Ice Cream

The town of Wickley practically closed down during the autumn/winter seasons. It wasn’t exactly a bustling tourist attraction in peak summer, but it managed to entice enough holidaymakers, weekenders and those from neighbouring towns and villages during the warmer months to sustain a number of businesses, including This and That.

This and That was a store that sold everything you didn’t realise you needed. For the tourists, there were fluorescent yellow flip-flops, pink sunhats with seagulls perched on top, and keyrings in the shape of shellfish.  But the shelves and metal baskets at the end of each aisle also contained enough non-tourist-centric items to keep the business afloat out of season — bookends shaped like various animals, beaded picture frames and a lamp stand resembling the Virgin Mary, to name but a few.

The owner, Elizabeth Owen, was astute enough to replace much of the seaside paraphernalia with curios designed to appeal to the locals, once the clouds started gathering and the leaves began turning.

As day sauntered into evening on the last day of September, Elizabeth was restocking a shelf previously occupied by shell-covered jewellery boxes with books on regional birdlife and fauna. A few of the locals were nature lovers, and she made sure she sourced books that could not easily be found elsewhere in the vicinity. The books were just one way she ensured a steady trickle of customers year-round.

Elizabeth stood straight and admired her work. The colourful book spines made an enticing display. She’d become quite the expert at merchandising over the past five years since leaving London for a life by the sea. It had been a major decision, at the age of thirty-four, to ditch her job with a major insurance provider and set up This and That in the town of Wickley — a town she’d fallen in love with as a child.

Her grandparents had lived here for some twenty years, enjoying a restful retirement, and Elizabeth and her parents would visit most years, usually in the summer, in lieu of an actual holiday. Elizabeth treasured many memories of days on the beach, face smeared with ice-cream, hands caked in wet sand; and of evenings sitting in her grandparents’ back garden, breathing in the salty air and keeping quiet as it grew dark, so that her parents wouldn’t send her to bed.

Sometimes during these evenings, Elizabeth’s sister would be mentioned, only if the adults had forgotten Elizabeth was there. The mention of her sister’s name, Judith, always stabbed Elizabeth like a needle, even though she barely remembered her.

Now Elizabeth lived in her deceased grandparents’ cottage, and the summer evenings were usually spent in the garden alone, breathing in the sea air and the memories.

As Elizabeth pulled down the metal shutters at the front of This and That, Bob Welder, who owned the fish and chip shop next door, gave her a wave. He was smoking a cigarette, while his wife, Brenda, was too distracted serving customers to nag him about it.

“Still got some business then, Bob,” said Elizabeth.

“We make the best fish and chips for miles, so we do okay all-year-round,” said Bob, dropping his cigarette butt and kicking it into the gutter. “How about you?”

“I’ll scrape by, but I’m always glad when it warms up.”

They had a similar conversation most years.

“Well, have a good night,” said Bob, heading back inside. Brenda gave him a glaring side-eye as he slipped back behind the counter, which made Elizabeth smile.

*

Elizabeth was five minutes from her cottage, climbing a steep, narrow lane lined with small, stone houses, when she heard the tinny tune of an ice-cream van.

It took a moment for the enormity of the music to register with her. It was a familiar sound around Wickley, but not in late September. All the ice-cream vans normally trundled off at the end of August, early September at the latest. What the vendors did for the rest of the year, she wasn’t sure. Maybe they converted to hot dog and burger sellers and plied their trade in the bigger towns inland.

Elizabeth stood still and listened intently to the tune. It sounded familiar, not just because of its tone; the actual melody was one she recognised. An image of a tape deck, small blue speakers on each side, popped into her head. She tried to keep hold of it so that she could place it, but the ice-cream van must have moved out of earshot or parked up somewhere, because the music had stopped, and without it, the memory was lost.

Elizabeth began walking again. She felt a little dizzy.

*

It was two days later, a day when the weather made a dramatic turn from mild to blustery and wet, that Elizabeth actually saw the ice-cream van. She was taking a walk at lunchtime, after a far from busy morning in the shop, when she spotted it parked up on the promenade. It made a dismal sight, a tatty, old white van partly obscured by a mini sandstorm, blown up from the beach by the strong wind. She stood staring at it for a moment before walking along the promenade towards it, her long curls caught in a hectic dance as the breeze blew in from the sea.

As she drew closer, she noticed that the serving window at the side of the van was open, and a woman, wearing a white overall, stood behind the counter, grinning. When she was just a few feet from the van, Elizabeth saw that the grin was fixed and set in an otherwise almost featureless face. It was like an incomplete police sketch, where only the mouth had been described by the witness.

