by Rachel Joyce
‘Dull as bloody Eastbourne.’ Maureen hit the word so hard it sounded like an invasion of her mouth.
He was interrupted by the couple at the next table. They had raised their voices. Harold wanted to get away, but there appeared to be no safe slice of silence in which he might stand and excuse himself.
The woman who loved Jane Austen said, ‘Do you think it was funny cooped up here with a broken leg?’ Her husband kept on looking at his map as if she had not spoken, and she continued to speak as if he was not ignoring her. ‘I never want to come here again.’
Harold wished the woman would stop. He wished the man would smile or take hold of her hand. He thought of himself and Maureen, and the years of silence at 13 Fossebridge Road. Had Maureen ever felt the impulse to say, where everyone could hear, such truths about their marriage? The thought had never occurred to him before, and was so alarming he was already on his feet and heading for the door. The couple didn’t seem to notice that Harold had gone.
Harold checked into a modest guesthouse that smelt of central heating, boiled giblets and air freshener. He was sore with tiredness, but once he had unpacked his few things and inspected his feet, he sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what to do next. He was too unsettled to sleep. From downstairs came the sound of the early-evening news. Maureen would be watching too, while she did the ironing. For a while he stayed, listening without hearing, comforted by the knowledge they were joined in this way at least. He thought again of the couple in the restaurant, and missed his wife so much he could think of nothing else. If he’d played it otherwise, could he have made a difference? If he’d pushed open the door to the spare room? Or even booked a holiday and taken her abroad? But she would never have agreed. She was too afraid of not talking to David, and missing the visit she was always waiting for.
Other things came too. The early years of their marriage, before David was born, when she had grown vegetables in the garden of Fossebridge Road, and waited for Harold every evening on the corner beyond the brewery. They would walk home, sometimes taking in the seafront, or stopping at the quay to watch the boats. She made curtains out of mattress ticking and, with the remnants, a shift dress for herself. She took to looking up new recipes from the library. There were casseroles, curries, pasta, pulses. Over dinner, she would ask about the chaps at the brewery, and their wives, although when it came to the Christmas party, they never went.
He remembered setting eyes on her in a red dress, with a little sprig of holly she had pinned to her collar. If he closed his eyes, he fancied he could smell the sweetness of her. They had drunk ginger beer in the garden, and watched the stars. ‘Who needs other people?’ one or other of them had said.
He saw her holding out the wrapped-up body of their baby and offering him to Harold. He wouldn’t break, she’d smiled: ‘Why won’t you hold him?’ Harold had said the baby liked her best and maybe dug his hands in his pockets.
So how was it that a truth that could make her smile once, and rest her head on his shoulder, would years later become the source of such resentment and fury? ‘You never held him!’ she had howled when things reached their worst. ‘All his childhood you never even touched him!’ It hadn’t been strictly true and he had said something along those lines; although she was right in essence. He had been too afraid to hold his own son. But how was it that once she had understood, and then years later she didn’t?
He wondered if David might come to her, now that Harold was at a safe distance.
It was too much to stay inside, thinking these things, and regretting so many others. Harold reached for his jacket. Outside a curve of moon hung above flakes of cloud. Noticing him, a woman with violent pink hair stopped watering her hanging baskets and stared, as if he were strange.
From a public phone box he rang Maureen, but she had no news to report and their conversation was brief and halting. Only once she referred to his walk, when she asked if he had thought of looking at a map. Harold said he was intending to buy proper walking equipment once he had made it as far as Exeter. There would be more choice in a city, he told her. He gave a knowing reference to Gore-Tex.
She said, ‘I see.’ The sound was flat, suggesting he had trodden in something unpleasant that she had been expecting all along. In the silence that followed he could hear the click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and the rattle of her swallowing. Then she said, ‘I suppose you have worked out how much this is all costing.’
‘I thought I’d use my retirement fund. I’m sticking to a budget.’
‘I see,’ she said again.
‘It’s not as if we had plans.’
‘No.’
‘So is that OK?’
‘OK?’ she repeated, as if the word were not one she had come across before.
For one chaotic moment he wanted to say, Why don’t you come with me, only he knew she would stamp on that with her I think not, so instead he said, ‘Is it OK with you? That I’m doing this? That I’m walking?’
‘It has to be,’ said Maureen, and then she hung up.
Again Harold left the phone box wishing he could make Maureen understand. But for years they had been in a place where language had no significance. She only had to look at him and she was wrenched to the past. Small words were exchanged and they were safe. They hovered over the surface of what could never be said, because that was unfathomable and would never be bridged. Harold returned to his temporary room, and rinsed his clothes. He pictured their separate beds at 13 Fossebridge Road and wondered when exactly she had stopped opening her mouth as they kissed. Was it before, or after?
Harold woke at dawn, surprised and thankful that he could walk, but this time he was weary. The heating was too much and the night had seemed long and confined. He couldn’t help feeling that, even though Maureen had not said it, what she was implying about his retirement fund was correct. He should not be spending it solely on himself and without her approval.
Though, God knows, it was a long time since he had done anything to impress her.
