photographs, from before, show Nora wearing her various hats, the neck held erect, finery displayed to elegant advantage.
A newspaper cutting firmly creased across the paper waist: the Mayor’s Garden Party in Bloemfontein. ‘Mej. Nora Hoare was gister op die tuinparty geklee in ’n rooskleurige geëmbosseerde nylon-tabberd, waarby sy ’n grootrandhoed van dieselfde kleur gedra het. Haar lang handskoene, handsak en skoene was wit.’
You didn’t know all what it said, but your mother looked beautiful, all blossomy and poised.
On the reverse of the cutting was part of an advertisement, a line drawing, severed by scissors. A telescope on a tripod, the long length rudely abbreviated, but still putatively trained towards the missing skies. A speechless, cryptic glimpse of something gone.
So, Halley thought, her name came out of her mother’s hat. If so, which one?
The nesting black osprey. The felted grey cloche. The black, beaded, shot-silk with seductive half net and mounted feather hackle. The swirled, pale pink ostrich feather cap, like a marshmallow dusted with shredded coconut . . . ?
A very odd practice, whichever one it was, Halley thought. Hatable.
Though come to think of it, maybe there were valid reasons for pulling a name from a hat, when you recalled that using other, more conventional methods Nana had come up with Matthew, Mark and Luke, for her three close-born sons, meaning that she must always, surely, have had the feeling that another, final son had failed to arrive; that a boy called John had gone missing, lost somewhere along the way. And then it’s her beloved, long-awaited daughter who goes, tipping the already precarious family balance into a mess of predictable men.
And how the established gospel of words meant that the fourth, empty place could never be properly filled, Halley thought, even if vivacious Norma had lived.
The hat trick. Halley teased it out, trying to tame the Medusa head of history; how to understand the trick with the hat. What did it mean?
Okay, so your ageing mother draws your baby daughter’s name from inside your wife’s smart hat.
Or, your hopeful mother-in-law pulls her puny granddaughter’s name from inside your empty hat.
Or, your aged grandmother finds your first name inside your mother’s old hat.
All of which are the same thing, it appears, the selfsame people and the very same cocked hat; the singular, unlikely name. Though the words make it seem impossible.
Halley knows about names. That some are more powerful than others, and that it isn’t always possible, or advisable, to name a thing as it’s commonly called, because this could mean trouble.
So he was never Daddy, but Your Father, and always with the slippery slope of italics. And because you were a girl, you had a koekie (and you must never smirk when offered a delicious, juicy koeksister). Children went for a tinkle, or did a jobbie, though grown-ups just went to the toilet without having to say, nothing about number one or number two. Except Nana, who always went to spend a penny, even at home, where you didn’t have to put the money in the slot. Also, you were to say excuse me if you made a poepiddy-poep. Which was a fart, though to say so was vulgar. And there was no need for even the silliness of willie in a family of females, forget about the other names, which were even worse words, and then no backchat you just had to eat soap.
But a name like Halley! This was a terrible punishment; plain stupid, really, and fit only for a complete ninny. So it didn’t fit her at all.
Halley had heard how in the birth register her father had meant to write ‘Hayley’ after Mills, but that he’d made a mess. For which he went on to blame his wife. Firstly, back when he’d admitted that the fresh-faced, girlish little blonde appealed to him, Nora wouldn’t leave off, always teasing and toying, harping on with words.
Hayley Mills! Oh really, she goaded her husband, And since when? So Miss Pollyanna appealed to you, did she? She what, Mr Murphy, pleaded with you? Said Kiss me, Mark, I beg you? And wouldn’t you just love that to be true, lover boy, another pretty one falling helpless into your arms!
After which brittle banter, words pulled this way and that, Mark didn’t know if he was coming or going, his brain in such a scrimmage from Nora and her sweet and sour tongue, her sharp, blunt mind.
And then secondly, about her name, Halley heard that Nora had often sung while doing chores, though what there was to sing about, her father said, buggered if he knew! In Nora’s repertoire, around the time of her first pregnancy, was the hit of the moment. Rock Around the Clock, by a certain Bill Halley and the Comets.
Oddly enough, she’d seen it spelt sometimes one ‘l’, Haley, and at other times two, Halley.
So who cared, you couldn’t hear in the song, trumped Mark. Or even know from the radio announcer’s voice.
But you could, Nora insisted, as only Nora could insist, attuning Mark’s ear, making him mindful of the consequence of spelling and pronunciation.
But these ephemera – words, spelling, enunciation, listening – he couldn’t grasp these, or not easily; they were enough to drive him mad.
So Halley’s name, whether one-legged or two, however it tripped or hobbled along: Well, people, it wasn’t his fault.
And certainly not hers.
Like many another child before her, Halley set out through this gnarled linguistic quagmire on a quest to find her real name, the one she was meant to have. She knew it was out there somewhere, if only her parents had looked hard enough, long enough. With enough dedication. Forget the happenstance of hats!
Even if they hadn’t had the energy to go out hunting after the one true name, how Halley wished they’d listened. That they’d just sat quietly in the lounge and waited for the sound. To enter. To fill the void. Because maybe it might have come, even to the corporation flats.
Mournfully, the spirited girl imagined her name as an intended, wandering around like a restless spectre, sad and searching. For her. A home in which to settle. When I’m calling youooo oo oo oo, oo oo oo. Like the song.
But what would it call her? Halley wondered anxiously. And if she didn’t know what she was being called, even that she was being called, how would she answer to her name?
At least Halley knew that her name would never be Ruth, because she, Halley Murphy, was merciless; or Arlette, which was too small and sheer and frilly to cover anything. And not Tammy, either, again because of that goody two-shoes actress. It was . . . possibly . . . Ursula. Not Ur-soo-la, but pronounced boldly: Urshla.
Urshla was suitably contradictory. A sexpot filmstar a virgin martyr a natural wild streak that could forage in the wilderness for food. Halley’s real name would come out of the water dripping, both sleek and shaggy, having caught a shining salmon with a single sweep of the paw. Sniff the air at night and find berries, and pinpoint the bear in the starry sky, standing in its naked fur, up on its hind legs, ready to face down the fierce hunters when they came close enough within its short-sighted range.
But hard as she tried, her real name didn’t come to her, and she couldn’t find a way to go to it, although she closed her eyes and concentrated, whispering with spirited devotion.
So she changed her mind.
Names! Oh, rubbish! Please, they
