And then suddenly, as I’m working a tent pole into its canvas sleeve, there they are: two men standing over me, grinning. “Need a hand with that, love?” says one.
“Looks like a bit of a tight fit,” adds the other with an audible smirk. “You need some K-Y, I reckon.’
I look up, acknowledging his teasing with a grin and a shake of my head. They’re both wearing uniforms of some sort: green shirts and trousers, radios on their belts. Both strong-looking men, thank goodness, and in their twenties at a guess.
“We were told you needed a hand,” says the one with the lube obsession. He’s got a handsome square face and sun-blonded hair that would be curly if he let it grow any longer than his stubbly beard.
“Um.” Standing, I look again at the NHS badges sewn on their shirtfronts. “From…doctors?”
He looks hurt. “Paramedics, love.”
“Oh—right.”
“We’ve got time to kill before the show kicks off,” says the other, the one with the olive complexion and the dark nap of hair shaved so close that it looks like suede. “Mrs. Addleman asked if there was anyone available for some heavy lifting, so we volunteered.”
Aha, I think. Mr. Addleman is doomed.
“Great, thank you. I’ve got two freezers full of ice cream in that van,” is what I say. “They’re on wheels but they’re still really heavy. If you could shift them down into the stall area here…”
They get to it with enthusiasm. It turns out that the fair one is Matt and the dark one, Trev; that they’ve been stationed here with the ambulance all day to back up the St. John’s first-aiders in case there’s a serious incident, and that they’re doing a demonstration in the main arena area later, helping the local fire brigade cut an “accident” victim out of his car. They’re fit and chirpy and they josh each other and me. They insist on helping me put up the tent, and I can barely instruct them fast enough to keep up with their swiftness and confidence. In minutes the stall has taken shape. With a few casual blows of the mallet it’s pegged securely to the ground. They connect up the freezers to the generator out back and get it started up for me with hardly any effort.
Oh, they make me feel old.
Vanilla: every ice-cream maker has to have some version of vanilla in his repertoire. Mine is Madagascan vanilla-pod and clotted Devonshire cream; the taste is rich and sweet and comforting. Even now when I make a batch it reminds me of bathing Skye when she was a baby, of talcing her skin and holding her tiny body to me. Vanilla is the scent of babies and breast milk. It’s safe and infinitely satisfying, and it’s what we all fall back on. It’s my best-selling line. Plenty of people eat only vanilla.
“Bloody hell,” says Matt. He’s just spotted the price list I’ve hung at the front. “That’s expensive ice cream!”
“Homemade, organic and fair-trade.” I’m not abashed: I’ll cover my costs here on any reasonable day, but my profit margins are surprisingly slim and it’s seasonal work. “I pick the fruit myself and make every tub. And the base is sheep’s milk for most of them. That’s not cheap.”
“Sheep? You milk sheep?”
“Not me—I get it from a local farmer. He used to milk for the cheese trade, but he lost his contract and I stepped in to try turning it into ice cream. It’s lovely stuff. Easier to digest than cow’s milk too.”
“Ginger and brandy snap,” he muses. “Green basil. Strawberry and black pepper.”
“Sounds good,” says Trev. “Weird, mind; but good.”
“Do you want some? I think I owe you both an ice cream, for this lot.”
“You got double-choc-chip?” asks Matt, grinning.
“Brazilian chocolate and chili,” I counter, daring him.
“Go on then. I can’t resist a Brazilian.” He winks; I roll my eyes in mock despair. But just as I open the freezer Trev’s radio buzzes to life. I can’t make out the words barked over the airways, but he switches in a second from affable to decisive.
“Gotta go. Sorry, Matt.”
“No fair. I was hoping for a chocolate flake with that.”
They hurry off at a jog. Matt looks back and shouts at me, waving his arm: “You owe us an ice cream! Don’t forget!”
I wonder why I feel so warm and tingling inside, and why I was so disappointed when the call came through.
Sloe Gin: it’s real sloes and real gin, though it takes some extra prep to make sure the alcohol doesn’t make the ice cream slushy. Every winter when I reduce the syrup my kitchen fills with the scents of juniper and plum. I pick the sloes in autumn, cherishing each hard, steely purple fruit won from its barbed-wire twig. Then I prick them all over with a fork and bottle them in gin for months, until the liquor turns the color of rubies. I like gin, but too much makes me weepy; the sloes mitigate that. They are autumn’s wergeld for the dying year, for the loss of summer. They are the compensation that comes with sorrow.