The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: A Novel Read online

  I never saw you without a golf club tie.

  I never saw you with a golf club.

  I never saw you without yachting shoes.

  I never saw you in a yacht.

  The lonely gentleman

  WELL, HAROLD, you’ve been walking a full week and now you have passed Exeter. And two postcards in one day! The description of your feet inside your socks was particularly vivid. I hope you managed to buy plasters in Chudleigh. And I like the picture of Exeter. The cathedral and the green. It’s strange to think it is twenty years since I was last there. The day I left Devon for good.

  ‘Dear Queenie,’ read Sister Lucy. ‘Do not give up. Best wishes, Harold Fry.’

  ‘So the fool hasn’t gone home yet?’ said Mr Henderson.

  ‘Of course not!’ shouted Finty. ‘He is walking to see Queenie Hennessy.’

  In today’s post, she received a voucher offering a year’s supply of McVitie’s crackers if she fills out an online questionnaire. There was nothing for Mr Henderson.

  ‘With post like yours, who needs enemies?’ he said.

  The Pearly King had two parcels but said he would prefer to open them in his room. Barbara received a knitted glasses case from her nephew. ‘That’s so nice,’ she said. ‘What a shame I’ve got no eyes. But I can keep my syringe driver in the knitted case. That will be nice too.’

  Another set of patients will arrive this afternoon.

  ‘When you come in those doors, it’s a one-way ticket,’ said Mr Henderson. ‘Whose turn next?’

  I pretended to read your cards.

  ‘Did you live in Kingsbridge once, Queenie?’ asked Sister Catherine. I gave a fast nod. ‘Is that how you made friends with Harold Fry?’ Another nod. ‘What made you leave?’ I felt my nose prickle. Sister Lucy took my hand.

  ‘So when do we suppose Harold Fry will get here?’ she said gamely. ‘Tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon?’

  Sister Lucy is one of the kindest young women I’ve met. When it comes to French manicures and blow-drying, she has no equal. But I don’t believe the poor girl has ever seen a map of England.

  No wonder she is challenged by her jigsaw.

  Yes, I remember Exeter. It was right at the end. I’d gone to your home in Fossebridge Road to say goodbye and I’d met your wife instead. It was the only time we ever spoke, she and I, and it was one of the most devastating conversations of my life. I remember the busy café opposite Exeter station where I sat early the following morning with my tartan suitcase and wondered what to do next. It was clear I had to leave. Maureen’s words rang in my ears. Whenever I was still, I heard them. I’d walked and walked after our meeting, but it was no good, I couldn’t get away from what she’d told me. I saw her too. In my mind I saw her. Hanging the washing, over and over, as if the sun would never come and the wind would never blow and her task would never finish. Behind her, net curtains now hung at every window. The house had closed its eyes.

  I don’t know why some of these memories must remain so crystal clear. I recall one sliver and the whole picture comes rushing back, while other things, for instance, other things I would like to remember, are completely unavailable. If only memory were a library with everything stored where it should be. If only you could walk to the desk and say to the assistant, I’d like to return the painful memories about David Fry or indeed his mother and take out some happier ones, please. About stickleback fishing with my father. Or picnicking on the banks of the Cherwell when I was a student.

  And the assistant would say, Certainly, madam. We have all those. Under F for Fishing. As well as P for Picnicking. You’ll find them on your left.

  So there my father would be. Tall and smiling in his work overalls, a roll-up in one hand and my fishing net in the other. I’d skip to keep up with him as he strode the broken lane down to the stream. ‘Where is that girl? Where are you?’ The hedgerow flowers would boil with insects and my father would lift me to his shoulders and then— What?

  I haven’t a clue. I don’t remember the rest.

  But I was writing about the café in Exeter. The place was already packed. Suitcases, bags, rucksacks. One could barely move. It was the very end of the school holidays, and there was an early morning fog outside. All around me I saw joined-together people, talking and laughing and looking forward to their joined-together futures. It was an insult, all of it. So much happiness, it had steamed up the windows. I chose a table by the door. Every time it opened, I hoped it would be you. Harold will have heard what I have done for him, I thought. Even if Maureen has failed to give him my message, he will have bumped into someone from the brewery who will have told him. Harold will come to find me and I will tell the truth. All I wanted was to see you one last time.

