The ten bedrooms here are at the front of the hospice with views towards the battlements, the mouth of the Tweed and the sea. The dayroom, the chapel and the dining room are at the back of the building, with large French windows that open out on to the Well-being Garden. Volunteers like Simon arrive every day to sit with us and tend the grounds, to cut back, to sweep, to dig over. I watch from the window. I watch the nuns, too, their robes blowing in the wind, and they are like white sails on a green sea.
When it came to our goodbyes, Simon said, ‘I’m going away. For a few months. But I’ll see you when I come back. Yeah?’
I nodded because he is a kind young man and I did not wish to upset things. He stooped to hug me and I felt the great boom of his heart. ‘You take care,’ he said. His face was wet, but we both smiled as if it wasn’t.
Afterwards I watched him bound down the steps to the car park two at a time. I watched him jump into his red car and peep-peep the horn as he drove away. Then I turned my head to the double doors that lead to the inpatient unit. They are plain doors, nothing special, but they seemed made of iron and bolts. This is how a prisoner must feel, I thought: as if life is closing down. Sister Philomena, the Mother Superior, took up my suitcase.
From the other side of the door came a hoot of laughter. ‘Fuck me. I’ve won a camper van!’ The laughter was followed by a dour Scottish voice: ‘You have not read the small print. She has not read the small print.’
Sister Philomena gave a radiant smile. ‘Our hospice may not be what you expect,’ she said.
The tall man and the snow
WHEN I WOKE this morning, Harold, the dawn sky was the colour of a pearl oyster. A flurry of white blossom passed my window. I remembered snow. I reached for my notebook.
Twenty-four years ago. I’m standing in my new office. This is my first day at the brewery and I’m frightened. Out of my depth. The room is small and intensely cold. There is a desk and boxes of screwed-up invoices but clearly no system. I check my face in my compact mirror and pin up a few brown curls that have slipped free. Lipstick? No lipstick? I am still trying to work out how to look like a trained accountant. The smell of the place, the hops and the cigarettes, makes me want to be sick. Then something catches my eye at the window. A fleck of white. I move closer. I steal a glimpse outside.
The window looks down over the yard and some industrial-size bins. It’s hardly picturesque. But the sky is heavy with winter cloud, and snow is beginning to drop like white feathers twisting in the air. I press my face and fingers to the chill of the glass and look up at the dizzying shower of white. No one has forecast snow, so it seems a small miracle, the way it can sometimes when there is a surprise change in the weather. I watch the yard and the bins and they look beautiful, quickly transforming from dark to white, from hard to soft. I forget about feeling ill or cold. I forget about being frightened.
A metal door clunks open and a tall figure in a coat rushes out.
It’s you.
Like me, you catch sight of the snowflakes and you seem surprised. You peer upwards, just as I did, with your hand making a tunnel for your eyes. You laugh. Then you glance to your left and right to check that no one is watching and you make your way to the bins. Satisfied that you are alone, you pull out a bag you must have been hiding inside your coat. Quickly lifting the lid on a bin, you place several empty beer cans inside it. All the lights are on in the brewery and you are caught in a bluish inky glow, with your shadow resting beside you on the thin layer of new snow. I wonder why you have to get rid of the cans so secretly. This is a brewery, after all. It is midmorning, and already I’ve noticed several of the reps are half-cut.
Whatever the reason, you seem relieved to be rid of those cans. You replace the bin lid and rub your hands the way my mother used to when a chore was done to her satisfaction.
You turn to go inside and then you seem to sense someone close by. You check the yard again. No, I think, he’s spotted me up here. Discovering it is only your shadow in the snow, you give another laugh. So do I. Your shadow lets us both off the hook.
