung in dark folds, as if there was too much of it for the bone behind. He appeared to have several cuts to the forehead and cheekbone. His hair and beard were wilder than he expected, and from his eyebrows and nostrils shot stray long hairs like wires. He was a joke old man. A misfit. He looked nothing like the man who had set off with a letter. He looked nothing like the man who had posed for photographs and worn a pilgrim T-shirt.

The waitress provided water in a disposable cup but did not invite him to sit. He asked if anyone might lend him a razor or a comb, but the manageress in the grey jacket came swiftly over and pointed to the sign at the window:
NO BEGGING
. She asked him to leave, or she would have to call the police. No one looked up as he moved to the door. He wondered if he smelt bad. He had been outside so long he had for gotten which smells were good and which were not. He knew people were embarrassed on his behalf, and wished to spare them that.

At a table beside the window, a young man and his wife crooned over their baby. There rose such pain inside Harold, he didn’t know how he would keep upright.

He turned to the manageress and the teashop people and he met them face on. He said, ‘I want my son.’

Speaking the words sent his body shaking; not with a gentle shiver but a spasmic shudder that came from deep inside. His face twisted as grief tore through his chest muscles and swelled its passage up his throat.

‘Where is he?’ said the manageress.

Harold squeezed his hands to keep himself from falling.

The manageress said, ‘Do you see your son here? Is he in Berwick?’

A customer put his hand on Harold’s arm. He said more gently, ‘Excuse me, sir. Are you the man who was walking?’

Harold gasped. It was the kindness of the man that unpicked him.

‘My wife and I read about what you did. We had a friend we had lost touch with. Last weekend we went to visit. We spoke of you.’

Harold let the man talk, and hold his arm, but he couldn’t reply or move his face.

‘Who is your son? What is his name?’ said the man. ‘Maybe I could help?’

‘His name is—’

Suddenly Harold’s heart plummeted, as if he had stepped over a wall and was tumbling through emptiness. ‘He’s my son. His name is—’

The manageress looked coolly back at him, waiting, waiting, with the customers behind her, and the kind man with his hand on Harold’s sleeve. They had no idea. No idea of the horror, the confusion, the remorse raging inside him. He couldn’t remember his son’s name.

Out on the street, a young woman tried to give him a piece of paper.

‘It’s salsa dancing classes for the over sixties,’ she said. ‘You should come. It’s never too late.’

But it was. It was far too late. Harold shook his head wildly, and took a few more staggering steps. His legs felt boned.

‘Please take the leaflet,’ said the girl. ‘Take the lot. You can throw them in the bin if you like. I just want to go home.’

Harold stumbled the streets of Berwick with the wodge of leaflets, not knowing where he was going. People swerved to avoid him, but he didn’t stop. He could forgive his parents for not wanting him. For not showing him how to love, or even giving him the vocabulary. He could forgive their parents, and their parents before that.

All Harold wanted was his child.

27

Harold and Another Letter

Dear Girl in the Garage
,

I owe you the full story. Twenty years ago I buried my son. It is not something a father should have to do. I wanted to know the man he would become. I still do
.

To this day, I don’t understand why he did it. He was depressed, and addicted to mixing alcohol with pills. He couldn’t get a job. But I wish with all my heart he had spoken to me
.

He hanged himself in my garden shed. He did it with some rope, tied to one of the hooks I used for garden tools. He was so full of the alcohol and pills, the coroner said it must have taken a long time to tie the noose. The verdict was suicide
.

It was me who discovered him. I can barely write this. At the time I prayed, although as I told you at the garage I am not a religious man. I said, Dear God, please let him be OK. I will do anything. I lifted him down, but there was no life. I was too late
.

I wish they hadn’t told me about him taking all that time to tie the noose
.

My wife took it terribly. She wouldn’t leave the house. She put up net curtains because she didn’t want the neighbours prying. Gradually those people moved away and no one knew about us, or what had happened. But every time Maureen looked at me, I knew she saw David dead
.

She began talking to him. He was with her, she said. She was always waiting for him. Maureen keeps his room exactly as it was the day he died. And sometimes it makes me sad all over again, but it is what my wife wants. She can’t let him be dead, and I understand that. It is too much for a mother to bear
.

Queenie knew all about David, but she didn’t say anything. She looked out for me. She fetched tea with sugar and talked about the weather. Only once she said, Maybe you’ve had enough now, Mr Fry. Because that was the other thing. I was drinking
.

It started off as just one to keep me steady before the coroner’s report. But I was keeping the bottles in paper bags under my desk. God knows how I drove home at night. I just wanted to stop feeling
.

When I was really out of it one night, I dismantled the garden shed. But even that wasn’t enough. So I broke into the brewery and I did something terrible. Queenie knew it had to be me and she took the blame
.