Elizabeth felt her stomach churn with unease. She closed her eyes briefly, hoping to clear them of whatever sand or grit was affecting her vision. When she opened her eyes, the van and the woman had gone. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the discordant music. It was the same tune as two days ago. Elizabeth felt the same frustrating sense of familiarity as the first time she had heard it. Once again, she felt dizzy, as the enormity of what she had just experienced hit her. She leaned against the stone wall that separated the promenade from the beach, steadying herself until the wooziness passed.

A young couple walking by — she recognised them from the local pub — offered her a combined look of concern, but Elizabeth smiled and waved to indicate she was okay.

She decided to close the shop for the afternoon.

*

It took a moment for her to place herself. She’d been dreaming of her sister, Judith. Elizabeth had been just four when Judith had been killed in a hit-and-run accident. She didn’t remember the tragic incident, but sometimes her dreams played out a version of the event. This time, Judith, or a vague impression of her, had been standing at a bus stop, dressed in a grey school uniform, when the car had screeched onto the pavement and knocked her down.

Elizabeth lay in the darkness of her bedroom, focusing on the soft moonlight that glowed through a gap in the curtains, which she found comforting.

The metallic music rose from below the window.

Elizabeth felt instantly cold, her skin prickling as if she’d walked through a wall of static.

She wondered, briefly, if the music was just the remnants of her dream, but the van hadn’t featured in her nightmare.

She sat up and listened to the clanking melody, still unable to place it.

It can’t be real, she thought. It’s three in the morning.

She finally found the resolve to leave the warmth of her bed and pad to the window. She pulled the right-hand curtain to one side and peered downwards.

The van sat on the opposite side of the road, a dilapidated relic; Elizabeth was surprised it could even move. With a start, she noticed the grinning woman from earlier appear at the rear of the van, standing in the road and staring up at Elizabeth — staring as much as a face with no discernible eyes could stare. The fixed grin remained intact, though.

Elizabeth shuddered. Why had no one else been disturbed by the music, which still rattled on, despite the van being stationary.  What was that tune?

I must be dreaming, she thought, about to let the curtain fall back into place. But then a small child sidled up next to the woman – a girl of around eight.

Elizabeth gasped and whispered her name: ‘Judith?’

*

Elizaeth let her mother ramble on about local gossip for the usual twenty minutes, before trying to steer the conversation around to the rarely discussed subject of her sister’s death.

‘Mum, I had a dream about Judith last night.’

Elizabeth heard her mum gasp at the shock of hearing the name of her deceased daughter. She didn’t respond otherwise.

‘It was a weird dream.’

‘Oh right.’ Her mother sounded distracted, as if she was trying to think of an excuse to go.

‘There was a van in the dream. An ice-cream van.’

This time the gasp was like a death rattle.

‘Mum?’

‘Why would you say that?’ Her mother sounded distraught.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘We kept that from you. To protect you.’

‘Mum, what are you talking about?’

‘The ice-cream van.’

‘What about it?’

“I need to go, Elizabeth; someone is at the door. It’s probably the package I’ve been waiting for.’

‘Mum, wait…’ But the line was dead.

*

That day, Elizabeth heard the ice-cream van music numerous times; sometimes distant, sometimes close, although she didn’t see the van itself.

That tune though…

Sitting behind the counter of This and That, she whistled it to herself, desperately trying to place it.

‘That takes me back,’ said the middle-aged woman, standing in front of her, placing a book on fungi on the counter.

‘What’s that?’ Elizabeth scanned the book and slipped it into a white paper bag.

‘That song you were whistling – isn’t it Naked in the Rain? I can’t remember who sang it now, but I used to dance to it when I was in my twenties.’

‘Is that what it is?’ asked Elizabeth.

‘Sounded like it. How much is that?’

‘Sorry?’ Elizabeth met the woman’s gaze.

‘The book?’

‘Oh, sorry; eight ninety-nine, please.’

Why that song? Thought Elizabeth.

*

Sally Malcolm had been Judith’s best friend. She’d lived two doors down from them in the suburban enclave that had been home for the first 18 years of Elizabeth’s life. She and Elizabeth had got to know each other a little over the years, although the four-year age gap meant they never got close. Elizabeth had found her on Facebook that evening and sent her a direct message.

She’d started with a general, ‘Hello, how are you? Before introducing Judith into the conversation. She said she’d been thinking a lot about her sister recently and would love to hear any memories Sally had of her.

