by Rachel Joyce
The social worker was listening so carefully, Harold felt a little hot. He reached for his tie and straightened it.
That night he dreamed for the first time. He got up before the images could settle, but the memory of blood sprouting from his knuckles was in his head and if he wasn’t careful, worse would follow. He stood at the window, staring at the black scope of sky, and thought of his father glaring at the front door the day his mother left, as if persistence alone was enough to make it swing open and reveal her. He had set a chair there and two bottles. Hours he seemed to sit.
‘She’ll be back,’ he had said, and Harold lay in his bed, his body so taut with listening he felt he was more silence than boy. In the morning, her frocks were strewn like empty mothers all over the small house. Some were even perched in the scrap of grass they called a front lawn.
‘What’s been going on?’ said the lady from next door.
Harold had collected the clothes in his arms and screwed them into a ball. His mother’s deep smell was so vividly present it was impossible to credit she wasn’t coming back. He had had to shove his nails into his elbows in order not to make a noise. Playing the scene again, he watched the darkness loosen from the night sky. Once he was calm, he returned to bed.
A few hours later, he couldn’t understand what had changed. He could hardly move. The blisters he could bear if he cushioned them with plasters, but every time he put any weight on his right foot it caused a spasmic pain to shoot from the back of his ankle into his calf. He did all his usual things; he showered, ate and repacked his plastic bag before paying his bill, but every time he tested it, the pain in his lower leg was still there. The sky was a cold cobalt blue, with the sun low over the horizon, so that vapour trails shone a luminous white. Harold followed Silver Street towards the A396, but failed to see what he passed. He had to stop every twenty minutes to roll down his sock and pinch at the muscle in his leg. To his relief there was no sign of damage.
He tried to distract himself with thinking about Queenie, or David, but none of these thoughts took shape. He would find a memory and lose it as quickly. He would recall his son saying, ‘I bet you can’t name all the countries in the continent of Africa’; but even as he tried to think of one, his leg would flash with pain and he would forget what it was he was trying to remember. After half a mile, it was as if his shin had been cut; he could barely put any weight on the leg. He had to use a heavy long step with his left foot, and only a skittish hop on his right. By mid-morning, the sky had filled with a dense blanket of cloud. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t help feeling that walking north, walking up England, had become the same as climbing a hill. Even the flat stretches of road suddenly appeared to have an upward slant.
He couldn’t lose the picture in his mind of his father slumped on a kitchen chair, waiting for his mother. The image had always been there, but he felt he was seeing it for the first time. His father had maybe been sick down his pyjamas. It was best not to breathe through your nose.
‘Go away,’ he said. But his eyes swerved so fast from Harold to the walls, it was hard to tell which he found most offensive.
When they heard, neighbours consoled his father. Joan was her own person, they said. It’s a blessing; at least you’re young enough to start again. Suddenly there was an unprecedented abundance of female life in the house. Windows were thrown open, cupboards emptied, bedding aired. Casseroles, pies and jellied meat appeared, along with suet puddings, jams and fruitcake wrapped in brown paper. There had never been so much food; mealtimes were not of particular interest to his mother. Black and white photographs disappeared into handbags. Red lipsticks vanished from the bathroom, as did her bottles of scent. He saw her on street corners, and crossing roads. He even caught sight of her waiting for him after school, only to dash out and discover she was a lady he didn’t know, wearing one of his mother’s hats or skirts. Joan always liked the bright colours. His thirteenth birthday came and went, with no word from her. After six months, Harold couldn’t even smell her in the bathroom cabinet. His father began to fill the spaces that had held his wife with distant relations.
‘Say hello to your Aunty Muriel,’ he’d say. He was out of his dressing gown. Instead he was wearing a suit that stuck out from his shoulders. He had even shaved.
‘Goodness, he’s big.’ The woman was a wide face poking out of a fur coat, with fingers like sausages around a bag of macaroons. ‘Would he like one?’
