| NOT STRICTLY A HAT
by Kate Thurlow
‘This is it, this is definitely the one’. Pat was jumping
up and down, her hand outstretched, waving the hat in the air. The few
other customers in the shop took little notice; we had already played
the same scene several times. Even I barely glanced at the item clutched
in Pat’s hand. She shook it more fervently, ‘No look, look,
Christie it really is, I’ve found it’. I moved away from the
racks of old straw hats, boaters, panamas, where I’d been rummaging,
pulling out one hopeful after another, then sighing with disappointment.
As I stepped towards her my heart tipped; the hat she held did look like
the one we were searching for - but I didn’t want to allow myself
to believe it, not yet.
‘Let me see’. Pat held her find out to me, her face alight
with triumph.
‘It is the same, Christie, it is’. I took the hat and immediately
memories were nudged into view. I turned it around in my hand, examining
it, scrutinising the detail, their was something so familiar about it,
the feel of the white weather-beaten, finely plaited straw, now yellowed
by time, its shape, its size, even the flowers at the side. But the most
amazing thing was that it had a tear, in the brim, in the exact place.
I could feel the hot prickles, my eyes filling with tears. I looked at
Pat and smiled.
‘Get your photograph out’, Pat urged. I pulled the envelope
from my bag and took out the old black and white picture. Its edges had
become softened over the years, testament to the number of times I had
studied the image. It froze the moment in time when two children sat side
by side on a beach. The sand clung to their small bodies in patches. Each
wore only a pair of shorts and a hat. One, a boy, about five years old,
was staring gravely towards the camera but the slight upturn of his lips
meant this was mock seriousness. His headwear was not strictly a hat,
as he wore a small plastic bucket, the handle of which lay across his
cheeks. The bucket had those battlement pieces cut into the base, promising
the sandcastles would look like real castles; except they never did because
the fragile structures would always crumble, no matter how tentatively
the bucket was lifted. There was a row of determined attempts in the forefront
of the picture, each disintegrating battlement flying a thin paper flag.
The other child, a little girl of about three years, wore a large, adult
sized sun-hat. It was made of very pale, tightly woven, thin straw. A
small cluster of flowers circled the band. The brim was enormous, accentuated
by an extraordinary shallow bowl, and it flopped over the child’s
shoulders and back partially covering her face. A small, frayed tear split
the brim at the front over one of her eyes. It probably would have concealed
her completely if worn directly on top of her head, but the hat was tilted
back. She faced the camera smiling for the picture-taker.
That girl was me. The boy was my brother, Peter. The photograph was all
that I had, that and a vague recollection, thinned and stretched over
the years like old elastic, of an endless summer’s day, of sand
and sunshine, and Peter wearing a bucket on his head. We stared at the
picture together, looking at the hat then back at the photo. The hat that
Pat had found was an exact copy of the one I wore all those summers ago.
‘You have, you’ve found it’, and we hugged each other
and both cried, there in the middle of the curios shop, in the middle
of the High Street, in the middle of a small market town in Norfolk.
It had all been Pat’s idea, trying to find a replica of that summer
hat. I had scoured my own home town, even made a trip to London, before
she had thought of the old secondhand shop in her High Street. It wasn’t
anything more than a glorified junk shop really but the somewhat eccentric
old lady who owned it specialised in collecting hats. Pat knew this but
had buried the fact in the deep recesses of her mind. She only recalled
it when I’d ’phoned her with my tale of failure to find my
special hat. In fact this whole thing has been Pat’s idea, or at
least she voiced what I had long thought of, but she encouraged me, pushed
me onto a track which gradually gathered momentum until it ran so fast
I couldn’t have stopped it, not that I ever would have wanted to.
Peter and I were separated not long after we had been caught in the frame
of that summer’s day. Our parents were killed in a road accident
and lacking any grandparents or willing aunts or uncles we were bundled
off to an orphanage. Sometimes, if I walk into a hospital there is the
same smell, it slips under the surface of my memory, slightly medicinal,
hygienic, making me shiver. My parents had vanished from my life and worse
still there was another cut, the separation of boys and girls, school
children from younger ones. I would see Peter across the huge dining room,
my throat constricting with sadness as our eyes met. All I had of my own
was a love-worn velveteen pony and the photograph. I don’t remember
how I came to have them but my ownership of these two items gave me some
control over my strange surroundings. I clung to them ferociously. After
a few months we were both found new homes, unfortunately not together.
Gradually over the ensuing years we lost touch. We were each adopted by
our foster parents and when our families moved away in different directions
we lost contact completely. I think nowadays it would be different, I
hope so. I never forgot him, although my memory faded with the tricks
of time.
Pat grew up knowing about my lost brother. She was the daughter of my
adoptive parents, so I grew up with a step-sister, someone else by my
side - even so a shadow remained. Together we would conjure up stories
about the boy in the photo, of the adventures we would have if we were
all together. I was always told, quite softly, by the adults in my life
that it would be best to forget him. Well intentioned advice I don’t
doubt but it did nothing to ease the aching loss I carried. Pat and I
are close, always have been, and as time went by and our adult life emerged
we soon became immersed in our own families. Once in awhile Pat would
say,
‘You should try to find him, that brother of yours’, but it
never seemed to be the right time. Then for my fiftieth birthday she gave
me a wonderful surprise. She had been searching for months and had found
Peter. She hadn’t made any direct contact but was certain it was
him. So what could I do but follow her lead? I was so scared, sick and
fluttery all at the same time but I did it. Peter seemed as eager as I
to touch our childhood again and to reach forward together into our present
lives. Cautiously we exchanged emails for a few weeks but it wasn’t
long before we had an easy rhythm to our conversations. We both wanted
to meet and agreed a time and place and that initially we would go alone.
I think we both wished to linger over the taste of the moment.
And it is for this planned reunion that I need my summer hat. Peter, I
discovered, has a copy of the same photograph. I wanted to wear a hat
as nearly identical to the one in the picture as I could. I’d told
him he will be able to recognise me by my hat. We had sent pictures of
ourselves by computer but as I am not proficient in either attaching or
downloading images neither of us has a current likeness to go by.
Now here I am at the agreed station, at the selected café. I am
early. I want to be settled so I can watch his arrival. I am wearing the
ridiculous hat but I don’t care what anyone may think. I am so excited
I have to remind myself to breathe. Peter knows I’ll be wearing
my hat - he’ll find me. So here I sit, a cold cup of coffee beside
me. I have forgotten to drink it.
A train has just come in. Peering through the crowds I think I see him.
Anyway there is a man, the right age, striding towards me and in his lapel
is a huge flower arrangement, hideously extravagant. I feel my heart thumping,
pounding in my ears. He is smiling as he gets closer and I can see two
heavy gold chains around his neck which glint only slightly more than
the synthetics in the suit he wears. Slung over his shoulder is a heavy
fur coat. His hair is dyed a brassy black. Not at all how I imagined.
I stand up to greet him, his hand now out stretched towards me. The bones
in my legs seem to vanish as I struggle to move forward - but he passes
me by, he walks on to the table next door and embraces a woman waiting
there.
He is not my Peter. I’m overwhelmed with relief and want to laugh
out loud. I start to settle myself down but become aware of someone behind
me. I turn to see a man standing there grinning beautifully, a grin that
echoes in my mind. A lovely comfortable man in faded jeans and a baggy
sweater, his arms held wide in greeting, sweeping all the years of longing
aside. He is just so familiar, but the confirmation that this man is indeed
my beloved brother, if any is needed, is that he is wearing, on his head,
a small plastic bucket.
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