Chapter 24 24. Harold and Richie

Harold felt as if something had changed after leaving Maureen, like a door had closed that he wasn't sure he wanted to open.Imagining the welcoming scene of the patients and nurses when he arrived also became dull, and he was no longer sure what the point of the journey was.Along the way, the progress became slower and slower, and problems and disputes emerged one after another. It took almost a week from Darlington to Newcastle.He gave Wilf the willow cane, and never got it back. Maureen said she missed him and told him to come home.He couldn't get that out of his head, and every now and then he found an excuse to call home on someone else's cell phone.

"I'm fine," Maureen said each time, "I'm very fine." She'd tell him about another nice letter, or a little present; sometimes she'd tell him about the red flowers in the garden. The growth of kidney beans. "You don't want to hear about my trivial matters," she would add.But in fact he wanted to hear it, very much. "On the phone again?" Rich would ask with a half-smile. He accused Wilf of stealing again, and Harold secretly feared that he might be right.It was hard work to defend him when he knew he was as unreliable as David.Wilf didn't even bother to hide the empty bottle, it took a long time to wake him up every time, and when he woke up he started complaining in a hurry.In order to protect him, Harold told everyone that the old problem of his right leg had recurred, and suggested to take a longer rest, and even suggested that some people could go first.But they all said no, no, no, Harold was the key to the pilgrimage.They couldn't have done it without him.

Harold breathed a sigh of relief the first time he saw the city.Wilf seemed to be alive again, and looking at all kinds of people, all kinds of windows, and thinking about things he didn't need, Harold could temporarily not face what went wrong with the journey.He really couldn't figure out how this situation that he couldn't control came about. "There's a guy offering a hell of a lot of money for my story," Wilf said out of nowhere.He started to get nervous again, smelling like alcohol, "I turned him down, Mr. Frye. I'm determined to follow you." The pilgrims pitched their tents, but Harold stopped cooking with them or planning the next day's route.Richie began to catch pheasants and hares, skin them and roast them, and Harold watched the poor little animals being disemboweled, and couldn't help but be terrified.These days, Rich's eyes showed a kind of hunger and greed that bordered on madness, and it always reminded Harold of Nabil and his father, which made him very uneasy.Richie's Pilgrim T-shirt was stained with blood and he had a string of small animal teeth hanging around his neck.Harold couldn't eat just looking at it.

Feeling more and more empty in his heart, the tired Harold wandered alone under the night sky, the crickets chirping at his feet, and the starry sky shining above his head. Only at this time could Harold feel free and not lonely.He thought about Maureen and Queenie, about the past, the hours that passed so quickly, but seemed as long as days.Every time he returned to the camp, some people had already fallen asleep, and some people were still singing by the campfire, a cold fear would rise in his heart.What is he doing with this group of people? Rich called a private meeting at this time.He was very worried, Rich said, and it was not easy to tell, but someone had to speak: Queenie might not last long.In view of this, he proposed to form a pioneer team, led by Rich himself, and take another route through the mountains. "I know it's not easy for everyone, we all love Harold, he is like a father to me. But the old man is getting worse and worse. First he has problems with his legs and feet, and then he runs out alone. Wandering around half the night, and now fasting again..."

"It's not fasting," Kate objected. "Don't put it so nonsense, he's just not hungry." "Anything is fine, anyway, he can't hold on anymore. To be a man, we must be straightforward and seek truth from facts. We have to think about how to help him." Kate sucked a scrap of vegetable between her teeth. "That's a lot of crap," she said.Wilf suddenly burst into hysterical laughter, and the topic ended like this.But Rich was unusually quiet all night, sitting at a distance from the others, whittling a little stick with his knife, grinding and chopping it until it was a pointed awl.

The next morning Harold was awakened by a commotion.Richie's pocket knife is missing.After searching carefully in the field, by the river, and in the bushes, it was concluded that Wilf had taken the knife away.At this moment, Harold realized that the paperweight he had brought to Queenie Hennessy was gone. The orangutan man reported that Wilf the Pilgrim had opened an account on "Facebook", which already had more than a thousand fans.What is written above are some personal anecdotes on the pilgrimage, how he saved people, and a few wishes.He promised fans more stories in upcoming weekly publications.