Harold’s mouth drenched at the memory. He ate all the biscuits in his plastic bag, but they did not satisfy the craving for something that he thought was food, and he was not appeased by them. His spittle was thick and white as paste. Approaching passers-by, he hid his mouth behind his handkerchief, hoping not to cause alarm. He bought two pints of long-life milk and drank in gulps that spilled down his chin. He took it too fast but the need was so intense he couldn’t reason with it; he tugged again and again at the carton with his mouth. The milk wouldn’t flow swiftly enough. A few feet on, he had to stop to be sick. He couldn’t stop thinking of the time his mother left.
In packing her suitcase, she had robbed him not only of her laughter but also of the only person taller than himself. You could never describe Joan as affectionate, but at least she stood between her son and the clouds. The aunts passed him sweets, or went to pinch his cheek, or even asked his opinion about the fit of a dress, but the world seemed suddenly to have no edges, and he shrank from their touch.
‘I’m not saying he’s odd,’ his Aunty Muriel had said. ‘He just doesn’t look at you.’
Harold made it as far as Bickleigh, where according to his guidebook he should visit the small red-brick castle nestling on the banks of the River Exe. However, a long-faced man in olive trousers informed him that his guidebook was sadly out of date, unless Harold was interested in a luxury wedding or a murder mystery weekend. Instead he directed Harold to the craft and gift shop at Bickleigh Mill, where he might find something more to his taste and budget.
He looked at the glass trinkets and lavender bags and a selection of locally carved hanging bird feeders, but none of them struck him as desirable, or even necessary. This made him sad. He wanted to leave but since he was the only person in the shop, and the assistant was staring, he felt obliged to make a purchase. He came away with four tablemats for Queenie, offering laminated views of Devon. For his wife he chose a biro that shone a dull red when you pressed the nib, so that she could write in the dark, if she ever felt the inclination.
Harold no-mum, the boys called him at school. He began to take days off, weeks, until his classmates seemed such strangers he felt he was a different species. His Aunt Muriel wrote notes: Harold had a headache, Harold looks pasty. Sometimes she fetched out the dictionary and got more creative: Harold had a spot of biliousness at about 6pm on Tuesday. When he failed his exams he stopped going altogether.
‘He’s all right,’ said his Aunt Vera, who took Muriel’s side of the bed when she left. ‘He’s got some good jokes. He just mumbles the punchline.’
Weary and forlorn, Harold ordered a meal at the Fisherman’s Cot, overlooking the river. He spoke with several strangers who informed him that the bridge crossing the troubled water was the inspiration for the song by Simon and Garfunkel, and all the time he felt that he was nodding and smiling, and trying to look like someone who was listening, while in reality his thoughts were preoccupied with his journey, the past, and what was happening in his leg. Was it serious? Would it go away? He retired early, promising himself that sleep would heal. It didn’t.
Deer son, read Joan’s only letter. New Zeeland is a wonderful plase. I had to go. Muthering was not me. Send my best regads to your dad. It wasn’t her leaving that was the worst part. It was the fact she couldn’t even spell her explanation.
On Harold’s tenth day, there was not an isolated moment in his walking, not one muscular flex, that did not fizz the length of his right calf and remind him he was in trouble. He remembered the urgency with which he ha
d made his promise to the hospice nurse about walking to Queenie, and it seemed childishly inappropriate. Even his conversation with the social worker shamed him. It was as if something had happened overnight; as if the walk and his belief in it had broken into two separate pieces, and he was left only with the relentless slog. For ten days he had walked, and all his energy had been focused into the sheer act of putting one step in front of the other. But now that he had discovered his faith in his feet, the practical anxieties had been replaced by something far more insidious.
The three-and-a-half mile stretch along the A396 to Tiverton was his hardest yet. There were few spaces to hide from cars, and even though the hedges had been recently cut, offering silvery flashes of the River Exe, it gave them a barbaric appearance, and he preferred not to look. Drivers blared their horns and shouted at him to get off the road. He berated himself for managing so few miles; at this rate it would be Christmas before he reached Berwick. A child, he told himself, could have done better.
