Ella's Ice Cream Summer

by Sue Watson

  I hoped she wasn’t spending all her pension on the fancy hotel, but the alternative was to stay with me in Sophia’s apartment and she wouldn’t want that.

  ‘Mum, are you here because you were you worried I might become best friends with Gina and she’d introduce me to the fisherman who would ravish me?’

  She looked sheepish – ah so that was it.

  ‘I’m a divorced mum of two, not an impressionable teen – Gina can’t turn me into a lady of the night… not that she ever would. And have you seen the fishermen round here? They’re less Jack Sparrow and more Captain Birdseye.’

  ‘You just keep yourself to yourself while you’re here and ignore her.’

  I sighed, we were back on the Gina loop.

  ‘She’s my cousin! Why must I ignore her?’

  ‘Because I said so.’

  ‘You can’t say that to me, Mum,’ I laughed. When was Mum going to realise that I wasn’t a child and that Gina wasn’t the devil.

  ‘Mum, while you’re here let’s forget about long-held family feuds, let’s use your family knowledge for good, not evil. So, what about Sophia’s recipes – any idea where they might be? Any idea what they might be?’

  ‘It was a long time ago, Ella, I can’t remember my own name some days – so I’m sure I can’t remember what my sister put in her sodding ice cream,’ she snapped.

  ‘Stay classy, Mother,’ I said, and leaned into the hatch to see if there was a single soul out there who might want something from my van, anything: directions to the local pub, a bag for their dog mess, a seventy-eight-year-old mother with a grudge. But naturally there was no one there in my time of need.

  ‘You’re not very busy are you?’ she said into the silence. As perceptive as ever, finding the wound and sprinkling in lashings of salt.

  ‘No I’m not busy because my ice cream is awful and I’m rude to the customers… oh but it’s okay because Gina’s here to show me how to lap dance so I won’t need this old van. I can get work as a stripper… even better, we can turn the van into a mobile lap dancing club.’

  ‘Oh may God forgive you.’

  ‘Oh don’t bring him into it. You always bring in the big guns when you’re losing,’ I said. ‘Anyway, what did you and God think about that brioche?’

  ‘Not that bad…’

  ‘Stop, Mum, you’re making my head swell.’

  ‘It was a bit bready now you ask… you’re not seeing Gina again are you?’

  Oh not again! ‘Yes, I am. She’s my cousin and she owns the café that my van belongs to. So not only is she family – she’s a fun, interesting and glamorous friend, and a work colleague.’

  ‘I know why you’re not busy.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ I sighed, ‘it’s Gina’s fault?’ I was now waiting for the pearls of wisdom and venom that would both enlighten and crush me at the same time.

  ‘You’re quiet because no one knows you’re here.’ So she was now criticising my business marketing, an unexpected move, but it bore my mother’s hallmark of taking one by surprise with her insults.

  I continued to lean on the hatch looking out, while Mum sat on the little stool. We were both lost in our own thoughts, two women who’d known each other forever and knew each other too well.

  ‘Trouble is they can’t see your van from the hotel,’ she continued. ‘There’s some kind of yuppie conference on there and they’re all on their iPhones. They don’t look up from their devices… that’s what they call them, devices.’

  She should talk, I thought – but she had a point. I’d watched people walking the front gazing into their phones and thought what a waste of all this lovely scenery.

  ‘Yes, imagine staying here and not taking this in,’ I said, gesturing around me. ‘Before them is the most stunning view and they’re missing it to stare into a tiny screen.’

  ‘That’s what you should do, Ella. Put fancy pictures of your ice cream on the screen so they can see it and increase sales.’ She said this like she was pitching to Lord Sugar on The Apprentice.

  ‘Oh Mum, advertising a business isn’t like online dating, you know,’ I could only imagine the weirdos that would turn up.

  ‘Yes it is – it’s exactly like online dating. You dress it up, take its photo and put it on the internet – and if people like what they see… then you’ve got a date.’

  I smiled and patted her knee in what was perhaps a rather patronising gesture, but wondered if what she was saying made some kind of weird sense.

