Their journeys are both physical and metaphorical. How they are seen by others matters to them yet has stifled their potential. Harold and Maureen are recognisable to anyone who knows people of this age. This is a poignant and beautifully told tale. Each must find their own way forward, one step at a time and alone. A lifetime of not talking about how they feel prevents meaningful communication. Harold’s wife, Maureen, is left to come to terms with her husband’s inexplicable behaviour.
As well as this self analysis he starts to appreciate his surroundings, to which he had previously paid little attention. He encounters strangers and starts to listen to their stories. He has many regrets but also imponderables over how he could have engineered more favourable outcomes. He will reunite with Queenie and somehow keep her alive. He is wearing yacht shoes, his usual shirt and tie he has his wallet but no provisions and no phone.Īs he walks Harold mulls over his life. Rather than go home he decides that he must continue to walk, from Devon to Berwick, a journey of over five hundred miles. A chance encounter with a young cashier at a garage where he stops for food places the seed of an idea into his head. Harold has no plan and cannot explain his actions, even to himself. When he reaches the post box at the end of his quiet, residential road he keeps on walking. Unsure how to respond, he pens a brief reply and sets out to post it.
He learns that Queenie is in a hospice with terminal cancer. Into this sterile world arrives a letter from a former work colleague, Queenie Hennessy, who Harold has neither seen nor heard from in twenty years. His days stretch before him with little purpose. His wife spends her days cleaning their already clean house and finding reasons to berate him. He worked the same job for forty-five years but has few friends. Harold Fry has been retired for six months and rarely goes out. This is a story of loss, and of the particular loneliness experienced by those who build walls around their emotions. Although his journey teaches him a great deal about himself, others and life, the lessons learned by those he leaves behind are at least as powerful. The protagonist is sixty-five years old and is travelling on foot. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce, is a road trip story with a difference.
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