Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (21 page)

Nicanora was still staring at the letter when Nena burst into the house later that morning, breathless with excitement, saying that there was a meeting in the plaza because Don Bosco had disappeared. Nicanora had still not been able to bring herself to read the note, and instead she handed it to Nena. If the words it contained came from her young daughter's mouth, she felt they might somehow be easier to swallow.

‘Please read it to me,' she said, not able to meet Nena's eyes.

‘Who's it from?' Nena asked.

‘Never you mind,' Nicanora snapped and then, realising that Nena was about to find out anyway, said, ‘Don Bosco.'

Nena drew in a deep breath.

‘And he hasn't disappeared,' Nicanora added. ‘He's just gone away for a few days. So don't you start spreading silly rumours.'

‘It's not me,' Nena said, ‘it's what everyone is saying. That's why they're having a meeting.'

‘You'd better read it to me, then,' Nicanora said.

‘“My dearest Nicanora,”' Nena began. ‘Why does he call you “dearest”?'

‘Nena.'

‘“I would like to thank you, from the depths of my heart,”' Nena continued, ‘“for lifting the blanket under which I have buried my
head for so many years. That I am a silly old fool, will, I am sure, come as news to nobody but myself.”'

‘I don't think he's silly,' Nena said. ‘I think he's nice.' The look on her mother's face made her continue.

‘“There are many things that I would like to have done with my life, for most it is now too late. I realise that you were right. Barbers are not very interesting people. So I have decided it is time that I took a journey to see something of the world before I die. I think your suggestion to turn my little establishment into a hat shop is an excellent one.”'

‘Hat shop? You're going to turn the barber's into a hat shop?'

‘Nena,' Nicanora said sternly, ‘will you please just get to the end. Where has he gone?'

‘He doesn't say.'

‘“I have been needing a new hat myself for some years now,”' Nena continued, unconsciously mimicking Don Bosco's voice, ‘“but have never had the time to make my way to Puerta de la Coruña to buy one. I have noticed that few people wear hats here, and when they do they are generally a battered and sorry sight. A hat shop will be of far more use than a barber's. I have left the key for you under the orange brick by the back door. I have always admired the way you have followed your heart (even when I have thought it has led you in the wrong direction). I am now following mine for the first time in my life. I hope you enjoy the little shop. It has made me contented for some years, and now I find it does not. Please take care of yourself. Your loving friend, as ever, Pepito.”'

‘“
Loving friend
,”' Nena said, her eyes wide with amazement at what she had just read. ‘Why does he say that? Why has he gone away? Why has he given you his shop? Where are you going to get hats from?'

‘Nena, that's enough,' Nicanora said. ‘I can't listen to all your silly questions and think straight at the same time. You mustn't breathe a word of this to anyone. Do you promise me?'

‘But why has he given you the key to his shop?' Then, suddenly piecing the possibilities together, she said, ‘Oh no, is he in love with you? Has he kissed you?'

‘Nena, that's enough,' Nicanora said, trying not to let tears well in her eyes. Then, taking Nena by the hand she left the house to see what trouble was brewing in the plaza.

The mayor had left home that morning in an unusually ebullient mood. The source of his good humour was a sound night's sleep in his own bed, with his wife, for the first time in weeks. What was more, he was convinced that when he returned that evening there would be no trace of his sister-in-law, Doña Lucia, anywhere in the house.

‘She's like an overfed rat, infecting my wife with her rancid gossip,' the mayor confided to Ramon, ‘lying there in my guest room like a great big cow that can't find its way home. Eating my food and getting fatter by the day.'

Ramon, not being a married man, was not used to being consulted on such affairs. He squirmed at this intimacy from his patron, before asking, ‘Is there anything that you would like me to do about it, señor?'

‘You can see if that bloody doctor has any poison,' the mayor replied. Ramon duly noted it on his ‘To do' list.

Ever since the mayor's return from his disastrous meeting with the district officer and his stay in Rosas Pampas, his wife had refused
him entry to the ‘marital suite', as she now liked to call the bedroom, putting an emphasis on the word marital. Doña Lucia, who had supposedly only been staying for a few weeks during the mayor's absence, had taken up permanent residence in the guest quarters. The mayor had been reduced to sleeping in the sitting room, on an old chaise longue, a wedding present from his great-aunt, Doña Teresa.

‘It's the only remaining trace of our family's European pedigree,' she had told him as she forced him to take away the hideous piece of furniture, ‘since your father married that filthy
mestizo
whore.'

Doña Lucia was clearly relishing her status as her sister's confidante and marriage adviser, almost as much as she was enjoying the obvious discomfort it brought her brother-in-law. She prided herself on her skills as a solver of all problems marital, making a modest income from her activities as the town's matchmaker. On Lucia's advice, Gloria was now refusing to speak a word to her husband and was directing all communication through her sister.

‘Her heart is in pieces,' Lucia confided to the mayor one evening, over dinner.

‘I still don't know what I'm supposed to have done,' he replied.

‘Rodriguez, we women are complicated creatures,' Lucia said confidentially. ‘I'm afraid she has lost her faith. She is grieving for what you once were. You'll have to win back her trust.'

