The Ice Cream Parlour: Part 2

Years rolled past as swiftly and relentlessly as the tide. In 1962, summer ended abruptly. Overnight, cruel red berries exploded on the rowan trees that lined the pathways of Welfare Park. The wind quickened, carrying with it a tang of salt and a murmur of faraway Northern lands: of forests and glaciers and mountains. Stella huddled into her coat and buried her hands deep into its pockets. She was the only person in the park. Dusk was falling softly. The hubbub of the shift change at the pit had abated. Day shift workers had droopingly made their way home. Little by little, the lights in the tiny colliery houses began to glow comfortably as families settled around tables for tea. Stella could see the pit wheel turn steadily against the darkening lavender sky, taking the night shift men down to the tyrannical blackness of the coal seam. From there, they would travel east until they were working hundreds of feet beneath the churning North Sea. Stella didn’t know how they could bear it: the tunnels so narrow it was impossible to stand, the choking darkness and dust, the heat. And worse than all of those things, the weight of the leaden grey water perpetually pressing down upon them, watching, waiting, biding its time like an avenging god. 

She looked at her watch. It was almost seven o’clock, the time she’d arranged to meet John. The ice cream parlour was closed. Her parents would be sitting down to their meal in their little flat above the shop. There would be the red-checked cloth on the table, along with their everyday china and the big mustard-yellow teapot. It was Monday, so they’d be eating leftover roast beef and gravy with golden bubble and squeak and a plate of white bread glossy with yellow butter. It was a traditional Colliery tea. In Stella’s home, meals could be as Northern as a ham and pease pudding stottie or as Neapolitan as pasta e patate. Her parents weren’t expecting her home that night. She’d said she was going to Angela’s and would be back by nine. She’d lied. She loved her parents. She knew she was loved in return. Their love for her was a gigantic, enveloping quilt: comfortingly weighty and warming. But, like the miners labouring under the North Sea, Stella felt smothered, oppressed. She was itchy for freedom and autonomy. She was restless. Impatient. She felt her future, with all its promise and excitement, calling to her, circling her, tormenting her, like a mob gathering. It was thrilling. Dangerous. Terrifying. She felt light headed when she thought about it. She was overwhelmed when she reflected on the mysterious and boundless possibilities of her life. She imagined them spreading out in front of her like a fan. It was a delicious pleasure, waiting for John on the park bench in the deepening dusk, dreaming about the future. The moon rose and balanced on the pit wheel like a silver dish. Stella sat and waited in its chilly brilliance. Since meeting John, she glowed with faith and optimism like a church candle, like a prayer sure to be fulfilled. 

They had met in April. It had been a Friday night, so Cichella’s was open till late. The night was drab; the air was damp and drizzly. It was a listless rain that seemed to hang, suspended in the air, seeping insidiously through the thickest of coats and scarves. The street was cloaked in its penetrating gloom. People passing by walked speedily, heads down, dreaming of flickering firesides and dry clothes. It certainly was not the night for ice cream sundaes or milk shakes. Cichella’s was almost deserted. Stella was standing on the chrome step stool, dusting the sweet jars. Her father was peering out of the window into the murky night. ‘This weather, Stella, it is awful.’

Stella didn’t reply. She’d been working in the shop for two years, since she left school at sixteen. Her mother had been eager for her to stay on at school, maybe even go to university. Her father’s dreams were different. He’d imagined Stella taking over Cichella’s, running it with her own family one day. Back in April, Stella wasn’t sure what she wanted. Her parents’ assumptions and views about her life were so distinct, so vociferous, she felt she couldn’t hear her own thoughts any more. Sometimes she felt like she was invisible, that she had no idea who she was, or what she wanted. She could see her friends so clearly: Angela was whimsical, creative, romantic. She was heading for art school in London in October. Stella imagined her living in a charmingly disarrayed basement flat, filled with dusty books and straggly cheese plants and a languid, skinny, long-haired lover. Catherine, on the other hand, was neat, organised, pragmatic. Her shoes and handbag always matched perfectly, her blouses were crisply ironed and she never got lipstick on her teeth. She was as dainty and demure as a field-mouse, yet she had mapped out her future with the ruthless efficiency of a military dictator. She’d already started a two-year secretarial course (and was doing night classes in bookkeeping). She then planned to get a job in a nearby town, maybe working for a solicitor or doctor. She’d stay at home in the Colliery while she worked, saving up until she got married. Eventually, she’d marry a professional man and move to a detached house with a fitted kitchen and two Labradors. Catherine was so self-assured, so diligent and so bright that Stella sometimes wondered why she never saw herself as the solicitor or doctor in need of a brilliant secretary. It was as if there was an unwritten, unspoken doctrine that limited the ambitions of Colliery girls and women. Don’t expect too much. Don’t be greedy. Don’t try be better than you ought to be, it said. 