"Told you he was a bad guy," Rich said across the campfire.His gaze stabbed at Harold through the darkness. Harold is very worried about the missing boy.He left the camp looking for signs of the boy, looking for Wilf's haggard and frail face among the bars and gangsters in the city, carefully watching for that trademark hysterical laugh.He always felt sorry for the boy, and that was Harold.He started sleeping poorly again at night, sometimes staying up all night. "You look tired," Kate said.They sat under the brick path of the canal some distance from the camp.The water was still and deep, like liquid green velvet.There were mint and cress by the water, but Harold knew he wasn't in the mood to pick them.

"I feel like I'm getting farther and farther away from the starting point, but I'm also getting farther and farther away from the end point." Harold stretched his waist, and his whole body seemed to shake, "Why do you think Wilf is leaving?" "He's had enough. I don't think he's bad or anything, he's just young, not sure yet." Harold finally felt that someone was communicating with him openly, as he had at the beginning of the journey.At that time, no one had any expectations, including himself.He confesses that Wilf reminds him of his son, so the fact that he "failed him" has bothered him more recently than "disappointed Queenie". "My son was very young, and we knew he was a smart kid. He locked himself in the room, spent all his time doing homework, and would cry if he didn't get the first place in the test. But this smartness seemed to backfire later, He was so smart, so lonely. After Cambridge, he started drinking. I couldn't do anything well in school, and I was in awe of his intelligence. The best thing I do is screw everything up."

Kate laughed, layers of loose skin folded around her neck.This abrupt straightforwardness made him appreciate her bulkiness instead."I've never mentioned it to anyone. I lost my wedding ring the other day," she said. Harold sighed.He knows that everyone is not optimistic about his trust in Wilf, but somewhere in his heart, he still believes that everyone retains a little bit of natural goodness, and believes that he can discover the goodness of the boy this time. "That ring doesn't matter. I just got divorced, and I don't know why I still have it." She fiddled with her empty finger. "So maybe Wilf did me a favor."

"Should I have done something else before, Kate?" Kate laughed. "You can't save everyone." After a pause, he asked again, "Do you still see your son?" The question exploded like a bomb.Harold looked down. "No." "I suppose you miss him a lot?" she asked. Nobody had asked about David since Martina.Harold's heart beat faster and his mouth was dry.He wanted to explain what it was like to see his son slumped in a pile of vomit, put him back on the bed and wipe him up, and act the next day as if nothing had happened.He wanted to say that it was the same feeling as a child when he saw the man he called his father drunk.He wanted to ask, what happened?Is it because of him?Is the problem with him?But he didn't say anything.He didn't want to put all these burdens on her.So he just nodded and said yes, he missed David a lot.

