One of those early days of Spring. Sunshine bright, but with a chill in the air, enough to keep coats buttoned up, but not enough to keep people indoors; the sun warming Amsterdam back to life again after another damp, grey winter. The café terraces are busy, people everywhere, drinking and chatting, laughing and relaxing. There are birds too, chirruping in the still bare branches. They know that winter is coming to an end, and that is reason enough to sing.
The café where they sit, makes the best espresso in town, so strong it gives you goosebumps. It’s why she’d insisted on meeting there and not at that other, cheaper place on the Prinsengracht Ella prefers. Such are the insignificant details on which decisions turn. Fateful, only when you look back.
Four euros fifty for a coffee is ridiculous, of course it is. But as she sips the espresso and feels the warmth of the sun on her face, she stops feeling guilty for bringing Ella here. And she looks over at Ella to check she is okay with it all, and sees her eyes are closed, her face is turned towards the sun. She is quiet and smiling. Good.
‘I’m glad we came here,’ she says.
And Ella nods, open her eyes and mutters, ‘uh-huh,’ while stirring a spoon of sugar into her coffee cup.
Later, she will think there should be a word to describe when a moment of happiness, such as this, turns from light to shade. Something German and unpronounceable. Untranslatable too, because who really wants to understand such a thing?
But for now, it is the balloon which catches her eye, some helium confection, yellow and bright, floating on a string. She watches it and tunes out Ella’s voice. She’s talking again about all that business with Frans, a story she’s heard a thousand times already, and today she does not feel like listening. But Ella drones on, the odd snippet filtering through despite her best efforts to push it away: ‘… it’s the lack of imagination… it’s not that I don’t want to talk to him, it’s more, well… what about?… Gina thought perhaps a holiday, just the two of us together, but I don’t know. What do you think? I mean, maybe…’
Good God, she thinks. Why can’t you simply enjoy the moment? Just let the morning fall away, all loose and relaxed and free from indignation. Why do you have to talk at all?
Ella hasn’t noticed the balloon. She hasn’t heard the birds chirrup or the teaspoons chink against the coffee cups. She hasn’t shivered with that little jolt of pleasure good coffee always brings.
And she thinks: maybe it’s not Frans whose lacking in imagination? and keeps watching the balloon as it bobs above the line of cars parked along the pavement. She smiles when she recognises it: Pikachu and finds herself amused by the contrast of the cartoon figure against the elegant gables of the canal-side houses. Twice she catches sight of the boy, a brief glimpse of blond hair and a red t-shirt. He is skipping along, and he is happy, just as she is.
And then he runs, this happy boy with the balloon, and she watches and thinks, ‘Well, why not? I would too if I were him. If I were a boy with a Pikachu balloon, bobbing down the street on a bright Spring day I would run and run and run.’
Though later, the mother – at least she assumes it is the mother – will say: ‘He just ran. I don’t know why. He just ran. Straight into the street.’
And it was true, he did. He ran out between the cars and on to the road. She saw him – a flash of yellow and red. She heard him too- the thud he made. She blinked and saw the balloon float up and away and it took her a moment to understand what she had witnessed. The car stopped on the street, someone screaming, wailing. The balloon rising and rising. And there on the ground, something red and small and crumpled.
But in that instant, as she registers the thud and what it means, all she can say is, ‘Oh!’ as she stands up, knocks the table, and tips over her coffee. The contents spill and spatter Ella’s new, white skirt. A stain that will never wash out.
‘Damn it, Louise,’ she hears Ella yell. ‘My new skirt.’
But she is running now too. Running to the road, running to the boy. Not knowing what she will do when she reaches him. Just running.
If Ella had understood why she ran, she would have stopped her. Made sure she didn’t reach him. Made sure, she didn’t kneel down beside him, and smooth away the hair from his face, and say to him, ‘everything will be okay, everything will be okay,’ while the mother wailed, and someone shouted to, ‘call an ambulance,’ and the birds, those damn birds, kept right on chirruping.
She would not have worried about the coffee stain on her new skirt. She would not have cursed and fussed and thought, ‘why is she always so careless with people?’ Those insignificant details again, on which each moment turns.
No, she would have held her back, looked her in the eye, and told her there was nothing she could do. She would have saved Louise from the memory which will come to haunt her. The boy’s blue eyes, bright as ice in the sun, then darkening as the pupils dilated.
But it is too late. There is no going back now. It is done. The coffee spilled. The balloon rising. The boy crumpled.
So there is no stopping it – the flow of memory, year after year. Spring comes around, and Louise remembers what she saw: ‘He was there, and then he was gone,’ while Ella remembers the coffee stain as it spread across the white of her skirt and thinks: ‘I could have saved her from this torment. If it wasn’t for a spilled coffee cup, I could have saved her from this.’
But in that moment, there is only chaos and noise and confusion. Ella stares at her skirt, Louise runs, a mother wails, and Pikachu, Pikachu floats above the rooftops and across the city, and people, blocks away, look up and point and smile and say, ‘Hey, look! Pikachu!’ While Ella’s coffee, in its delft blue cup, grows cold.
This story was shortlisted for The Sunderland Short Story Award in 2019 and was published in New Writing Scotland No. 38 in 2020
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