Caught in a square of light from the window, you lift one arm and your shadow does the same. You wave and your shadow waves back. Then you raise your left foot and shake it a little and so does your Harold double; he shakes his foot too. Once again you check carefully that no one is in the yard, no one is watching, and then you strike a new pose. What are you up to? I’m hooked. With your left shoulder lifted, your elbows tucked into your waist and your hands poised, you begin a soft shoe shuffle in the powdery snow. You glide a little to the left, a little to the right, sashaying your body this way and that, balancing gently on one foot, then on the other. Once, you even twist your heels and give a full turn. All the time you dance, you keep an eye on your shadow and you’re grinning, as if you can’t quite believe it has the energy to keep up with you.
I’m laughing. I’ve been a ballroom dancer for years – never professionally, just as a secret pastime. Wherever I’ve travelled, I’ve found a dance hall. But I’ve rarely seen a man move with such lightness. Mostly the strangers who partner me have two left feet, the medicinal whiff of camphor soap and a clammy hand on my lower back. All around you, soft flecks of white are curling through the air, and they are like music falling, little soft notes of it.
Please keep dancing, tall man. You make me happy. And it’s a long time, what with Corby and the Shit and all the travelling, all the loneliness, it’s a long time since I’ve laughed. Remaining at the window, I begin to move too. You mooch to the left. I glide to the right. You give a side step. I make a turn.
Then you glance straight up at my window, and once again I think you’ve spotted me. But this time I don’t care. You look up. I look down. We are joined, you and I. I wave. You lift your hand too. But you don’t wave. You catch a snowflake instead. Of course. You haven’t seen me at all.
A clunk. A yelp. The metal door springs open, and a young rep is shoved into the yard. Our boss, Napier, is behind the rep, and he’s spitting something into the rep’s ear. He holds the rep’s arm pinned behind his back and pushes him forward on his toes so that the poor man’s shoes drag tramlines through the thin new layer of white. I wonder if I should shift from the window, not watch any more, but I can’t move.
Other men burst through the door after Napier. They’re all shouting. One has a plank of wood ripped from a crate, and he is swinging it at the flakes. You know how it is when a fight is coming. You can feel it, from the way people are all wired up. No one has spotted you yet, but soon they will. There is no hiding in that yard.
You freeze. I remember my father when my mother was angry, and he’d stand very still, hoping she’d mistake him for something else and lose interest. What are you up to down there? Your forehead bunches into lines as you make up your mind what to do next. And the thing you decide to do takes the wind from me. It takes the wind from everyone. You give a wide buffoonish wave and you stroll right towards the men. The snow has been getting heavier, and their shoulders, their shoes, are caked with white. But you sing out, ‘Hello there, chaps! Jolly nice day!’ You keep walking straight ahead so that they have to part, and where there has been a gang of bullies there is now only a collection of single men looking rather lost and chilly. You transform yourself into a pantomime version of the dancing man I watched only moments before. But you have changed the course of things. The spell of violence is broken.
The rep goes scampering across the yard, and jumping up at the railings he scrambles over the iron gates. Napier and his men beat the living daylights out of a football. With one last glance up at the snow, you slip through the metal door.
I see it all. But you don’t see me.
A harsh reminder
HAROLD, DON’T take this wrongly, but if you are serious about your journey maybe you should concentrate on the miles and not waste precious time on postcards? Three arrived today. There’s one with a picture of Buckfast Abbey, one of ‘South Brent by Night’ – not a lot happenin
g in that one – and the last a topographical drawing of Devon. You’ve marked your position with a cross. After three full days of walking the length of England, you seem to be pottering just beyond Kingsbridge.
Have you consulted a map?
I left the cards on my knee. Not wanting a repeat of the attention they brought two days ago, I didn’t dare read them. It was Finty who asked what they said. I pointed at my mouth, and mistaking this for a cry for help, Sister Catherine swooped in and read out your messages. She flicked through them like a series of prompts for a wedding speech.
She said, ‘Dear Queenie. I have blisters on my blisters but continue to walk.’ She said, ‘Dear Queenie. I have come approximately 20 miles. You must keep waiting. Harold (Fry).’ She said, ‘Dear Queenie. Nice day here. Best wishes. Harold.’
Squashed-up silence again. It was interrupted only by the unsteady breathing of the new young woman.
