Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop (4 page)

After six months of hard labour, she had gathered enough money to buy two single tickets to Manola, from where she understood they could sail to anywhere in the world. When she presented the money to Francisco, she lied as to how she had come by it, so as not to make him feel he had failed. She told him that a wealthy elderly patron whose house she had been cleaning had died suddenly, and that his family had given it to her as a thank-you gift. She was surprised at how readily he accepted the unlikely story. They celebrated their good fortune with a feast of roast chicken, throwing liberal quantities of beer on the ground to thank the Mother Earth for her help along the way. The next day Francisco
went out proudly with the money in his pockets to buy the tickets, and did not return for three days.

Nicanora had not told Francisco about the bouts of sickness that she had been having for a few months, which at first she put down to the stench of the busy streets. The monthly bleeding, which initially she was relieved to be without, showed no signs of returning. Despite there being scarcely any food in the house, a growing belly had begun to accompany the sickness. She wanted to keep her condition a secret from Francisco until she had saved enough money to buy the tickets, worried that the thought of the added responsibility of a baby would put him off leaving for ever. She convinced herself that she could quite as easily look after a child on a boat as she could in a dingy little rented room. He only commented on how life in Puerta de la Coruña must be agreeing with her as she was looking fatter than ever. When Francisco returned home after his three-day absence, he came carrying a handful of coloured stones and a pocketful of foreign coins, offering no explanation for his disappearance.

‘And the tickets?' she said expectantly.

‘I bought them,' he said, unable to meet her eye. ‘I did buy them.'

‘Well, where are they?' she asked, thinking he was playing a cruel game in which she momentarily saw all hope disappear before he finally produced the promise from his pockets. It was no game. It was the start of her life's disappointments.

‘I lost them,' he said.

‘Lost them?' she repeated. ‘How could you lose them?'

‘I just did. In a game. It was a chance, a chance to win us the tickets around the world.'

‘You gambled them?'

‘It was a good bet. I knew I could win. I had already won these,'
and with a sheepish grin he put the stones and coins down on the table in front of her. ‘They told me I could sell them. They're rare gemstones – look at the colour. Have you ever seen stones that colour before?'

Nicanora picked them up, green and blue flakes of paint peeling off as she turned them over in her hands. She had never felt rage like it before, not even when conversing with her ancestors. She threw the stones on the floor and flew at him. She grabbed him by the shirt and shook him. She reached for his hair, trying to pull it out by the roots. She slapped his face and then sank down, sick and exhausted.

‘We'll try again,' he said, still unable to look at her. ‘I'll get the tickets. It'll be all right, I promise.' Then he left the room and disappeared for a week.

Nicanora was determined not to give up. She could not face the shame of returning to Valle de la Virgen with a child and no husband, to be chastised by her mother and neighbours for having failed so easily. And she could not face looking every day into the eyes of the man whose feelings she had so carelessly dismissed. She made up her mind that whatever it took she would save enough money to buy the tickets to transport them to a world of hope. For the next three years, Nicanora sat on the streets selling her weavings while Francisco drank, gambled their money away and filled her belly every year with another child. It was during this time that the idea of the hat shop first came to her. She had seen the groups of mountain women who made their way down the treacherous pass for an opportunity to sell their produce in the markets of
Puerta de la Coruña, their bowler hats perched meticulously on their heads. She remembered how, as a child, her mother would tell her stories about life in the mountain village from which her ancestors came, and in particular how she would lament the poor standards of dress in the swamp town to which her husband had brought her. ‘In the village where I was born,' her mother would say, ‘no self-respecting woman would dream of stepping outside without her smart black bowler on her head.' Or she would click her tongue after her neighbour had walked past bare-headed and mutter: ‘Where I come from you could tell the sort of woman your neighbour was by the state of her hat.'

Nicanora would challenge her mother as to why she had let her own standards drop so low and had abandoned her precious bowler. Her mother would simply reply, ‘It doesn't do to stand out from the neighbours. I don't want them killing me with their envy.' It was true. Nicanora had never seen anyone wearing a hat in Valle de la Virgen, with the exception of Don Bosco, who always wore a smart black trilby sent to him by his brother Aurelio to go with his Sunday suit. Don Bosco would not walk out without it, even on the most stiflingly humid days. ‘It stops the mosquitoes biting my head and stealing my thoughts,' he explained to Nicanora as the sweat dripped off his face during their Sunday strolls.

For many months now Nicanora's daydreams had been drifting unchecked back to the safety of her hometown. No longer did she wish to be transported to foreign parts and exotic locations. She craved the comfort of her mother's house, and with a regret that was too painful for her to acknowledge, she thought of how one day she might still set up her business in the plaza, selling her shawls, if she could bring herself to look humiliation and sadness in the face.

