J C M Hepple
The Happy Hat
When Joyce married for the second time
her mother wore the same hat,
a glorious smoky concoction with gardenias
and grey sweet-peas lying along the wide brim.
It cost she said. There’s no call to spend on me,
I’ve not worn it once these nine years.
The wedding breakfast was held
in the Shapp’s Tower roof-garden restaurant,
where the bride groom ended his speech
by lifting the hat with a gallant gesture
and saying and you will never need
this lovely thing again, Mam
as, to a gasp from the guests,
he flung it, frisbee-fashion, over the parapet,
so that it sailed from their view
to jink and swoop, like a seagull
in a steamer’s wake, over the roofs
to land - Hoop La! - on a chimney-pot
at 98 Newtown Road, filling the front-room with smoke,
which interrupted the first quarrel
ever to blemish the hearth
of Jean and Harvey Clouder who,
coughing and laughing, forgot their difference
which they could never afterwards remember.
Page(s) 7
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