‘Who is this man again?’ said Mr Henderson at last.
‘He’s called Harold Fry,’ said Sister Catherine. ‘He is a friend of Queenie’s.’
‘And he says what? “Wait for me”?’
‘Yes, he seems to be saying that.’ Sister Catherine got busy straightening a set of cork coasters on the coffee table.
‘While he walks the length of England?’
Sister Catherine made a small hm hm noise of affirmation. It was not as impolite as saying nothing, but it was not as big as a yes.
‘What a tosser.’ Mr Henderson went back to his newspaper. Sometimes Sister Lucy asks if he’d like to do the crossword, since he was an English teacher, but what is the point? he snaps. He may not be here for the answers.
‘So is yer man really coming?’ said Finty. If you want to picture her you need to imagine a stick-thin scarecrow in elasticated purple slacks, a brightly coloured sweatshirt and a green terrycloth turban. She wears scarlet lipstick, and asks Sister Lucy to paint her nails to match. Her eyebrows she draws in, two high orange arches, so she looks permanently surprised. One of the pluses of chemotherapy, she tells the volunteers, is that all her facial and body hair has gone. It’s like a permanent Brazilian for free, she says. One of the minuses of chemotherapy is that all the stuff on top of her head has gone too. (‘What is a Brazilian?’ Sister Lucy asked the other day. Finty gulped and looked for help, but the Pearly King was studying a parcel and Barbara had lost one of her glass eyes again in her lap. ‘It’s a sort of haircut,’ said Finty. ‘Quite short.’)
‘Perhaps Queenie’s friend is just going for a long walk,’ said Sister Lucy, ‘and sending nice postcards to tell her about it.’ She was back with her new jigsaw. It is an illustration of the British Isles and it has a thousand pieces. So far she has managed a thin strip of Cornwall and a small section of the Norfolk coast. The British Isles are the shape of an open-toed sandal.
‘But why would Harold Fry say he was coming all the way to Berwick-upon-Tweed?’ asked Finty. ‘And why would he tell Queenie to wait?’
Mr Henderson scowled at his newspaper. ‘Exactly how old is this man?’
I pretended I hadn’t heard, and he repeated the question, much louder. I held up my fingers very quickly to show a six and then a five. Sixty-five. Mr Henderson gave a laugh. ‘Oh. Just retired, is he? Fed up sitting at home? Harold Fry should try a cruise holiday.’ I felt myself disappear in a blush. It was even in my toes.
Barbara said she had a man who loved her once. His name was Albert Bates. The Pearly King said he had a lot of women who’d loved him several times and he hoped they didn’t get funny ideas and start walking as well. He is a large man, almost a giant, and the buttons on his jacket glitter like a hundred scales. He doesn’t talk so much as growl. The first time I heard him, I mistook him for a tractor.
But Harold Fry didn’t love me, I wrote. I hoped that would be the end of it. I hoped they would leave me alone again.
‘Maybe Harold Fry is doing a sort of modern-day pilgrimage,’ said Sister Philomena.
‘To Berwick-upon-Tweed?’ laughed one of the volunteers.
Sister Philomena laughed too. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is something he needs to do.’
‘I see,’ said Barbara. ‘I see.’
‘That’s not strictly true,’ pointed out Mr Henderson.
‘Well, I wish some old geezer would walk for me,’ said Finty. ‘Even a stroll to the liquor store and back would be nice.’
Suddenly the new young woman let out a startled gasp, followed by a series of tiny squeaks. It was as if she’d eaten something and it was stuck in her throat. Her face opened – her eyes, her mouth, her nostrils. Her hands flew out, the fingers splayed. For a moment no one moved, no one knew what was happening, and then the penny dropped and everything was movement. All I could hear was the dreadful curdling sound of her choking, and all I could see beyond the crowd of white and black surplices was the flapping of the young woman’s slipper as she fought to keep the life inside her. The nuns lifted her to help her breathe. Someone called for oxygen. Then the slipper stopped flapping and hung limp. There was a beat of silence. It was all so quick.
