The pleasures of heaven are here
O welche Lust in freier Luft
Den Athem einzuheben!
Oh what joy, in the open air
Freely to breathe again!
(The Prisoner’s Chorus from Beethoven’s opera, ‘Fidelio’).
I hear the siren call of the ice-cream van on the far side of the park. It is like a sound from a halcyon past and the child still living within me runs from home towards it. The park is full of litter which lies carelessly discarded on the grass. Human litter. Angular arms and fleshy legs falling out of packets of clothing. They lie at angles on rugs and blankets, grouped like wind-blown wrappers, or singly propping up books or pads. The sun shines warmly on this last day of May. It feels like an end, or a new beginning, although our leaders say it is none of these things.
Barefoot, I rush with childish glee across the grass towards the ‘MB Soft-Ice’ van. It is not so straightforward as the ways are filled by the people of Hammersmith who’ve come wearing their masks, their scarves, their turbans and their hats. They emerge like the prisoners they were, from their locked up rooms and garden-less flats, laughing at their freedoms and spread their colours and sizes on the green grass, ‘freely to breathe again’. They bare their blue, tattoo-stained skins and hold their beer and crisps in their hands. Mouths are filled with cakes, eyes are bright with the shining and the worries of the world packed away for the day. Big men furloughed and disguising their dread, push their kids along the paths with a smile.
Beside the lake there’s drum thudding an African beat. Dogs yelp with glee and raid unattended morsels whilst backs are turned. A Bose speaker plays a somnolent song beside a man asleep. Children squeal with excited glee as they chase their multi-coloured balls. Laughter shrieks echoing the parakeets racing through the air above.
On rugs torn from beds they sit and they drink and play their games of cards and dice. On the paths the kids slalom their scooters between couples embracing. I can see the queue now, long and filled with the hot and tired, made longer still with the two metre distancing rule. I slow my haste hoping that by the time I cover the next two hundred metres, ‘Mr Soft-Ice’ will have served them all and I can offer my sweaty coins in exchange for frozen cream covered in layers of chocolate. I pause in the shade of the Indian Chestnut tree. Near me are two faces, creased with anxiety, sitting cross legged opposite each other, knees touching, and eyes downcast towards the grass.
“Absolutely right.”
“Yes we can’t go on like this.”
“You’re always like…”
“No I am not…”
“I’ve told you before….”
“So what are we going to do then?”
“I don’t know”.
She pauses, and reaches forward for his hand. A love-lorn and forgiving smile crosses her face.
The queue like a tide is ebbing. I make my way past the bulbous, fat and famous Baobab Plane tree where five ladies with more flesh than dress discuss their absent boy-friends. Their rug, tasselled and tartaned, is littered with empty plastic cartons of dips and drinks and crisps.
‘He’s like a crab’
‘Who? Your boyfriend’?
‘Yeah, he’s gone to Spain’
‘What? When? How did he get out there?’
And on, ever closer to that van, under the skirts of the Caucasian Wingnut tree, where eight women dig carrot sticks into pits of hummus. Their air is filled with untrammelled laughter. Wine glass stems are clutched, one has her hand around the neck of the bottle.
‘He held her with his hands and holding on, you know what I mean…..’
‘What shaking?’
‘Oh my God. Fuck. Look the dog’s run off’.
The one in the floral short dress whose straps are falling, adjusts her skirt and sets off in unsteady chase. Her mates fall like skittles with laughing.
I look up and count the queue and nearly trip over the young man lying on his own on the grass near the elms. His shirt is open, white skin is shown to the sun, his phone on the grass beside him. There is no rug nor blanket beneath him, no glass in his hands. A book shields his eyes. It is too close for reading. His eyes are closed.
Nearly there now, just 50 metres to the back of the shortened line. On the path a woman jogs, brushing me as she passes, oblivious to the social distancing request of the notice on the wall alongside her. She shouts into her phone, gesticulating wildly, eyes glued to the floor ahead of her.
‘You’re so mean to him, you ought to give in. I mean he loves you.’
Now here I am, just six people in between me and that Magnum Double Choc. My heart races not from the walk across the park, but from the anticipation remembered from childhood days when life was carefree and full of fun. My coins jingle in my hand. I see the notice on the back of the van; ‘No cash. Card only’. The tang of disappointment curls my lips. I feel childhood tears welling in my eyes as I turn to leave the queue. The man ahead pays with his phone. His Phone! Of course, I’ve got my phone - I can pay.
With my melting Magnum between finger and thumb I walk back across the park. Shoes are being returned to feet. Blankets are rolled up. Litter, both human and paper, is tidied into bags and clothes. Tomorrow it will be June, new rules will apply and the weather will turn back to a summer wet sky. But for today, at the end of May, with cool chocolate dribbling down my hand, the pleasures of heaven are here.