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ELLEN MURRAY AND HER CRAZY HATS

A short story by Sharon Owens

 

“Ellen? Ellen Murray, is it really you? As I live and breathe, after all these years? Ellen Murray and her crazy hats! Well, well, well, isn’t this one tiny little hell of a town?”

 

Oh no, no, no, she thought. This just cannot be happening. Joseph Patrick Flanagan, back from the dead: she’d know that sexy, sultry voice anywhere. Its deepest notes suggested all kinds of adult bedroom scenarios. Her heart had already started hammering and her skin had instantly drained of all warmth though the bar was crowded and claustrophobic. She badly wanted to hyperventilate. That was just the primitive part of her brain reacting to the shock. The involuntary nervous system, it was called. It was always a few seconds ahead of the rational self. She remembered that useful nugget of information and immediately began to control her breathing. Four seconds in, six seconds out.

 

She couldn’t see his face from under the wide brim of her hat and she couldn’t tilt her head backwards either. She was still paralysed with fright. Somewhere in the dark recesses of her consciousness she could see a handful of pastel-coloured confetti drifting down from the ceiling of a white-painted suburban bedroom. A bundle of tear-stained letters that went unanswered, a brief period of agoraphobia, and finally, a humiliating visit to the local doctor when her mother and father could do nothing further to console her. Don’t dwell on the negative, the doctor had said. Remember the counselling, she told herself. Remember the counselling. Face Joe. Deal with him. All things are passing. Four seconds in, six seconds out.

 

Whoosh! She was back in the present again. The chatter of the other lunchtime diners became a soft murmur in the background. How long had he been standing there? Maybe if she ignored him he would go back where he belonged, twenty years into the distant past? But no, she could see his expensive leather shoes firmly planted side-by-side on the tiles that all Belfast pubs seemed intent on having these days. She yearned for a bit of patterned carpet, she thought suddenly. It used to be a lot quieter in pubs in the old days before the hard floors and the hard furniture made every sound ten times louder. He was still there. She had to meet him again. Otherwise he would think she was mad: Ellen Murray and her crazy hats. She looked up, slowly and reluctantly, into the hazel-flecked eyes of Joe Flanagan and her heart sank like a shiny pebble to the bottom of a garden pond. No, more like a heavy boulder catapulted with huge force into a bottomless well. She could almost hear the dunk-splash! She smiled at him, a strange lopsided smile that went through several awkward stages before it reached something approaching normality.

 

“It is you,” he announced, pleased that he’d been right. “Still the same old Ellen with her crazy hats… Wow, that’s some specimen you got there: pink as bubble-gum candy! Crazy!” He laughed a thick luscious laugh. She laughed too, a small tinkling laugh as fragile as spun sugar. She touched her pink felt hat self-consciously, feeling the big overblown satin roses on the front of it. Her crazy hats: she decorated some of them herself with ribbons and flowers she bought in the market. They were her personal fashion trademark. She felt naked without them. The hats kept the sun, wind and rain out of her turquoise eyes. And that was why she had no wrinkles on her face yet even though she was thirty-eight.

“Yes it’s me, indeed it is. How are you, Joe? Long time, no see, and all that.” Discreetly her eyes searched the room for the young waitress with the dyed-red ponytails and the bottle-green eyeliner. Was it too late to cancel her own lunch-order and flee this dimly-lit gin palace in Queen’s Arcade, with some shred of her dignity intact?

 

“Can I join you?” he asked. “I can’t find a free table. This place is absolutely packed.”

Her heart suddenly remembered what it was there for and started up a hammering beat that she was convinced could be seen under three layers of clothing. Think a happy thought, she told herself. I cannot be happy and upset at the same time, she told herself. She thought of the inside of her sewing-box with its neat rolls of shiny ribbons, long hat-pins and glitter-covered butterflies. She had butterflies in her stomach now, oh dear. Say something, she pleaded with herself. Say you’ve a friend coming along to join you. Say something. But there was no time to say anything; he was already seated beside her and was slipping off his overcoat. He made a great show of folding it properly and draping it neatly over the back of the steel chair. Those raw-looking chairs reminded her of sardine cans and now she felt like a sardine herself, trapped and helpless in a suffocating layer of sunflower oil.

