Harold Fry and Rich Lion

The relationship between Harold Fry and Rich Lion is the novel's most pointed dramatization of what happens to a pilgrimage when it becomes public property. Rich, whose full name is Richard Lion, enters Harold's story at the moment the walk has already been transformed by media attention, and he embodies both the promise and the peril of that transformation. Where Harold walks out of an unthinking, almost involuntary devotion to Queenie Hennessy, Rich walks to reclaim something for himself: his lost sons, his shattered self-respect, his sense of being a hero. The collision between these two motives — one selfless, one self-serving — defines their entire association and ultimately forces Harold to shed even the companions who claim to support him.

Rich Lion's Arrival and Self-Presentation

Rich presents himself to Harold as a man remade by the pilgrimage. He had been in finance but left the business in his mid-thirties, and since then had been 'winging it.' Reading about Harold's journey, he says, filled him with a hope he had not experienced since childhood, and he packed only a few necessaries and set off to join the walk. He is a tall man, like Harold, with an assertive voice that has an adenoidal ring, and he dresses the part of the adventurer: professional boots, camouflage trousers, and a kangaroo-leather bush hat bought online, along with a tent, a sleeping bag, and a Swiss Army knife for emergencies. His confession to Harold is raw and immediate: he made a big mess of his life, got made redundant, suffered a breakdown, and his wife left him and took the children. Striking the ground with the sharp blade of his knife, he tells Harold that he misses his boys so much and wants them to see he can do something, to be proud of him. Almost in the same breath he asks whether Harold has thought about going cross-country, revealing that even his earliest engagement with the walk is oriented toward strategy and image rather than the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other.

The Dynamics of the Growing Pilgrim Group

As the newly formed party makes its way toward Leeds, Rich's influence begins to reshape the pilgrimage. There are discussions about the route: Rich suggests avoiding cities and making for the moors, while Kate feels they should continue along the A61. Harold, uncomfortable with conflict, suggests both are good ideas as long as they get to Berwick. He has been alone for so long that he finds it tiring to be constantly in the company of others; their questions and enthusiasm both move and slow him. Yet because they have chosen to walk with him and support Queenie's cause, he feels responsible for them, as if he had asked them to join and must therefore listen to their different needs and secure their safe passage. Rich, by contrast, treats the group as a project to be managed. When the press runs testimonies to Harold's goodness — a spiritualist in Clitheroe claims the pilgrim has a golden aura, and a young man on the verge of jumping from the Clifton Suspension Bridge gives a moving account of how Harold talked him down — Harold protests that he never went to Bristol, that he went to Bath and from there to Stroud, and that he never met anyone on a bridge. Rich dismisses this as a minor detail, even petty. 'Maybe he didn't say he was about to commit suicide. But meeting you gave him hope. I expect you've forgotten.' He reminds Harold to look at the bigger picture: no publicity is bad publicity. It occurs to Harold that even though Rich is forty, and therefore about the right age to be his son, he talks as if Harold is the child. Rich speaks of cornering a rich market, striking while the iron is hot, cherry-picking ideas, and singing from the same hymn sheet, until Harold, getting a headache from the congestion of incoherent images — cherry trees and hymn sheets and steam irons — wishes the man would honor the true meaning of words instead of using them as ammunition.