  ‘So how… exactly how would you advertise this business?’ I asked.

  ‘I told you, take photographs…’

  ‘No I mean, literally, what would you do, put them on Facebook or what?’

  How to confess to your seventy-eight-year-old mother that you needed her help online, that you used words like Twitter and Instagram, but you hadn’t a clue how they worked. Thanks to having time on her hands and teenage grandkids, Mum knew far more about it all than I did. But I absolutely couldn’t admit this to her – if she knew she was in the driving seat she’d try to take over. And as we’d learned, mother could get a little ahead of herself and make mistakes (I give you, Gay and Gorgeous and ‘sextgate’ with the vicar).

  ‘Well you make an Instagram and a Twitter account,’ she said, looking up for inspiration. ‘Oh that reminds me, have you seen Josh and Lucie’s photos on Instagram?’

  I was a little embarrassed to admit I hadn’t because I didn’t know how to work the mysteries she spoke of.

  ‘Well it’s a good job one of us knows what we’re doing and can keep an eye on them, isn’t it?’ she said, making me feel like a complete Luddite.

  She took out her phone, clicked a few times, then turned the screen towards me. And there was my handsome son, standing on rough terrain, a spade in his hand, a smile on his face. Another one of him building a brick wall, then holding a little child, with Aarya by his side beaming. Then Mum scrolled along and we found Lucie in Thailand on a beach, sunbathing in a very small bikini.

  ‘I thought she was seeing the sights?’ I sighed.

  ‘I think she’s making her own sights,’ Mum smiled. Funny how she was so accepting of her granddaughter in a bikini, but she’d once spotted my photos of her niece Gina in a bathing suit when I’d holidayed here and she was horrified. ‘I don’t want to see you following her example,’ she’d said. I suppose times were different, but I couldn’t help but feel that Mum had it in for Gina simply because she was Sophia’s daughter.

  ‘Oh Mum, the kids look so grown-up don’t they?’ I said, grateful for what felt like an illicit peep into my children’s world. I could speak to them on Skype, but this was ‘mummy stalker’ paradise – I would get Instagram now so I could look at them whenever I missed them. Young people didn’t seem to use Facebook any more whereas Instagram was a chronicle of every minute of their lives in picture format. On a still photo I could really study their facial expressions to make sure those smiles were real and they were genuinely safe and happy. Sue and I used to do that in ‘Fashion Passion’ with copies of Hello; we’d worked out the truth behind many a WAG’s smile and therefore the real state of her marriage that way. And here I was now with a whole album of my kids’ photos for me to go through with the tenacity of a good forensic analyst.

  ‘Be careful not to let the kids know you’re checking their social media every four minutes,’ Mum said, reading my mind. ‘They call that creeping… and you don’t want to be a creeper, Ella.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I sighed, as she scrolled onto a photo of Lucie with a man I’d never seen before. ‘Who’s that?’ I said.

  Mum looked closer through her glasses. ‘Oh that’s Pang, don’t worry about him, he’s gay,’ she said knowingly. ‘Always difficult when you see something or someone and you want to know about it but can’t ask, because then they’ll know you were creeping,’ she said, with a warning look.

  ‘Oh yes, I can see how that would be a problem. Sometimes ignorance is bliss?’ I said, trying to s
wipe onto the next picture but Mum snatched the phone off me.

  ‘I’ll say, love. I remember when you were their age and I caught a phone conversation you had with your boyfriend. I remember you came off the phone in tears and I wanted to go round and punch him, until you explained his dog had died.’

  ‘I remember that, and I also remember resenting you for trying to get it out of me. I can hear the same tone in the kids’ voices when I try and find out what’s going on in their lives,’ I smiled. ‘Sorry I gave you a hard time, Mum,’ I reached out and touched her arm.