 

Several women at nearby tables in the bar had already noticed Joe and were looking over, wondering who the handsome stranger was. And he was still handsome; there was no doubt about that. She had not seen him for twenty years but time had been kind to Joe. He was tall and broad-shouldered with his dark hair combed back off his forehead, 1950’s style. His clothes were perfectly fitted: a vintage jacket with extra-wide lapels and the shirt collars worn outside the jacket. No tie; and you could see a curl of dark chest hair in the opening of his shirt. That flashy belt buckle was designed to draw the eyes of amorous females to his flat stomach. He always did give a lot of thought to his appearance, she remembered. He wore colours that suited him; brown suede jackets, pale linen suits, shiny leather brogues. Most of the other men in the city wore the same shapeless dark suits or saggy-bottomed jeans year after year. But Joe Flanagan never had the look of a small-town boy about him and as soon as he could, he left Ireland determined to make something of himself. He went to America and left a string of broken hearts behind him. She was only the last one in a very long line.

 

“Are you here alone?” he asked, half smiling at her, half trying to attract the attention of a waiter. He consulted his watch and set a packet of American cigarettes on the table.

“Yes, I was just doing a bit of shopping and I suddenly felt ravenous, and my favourite coffee-shop was full so I came in here. They do the best vegetable broth in the city of Belfast, so I’m told. And the best live music at weekends though I couldn’t vouch for that myself.” She stopped talking then, aware that she was babbling on, just like she had twenty years ago, babbling on and boring him away across the Atlantic. A waitress appeared bearing a big white plate with sloping sides, piled high with deep-fried food and a small bowl of thousand island sauce with chopped pickles sprinkled on the top. And shame of shames, a whole pint of lager. Why had she ordered that anyway? She usually had just a glass of lager. She must have been trying to impress those pie-eyed students at the next table.

 

“You’ve already ordered? Well, you always did like your food!” he said with a twinkle in his eye. Immediately she felt ashamed of her generous portion of scampi and chips and she played with her napkin for a couple of minutes, unfolding it and spreading it across her lap. He told her the food would go cold. He seemed impatient. Was it America did that to him or was he always impatient? She began to squeeze a chunky wedge of lemon over the scampi as if the goodness of the juice might compensate for the crispy frills of golden-brown batter. She’d been looking forward to this treat all week but now that she had an audience she wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. Joe used to tease her about her curvy figure. He liked women that were pencil-thin and glamorous and confident.  They both watched the lemon shed its bittersweet liquid over the garnish of rocket leaves. She reached for the pepper-grinder; anything to avoid having to open her mouth wide enough for one of those king-sized chips. Two more waitresses appeared just then, notepads at the ready. Joe gave them his brightest smile.

 

“Now that’s what I call service,” he laughed, and they laughed too, but neither of them walked away. “I’d like a large steak, please, medium-rare; extra fries, side-order of salad and hold the dressing. I’d like onion rings, grilled tomatoes and potato salad,” he said to the first girl. “And you can fetch me a large Scotch,” he told the second one. “Thanks girls.” He turned to face his companion again and the two young waitresses scurried away giggling to the kitchen. Medium-rare, what the hell was he talking about, she wondered. He lit a cigarette and asked if she minded.

“Go ahead. Well, it’s easy to see you’ve been in America, Joe; the way you order your food. We still say chips here. And you don’t have to say hold the dressing. They ask you if you want dressing.”

“Whatever, it’s probably some bottled junk anyway.”

“We’ve become more cosmopolitan in recent times, Joe. I mean they have pepper-grinders everywhere now and everything.” She gave it another self-conscious twist. “Rock salt too: imagine that.”

“Rock salt: is there any other kind of table salt? Yeah, I’ve lived in New York for the last eight years. Got a little business there; a deli. Before that I worked in a big hotel in Boston. I managed the restaurant; served two thousand meals a day, every day.”

She nodded and sipped her glass of lager, trying to avoid getting a foamy moustache. She was unable to think of a single sensible thing to say. Any normal woman would get up after two minutes, make some excuse about a hair appointment and leave the bar with an air of nonchalance. But she was paralysed with a strange mixture of sadness and rage. He’d broken her heart and he didn’t even know it. Four seconds in, six seconds out. His food was brought to the table and the waitress could hardly make room for Joe’s order. She had to balance some plates on the sides of the other ones.

 

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said to her. “Same again?”

“No thanks, I’m in a bit of a rush,” she said.

“Same again for me then,” he smiled at the pretty waitress with her red ponytails and her slender legs in black cut-offs. He began to eat, slicing several strips off the meat with his knife and fork, and then laying down the knife and using his fork like a shovel, the way Americans did. He ate off all four plates at once. He drank his Scotch in one go.

“You married, Ellen?”

“Yes I am, Joe. I managed to find a man brave enough to take me on.” The cheek of him, she fumed: coming right out with a personal question like that. He was never any different. The things he used to ask me: why won’t you sleep with me? Are you frigid? Are you some kind of religious nut? Are you afraid of having a baby? Haven’t you heard of packets of three?

