by Rachel Joyce
The wedding had been small, with guests he didn’t know in hats and gloves. An invitation was sent to his father, but to Harold’s relief he had not showed up.
Alone at last with his new wife, he had watched her across the hotel room as she unbuttoned her dress. He was desperate to touch her, and tremulous with fear. Removing both his tie and jacket, borrowed from another chap at the bus garage and slightly too short in the sleeve, he had looked up and found her sitting on the bed in her slip. She was so beautiful it was too much. He had to bolt to the bathroom.
‘Harold, is it me?’ she had called through the door, after half an hour.
It hurt to remember these things, when they were so far out of his reach. He had to blink several times, trying to lose the pictures, but they still swam back.
Harold walked the towns that were full of the sounds of other people, and the roads that travelled the land between, and he understood moments from his life as if they had only just occurred. Sometimes he believed he had become more memory than present. He replayed scenes from his life, like a spectator trapped on the outside. Seeing the mistakes, the inconsistencies, the choices that shouldn’t be made, and yet unable to do anything about them.
He caught himself taking the phone call after Maureen’s mother had died very suddenly, two months after her father. He had pinned her in his arms in order to break the news.
‘There’s only me and you,’ she sobbed.
He had reached for the swell of her growing belly and promised it would be all right. He would look after her, he’d said. And he’d meant it too. There was nothing Harold had wanted more than to make Maureen happy.
In those days she believed him. She believed Harold could be all she needed. He hadn’t known it then; but he did now. It was fatherhood that had been the real test and his undoing. He wondered if he must spend the rest of his life in the spare room.
As Harold made his way north towards Gloucestershire, there were times when his steps were so sure they were effortless. He didn’t have to think about lifting one foot and then the other. Walking was an extension of his certainty that he could make Queenie live, and his body was a part of that too. These days he could take the hills without thinking; he was becoming fit, he supposed.
Some days he was more engrossed in what he saw. He tried to find the right words to describe each shift; only sometimes, like the people he had met, they began to jumble. But there were days when he wasn’t aware of himself, or his walking, or the land. He wasn’t thinking about anything; at least not anything that was related to words. He simply was. He felt the sun on his shoulders, watched a kestrel on silent wings, and all the time the ball of his foot pushed his heel from the ground, and weight shifted from one leg to the other, and this was everything.
Only the nights troubled him. He continued to seek modest accommodation, but the inside world seemed to stand as a barrier between himself and his purpose. He felt a visceral need to leave some part of himself outside. Curtains, wallpaper, framed prints, matching hand and bath towels; these things had become superfluous and without meaning. He threw the windows open, so that he could continue to feel the presence of the sky and the air, but he slept badly. Increasingly he was kept awake by images from the past, or dreamed of his feet lifting and falling. Getting up in the early hours, he watched the moon at the window and felt trapped. It was barely light these days when he paid with his debit card and set off.
Walking into the dawn, he watched with wonder as the sky flamed with strong colour and then faded to a single blue. It was like being in an altogether different version of the day, one that held nothing ordinary. He wished he could describe it to Maureen.
The problem of when and how he would reach Berwick receded into the background, and Harold knew Queenie was waiting, as certainly as he saw his shadow. It gave him pleasure to imagine his arrival, and her place at the window in a sunny chair. There would be so much to talk about. So much from the past. He would remind her how she had once produced a Mars bar from her handbag for the homeward journey.
‘You’ll get me fat,’ he’d said.
‘You? There’s nothing on you.’ She’d laughed.
It had been a strange moment, not uncomfortable in an un pleasant way, but it marked a shift in how they spoke to one another. It revealed she had noticed him, and that she cared. She carried a piece of confectionery for him every day after that and they called each other by their first names. They spoke easily when they were travelling. Once they had stopped at a Little Chef and, face to face across a laminated table, they found the words dried up.
‘What do you call two robbers?’ he heard her ask. This time they were back in the car.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It’s a joke,’ she’d said.
‘Oh I see. Very good. I don’t know. What do you call them?’
‘A pair of knickers.’ She had gripped her hand over her mouth but she was shaking so much that a violent snort shot between her fingertips, and turned her crimson. ‘My father loved that one.’
In the end he had been forced to stop the car, they were laughing so much. He had repeated it that night to David and Maureen over spaghetti carbonara and they had both stared so blankly that the punchline, when he reached it, sounded not hilarious but vaguely smutty.
Harold and Queenie often talked about David. He wondered if she would remember that too? Having no children herself, and no nephews or nieces, she was very interested in his progress at Cambridge. How does David find the town? she’d say. Has he made lots of friends? Does he like punting? Harold assured her his son was having the time of his life, although in truth David rarely answered Maureen’s letters and calls. There was no mention of friends, or studying. There was certainly no mention of punting.
Harold didn’t tell Queenie about the empty vodka bottles he found stashed in his shed after the holidays. Nor did he mention the cannabis in a brown envelope. He told no one; not even his wife. He boxed them up and dumped them on his way to work.