She was fired on the spot and then she disappeared. I heard she had been warned to get out of the South West, if she knew what was good for her. I also overheard a secretary who was friendly with Queenie’s landlady saying that she had not left a forwarding address. I let her go. I let her take the blame. But I gave up drinking
.

Maureen and I fought for a long time, and then gradually we stopped talking. She moved out of our bedroom. She stopped loving me. There were many times I thought she would leave, but she didn’t. I slept badly every night
.

People think I am walking because there was a romance between myself and Queenie all those years ago, but it isn’t true. I walked because she saved me, and I never said thank you. And this is why I am writing to you. I want you to know how much you helped me all those weeks ago, when you told me about your faith and your aunt, although I fear my courage has never matched yours
.

With best wishes and my humble thanks
,

Harold (Fry)

PS. I apologize for not knowing your name
.

28

Maureen and the Visitor

FOR DAYS MAUREEN
had been preparing the house for Harold’s return. She had taken the two photographs he kept in his bedside drawer and measured them up for frames. She had repainted the best room a soft shade of yellow, and hung a pair of pale-blue velvet curtains at the window, which she had picked up at the charity shop, good as new, and shortened. She baked cakes to store in the freezer, as well as a selection of pies, moussaka, lasagne and boeuf bourguignon; all those dishes she had cooked in the days when David was alive. There were jars of her runner bean chutney in the cupboard, along with pickled onions and beetroot. She kept lists in the kitchen and bedroom. There was so much to do. And yet sometimes, when she looked out of the window, or lay awake listening to the gulls crying like children, she felt that despite her activity there was something about it that was inactive, as if she were missing the point.

Supposing Harold returned home and told her he needed to walk again? Supposing he had outgrown her, after all?

A ring at the doorbell in the early morning brought her downstairs. She found a sallow-faced young girl waiting on the threshold, with lank hair, and wearing a black duffel coat although it was already warm.

‘Please could I come in, Mrs Fry?’

Over tea and several apricot flapjacks, the girl told her she was the one who had given Harold the burger all those weeks ago. He had sent her many lovely postcards; although due to his sudden rise to fame there had been an inconvenient number of fans and journalists hanging about the garage. In the end her boss had been obliged to ask her to leave for health and safety reasons.

‘You lost your job? That’s terrible,’ said Maureen. ‘Harold will be very sorry to hear this.’

‘It’s all right, Mrs Fry. I didn’t like the job anyway. Customers were always shouting, and in too much of a hurry. But what I said to your husband about the power of faith has been bothering me ever since.’ She looked fidgety and anxious; she kept tucking the same strand of hair behind her ear, although it wasn’t out of place. ‘I think I gave him the wrong impression.’

‘But Harold was inspired by what you said. It was your faith that gave him the idea to walk.’

The girl sat bunched up in her coat and gnawed at her lip so hard Maureen was afraid she would draw blood. Then she tugged an envelope out of her pocket, and removed several sheets of paper. She held them out, but her hand was trembling. ‘Here,’ she said.

Maureen’s mouth bent into a frown. ‘Salsa for the over sixties?’

The girl reached for the papers and flipped them over. ‘The writing’s on the other side. It’s a letter from your husband. It came to the garage. My friend warned me to fetch it before the boss saw.’

Maureen read in silence, weeping over each sentence. The loss that had wrenched them apart twenty years ago was as lacerating and incomprehensible as if it was happening afresh. When she finished, she thanked the girl and folded the letter, running her nail along the crease. Then she posted the letter back inside its envelope. She sat, very still.

‘Mrs Fry?’

‘There’s something I need to explain.’

Maureen wet her lips and let the words come. It was a relief. Moved as she was by Harold’s confession, it felt right to share the facts at last about David’s suicide, and the grief that had split his parents apart. ‘We shouted for a while. I blamed Harold terribly. I said awful things. That he should have been a better father. That the drinking was in Harold’s family. And then we seemed to run out of words. It was about that time I began talking to David.’

‘You mean he was a ghost?’ said the girl. She had clearly seen too many films.

Maureen shook her head. ‘Not a ghost, no. More like a presence. A feeling of David. It was my only comfort. I said little things at first. “Where are you?” “I miss you.” Things like that. But as time went by, I said more. I said everything that I didn’t say to Harold. There were times when I almost wished I hadn’t started; but then I worried that if I stopped talking, I would somehow betray David. Supposing he really was there? Supposing he needed me? I told myself that if I waited long enough I might see him. You read about things like that in those magazines at the doctor’s, while you’re waiting. I wanted to see him so much.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘But it never happened. I looked and looked but he never came.’