He remembered David dancing like a demon. He thought of the boy swimming out at Bantham. He saw again the occasion he had tried to tell his son a joke, and how David’s face had creased. ‘But I don’t get it,’ he’d said. He looked on the verge of tears. Harold had explained that the joke was funny. It was meant to make you laugh. He had told it a second time. ‘I still don’t understand,’ the boy had said. Later Harold had heard him repeat the joke to Maureen in the bath. ‘He said it was funny,’ David had complained. ‘He said it twice and it didn’t make me laugh.’ Even at that age he made the word sound dark.
And then Harold thought of his son as an eighteen-year-old; his hair flowing well below his shoulders; his arms and legs too long for clothes. He saw the young man lying on his bed with his feet on the pillow, staring so hard at nothing that Harold had briefly wondered if he saw things that Harold couldn’t. His wrists were bone.
Harold heard himself saying, ‘I hear from your mother you got into Cambridge.’
David had not looked at him. He kept staring at the nothing.
Harold had wanted to take him in his arms and hold on tight. He wanted to say, You beautiful boy of mine; how do you get to be so clever, when I am not? But he had looked at David’s impenetrable face and said, ‘Well, gosh. That’s good. Golly.’
David scoffed as if he had just heard a joke that was all about his father. And Harold in turn shut the bedroom door and promised himself that one day, when his son was a full-grown man perhaps, things would be easier.
From Tiverton, Harold decided to continue with the main roads. He reasoned that this route was the more direct. He would follow the Great Western Way and then cut across country lanes until he reached the A38. It should be twenty miles to Taunton.
A storm was coming. Clouds drew up like a hood over the earth, and threw an eerie luminous light over the Blackdown Hills. For the first time he missed his mobile phone; he felt unprepared for what lay ahead, and he wished he could speak to Maureen. The tops of the trees shone against the granite swell of the sky, and then shook as the first winds hit them. Leaves and twigs were tossed into the air. Birds cried out. In the distance, sails of rain came into view, and hung between Harold and the hills. He cowered into his jacket as the first drops hit.
There was no hiding. The rain shot at Harold’s waterproof jacket and down his neck, and even up the elasticated rims of his sleeves. The drops hit like peppercorns. They swirled in pools and rivulets along the gutters, and with each passing car they sloshed over the rims of his yachting shoes. After an hour his feet were water, and his skin itched from the constant chafing of wet clothes. He didn’t know if he was hungry and he couldn’t remember if he had eaten. His right calf spangled with pain.
A car drew up next to him, and threw water the length of his trousers. It didn’t matter. He could not get wetter. The passenger window steadily rolled downwards. There was a warm smell of new leather and heated air. Harold stooped his head.
The face on the other side was young and dry. ‘Are you lost? Do you need directions?’ it said.
‘I know where I’m going.’ The rain stung Harold’s eyes. ‘But thank you for stopping.’
‘Nobody should be out in weather like this,’ insisted the face.
‘I made a promise,’ said Harold, straightening up. ‘But I am grateful to you for noticing me.’
For the next mile he asked himself whether he had been foolish not to ask for help. The longer he took to walk, the more unlikely it was that Queenie would keep living. And yet he was certain she was waiting. If he failed in his share of the bargain, albeit one without logic, he was afraid he would not see her again.
What should I do? Give me a sign, Queenie, he said, maybe out loud, maybe to himself. He wasn’t sure any more where he officially stopped and the outside world began.
A large lorry thundered towards him, blaring a violent horn, and splattered him from head to foot with mud.