‘Well, if she won't let me into the bedroom, how am I supposed to do that?' he asked, genuinely confused.

‘Oh, Rodriguez,' Lucia replied with a hint of the coquette in her voice, ‘you'll have to try harder than that.'

On Lucia's advice, Gloria had been boycotting the dining room for a week and was living off sandwiches and titbits brought to her room by her sister. Seeing that the strategy did not seem to
have brought about contrition from her husband, Gloria was desperately searching for a way out of the corner into which she had locked herself. In her self-imposed isolation, doubts about her sister's motives were starting to take hold. Gloria was beginning to feel that Lucia had manipulated her into this situation, and that Lucia now had free rein over the house. Gloria could not help feeling that she was the one being punished, banished to the bedroom while Lucia dined with
her
husband, at
her
table, in
her
house. In her darkest moments, Gloria was beginning to face a deep, painful and unspoken suspicion about Lucia's fidelity with her husband, which she was struggling to deny to herself. The subtle hints that Lucia had dropped recently tormented and tantalised Gloria, fuelling her dark moods. Yet, until now, she had never allowed herself to confront the possibility of this greatest betrayal of all, and she could not quite bring herself to believe it. She was desperate for her husband to do something to prove to her that her suspicions could not be true. Above all, she wanted him to make Lucia leave the house, as soon as possible.

‘You've been so kind to me,' Gloria said to her sister. ‘But I have started to wonder whether he has suffered long enough.'

‘Never forget what he has done to you,' Lucia replied. ‘Remember, he was seen with those two young women at that guest house in Rosas Pampas. And he hasn't even said sorry about it yet. Your dignity is at stake.' And with these words from Lucia the terrible stab of doubt pierced Gloria's heart again.

‘But, Lucia,' she said, trying to find a defence for her husband's behaviour, ‘you know he had to stay there all that time because he was suffering from a bout of the swamp fever. He couldn't even get out of bed.'

‘I'm sure he couldn't, swamp fever, and the company of two young sluts,' Lucia said.

‘Oh, but Lucia,' Gloria protested, ‘we have no proof of that. It's just malicious gossip. Who could possibly have seen him there?'

‘Even the trees have eyes,' was all Lucia would say on the topic.

With the thoughts of the previous night in his mind, the mayor gazed at the mounds of paperwork on his desk, sat back in his chair and smiled to himself. His strategy to win back his wife's affections had been executed with precision. He had resisted the urge to simply throw Lucia's belongings out into street and demand that Gloria stop all her nonsense, unlock the door and let him back into the bedroom. Lucia's influence had taken too firm a hold over his wife in his absence and he feared that unless he handled the situation with care, he might never have the house to himself again. It was imperative that Gloria should be the one to ask Lucia to leave.

Unbeknown to Lucia, in the past few days he had started delivering little breakfast trays to his wife. Setting them on the floor outside the bedroom, he pushed love notes under the door to alert Gloria to their presence. The previous night, having built up the anticipation, he had made his approach. He had ensured that Lucia was dead to the world by slipping some sleeping pills into the evening cocoa taken to her by the maid. He then sat outside the bedroom and started whispering soft lovelorn murmurings at the door.

‘Are you there, my tender little peach?' he sang.

Gloria, who was sitting up in bed filing her nails at the time, at first thought she was hearing things, perhaps mice in the wardrobe.
Over their long and tempestuous marriage, her husband had called her many things, but a tender little peach had never been one of them. She decided she would make a visit to the handsome doctor that Lucia had told her about, to have her ears looked at. The singing continued. She got up and moved towards the door.

‘My darling, my sweetheart. I can't bear this any longer, I'm aching all over with my devotion to you,' the voice continued. Gloria put her ear closer to the door as her husband's eulogy floated into the room.

‘My darling, I'm wasting away. Please let me in and let me hold you close to me again, my soft little flower blossom.' Gloria felt a tear well up in her eye.

‘My love,' he continued, holding his aching back as he crouched by the door. ‘I know I've been a bad husband at times and a foolish man, but I'm falling apart.'

He tried to move into a more comfortable position. As he did so, a muscle in his back, which had been slowly tightening after weeks of sleeping on his European ancestry, went ping. He slumped to the floor in agony. With no warning, he started to sob. He had no idea where the sobs had come from. He hadn't even known that they had been bubbling in his heart, waiting to break out. Perhaps they were the result of the sudden pain in his back, perhaps of the growing tension he had been living under since his return home, or perhaps of the realisation that his life and marriage were a total disappointment to everyone involved.

He had married Gloria on a whim. He had not wanted to marry at all, especially not at the age of nineteen. Doña Teresa had tricked him into it with creatively vindictive flair, to ensure that he would never leave the town. He had been brought up in the small but elegant coastal town of Manola, several weeks' journey down river
from the swamp in which he had languished for his adult life. His family had had high hopes for the young Rodriguez, the only boy out of their six children. His father, a respected lawyer, had devoted his life to establishing the family reputation in a town in which they were still considered to be relative newcomers, having lived there for only two generations. After many years of attending the right functions, wining and dining the appropriate people and having the most influential clients on his lists, he finally won his reward and was voted mayor, a position he had coveted.