The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth Read Free Page B

try and remember what he was like.’
    I shook my head. I couldn’t remember a thing. Whatever chemical had been added to the ripple to take Myfanwy away had also taken with it my memory.
    ‘Little details that are insignificant to you … you probably don’t think they are worth repeating but you never know …’
    ‘What’s there to say? He was just an ice man—’
    Sospan hissed indignantly. ‘I am surprised to hear you, of all people, utter a sentiment like that. Imagine if I had been mugged by the postman and you asked me to describe him and I said “Oh he was just a postman”, imagine the harsh words you would rightly reproach me with. That’s like saying it was just another Fabergé egg. On the surface, I grant you,
gelati
men may all look alike, but each van and vendor are distinctive. Each vendor has a thousand distinguishing characteristics that contribute to his own personal style. The van will reveal clues to the initiated eye as to who owns it, where he comes from and possibly his philosophy of life.’
    ‘I honestly can’t remember much, but you are welcome to come down to Ynyslas and have a look. The
gelati
van has gone but you might find something. A Stingray wrapper or something.’
    Sospan flinched and gulped as if a bluebottle had flown into his mouth and he had mistakenly swallowed it. A fugitive fear flickered in his eyes.
    ‘Oh … well … I couldn’t do that, Mr Knight, I … er … I’d love to, you know, but … but …’
    I turned away from his look of pain and stared at the Pier,pretending to find something unusually fascinating in it this morning, and affecting not to notice the grave sin I had just committed. I had just tried to seduce him to an act of heresy. I had asked him to leave his box. How could I have been so tactless? No one could remember having met Sospan outside his box. All our lives he had been but a disembodied upper torso, like Mr Punch, who flapped his arms about exaggeratedly in order to compensate for the guilty secret that maybe there was nothing else of him below the wooden stage that served as his counter. The kiosk represented the limits and essence of his world like the metal body of a Dalek. Tongue and grooved together from planks of wood and gloss-painted in blue and white, it was the carapace from which, if he ever emerged, it was like a hermit crab to scurry about when no one was looking.
    ‘You see,’ said Sospan, ‘every ice man has his own particular way of doing things, his own style. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is unique like a fingerprint or anything like that, but it can still help identify him. Take the ripple pattern for instance. Can you remember how he applied it?’
    I grimaced in frustration. ‘I don’t know! That’s like asking how someone puts salt on their chips.’
    A chill edge entered the tone of his voice. ‘That’s where you are wrong if you don’t mind me saying so.’
    I shrugged defiantly.
    ‘Some of the more common trademarks of an ice man’s style include the pattern of the ice-whorl, the handedness of the scoop action and the depth to which he buries the Flakes. Does he stick them up proud as a Priapus or does he sink them like the eye sockets of a snowman? Where does he get his cones from? Every one has the mark of where he bought it, like a gun. But it could have been filed off. Did he have insignia on his breast pocket? All these things you could have noticed and yet you tell me he was just another ice-cream vendor. And we haven’t even got tothe ripple pattern.’ He pulled a thick reference work out from under the counter and opened it to the contents page.
    ‘Each pattern can be classified according to the broad characteristics and then subdivided into various phyla.’ He turned the book round and pushed it towards me and ran his finger along the contents page.
    ‘Was it spotted like measles, or blotched like Caesar’s toga? Splattered in the style known as “Chicago barbershop”? Or more like