‘You and Maureen must be so proud, Harold,’ Queenie would say.
He went over their shared time at the brewery, although neither of them had been part of the crowd. Would Queenie remember the Irish barmaid who claimed she was pregnant with Mr Napier’s baby, and stopped working very suddenly? People said he had fixed for the girl to lose the child, and that there had been complications. There was another time when one of the new young reps got so drunk he was found tied to the gates of the brewery, stripped to his underpants. Mr Napier had talked about setting the dogs on him in the yard. It would be a crack, he said. The boy was screaming by the end. A trickle of brown liquid streaked his legs.
Living it again, Harold felt a nauseous stirring of shame. David had been right about Napier. It was Queenie who had shown the courage.
He saw her smiling the way she used to; slowly, as if even the happy things had a sadness.
He heard her saying, ‘Something happened at the brewery. It was in the night.’
He saw her swaying. Or was it himself? He thought he might fall. He found her small hand gripping at his sleeve, and shaking it. She had not touched him since the stationery cupboard. Her face was white.
She said, ‘Are you listening? Because this is serious, Harold. It’s very serious. Napier won’t let it go.’
It was the last time he’d seen her. He knew she’d guessed the truth.
Harold wondered why she had taken the rap for him, and whether she understood how much he regretted what he had done. Again he asked why, all those years ago, she had not stopped to say goodbye. And thinking all this, he shook his head and kept walking north.
She had been fired on the spot. Napier’s abuse was heard all over the brewery. There was even a rumour he hurled a small round object, an ashtray possibly but maybe a small paperweight, that narrowly missed Queenie’s forehead. Mr Napier’s secretary confirmed afterwards to a few of the reps that he had never liked the woman. She also confirmed that Queenie stood her ground. S
he couldn’t hear Queenie’s exact words because the door was closed, but from Mr Napier’s screaming you could get the gist of what Queenie had said, and it was along the lines of ‘I don’t know what the fuss is about. I was only trying to help.’ ‘If she’d been a man,’ someone told Harold, ‘Mr Napier would have kicked the living shit out of her.’ Harold had been sitting in a pub at the time. Feeling sick, he had reached for his double brandy and downed it in one.
Harold’s shoulders hunched at the memory; he had been an unforgivable coward, but at least he was doing something about that now.
The city of Bath came into view, the crescents and streets cutting into the hillside like small teeth; the cream stone blazing against the morning sun. It was going to be a hot day.
‘Dad! Dad!’
He looked round, startled, with the clear impression that someone was calling. The passing traffic rustled the trees, but there was no one.
16
Harold and the Physician and the Very Famous Actor
HAROLD INTENDED TO keep his stay in Bath brief. He had learned from Exeter that a city diluted his purpose. He needed to get his shoes resoled but the cobbler was closed until midday, due to family affairs. While Harold waited, he would use the time to choose another souvenir for Queenie and Maureen. The sun fell in stark slabs of light in the abbey churchyard. It was so dazzling he had to shield his eyes with his hand.
‘Could I ask you all to form a proper line?’
Glancing behind, Harold found himself included in a party of foreign tourists, wearing canvas sunhats and visiting the Roman Baths. Their guide was an English girl, barely out of her teens, with a fragile face and an upper-class trill to her voice. Harold was about to explain he was not one of the party, when she confessed this was her first tour as a professional. ‘None of them has a clue what I’m talking about,’ she whispered. She sounded so startlingly like Maureen as a young woman that he couldn’t move. Her mouth wobbled as if she were about to cry, and Harold was undone. He tried lingering at the back, and also attaching himself to a party who were almost finished; but each time he was on the verge of escape, he remembered his young wife in her blue coat and couldn’t let the guide down. Two hours later, her tour ended in the gift shop where he bought postcards and mosaic key rings for both Maureen and Queenie. He had especially enjoyed her introduction to the Sacred Spring, he told her; they really were extremely clever, the Romans.
The young guide gave a slight wriggle of her nose, as if she had smelt something unpleasant, and asked if he had considered visiting the nearby Thermae Bath Spa, where he might enjoy picturesque views of the city, and a state-of-the-art cleansing experience?
Appalled, Harold rushed straight there. He had been careful to keep washing both his clothes and himself, but his shirt was frayed at the collar, and his fingernails were dirt ridges. It was only once he had paid for his entrance ticket and the hire of towels that it occurred to him he had no trunks. For these he had to leave and find a nearby sports shop, making the day his most expensive so far. The assistant fetched a choice of bathing costumes and goggles, although when Harold explained he was more of a walker than a swimmer she was keen to show him waterproof covers for his compass, and a selection of reduced-price, all-weather trousers.
By the time he left the shop with his swimming shorts in a small bag, a large crowd was packed on the pavement. Harold found himself squashed against a copper statue of a Victorian man in a top hat.
‘We’re waiting for that famous actor,’ explained a woman beside him. Her face was red and filmy with the heat. ‘He’s signing his new book. If he catches my eye, I shall pass out.’
