The Hat Shop on the Corner (29 page)

Ellie was busy in the back working on Erin O’Donovan’s blue goose-feather hat when she heard the shop bell ring. She tucked a few pins into the circle of crêpe and smoothed the blue snippets of feather off her clothes and lap. There must be a customer, she thought as she went to the front. She stopped. The boy was standing there. He’d been watching the place for a day or two from a vantage point across the street. Casing the joint more likely, thought Ellie, preparing to rob her cash or steal her stock. She was lucky she’d heard him sneak in, and her eyes involuntarily flew to the grey steel cash box that lay hidden under the counter.

She wouldn’t give in without a fight, she decided. She wasn’t scared of him.

‘Mrs . . .’

She took a breath. Here it came: the threat, the demand. Funny, he looked a lot younger up close. He might only be twelve or thirteen, his skinny face covered in freckles, his mousy hair standing on end.

‘Mrs?’

‘Yes?’ She tried to appear nonchalant, as if she was used to young thugs coming into her shop every day of the week.

‘Mrs, I want to buy a hat.’

Ellie stopped. Had she misheard him or had he actually said he wanted to buy a hat? Purchase one of her creations? She must have misheard. Perhaps he was trying to trick her, put her off her guard. Send her in the back for something while he made off with her stock or the takings, or both. Kids like him could run as fast as hell.

‘I want to buy a hat,’ he said, more determined. ‘A special hat for someone.’

Ellie was taken aback. He sounded genuine.

‘I have some money,’ he offered.

She shook herself. He was a customer, after all, in search of one of her creations; age and size and the fact that he was a mere schoolboy should not come into it.

‘Have you seen one that you would like?’

The boy shook his head. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘This hat has got to be made special.’

Ellie’s eyes widened. ‘It might work out quite expensive,’ she said gently.

He stood there, still undeterred. ‘That’s all right.’

She watched as he stuffed his hands in his pockets, his feet shuffling in his trainers. Poor kid. Maybe it was a dare!

‘What kind of hat were you looking for?’

‘I dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘Something big and beautiful, with flowers and all kinds of things on it.’

Ellie wondered was he being serious. ‘Do you mind me asking who this hat is for?’

‘For my granny.’

‘Well, maybe your grandmother could come in here herself and choose a hat,’ suggested Ellie, proffering one of the fancy new cards that had been designed for her.

‘No, she can’t,’ he said firmly. ‘Anyways it’s a surprise for her birthday.’

Ellie was taken aback by his determination.

‘I want a hat like that.’

He was pointing to a broad-brimmed up-brim with a simple wide bandeau of lemon round it.

‘But with all kinds of things on it.’

‘What kind of things?’ Ellie asked, suddenly curious.

‘Things that are special to my gran.’

He suddenly brandished an old sepia photo at her. It was of a young woman wearing a broad-brimmed hat trimmed with roses and ribbon, her dark eyes laughing, her head thrown back, relaxed.

‘What a lovely photograph!’

‘My gran likes hats,’ he said, serious. ‘And she likes all kinds of things.’

Perhaps he was genuine and she could let him have a simple base hat with a few artificial flowers to satisfy him.

‘Hold on a second.’

She darted in the back and rummaged around. There must be one somewhere. She found it and plucked a handful of roses and leaf stems made of nylon, which could easily be mounted on a piece of pale pink ribbon. She’d show him. Her fingers flew as she attached them lightly with pins. There, done. She carried it out.

‘What about this?’ she said, placing it on the hatstand on the counter.

He couldn’t mask the disappointment in his young face.

‘Would your grandmother like this?’

‘No. That’s not it at all. It’s got to be a big hat with all the things my granny cares about on it.’

Ellie was intrigued.

‘I made a list.’

The list was on a folded sheet of school copy-book paper.

‘My granny will be a hundred years old next month,’ he said proudly. ‘So it has to be the best present in the world. My mam says she already has everything she needs, but she’s always loved hats so I thought I might get her a new one.’

‘She’s a hundred years old?’

‘Yeah. She lives in the Charlemont Home. They look after her real well because sometimes she forgets things,’ he confided, ‘but a hat like that might remind her of all the special days in her life. Help her remember.’

Ellie peered at the scrawly writing. He’d jotted down Lillian’s name and age, address, date of her wedding and details of her family. It was a start but it wasn’t enough to document a rich life well lived.

Pulling up the stool from behind the counter, she asked Tommy to sit down for she needed him to tell her more about Lillian Butler, his grandmother.

Later, sitting in the shop and trying to think of a design that would suit such a hat, she laughed to herself. Kim would kill her. This went against all her concepts of a business catering for stylish well-heeled customers. Other designers had privileged customers and wealthy socialites clamouring for their services, while she had a kid determined to buy the best for his centenarian grandmother. It was some challenge.

             

One hundred years, all put together in a hat. A special Memory Hat. That would be the best birthday present ever, thought Tommy, as he got ready for school.

Finding out all the things that were important to his grandmother over so many years and piecing them together to make the hat would be a bit like playing detective, he thought. He took the small spelling notepad from his schoolbag and began to make notes.