  ‘Oh I’m sure I did the same to my mother. My parents wanted us to be good church-going housewives; sex wasn’t on the agenda before marriage. I think they were hoping for at least one nun for a daughter, but no chance of that with our Sophia,’ she laughed. There were times, like now, when Mum talked about the past and Sophia in a light-hearted, nostalgic way and I’d realised this was usually when she was thinking about the distant past. Memories of their childhood and when they were young women still made her smile, and I wondered again what had happened later to change everything?

  ‘No chance of you becoming a nun either – given your recent activities, Mother,’ I said in an affectionate reprimand.

  ‘Yes but it’s not about sex, Ella…’

  ‘Enough information, Mum,’ I said, sounding like Josh or Lucie.

  ‘No, what I mean is everyone talks about it and the young ones are using all kinds of orifices… but it’s not for me.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said, desperate to change the subject and adding the word orifice to the growing list I didn’t want to hear my mother say again.

  ‘I just want someone to be there for me, everyone wants someone for them, don’t they? Sometimes I think no one would notice if I wasn’t here, because I just get in the way.’

  I looked at her and suddenly felt such sadness; ‘Mum, you’re not in anyone’s way, it’s just that the kids are gone now and I’m trying to make a living and… a life I suppose. I’m trying to make a grab at something before it’s too late.’ But in my selfish pursuit of happiness, I’d forgotten about Mum – she also wanted something before it was too late: she wanted to be loved again. We lost Dad many years before, and even though Mum had me and the kids it wasn’t the same as having that companionship. Sometimes she could be a little critical, sometimes a little crazy, difficult even – but I could see now that she was trying to readjust to being older while still searching for her own happiness.

  ‘I think we both need to find our “happy” don’t we, Mum?’ I said.

  ‘Oh as long as you and the kids find your happy, I’ll be okay,’ she said, then she looked at me and I knew that familiar question was about to be asked. ‘I’ve been a good mother, haven’t I?’

  And I answered the same answer as always, ‘The best, Mum, the best.’

  She seemed reassured by that and began scrolling through her phone again. Another picture of my lovely son.

  ‘He’s rebuilding Nepal, love,’ she said, ‘one brick at a time. Have you read his blog?’

  ‘I didn’t realise he had one.’ I wasn’t completely sure what a blog was, and I worried if I looked I might be caught out as ‘a creeper’.

  ‘Oh love – you need to get with the programme. You’re no one without a blog,’ Mum was saying. ‘Mind you it all moves so fast – Doris says vlogging is the new black, whatever the bugger that means.’

  For someone who couldn’t remember her name, the woman could retain amazing facts.

  ‘Mum, you amaze me the way you know all this internet stuff.’

  ‘Well, I dated that internet billionaire for a while…’

  ‘Did you?’ I was surprised.

  ‘Did I? Bill Green, he volunteered at the library. Oh that’s right, he wasn’t an internet billionaire, I got mixed up with Bill Gates.’

  ‘Easy mistake to make,’ I said, and we both laughed.

  Later, I took Mum back to her hotel. I invited her to look at my apartment, but she said she didn’t want to see too much of Appledore and the surrounding areas because it brought back happy memories.

  ‘But that’s good isn’t it?’ I asked.

  ‘No, because we used to drop you off here when you were little and you’re not little any more and that makes me sad.’

  I felt for her. I thought of my own kids and understood what she meant; ‘I know, it’s hard isn’t it? You have your kids for such a short time – and all the while we’re preparing them for life without us, but it’s still a shock when they leave and your little family’s spread or gone.’

  She smiled and patted my hand; ‘You’re so precious, Ella, thought I might lose you once or twice along the way.’

  ‘What do you mean you thought you might lose me, was I ill?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, suddenly closing up again like a stroppy child.

  ‘You can’t just say that and expect me to leave it alone,’ I said.

  ‘You were, are, so precious and I worried… I worried you’d leave.’ She was either confused or had decided not to tell me something, but either way she seemed to need my reassurance.

  ‘All children leave eventually, it’s part of the process, but I’m still here, Mum, we’re still together, you and me.’

  Her mood had changed completely and once more I was puzzled. Was this Mum’s age confusing her, or was it something more?

