The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)

by Rachel Joyce

Men had no idea what it was like to be a mother. The ache of loving a child, even when he had moved on.

The boy watched his mother, so still and close it was as if his face was part of hers.

He had started; and in doing so Harold could already see the end.

He must have been so caught up in the day’s agenda, and arriving punctually at their destination, that the land beyond the car had been no more than a wash of one green, and a backdrop of one hill. Life was very different when you walked through it.

Now that he accepted the slowness of himself, he took pleasure in the distance he covered.

The simplicity of it was joyful.

But it never ceases to amaze me how difficult the things that are supposed to be instinctive really are.”

Mothering had come so naturally to Maureen. It was as if another woman had been waiting inside her all along, ready to slip out.

There was so much to protect him from, Harold was overwhelmed.

A child’s growing was a constant pushing away.

She looked at him and her heart tipped sideways. She

deceit. But that was how it went; she knew that. You had to keep crawling up, not believing it, only to be punched back down again, until the truth well and truly hit home.

The silver-haired gentleman was in truth nothing like the man Harold had first imagined him to be. He was a chap like himself, with a unique pain; and yet there would be no knowing that if you passed him in the street, or sat opposite him in a café and did not share his teacake.

And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The inhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.

It wasn’t her leaving that was the worst part. It was the fact she couldn’t even spell her explanation.

Everywhere around her people were doing ordinary things. They were driving cars and pushing buggies and walking dogs and coming home, as if life was exactly the same, when it wasn’t.

He wanted to stay, talking to Maureen, but the silence and the distance, which they had nursed for twenty years, had grown to such a point that even clichés were empty, and they hurt.

took effort to keep watching and listening, and taking her in, when within himself there was such pain.

To live without her would be like scooping out the vital parts of himself, and he would be no more than a fragile envelope of skin.

Other people knew interesting stories, or had things to ask. He didn’t like to ask, because he didn’t like to offend.

He felt safe with what he had confided. It had been the same with Queenie. You could say things in the car and know she had tucked them somewhere safe among her thoughts, and that she would not judge him for them, or hold it against him in years to come. He supposed that was what friendship was, and regretted all the years he had spent without it.

It was hard to understand a little and then walk away.

Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He

He had wanted more than he could physically give, and so his walk had become a battle against himself, and he had failed.

had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too. The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.

knew it would be unbearable for a while to keep thinking of the man, but that he would do it all the same.

was over. She couldn’t think what exactly it was, other than an unspecific weight of pain.

a gift to receive as it was to give, requiring as it did both courage and humility.

“Nobody is so frightening once you stop and listen,

had such a congestion of incoherent images in his mind—cherry

He wished the man would honor the true meaning of words, instead of using them as ammunition.

The discrepancy between what he knew and what other people believed frightened him.

Maureen felt afresh the shame of not getting it. She longed to show him all her colors, and here she was, a suburban shade of gray.

How could he say all this? It amounted to a lifetime. He could try to find the words, but they would never hold the same meaning for her that they did for him.

place was not cruel. It was worse. It didn’t notice.

It was rather that he had passed through life and left no impression. He meant nothing.

There was so much to do. And yet sometimes, when she looked out of the window, or lay awake listening to the gulls crying like children, she felt that despite her activity there was something about it that was inactive, as if she were missing the point.

he felt that in that one glance they had made a pact that would oblige them for the rest of their lives to say only what they did not mean, and to wrench apart what they most loved.

got up, and you did something. And if trying to find a way when you don’t even know you can get there isn’t a small miracle; then I don’t know what is.”

If we can’t be open, Maureen thought, if we can’t accept what we don’t know, there really is no hope.

“That was the thing, love. It was ordinary. It must have been funny because we were happy.”