Sally replied a few hours later, just as Elizabeth was sipping a camomile tea on the sofa, planning an early night.

She seemed genuinely pleased to hear from Elizabeth and shared several memories of Judith, including Jason Stanley, the boy they had fought over in junior school, and the day they had both planned to run away from home because their respective parents had refused to let them go to the cinema on their own to see Ghost, at the age of seven.

Elizabeth sent a laughing emoji in response to this, then asked if Sally remembered Judith liking any specific songs. ‘I remember her dancing around her bedroom to something,’ she lied.

‘Take Me Dancing Naked in the Rain!’ Sally replied almost instantly. ‘Not the most appropriate song for an eight-year-old, but she loved it! Drove me mad in the end. Makes me smile every time I hear it now — and a bit sad.’

Elizabeth took a sharp intake of breath. Could her dead sister be trying to make contact?

That’s crazy talk!

Elizabeth considered asking Sally about ice-cream vans, but couldn’t think of a way to introduce the topic without sounding mad.

*

Elizabeth was walking home after a day in the shop when the music suddenly blared behind her. She screamed and turned sharply. The ice-cream van sat in the middle of the narrow lane, music still shrieking, the melody now clearly her sister’s old favourite.

No one else could hear the sound or see the van; that was obvious. Not one curtain in the surrounding houses twitched, and the elderly man pruning something in his front garden just yards away was completely oblivious to it. This was all for her eyes and ears only.

As before, the grinning vendor appeared, standing on the pavement, waving menacingly at Elizabeth. Then Judith was there too, but standing on the other side of the van, in the road, ice cream in hand. Her pale face looked dead, but the expression still conveyed menace.

‘What do you want?’ asked Elizabeth.

Judith, or the dead thing that had been Judith, held up the ice-cream. There was strawberry sauce dripping over her hand and down her wrist. Car brakes screeched behind her, although there was no vehicle on the road. Judith’s mouth dropped open, and she began to wail — a sound as discordant as the van’s music.

‘What…?’ began Elizabeth, but then she remembered. The scene before her faded to black and the memory played on the darkness as if it were a cinema screen. There was Judith’s bedroom, and Judith was dancing to her favourite chart music, turning up the volume on her stereo tape deck.

Elizabeth saw her four-year-old self standing in the bedroom doorway. ‘Can you go get me an ice-cream?’

Judith flapped a hand at her and continued to twirl and shake her head vigorously to the music.

Take me dancing…

“Please, Judith, mum won’t let me go, and the van is just outside.’

Judith ignored her, lost in the track.

“Judith, please!’

Young Elizabeth repeated the plea at least ten times before Judith finally relented, silencing the tape deck and glaring at her sister. ‘You’ll have to pay me back.’

‘I will,’ insisted Elizabeth. “I get my pocket money tomorrow.’

With a huff, Judith left the bedroom and clattered down the stairs. The front door opened and closed.

Two minutes later, the screech of brakes filled the adult Elizabeth’s ears. Young Elizabeth ran to the bedroom window, looking out onto the street. She began to scream hysterically.

The memory cleared, and Elizabeth once again faced the van, the vendor, and her dead sister.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I was just a kid. I didn’t know what would happen.’

The grinning woman began to cackle, and Judith shook her head, her expression despondent, disappointed.

‘I didn’t even remember until now,’ said Elizabeth. ‘No one talked about it. I’m sorry!’

‘You okay, Love?’

It was the elderly man calling to her from his front garden. Elizabeth turned to look at him. What could she say?

When she turned back, the road was clear.

*

‘Do you have any Christmas cards?’ asked Brenda from the fish and chip shop. Elizabeth thought this was the second time she’d asked.

‘No, sorry,’ Elizabeth replied, glancing over Brenda’s shoulder and through the shop window to the promenade.

‘I want a box of twenty,’ said Brenda.

‘Sorry,’ repeated Elizabeth, still staring past Brenda.

‘No problem, Love.’ Brenda left the shop, glancing back at Elizabeth, confused.

Christmas lights twinkled along the promenade, strung between lampposts. They looked pretty in the early evening darkness. But Elizabeth couldn’t enjoy them because the van was there, sat just outside the shop, its dirty white paintwork reflecting the colourful illuminations. The grinning woman waved from the service window, and standing below her, hand outstretched for an ice cream, was Judith. As Elizabeth watched, her dead sister turned and stared at her, accusingly; her face was smeared with Mr Whippy and red sauce.

Elizabeth released a weary whimper and looked away.