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Back The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents
  3. 1
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Out on the street, a young woman tried to give him a piece of paper.

“It’s salsa dancing classes for the over sixties,” she said. “You should come. It’s never too late.”

But it was. It was far too late. Harold shook his head wildly, and took a few more staggering steps. His legs felt boned.

“Please take the leaflet,” said the girl. “Take the lot. You can throw them in the bin if you like. I just want to go home.”

Harold stumbled the streets of Berwick with the wodge of leaflets, not knowing where he was going. People swerved to avoid him, but he didn’t stop. He could forgive his parents for not wanting him. For not showing him how to love, or even giving him the vocabulary. He could forgive their parents, and their parents before that.

All Harold wanted was his child.

27

Harold and Another Letter

Dear Girl in the Garage,

I owe you the full story. Twenty years ago I buried my son. It is not something a father should have to do. I wanted to know the man he would become. I still do.

To this day, I don’t understand why he did it. He was depressed, and addicted to mixing alcohol with pills. He couldn’t get a job. But I wish with all my heart he had spoken to me.

He hanged himself in my garden shed. He did it with some rope, tied to one of the hooks I used for garden tools. He was so full of the alcohol and pills, the coroner said it must have taken a long time to tie the noose. The verdict was suicide.

It was me who discovered him. I can barely write this. At the time I prayed, although as I told you at the garage I am not a religious man. I said, Dear God, please let him be OK. I will do anything. I lifted him down, but there was no life. I was too late.

I wish they hadn’t told me about him taking all that time to tie the noose.

My wife took it terribly. She wouldn’t leave the house. She put up net curtains because she didn’t want the neighbours prying. Gradually those people moved away and no one knew about us, or what had happened. But every time Maureen looked at me, I knew she saw David dead.

She began talking to him. He was with her, she said. She was always waiting for him. Maureen keeps his room exactly as it was the day he died. And sometimes it makes me sad all over again, but it is what my wife wants. She can’t let him be dead, and I understand that. It is too much for a mother to bear.