  ‘Excuse me? Is this seat free?’

  My heart gave a swing. I looked up, and it was, of course, another man. Not you. He had thick brown hair, but it didn’t give the smallest kink of a curl at the nape of the neck like yours, and neither did it poke out a little above the ears. He pointed at the empty place opposite mine. No, that seat’s reserved, I told him. I’m waiting for someone. Now bugger off.

  I didn’t say that last bit, but my head did.

  The man nodded and moved away. There was something so afraid and careful about him, picking his way around the luggage, the noise. He didn’t seem to know the place. He looked like a glass animal, too delicate-limbed. Eventually he found a spare seat beside a family and perched himself on the edge. He kept checking his cuffs, his hair, his shoes, the way people do when they’re unsure and they need to remind themselves where they stop and the rest of the world begins. He ordered a pot of Ceylon tea (no milk) and a toasted teacake. Then the child next to him tipped her plastic cup upside down and showered him with juice.

  Everyone jumped to their feet. The lonely gentleman, the waitresses, the other customers. Don’t worry, don’t worry, he kept saying, dabbing his suit with his handkerchief. The girl’s parents were passing him paper napkins, and they were saying, Just send us the dry-cleaning bill, why don’t you have our food instead? And he was blushing and saying, No, no, please. No, no, please. The more attention he got, the more pained he looked. And I sat watching, I am ashamed to say, thinking, Good. Make the lonely man squirm. At least it isn’t me.

  A young man arrived. He didn’t come into the café. He stopped at the doorway. Jeans. T-shirt. New cowboy boots. With his arms folded, he scanned the tables as though he were counting us. The lonely gentleman stood. He mopped his suit again, but his hands were shaking. Excuse me, he said. Excuse me, world. He left money for the bill and followed the young man out of the café.

  I wiped the steam from the window with my sleeve. From where I sat, I watched them make their way down the street. The lonely gentleman walked alongside the young man, hands in pockets, until the young man reached his arm around the lonely gentleman and pulled him close. Other people noticed, skirted them, but the young man kept his arm around the gentleman and steered him forward. I watched them against the fog. Then they were gone.

  You see, even the only other single person in the café was not a single person. It was the final straw. Harold Fry is not coming, I thought. You can wait a whole lifetime and he will not come. For what I had done, there could never be forgiveness. I grasped the handle of my tartan suitcase and yanked it through the crowd, in the way I have seen an exasperated mother tug a screaming child out of the way of strangers. ‘Mind where you’re going,’ people muttered at me. I hated them, but really the person I hated was myself. I fled.

  At the train station, I scanned the departures board, trying to find the farthest destination. I’d have gone to Mars if it had been listed. As it was, I had to settle for Newcastle.

  ‘Single, madam?’

  Ha ha. Very funny. Thank you for pointing that out. ‘Yes, I am all alone.’

  ‘No, I mean, are you planning to come back, madam? Do you want a return ticket?’

  The truth dawned on me. I didn’t want to go. Please, let m
e not go. This is not what I want. I am in love with Harold Fry. My life will be nothing if I leave. And then I remembered Maureen’s words and I felt again the hollowing punch of them.

  ‘A single, please,’ I said. ‘I’m never coming back.’

  In which not much happens

  I HEARD that the Pearly King felt too unwell to visit the dayroom today and so did Mr Henderson. There was a patient who sat with her family in a circle around her, all holding hands. Sister Philomena asked if they would like to join her for prayers and they said yes, they would. They closed their eyes as Sister Philomena whispered the words and I thought this must be the nearest humans get to whatever God is, when they hold hands and listen.

  A volunteer showed Finty how to make a tissue-paper flower. They made one for Barbara too, but she mistook it for a hat and put it on her head.

  She wore it all morning.

