Mum and Sandra wear wide-brimmed, white hats, sun-blessed swirls; floppy folds like just-set meringues. Their long, summer dresses feature small floral print designs; leaves and flowers cascade, stall, twist upon tension points and light bodily sweat, pinch into something new, origami, fabric-style.
Ian and I walk across the car park with Mum and Sandra, who both giggle conspiratorially behind us. Occasionally they speak in drawn-breath voices; rub-squeaked balloons, or amp up North-Western accents, drag vowels out; musical words on heavy chains tied to a rock. The tarmac reveals tiny oily pools, which bleed brown-black, erupt randomly upon the surface with lightning-strike cracks and filigree fissures; an over-baked cake. Steam rises in genie-lamp coils and question marks; school kids in back of bike shed tradition, exhaling from hesitant drags, laughter-gasping on Mum and Dad’s missing cigarettes.
Minutes ago, James and I peered inside the glass domes of an ice cream parlour, as though the contents were precious jewels in a museum case; new, to us, a range of potential ice cream flavours to stimulate our senses. An accumulation of sweet scents combined in strip-light, hazy atmosphere; an opened, rust-rimmed honey jar; finger-squashed overripe raspberries; traces of cheap chocolate, tanged by silver paper wrapper; cardboard-y vanilla.
Wall`s Vanilla Ice Cream was rare luxury for us at home; ice cream, much harder then, in both consistency and availability. Occasionally, I recall chocolate ice cream with a questionable cocoa content; Neopolitan, tricolour flavours suggested, rather than submitted authentic tastes. But now, right in front of us, Tutti Frutti – really? Rum and Raisin – what? Toffee Fudge, chunks embedded in marbled dessert, gold nuggets ready to chisel out with tiny teeth, teased by tantalised tongue, new for trial taste, lick delicately, rapidly, as though prompted by drought-dry mouth.
As well as a helter-skelter, ice cream run escaping from his castellated cone, Ian is entranced by cars. ‘Red TR7, Matt. Seen it?’ He points a Mr Men plaster-wrapped forefinger (always with the Mr Bump, my brother) towards the sharp wedge sports car. ‘Look, there’s a Capri over there. Bit like the one in The Professionals.’ Images: criminals, arms twisted behind backs, garage-greasy hair, stubble chins greeting bonnet, mouths of chip fork tine teeth, tar-stained tongues, post-watershed retort; traffic cones, dustbins, cardboard boxes, bags filled with mystery (air) struck by car-skid arcs, gravel spraying out like residual shotgun blast towards the stand-back camera crew member. Most of James’s excitement, however, was reserved for the quotidian: ‘Matt? Matt? Look! Blue Ford Escort…white Cortina…brown Vauxhall Chevette…orange Allegro!’ His relentless flicker eyes behind NHS spectacle-glazed daze; two electric blue damselflies sparkle, each trapped in their own oval of lapis lazuli.
I carefully lick at the ice cream, nibble initial taste of nothingness from chocolate nibs, crunch melt fragments on my tongue to produce a taste just shy of cacao gone vague, just a sugary representative. It doesn’t matter; it feels so good. My eyes blink, trap light, fuel fantasy to bliss, as I tease out a deep embedded chocolate chip; jutted, a loose brick from the remaining igloo shape of decadent dessert. The extra weight in my hand almost disappears. I open my eyes. The ice cream has fallen away from its soggy-edged host, leaving only a mint-green ring as a reminder of our brief, beautiful marriage.
Loud laughter emanates from Mum, Auntie Sandra and James; explosions from popped paper bags. I stare at plop dome-melt on road. My eyebrows arrowhead down, shoulders, hunch, fold; a rain-soaked Rook. I walk away; kick at the stick with scuffed-toe trainers, embarrassment and disappointment.
Auntie Sandra unclips click-y, gold metal twins to search in her handbag. She picks out a credit card with her lightly freckled fingers, holds it up to us briefly, emphasises intention with a makeshift tool. Sandra kneels on the ground; I see thin, white lines radiate, send signals across her tanned ankles; imagine melted tar and hot gravel touch her knees; unwanted sticky kisses. Sandra carefully scrapes, lifts the mini-mound of dark chocolate chip-dotted, pale green ice cream, a melting sugary transfer left behind. I watch Sandra place the ice cream back on my cone, which, unaware, I still hold entrenched within my suntanned fist. Still angered with shock, cherry-pied with embarrassment, I freeze in sympathy with the remaining scoop of marble-melt flavours. Eventually with incredulity at Sandra’s action (is this grown-up behaviour? It’s not hygienic, is it?), reluctance relinquishes to acknowledge the gesture; I submit. Result: a broad, mint-choc-chip moustache, cold-lipped smile. My laughter like the last nestling, coaxed by an adult to fledge, soon joins them; a chorus of mirth.
The first voice of rain, whisper-filled balloons appear, polka dot-pattern our path, shiny drops of satin, which sing quietly, evaporate, sigh; disappear.