It was difficult to see the really famous actor, let alone catch his eye, because he seemed to be rather short, and surrounded by a wall of bookshop assistants in black uniforms. The crowd shouted out, and applauded. Photographers held up their cameras and the street was punctured with flashlight. Harold wondered what it must be like to have made such a success of your life.
The woman beside him was saying she had named her dog after the actor. The dog was a cocker spaniel, she said. She wished she could tell the actor. She had read all about him in magazines; she knew him like a friend. Harold tried to lean against the statue for a better look, but the statue gave him a sharp dig in the ribs. The bleached sky shone. Sweat broke out on Harold’s neck and slid from his armpits, clamping his shirt to his skin.
By the time Harold made it back to the spa, a flock of young women on a hen party were playing in the water and he didn’t want to alarm them or get in the way, so he took a quick steam and left in a hurry. At the Pump Room, he asked if he might take a sample of the health-giving water to a very good friend in Berwick-upon-Tweed. The waiter poured some into a bottle and charged five pounds because Harold had mislaid his ticket for the Roman Baths. It was already early afternoon, and he needed to get back on the road.
In the public lavatories, Harold found himself washing his hands next to the actor from the book signing. He was wearing a leather jacket and trousers, and cowboy boots with a small heel. The man stared at his face in the mirror, pulling at the skin, as if he were checking it for something missing. Close up, his hair was so dark it looked plastic. Harold didn’t want to intrude on the actor. He dried his hands and pretended he was thinking of something else.
‘Don’t tell me you have a dog named after me as well,’ said the actor. He was staring straight up at Harold. ‘Today I am not in the mood.’
He told the actor he didn’t have a dog. As a child, he added, he had been bitten many times by a Pekinese called Chinky. This was probably not politically correct; the aunt who owned him had not troubled herself with other people’s feelings. ‘But I have been walking and I have met some nice dogs recently.’
The actor returned to his reflection. He continued to talk about the dog-naming issue, as if Harold’s interjections about his aunt had not been made. ‘Every day, someone comes up to tell me about their dog and how they’ve given it my name. They say it as if I should be happy. They haven’t the first idea.’
Harold agreed this was unfortunate, although secretly he thought it must be flattering. He couldn’t imagine anyone calling their pet Harold, for instance.
‘I spent years doing serious work. I did a whole season at Pitlochry. Then I make one costume drama, and that’s it. Everyone in the country thinks it’s original to name a dog after me. Did you come to Bath for my book?’
Harold admitted he hadn’t. He told the actor the barest details about Queenie. He didn’t think he should mention the nurses he had imagined applauding as he arrived at the hospice. The actor appeared to be listening, although at the end of the story he asked again if Harold had a copy of the book, and if he would like the actor to sign it.
Harold agreed. He felt the book might be a perfect souvenir for Queenie; she had always liked reading. He was about to ask the actor if he wouldn’t mind waiting while he nipped out to buy a copy, but the actor spoke instead.
‘Actually, don’t bother. It’s rubbish. I haven’t written a word of the thing. I haven’t even read it. I’m a serial shagger, with a serious coke habit. I went down on a woman last week and discovered she had a cock. They don’t put that sort of thing in the book.’
‘No.’ Harold glanced at the door.
‘I’m on all the chat shows. I’m in all the magazines. Everyone thinks I’m this really nice guy. And yet no one knows the first thing about me. It’s like being two people. You’re probably about to tell me you’re a journalist.’ He laughed, but there was something both reckless and grim about the gesture that reminded Harold of David.
‘I’m not a journalist. I think I would make a very poor one.’
‘Tell me again why you’re walking to Bradford.’
Harold said something quiet about Berwick, and atoning for the past. He was unnerved by the very famous actor’s confession and was still trying to find a place in himself in which to keep it.
‘So how do you know this wom
an is waiting? Has she sent a message?’
‘A message?’ repeated Harold, although he hadn’t misheard. It was more a stalling for time.
‘Has she told you she’s up for it?’
Harold opened his mouth, and reworked it several times, but he couldn’t get the words to come.
‘How does it work exactly?’ said the actor.
Harold touched his tie with his fingertips. ‘I send postcards. I know she is waiting.’
Harold smiled and the actor smiled too. He wanted the actor to be persuaded by what he had heard, because he wasn’t sure there was any other way of putting it, and for a moment it appeared that the actor was; but then a scowl crept over his face as if he had just tasted something not right. ‘If I were you, I’d get myself in a car.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Bollocks to the walk.’
Harold’s voice trembled. ‘The walk is the idea. That’s how she will live. John Lennon lay in a bed once. My son had a picture of him on his wall.’
‘John Lennon had Yoko Ono and the world’s press in the bed as well. You’re on your own, slogging to Berwick-upon-Tweed. It’s going to take weeks. And supposing she didn’t get your message? They might have forgotten to tell her.’ The actor’s mouth arched in a frown, as if he were thinking through the implications of such a mistake. ‘What does it matter if you walk or get a lift? It makes no difference how you get there. You’ve just got to see her. I’ll lend you my car. My driver. You could be there tonight.’
