The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel

by Rachel Joyce

  Harold and the Follower

  SOMEONE WAS BEHIND Harold. He could feel it in his spine. He quickened his pace, but the person following him along the hard shoulder did the same, and although they were not yet close enough to become a shadow they would catch up soon. Harold scanned the road ahead for people, but there was no one. Harold turned to look behind. The ribbon of tarmac stretched toward the horizon between fields of yellow rape, so hot in the afternoon sun it shimmered. Cars appeared to come out of nowhere and vanish as quickly. You couldn’t even see the people inside. But there was no one walking. There was no one on the hard shoulder.

  However, as he continued he could sense in his skin, all the way up his neck and into his hair, that there was certainly a person behind, and that they were still following. Not wanting to stop again, he found a gap in the traffic and darted into the road, crossing fast at an angle, while also casting an eye to his left. Nobody came into view, and yet minutes later he knew that the person following had also crossed the road. He walked faster, with his breath and heart pounding. A sweat had broken out all over him.

  He continued like this for another half hour, stopping and looking back and seeing no one, but knowing he was not alone. Only once, when he turned, did he notice a low shrub quivering, although there was no wind. For the first time in weeks, he regretted he had no mobile phone. He took refuge that night in an unlocked toolshed, but lay very still in his sleeping bag, listening for the person he knew in his bones was waiting outside.

  The following morning, and due north of Barnsley, Harold heard someone shout his name from the opposite side of the A61. A slight young man in reflective shades and a baseball cap dodged between traffic. Gasping for breath, he said he had come to join Harold. He spoke fast. His cheekbones were like pencils. His name was Lf. Harold frowned. “Ilf,” repeated the boy. And then again: “Wilf.” He looked undernourished and barely twenty. On his feet he wore trainers with fluorescent green laces.

  “I am going to be a pilgrim, Mr. Fry. I’m going to save Queenie Hennessy too.” He lifted a sports bag and held it suspended. It was clearly new, like the trainers. “I’ve got my sleeping bag and everything.”

  It was like talking to David. Even the young man’s hands were shaking.

  There was no time to object, because the young man called Wilf had already fallen in beside Harold, and was striding at his pace, chattering nervously. Harold tried to listen but every time he looked at Wilf he found further reminders of his son. The fingernails bitten to the quick. The way he slipped out words as if they weren’t really for your hearing. “I saw your picture in the paper. And then I asked for a sign. I said, ‘Lord, if I should go to Mr. Fry, show me.’ And guess what he did?”

  “I don’t know.” A passing van slowed. The driver pointed a mobile phone out of the window and appeared to take Harold’s photograph.

  “He gave me a dove.”

  “A what?” The van drove on.

  “Well, maybe a pigeon. But the point is, it was a sign. The Lord is good. Ask the way, Mr. Fry, and he will show you.”

  There was something about the way the young man used his name that caused Harold further confusion; as if Wilf knew something about him, or had a claim to him, but Harold didn’t know it. They continued to walk along the grass verge, although sometimes it narrowed and it was difficult to keep side by side. Wilf’s steps were smaller than Harold’s so that he cantered at a sideways angle.

  “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  “I don’t.”

  The young man pulled a face and glanced over his shoulder. “Then whose is it?”

  He was right. On the other side of the road, a dog had stopped and was studying the sky, panting, with its tongue to one side. It was a small thing, the color of autumn leaves, with rough fur like a brush. It must have waited all night outside the toolshed.

  “That dog is nothing to do with me,” said Harold.

  As he started off, with the young man gamboling to keep up, he could see out of the corner of his eye that the dog had crossed the road and was also trotting behind. Whenever Harold stopped and looked back, the dog shrank into the hedgerow with its head dropped, as if it weren’t there, or was something else. Perhaps a statue of a dog.

  “Go away,” called Harold. “Go home.”

  The dog tilted its head as if Harold had just told it something interesting. It trotted up to Harold, and carefully placed a stone beside his shoe.

  “Maybe it doesn’t have a home,” suggested Wilf.

  “Of course it has a home.”

