It took me a long time to finish reading One Man's Pilgrimage I before I turned to One Man's Pilgrimage II - Queenie's Love Song.
I thought that Harold and Maureen making up and Queenie dying would be the best ending. I didn't expect it to be another surprise.
One Man's Pilgrimage II - Queenie's Love Song, is a love song that Queenie spent twenty years writing for Harold. The crush buried in the bottom of her heart for twenty-four years, it is not that she does not want to talk about it, but just does not have the opportunity to do so.
Finally, due to illness this opportunity, she wrote a letter to Harold, informing him that he is about to soon, will leave the world.
So Harold sets off on his journey, with the sole belief that Queenie will survive as long as he is gone.
As Harold begins to embark on his pilgrimage, Queenie also begins to remember the past twenty years.
Turns out, my memories are full of you.
It turns out that you never left my world.
It turns out that I used twenty-four years to write a love song for you.
But you know what?
02
Before she went to work at the brewery, Queenie had been to many places, done many things, and met many people.
A Cambridge Classics graduate, a pub job, a secretarial course, a researcher, a tour guide, then a governess, then Holland and a tangle with a retired High Court judge in Kirby ......
Until the age of thirty-nine, Queenie lived a spontaneous, free-spirited life.
But even the most spontaneous and free-spirited person can be scared when she arrives in an unfamiliar environment and does something she can't control. She went to work in a brewery as an accountant.
That's when Harold comes into Queenie's view.
It's snowing, and Harold puts beer bottles in the trash and dances in the snow.
Queenie, who is standing in the window, dances along with Harold, you left, I right, you right, I sit, and they have a great time. Queenie no longer feel afraid, began to laugh. She hadn't been this happy in a long time after losing her baby to Kirby, who was only sixteen weeks old.
However, Harold, who was outside the window, did not see Queenie.
After seeing Harold, she began to ask people on the sidelines about everything about him, but no one could say anything new. So Queenie watched Harold secretly, hopelessly addicted with Harold's eyes.
" Your eyes are a deep blue, a blue so vivid it's almost startling. "
It is these deep blue eyes that make Queenie unstoppable.
The first time they really crossed paths was when Queenie hid in the company stationery cupboard and cried, and Harold overheard her and handed her a handkerchief.
From that moment on, Queenie's world was filled with one more Harold.
03
When Nabil learns that Queenie is leaving the brewery, he threatens Queenie not to fire Harold as long as she stays. He even makes Harold his full-time driver.
When one person originally stood at a safe distance, watching and loving another. Suddenly, there is a chance to get close, but also a long time alone with the opportunity, how can not be ecstatic, how can not be happy to go crazy.
That kind of want to say but can not say out loud like, let me use to accompany you to say it. Although you can never know, I silently accompany you around, because I like you.
After that, Queenie and Harold often went out on business together.
He sat in the driver's seat and she sat in the passenger seat. They talked, ate pancakes, sang songs, ate mints, and talked about David. For Harold, it was a very ordinary time at work; for Queenie, it was silent companionship.
Watching her beloved, just driving for herself, listening to him talk about him, every minute, every second, was so beautiful.
Although the first half of Queenie's life was met with misfortune, but to be able to meet love again at the age of forty is a gift from God.
When she was fifteen years old, her mother said to her that there is no such thing as love at first sight in the world, there is just love at the right time. As a young girl, she didn't think so. Now, she believed it, because Harold's presence, just still the worst pain in her heart, the sixteen-week-old child, cruelly leaving her body, was the child's way of telling her that it was time, to make time and space, for another man.
That man, is you, Harold.
04
Queenie had thought she was going to do just that, stay quietly with Harold into old age. Until something came up with David.
David, Harold's only son, was knackered from dancing. From then on, David would extort some money from Queenie from time to time. Queenie wanted to talk to Harold several times, but the words had to be swallowed. Until that day, twenty-one-year-old David went to Queenie's place as usual and sarcastically told Queenie that Harold would never fall in love with her. Queenie was irritated and went crazy, yelling that Davy, would do anything but ask for her, her mother, and her father. Meaning, Davy is good for nothing. By the time she came back to her senses, Davy was no more.
By the time she knew of Davy again, Davy had hanged himself in front of his house.
Because of this incident, she felt guilty for more than twenty years and did not know what way to pay back.