  The buds on the tree outside my window have popped open to leaves. The tree shakes them every now and then, as if to say, Are you happy up there?

  So I was wrong. Something has happened, after all.

  Do you see leaves too?

  Hang on, would you like my handkerchief?

  WHEN YOU FOUND me in the stationery cupboard, Harold, I’d been at the brewery a full month. It was early February. I’d eaten your sandwiches and sniffed around your desk, but we hadn’t spoken since the canteen. I waited for you at my window, though. Nearly every day you were there with your empties, and sometimes I willed you to dance but you never obliged me. Maybe snow was your thing. We never had that weather again, not in all the time we worked together.

  So picture this. I’m crying in a cupboard. I hear someone approach and pull at the door, and I try to hide. Or, more specifically, I behave like my father and I try to not be there. But it is difficult to not be somewhere when you are a small woman in a brown wool suit and you have nothing around you but typing paper and manila envelopes.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ you said. You clearly had no idea where to look. You chose my feet.

  I didn’t know how to explain. I straightened my skirt and lowered my head. I blamed my anguish on the way Napier and the other reps laughed at me. I said I couldn’t take any more, I was going to hand in my notice. I was saying anything that came into my head. What I didn’t mention was that I’d been pregnant when I came to Kingsbridge. What I didn’t mention was that I’d lost my baby only the previous weekend. What with the stomach cramps and my grief, I could barely stand.

  You clearly wished two things: that you hadn’t opened the door to the stationery cupboard and that you hadn’t found me inside it. I also wished two things: that you would close the door to the stationery cupboard and that I’d never see you again. It seemed best all round. You kept glancing up and down the corridor. Left. Right. Left.

  Help didn’t come from either direction.

  And so you made another small decision. I read it in your face and body. You carefully placed your feet a little apart, just as you had done with Sheila. You caught your hands behind your back and your brow crumpled with concentration while you shifted your weight from side to side, finding your correct balance. It was like watching a tree take root. You were not going to move until you had helped me. And then you spoke.

  ‘Don’t resign.’ Your voice was soft. I looked up at you and found you were shining your eyes straight into mine. ‘I found it hard at the beginning too. I felt out of place. But it will get better.’

  It was like another spell of yours. I couldn’t reply. For a moment I believed everything would turn out all right for me because you clearly desired that too. It was simple. And I had lost a lot at this point, Harold. More than anything, I’d wanted to keep my baby.

  You said, ‘Hang on a mo, would you like my handkerchief?’ I said no, no, I couldn’t possibly, but you didn’t hear. You tugged it from your pocket like a magician’s scarf and you folded it several times over, very carefully, until it was the size of a small pincushion. ‘Please,’ you said gently. ‘Take it.’ I lifted it to my face, and the smell of you tipped me sideways.

  Perhaps it was the hormones. I don’t know. I still get that smell sometimes. Imperial Leather soap, milky coffee and lemon-scented aftershave. The mix has to be just right. A stranger could pass my sea garden and I’d want to drop my tools and run after him along the coastal path. I wouldn’t even wish to speak or touch. I’d need the scent, the feeling of stomach-fluttering warmth that accompanied it. I have tried to find the smell in a plant, but I have never been able to get it. I grew lemon thyme once. When the sun shone, that came close. I’d sit beside it with my mug of coffee, although I had to shut my eyes to imagine the Imperial Leather part.

  We were in the stationery cupboard. You asked if I would care to come out and I said, ‘Thank you,’ and really I could have been saying anything. I wobbled a little with the pain inside me and you held out your hand.

  ‘Steady on,’ you told me. ‘No need to rush.’

  It was the first time a man had touched me since the Shit in Corby. (I don’t include the young doctor who examined me while I lay on a stretcher in the hospital.) The thrill of your fingers round mine sent prickles of electricity shooting up my spine and towards my hairline. Your hand was large and warm and unwavering. If only I could have stayed like that, my hand in yours. Another time, another place, another life, I might have made a small sashay to the left and swung into your arms. But you were Harold Fry. I was Queenie Hennessy. I pulled myself free and walked away from you as fast as I could. I was almost running.