  “Well, maybe it doesn’t like its home. Maybe it gets beaten or something. That happens. It hasn’t got a collar.” The dog picked up its stone and placed it beside Harold’s other shoe. It sat on its back legs, looking up at him patiently, not blinking and not moving its head. On the horizon grew the dark moors of the Peak District.

  “I can’t look after a dog. I don’t have food. And I’m walking to Berwick on busy roads. It’s too dangerous. Go home, dog.”

  They tried to fool it by throwing the stone into a field and hiding behind a hedge, but the dog fetched the stone and sat beside the hedgerow, wagging its tail. “The trouble is, I reckon it likes you,” whispered Wilf. “It wants to come too.” They crawled out from the hedge and continued, with the dog now sauntering openly at Harold’s side. It wasn’t safe to stick with the A61. Harold took a diversion on the quieter B6132, although the going was slow. Wilf had to keep stopping to pull off his trainers and shake them. They covered only a mile.

  It came as a further surprise to Harold that he was recognized by a woman deadheading roses in her front garden. “You’re the pilgrim, aren’t you?” she said. “I have to say I think what you are doing is absolutely marvelous.” She opened her purse and offered him a twenty-pound note. Wilf wiped his forehead with his cap and whistled.

  “I couldn’t possibly take it,” said Harold. He felt the young man’s eyes boring holes into his side. “But a round of sandwiches would be kind. And maybe some matches and a candle for tonight. A bit of butter. I don’t have any of those things.” He glanced at Wilf’s nervous face. “I think we may need them.”

  She urged him to join her for a light supper, and extended her invitation to Wilf, also offering the men bathroom facilities and the use of her telephone.

  It gave seven rings before his wife answered. She sounded tense. “You’re not that PR girl again?”

  “No, Maureen. It’s me.”

  “It’s gone mad,” she told him. “Sometimes people ask to come inside the house. Rex found a young man trying to remove a piece of flint from the front wall.”

  By the time Harold had showered, it seemed that his hostess had also invited a small number of chums for an impromptu sherry party on the lawn. On greeting him, they raised their glasses and toasted Queenie’s health. He had never seen so much backcombed gray-blue hair, or so many corduroy trousers in shades of mustard, gold, and russet. Underneath a table, laid out with canapés and cold meats, sat the dog, chewing on something between its paws. Occasionally someone threw the stone, and the dog retrieved it and waited for them to do it again.

  The men told stories about their own adventures involving yachts and shooting, and Harold listened patiently. He watched Wilf talking animatedly to their hostess. Her laughter had a shrill quality Harold realized he had almost forgotten. He wondered if anyone would notice if he slipped away.

  He was swinging his rucksack up onto his shoulders when Wilf broke free of the women and caught up. “I had no idea it was like this,” he said. He crammed a smoked salmon blini into his mouth with all five fingers, as if it were alive. “Why are we leaving?”

  “I need to get on. And it isn’t usually like this. I find a place for my sleeping bag and no one notices. I’ve been living for days on bread rolls and what I find. But you should stay here, if you’d like to. I’m sure you’re very welcome.”

  Wilf gazed at Harold but he wasn’t really listening. He said, “People keep as
king if I’m your son.” Harold smiled, suddenly tender. Turning again to the cocktail guests, he felt he and Wilf were linked in some way, as if, by being outsiders, they shared something bigger than in truth they had. They waved their farewells.

  “You’re too young to be my son,” said Harold. He patted Wilf’s arm. “We’d better get a move on if we’re going to find somewhere to sleep.”

  “Good luck!” called the guests. “Queenie will keep living!”

  The dog was already at the gate, and all three walked at an easy pace. Their shadows were posts against the road and the deepening air smelled sweet with elderflower and privet blossom. Wilf told Harold about his life; how he had tried many things, but been good at none of them. If it weren’t for the Lord, he said, he would be in prison. Sometimes Harold listened, and sometimes he watched for bats, flitting through the dusk. He wondered if the young man would really accompany him all the way to Berwick, and what he would do about the dog. He wondered if David had ever tried God. Far away, the factories belched further cloud into the sky.

  After only an hour, Wilf was clearly limping. They had barely covered half a mile.