Clutching his knees, he remembered lying in his room as a teenager, listening to the silence of his mother's absence.He remembered how he had slumped in his chair when he heard Queenie leave, because she hadn't even said goodbye.He saw the disgust on Maureen's pale face as she slammed the guest room door.He saw again the scene of his last visit to his father. "It's really a pity," the nurse pulled Harold's sleeve and almost pulled him out of the door, "but he is very unstable. Maybe you should go home today." When I left, I looked back step by step, and the last thing I saw was a thin and small man who threw all the spoons on the ground and shouted desperately that he had no son, no son. How did he tell all this?These words had accumulated for a lifetime, and he could try to find words, but they would never weigh as much in her ears as they did in his heart.He could say "my house," and the image in her mind could only be her house.These are beyond words. Kate and Harold sat in silence for a while longer.He listened to the sound of the evening wind through the willows, watched the swaying of the willows, the oleanders and evening primroses glimmering in the dark.There was a burst of laughter over the campfire as Richie organized a game of tag. "It's getting late," Kate said finally, "you should take a break." They returned to camp, sleepy but not knowing where.Harold's mind was full of his mother, and he searched hard for images of her, trying to find some comfort.He thought of the cold home of his childhood, the smell of whiskey on his school uniform, and the overcoat on his sixteenth birthday.For the first time, he let himself feel the pain that neither his parents wanted him to do.He walked for a long, long time under the sky lit up with stars so small that they were almost invisible.Scenes flashed before her eyes, Joan licked her fingertips and flipped through a page of a travel magazine, Joan rolled her eyes when she saw her father's trembling hand reaching for the bottle, but there was no scene where she kissed Harold's head or told him everything will get better. Did she ever wonder where he was afterward?How is he?He saw her reflection in the mirror as she applied red lipstick to her lips.Her movements are so careful, as if she is trying to capture what is behind this color.He remembered the scene where he met his mother's eyes once, and suddenly couldn't control himself.She stopped what she was doing then, so her lips were half Joan and half Mother.Little Harold's heart almost jumped out, and he suddenly found the courage to speak in a trembling voice: "Can you tell me, please? Am I ugly?" She suddenly laughed wildly.The dimples around his mouth were so deep that Harold could almost imagine the feeling of his little fingers going in there. That's not a funny question.That was the question hidden in his heart.But since mother and child had never had close contact, seeing her smile became the best thing he could hope for.He wished he hadn't torn her only letter to pieces. "Dear Son" also makes sense.It also made sense to take David into his arms and tell him everything was going to be alright.He regrets all the things he didn't do. Before dawn, Harold crawled back into his sleeping bag, and suddenly found a small package under the zipper, which contained a piece of bread, an apple, and a bottle of water.He wiped his eyes and ate his food, but he still couldn't sleep all night. When Newcastle's territory occupied most of the field of vision, a new dispute appeared in the team.Kate advocates not passing through the city at all.But someone has a bunion and needs to see a doctor, or at least get some medicine.Rich has endless views on the nature of modern pilgrimage, and the orangutan man has finished a notebook and needs a new one.To everyone's bewilderment and horror, Harold now proposed a detour to Hexham and produced a crumpled business card from the hotel where he had spent his first night. Baba, the edges are also rolled up.Although the experience of the first few days almost made him retreat, he still misses the people he met then.There was an earthy simplicity in them all which Harold seemed on the verge of losing, or had already lost. "Of course I won't force you to come with me," said Harold, "but I have my word to keep." Rich called another secret meeting. "I can't believe I'm the only one with the courage to speak up. But none of you see the magnitude of the problem. Harold is breaking down. We mustn't go to Hexham. That would mean walking two more times for nothing. Ten miles." "He made promises," said Kate, "as if he felt he had a certain duty to us. He took promises too seriously to break them. That's what we are British about, and it's a virtue." Richie was furious. "Don't you forget that Queenie is dying. I said we should go straight to Berwick with an advance party. He's said it himself before. We'll be there in a week." No one said anything, but the next morning, Kate found that the changes had quietly happened overnight.The whispers in the tent, around the ashes of the campfire confirmed Rich's words, that although they all loved Harold, it was time to leave him.Everyone looked around for the old man, but he was nowhere to be seen, so they packed up their tents and sleeping bags and left.Except for the gradually extinguished bonfire, the entire camp was empty, almost making her wonder if everything really happened. She found Harold by the river. He was throwing stones with the puppy, with his chest in his mouth as if there was some weight on his back.Kate was shocked to realize how much older he looked suddenly.She told Harold Ridge that he had persuaded Gorilla Man to go with him, and took the remaining reporters and supporters with him. "He had a meeting and said you need to stop and shed a few tears. There's nothing I can do about it. But those people won't be fooled for long." "I don't mind. To be honest, this thing has become a bit too big." The swallow