  If only I’d kept going, you might say. I could have saved us all a lot of sorrow.

  That night I compiled a letter to the Shit. I enclosed the money he’d pressed on me to have an abortion. There was no child, I wrote. His reputation was safe. (‘Come back,’ he’d moaned. He was slippery-faced with tears. ‘Come back when it’s all sorted. I can’t live without you, dearest.’) I added that I never wanted to see him again. He would probably discover that he could live after all.

  I lifted your handkerchief to my face and breathed in the smell of you. I felt healed again.

  Can’t write any more. Hand tired. Head too. The night nurse asked if I was in pain and fetched liquid morphine in a shot glass to help me sleep.

  The two blue birds wake up and take flight out of the framed print. I watch the sky at the window fill with ink. Then I see the stars and they are fizzing out there. Even the slim moon keeps shattering into splinters.

  Sister Mary Inconnue says, ‘I need to replace my ribbon spool, dear one.’

  That is enough for one ni—

  An ultimatum

  THERE WAS NO post for me again today. I confess I was a little downhearted. The Pearly King had another of his parcels, but he didn’t open it.

  ‘Maybe you will get a card from Harold Fry tomorrow?’ said Sister Catherine.

  ‘There is no such word as tomorrow,’ said Mr Henderson.

  I felt hot and weak.

  Could you really walk? From Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed? I tried to picture you strolling down a country lane, and all I could get was a man in fawn, giving hand signals to passing cars.

  ‘Do you have to do that?’ I asked once. You looked confused. ‘Do what?’ you said. ‘Winding down your window and waving your hand whenever you turn left or right. Isn’t that what indicators are for?’ ‘Are you suggesting I’m an old-fashioned driver?’ you said. And I did think that, only not in a critical way, so I dressed the thought up as something more anodyne and said no, you were just a very thorough driver. ‘I thought that was what Napier required,’ you said. ‘He wants me to take care of you. You’re a good accountant.’ And I felt a little burst of pleasure, because when you said those things I believed you, in the same way I felt safe when you put on your driving gloves and turned the key in the ignition. ‘Also,’ you said, still flapping your hand at oncoming traffic, ‘it helps us go faster. To be honest, Miss Hennessy, I wish you would stop sitting there like a lemon and help.
’ When I stuck my hand out of the window and laughed, you suddenly smiled and I got the impression it gave you happiness, to make another person laugh. I remember wondering whether it was the same with your wife.

  But that was long ago.

  In the dayroom, I imagined your arrival at the hospice. I imagined you approaching the inpatient doors. (Don’t be scared of them, Harold. It turns out they are only ordinary doors.) I imagined the nuns fetching you tea and asking about your journey. I imagined you reading my letter. But when I got to the part where you walked into the room, where I saw your face and you saw mine, I turned to the window. I had to concentrate very hard on the sky or the evergreens or anything that was not inside my mind.

  I have searched for you, Harold, in the years I have lived without you. Not a day has gone by when I have not thought of you. There was a time when I wished it would stop, when I tried to forget, but forgetting took such strength it was easier to accept you were a missing part of me and get on with life. Sometimes, yes, I have spotted a tall man down by the sea, throwing stones, and with a jolt of excitement that leaves me trembling I have said to myself, That’s him. That’s Harold Fry. Other times I have heard a car draw up behind me as I walk to the village, or I have passed a man heading towards the castle ruins, a hiker perhaps, or I have stood behind a stranger at the shop. And something about the rumbling of the car engine, or the way the man carries his shoulders, or asks for stamps at the counter with a southern softness to his voice, has allowed me for one moment to pretend it is you. It is a fantasy, a daydream. Even as I indulge the idea, I know it cannot be true. Embleton Bay is a sprinkling of clifftop summer beach houses in the north-east of England, and I never sent you my address. But pretending you are near, for a few moments, I have felt complete again. Only when my illness came did I give up looking for you.