  “Do you need to rest?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Fry.” But he was hopping.

  Harold searched for a sheltered spot and they stopped early. Wilf copied him spreading out his sleeping bag beside a storm-felled elm. Plates of dryad’s saddle grew out of the dead trunk with mottled markings like feathers. Harold picked the fungi while Wilf jumped from one foot to the other, yelping and calling them gross. Afterwards he searched for fallen leafy branches and velvet pads of moss, which he layered in the earthed hole at the foot of the tree where its roots had ripped through. Harold had not taken such care over his sleeping place in days. As he worked, the dog followed, picking up stones and dropping them at his feet.

  “I’m not going to throw them,” he warned, but once or twice he did.

  Harold reminded Wilf to check his feet for blisters. It was important to take proper care; later he would show him how to drain the pus. “And can you light a fire, Wilf?”

  “Can I shit, Mr. Fry? Where’s your petrol?”

  Harold explained again that he was walking without unnecessary baggage. He sent the boy off to look for more wood, while Harold ripped the fungi into rough slices with his fingernails. They were tougher than he would have liked, but he hoped they might impress. He cooked them over the fire in an old tin he carried in his rucksack especially for the purpose, with the pat of butter and torn-up leaves of Jack-by-the-hedge. The air smelled of fried garlic.

  “Eat,” he told Wilf, offering the tin.

  “What with?”

  “Your fingers. You can wipe them afterwards on my jacket if you want. Maybe tomorrow we’ll find potatoes.”

  Wilf refused; he had a laugh that was like a shriek. “How do I know it’s not poisonous?”

  “I’m eating it. Look at me. And there’s nothing else tonight.”

  Wilf posted a small corner between his teeth, and ate with his lips curled back as if he was afraid of being stung.

  “Shit,” he kept squealing. “Shit.” Harold laughed, and the boy ate more.

  “It doesn’t taste so bad,” said Harold. “Does it?”

  “It tastes of fucking garlic. And mustard.”

  “That’s the leaves. Most wild food tastes bitter. You’ll get used to that. If it tastes of nothing, that’s nice. If it tastes good, that’s a treat. Maybe we’ll spot red currants. Or wild strawberries. If you get a really ripe one it’s like cheesecake.”

  They sat with their knees hunched, watching the flames. Far behind them, Sheffield was a sulfuric glow on the horizon, and there were always cars if you listened hard enough, but he felt they were a long way from other people. Harold told the boy how he had learned to cook over the fire, and how he had taught himself about plant life from a small book he had acquired in Bath. There were good fungi and bad ones, he said; you had to learn the difference. You had to be sure, for instance, that you didn’t pick sulfur tufts instead of branching oysters. Occasionally he leaned over the fire and blew on it, so that the embers bloomed red. Flicks of ash rose into the air, glowing briefly before melting into the dusk. The air was alive with crickets.

  “Don’t you get scared?” said Wilf.

  “When I was a boy, my parents didn’t want me. Then, later on in my life, I met my wife and we had a child. That went wrong too. Since I have been out in the open, it seems there’s less to be afraid of.” He wished David could hear.

  Later, as Harold wiped the cooking tin with a piece of newspaper and returned it to his rucksack, the boy amused himself with throwing a stone into the undergrowth for the dog. It yelped wildly and scurried into the darkness, returning with the stone and posting it at Wilf’s feet. It occurred to Harold how much he had grown used to both solitude and silence.

  They lay in their sleeping bags, and Wilf asked if they might pray. Harold said, “I have no objection to other people doing it; but if you don’t mind, I won’t join in.”

  Wilf clenched his hands into a ball, and screwed his eyes closed. With his nails so ragged, the skin at his fingertips looked too tender. He bowed his head, like a child, and whispered words that Harold did not care to overhear. Harold hoped there was someone, or something, apart from himself, listening. There was a trace of light left in the sky as they drifted into sleep. The cloud was low, and the air hung still; he was sure it wouldn’t rain.

  Despite his prayers, Wilf woke crying out in the night, and shivering. Harold took him in his arms but the boy was covered in sweat. He worried he had been wrong about the fungus, although he hadn’t made a mistake so far.

