Ralph can’t find the coffee shop. Julie Parsley is close but he can’t locate her. He stops a passer-by, a woman pushing a toddler in a buggy. The buggy seems to be covered in wraparound plastic—can the child actually breathe in there? Is this woman attempting to suffocate her son? It looks like it was designed for mud, snow, treacherous conditions, not a summer’s day and a quiet street in an artisan quarter of town.
“Excuse me,” Ralph says.
“I can’t stop,” the woman says. Put together, her facial expression and tone are a cryptic duo—a blend of Charlotte Rampling and Kenneth Williams.
Ralph notices that inside the plastic cover the toddler is unseasonably dressed in a bobble hat.
“I have to make and do,” the woman says.
“Make and do?”
“I made this bobble hat,” she says, tapping the boy’s head through the plastic, waking him up. He begins to cry. “Today is knitted animals.”
“I see,” Ralph says, but all he can see is a camp and mysterious woman, an intrepid buggy, a red-faced child.
“Don’t cry, honeybun,” the woman says to the toddler. “You’re always crying.”
“Why the cover?”
She scowls, shakes her head. “Surely you realize that he isn’t safe without the cover?” Then she rushes off, pushing the buggy as fast as she can. In her mind she is racing against a troop of mothers, trying to keep up, longing for a time when life doesn’t feel like a competition. The mothers fill the streets but Ralph can’t see them. He can only see his own ghosts, his own projections, dancing around him, shadowy.
The door of a bike shop opens and a young man cycles through it on a mountain bike. He cycles up the road and back again, turning this way and that way. It’s a test drive. Try before you buy. As he freewheels towards him, Ralph holds up his hand.
“Excuse me, do you happen to know where the Nordic Coffee House is?”
The squeak of new brakes. “Julie’s place, you mean?” the man says, getting off the bike.
“Is it?”
“What?”
“Julie’s place?”
“Julie P,” he says, bending down to inspect the bike.
“Does she own the Nordic Coffee House?”
“It’s part of her shop.”
“I see.”
(Today is a day of seeing and not seeing.)
“It’s just up there on the right, next to Make and Do.”
“That’s great, thanks.”
“No problem.”
Julie’s place. For a moment there is a kaleidoscope of butterflies in Ralph’s stomach. They have J and P on their wings, black on yellow, fluttering initials, beautiful. It’s been so long since he spoke to someone who knows Julie Parsley, who speaks of her with warmth and familiarity. This could have been his life: dropping her off at work in the mornings, getting to know the people who run the bike shop, the delicatessen, the hairdressers, the shop selling minimalistic music systems with a wood-grain finish. As he walks along the street he pictures himself having a trim in the salon, buying bread, cheese and chocolate from the deli, waiting in his car while Julie sets the alarm and locks the door of the Nordic House—a store selling all things Scandinavian, with a cafe at the back called the Nordic Coffee House.
He wonders what his life might have looked like if he had chosen Julie. What he might have looked like.
Chosen Julie? That’s a convenient way of remembering it, Ralph. Easier than the truth: you were too intimidated to make a move.
As he opens the door and steps inside, Ralph finds himself face to face with a giant Moomin in a black hat. It’s Moominpappa—the romantic, the adventurer. Ralph used to read Tove Jansson’s books to Stanley and Arthur and he remembers them well, but he has never been face to face with a Moomin. (He recalls the huge gnome in B&Q, the one he walked into when he last saw Julie. Is she destined to make his world a cartoonish place, populated with fictional figures, their lively rigidity both charming and disturbing?)
Behind Moominpappa there is Moomin world: mugs, tea towels, cards, badges, plates, tablecloths, tote bags, spoons. Once you’ve passed through Moomin world you arrive in a room full of Scandinavian chairs, lights, clocks, plates, glasses and candlesticks, accompanied by catalogues full of similar objects. A young woman with red hair sits at a desk in the corner. There’s a cash register, a tiny Moominmamma, an iMac, a pile of paperwork.
