by Rachel Joyce
The door opened and a gentleman in shorts made his way to the urinal. Harold waited for him to finish. He needed the very famous actor to know that you could be ordinary and attempt something extraordinary, without being able to explain it in a logical way. But all he could picture was a car driving to Berwick. The actor was right. Harold had left a message, and sent postcards, but there was no proof she’d taken him seriously, or even heard about his call. He imagined sitting in the warmth of the car. If he said yes, he could be there in hours. He had to grip his hands to stop them from shaking.
‘I haven’t upset you, have I?’ said the actor. His voice was suddenly tender. ‘I told you I was an arse.’ Harold shook his head, but kept it bowed. He hoped the gentleman in shorts wasn’t looking.
‘I have to keep walking,’ he said quietly, although he knew he was no longer certain.
The newcomer placed himself between Harold and the actor in order to wash his hands. He began to laugh, as if remembering something private. Then he said, ‘I’ve got to tell you. We have this dog—’
Harold made his way to the street.
The sky had filled with a dense layer of white cloud that pressed down on the city as if intending to squeeze the life out of it. Bars and cafés spilled on to the pavements. Drinkers and shoppers were stripped to vests, and skin that had not felt the sun for months was crimson. Harold carried his jacket over his arm, but he frequently had to mop his face with his shirtsleeve. Seedheads hung in the stiff air like fuzz. When Harold got to the cobbler, it was still closed. The straps of his rucksack were wet from his body, and dug into his shoulders. It was too hot to keep walking, and he hadn’t the energy.
He thought he might take refuge in the abbey. He hoped it might be cool there, and inspire him again, remind him what it was to believe in something, but the abbey was closed to visitors for a music rehearsal. Harold sat in a pocket of shade and briefly watched the copper statue, until a small child burst into tears because it had waved and offered her a boiled sweet. He would wait in a small teashop where he reckoned he could afford a pot of tea for one.
The waitress scowled. ‘We don’t do drinks-only in the afternoon. You have to have the Regency Bath cream tea.’ But he was already sitting down. Harold asked for the Regency Bath cream tea.
The tables were set too close together and the heat was so solid you could almost see it. Customers sat with their legs open and flapped the air with their laminated menus. When his order arrived, a small scoop of clotted cream swam in a pool of fat. The waitress said, ‘Enjoy.’
Harold asked if she knew the quickest route towards Stroud but she shrugged. ‘Do you mind sharing?’ she said, only without making it sound like a question. She called out to a man at the door and pointed at the seat opposite Harold’s. The man sat apologetically and pulled out a book. He had a neatly chiselled face, and closely cut light hair. His white shirt was open at the collar, revealing a perfect V-shape of toffee-coloured skin. Asking Harold to pass the menu, he also asked if he liked Bath. He was an American, he said, doing England. His girlfriend was currently enjoying the Jane Austen experience. Harold wasn’t sure what this might be, but hoped for her sake that it didn’t involve the very famous actor. He was relieved that they fell into silence. He didn’t need another encounter like the one in Exeter, or even the one he had just had. Despite his obligation to other people, he wished at that moment he had walls.
Harold drank his tea, but couldn’t face the scones. He felt dulled with such apathy it was like being at the brewery again in the years following Queenie’s departure; like being an empty space inside a suit, that said words sometimes and heard them, that got in a car every day and returned home, but was no longer connected up to other people. The manager appointed after Napier suggested Harold should take a back seat until his retirement. Filing, he suggested. The odd piece of consultative advice. Harold was given a special desk with a computer and his name on a badge but no one had approached. He draped a serviette over his plate and caught the eye of the chiselled man opposite.
‘Too hot for food,’ said the man.
Harold agreed. He instantly regretted it. The chiselled man now seemed to feel obliged to make further conversation.
‘Bath seems like a nice place,’ he said. He closed his book. ‘Are you on vacation?’
