There are certain words he likes, good words, inspiring words, words which carry him forward as he works to find form beneath the ugly surface of things - words like ‘potentiality’ and ‘potential’. ‘Potentiality’ and ‘potential’, are, he thinks, more evocative than the word ‘possibility’, which is too closely linked to the idea of ‘options’ and the business of making choices when faced with the mundane demands of day-to-day life. The words ‘potentiality’ and ‘potential’ speak of discovery, of disclosure, of beauty - Within things, within reality, for the moment hidden! Waiting to be revealed.
As he puts together the ingredients of his ice cream - ‘Arnie’s Kreemy Ice Cream!’ as he calls it - his thoughts return, as always, to the sculptor liberating the statue from the block of marble: his favourite metaphor. Ice cream is my marble, he tells himself.
Children! He would have liked to have had children, to watch them grow and to shape them. But now when he thinks of children, he imagines them eagerly anticipating the languid chords of ‘Greensleeves’ broadcast from the loudspeakers on top of his ice cream van. ‘Greensleeves’, a lament composed in the Tudor period - perhaps, but not certainly, by King Henry VIII. The lyrics evoke the image of a young woman clad in a long Tudor dress with bright green sleeves. Green: the colour of youth and Spring.
The words of the piece speak to him, of the love he has lost, of a cherished time, a time of promise forever gone, an episode in his existence, on the surface painful and ugly, yet beneath the surface, so cold and harsh ... So much potential!
As he grinds his substances in his black granite mortar he softly sings some lines.
Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
And I have loved you so long,
Delighting in your company.
A small, tight-lipped smile. ‘But you ... you delighted in the company of others, didn't you?’
He grinds, occasionally using tweezers to add to the mix - some grains selected from one of several dark coloured cones of dry and dusty substances lined up on a large sheet of glass on his kitchen table. The ingredients will form the foundation of an infusion, a hidden feature of his ever-improving ice cream recipe. From nature, from the woods, so much potential in the forest, he thinks. And in the fungi, the pretty and the ugly fungi, especially in that!
He thinks again of the children clustering around his van, waiting impatiently for their heaped ice cream cones. My nice ice cream... with my special additions.
He leaves little left to chance, never using a new ingredient until he is sure about its strength. Don't want children seeing things, do I? Going off their little heads! Don't want that! Helping them find what’s in their brains. That's my vocation. Unleashing their creativity, their potential...for good... or whatever. He chuckles as he grinds.
Now he licks the tip of the small finger of his left hand, delicately touches the surface of the dark brown powder in the mortar and transfers a few grains to his protruding tongue. He shuts his eyes and waits for the desired effect: a lightening mood, thoughts gathering momentum, a heightened eagerness to act, to find a reason - any reason - to act. Yes, he thinks, subtle and not too dramatic.
That night he lies awake listening to the wind of an early summer storm sweeping through the valley, churning the trees at the fringe of the nearby forest and beating ineffectually against the squat and sturdy walls of his cottage. As he drifts towards sleep he conjures up the image of his lost and treacherous love, clad in a gown with long green sleeves.
He wakes suddenly, alerted by an unusual draught coming from beneath the bedroom door. He quickly discovers that a pane in the kitchen window has cracked open. Dismayed, he sees that the ingredients on the kitchen table have been dispersed. The air has the fragrance of a wood smoke. On his tongue - an unusual flavour. ‘Like stilton cheese?’ he murmurs, savouring the taste.
A headline in the late edition of the local newspaper: ‘Death of ice cream man’. The article is brief. ‘Early yesterday morning residents of the village of Eltonby reported that an ice cream van had crashed into a fallen tree. Minutes earlier they had been woken by the van being driven at high speed through the village with its loudspeakers transmitting at full volume. The van driver, said to be Mr Arnold Blair, was pronounced dead at the scene. According to neighbours he was a small-scale ice cream manufacturer who served villages and towns in the area. Police are investigating the unusual circumstances of this accident.’
His nearest neighbour, an elderly man, puts down the paper and looks at his wife sitting across from him in their living room. ‘Poor Arnie. What got into him?’
His wife, who never liked Arnie or his ice cream, glances up from her gardening magazine, and considers the question for a moment. ‘You never know what's going on in some folk's lives,’ she mutters. Then she shrugs, moistens a thumb and continues her search for an interesting article.
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