“May I help you?” the woman asks, glancing up from the iMac.
“Just looking for the cafe,” Ralph says.
The woman points at a large sign above a door. She smiles. The smile says: “How could you have missed that?” She doesn’t realize that missing what is obvious is Ralph’s forte.
He rolls his eyes. The rolling says: “I’m so stupid sometimes.”
He walks up to the door. The door to what? His past? His future?
An excited voice: “I’m instant messaging a woman in Finland,” the voice says.
Ralph turns to look at the woman with red hair, who is beaming at her iMac.
“I still find it amazing, you know? She’s in Finland, and it’s like she’s sitting on my lap.”
“On your lap?”
“If only,” the woman says, squeezing the tiny Moominmamma.
Ralph opens the door to the Nordic Coffee House. The first thing that hits him is the music. He used to own this album—Hips and Makers, Kristin Hersh. The walls of the coffee shop are either wood-panelled or covered in red tiles. There are seven tables, an abundance of stools, an industrial coffee machine, plates full of pastries, cookies and cakes covered with glass lids that look like upside-down bowls. At one of the tables, a woman is writing in a notebook. She has short black hair and olive skin. She is wearing grey sneakers, green linen trousers and a long-sleeved T-shirt, its three top buttons undone. She doesn’t look up as Ralph walks over. On the table, alongside her notebook, there’s a pencil case, an empty coffee cup and a plate covered with crumbs.
Now he is right beside her.
She is looking up, smiling, rising to her feet, pulling headphones from her ears.
He goes to kiss her on the cheek but she moves first, kissing one side of his face, then the other.
He could cry, so easily and for so long, but he doesn’t.
Julie Parsley is sitting in the corner of her cafe, eating a Danish pastry, listening to Kate Bush on her iPod. The album is all about snow. Julie would happily live her entire life in snow, because snow is a departure, a cover-up, a slowing down of what is usually too fast. She turns up the volume and scribbles in her notebook. This scribbling is something to do while she is waiting for Ralph. It will make her look busy and diligent and less self-conscious than usual. She writes the words waiting for Ralph, which inflates the significance of the waiting and makes her feel self-conscious. The scribbling has backfired, but Julie is used to how this feels. C’est la vie.
Ralph goes to kiss her on the cheek but she moves first, kissing one side of his face, then the other. He asks if she would like another drink and she says no, you sit down, what would you like, I’ll get these. He says some kind of pastry would be nice. He is starving. He didn’t eat breakfast this morning. He sat and watched while Miriam devoured a plate of eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms and toast. When she is nervous she eats. When he is nervous he fails to see what is in front of him, and considering the fact that he is often nervous (low-level edginess, normalized by its own longevity), he spends most of his life blinkered.
A few minutes later they are looking down at a latte, a macchiato, a cinnamon and raisin swirl.
Ralph says the word so, it comes out loud and quick.
“So,” Julie says.
And so it begins, their afternoon together, which opens with coffee and closes with a surprising announcement.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” he says.
“I’m sure you could if you wanted to,” she says.
His cheeks flush. He mutters something about the pastry being delicious.
“If Kate Bush can think of fifty ways to describe snow, I’m sure you can tell me why it’s good to see me after all this time.”
“Kate Bush?”
Julie sips her macchiato. The years that have passed since they last met have stolen her ability to make small talk. They have stolen other things too. More important things.
Ralph sees that he has two choices. He can be as direct as her, or he can pull back with questions about the shop, the cafe, what she has been doing all this time. Deep or shallow, sink or swim. Fuck it, he thinks, tapping his feet to the beat of Julie Parsley. Some things clearly haven’t changed—she’s still sharp, candid. Fuck it.
“I’ve thought of you so often over the years,” he says. (It’s a BFL. It’s a big fat lie.)
She bursts out laughing. Not the best response.
He laughs too, like it’s funny, like it didn’t really mean that much.
Silence.
She rubs her chin.
He eats his cinnamon and raisin swirl.