The problem was, before she met John, when Stella looked at herself in the mirror, she didn’t know what or who she saw. She didn’t have Samantha’s dreamy creativity or Catherine’s brisk efficiency. Stella was as plain and ordinary as a bottle of milk. Her friends seemed to be rushing towards the future purposefully, assuredly. They were arrows flying straight and true, arcing high above the narrow colliery streets and ginnels. Soon the colliery would shrink, as if viewed from the wrong end of a telescope, before vanishing from their lives altogether. Stella was terrified of being left behind, but just as terrified of leaving. She felt trapped, fossilised by her own passivity and blankness. 

She watched the customers in the ice cream parlour. There were only two booths taken that night. A family of four had courageously ventured out into the sopping subterranean gloom for ice cream. Their coats, scarves, gloves and hats were piled, steaming on a chair in front of the radiator. Their warm chatter was teasing and affectionate, punctuated with the metallic chime of a spoon in a sundae glass or the exaggerated slurp of a milkshake. The twinkling lights from the jukebox and the crackle and flutter of the fluorescent strip lights overhead were making the neatly stacked glassware glimmer and dance. Stella smiled. She did love the shop. Even on the darkest, most wintry of nights, it radiated warmth and happiness.

In the other booth though, a young couple seemed frozen in a glacier of sourness and resentment. Stella felt her eyes drifting towards them involuntarily. It was like peeking under a bandage at a particularly bloody, diseased wound; she just couldn’t stop herself from looking. She recognised the girl, who’d been in the year above her at school. She’d had a bit of a reputation, Stella remembered. Back then she was one of the cool girls, one of the tough girls. She smoked, she bunked off school, she hung out with boys, she answered teachers back. She was fearless. She’d been pretty, but she’d had an edge, a scowling hardness that she wore like armour. She transformed vulnerabilities into ammunition. 

So what if I have don’t have a winter coat? I don’t need one. It’s not even cold. 

No, I’ve not got a packed lunch today. I’m not even hungry. I don’t want to get fat like you.

No, I’m not going on the trip to the art gallery. Of course, it’s not the money. Galleries are boring. I’d rather skive off anyway. 

Looking at her that night, Stella thought she seemed diminished, powerless. Once she was a beautiful and dangerous wild animal, now she seemed as sad as a circus tiger, weakened and made pathetic by years of abuse. Her hair was bleached almost white, but several inches of dark roots were insolently showing. Her eyes were black with smudgy kohl. She was thin. Tiny even. She was as frail as a dried spider. She seemed so weak her starved body bowed forwards, as if weighted down by the burden of clothing or of the air itself. Stella sensed the girl had been crying. She’d had her ice cream float in front of her for half an hour but had not yet taken a sip. Her eyes were fixed on the glass. Every now and then she would listlessly stir the melting ice cream into the frothy lemonade. Occasionally she would anxiously glance up at the boy sitting opposite her, trying to read his expression. He was as cold and still as a bronze statue. He stared sharply past the girl towards the dark window, his eyes fixed and intense. There was nothing to see outside. All the boy could see was his own sour reflection dissolving in the steamy glass. Stella thought he didn’t even see that. There was a vacancy about him, an emptiness.

Stella had been wary of the boy from the moment he walked in. His gait, his mannerisms, his voice, they all seemed suffused with cruelty and scorn. He hadn’t even looked at Stella when he’d ordered, or said please or thank you. When they first sat down, he’d spat some barbed words at his girlfriend, jabbing his fingers in her face to emphasise his contempt. Stella hadn’t heard exactly what he’d said but she had noticed the girl’s reaction. She’d crumpled into herself, trying to make her tiny, fragile body even smaller. Trying to disappear. 

‘Don’t even think of deeing that again, like,’ he’d said, his voice icily controlled. He reached forward and grabbed her hand. She flinched, as if she’d been bitten by a snake. 

‘I will find out, you na. You na I will,’ he stared at her with a sadistic hatred and pushed her hands away as if they were repulsive to him. 

Since that final exchange, they had sat in sullen silence. 

‘I’m going to check everything is alright upstairs with Mamma,’ Tony called to Stella. ‘Can you manage down here for a while?’

