Rachel Joyce - Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

About the Book

When Harold Fry leaves home one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking. To save someone elses life.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is also available as an unabridged audio download, read by Jim Broadbent.

Contents

For Paul, who walks with me, and for my father,
Martin Joyce (19362005)

Who would true valour see,

Let him come hither;

One here will constant be

Come wind, come weather.

Theres no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent

To be a pilgrim.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrims Progress

THE LETTER THAT would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelt of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with a slice of toast that he wasnt eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureens telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbours closeboard fencing.

Harold! called Maureen above the vacuum cleaner. Post!

He thought he might like to go out, but the only thing to do was mow the lawn and he had done that yesterday. The vacuum tumbled into silence, and his wife appeared, looking cross, with a letter. She sat opposite Harold.

Maureen was a slight woman with a cap of silver hair and a brisk walk. When they first met, nothing had pleased him more than to make her laugh. To watch her neat frame collapse into unruly happiness. Its for you, she said. He didnt know what she meant until she slid an envelope across the table, and stopped it just short of Harolds elbow. They both looked at the letter as if they had never seen one before. It was pink. The postmark says Berwick-upon-Tweed.

He didnt know anyone in Berwick. He didnt know many people anywhere. Maybe its a mistake.

I think not. They dont get something like a postmark wrong. She took toast from the rack. She liked it cold and crisp.

Harold studied the mysterious envelope. Its pink was not the colour of the bathroom suite, or the matching towels and fluffed cover for the toilet seat. That was a vivid shade that made Harold feel he shouldnt be there. But this was delicate. A Turkish Delight pink. His name and address were scribbled in biro, the clumsy letters collapsing into one another as if a child had dashed them off in a hurry: Mr H. Fry, 13 Fossebridge Road, Kingsbridge, South Hams . He didnt recognize the handwriting.

Well? said Maureen, passing a knife. He held it to the corner of the envelope and tugged it through the fold. Careful, she warned.

He could feel her eyes on him as he eased out the letter, and prodded back his reading glasses. The page was typed, and addressed from a place he didnt know: St Bernadines Hospice. Dear Harold, This may come to you as some surprise . His eyes ran to the bottom of the page.

Well? said Maureen again.

Good lord. Its from Queenie Hennessy.

Maureen speared a nugget of butter with her knife and flattened it the length of her toast. Queenie who?

She worked at the brewery. Years ago. Dont you remember?

Maureen shrugged. I dont see why I should. I dont know why Id remember someone from years ago. Could you pass the jam?

She was in finances. She was very good.

Thats the marmalade, Harold. Jam is red. If you look at things before you pick them up, youll find it helps.

Harold passed her what she needed and returned to his letter. Beautifully set out, of course; nothing like the muddled writing on the envelope. Then he smiled, remembering this was how it always was with Queenie; everything she did so precise you couldnt fault it. She remembers you. She sends her regards.

Maureens mouth pinched into a bead. A chap on the radio was saying the French want our bread. They cant get it sliced in France. They come over here and they buy it all up. The chap said there might be a shortage by summer. She paused. Harold? Is something the matter?

He said nothing. He drew himself up tall with his lips parted, his face bleached. His voice, when at last it came, was small and far away. Its cancer. Queenie is writing to say goodbye. He fumbled for more words but there werent any. Tugging a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, Harold blew his nose. I um. Gosh. Tears crammed his eyes.

Moments passed; maybe minutes. Maureen gave a swallow that smacked the silence. Im sorry, she said.

He nodded. He ought to look up, but he couldnt.

Its a nice morning, she began again. Why dont you fetch out the patio chairs? But he sat, not moving, not speaking, until she lifted the dirty plates. Moments later the vacuum cleaner took up from the hall.

Harold felt winded. If he moved so much as a limb, even a muscle, he was afraid it would trigger an abundance of feeling he was doing his best to contain. Why had he let twenty years pass without trying to find Queenie Hennessy? A picture came of the small, dark-haired woman with whom he had worked all that time ago, and it seemed inconceivable that she was what? Sixty? And dying of cancer in Berwick. Of all the places, he thought; hed never travelled so far north. He glanced out at the garden and saw a ribbon of plastic caught in the laurel bush, flapping up and down but never pulling free. He tucked Queenies letter into his pocket, patted it twice for safekeeping, and rose to his feet.

Upstairs Maureen shut the door of Davids room quietly and stood a moment, breathing him in. She pulled open his blue curtains that she closed every night, and checked there was no dust where the hem of the net drapes met the windowsill. She polished the silver frame of his Cambridge portrait, and the black and white baby photograph beside it. She kept the room clean because she was waiting for David to come back, and she never knew when that would be. A part of her was always waiting. Men had no idea what it was like to be a mother. The ache of loving a child, even when he had moved on. She thought of Harold downstairs, with his pink letter, and wished she could talk to their son. Maureen left the room as softly as she had entered it, and went to strip the beds.

Harold Fry took several sheets of Basildon Bond from the dresser drawer and one of Maureens rollerball pens. What did you say to a dying woman with cancer? He wanted her to know how sorry he felt, but it was wrong to put In Sympathy because that was what the cards in the shops said after, as it were, the event; and anyway it sounded formal, as if he didnt really care. He tried, Dear Miss Hennessy, I sincerely hope your condition improves , but when he put down the pen to inspect his message, it seemed both stiff and unlikely. He crumpled the paper into a ball and tried again. He had never been good at expressing himself. What he felt was so big it was difficult to find the words, and even if he could, it was hardly appropriate to write them to someone he had not contacted in twenty years. Had the shoe been on the other foot, Queenie would have known what to do.

Harold? Maureens voice took him by surprise. He thought she was upstairs, polishing something, or speaking to David. She had her Marigolds on.