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Back The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
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  2. Table of Contents
  3. 1
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Early July had brought winds and heavy rain. Her bamboo stakes tilted at a drunken angle towards 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.

More than anything, Maureen wanted Harold home.

26

Harold and the Café

The last stretch was the worst. All Harold could see was road. He had no thoughts. The earlier damage to his right leg had flared up again, and caused him to limp. There was no pleasure to be had; he was in a place where it did not exist. Flies swarmed in a cloud round his head. Sometimes there were bites. Maybe stings. The fields were immense and empty, and the cars were drawn along the roads like toys. Another peak. Another sky. Another mile. It was all the same. It both bored and overwhelmed him to the point of surrender. He often forgot where he was heading.

Without love, nothing had – what? What was the word for it? He couldn’t remember. He thought it began with a v, and he wanted to say vulva, but that surely wasn’t right. Nothing could be made to matter very much. The blackness crept from the sky. The rain slashed his skin. The winds blew so hard he struggled to keep his balance. He fell asleep wet, and woke wet. He would never know again what it was to be warm.