‘Of course. It’s quiet, Papa. You go and put your feet up for a while.’

Tony disappeared through the fluttering curtain of multi-coloured plastic ribbons, leaving Stella alone in the shop. The family had finished their ice creams and were wrapping up in coats and scarves, ready to brave the wintry chill.

‘That was lovely, pet,’ the mum said to Stella as she opened the door to leave. ‘Howay, let’s get home.’ 

The door closed behind the family, sending a burst of cold, damp air into the shop. Stella looked at the young couple. She felt bad for the girl, who had once seemed so vibrant and brave. She walked over to their table and smiled.

‘I can get you something else, if you don’t like that,’ Stella said, pointing to the girl’s full glass.

‘No, thank you. It’s lovely really. I’ve just had enough,’ the girl replied, her eyes flitting nervously to her boyfriend. 

‘You were in the year above me. You’re Edie Waters, aren’t you?’ Stella smiled.

‘Aye,’ the girl nodded, but there was no warmth in her response, just fear. ‘Please go away,’ her eyes seemed to plead.

‘I’ll take your glass then, if you’re finished,’ as Stella reached over she noticed that the girl’s brittle arms were marbled with blue and yellow bruises. There were marks showing under the collar of her blouse too. Stella looked away, embarrassed and then glanced at the boy, who was watching her coldly. 

‘Can you just leave us alone please, love,’ he spat rudely. ‘We were having a private conversation here.’

‘Of course. Just call me over if you need anything,’ Stella forced a smile and walked away.

‘Will you pull your fucking sleeves down and button your shirt. Who wants to look at that?’ Stella heard him whisper acidly to the girl as she left.

She felt suddenly scared. She didn’t want to be alone in the shop with those two. She put down the glass and collected a tray to clear the family’s table. She glanced up at the couple. The girl had her back to Stella, but the boy was staring at her, his eyes as black and cruel as a snake’s. The room was unsettlingly quiet. Stella could hear the tick of the large station-style clock above the coffee machine. Then she heard the ringing of the glasses on her tray and wondered what was causing them to chime like bells. That was when she realised she was shaking. 

The boy stood up with a slow and theatrical menace. He was tall, spare and angular, dressed in black. He unfolded himself from the booth like a spider releasing itself from a tank, one vile and dangerous limb at a time. He looked around with measured deliberation, stretched out his arms and inhaled deeply. The vastness of his presence and the meanness of his gaze seemed to expose the fragility of everything in the room. 

‘Can I get you anything else?’ Stella asked in a tiny, suffocated voice.

‘What a fucking dump,’ the boy said meanly, shaking his head as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. 

The girl stood up, ‘Let’s just go, Frank.’

Stella started towards the counter with the trembling tray of glasses. She hoped their rattling drowned out the noise of her heart, which seemed to echo like a tap dripping on an empty drum.

‘Here, let me help you with that, love. You seem a bit shaky’ the boy was stalking towards her, with a wasp-like smile. He stood right in front of her, blocking her path.

‘Frank, let’s just go,’ the girl’s pleading voice was faltering, fearful. 

He reached out and carefully took the tray from Stella, staring at her with his snake-like, saturnine eyes. He leant in so close she could smell the sourness of his breath and the ripe dankness of his clothes.

‘You really need to mind your own business, love,’ he whispered. 

He took a step back and let the loaded tray crash to the floor. 

‘Oh, look at that,’ he said with feigned bewilderment, ‘You dropped your tray. What a mess.’

Stella didn’t look down. She raised her chin and stared back at the boy, challengingly. She had the sense again that a venomous creature was loose in the shop and the worst thing she could do would be to show her terror.

‘Everything OK down there?’ her father called from upstairs. She could hear his footsteps at the top of the stairs and saw a flicker of doubt sweep across the boy’s face.

‘Just dropped a tray, Papa. Don’t worry. I’m cleaning it up now,’ she called brightly. 

She crossed to the door with the determination of an unarmed soldier marching single-handed into battle. She pulled the door, wedging it open with her quaking body and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest.

‘Get out of my shop and don’t come back,’ she muttered. 

The boy smirked sourly, ‘Like I said, a fucking dump run by filthy foreigners. Howay, Edie.’

He violently pushed his way past Stella, his black figure seeming to dissolve into the swirling fog like ink through water. 

Edie scurried to the door, ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered as she passed. 

Stella reached out and touched the girl’s icy hand. It felt as fragile as the spine of a sparrow. 

‘Come back another time Edie, if you’d like to. Just you,’ she whispered. 

