The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

by Rachel Joyce

  Harold and Dog were so close to Berwick they must do nothing but walk. After his experience with the pilgrims, he was anxious to avoid public attention. In talking to strangers, and listening, he feared he had created a need in them to be carried and he hadn’t the strength for that any more. If he and Dog came to a built-up area and could not bypass it, they slept in fields on its fringes until dark, and then crossed in the early hours of the morning. They ate what they found in hedgerows, and bins. They picked only from the allotments or trees that looked uncared for. They still stopped to taste springwater wherever it bubbled up, but they troubled no one. Once or twice someone asked for his photograph, and he obliged, though he found it hard to look into the camera. Occasionally a passerby recognized him and offered food. A man who was possibly a journalist asked if he was Harold Fry. But since he was careful to keep his head low, and since he stuck to the shadows and the wider spaces, people mostly left him alone. He even avoided his reflection.

  “I hope you feel better,” said a graceful woman with a greyhound. “It was such a shame to lose you. My husband and I wept.” Not understanding, Harold thanked her and moved on. The land heaved ahead and formed dark peaks.

  Strong winds came from west to north, bringing rain. It was too cold to sleep. He lay rigid within his sleeping bag, watching patches of cloud as they skittered across the moon, and trying to keep warm. The dog lay against him in the sleeping bag. Its ribs were cavernous. He thought of the day David swam out at Bantham, and the fragility of his son against the lifeguard’s tanned arms. He remembered the nicks in David’s skull where he had dug the razor, and how he used to haul David upstairs before he was sick again. All those times David had put his body at risk, as if in defiance of the ordinariness that was his father.

  Harold began to shiver. It started as a tremble that caused his teeth to rattle, but seemed to gain momentum. His fingers, toes, arms, and legs were shaking so hard they hurt. He looked out, hoping for comfort or distraction, but found no fellowship with the land, as he had before. The moon shone. The wind blew. His need for warmth made no impression. The place was not cruel. It was worse. It didn’t notice. Harold was alone, without Maureen or Queenie or David, in a place that did not see, shaking and shaking in a sleeping bag. He tried gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, but that made it worse. Far away foxes were cornering an animal, their anarchic cries cutting through the night air. His wet clothes stung against his skin, and stole the warmth from him. He was cold to the core. The only thing that would stop him shaking would be when his inner organs froze over. He no longer had the wherewithal to resist even the cold.

  Harold was sure he would be better once he was back on his feet. But he wasn’t. There was no escaping what he had realized as he fought for warmth in the night. With or without him, the moon and the wind would go on, rising and falling. The land would keep stretching ahead until it hit the sea. People would keep dying. It made no difference whether Harold walked, or trembled, or stayed at home.

  What began as a flat, subdued feeling grew over the hours into something more violently accusing. The more he dwelt on how little he mattered, the more he believed it. Who was he to go to Queenie? What did it matter if Rich Lion took his place? Every time he paused for breath, or rubbed at his legs to get the blood moving, the dog sat at his feet, watching with concern. It stopped straying from Harold’s path. It stopped bringing stones.

  Harold thought of his journey so far: the people he had met, the places he had seen, the skies beneath which he had slept. Until now he had held them in his mind like a collection of souvenirs. They had kept him going when the walking was so arduous he had wanted to give up. But now he thought of those people, places, and skies and he could no longer see himself among them. The roads he had walked were full of different cars. The people he had passed were passing other people. His footprints, however firm, would be washed away by rain. It was as if he had never been in any of the places he had been, or met the strangers he had met. He looked behind, and already there was no trace, no sign of him anywhere.

  The trees gave up their branches to the wind as fluidly as tentacles in water. He had made a mess of being a husband, father, and friend. He had even made a mess of being a son. It wasn’t simply that he had betrayed Queenie, and that his parents did not want him. It wasn’t simply that he had made a mess of everything with his wife and son. It was rather that he had passed through life and left no impression. He meant nothing. Harold went to cross the A696 in the direction of Cambo, and realized the dog was missing.