Her decision was made the day a travelling salesman stopped by her roadside stall. He stood for a long time looking at her woven shawls, touching them gently, running his fingers over the fine fabric of the weave. At last he spoke to her.

‘You're very clever,' he said, ‘these designs are works of art. Where did you learn how to do them?' Nicanora, at first thinking he was making fun of her, did not answer.

‘They really are beautiful,' he said again. ‘I'd like them for my shop. The colours and patterns are exquisite. But I'm afraid I would never be able sell them to the ladies in the city. These are peasant clothes.'

‘So what do the women in the city wear?' Nicanora asked, feeling both indignant and deflated. The man pulled some pictures out of his pocket. The photos were of women in glittering jewellery and elegantly laced skirts, and all wearing the most glorious hats. She could not take her eyes off them. She ran her fingers over them as if trying to conjure the hats out of the photographs and into the reality of her world. She imagined herself returning home in one to prove to the townsfolk and above all to her mother, that despite what they thought of her she had made something of her life, and that she could dress like a glamorous city woman.

The man stood quietly observing her. ‘Would you like one?' he asked finally. ‘I have one here in my bag. I will give it to you in exchange for your shawls.' He bent down to undo his travelling case and pulled out a pink box. It contained the most exquisite hat Nicanora had ever seen. It had a soft, delicate sheen that subtly changed colour in the light, transforming itself through shades of pink and blue. It was trimmed with a lace that looked as if it had been woven from diamonds. Nicanora could not bring herself to touch it.

‘It's yours,' the man said at last, coaxing her. ‘I could sell it for a
fortune. It comes all the way from Europe, handmade in Italy. You can have it in exchange for all the weavings you have.' Nicanora knew, in that moment, that destiny had tapped her on the shoulder.

Her mind was now made up. She could no longer stand the squalor and disappointment of her life in a single rented room with only Francisco's lies to support her and the children. She would face her mother and anyone else in Valle de la Virgen who might wish to judge her. She no longer felt she had to hide from the man whose goodness she had spurned and whose hopes she had destroyed. She knew who she was and what she was worth and it was far more than the life she was living now. In a moment of inspiration she knew where her destiny lay. She would bring joy and elegance to her hometown. She would save every penny she earned, and one day soon she would open Valle de la Virgen's first ever hat shop, and this was the jewel in her collection.

She rushed home and gathered the results of her hard labour and handed them over to the man in exchange for the pink box. He tipped his hat to her as he departed and wished her a life full of surprises. She packed a small bag, and with the precious hatbox in her hand, a baby on her back and her children beside her, she made her way home for good. It was only when she arrived at her mother's house, beaten and worn after three weeks' travelling and with sick children to nurse back to health, that she realised she had been cheated. She had tentatively peered inside the box, but it was wrapped so beautifully in soft pink tissue paper and tied with ribbon that she wanted to leave it in its pristine state until she presented it to her mother. When she finally opened the box to reveal to her mother the woman she had become, she found a plain straw hat on which sat a bright pink plastic rose. It was the only possession she had to show for her three years' toil on the streets of Puerta de la Coruña.

Several months later, Francisco arrived back from one of his many long absences wandering the area in search of profitable work to find another miserable and hungry family living in their rented room. It took him several hours to recognise that the sleeping children were not his own. It was only when their mother returned home and pleaded with him not to hurt them that he realised they were strangers and that his family had disappeared.

Nicanora put her mind to feeding the rapidly growing appetites of her children. She continued to weave her shawls, which she hawked around the surrounding villages, but nobody ever again picked them up with such tenderness and appreciation as the man who had shown her that perfection could exist in a single object. She set up a small stall selling fruit and cooked food for the men who passed through the market on their way to and from the estate and their small plots of land. The money she earned was barely enough to pay for the food to feed her family. Her dream and the straw hat were safely locked away – alongside her cherished hopes for her children – in a mental box marked ‘Life's unfulfilled promises'.

She saw Francisco only one more time. He arrived suddenly one night at her mother's house some years later wearing a smart suit, and regaled a wiser Nicanora with stories of how he was on the brink of making his fortune from his endeavours in gold prospecting, pig farming, matchmaking and storytelling. She listened to him with no more interest than she had listened to her mother's warnings in her youth. He stayed for one last night, a night in which some of the passion of their first few months together was rekindled for old times' sake, and then disappeared the next day
promising to return with the money to change his family's destiny. Nicanora sensed that she would not see him again. She did not expect, however, that his body would be found three days later splattered at the foot of the cliff. He had been seen the day he left by one of the townsfolk, who had passed him stumbling drunkenly near the cliff edge, shouting about the great future he was about to give his wife and children. He left one lasting reminder of his visit. Nine months later Nena was born. As Nicanora stared into the eyes of her freshly delivered bloodstained daughter, she knew that Francisco had on his final journey been able to leave her with the most precious gift possible.