The girl smiled, moved by such unaccustomed kindness, but she didn’t reply. Stella heard her high-heeled shoes clattering up the street as she hurried to catch up to her boyfriend 

Stella leant against the closed door for a second to steady her shaking body. She’d clear up and lock up, she decided. It was only eight o’clock, but she didn’t think her Papa would mind. She got the dust pan and brush from the stockroom and started sweeping up the broken glass. She felt shaken. Ashamed. Violated. Furious. Hot, silent tears were streaming down her face. Her hands shook as she bent to carefully pick the teaspoons out of the treacherous shards. She’d tidy up and then go upstairs for a hot bath and an early night, she told herself. He was just a stupid boy. A bully. She’d met bullies before. It distressed her though, thinking of the frailty of Edie’s bruised arms and the way she’d miserably followed him into the dark night, like a satellite dragged by some cruel, monstrous planet. 

She was washing up in the back when she heard dull jangle of the shop bell. She cursed herself for forgetting to lock the door and turn the sign to closed, her legs turned to sand at the thought that Frank might have returned. She crept out to look into the shop. A man she’d never seen before was casually reading the peg-board menu displayed behind the glass counter. He was young, mid-twenties at the most. He was tall, dark, bearded and dressed in a funereal overcoat with a paperback sticking out of one of the pockets. He noticed Stella, peering from behind the ribbon curtain. 

‘I could do with a coffee, pet. Are you open?’

She took a step forward and looked at his face. His eyes were dark brown, shaded underneath heavy brows. There was something bear-like about him: a stern roughness, but it was tempered with something warmer, softer. He spoke politely in a strong colliery accent, but there was a wry and sardonic undertone colouring his words. 

‘Yes, I can get you a coffee. Sit down wherever you like. I was going to close but . . .’ she gestured weakly, unsure of how to finish her sentence. 

The man nodded and walked to a booth. He took off his coat and opened his paperback and stretched out his long legs underneath the table. His dark hair was beaded with droplets of rain that glimmered in the light of the jukebox. Like a cat stretching in sunlight, he seemed elementally at ease with his surroundings. 

The coffee machine gurgled grumpily. Stella found, for the second time that night, that her hand trembled as she crossed the room with the man’s coffee. By the time she reached the booth, the saucer was flooded with milky foam. She must still be shaken by that awful confrontation with Frank, she thought. 

‘I’m sorry,’ she said as she artlessly set down the drink, slopping even more liquid into the saucer. ‘I’ll get you another one, shall I?’ She self-consciously smoothed the errant strands of hair that had fallen loose from her pony tail. The man looked at her and smiled.

‘Nah, it’s fine, petal. Don’t worry about it.’

Stella nodded thankfully. She expected she’d have made just as much of a mess of a second cup anyway. She felt strangely graceless and gauche in front of him, like a new-born foal trying to stand for the first time, ridiculous with vulnerability. Every fibre of her being compelled her to get as far away from him as possible, yet it appeared her feet were welded to the floor because there she still stood in the syrupy amber glow of the juke box, right in front of him, motionless. 

‘What’s your book?’ she heard herself say. 

He held the paperback up in front of her.

‘D H Lawrence, The Rainbow,’ she read. 

‘Aye. I’m just back from a night class. We’re starting on this,’ he said, shrugging. His voice was as low and resonant, like a hushed wind oscillating through a forest.

‘You’re a student?’ she asked.

‘Nah. I work at the pit, pet. I’m a joiner. Now I’ve finished me apprenticeship and I’m working steady, I thought I’d do some classes just for me, like. Things I’m interested in.’

‘What other classes are you doing?’ Stella asked, fascinated. Here was yet another person who knew exactly who he was and what he wanted from the world. Someone who was purposefully scything a path for himself away from the narrow, snarling tangle of colliery life. She found herself sliding into the booth opposite him, intrigued. 

‘I’m doing History, English Literature, English Language. A’ Levels, you know,’ he said.

‘That’s what you’re interested in?’ she asked, wondering if she even knew what interested her. She’d loved art when she was at school. She had little talent for it herself, but she’d loved looking at paintings and learning about the lives of artists. She remembered glowing with pride when her art teacher rhapsodised about the Italian Renaissance. She’d shown the class Giotto’s Lamentation. Stella could still picture the still, pearlescent body of Christ lying beneath a lapis sky scattered with weeping golden angels. 

‘Aye, those are my interests.’ the man had said. ‘I’m John.’ He reached out and shook Stella’s hand. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a coffee, pet?’

And so, it began.