  He felt a shower of panic. He wondered if the dog had been hurt, and he hadn’t noticed. He retraced his steps, scouring the road and the gutters, but there was no sign of the animal. He tried to remember when he had last registered its presence. It must be hours since they had shared a sandwich on a bench. Or was that the day before? He couldn’t believe he had failed even in this simple task. He was waving down cars, asking drivers if they had seen a dog, a little tufty thing about so high, but they sped away, as if he were dangerous. Catching sight of him, a small child clung to her car seat and sobbed. There was nothing for it but to retrace his steps toward Hexham.

  He found Dog sitting in a bus shelter, at the feet of a young girl. She was wearing a school uniform, and had long dark hair that was almost the autumn color of its fur, and a kind look about her. Stooping to pat its head, she picked up something by her shoe, and stowed it in her pocket.

  “Don’t throw the stone,” Harold was about to call; but he didn’t. The girl’s bus drew up beside her and she got on it, followed by the dog. It looked as if it knew where it was heading. He watched the bus drive away, with the girl and the dog on it. They didn’t look back or wave.

  He reasoned the animal had made its own decision. It had chosen to walk with Harold for a while, and then it had chosen to stop, and walk instead with the young girl. Life was like that. But in losing his last companion, Harold felt a further layer of skin had been ripped from him. He was afraid of what would come next. He knew he hadn’t got it in him to take much more.

  The hours turned into days and he couldn’t remember how one was different from another. He began to make mistakes. He would set off with the first cracks of dawn, compelled to go toward the emerging light, regardless of whether or not it lay in the direction of Berwick. He argued with his compass when it pointed south, convinced it was broken, or worse: that it was deliberately lying. Sometimes he walked ten miles only to discover he had traveled a large looping circle, and was back almost where he had started. He took diversions to follow a shout or a figure, but they led to nothing. Near the crest of a hill, he saw a woman calling for help, but after an hour of climbing he found she was a dead tree trunk. He frequently lost his footing and stumbled. When his glasses snapped a second time, he left them behind.

  Deprived of rest and hope, other things began to slip from him. He found he couldn’t remember David’s face. He could picture his dark eyes, and the way they stared, but when he tried to conjure up the fringe that flopped over them, he could see only Queenie’s tight curls. It was like fixing a jigsaw together in his mind, but without all the pieces. How could his head be so cruel? Harold lost all sense of time, and whether or not he had eaten. It wasn’t that he had forgotten; he no longer cared. He no longer took any interest in what he saw, or the difference between things, or their names. A tree was no more than another of the things he passed. And sometimes the only words in his head were the ones that asked why he was still walking when it would make no difference. A lone crow passed overhead, its black wings beating the air like a whip, and filled him with such inhuman fear that he went scampering for shelter.

  So expansive was the land, and so small was he, that when he glanced back, trying to gauge the distance he had traveled, it seemed as if he had not advanced at all. His feet fell on exactly the same place where he had lifted them. He looked at the peaks on the horizon, the waves of turf, the boulders of rock, and the gray houses tucked among them were so
small, so temporary, it was a wonder they stayed up. We hang on by so little, he thought, and felt the full despair of knowing that.

  Harold walked under the heat of the sun, the pelting of the rain, and the blue cold of the moon, but he no longer knew how far he had come. He sat beneath a hard night sky, alive with stars, and watched as his hands turned purple. He knew he should lift his hands, guide them to his mouth and blow on the knuckles, but the idea of flexing one set of muscles and then another was too much. He couldn’t remember which muscles served which limbs. He couldn’t remember how it would help. It was easier simply to sit, absorbed in the night and the nothing that was all around him. It was easier to give up than keep moving.

  Late one night, Harold rang Maureen from a phone booth. He reversed the charges as usual, and when he heard her voice, he said, “I can’t do it. I can’t finish.”