From Buckfast Harold took the B3352 via Ashburton, stopping overnight at Heathfield. He passed other walkers, and they spoke briefly, acknowledging the beauty of the land and the coming of summer, before they wished one another a safe journey and went their separate ways. Harold turned bends, followed the contours of the hills, his path always the road ahead. Crows scattered from trees with a clatter of wings. A young deer shot out from the hedgerow. Cars roared up from nowhere, and disappeared. There were dogs behind gates, and several badgers, like furred weights against the gutter. A cherry tree stood in a dress of blossom, and as the wind took up it loosened a drift of petals like confetti. Harold was ready for surprise, whatever form it took. Such freedom was rare.
‘I am Father,’ he had told his mother when he was maybe six or seven. She had looked up, interested, and it shocked him that he had been so bold. He had no idea what he was going to do next. There was nothing for it but to put on his father’s flat cap, and his dressing gown, and stare accusingly at an empty bottle. His mother’s face set like a jelly; he feared at least a slap. Then, to his shock and profound delight, she stretched back her soft neck and the air tinkled with her laughter. He could see her perfect teeth and the pink of her gums. He had never made his mother laugh like that before.
‘What a clown,’ she had said.
He had felt as tall as the house. Grown up. Despite himself, he had laughed too; first as a grin and then with a great bellyful that sent him doubling over. After that, he sought out ways to amuse her. He learned jokes. He pulled faces. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes he hit on things without even knowing how they were funny.
Harold walked the streets and lanes. The road narrowed and widened, and rose and curved. Sometimes he was almost flat against the hedgerows; others he walked the pavements freely. ‘Don’t walk in the cracks,’ he heard himself call after his mother. ‘If you walk in the cracks there are ghosts.’ Only this time she had looked at him as if
she had never seen him before, and then stepped on every one of them, so that he had been forced to run after her, holding out his arms and flapping wildly. It had been hard to keep up with a woman like Joan.
A new set of blisters began to bulge on both Harold’s heels. By the afternoon, further blisters rose also on the pads of his toes. He had no idea that walking could hurt so much. All he could think of were plasters.
From Heathfield, he walked to Chudleigh Knighton along the B3344, and on again to Chudleigh. It was an effort to get that far, with such exhaustion deep inside him. He took a room for the night, disappointed he had barely managed five miles, although the following day he pushed himself hard and walked from dawn, covering another nine. The early sun shone through the trees in spokes of light, and by mid-morning the sky was pasted with small stubborn clouds that, the more he looked, resembled grey bowler hats. Midges shot through the air.
Six days after leaving Kingsbridge, and approximately forty-three miles from Fossebridge Road, the waistband of Harold’s trousers drooped from his stomach and patches of sunburnt skin peeled from his forehead, nose and ears. Referring to his watch, he found he already knew the hour. Morning and evening, he studied the toes, heels and arches of his feet, applying plasters or cream where the skin was broken or chafing. He preferred to take his lemonade outside, and sheltered with the smokers when it rained. The first of the forget-me-nots shone in pale pools under the moon.
Harold promised himself he would buy serious walking equipment in Exeter, and a further souvenir for Queenie. As the sun sank behind the city walls and the air chilled, he remembered again that there was something not right about her letter, but couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
8
Harold and the Silver-Haired Gentleman
Dear Maureen, Writing this from a bench beside the cathedral. Two chaps are doing street theatre, though they seem to be in danger of setting themselves on fire. Have marked my position with an x . H.
Dear Queenie, Do not give up. Best wishes, Harold (Fry).
Dear Girl in the Garage (Happy to Help), I have been wondering whether you pray? I tried once but I was too late. I am afraid that did it for me. Kind regards, The man who was walking.
PS. I am still doing it.
IT WAS MID-MORNING. A crowd had gathered around two young men who were eating fire outside the cathedral to the accompaniment of a CD player, while an old man dressed in a blanket rooted through a bin. The flame-eaters wore dark, oily clothes and had tied their hair in ponytails; there was something shambolic about their act, as if it might go wrong at any time. They asked people to stand back, and then they started juggling flaming batons, while the crowd gave a nervous clap. The old man seemed to notice them for the first time. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd and stood between the two men, like a piggy in the middle. He was laughing. The two young men yelled at him to move away, but he began to dance to their music. His movements were jerky and unrefined; suddenly the flame-eaters seemed both slick and professional. They switched off their CD player and packed away their things, and the crowd diluted to a few passers-by, but the old man danced alone outside the cathedral, his arms outspread and his eyes closed, as if both the music and the people were still present.
Harold wanted to get on with his journey, but equally he felt that the old man was performing for the benefit of strangers and that, as the only one remaining, it would be discourteous to abandon him.
He remembered David jiving at the holiday camp in Eastbourne, the night he won the Twist prize. Embarrassed, the other contestants had peeled away, leaving only this eight-year-old child with his body jiggering so fast, it was impossible to tell whether he was happy or in pain. The compère began a slow clap, and made a joke that rang through the dance hall, so that everyone roared. Bewildered, Harold had smiled too; not knowing in that moment how to be anything so complicated as his son’s father. He glanced at Maureen and found she was watching, her hands to her mouth. The smile dropped from his face and he felt nothing but a traitor.
