Whispers Through a Megaphone (20 page)

M
iriam is early. Ninety minutes early. She is sitting on the grass in the park, waiting for a man who is a stranger and not a stranger. This is new—waiting in the outside world for someone who
wants
to see her. Perhaps other people are used to this kind of thing? It’s highly likely. Other people are used to all kinds of things that Miriam has never tried. Lovers’ tiffs. Holidays. Bowls of pasta in Italian restaurants.
Sex
. She wonders if Matthew has had sex. It’s a little odd, thinking about your brother’s sex life, but having a sibling is another thing Miriam isn’t used to. Is the conversation between siblings different to other conversations? Can they read each other’s minds?

“Imagine that your head is a glass box,” Frances said to her ten-year-old daughter. “I can always see what’s inside it.”

“No you can’t.”

“I can. Your thoughts aren’t private, Mim.”

That afternoon Miriam bought a bobble hat to cover the glass box, and wore it every day until her mother flushed it down the toilet, which caused a blockage.

“Is this a bobble hat?” the plumber said.

“So what if it is?” Frances said. “What a woman flushes down the toilet is her own business.”

“Well I never. Can I take a photo?”

“No you cannot take a photo. Do you have a perversion?”

“Do
you
?”

Miriam realizes something. She doesn’t actually know what Matthew looks like. How will she recognize him? Her eyes will dart from man to man. Are you my brother? Am I your sister? She has no idea that Matthew will recognize
her
. He knows that she stayed inside her house for three years. How does he know what he knows? He talks to people. Like his father, he makes talking look easy. He’s a conversational pickpocket. It’s dialogical pilferage. It’s fancy talk.

She sits and waits and wonders what she will do for the next ninety minutes. She needed to get out of the house—Ralph was driving her mad with all his Parsley this and Parsley that and he wasn’t even cooking.

Matthew is spreading butter and raspberry jam on a slice of toast. He looks at his father, who is unusually quiet. They are all unusually quiet, even Alfie, who has just been informed that his dad was once married to another woman, and thanks to this horrible confusing out-of-the-blue union, he has a sister who is really really old (thirty-five). He’s already been to her house. He put postcards through her door. 7 Beckford Gardens—remember, Alfie? Matthew knew about the sister but didn’t tell him. He did this for Alfie’s own good because their father was waiting for the right time, even though there’s no such thing.

“Time has a life of its own, like the sea,” Matthew says.

“How did you know about her?” Alfie says.

“I overheard Mum and Dad talking about her before you were born.”

“Before me?” he says, because time before Alfie is inconceivable.

“Before you.”

“What time was it?” Alfie says, squinting at the kitchen clock.

“Sorry?”

“What time did you hear it?”

“I have no idea. It was late, though. Late at night.”

He was sitting on the stairs, holding an empty glass, and they were discussing a girl.

“I can’t imagine how that must feel,” his mother was saying.

“It’s awful.”

“Perhaps it’s not too late?”

“You haven’t met Frances. It just feels wrong, letting Matthew believe he’s an only child when he has a sister.”

A sister?

Silence. Matthew sat perfectly still. He shivered. It was January. He had only come downstairs for milk and a Wagon Wheel and now he had a sister. So where was she?

“When she was a baby she had this toy penguin. She held it so tight. She was scared, Angie, even then, I’m sure of it. Her little knuckles would turn white.”

“Don’t, Eric. You’re just upsetting yourself. You did what was best.”

“Did I?”

“You were only eighteen.”

“That’s hardly an excuse.”

“Did you get your Wagon Wheel?” Alfie says.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I think I just went back to bed.”

Alfie looks at Amy Pond. The look says: “Help me, Amy. Call Doctor Who. Take me back in time to erase the lady who is not my mum.”

“I can’t do that,” Amy says. She is soft and kind and Scottish. “Doctor Who doesn’t
erase
people unless they’re a threat to the human race.”

Alfie sighs. Naughty Amy! What a silly answer. Can’t she see he’s suffering? Under threat? And he’s part of the human race. He’s a small human being with a big problem and that problem is called
turbulence
. He knows what turbulence is, he saw it happen to an aeroplane on TV and now it’s happening to him. (“Is turbulence the same as flatulence?” he had asked his mum, shortly after the programme. “Well, they both involve wind,” she said, “but no, they are
not
the same thing.”)

“I’m going to meet Miriam today,” Matthew says.

“Why?”

“Because she should be part of our family.”

“Steady on,” Eric says. “She may not want to be part of this family.”

“Are you going too?” Alfie says.

“No,” Eric says. “Matthew arranged this himself.”

Eric and Angelina exchange a look of powerlessness, gratitude, bewilderment.

“Why?”

“Because I want to buy her a cup of tea,” Matthew says.

“Doesn’t she have tea at her house?”

“I have no idea.”

“Is she nice?”

“She sounded nice on the phone.”

Alfie stabs a block of butter with a knife.

“Alfie, please,” his mother says, grabbing the knife.

“Are you going to swap me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is she going to take my place?”

Eric stands up. He asks Alfie to do the same. Father and son face each other in the middle of the kitchen. Matthew and Angelina watch and eat toast as Eric picks Alfie up and spins him around. He tickles him, turns him upside down, says that’s the daftest thing I’ve ever heard you crazy crazy boy, you’re stuck with us for life, do you hear me? They play the human aeroplane game, even though Alfie is a bit old for this now, and it’s a smooth flight with no turbulence at all, and the plane is giggling, it’s giggling really loudly, because the pilot is brilliant and he’s going nowhere.

And then Matthew has gone and the room is too quiet and no one is giggling any more.