Reluctantly, Harold explained his story, but kept it brief. He left out, for instance, the detail about the garage girl and how she had saved her aunt. Instead he added that after his son left Cambridge, he had gone on a walking trip to the Lake District, although he wasn’t sure how much hiking he had done. David had returned home and not moved for weeks.
‘Is your son joining you?’ said the man.
Harold said he wasn’t. He asked the American what he did for a living.
‘I’m a physician.’
‘I met a Slovakian lady who is a doctor. She can only get cleaning work. What sort of physician are you?’
‘An oncologist.’
Harold felt his blood quicken, as if he had unintentionally broken into a run. ‘Gosh,’ he said. It was clear neither man knew what to say next. ‘Goodness.’
The oncologist raised his shoulders and gave a regretful smile, as if he wished he could be something else. Harold glanced round for the waitress, but she was fetching water for another customer. His head was dizzy with the heat and he dabbed at his forehead.
The oncologist said, ‘Do you know what sort of cancer your friend has?’
‘I’m not sure. In her letter, she says there’s nothing else they can do. She doesn’t say any more than that.’ He felt so exposed, the oncologist might as well have been probing at Harold’s skin with his scalpel. He loosened his tie, and then his collar. He wished the waitress would hurry.
‘Lung cancer?’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘May I see her letter?’
He didn’t want to show it, but the oncologist was holding out his empty hand. Harold reached into his pocket and found the envelope. He adjusted the sticking plaster on his reading glasses, but his face was so slick with moisture he had to hold them in place. He wiped the table with his sleeve, and then again with his napkin, before unfolding the pink sheet of paper, and smoothing it flat. Time seemed to stop. Even as the oncologist reached for the letter and gently eased it closer, Harold’s right fingers hovered over the page.
He read Queenie’s words as the oncologist read them. He felt he had to protect the letter and that, by not letting it out of his sight, he could do that. His eye fell on the postscript: No need to reply. After that came an untidy squiggle, as if someone had made a mistake with their left hand.
The oncologist threw himself back in his chair, and blew out a sigh. ‘What a moving letter.’
Harold nodded. He replaced his reading glasses in his shirt pocket. ‘And beautifully typed,’ he said. ‘Queenie was always neat. You should have seen her desk.’ At last he smiled. It was going to be all right.
The oncologist said, ‘But I assume a care worker did it for her?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Harold’s pulse stopped.
‘She won’t be well enough to sit in an office, typing letters. Someone at the hospice will have done it for her. It’s nice she managed the address, though. You can see she really tried.’ The oncologist gave a smile that was plainly intended to be reassuring, but it remained fixed on his face, looking like something forgotten or even misplaced.
Harold took up the envelope. The truth dropped like a terrible weight straight through him and everything seemed to fall away. He didn’t know any more if he was unbearably hot or freezing cold. Fumbling again with his reading glasses, he saw now what he had not been able to make sense of; the thing that had been wrong all along. How had he not realized it before? It was the childlike handwriting, with its downward slant and almost comical irregularity. It was the same as the messy squiggle at the bottom of the letter, which, now that he looked again, he found was a botched attempt at her name.
This was Queenie’s handwriting. This was what she had become.
Harold replaced the letter in its envelope, although his fingers were trembling so hard he couldn’t get the corner to fit. He had to take it out and fold it again, and give it another push.
After a long moment the oncologist said, ‘How much do you know about cancer, Harold?’
Harold gave a yawn to stifle the emotion building up inside his face, while gently and slowly the oncologist told how a tumour is formed. He didn’t rush. He didn’t flinch. He explained how a cell may reproduce uncontrollably to form an abnormal mass of tissue. There were more than two hundred types of cancer, he said, each with different causes and symptoms. He described the difference between primary and secondary cancers, and how ascertaining the origin of the tumour dictated the type of treatment. He explained how, when a new tumour forms on a distant organ, it will behave like the original tumour. A breast cancer growing in the liver, for instance, would not be liver cancer; it would be primary breast cancer, with secondary breast cancer in the liver. But once other organs were involved, the symptoms could get worse. And once a cancer had begun to spread beyond its original site, it became more difficult to treat. If it had got into her lymphatic system, for instance, the end would be quick; although with the immunity so low, another infection might kill her first. ‘Even a cold,’ he said.
