the Exeter Cathedral paperweight

The Exeter Cathedral paperweight is a small glass souvenir that Harold Fry purchases in a gift shop close to Exeter Cathedral during the early days of his pilgrimage to Berwick-upon-Tweed. It contains a model of the cathedral that covers itself in glitter when tipped upside down, a childlike, almost magical quality that makes it the most personal of the gifts Harold carries for Queenie Hennessy. Harold buys it alongside a set of embossed pencils he hopes Maureen will like, and he reflects that tourists buy trinkets and souvenirs of religious places because they have no idea what else to do when they get there. The paperweight is thus born of a kind of helplessness, a man who does not know how to express what he feels except through objects, and who chooses for Queenie the most whimsical, glittering thing he can find.

Purchase and Early Journey

Harold buys the paperweight in Exeter, a city that takes him by surprise and threatens to overturn the slow inner rhythm he has developed on the open road. He has felt himself to be part of something bigger than simply Harold in the security of open land and sky, but in the city, with its short-range sight, he feels anything might happen and that he would not be ready for it. The paperweight is one of two presents for Queenie that he keeps in his plastic carrier bag, along with a second-hand dictionary of wild flowers and a visitor's guide to Great Britain. He also carries replenished supplies of water, biscuits and, on the advice of a chemist, a tube of petroleum jelly for his feet. The paperweight travels with him as he leaves Exeter early, relieved to be back on the road, and it becomes part of the small collection of objects that define his pilgrimage.

The Gift Among Gifts

As Harold walks, the paperweight becomes one of several gifts he rewraps for Queenie, alongside a pot of honey, a rose quartz, a Roman key ring and a wool hat. In Cheltenham, he donates his washing powder to a student going into a laundrette, offers his wind-up torch to a woman from Prestbury who cannot find her key, gives his plasters and antiseptic cream to the mother of a distressed child with a bleeding knee, and hands his guide to Britain to a bewildered German couple lost near Cleeve Hill. But the gifts for Queenie he keeps and rewraps carefully, and the compass and rucksack he keeps because they are not his to give away. The paperweight is thus distinguished from the objects Harold sheds along the way, marked as something sacred, a token of his promise that as long as he walks, Queenie must live.

Wilf and the Paperweight

When the young man Wilf joins Harold's pilgrimage, the paperweight takes on a new life. Harold shows Wilf the presents he carries for Queenie in his rucksack, and the boy particularly likes the paperweight from Exeter Cathedral that glitters when he tips it 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 further souvenirs: a piece of flint, a spotted guinea-fowl feather, a stone hooped with rings, once a small garden gnome with a fishing rod that he promises he found in a bin, and another time three pints of milk insisting they are going free. There are so many offerings that Harold has to leave them behind when Wilf is not looking, taking care to hide them from the dog, who is inclined to retrieve the pebbles and return them to Harold's feet. But the paperweight is different; it is the one gift Harold cannot bear to lose, and Wilf's fascination with it foreshadows the betrayal to come.

The Theft and the Loss

Harold is woken one morning by shouts. Rich's knife has gone, and 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. The theft is a double wound: Wilf has taken not only a knife but the most precious object Harold carries, the glittering token of his love and his promise. 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, and several prayers, promising his fans more stories to come in the weekend papers. Rich says across the camp fire, 'I told you he was no good,' his eyes pinning Harold through the dark. The paperweight's loss marks the moment the pilgrimage's integrity is shattered, and Harold is left to continue without the one gift he most wanted to deliver.

Aftermath and Significance

After the split, Harold removes the pilgrim T-shirt and retrieves his shirt and tie from his rucksack, slipping the T-shirt in a bin when no one is looking. He is wearier than he has realized, and it takes him a further three days to reach Hexham. The paperweight is never recovered, and Harold never mentions it again, but its absence haunts the final stages of his journey. The pilgrims who stole it arrive in Berwick-upon-Tweed a week after the split, with photographs in the newspapers of Rich Lion walking hand in hand with his two sons along the quay, a man in a gorilla suit nuzzling the cheek of Miss South Devon, a brass band, a performance by the local cheerleading troupe, and a dinner attended by local councillors and businessmen. They deliver flowers to the hospice along with a giant basket of muffins, although Queenie is unable to receive them. Maureen watches the footage and says, 'Those people didn't even know Queenie. It makes me want to spit. Why couldn't they wait for Harold?' The paperweight, which was meant to be a gift of love, becomes instead a symbol of everything the false pilgrims took from Harold, and its loss is a quiet grief that he carries into his final meeting with Queenie at St Bernadine's Hospice.