And yet something else happened, and it became one of those moments that he would walk into and realize, even as it was happening, that it was significant. Late in the afternoon, the rain stopped so abruptly it was hard to credit there had been any at all. To the east, the cloud tore open and a low belt of polished silver light broke through. Harold stood and watched as the mass of grey split again and again, revealing new colours: blue, burnt umber, peach, green and crimson. Then the cloud became suffused with a dulled pink, as if those vibrant colours had bled through, merging as they met. He couldn’t move. He wanted to witness every change. The light on the land was gold; even his skin was warm with it. At his feet the earth creaked and whispered. The air smelt green and full of beginnings. A soft mist rose, like wisps of smoke.
Harold was so tired he could barely lift his feet, and yet he felt such hope, he was giddy with it. If he kept looking at the things that were bigger than himself, he knew he would make it to Berwick.
11
Maureen and the Locum
THE RECEPTIONIST APOLOGIZED; due to the installation of an automated service, she was no longer able to check Maureen in for her doctor’s appointment. ‘But I am standing right here,’ said Maureen. ‘Why can’t you do it?’ The receptionist pointed to a screen set a few feet from the main desk, and assured Maureen that the new procedure was a simple one.
Maureen’s fingers went clammy. The automated service asked if she was male or female, but she tapped the wrong button. It asked for her birth date, and she tapped the month before the day, and had to be helped by a young patient who sneezed all over her shoulder. By the time she had registered, there was a small queue behind her, groaning and creaking with illness. The screen flashed the words Refer to main reception. The small queue gave a uniform shake of its head.
Again the receptionist apologized. Maureen’s regular GP had been called away unexpectedly, but she could take an appointment with a locum instead.
‘Why couldn’t you tell me this when I first arrived?’ cried Maureen.
The receptionist offered her third round of apologies. It was the new system, she said; everyone had to check in electronically, ‘Even OAPs.’ She asked if Maureen would like to wait or come back the next morning, and Maureen shook her head. If she went home, she didn’t trust she would have the will to return.
‘Do you need a glass of water?’ said the receptionist. ‘You look pale.’
‘I just need to sit a moment,’ said Maureen.
Of course David had been right in reassuring her that she could leave the house, but he had no idea of the anxiety she would suffer in making her way to the surgery. It wasn’t that she missed Harold, she told herself; but still it came as a fresh shock to find herself alone in the outside world. Everywhere around her people were doing ordinary things. They were driving cars and pushing buggies and walking dogs and coming home, as if life was exactly the same, when it wasn’t. It was all new and wrong. She buttoned her coat to her neck, and pulled the tips of her collar against her ears, but the air felt too cold, and the sky too open, shape
s and colours too forceful. She had rushed down Fossebridge Road before Rex could spot her, and fled to the centre of town. The petals of the daffodils along the quayside were a crumpled brown.
In the waiting room she tried to distract herself with magazines, but she looked at the words without connecting them into sentences. She was aware of couples like herself and Harold, sitting side by side, keeping one another company. The late-afternoon light was sprinkled with dust motes, swirling in the thick air as if it had been stirred with a spoon.
When a young man opened the consulting-room door and mumbled a patient’s name, Maureen sat waiting for someone to get up and wondering why they took so long, until she realized it was her own name and scrambled to her feet. The locum looked barely out of school, and his body didn’t fill his dark suit. His shoes were polished like conkers; an image came to her from nowhere of David’s school shoes, and she felt a twist of anguish. She wished she had not asked for her son’s help. She wished she had stayed at home.
‘What can I do for you?’ murmured the locum, as he folded into his chair. Words seemed to slip out of his mouth without noise, and she had to crane her head closer in order to catch them. If she wasn’t careful, he’d offer her a hearing test.
Maureen explained how her husband had set off to visit a woman he had not seen for twenty years, convinced he could save her from cancer. It was his eleventh day of walking, she said, rolling her handkerchief into a knot. ‘He can’t get to Berwick. He has no map. No proper shoes. When he left the house, he actually forgot his mobile.’ Telling a stranger brought home the rawness of it, and she was afraid she would cry. She dared a glance at the locum’s face. It was as if someone had stepped over to him while she wasn’t looking and drawn in thick worry-lines with a black pen. Maybe she had said too much.
