Read Online Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop by Kirstan Hawkins - Free Book Online Page B

life. His father had other ideas. Claudia was the daughter of a cousin of Arturo’s father, several times removed. Her father had been a known communist agitator, a writer of dubious fiction, a womaniser and a drunk. Arturo’s parents considered Claudia to be possessed with the same reckless spirit as her father. Although she was a frequent visitor to the house during Arturo’s childhood, she was tolerated only because her mother – having eventually separated from her ill-chosen husband – had become a prodigiously influential civil servant with the power to make or break a man’s career. Loretta Camacho was a force to be reckoned with. Under her protective matriarchal shadow, Claudia’s untamed spirit ran riot throughout the Aguilar household, taking Arturo with her.
    Arturo had been a timid child. Having no siblings, he wasoveranxious to please his father, and lived in constant fear of the wrath he would encounter whenever he fell short of his father’s expectations, which happened daily. In the presence of Claudia, he became filled with a confidence and a bravado that both terrified and excited him, and which departed with Claudia as soon as she left the house. Alone, he faced his father’s icy disapproval.
    â€˜Did you and that girl go into my study?’ his father asked sternly, after Claudia had dared Arturo, yet again, to go into the forbidden room. ‘You are nothing but a disappointment to us. You know that, don’t you? You will be the death of your mother. If you ever dare to do that again, we will give you to the monks.’ And Arturo was sent to his room in disgrace.
    After Claudia’s visits to the house, Arturo’s parents started to notice that small items had gone missing. An old snuffbox that had belonged to Arturo’s grandfather disappeared from the mantelpiece, and the cleaning maid was instantly sacked on suspicion of the offence. Then a little book with pressed flowers that Arturo’s father had treasured since his childhood – and which he had foolishly shown to the children one day to impress Loretta – went missing from the bookshelf. After that, Dr and Señora Aguilar realised that countless small and insignificant items such as pens, teacups, notebooks, tablemats and ashtrays mysteriously vanished after a visit from Claudia and Loretta Camacho. Then objects started to go missing from Arturo’s mother’s bedroom: her tortoiseshell comb was suddenly nowhere to be found, neither were her favourite lipsticks; a vanity mirror her mother had given her and other pointless trinkets given to her by her husband over the years all disappeared.
    Arturo’s father could not bring up the matter of Claudia’s kleptomania with Loretta. He was greatly indebted to his cousin for herhelp in furthering his career and was also very proud of his connection to her. Under her patronage he had been given a place on all the important committees, with the added financial bonus of being made head surgeon at the Santa Maria Memorial Hospital, the most prestigious private hospital in the city and the one used by all the important generals, politicians and foreign diplomats as well as visiting dignitaries laid low by the demands of altitude and the excesses of formal state visits. Loretta Camacho’s house calls became more frequent as her influence over Dr Aguilar grew. He provided her with a useful and authoritative voice on the various committees on which she had installed him, eloquently advocating the initiatives she supported even when he passionately disagreed with them.
    Rather than daring to raise the issue of Claudia’s thefts, the Aguilars started clearing away all small and extraneous items from the main rooms of the house and locking them in the cleaning cupboard before a visit was expected from Loretta and her daughter. Eventually, the hiding and rearranging of household knick-knacks became so tiresome for the domestic staff