“What does he do for a living, this husband of yours?”

“He, I mean Michael, he works in the hospital.”

“What is he, a porter, a cook?”

She almost hated him for implying her husband had a lowly position. There was nothing wrong with those types of jobs anyway. What was Joe himself, only a glorified sandwich-boy? He was plain rude and a snob on top of it.

“Michael is a surgeon,” she announced proudly.

“Wow! Straight up! A proper operating-on-sick-people surgeon! You’re kidding me!”

“Why would I do that? He works very hard, Joe. There’s a long waiting list to see him. He’s pioneering a new technique on-”

“-You work yourself, Ellen?”

Ha, she thought: he can’t put my husband down so he’s going to have a go at me. Well, he won’t get any satisfaction there either.”

“Yes I do work, now you mention it: I run my own business making hats.”

“Really; there’s a market for hats in this little town?”

“Belfast is a capital city, Joe. I have quite a few prestigious clients.”

“Capital maybe but Belfast is no city. You want a city, you come to New York.”

So he didn’t want to know about her hats, okay. But why had he bothered coming over to greet her in the first place? Was it just for the empty seat, she wondered? Could he really be that insensitive? When he must have known that she had almost lost her mind over him? Four seconds in, six seconds out.

 

“How is your steak, Joe?”

“It’s fine; a bit too well done, it’s the Irish way.”

He did not speak again until he had finished his meal and she remembered it had been just like this when they were a couple all those years ago. She was always waiting for him to phone, to call to her house, to suggest another date, to reward her with a kiss. The lights in the bar were dimmed further. Someone put on a blues tape and she was grateful for that. It made the silence between them less obvious. She attempted to eat some food, nibbling delicately at it like a mouse.

 

“That wasn’t bad at all,” he said as he wiped his mouth with a napkin and eased back into his chair. Seconds later he was smoking again. “You’re not hungry, Ellen?”

“I am actually,” she said and she put a whole piece of scampi in her mouth, crushing it without mercy. Her cheeks puffed out and grew pink as she chewed. Joe didn’t notice these things. He was eyeing up the other customers, always scouting for a good-looking conquest or a new business opportunity, some things never change, she thought. She ate some chips. They were delicious covered in the newfangled glistening grains of rock salt. She added some vinegar from a pretty glass bottle with an old-fashioned stopper and ate a few more calorie-laden chips. What did Joe care if she ate her lunch or didn’t eat it? Honestly, she deserved to be treated with contempt all those years ago for being such a snivelling doormat. Women, she thought: what utter fools we are. Joe had his second drink and ordered a third.

 

She sat back too and made a huge effort to take control of the situation. She decided to make polite conversation for a few minutes to show him she was not running away from him; to show him she was not still nursing a broken heart. Then she would breeze out casually as if he were just an old acquaintance. They talked about America; the way some New Yorkers hardly ever ate at home.

“People eat out,” Joe said. “Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Americans are always busy, always on the move. Not like in this place, where everybody is still hunched over tea and toast at ten to nine in the morning.”

Well, that wasn’t true for a start, she told him. All the women in Belfast worked too. Few people had the time to sit over breakfast nowadays. But Joe was on a roll.

“Americans don’t waste time peeling potatoes and boiling great lumps of beef for hours and hours. Look at that salad there: only lettuce and tomatoes on it. If I gave that salad to someone in New York they’d laugh in my face. The salads I sell in my deli have fifteen ingredients in them.”

She tried to defend her fellow countrymen and women, saying things had changed and were becoming more modern every day. She told him it was nice to relax in a pub now and not have to worry about unattended packages. Who cared about fifteen ingredients on a salad if they had peace in Belfast?

“People just need to be shown new things,” she said. “Life here is as good as anywhere and better than a lot of places.”

Joe snorted as if there was a piece of fluff up his nose. She struggled on with the conversation.

“It’s good to live in a small city. We don’t have huge crowds. We don’t have the congestion they have in London. There’s plenty of space to move around.”

“And plenty of rain too; does it ever stop?” he asked.

“Only when it snows,” she said and they both laughed. She didn’t want to be defensive, as if she still cared about him and his opinions. She ate another chip. Joe began to talk about the weather in America: sunshine so hot it sometimes killed people in their own homes if they didn’t have air-conditioning, and snow that had to be shovelled from the sidewalks, and bright blue skies that would blind you if you didn’t wear shades. Not like the sky over Ireland that stayed grey for months on end.