skimmed across the water, changing direction with a wave of its wings.He looked at it for a while. "What are you going to do now, Harold? Go home?" He shook his head heavily. "I'll go to Hexham and from there to Berwick. It won't be too far, you What?" "I'll be home. My ex-husband has been calling me and he wants us to try again." Harold's eyes were wet in the morning light. "That's good." He took Kate's hand and gave it a firm squeeze.She suddenly wondered if he thought of his wife.The two clasped hands opened naturally and hugged each other.Kate didn't know if she hugged Harold or Harold hugged her.Harold was very thin in his Pilgrim T-shirt.They maintained the posture of embracing but not embracing, a little unsteady, until she let go of her hand and quickly wiped her cheek. "Please do take care," she said. "I know you're a good man and people want to listen to you, but you look really tired. Take care of yourself, Harold." He waited until Kate left.She turned around and waved her hand a few times, but he stood there watching her go away.He had walked too long with the others, heard their stories too much, followed their paths too much.He was relieved to be able to listen to only himself again now.But watching Kate's figure shrink a little bit, he still felt a kind of sadness of losing her, as if a small piece of something had passed away.She had almost reached a forest, and Harold was about to leave, but suddenly saw her stop, as if she had lost her way, and seemed to have forgotten something.She began to walk back quickly, almost to a trot, and Harold felt a thrill, for Kate was the one he really knew and liked of all, even Wilf.But after a while she stopped again, and seemed to shake her head.Harold knew that for her sake he must stand here and watch, supporting her from afar, until she left him completely behind. He waved his hands vigorously.She finally turned around and walked into the woods.He stood for a long time to prevent her from turning around again, but the air seemed to stagnate and did not bring her back. Harold took off his Pilgrim T-shirt, opened his backpack and slipped back on his shirt and tie.The clothes were a mess and wrinkled beyond belief, but once he put them on, Harold felt himself again.He thought about taking the Pilgrim t-shirt as a souvenir to Queenie, but it didn't feel right to give her a memento that had caused so much controversy, so he threw the shirt in when no one was looking. trash can.He found himself more tired than he realized, and it took another three days to reach Hexham. He found the address on the business card, pressed the doorbell, and waited all afternoon, but there was no sign of the businessman.A woman who claims to be his neighbor comes down and tells Harold that the owner of the apartment is on vacation in Ibiza. "He always goes on weekends," she said, and asked Harold if he wanted a cup of tea, or some water for the dog, but Harold declined her offer. A week after the procession parted, news of the pilgrims' arrival in Berwickshire was published in the newspapers.There are other photos: Rich Lyon walks the hand of his two sons by the pier; a man in a gorilla suit kisses Miss South Devon on the cheek; they are welcomed by a brass band and cheerleading; and A welcome dinner was held, attended by local MPs and business people.Several weekly newspapers simultaneously claimed to have exclusive sources of Rich's diaries, and word spread that a film was being made. Television news also reported the arrival of the pilgrims.In the BBC spotlight, Maureen and Rex watched as Rich Lyon and a few others delivered flowers to the nursing home, along with a giant basket of muffins, though Queenie couldn't receive them.The reporter said that unfortunately, no one at the nursing home was willing to comment.She was standing in the driveway of the nursing home with a microphone in hand, behind a well-groomed lawn of blue hydrangeas and a man in overalls pruning. "Those people don't even know Queenie," said Maureen. "It's disgusting. Why can't they wait for Harold?" Rex took a sip of Ovaltine: "I think they might be getting impatient." "But it's not a competition, the process is the key. Besides, the man didn't leave because of Queenie. He wanted to prove that he was a hero and win his child back." “I think his story is a process in a way,” Rex said, “just a different process.” He placed the glass on the coaster carefully so as not to stain the table. The reporter briefly mentioned Harold Frye, and also inserted a photo of Harold. He shrank so small in front of the camera that he looked like a shadow, dirty, haggard, and scared.Exclusively speaking from the dockside, Rich Lyon says the elderly Devonshire pilgrim was exhausted and had complicated emotional issues and had to give up just south of Newcastle. "But Queenie is still alive, and that's the most important thing. I'm lucky to have the support and help of so many companions." Maureen snorted: "For God's sake, this man can't even talk." Rich put his hands on his head in a triumphant gesture: "I know Harold will appreciate your support!" Squeeze Enthusiastic people nearby cheered.The show ended with a shot of the coral-colored stone wall of the pier, with several city workers tearing down a welcome sign from the wall.One person cleaned up from the beginning of the sentence, and the other started from the end of the sentence, tearing off the words one by one and throwing them into the back of the truck. Only the words "Welcome to Kejun" remained on the wall.Maureen snapped off the TV and walked into the room. "They all burned bridges," she said. "They all regretted believing him, making him look like a fool. It's incredible. He never asked for their attention in the first place." Rex pursed his lips and fell into thought: "At least those people let Harold go now. At least he can concentrate on walking alone now." Maureen cast her gaze into the depths of the sky, unable to speak a word.