Harold's phone call from Nailsworth to the hospice

On the twenty-sixth day of his walk, six miles south of Stroud, Harold Fry reached a point of utter collapse. He had retraced the five miles to Bath and kept walking for a further four days along the A46, but the mistake he had made about his direction deeply disturbed him, and the going was hard. Hedgerows had reduced to ditches and drystone walls; the land opened out and stretched to the left and right, with giant pylons marching as far as he could see. He observed these things but felt no interest as to why they occurred. Whichever way he looked at it, the road was something that never stopped, and never yielded its promise. It took every scrap of himself to keep moving when he knew in his heart he could not make it. He had wasted so much time, looking at the sky and the hills, talking to people, thinking about life, and remembering, when all along he could have been in a car. Of course he couldn't do it in yachting shoes. Of course Queenie couldn't keep living, just because he'd told her to do so. Every day the sky hung low and white, lit by a silvery spoke of sunlight, and he lowered his head so that he would not see the birds swooping overhead or the traffic passing in a flash. He felt more lonely and left behind than he would have done up a faraway mountain.

The Decision to Stop

In making his decision to give up, Harold wasn't only thinking of himself. There was Maureen too. He missed her more and more. He knew he had lost her love, but it was wrong to walk out and leave her to pick up the pieces; already he had caused her too much sorrow. And there was David. In the days since Bath, Harold had felt a painfully long distance from him. He missed them both. Finally there was the money. The guesthouses had been cheap, but all the same he couldn't afford to keep spending like this. He had checked his account at the bank and been shocked. If Queenie was still alive, and if she was interested in a visit, he would take the train. He could be in Berwick by the evening.

The Call to the Hospice

It was from this place of defeat that Harold made his telephone call to the hospice. He rang and said, 'GOOD AFTERNOON. I am ringing about a patient called Queenie Hennessy. She sent me a letter just over four weeks ago.' The woman on the other end of the line asked if he had rung before, and Harold wondered if she was the same nurse with whom he had left his original message. This voice was Scottish, he thought, or was it Irish? He was too tired to know. When he asked to talk to Queenie, the woman made a sound as if she was breathing out a long sigh, and Harold's spine chilled. He clamped his knuckle to his mouth, certain that Queenie was dead and that he was too late. But the voice said, 'I'm afraid Miss Hennessy is asleep. Can I take a message?'

The nurse then asked if he was the gentleman who was travelling by foot. Harold swallowed something sharp and said that yes, he was. He apologized. Her reply changed everything: 'Mr Fry, Queenie has no family. No friends. When people have no one to stay for, they tend to pass quickly. We have been hoping for your call.' He could barely speak; he could only listen. Even his blood was still and cold. She told him that after he rang, they had all noticed the change in Queenie. It was very marked. He saw a body on a stretcher, stiff with not living, and felt what it was to be too late to make a difference. He said with a hoarse whisper, 'Yes.' And then, since she said nothing, he said again, 'Well, of course.' He slumped his forehead against the glass of the booth, followed by his palm, and closed his eyes, wishing it was simple to stop feeling.

She's Waiting, Mr Fry

But the nurse's news was not what he feared. She gave a fluttery noise, like a laugh, though it surely couldn't be. 'We've never seen anything like it. Some days she sits up. She shows us all your postcards.' Harold shook his head, not understanding. 'She's waiting, Mr Fry. Like you said she should.' A cry of joy shot out of him and took him by surprise. 'She's alive? She's getting better?' He laughed, not meaning to, but it grew bigger, spilling out in waves as tears moistened his cheeks. 'She's waiting for me?' He threw open the door of the kiosk and punched the air. The nurse explained that when he rang and told them about his walk, she had been afraid he'd misunderstood the gravity of things. But she was wrong. 'It's a rather unusual kind of healing. I don't know how you came up with it. But maybe it's what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.' Harold was still laughing; he couldn't stop.

The Renewed Promise

When she asked how the journey was going, Harold said it was well, very well. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, he had stayed in Old Sodbury, and he had also passed Dunkirk. Now he believed he was in Nailsworth. Even that was funny, and the voice was chuckling too. When she asked when they should expect him, Harold blew his nose and mopped the last of his crying away. He looked at his watch, wondering how quickly he could get a train and how many different connections it would take. Then once again he pictured the space between himself and Queenie: the hills, the roads, the people, the sky. He saw them as he had done on that first afternoon, but now there was a difference; he placed the image of himself among them. He was a little broken, a little tired, his back to the world, but he wouldn't let Queenie down. 'In about three weeks. Possibly more or indeed less.' The voice laughed and said she'd tell her that. 'And tell her not to give up. Tell her I will keep walking.' He was laughing again because she was.

The Meaning of the Call

The call from Nailsworth is the hinge on which the entire pilgrimage turns. It converts a decision born of exhaustion and guilt into a renewed act of faith, and it gives Harold a new understanding of his walk. He 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 done so for a long time. Now he saw that his own walk was part of that same fabric. In order to succeed he must remain true to the feeling that had inspired him in the first place. It didn't matter that other people would do it in a different way; in fact this was inevitable. He would keep to the roads because, despite the odd fast car, he felt safer there. It didn't matter that he had no mobile phone, or that he had not planned his route, or brought a road map. He had a different map, and that was the one in his mind, made up of all the people and places he had passed. He would also stick to his yachting shoes because, despite the wear and tear, they were his. He saw that when a person becomes estranged from the things they know, and is a passer-by, strange things take on a new significance. And knowing this, it seemed important to allow himself to be true to the instincts that made him Harold, as opposed to anyone else.

After the call, Harold knew that he had found his way. He told the story about Queenie and the garage girl, and he asked strangers if they would be so good as to help. In return, he listened. He might be offered a sandwich, or a bottle of water, or a fresh set of plasters. He never took more than he needed, and gently refused lifts, or walking equipment, or extra packages of food to keep him going. He continued to sleep outside, choosing dry places and always being careful not to upset things. He washed in public lavatories, fountains and streams, and rinsed his clothes where no one was watching. He took the A-roads, B-roads, lanes and tracks, following the compass as it quivered northwards. He went by day or by night, as the mood took him; mile after mile after mile. If the blisters were bad, he bound them with duct tape. He slept when the need for it came, and then he returned to his feet and walked again. He went under the stars, and the tender light of the moon, when it hung like an eyelash and the tree trunks shone like bones. He walked through wind and weather, and beneath sun-bleached skies. It seemed to Harold that he had been waiting all his life to walk. He no longer knew how far he had come, but only that he was going forward. The pale Cotswold stone became the red brick of Warwickshire, and the land flattened into middle England. Harold reached his hand to his mouth to brush away a fly, and felt a beard growing in thick tufts. Queenie would live. He knew it.