 

But she was not listening to his account of New York weather. She was thinking of Michael’s face, of how concerned and gentle and tender he was when she first met him that day in the hospital canteen. Of how he commented that her hat was beautiful; it was the blue velvet one with the embroidered forget-me-not flowers on the rim. He said the hat matched her eyes. She told him she was broken-hearted and that she was feeling overwhelmed by all the turmoil in the city, by all the unemployment. Her boyfriend had left the city to find work in America, she explained. But that was only half-true. He had left her because she was so boring. Michael showed her the way to the counselling rooms and assured her she would be fine in a few months. She was just very sensitive, he said, and she should remember that being sensitive wasn’t a crime.

 

She didn’t want to be sensitive. She’d wanted excitement in those days. And excitement was not something that came in large helpings in the gloomy terrace where she lived. The kind of breathless excitement Joe had provided when he reached inside her blouse after the disco. He wanted her desperately and she wanted him too. She was almost worn out resisting him in the dark alley behind Hogan’s ballroom. She wore a black bra from a cheap boutique. It left red marks on her skin but Joe liked it. She had to hand-wash it every night in the bathroom sink and dry it on her radiator so her mother wouldn’t see it in the laundry basket and start asking awkward questions. And then after three lust-drenched months, just when she was about to give up her virginity and give in to his advances, and give her body to him at last, he stopped calling. Ten days passed without a word from him. She didn’t know his home number as he said his mother didn’t like to be disturbed. When she eventually plucked up the courage to call at his house his mother said he had gone to the States. What? Gone to the States, Mrs Flanagan repeated wearily. America? Yes, America. For a holiday, she asked? No: to find work.  

 

She was devastated, bombed-out, hollowed-out and desolate. She remembered looking at Joe’s mother as if she had never seen her before. Joe hadn’t even told her he’d applied for a permit. He’d just calmly gone to the airport one day, hopped on a plane and left her life smashed into sharp little pieces. She sat in her bedroom after Joe had emigrated, sobbing her heart out into tissues and then toilet paper and then her mother’s best towels with the appliqued sea-shells. She listened to sad love songs on the radio. Only You by Yazoo was guaranteed to bring on torrents of salty tears. Her grandmother came round with some crumbed ham to cheer her up. And two blessed medals to pin on her chest even though she was eighteen years old. She howled into her pillow every night and started buying little boxes of confetti to sprinkle round her bedroom. Then she stopped going out of the house at all. Her bewildered parents trailed her to the health centre to see the doctor. The doctor sent her to the hospital for counselling.

He said she was depressed. He was an understanding man, years ahead of his time. He said he would not prescribe tablets as the end of a teenage romance was not a serious matter, but sometimes it triggered other negative feelings and made the thought-process confused. Her parents were pleased that she wasn’t going to end up in the big house with the little windows. That was what people called the Victorian asylum on the Saintfield Road.

 

And so she tried to pick up the pieces of her life when Joe left. She met Michael for tea several times in the canteen and when the counselling was over he asked her out on a date. They went to the cinema, and then for a walk in the park to admire the tulip display. She liked Michael but her confidence was still very low. She dropped out of college and got a job in a wool shop, spending most of the day counting buttons into plastic tubes. Michael tried to persuade her to go back to college but she told him she was happy in the shop. It was a peaceful little place. Her mother never mentioned the whole episode again once things had settled down. Her father stopped hiding his razor-blades. She would never forgive herself for hurting her parents so much, or herself.

 

No, she reminded herself now: I do forgive myself. I was so young. I had no sense. Most of it was hormonal. It happens to thousands of people. I was not crazy. I was never crazy and I am not crazy now.

“Hey, you’re miles away,” Joe said, lighting another cigarette. She wondered how he could breathe at all with so much smoke hurtling into him.

“Sorry, I was thinking about something,” she said. “Tell me why you’ve come back to Belfast, Joe. Is it a holiday?”

“Business actually: a distant relation of mine died and left me some money. I came back to sort out the paperwork and to see my mother. Haven’t seen her since I left Ireland.” She couldn’t believe he hadn’t visited his mother in all that time. “Have you any kids?” he asked.

“I have three sons all doing well at school, thank God,” she said. “They’re a joy to me.”

“Cool.” He seemed amused she had children. He didn’t ask for their names or to see photographs. Her precious children! Four seconds in, six seconds out.

Oh stuff the breathing exercises, Joe was a jerk. It was time for the counter-attack.

 

“Are you married, Joe?” She hoped that question would wipe the smile off his face, and it did. It was naughty of her to boast about her husband’s career but Joe had brought it on himself, going on about snow and salads as if they were the most important things in the world.