  She said nothing. He wondered if she had thought better of missing him. Or maybe she had been asleep.

  “I can’t do it, Maureen,” he repeated.

  She gave a gulp down the telephone. “Harold, where are you?”

  He looked at the outside world. Traffic shot past. There were lights, and people hurrying home. A billboard advertised a television program, coming this autumn, and showed a giant-sized policewoman smiling. Beyond stood all the darkness that lay between himself and wherever he was going. “I don’t know where I am.”

  “Do you know where you’ve come from?”

  “No.”

  “The name of a village?”

  “I don’t know. I think I stopped seeing things quite a while ago.”

  “I see,” she said, in a way that sounded as if she saw other things too.

  He swallowed hard. “Wherever I am now might be the Gateway to the Cheviot Hills. Something like that. I maybe noticed a sign. But maybe that was a few days ago. There have been hills. And gorse too. A lot of bracken.” He heard a sharp intake of breath, and then another. He could picture her face, the way her mouth worked open and shut when she was thinking. He said again, “I want to come home, Maureen. You were right. I can’t do it. I don’t want to.”

  At last her voice came. It sounded slow and careful, as if she were reining in words. “Harold, I’m going to try and work out where you are and what to do. I want you to give me half an hour. Can you do that?” He pressed his forehead on the glass, savoring the sound of her. “Can you phone me back?”

  He nodded. He forgot she couldn’t see.

  “Harold?” she called as if he needed reminding who he was. “Harold, are you there?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Give me half an hour. That’s all.”

  He tried to walk the streets of the town, so that time would pass more quickly. There were people queuing outside a fish and chip shop, and a man being sick in the gutter. The further he strayed from the phone booth, the more afraid he became, as if the safe part of himself still remained there, waiting for Maureen. The hills were terrible deep giants impinging on the night sky. A gang of young men was striding into the road, shouting at cars and throwing beer cans. Harold cowered in the shadows, afraid of being seen. He was going home, and he didn’t know how he would tell people that he didn’t make it, but it didn’t matter. It was an insane idea, and he needed to stop. If he wrote another letter, Queenie would understand.

  He phoned Maureen and reversed the charges. “It’s me again.”

  She didn’t reply. She gave a gulping noise. He had to say, “It’s Harold.”

  “Yes.” She gulped again.

  “Shall I phone later?”

  “No.” She paused and then she said slowly, “Rex is here. We’ve looked at the map. We made a few calls. He has been on his computer. We even got out your Motorist’s Guide to Great Britain.” She still sounded not right. Her words came light against his ear, as if she had run a long way and was struggling to settle her breath. He had to press the phone against his ear to hear her properly.

  “Will you say hello to Rex?”

  At this she gave a laugh, a short fluttery one. “He says hello too.” There followed more strange swallowing noises; like hiccups but smaller. Then: “Rex thinks you must be in Wooler.”

  “Wooler?”

  “Does that sound right?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all beginning to sound the same.”

  “We think you must have taken a wrong turn.” He was about to say he had taken many but it was too much effort. “There’s a hotel called the Black Swan. I think it sounds nice, and so does Rex. I have booked you a room, Harold. They know to expect you.”

  “But you’re forgetting I have no money. And I must look terrible.”

  “I paid over the phone by card. And it doesn’t matter how you look.”

  “When will you be here? Will Rex come too?” He paused at the end of both questions, but Maureen’s voice gave nothing. He even wondered if she had put the phone down. “You are coming?” he said, his blood warming with panic.

  She hadn’t gone. He heard her sucking in a long breath, as if she had burnt her hand. Suddenly her voice shot out so loud and fast it hurt his ear. He had to hold the handset slightly away. “Queenie is still alive, Harold. You asked for her to wait and you see, she is waiting. Rex and I checked the weather forecast and they have slapped happy sun shapes all over the United Kingdom. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “Maureen?” She was his last chance. “I can’t do it. I was wrong.”

