The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce Read Free Book Online

job in a bar to fund a secretarial course. I’d had the job as a researcher, and when that got too much I’d taken another as a tour guide and afterwards a tutor. I’d hung around for a few years with a troupe of female artists in Soho, I’d got involved with a retired high court judge (the Shit) in Corby. All in all, I’d heard people do a lot of things with words. I’d heard them not say what they meant and I’d seen them not do what they said, but I’d never met a person who could speak so simply and still convey so much. Sheila listened in awe. There you stood, feet firm, shoulders set, believing she would be happy with such conviction that right away she began to believe it too. Then you said, ‘Well, cheerio, ladies,’ and you walked off with my sandwiches.
    It turned out yours were turkey and salad cream on white. Your wife had cut off the crusts. I know this because I ate them.
    Sheila said to me, ‘He’s a good man, Mr Fry. He’s not like the others. I’ll be OK now.’
    ‘He’s a dancer, isn’t he?’
    Sheila laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. He mostly, you know, he mostly sits.’
    Afterwards I asked the other secretaries about you, but no one had much to add. You had already worked at the brewery longer than a lot of people. You’d never missed a day’s work, not even when your son was born. Apparently you took a two-week holiday every summer with your family, but there were no photographs on your desk because I checked when I returned your Tupperware and all I found were paperclips, a plastic pencil sharpener and a complimentary Christmas calendar from the Chinese takeaway. It was out of date.
    Watching you from a distance, I discovered several new things: on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays you wore a brown suit and a selection of golf club ties; on Tuesdays and Thursdays you wore beige corduroys and a beige V-necked sweater. When it came to fashion, it seemed you were mainly interested in blending in with the background.
    Your eyes were a deep blue, almost shocking they were so vivid. Years later, I tried to find the same colour in my sea garden, and sometimes I thought the irises had it, sometimes my blue poppies. On an early summer morning, when the sky was reflected in the smooth folds of the sea, it was there I found you. You walked with a straight spine. Your hair was a thick sweep of brown that never quite sat flat. You wore your scarf (fawn stripes) in a tight knot and this made me wonder if your mother had once said you’d get a cold unless you kept your neck warm. It lifted my spirits at the brewery to watch you from a distance and ask myself these things. I assumed you had a drinking habit of which you were ashamed, but there. We all have secrets.
    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
    W ELL , H AROLD , 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