For years, the sisters were convinced that their mother had kept something mysterious from them. And if only they could sniff it out.
So one day when she was at work and the boring afternoon was stretching out beyond the possible, they dragged a kitchen bankie into their mother’s bedroom and stacked a chair on it so as to reach the untouchable hatbox collection stored on top of the high wardrobe.
They’d find something, they knew, because Halley said so. Something would be in there.
And something was. Hats.
Along with a hideous, perversely flattened albino cockroach, scurrying out of one box as if it had been pressed dead but a single chink of light had coaxed it back to life.
With such a skrik, Halley sent everything tumbling, hats, tissue wrappings, herself included, nearly conked on the head by the heavy wooden dummy, and she abandoned all their mother’s things where they fell in a headless sprawl of satin and ostrich feathers and nubbled felt. She quickly slammed shut the bedroom door, as if it might become at once an impenetrable boundary and an invisibility cloak.
After, when she discovered the meddling, Nora was really mad. As a snake. A hatter. A hooded spitting cobra, the images whirled in Halley’s head.
What the heck were they doing, rummaging like that? Fossicking among her things.
That fossilised word, plus the intensity of their mother’s anger, only convinced Halley that Nora really did have something to hide. More than ordinary hidden treasure even.
Plus, the girl had found the letter, folded among the hats, and she’d clutched it in her fall from the tower of boxes when she’d been startled by the monstrous kokkerot.
My dearest Nora, she read later, locked in the toilet . . .
You will excuse my writing to you, but as Mark’s mother I of all women know that he is not an easy man, and that things between the two of you have been difficult. As he tells me, they seem now to have reached an impasse and so I would understand if you threw him over.
I myself, dare I admit, had occasion to experience similar feelings towards his father, who as you’ve heard was a well-meaning but misguided person.
But please, my dear, please. If only for my sake and that of the unborn child: think about how much you love him. Without you, my son is likely to be ruined. He has always been slow to settle, and I fear that you will tip him over the edge when you could just as clearly save him. I know it.
I know my son. He has never loved any woman as much; I have never seen him so besotted. He merely needs a little time to work the waywardness out of his system.
Although I don’t wish to make excuses for him. Only to beg that you allow him a final chance to commit.
He has, I admit, made yet another mistake. One of consequence. Yet he has come clean, has found the humility to confess to you, and apologise. Won’t you be big enough, once again, to forgive him?
Please. Do not abandon him. The two of you can make it work.
And, Nora, you know that love is never easy, especially for the woman. Men are very weak. It is the woman who must be strong. You are strong, determined. I have seen this quality in you already. I admire it, and trust it will be the making of the relationship between you and Mark.
With my fondest wishes,
Felicity
Halley felt breathless, unsure about what she’d discovered. Had to tell Jen.
You can hardly blame Mommy, she said quietly to her sister, I think she wanted to believe in something, even if it was only herself.
Hatbox upon hatbox containing Nora’s creations teetered on high atop the wardrobe. Page upon page of memorable photographs, from before, show Nora wearing her various hats, the neck held erect, finery displayed to elegant advantage.
A newspaper cutting firmly creased across the paper waist: the Mayor’s Garden Party in Bloemfontein. ‘Mej. Nora Hoare was gister op die tuinparty geklee in ’n rooskleurige geëmbosseerde nylon-tabberd, waarby sy ’n grootrandhoed van dieselfde kleur gedra het. Haar lang handskoene, handsak en skoene was wit.’
You didn’t know all what it said, but your mother looked beautiful, all blossomy and poised.
On the reverse of the cutting was part of an advertisement, a line drawing, severed by scissors. A telescope on a tripod, the long length rudely abbreviated, but still putatively trained towards the missing skies. A speechless, cryptic glimpse of something gone.
So, Halley thought, her name came out of her mother’s hat. If so, which one?
The nesting black osprey. The felted grey cloche. The black, beaded, shot-silk with seductive half net and mounted feather hackle. The swirled, pale pink ostrich feather cap, like a marshmallow dusted with shredded coconut . . . ?
A very odd practice, whichever one it was, Halley thought. Hatable.
Though come to think of it, maybe there were valid reasons for pulling a name from a hat, when you recalled that using other, more conventional methods Nana had come up with Matthew, Mark and Luke, for her three close-born sons, meaning that she must always, surely, have had the feeling that another, final son had failed to arrive; that a boy called John had gone missing, lost somewhere along the way. And then it’s her beloved, long-awaited daughter who goes, tipping the already precarious family balance into a mess of predictable men.
And how the established gospel of words meant that the fourth, empty place could never be properly filled, Halley thought, even if vivacious Norma had lived.
The hat trick. Halley teased it out, trying to tame the Medusa head of history; how to understand the trick with the hat. What did it mean?
Okay, so your ageing mother draws your baby daughter’s name from inside your wife’s smart hat.
Or, your hopeful mother-in-law pulls her puny granddaughter’s name from inside your empty hat.
Or, your aged grandmother finds your first name inside your mother’s old hat.
All of which are the same thing, it appears, the selfsame people and the very same cocked hat; the singular, unlikely name. Though the words make it seem impossible.
Halley knows about names. That some are more powerful than others, and that it isn’t always possible, or advisable, to name a thing as it’s commonly called, because this could mean trouble.
So he was never Daddy, but Your Father, and always with the slippery slope of italics. And because you were a girl, you had a koekie (and you must never smirk when offered a delicious, juicy koeksister). Children went for a tinkle, or did a jobbie, though grown-ups just went to the toilet without having to say, nothing about number one or number two. Except Nana, who always went to spend a penny, even at home, where you didn’t have to put the money in the slot. Also, you were to say excuse me if you made a poepiddy-poep. Which was a fart, though to say so was vulgar. And there was no need for even the silliness of willie in a family of females, forget about the other names, which were even worse words, and then no backchat you just had to eat soap.
But a name like Halley! This was a terrible punishment; plain stupid, really, and fit only for a complete ninny. So it didn’t fit her at all.
Halley had heard how in the birth register her father had meant to write ‘Hayley’ after Mills, but that he’d made a mess. For which he went on to blame his wife. Firstly, back when he’d admitted that the fresh-faced, girlish little blonde appealed to him, Nora wouldn’t leave off, always teasing and toying, harping on with words.
Hayley Mills! Oh really, she goaded her husband, And since when? So Miss Pollyanna appealed to you, did she? She what, Mr Murphy, pleaded with you? Said Kiss me, Mark, I beg you? And wouldn’t you just love that to be true, lover boy, another pretty one falling helpless into your arms!
After