Nine children. That was something no one would ever forget. Tommy wrote down his dad’s name and those of all his uncles and aunties. Then there were the grandchildren. Last count there were thirty-seven of them. Now of course there were the great-grandchildren, including his sister’s new baby, Dara, which made it twelve so far. Massive. Granny and Grandad Butler had started a dynasty. Before you knew it, half of Dublin would be part of their family. It gave him a warm feeling just thinking about it.

He had pocket money due and if he helped the old lad with cutting the grass for the next few weeks, he could probably earn another few euros to add to his hat kitty. Before you could say ‘Tommy Butler’ he would have the amount needed to pay for the fancy designer hat his grandmother deserved.

He could see the hat in his mind. The only trouble was deciding what to put on it, like the nice lady in the shop had said. Everything had to be just right. This hat was going to be hard work but for once it was something he didn’t mind. He would have to get cracking if he wanted it ready in time as his mam and dad had already started sending out the invitations for Granny’s big party.

He would search through the family photo albums to get some clues about his grandmother’s life. Auntie Paula, his dad’s sister, was usually good for stories and remembered everything. He’d call on her. She’d never married and had no children and loved to get visitors, especially her nieces and nephews, whom she doted on.

Auntie Paula was surprised to see him and made him sit down for a bacon and sausage sandwich and a cup of tea the minute he arrived.

‘Just about to have one myself,’ she assured him, as she fussed around the kitchen of her red-bricked two-up two-down near the canal. She was wearing a pair of baggy trousers and an old cricket jumper, her plump figure moving around the small kitchen as the smell of rashers filled the air.

Tommy hadn’t realized how hungry he was after a day’s lessons. He wolfed down the tomato-sauce-smothered snack as his auntie poured out the tea.

‘That’s what I like to see, a good appetite,’ beamed Paula Butler. ‘After all, you are a growing boy and need to keep your strength up for studying.’

Tommy blushed. He wasn’t exactly doing well in the studying department and was struggling with maths and science. Mr McHugh, his teacher, had suggested him going for extra help after school but it clashed with his football training. He couldn’t miss football! He wanted to be a footballer when he grew up so training was more important than a hundred maths lessons in his eyes. He found himself telling his aunt, who nodded sagely.

‘None of the Butlers were known for their mathematical abilities, Tommy,’ she admitted. ‘You just do your best. But maybe that teacher of yours is right – a little bit of extra help might make a difference.’

With very little prompting his aunt soon launched into an account of her own childhood days and going to school. He constantly interrupted her with questions about his grandmother, which she was delighted to answer as Tommy scribbled in his notebook.

Dermot McHugh looked down at the class of twenty-four boys, knowing in his heart that like himself they were counting the minutes till the bell sounded that would herald the end of the school day. He had spent the past hour trying to instil some sense of the importance of the Land League in two dozen uncaring minds. He had observed them fiddle and shift and doodle and chew gum and secretly read the sports pages of the tabloid newspapers as he rolled out dates and times and places and the significance of their fellow countrymen’s secret rebellion against the British landlords.

He could jolt them into shocked attention by announcing that there would be a sudden test on the subject in the ten o’clock history class next morning, but knew he wouldn’t have the heart to mark all their papers. Most likely they would mirror exactly what was written in their history textbook. The class swot, Oscar O’Flynn, would hand him immaculate pages of perfect script worthy of a Trinity history scholar, while the rest would as usual do their worst! How had he ended up here trying to teach boys about the past, when it was clear all they were interested in was the future and getting released from school? He had always meant teaching to be a temporary position, something to do until a more interesting and fulfilling career had turned up, and yet here he was, twenty-six years later, languishing in the depths of St Peter’s Boys’ School. His own classroom, his own pigeon hole in the staff room and the after-school responsibility of running the Chess Club. He blinked behind his glasses.

If he hadn’t met and married Laura O’Leary after a whirlwind eight-month courtship his life would be very different now. He wouldn’t change loving Laura, or having his two kids, it was just that he had got weighed down with the responsibilities of being a family man much earlier than he had ever expected. His son Aongus sent him a weekly email from Australia: Perth, Ayers Rock, Sydney. The emails kept coming, telling him of his son’s wild adventures as he backpacked around the country.

‘Isn’t it wonderful to see the young enjoying themselves,’ his wife kept telling him as she organized their regular summer trip to Kerry. ‘I’m so proud of Aongus, going off adventuring and seeing the world.’

The adventuring was expensive and Dermot was carrying the extra few-thousand-euro debt on his own overdraft, his son promising to pay him back on his return to Dublin.

The class were shuffling. Pretending to concentrate, waiting to see if he was going to load them with homework. He was tempted to disrupt their night’s DVD and TV watching with a six-page essay but good sense prevailed.

‘Just read over the next chapter in your books, boys,’ he said as the class finished.

He was definitely going soft in the head, old age creeping up on him, he thought, as he watched them grin and nudge and holler to each other, pushing and shoving through the wooden door. The classroom emptied quickly as he tidied his notes and books.

‘Excuse me, sir. I wondered if I could ask you something.’

Tommy Butler stood in front of him. The Butler boy was one of those who usually frequented the back row of the classroom and contributed little or nothing unless it was disruption, so to find him still there minutes after the last class of the day had finished was unusual.