Tales

The Ice Cream Man (Part 3)

Every Friday afternoon at three o'clock he was waiting for us outside the school gates. The Ice Cream Man never parked his van at the main gates where all the parents waited. Instead he went to a quiet street that ran behind the school. Few cars went up and down that street. You never saw any pedestrians. The houses across the street backed onto the railway line, and were dark and abandoned-looking. Except when a passenger train roared past and set off the bells at the distant level crossing, the street was quiet.

He'd pull up just inside the gate, on a square of ancient brown asphalt broken up by the roots of a big oak tree. In summer the tree cast the whole area in cool shade. In autumn the ground was littered with acorns we collected and threw at each other in epic battles that lasted whole lunchtimes. In winter the wind would send the brown oak leaves whirling up like the devils from old half-remembered stories. It was the quietest and most secluded place in the whole school.

We weren't really looking out for the Ice Cream Man, by the way. Unless you were sitting right in the back corner of the classroom you had no hope of catching a glimpse of the van anyway.

No, mostly we were listening for him.

Greensleeves was the song he played. Nothing unusual about that: it's the all-time ice cream van classic. Nothing unusual about how loud the music was either. It was turned up to some hellish volume, so distorted that you could barely make out the melody, warbling like an ambulance siren, and sounding basically like our music class after the teacher had stupidly handed out recorders. When the music started up all the neighbourhood dogs would start to howl. Was that strange? No, not really. Though I sometimes wonder if it was the music making the dogs howl. What if it was the ice cream man himself? What if they knew?

If Miss Radcliffe heard any of this she pretended not to. Miss Radcliffe didn't like distractions. If the real life version of one of the Principal's planes had been strafing the playground I don't think she would have even looked up. I sometimes wondered if she could hear it at all. Was she half-deaf? That would have explained all the shrieking at least.

There it was now: the faraway blat of the ice cream van's speaker. The room went silent. Kids fidgeted in their chairs and licked their lips. The tension was unbearable.

Finally, the school bell rang.

"You may go," Miss Radcliffe said, without looking up from her desk. Books were shoved violently into bags, chairs squealed.

Could I sneak out without her noticing? I knew better than that. She hadn't forgotten I was there. Miss Radcliffe liked to toy with her prey.

The classroom was empty in seconds, and the tinkle of Greensleeves faded away into the air. I looked out the window and saw a mass of kids streaming off in all directions. Some would go to the main gates to beg ice cream money off their parents. A few unlucky ones, who for whatever reason had no money for ice cream, were heading off slowly, their heads down. But most of the pack headed directly for the gate where the Ice Cream Man waited.

We scrimped and saved all week, squirrelling away our pocket money, searching behind sofa cushions for stray silver, diving under shop counters to the horror and shame of our parents, washing windows and cars and dogs, mowing lawns, collecting bottles and cans for recycling – there was no job too degrading. The ice creams weren't free, after all. Nor were they cheap.

But were they good?

Were they ever.

They were the best ice creams in the world.

After eating one you felt like nothing would ever taste good again. All other food was like ashes in your mouth. Whatever magic made them taste so good we didn't know, and didn't want to know. Perhaps it was best that we didn't.

This also applies to hot dogs.