A drunken Harold, who can't stand the idea of a white-haired man giving away a black-haired man, breaks all the clowns in Nabil's office as a way of venting his inner hurt. The next morning, Nabil saw the office was a mess, to be held accountable when Queenie replaced Harold, wanting him to continue to work in the winery.
But what she doesn't realize is that from then on, Harold's world becomes a black and white world.
Queenie resigned, intending to say goodbye to Harold, but was blocked by Maureen, and, in the end, had to leave in a hurry.
This was the only time in her life that Queenie fled in a hurry, knowing that if she had been able to keep David that night, perhaps David would not have chosen to leave the world. For this burden, which she had carried for more than twenty years, she was finally, at the end of her life, able to talk about it.
05
Leaving Harold doesn't mean he disappears from Queenie's world.
Queenie buys a run-down beach house. There's not an inch of grass here, and over time, the hut, transformed into a beach garden. Every visitor to the beach praises it.
Seeing this, I thought of San Mao. Sansao just arrived in the Sahara Desert, the house is dilapidated, nothing, relying on her little effort, so good that even the landlord has to increase the rent.
Queenie and San Mao should be the same type of person. Because of the love in their hearts, they live their lives as poetry.
So warm Queenie, but only one person, alone to enjoy the garden.
Every now and then pick up a few logs, this one is you, this one is David, this one is Maureen, this one is Nabil, this one is mother, this one is father, this one is me.
Even though some of them are gone, there is still a place for them in Queenie's heart.
Because they were all part of her life.
Queenie's favorite is the log right in the middle.
That is, you, Harold.
In this garden, she never hid her fondness for Harold. The man who came along as she approached her forties, but who gave her a taste of love.
Even though love is so beautiful that one can't help but feel it, Queenie always keeps a sense of proportion and doesn't dare to step beyond the limits.
In her case, the crush, has been the best.
06
It didn't take long for the garden to be destroyed by a flock of sheep.
The garden was so beautiful, but now it is a ruin.
The garden was so beautiful, but now it is a ruin.
This garden is the beauty of her love.
This garden is the beauty of her love, but now, there is nothing left.
Until a year later, Queenie for the destroyed garden, only to release.
She no longer has the energy to recreate it.
Because, well, she was sick.
Or cancer, which is about to leave her life.
And so there it is, what you see at the beginning of this book.
A patient with cancer, in a nursing home, waiting for her friend, Harold, to arrive.
07
Waiting is a long thing, especially for a patient.
For someone who has waited twenty years, waiting a little longer is no longer difficult.
This brings us to this book.
During the writing of the book, a number of people from the sanatorium, accompanied Queenie and waited for Harold together.
Henderson, Queen Mother Button, Barbara, Finty, they didn't end up waiting.
They died one after the other, and yet, in the book, there was no sadness to be seen.
Everyone knows, including Queenie, that they came to the sanitarium for one purpose, to die.
Death, which is supposed to be a terrible thing. But because of the company of everyone, without exception, facing death, very calm.
Queenie was also calm in the end.
08
I, who waited for you for more than twenty years, loved you for more than twenty years.
All this, you do not know, and do not need to know.
It's just the guilt inside me that compels me to confess to you about David.
If that day, I stayed calm; if that day, I left David for the night; if that day, I did not blurt out ......
But there are no ifs.
I was the one who gave David the fatal blow.
I banished myself for more than twenty years, never able to face the pain in my heart.
I knew that in this life, you would never love me.
I never expected, never expected, just want to love you so silently.
I love the sound of your voice, the way you walk, your marriage, your hands, your jagged foreign investments, the deft knots in your scarf, your white bread sandwiches, everything about you.
It never occurred to me how humble it is that I love you.
Because, I insisted for more than twenty years, and who, can exceed me.
In fact, this is my love alone.
I love you so firmly, just because it is you, just like my mother said, there is no love at first sight, only love the right time.
09
Everyone is ordinary, and we will fall in love with another ordinary person.
A crush, how beautiful, but also how cruel.
The cruelty is that in this love, I am the only one who misses, misses, misses you.
But you are far away, but you do not know anything.
Queenie does not feel.
What I see in the author's writing is that Queenie, caught in love, becomes so little womanly, becomes observant of everything about the person she loves.
Whether it's a tiny bow tie or a huge car, she, in everything, observes Harold.
So much so, that in the days to come, Harold becomes her only reason for living.
I think Queenie is happy.
She left in happiness.
10
Let's end with the words from the book.
These are worth remembering.
An upturned smile.
The wear and tear on a shoe.
A streak of sunlight.
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