Harold listened without moving.
‘I’m not saying cancer can’t be cured. And when surgery fails, there are alternative treatments. But as a physician, I would never tell a patient there was nothing to be done, unless I was absolutely certain. Harold, you have a wife and son. If I may say so, you look tired. Is it really necessary to walk?’
Out of words, Harold stood. He reached for his jacket and slipped his arms into the sleeves but he kept missing one of them, and the oncologist had to stand to help. ‘Good luck,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘And please let me take the bill. It’s the least I can do.’
For the rest of the afternoon, Harold continued to tread the streets but without knowing where he was going. He needed someone to share his faith in his walk so that he could believe in it too, but he barely had the energy to talk. He finally got his shoes resoled. He bought a new box of plasters to keep him going as far as Stroud. He stopped for a takeaway coffee and briefly mentioned Berwick, but nothing about how he was getting there, or why. No one said what he longed to hear. No one said, You are going to get there, and Queenie will live. No one said, There will be crowds applauding because this, Harold, is the best idea we have ever heard. You must definitely finish.
Harold tried to speak to Maureen, but worried he was taking up her time. He felt he had mislaid all the normal words and the everyday questions that would lead to an exchange of commonplaces, so that speaking caused further pain. He told her he was doing splendidly. He found the courage to hint that a few people had expressed doubt, hoping Maureen would laugh it away, but instead she said, ‘Yes, I see.’
‘I don’t even know she’s—’ Again the words ran out.
‘She’s – what?’
‘Still waiting.’
‘I thought you did?’
‘Not really.’
‘Have you stayed with any more Slovakian ladies?’
‘I met a physician, and a very famous actor.’
‘Goodness,’ said Maureen with a laugh. ‘Wait till I tell Rex.’
A bald, thickset man wearing a patterned frock trudged past the kiosk. People were slowing to point him out, and laugh. The buttons on the dress strained at his belly, and his eye was a large closed-up bruise from a recent punch. Harold wished he hadn’t seen, but he had, and he knew it would be unbearable for a while to keep thinking of the man, but that he would do it all the same.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ said Maureen.
Along came another pause, and he was suddenly afraid he was going to cry, so he told her someone else was waiting for the phone, and that he must get going. There was a red stretch in the western sky, and the sun was beginning to sink.
‘Well, cheerio,’ said Maureen.
For a long time, he sat on a bench close to the abbey, trying to work out where to go. It was as if Harold had taken off his jacket, followed by his shirt, and then several layers of skin and muscle. Even the most ordinary things seemed overwhelming. A shop assistant began to wind up the striped awning and it made such a rattle the noise cut into his head. He looked along the empty street, knowing no one, having nowhere to belong, when, emerging from the opposite end, he saw David.
Harold stood. His heartbeat came so fast he could feel it in his mouth. It couldn’t be his son; he couldn’t be in Bath. And yet, looking at the stooped figure striding towards him, tugging on a cigarette, and with his black coat billowing out like wings, Harold knew it was David, and that they were going to meet. He was shaking so much he had to reach for the bench.
Even from this distance, he could tell David had grown his hair again. Maureen would be so pleased. She had wept bitterly the day he shaved his head. His walk was still the same; toppling and long-paced, his eyes fixed to the ground, his head bowed, as if other people were to be avoided. Harold called out: ‘David! David!’ They were no more than fifty feet apart.
His son staggered as if he had lost his balance or tripped. He was maybe drunk, but that wouldn’t matter. Harold would buy him a coffee. Or a drink, if he preferred that. They could eat. Or not eat. They could do whatever his son wanted.
‘David!’ he called. He started to edge towards him. Gently, to show he meant no harm. A few more paces; that was all.