“No, I’m not married, Ellen. I was seeing a swim-wear model for a while but it didn’t work out. You know me, Ellen: I’m a rolling stone.”

She smiled at him. She was thrilled to feel nothing at all for him. His spell did not work on her any more. The counsellor had been right all those years ago. Some things were not as bad as they seemed. Time was a great healer. It was the truth. To think she’d once believed she couldn’t go on living without this poseur by her side! Swim-wear model indeed! And he was fairly throwing that whiskey down his neck. And he was smoking like a train.

That made two Irish habits he hadn’t left behind on the old sod. Could Joe have a drink problem, she wondered? And then she stopped herself from getting involved. Joe was a stranger to her now. He had always been a stranger to her, even when he was pulling her black bra off her shoulders, panting for more.

 

“You own your own home, Ellen? You must do, having married so well?”

Was Joe implying she had married Michael for his money, the toady little creep!

“Yes, Joe: a lovely Georgian mansion on the Malone Road. We restored it ourselves, replaced the original features and papered all the rooms. Our room has red poppies on the walls and a four-poster bed from France that we had shipped home at great expense. Genuine Art Nouveau: an outrageous extravagance.”

“A mansion, you say? Well, well, well.”

“Yes.” Ha, that shut him up.

He can’t boast about his own place or he’d already be telling me about some fancy apartment overlooking the park. Maybe he’s not as wealthy as he looks. He can’t have millions; he wouldn’t have come home for a small Belfast legacy if he had millions. And we’d all know if someone had died and left millions, it’s that kind of place. Well, time to get out of here before he catches me out in one of my lies. She stood up and put on her long tweed coat and pink gloves.

“You’re leaving, Ellen?”

“Yes Joe. Michael took the boys skating today so I could go shopping for a new outfit. We’re going out tonight. It’s our fifteenth wedding anniversary.”

“Cool. Fifteen years, that’s pretty cool.”

“It was so nice to see you again, Joe. You haven’t changed a bit. I must go. All the best now and enjoy your trip.”

 

Joe jumped to his feet and shook her hand. His hazel eyes had lost a bit of their sparkle but he was as cheerful as ever. She left money on the table and walked slowly out of the bar without looking back. She hadn’t asked him for a contact address or said anything desperate. Her heart soared with happiness. Why couldn’t she have felt this way before? She’d finally got the upper hand.

 

It was still wrong to lie to Joe. Of course it was; cruel even. And she mightn’t have done it except he had forgotten something very important about her. She’d laugh about it later. It was hilarious in a way. Michael wasn’t a surgeon. He wasn’t even a doctor. He was a nurse and proud of it. He worked hard and was very popular in the hospital, always keeping patient morale up with his impersonations of famous people. He’d been assaulted one time in A&E with a broken beer bottle and left with a long scar on his left cheek. The compensation had enabled them to move from a two-bed period terrace in Edinburgh Street to a lovely three-bed new-build in the suburbs. They had a big garden and off-street parking. It was no mansion but they did have poppy wallpaper and a four-poster bed (reproduction) and the lovemaking that went on in it was blissfully satisfying. And she didn’t run her own business. She still worked in the wool shop and lately trade had been dropping off and the owner had been thinking of turning to hat-rental for special occasions, which she was delighted about because she loved hats.

 

She’d never seen Joe without his clothes on. Michael was the only man she had ever seen naked, and he was beautiful in his own way, and she was glad he was her first and only lover. Sometimes Michael painted her toenails as they lay on the bed together and he’d brought her thousands of cups of tea there over the years. She hung her hats on the bed-post and draped her glass necklaces and soft gloves on its metal curves. It was like making love in a miniature department store, Michael often said. But he loved her completely, hats and all. And they did have three sons doing well at school. That part was true too.

 

Inside her pocket, her hand closed around the watch she had bought for Michael that day. It was engraved with the words, I will love you forever: romantic words she’d once said to Joe. But this time, for Michael, she meant them. She smiled to herself as she went to buy a card and gift-wrap. In the bar Joseph Patrick Flanagan ordered another drink.

 

I wonder where he got Ellen from, she thought on the bus home. My name isn’t Ellen, or even Helen. It’s Jane. Jane Murray was my name when I was dating Joe. Jane Johnston is my name now, my married name, JJ for short. That’s what Michael calls me: JJ. I love it when he calls me that. I love Michael so much. I love our sons so much. Thank my lucky star I met Michael in the hospital that day. He saved me. He loved me. He showed me I was worth loving. So who exactly is Ellen Murray and her crazy hats, I wonder? It certainly isn’t me.

 

THE END