  ‘Will you be okay here tonight, Mum, you could come with me and stay at the apartment?’

  ‘She’s not there, is she?’

  ‘No, I think Gina’s in a hotel,’ I said, praying it was a different one to my mother’s.

  ‘No, I won’t come to the apartment – there’s chicken cacciatore on the menu, and as it’s my speciality, I thought I might have a word with the chef so he doesn’t make any mistakes.’

  I smiled, thinking that would go down well. Then we hugged and she said she’d come and see me at the van the next day.

  ‘I’ll just be glad when you’re back home safe and sound, love,’ she called after me as I walked from the hotel.

  It seemed Mum had been worrying about me in Appledore while I was worrying about my kids on the other side of the world. Once you’re a mum that’s it – they can be a million miles away, but they take a little chink of your heart with them until they’re back again.

  ‘Ella, there was something I had to tell you,’ she called as I headed back to the van. So I turned round and walked back.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t bloody remember.’

  ‘Tonight’s cacciatore?’ I suggested.

  ‘That might be it,’ she said, ‘too much oregano and it’s buggered…’ and with that she wandered into the hotel.

  I walked back, got into the van, and was just starting it when I saw her face at the window. She looked frantic and I was immediately concerned; ‘Mum, are you okay?’

  ‘Yes… I just remembered what it is. That Dick you were married to?’

  ‘Yes, yes… what, Mum?’ I asked, hoping something terrible had happened to him, or that his wife’s breasts had finally popped.

  ‘He sent a man round, said the house is sold. But worse than that, he wants the telly! That’s why I came here. Oh damn, I was looking for my room key and I just found it in my bloody handbag, look!’ She thrust a thick brown envelope at me and my heart began to thud.

  I opened it with trepidation and, as I’d expected, it was from Richard’s solicitor – the house had been sold and we had to move out before the end of the month. The Dick couldn’t wait to get his hands on the money from the house and it made me livid. When he left he’d felt guilty about the affair and said he’d never see me or the kids without a roof. Then he’d changed his mind and we were now all homeless – it was bad enough for me and the kids, but I also had a homeless mother too.

  I sat in the driver’s seat of the van, my face crumpled along with the papers in my hand. It wasn’t a huge surprise, I just didn’t think t
he house would sell so quickly, especially with my mother in it when people were being shown round.

  I was vaguely aware of my mother now opening the passenger side door, but I was in shock and just concentrating on the immediate problem. I would receive a small amount of money for the sale of the house, but if the kids wanted to come home and live with me again I’d need at least three bedrooms.

  I had the apartment for the summer, and I had time to think about this, but I was still responsible for three other people despite my new-found freedom. It was more important than ever that I make a go of this business so I could at least earn enough for a deposit on a small house.

  I was suddenly jolted back to the here and now by Delilah’s barking, alerting me to a drama going on at the passenger door. There I was worrying about the weight of responsibility for my mother, not realising she was now dangling in the open door, clinging to the side, being nipped and barked at by a dog in a stripey jumpsuit and jaunty beret!

  Unable to lift herself onto the seat, Mum was yelping and Delilah was barking and they were creating quite a scene.

  ‘Mum, oh Mum, I’m sorry,’ I said, abandoning my seat and running round to help her, arriving after Ben, who happened to be walking along the front, had seen the kerfuffle and come over to help. He was now offering my mother a push up.

  ‘I’m all right dear, this nice young man is helping,’ she said to me. Given his track record for spills, falls and general catastrophe this was more of a concern than relief.

  ‘Meet my mother,’ I said as she handed me her handbag like the queen to one of her courtiers.

  ‘Hello,’ Ben said to me while hoisting her up. I had been right about the French farce, I was officially living it. My mother’s bottom was now in Ben’s face and Delilah was yapping at his heels, it wasn’t the introduction I’d imagined – or perhaps it was. Between us we eventually calmed Delilah and settled Mum into the passenger seat.

  ‘So you changed your mind, you’re coming back with me tonight after all?’ I said to her.