The Pilgrim T-Shirts and the Splintering

The turning point in their relationship comes when Rich decides the group needs something to distinguish the real pilgrims from their followers. He has been in touch with an old friend in PR who owes him a favor, and the friend has contacted the distributors of a health drink who will provide all official walkers with T-shirts bearing the word PILGRIM on the front and back, in white and in three sizes. Kate scoffs at the color — 'Where are we going to wash these things?' — but Rich insists that white stands out and its image is pure. Harold, who has been shedding possessions and renouncing the trappings of identity throughout his walk, now finds himself wearing a branded uniform that turns his private act of faith into a marketing campaign. The T-shirt becomes a symbol of everything that has gone wrong. While Harold wanders off at night, the only time he feels free and connected, thinking of Maureen and Queenie and remembering the past, Rich calls a private meeting. He voices grave concerns: Queenie can't hang on much longer, and he suggests that a reconnaissance party, led by himself, should take an alternative cross-country route. 'I know this is hard for everyone because we love Harold. He's been a father to me. But the guy is slowing down. His leg's bad. He wanders off for half the night. And now this fasting. He's not the man he was—' Kate objects that Harold is not fasting, that he is simply not hungry, but Rich presses on: 'Whatever he's doing, he's not up to the journey. You've gotta call a spade a spade. We need to think how we can help.' The language of concern masks a coup, and Harold, who has been watching Rich hunt rabbits and birds, skinning and plucking them and cooking them over the flames, is alarmed by the hungry wildness in Rich's eye that reminds him of both Napier and his own father. Rich's pilgrim T-shirt is smeared with blood, and he has taken to wearing a string of small rodent teeth around his neck.

The Split and Rich's Triumph

A week after the split, reports come of the pilgrims' arrival in Berwick-upon-Tweed. There are photographs in the newspapers of Rich Lion walking hand in hand with his two sons along the quay, and others of a man in a gorilla suit nuzzling the cheek of Miss South Devon. A brass band welcomes the party, with a performance by the local cheerleading troupe, and a dinner attended by local councillors and businessmen. Several Sunday papers claim to have sole access to Rich's diaries, and there is talk of a film. The pilgrims' arrival is covered on television news, and Maureen and Rex watch footage of Rich Lion and several others delivering flowers to the hospice along with a giant basket of muffins, although Queenie is unable to receive them. Maureen is disgusted: 'Those people didn't even know Queenie. It makes me want to spit. Why couldn't they wait for Harold?' In an exclusive interview from the quayside, Rich explains that the elderly Devon pilgrim was suffering from fatigue and complicated emotional issues and had been forced to retire from the walk south of Newcastle. 'But Queenie is alive. That's the main thing. It was lucky me and the guys were there to step in.' He clasps his hands together above his head in a gesture of victory and declares, 'I know Harold would be moved by your support.' The jostling crowd of well-wishers cheers. Rich has completed his journey: he has his sons, his media triumph, his film deal. But he has also revealed the hollowness at the core of his pilgrimage. He walked to prove he was a hero and get his children back, as Maureen puts it, and Rex offers the only charitable reading: 'I suppose in the end his was a journey of a kind. Just a different one.'

Harold's Response and the Meaning of the Relationship

Harold's response to Rich's betrayal is not anger but a quiet return to himself. He removes the pilgrim T-shirt and retrieves his shirt and tie from his rucksack; they are screwed up and very worn now, but it is like being himself again as he puts them on. He considers taking the T-shirt to Queenie as a souvenir but decides it doesn't feel right to carry something that has caused such dispute, and slips it into a bin when no one is looking. The relationship with Rich thus becomes the negative image of Harold's entire journey. Where Harold walks in faith, Rich walks in calculation; where Harold sheds his possessions, Rich accumulates symbols of status; where Harold seeks to save Queenie, Rich seeks to save himself. The novel's epigraph — 'Who would true valour see, Let him come hither; One here will constant be Come wind, come weather. There's no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first avowed intent To be a pilgrim' — applies to Harold precisely because Rich fails every one of its tests. Rich relents at the first sign of difficulty, abandons the original intent, and turns the pilgrimage into a spectacle. Yet the relationship also clarifies Harold's own achievement. By the time he finally reaches St Bernadine's Hospice and Queenie, he has learned that the walk was never about arriving with followers or fanfare; it was about the solitary, unglamorous act of continuing. Rich's triumph is worldly and hollow; Harold's is quiet and real. The contrast between them is the novel's sharpest statement about the difference between faith and its counterfeit, and about the cost of letting the world define what a pilgrimage means.