“Maybe you could draw Miriam a picture?” his mum says.

“Why should I?” Alfie says.

He sees her in the park, cross-legged on the grass with her hands on her lap. He walks over and stands beside her, staring at the top of her head. “Miriam Delaney?” he says, rather abruptly.

She jumps to her feet, startled.

His arms are wide open. After years without physical affection, he is the second person this summer to offer her a hug. Before she can make up her mind he lowers his arms and steps forward to kiss her on the cheek.

He is six feet tall. Wiry. Messy light-brown hair, brushed forward, long over the ears. Clean-shaven. Earnest.

“Hello, Miriam,” he says.

“Hello,” she whispers, forgetting that he already knows what kind of sound she makes. She waits for him to respond, to say
sorry?
or
what?
or
speak up
, but he doesn’t.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” he says.

“That would be nice.”

In the cafe near the park entrance, he chooses a table by the window and pulls out a chair for her to sit on. They order tea and egg sandwiches from a waitress in an old-fashioned uniform who is solemn and frilly.

Through the window, they watch two men playing tennis. Words do not come easily—this is not like the phone call a few hours ago.

“That was a good shot,” Matthew says.

“It was,” Miriam says.

“Do you play tennis?”

“No.”

“Me neither. I’m not very sporty.”

“No?”

“No. Do you have any hobbies?”

Miriam looks at him blankly. The silence is awkward, vertiginous, it feels like falling.

“I like box sets,” she says, finally.

“Me too,” he says.

They say something and nothing. They drink tea and eat sandwiches. A baby screams and they roll their eyes, pretending to mind the noise. (Miriam notices how his eyes are brown like hers.) They are shy and lost but Matthew has a plan, a way to bring them together.

“Would you like to go for a bike ride?” he says, when their plates are empty.

Miriam has never ridden a bike. She doesn’t own one.
A bike ride
? What an odd thing to suggest at a time like this.
It’s disappointing too, because now she is feeling like she so often feels in the company of others: stupid, alien, out of her depth.

“I don’t know how,” she says.

“That’s okay. I’ll do the work.”

He’ll
what
?

“Would you like to see my bike?”

Not really, she thinks. I’d rather have a piece of cake and ask about your father.

Matthew leads the way across the park. It’s a relief to be outside, not face to face under bright lights in a room full of insistent waitresses who want to know things. (Would you like tea or coffee or cake or sandwiches?
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know
.)

Miriam buys a Mr Whippy with a flake for Matthew and a lemonade lolly for herself. As they walk past a small lake, she imagines that he is five and she is nineteen. Is this the sort of day they would have shared? A stroll in the sun, an ice cream, talk of bicycles? But he is not five and she is not nineteen. It is sixteen years later and he is telling her that he likes art, bikes, Oasis. He makes it look effortless, this listing of things, as though his self is solid and fixed and easy to explain. What else does he like? Charcoal, George Orwell, life drawing,
Wallander
, roast dinners and postcards.

He stops walking. “I sent you eight postcards,” he says.

“They were from
you
?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I was trying to make contact.”

“You could have picked up the phone.”

He blushes, looks guilty. “I got Alfie to post them while I waited in the car.”

A high-pitched whisper as his words sink in: “You’ve been to my house?”

He freezes. She looks so sad.

In her mind, Miriam shouts:
This was a mistake. You’re crazy. I need Ralph. He’ll take me home. I need Ralph
.

“I just wanted to reach you,” he says. “That’s why I sent them. And why I brought you this.” He rummages through his bag and pulls out a small wooden tree. He holds it upside down and points at the base. “Tree of Simplicity, see? Dad made it years ago. I kept it for you.”

Miriam takes the tree from his hand and inspects the wording: TREE OF SIMPLICITY. It is beautiful. Intricate. The tree is crooked. It has one tiny leaf, painted orange.

They walk on in silence, following a footpath along the edge of the park. As the path curves, it opens into a parking area for bikes. Right in the middle of the row, secured by two locks, is a tandem: two handlebars, two sets of pedals, two seats.

“What do you think?” Matthew says.

“There are many bikes,” Miriam says. “Which one is yours?”

“This one,” he says, tapping the tandem.

That cumbersome thing? A bicycle built for two?

“I can’t get on that.”

“Why not?”

“People will stare.”

“So?” he says, unlocking the bike.

What is he doing now? She watches him bend down and look inside his bag. He pulls out some kind of music player and a massive pair of red headphones. Miriam has never seen such ridiculous headphones. She would feel self-conscious wearing those, but he doesn’t seem to worry about such things. He—

Excuse me?

is putting the headphones on her head, adjusting them until
they are tight. He presses something on the music player and slips it inside her pocket. Now she can’t hear anything. The world is silent. It’s nice. Until—

My God that’s loud!

He smiles at the tinny sound coming from the headphones. “Come on,” he shouts. He is sitting on the front seat, gesticulating towards the back. He wants her to get on. To get on
now
. “Come on!”

She does what he says. She gets on the bike.
And they’re off
. Four feet on four pedals. He’s steering, they’ve left the park, they’re cycling down the main road. Now they’re turning left, heading downhill and it’s so bloody fast, the wind is in her hair, he’s yelling woohoo! and she can just about hear him over the sound of Oasis, ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, and there’s another woohoo, it’s wispy and small but definitely there, in her throat in her mouth, making its way out as she closes her eyes, as she kicks out her legs, and the woo is a whisper but the hoo is something else, it’s richer and bigger, part whisper part song, and this is her secret, just hers for now, the woo and the hoo and the speeding downhill on a bicycle built for two.

R
alph 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.

“Sorry?”

“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.