  “What’s that noise?” shuddered Wilf.

  “Just foxes. Maybe dogs. And sheep too. I can definitely hear sheep.”

  “We didn’t pass any sheep.”

  “No. But you hear more of what is around at night. You get used to that quickly. Don’t worry. Nothing will hurt you.”

  He rubbed his back and coaxed him to sleep, the way Maureen used to do with David when he got the frights after the Lake District. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” he repeated, just the way she would. He wished he had found a better place for Wilf’s first night; there had been an unlocked glass summerhouse a few evenings back, and Harold had slept in comfort on a wicker sofa. Even underneath a bridge would have been better than this, although there was always the worry of attracting attention.

  “It’s fucking freaky,” said Wilf. His teeth were knocking. Harold pulled out Queenie’s knitted beret and fitted it over the boy’s head.

  “I used to have bad dreams but they stopped as I walked. It will be the same for you.”

  For the first time in weeks, Harold did not sleep that night. He sat watching over the boy, remembering the past, and asking himself why David had made the choices he had; whether Harold should have seen the seeds of them right from the beginning. Would it have been the same, if David had a different father? It was a long while since such questions had troubled him. The dog lay at his side.

  As dawn came, the moon glowed pale yellow in the morning light, surrendering to the sun. They walked through dew with the pink feathery tips of sedge and ribwort brushing wet and cold against their legs. Droplets hung from the stems like gems and spiderwebs were downy puffs between the blades of grass. The rising sun shone so low and bright that the shapes and colors ahead of them lost their clarity and it was like walking into mist. He showed Wilf the flattened path their feet had made on the verge. “That’s us,” he said.

  Wilf’s new trainers continued to trouble him and the lack of sleep slowed Harold. In the course of the following two days they made it only as far as Wakefield, but he felt unable to leave the young man behind. The panic attacks, or nightmares, continued. Wilf insisted he had been bad in the past, and that the Lord would save him.

  Harold was less sure. The boy was painfully underweight, and prone to mood swings. One minute he was running ahead, racing the dog t
o find its stone; the next he could barely speak. Harold distracted Wilf by telling him all that he had taught himself about hedgerow plants, and the sky. He pointed out the difference between the low-combed stratus clouds and the tall cirrus clouds that moved high above like boulders. He showed Wilf how, by observing shadows and textures around him, he could deduce his direction. A plant, for instance, that showed a thicker growth on one side was obviously receiving more sunlight there. They could tell from this that the plant was south-facing, and that they must head in the opposite direction. Wilf appeared to learn greedily, although sometimes he would ask a question that suggested he had not been concentrating at all. They sat beneath the poplar and listened to its leaves rattling in the wind.

  “The trembling tree,” said Harold. “You can spot it easily. It shakes so hard that from a distance it looks as if it’s covered in little lights.”

  He told Wilf about the people he had met at the beginning, and others who had more recently crossed his path. There was a woman living in a straw house, and a couple who drove a goat in their car, and a retired dentist who traveled six miles a day to fetch fresh water from a natural spring. “He told me about it. He said we all should accept what the earth gives freely. It is an act of grace, he said. Since then I always make a point of stopping to drink from a spring.”

  It was only in saying these things that Harold realized how far he had come. He took pleasure in heating water, a little at a time, in a cup for Wilf over a candle, and picking the blossom from the lime tree to make tea. He showed him you could eat ox-eye daisies, pineapple weed, toadflax, and sweet hop shoots, if you wanted. He felt he was doing everything for David that he hadn’t in fact done. There was so much he wanted Wilf to see.

  “These are vetch pods. They’re sweet, but not good if you have too much. Mind you, nor is vodka.” Wilf held the tiny pod and took one nibbling mouthful, before spitting it out.

  “I’d rather have vodka, Mr. Fry.”

  Harold pretended he hadn’t heard. They hunkered down on a bank, waiting for a goose to lay an egg. The boy danced and screamed as it emerged, wet and white and huge against the grass. “Oh fuck, that’s so rank. It came right out her arse. Shall I throw something?”