  She didn’t hear, or if she heard she wouldn’t allow the gravity of what he was saying. Her voice kept coming at him, rising in pitch: “Keep walking. It’s only sixteen more miles to Berwick. You can do it, Harold. Remember to stay on the B6525.”

  He didn’t know how to say what he was feeling after that, so he hung up.

  As Maureen had told him, Harold checked into the hotel. He couldn’t look at the receptionist or the young porter who insisted on leading him to his room and opening the door on his behalf. The chap drew the curtains over the windows, and showed him how to change the air conditioning, and where he would find the en-suite bathroom, as well as the minibar and Corby trouser press. Harold nodded but he didn’t see. The air felt chilled and hard.

  “Can I fetch you a drink, sir?” asked the porter.

  Harold could not explain about himself and alcohol. He merely turned away. With the porter gone, he lay fully clothed on the bed, and all he could think was that he did not want to keep going. He slept briefly, and woke with a start. Martina’s partner’s compass. He groped his hand in his trouser pocket, and pulled it out and tried the other. The compass wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the bed, or on the floor. It wasn’t even in the lift. He must have left it in the phone booth.

  The porter unbolted the main doors, and promised to wait. Harold ran so hard that his breath cut into the cavities of his chest like blows. He swung open the door of the kiosk, but the compass had gone.

  Maybe it was the shock of being once more inside a room, and lying on a bed with clean sheets and soft pillows, but that night Harold started to cry. He couldn’t believe he had been so foolish as to lose Martina’s compass. He tried to tell himself it was only a thing. She would understand. But all he could feel was the loss of its weight from his pocket, so vast its absence mounted to a presence. He feared that in mislaying the compass, he had also lost an essential, steadying part of himself. Even when he briefly slipped into something that was like unconsciousness, his head swarmed with images. He saw the man from Bath in the dress, with his punched eye. He saw the oncologist staring at Queenie’s letter, and the woman who loved Jane Austen talking into midair. There was the cycling mother with her scarred arms; he asked himself again why a person would do that. He curled into the pillow and dreamed of the silver-haired gentleman who traveled by train to see the boy with trainers. He saw Martina waiting for the man who was never going to return. And what about the waitress who would never leave South Brent? And Wilf? And Kate too? All those people, searching for happiness. He woke c
rying, and continued to cry all day as he walked.

  Maureen received a postcard with a picture of the Cheviots, bearing no stamp. The message read, Weather good. H. x. There was another postcard the following day, showing Hadrian’s Wall, but this had no message.

  The cards came every day; sometimes there were several. He wrote the briefest messages: Rain. Not good. Walking. I miss you. Once he drew a hill shape. Another time a squiggly w that was possibly a bird. Often the cards were blank. She asked the postman to look out for them at the sorting office; she would pay the extra charges. The messages were more precious than love letters, she said.

  Harold did not ring again. She waited in every night, but to no avail. It tortured her that she had let him go, when he needed her help. She had booked the hotel and spoken to Harold through tears. But she and Rex had talked it over and over; if he gave up when he was so close to arriving, he would regret it for the rest of his life.

  Early July had brought winds and heavy rain. Her bamboo stakes tilted at a drunken angle toward the ground, and the tips of her bean plants groped their blind passage into air. Harold’s postcards continued to arrive, but they no longer mapped a steady northward path. There was one from Kelso, but by her reckoning that was twenty-three miles west of where he should be. Another came from Eccles, and also Coldstream; again too far west of Berwick. Almost every hour, she resolved to ring the police, only to realize as she lifted the phone that it was not her place to stop Harold when he must surely arrive any day.

  She rarely slept a full night. She feared that by giving in to unconsciousness, she surrendered her one contact with her husband, and might lose him altogether. She sat outside on a patio chair beneath the stars, keeping vigil for the man who somewhere very far away was sheltering under that same sky. Now and again, Rex brought her tea in the early morning, and a travel blanket from his car. They watched the night lose its darkness, and the pearl light of dawn, without speaking or moving.