Sister Lucy scooped me up in her arms and carried me away. She had no time for the wheelchair. She said nothing, but her face was set, like custard.
I didn’t even know the young woman’s name. She must have been in her twenties. The undertaker’s black van was here this afternoon.
‘Lightweight,’ said Mr Henderson at tea.
On each table the nuns had placed linen napkins, and grape hyacinths from the garden.
The doing of small things
‘I AM SORRY I am late this morning,’ said Sister Mary Inconnue, ‘but I was delivering a plant to a friend. I had several difficulties getting it on and off the bus.’ She unzipped her anorak and hung it over the back of the chair.
I gave an impatient shake of my head but she interrupted. ‘It was rush hour. Imagine. A nun on a bus and a potted myrtle shrub.’ Sister Mary Inconnue unlocked her leather bag and set the typewriter on her lap. ‘What shall we write about today?’ she said.
I thought of all the things she must have done in the time I’d only lain here and been attended to. The light at the window was a clear iced blue. There would be a late frost outside, perhaps the last of the year. I pictured my driftwood figures glinting with sequins. I thought of the crystallized leaves and grasses. The clifftop shining as blue as the bay below. I was overcome with sorrow. I will never get to the end of my letter, I thought. There is a huge story ahead of me, and the truth is so complicated. When a thing is broken, throw it away.
I don’t want to be here, I scribbled. I want to be in my sea garden.
Sister Mary Inconnue read my comment and sat still. She cocked her head as though she were listening to something a little beyond my range. Then she said, ‘I find it helps to start the day by practising one small, regular thing. I knew a businessman once, a very wealthy person, and he went out to collect kindling sticks each morning. He said it helped him to avoid all sorts of conflict later in the day. I have another friend who walks his dog by the sea. Now, I realize sticks and dog walks are out of the question, but you might memorize a poem. Or do some spine exercises. It is good to practise these small daily rituals. What will be yours, Queenie?’ Sister Mary Inconnue cast a glance over the room.
It was hardly inspiring. The wheelchair. A sink. A framed print of two blue birds. Yellow curtains. A window. The branches of the tree outside, with only the flimsiest shawl of leaves. There is a television, but I have lived for twenty years without one of those. I lifted my hands in a helpless gesture.
‘Oh, very good,’ said Sister Mary Inconnue. I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘We will do finger stretches.’
So that is what we did. I copied her as she rotated her hands like wheels and placed them gently palm against palm. I copied as she pointed first her thumb, then the index finger, and so on. I remembered how you used to wind down your car window and give careful signals with your hand. From outsid
e the hospice I heard the gulls in the sky, the wind in the tree. I heard the nuns talking with the medical team in the corridor. But they were gentle sounds that ebbed and flowed. I heard them and I let them go. Only the picture of you in the driving seat of your car stayed with me. I smiled.
‘That’s better,’ said Sister Mary Inconnue. ‘Are you ready for your letter now? One word in front of the other.’
Tin-pot tyrant
THE IRONY IS, Harold, that I wasn’t even a trained accountant. I’d graduated in classics. The nearest I had come to an account book was when I got my first job as a researcher for a politician. He liked me to fiddle his chequebook stubs so that his wife wouldn’t get suspicious. He asked me to fiddle other things as well, but I drew the line at those.
After my decision on Bantham Beach to start again, I had taken the cheapest room I could find in a B&B just outside Kingsbridge. The place reeked of gravy and fabric conditioner. The smell was in everything. The woodchip walls, the terylene sheets, the pink bedside lamp and paper shade. Sometimes I’d be halfway down the street and I could still smell it. It seemed to crawl into my skin, my hair, and cling there. I had to find somewhere new.
I saw the brewery job advertised in a local paper and went to the interview. The work was beneath me, but I was desperate. The job would be a stopgap. I’d give Kingsbridge a few months, then I’d move on. I thought my life would be very different by late summer.