The man behind the industrial coffee machine watches them.
“Why are you here?” Julie says.
“Why are you here?”
“You don’t mess about do you?”
“I can’t be bothered with messing about. I’ve done too much of that already and where did it get me?”
“Where did it get you?”
She sighs. “I married a man with big hips,” she says, “that’s where it got me.”
Ralph grimaces. “Big hips?”
“It was the great tragedy of his life, being hippy instead of hip.”
“Are you still together?”
“Fortunately not. By the end of our marriage he had two chins.”
“Oh.”
“He was a musician. I couldn’t stand him. We never had children—couldn’t be sure we had enough love to offer. When we divorced, I bought the shop and a flat and thousands of Moomins.”
Ralph thinks of Miriam, who believes she is crazy while everyone else is sane.
“Do you still sing?” he asks, sipping his latte.
“Only at the beach when no one’s around. I swim in the sea three times a week. Apart from that, I work. I prefer Moomins to people. Tove Jansson is my muse. I also do yoga and look after my father.”
“Right.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?”
“I’d been thinking about you. I wondered how you were.”
“And now you know.”
Well, sort of, he thinks.
“Your turn next,” she says, impatiently.
“What would you like to know?”
“Married? Children? Employed?”
“Okay, well, I’m married to Sadie. We have two sixteen-year-old sons, Stanley and Arthur. I’m a psychotherapist—a bad one, because I’ve taken an early break without giving any notice. I haven’t seen my family for a week and a half. I just walked out.”
Interesting, Julie thinks. If this conversation were a walk down the street she would now be on his back, her legs around his waist.
“Where did you go?”
“To the woods.”
“The woods.”
“Yep.”
“What happened in the woods?”
“I found a cat and slept in a shed.”
“What else?”
“I met a woman called Miriam.”
“She was in the woods?”
“No, she just arrived. It rained so much we couldn’t stand it so we ran back to hers. It’s purely platonic, though.”
Julie leans forward. “What about the cat?” she says.
“I took her with me.”
“How did you carry her?”
“In my arms.”
“And where is she now?”
“At Miriam’s.”
“Good.”
Ralph nods. He is out of breath.
Julie looks at her watch. “Do you have somewhere to be this afternoon?” she says.
“No, why?”
“I just wondered if you’d like to go to the beach.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
He thinks for a moment, or pretends to. “Okay.”
“I need to feed my father first.”
Before Ralph can ask why her father needs feeding, Julie is sweeping her things into a rucksack. She tells him how much better she feels now he has explained why he’s here. “You’re lost in the woods,” she says.
“What?”
“You’re stumbling around in the woods.”
“Er, no—”
“Oh yes,” she says, making her fingers run across the table. “You’re like one of Tove Jansson’s little characters, scurrying through dead leaves. I wonder how it will end.”
“How what will end?”
“The story of little Ralph Swoon.”
Who is she calling little? Has she been speaking to Sadie?
The butterflies in his stomach have gone. Now he is just full of pastry and hot milk. He looks down at her tight-fitting top to make himself feel better; she sees him looking, her eyebrows are raised and she is smiling. The atmosphere changes, just like that, and he walks behind her, feeling calmer, feeling tall.
They enter the room full of Scandinavian objects. The young woman with red hair is laughing.
“She’s Skyping Annika,” Julie says. “They Skype at the same time every day.”
“That’s quite a commitment,” Ralph says, following her through Moomin world and out into the street.
“What a strange thing to say.”
“Is it?”
“I think so. It’s lovely that they speak every day. They have no one else.”
“Not the healthiest way to live,” he says.
“What a smug psychotherapist you are,” she says.
She blows hot, she blows cold. These are erratic conditions. Julie is as volatile as ever and Ralph strolls beside her past Make and Do, the shop selling minimalistic music systems, the hairdressers, the delicatessen, the bike shop. The sun is shining and his arms are covered in goosebumps.
“I really don’t think I’m smug,” he says.