He remembered the skeletal thinness of David after the Lake District; the way his head balanced on top of his neck, suggesting his body had rejected the rest of the world and was interested only in consuming itself.
‘David!’ he called again; a little louder to make him look up.
His son caught his eye, but failed to smile. He glanced at Harold as if his father wasn’t there, or was part of the street but not something he recognized. Harold’s insides turned. He hoped he wouldn’t fall.
It wasn’t David. It was someone else. Another man’s son. He had allowed himself to believe for a few brief moments that David could appear at one end of a street, while Harold sat at the other. The young man took a sharp right and marched swiftly away, becoming smaller and less distinguishable, until with a snap he turned another corner. Harold kept watching, waiting in case the young man changed his mind and was David after all, but he didn’t.
It was worse than not seeing his son for twenty years. It was like having him, and not having him, all over again. Harold returned to the bench outside the abbey, knowing he must find somewhere to sleep, and unable to move.
He ended up near the station, in a stuffy room overlooking the road. He wrenched up the sash window for air, but the traffic would not stop, and the trains shrieked in and out of the platforms. From beyond the wall came a voice in a foreign language, shouting into a telephone. Harold lay on a bed that was too soft, where so many people he didn’t know had slept before him, listening to the voice he didn’t understand, and he was afraid. He got up and paced the room, up and down, with the walls too close and the air too still, while the traffic and the trains went to wherever they were going.
The past could not be changed. Inoperable cancer could not be cured. He pictured the stranger dressed as a woman, with the blow to his head. He recalled the way David looked the day of his graduation, and in the months following, as if he were asleep with his eyes open. It was too much. It was too much to keep going.
As dawn broke, Harold was already on the road but he did not refer to his compass or his guidebooks. It took all his strength and will to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Only when three teenage girls on horseback asked him the way to Shepton Mallet did he realize he had lost a full day heading in the wrong direction.
He sat by the roadside, looking over a field ablaze with yellow flowers. He couldn’t remember their name and h
e couldn’t be bothered to take out his wild-plant guide. The truth was, he was spending far too much money. After three weeks of walking, Kingsbridge was still nearer than Berwick. The first of the swallows swooped and dived overhead, playing through the air like children.
Harold didn’t know how he would ever get back on his feet.
17
Maureen and the Garden
‘YES, DAVID,’ MAUREEN told him, ‘he’s still walking. He rings most evenings. And Rex is being very kind. In a funny way, I’m almost proud. I wish I knew how to tell Harold that.’
Lying on the queen-sized bed she had once shared with Harold, she watched the block of bright morning light trapped behind the net curtains. So much had happened in one week, she sometimes had the feeling she had slipped into a different woman’s skin. ‘He sends postcards, and occasionally a present. He seems to favour pens.’ She paused, afraid she had offended David because he wasn’t replying. ‘I love you,’ she said. Her words trickled to nothing and still he did not speak. ‘I should let you go,’ she said at last.
It wasn’t that it was a relief to stop, but for the first time she had begun to feel uncomfortable when she talked to her son. She had believed they would enjoy a greater intimacy now that Harold was gone. And yet, faced with hours, if she wished, to tell him how things were, she found she was too busy. Or she would speak, and it would dawn on her with creeping certainty that he wasn’t listening. She found reasons not to tidy his bedroom. She even stopped thinking she might see him.
It was the trip to Slapton Sands that had marked her turning point. That night, she had fumbled her front-door key into the lock, calling her thank you to Rex across the dividing fence, and then she had climbed the stairs without taking off her shoes and walked straight into the master bedroom. Fully dressed, she had toppled on to the bed and closed her eyes. In the middle of the night she had realized where she was with a prickle of panic, followed by relief. It was over. She couldn’t think what exactly it was, other than an unspecific weight of pain. She had pulled back the duvet and curled into Harold’s pillow. It smelt of Pears soap and him. Waking later, she had felt the same lightness spreading through her like warm water.