There was more. There were David’s school years. The hours in his bedroom, the top marks, the refusal to allow his parents’ help. ‘It doesn’t matter he keeps to himself,’ Maureen would say. ‘He has other interests.’ After all, they were loners themselves. One week David wanted a microscope. Another it was the collected works of Dostoyevsky. Then it was German for Beginners. A bonsai tree. In awe of the greed with which he learned new things, they bought them all. He was blessed with an intelligence and opportunities they had never had; whatever they did, they mustn’t let him down.
‘Father,’ he would say, ‘have you read William Blake?’ Or, ‘Do you know anything about drift velocity?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I thought as much.’
Harold had spent his whole life bowing his head to avoid confrontation, and yet, spilled from his own flesh was someone determined to hold his eye and have it out with him. He wished he had not grinned the night his son jived.
The old man stopped dancing. He seemed to notice Harold for the first time. Throwing off his blanket, he gave a low bow, sweeping the ground with his hand. He was wearing some sort of suit, though it was so dirty it was hard to tell which was shirt and which jacket. He rose again, still gazing directly at Harold. Harold checked behind him in case the old man was looking at someone else, but other people were shooting past, avoiding connection. The person the old man wanted was undoubtedly him.
He moved towards the old man, slowly. Halfway he got so embarrassed he had to pretend he had something in his eye, but the old man waited. When they were maybe a yard apart the old man held out his arms, as if embracing the shoulders of an invisible partner. There was nothing for it but for Harold to lift his own arms and do the same. Slowly their feet fumbled a passage to the left and then to the right. They weren’t touching but they danced together, and if there was a smell of urine and possibly vomit, it was also true that Harold had smelt worse. The only sound came from the traffic, and the crowds.
The old man drew to a halt and bowed a second time. Moved, Harold ducked his head. He thanked the old man for dancing, but the old man had already picked up his blanket and was limping away, as if music was the last thing on his mind.
In a gift shop close to the cathedral, Harold bought a set of embossed pencils that he hoped Maureen would like. For Queenie, he chose a small paperweight containing a model of the cathedral that covered itself in glitter when he tipped it upside down. It struck him as strange but true that tourists bought trinkets and souvenirs of religious places because they had no idea what else to do when they got there.
Exeter took Harold by surprise. He had developed a slow inner rhythm that the fury of the city now threatened to overturn. He had felt comfortable in the security of open land and sky, where everything took its place. He had felt himself to be part of something bigger than simply Harold. In the city, where there was such short-range sight, he felt anything might happen, and that whatever it was he wouldn’t be ready.
He looked for traces of the land beneath his feet and all he found was where it had been replaced with paving stones and tarmac. Everything alarmed him. The traffic. The buildings. The crowds pushed past, shouting into their mobile phones. He smiled at each face and it was exhausting, taking in so many strangers.
He lost a full day, simply wandering. Each time he resolved to leave, he saw something that distracted him, and another hour passed. He deliberated over purchases that he hadn’t realized he required. Should he send Maureen a new pair of gardening gloves? An assistant fetched five different types, and modelled them on her hands, before Harold remembered his wife had long since abandoned her vegetable beds. He stopped to eat and was presented with such an array of sandwiches that he forgot he was hungry, and left with nothing. (Did he prefer cheese or ham or would he like the filling of the day, seafood cocktail? Or would he like something else altogether? Sushi? Peking duck wraps?) What had been so clear to him when he was alone
, two feet on the ground, became lost in this abundance of choices and streets and glass-fronted shopping outlets. He longed to be back on the open land.
And now that he had the opportunity to buy walking equipment, he also faltered. After an hour with an enthusiastic young Australian man, who produced not only walking boots but also a rucksack, a small tent and a talking pedometer, Harold apologized profusely and bought a wind-up torch. He told himself that he had managed perfectly well with his yachting shoes and his plastic bag, and with a little ingenuity he could carry his toothbrush and shaving foam in one pocket, and his deodorant and washing powder in the other. Instead he went to a café close to the railway station.
Twenty years ago Queenie must have made her way to Exeter St David’s. Had she gone straight from here to Berwick? Had she family there? Friends? She had never mentioned either. Once, a song had come on the car radio and she had wept. ‘Mighty Like A Rose’. The male voice filled the air, steady and deep. It reminded her of her father, she said between gulps; he had died only recently.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘It’s all right.’
‘He was a good man.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘You’d have liked him, Mr Fry.’
She had told a story about her father; how he played a game when she was a child where he pretended she was invisible. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ she’d be laughing; and all the time he’d look straight down at her, saying, as if she wasn’t there, ‘Come here this minute. Where are you, Queenie?’
‘It was so funny,’ she said, nipping the end of her nose with her handkerchief. ‘I miss him very much.’ Even her grief possessed a compact dignity.
The station café was busy. Harold watched the holidaymakers negotiating the small spaces between the tables and chairs with their suitcases and backpacks, and he asked himself if maybe Queenie had sat in this same spot. He pictured her, alone and pale, in her old-fashioned suit; her neat face staring resolutely forward.
