Harold Fry and Wilf

The relationship between Harold Fry and Wilf begins on the morning of Harold's forty-seventh day of walking, when a slight young man in reflective shades and a baseball cap dodges between traffic on the A61, due north of Barnsley, shouting Harold's name. Gasping for breath, the boy introduces himself with a name that Harold first mishears as 'Lf,' then 'Ilf,' before the boy finally clarifies: 'Wilf.' He looks undernourished and barely twenty, with cheekbones like pencils and trainers with fluorescent-green laces. He carries a sports bag that is clearly new, like the trainers, and announces, 'I am going to be a pilgrim, Mr Fry. I'm going to save Queenie Hennessy too.' He has brought his sleeping bag and everything. For Harold, the encounter is immediately disorienting: 'It was like talking to David. Even the young man's hands were shaking.'

Identity and Introduction

Wilf enters the narrative as a stranger who has been following Harold for some time. Harold had sensed the presence of a person behind him for over half an hour, feeling it in his skin, all the way up his neck and into his hair, even though he could see no one when he turned. A low shrub quivering with no wind confirmed his suspicion. For the first time in weeks, he regretted having no mobile phone, and he took refuge that night in an unlocked toolshed, lying very still in his sleeping bag, listening for the person he knew in his bones was waiting outside. When Wilf finally reveals himself, he is breathless and eager, a young man who has clearly prepared for this moment, carrying a new sports bag and new trainers, and declaring his intention to become a pilgrim and save Queenie Hennessy. Harold's immediate recognition of David in Wilf—the shaking hands, the youth, the intensity—sets the emotional tone for their entire relationship.

The Surrogate Father-Son Bond

Harold's tenderness toward Wilf grows quickly. At a cocktail party where they are both outsiders, Wilf gazes at Harold and says, 'People keep asking if I'm your son.' Harold smiles, suddenly tender, and feels that he and Wilf are linked in some way, as if, by being outsiders, they share something bigger than in truth they have. He pats Wilf's arm and says, 'You're too young to be my son,' before urging they get a move on to find somewhere to sleep. The bond deepens as they travel together. They talk about Queenie Hennessy and the small kindnesses she had shown, with Harold describing how she could sing backwards and always liked a riddle. 'I don't think anyone else knew those things about her,' he says. 'We told one another things we probably didn't tell other people. It's easier when you're travelling.' Harold shows Wilf the presents he carries for Queenie in his rucksack, and the boy particularly likes the paperweight from Exeter Cathedral that glittered when tipped upside down. Sometimes Harold finds Wilf has taken it from his rucksack and is playing with it, and has to remind him to take care. Wilf, in turn, produces a stream of souvenirs: a piece of flint, a spotted guinea-fowl feather, a stone hooped with rings, a small garden gnome with a fishing rod he promises he found in a bin, and once three pints of milk he insists were free. Harold warns him not to rush as he drinks, but the boy does and is sick after ten minutes. There are so many offerings that Harold has to leave them behind when Wilf isn't looking, taking care to hide them from the dog, who is inclined to retrieve the pebbles and return them to Harold's feet. Sometimes the boy turns to shout about something new he has found, and Harold's heart flips over. 'It could so easily be David.'

The Shadow of David

Wilf's presence constantly evokes Harold's dead son, David, who hanged himself in the garden shed twenty years earlier. Harold's confession letter to the garage girl reveals the depth of this wound: '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.' David was depressed and addicted to mixing alcohol with pills, couldn't get a job, and hanged himself with rope tied to one of the hooks Harold used for garden tools. The coroner said it must have taken a long time to tie the noose. Harold discovered him and was too late. In Wilf, Harold sees the son he lost—the shaking hands, the youth, the neediness—and the relationship becomes a way of reliving, and perhaps partially healing, that grief. The tenderness Harold feels for Wilf is inseparable from the pain of David's death, and every moment of joy with the boy is shadowed by the memory of what he could not save.

The Betrayal and the End

The relationship ends in betrayal. Harold is woken one morning by shouts: Rich's knife has gone. After a thorough search of the field, banks and hedgerows, it is clear that Wilf has gone with it—and so, Harold discovers, has the glittering paperweight for Queenie Hennessy. Rich, who had been chipping at a stick with his penknife the previous evening after Kate dismissed his talk, says across the camp fire, 'I told you he was no good,' his eyes pinning Harold through the dark. The gorilla man reports that Pilgrim Wilf has set up a Facebook page with over a thousand likes, personal anecdotes about his walk and the people he has saved, several prayers, and promises of more stories to come in the weekend papers. Wilf's theft of the paperweight—the very gift Harold had chosen for Queenie, the one Wilf had loved to play with—is a profound betrayal. It destroys the surrogate father-son bond and leaves Harold to continue his pilgrimage alone, carrying the weight of yet another loss.

Narrative Significance

Wilf's role in the narrative is to embody both the hope and the fragility of Harold's pilgrimage. He is one of the pilgrims who gather around Harold, drawn by the story of the man walking to save a dying woman, and his presence tests Harold's faith in the walk. Harold's decision to keep to the roads, to stick to his yachting shoes despite the wear and tear, and to trust the map in his mind made up of all the people and places he has passed—these are the instincts that make him Harold. Wilf, with his new trainers and new sports bag, represents a different kind of pilgrim, one who is not yet ready for the sacrifices the journey demands. His theft reveals the limits of Harold's ability to save others, just as he could not save David. The relationship underscores the novel's central themes of atonement and redemption: Harold cannot undo the past by walking, but he can carry its weight, and Wilf is one more weight he must bear. The boy's departure, like the splintering of the pilgrims and the loss of the dog, strips Harold down to the essential act of walking itself—'On, on, on. These were the only words'—until he is no more than blue-duct-tape feet and Berwick-upon-Tweed.