‘I think Rose water is better, if you call it that other name no one round here will know what it is,’ said Calamity.
‘Does it matter? They can always taste it, can’t they?’
‘But they’ll say, hey, tastes a bit like roses.’
Sospan looked a trifle flustered. One of the continuing struggles of his life was the disconnect that seemed to exist between his role, as he saw it, and the way the townspeople viewed it. To Sospan, to classify his vocation as dispensing ice cream was like saying the priest who administered the sacrament handed out biscuits.
‘Tell us another one,’ I said.
‘Ginkgo Biloba.’
This time he read the puzzled expressions on our faces and continued quickly, ‘That’s a sacred tree, much prized in Chinese and Japanese cuisine. It was the only tree in Hiroshima to survive the atom bomb.’
‘I’m not sure about that one,’ said Calamity.
Sospan consulted his notes again. ‘Then we’ve got Sea Cucumber, Ambergris, Spanish Fly, and Potato.’
Calamity looked glum. ‘Potato sounds a bit boring.’
Sospan acquired that look of infinite patience that the artist who paddles in the wilder experimental shores learns to assume. ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘try this: it’s the centrepiece of the autumn collection. I have high hopes for it; it intertwines a variety of approachable themes that even the day-trippers can enjoy while at the same time it contains within it notes of complexity that will satisfy the educated palette.’ He pulled out a tub from the fridge that was marked only with a code as if the exact identity must remain a secret for a while. He scooped out two small testing samples and laid them on mini wafers like canapes. We popped the morsels into our mouths and savoured. It was very fishy and sharp, even seaweedy.
‘I haven’t decided on a name yet,’ he explained, ‘but I was thinking of Mermaid’s Boudoir.’
‘It’s very fishy,’ said Calamity. ‘What’s in it?’
‘Fish milt,’ said Sospan with evident pride at his ingenuity.
I choked.
‘Fish what?’ said Calamity.
‘Milt.’
‘What’s that?’
The ice-cream man turned pink. ‘Well . . . not sure if I should . . . you know . . .’
‘It’s OK, Sospan, she’s seventeen now, she’s grown-up.’
‘I saw a corpse last year,’ added Calamity as further illustration of her maturity.
Sospan rubbed his neck with the palm of one hand. ‘It’s, you know, well . . .’
I tried to help him out. ‘When daddy fish and mummy fish want to start a little shoal . . .’
‘Yes?’ said Calamity.
‘Daddy fish sprays something on to mummy fish’s eggs,’ said Sospan.
‘Oh that,’ said Calamity, as if it was a substance one encountered every day.
‘They eat a lot of it in Russia. You needn’t pull a face, it’s quite a delicacy.’
‘Your new flavours are certainly . . . brave,’ I said.
‘Brave?’
‘Avant-garde.’
‘I know what you are trying to say, the people round here will hate them. Of course they will, do you think I don’t know that? Do you think a man could remain sane making ice cream for the people of Aberystwyth all his life? What do they care about art? All they want is chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Not just in their cornet but in everything. Louie, I’m not doing this for them, it’s for me. For my self-respect, to assuage the yearning . . .’
‘But if no one eats it, won’t it upset you?’
‘The only people who I need to care about are the reviewers for
‘Any others on your list.’
‘Just one, Tempura.’
‘Mmm!’ We both chorused bogus enthusiasm to soothe his wounded pride.
‘How do they collect the fish milt?’ asked Calamity.
Sospan blushed.
Fortunately, before he could reveal this particular trade secret we were distracted by the sharp cry of a gull swooping low over the kiosk. It was followed by a short intense bray of joy, and the smell of donkey wafted across signalling the arrival of my father, Eeyore, leading the donkeys on the morning’s first traverse. In contrast to the rest of the townspeople that hot August morning he was wearing a suit, with bits of straw stuck to it. He greeted us with a sprightly cheer that belied his age and slung the halters loosely on to the emergency-exit door bar at the back of the kiosk. Sospan put down a washing-up bowl of water for the donkeys and they lapped happily. There were seven that morning: Escobar, Spinnaker, Uncle Ho, Squirrel, Invincitatus, Anwen and Piper. There were no riders. Eeyore had long ago relinquished all pretence that the job of the donkey man had anything to do with giving rides to children. Partly because he did not like the modern variety of children very much, and partly because the job had a deeper significance. Or so he thought. Years ago, Eeyore had been a cop. When he retired, a community grateful for all the crooks he had removed from their midst presented him not with a gold watch but a different sort of time-keeper: a pendulum made of donkeys. And every day he led the caravan of mute and obliging beasts along the perimeter of the town with a rhythm that was as reassuring and predictable as the bright star that traces across the screen of an oscilloscope on a heart monitor.
Each pulse across the dark green dial proved that Aberystwyth was still hale and the fathomless oceans that lay before the cradle and beyond the grave were being held in check by the thin brown line of beasts measuring out their metronomic dung-beat.
He ran a gentle hand of greeting down Calamity’s cheeks and said, ‘What’s up?’
‘We’re looking for a ghost called Gethsemane from Abercuawg,’ she answered indiscreetly.
Eeyore’s face darkened. ‘You shouldn’t joke about such things.’
Sospan tut-tutted in rebuke.
Calamity looked from face to face in search of an explanation. ‘We shouldn’t?’
‘Gethsemane Walters,’ said Eeyore. ‘That was a terrible case.’
‘You mean,’ said Calamity, ‘you’ve heard of her?’
‘Happened in 1955. I remember it well because I was courting Louie’s mum at the time, before we moved to Llandudno. The little girl was eight or nine years old, I think. Disappeared when they were building the dam.’
Calamity stared at him, eyes wide and shining. ‘So what happened to her? Did someone do her in?’
Eeyore pulled a face as if such bluntness was inappropriate. He sighed. ‘They convicted a boy for it, young chap called Goldilocks. I was never convinced about it to tell the truth, he was no angel, used to hang out with the mob who worked at the slaughterhouse, but it never felt right to me. He was due to hang that autumn but he escaped. Hasn’t been seen since. They never found Gethsemane’s body.’
‘The girl’s mother was Ffanci Llangollen the singer,’ said Sospan. ‘She was pretty big in the forties. That was her stage name of course.’
‘That’s right,’ said Eeyore. ‘She used to run the village school. After Gethsemane went missing she left town, and set off to look for her. Far as I know, she is still looking – comes back from time to time. But the really strange thing about the case, as I remember, came the following year. On Ffanci Llangollen’s birthday a spiritualist sent her a tape recording she had made at a seance, apparently it was the voice of Gethsemane. Of course, that’s a bit hard to believe but Ffanci swore it was her and the father killed himself on account of it. Said now he knew for sure she was in heaven there was nothing worth living for.’
‘Where’s the tape now?’ I asked.
‘Stolen,’ said Eeyore. ‘They reckon it was the work of snuff philatelists.’
We bought two vanilla cornets and walked along the beach in the direction of the Pier. There was no breeze and the surface of the sea was the colour and lustre of mother-of-pearl; it was so hot the air zinged. The heat was tangible, audible . . . it quivered and made the air tingle as if it had been struck by a giant tuning fork.
‘Boy!’ said Calamity. ‘If we were in a movie we would be walking across the desert and they would be playing that violin sound they always play, the one that goes Eeeeeeeeeeee!’
‘That’s right, and then one of us would look directly at the sun and they’d play an organ chord to show that
