The Man In The Hat Stood At The Foot Of My Bed And Waited To Be Introduced

I was nine. He came maybe six times over two years.

He stood at the foot of the bed. He wore a hat with a brim — I did not know the word fedora until I was thirty and somebody on the internet said it and my stomach dropped out of me — and a long coat, and he had no face that I ever saw, and he did not move.

He never did anything. That is what nobody believes. He never came closer, never spoke, never reached out. He stood there, and he waited.

Waited is the right word. He had the posture of a man who has been shown into a room and is waiting to be introduced to somebody.

I told my mother. She was standing at the sink and she went absolutely white, and she said, "What kind of hat?"

I have spent thirty years thinking about that question.

She never explained. She did the thing mothers of that generation do: she said it was a dream, she left the landing light on, and she changed the subject with the force of a woman closing a door on a fire.

He stopped when I was eleven.

When she was dying — and she was ill for a long time and we had a lot of time to talk, and we said most of the things — I asked her.

She said: "He stood at the foot of Granddad's bed, too. In the hospital. The night before."

I said, "Did he come for you? Ever?"

She said, "Not yet."

And then she laughed, which was ghastly and wonderful, and said, "He waits to be asked in. Don't ask him in."

She died in November. I was there.

I looked at the foot of the bed the whole time, and I want to tell you that I saw nothing, and I did see nothing.

But at about four in the morning my mother, who had not spoken in two days, opened her eyes, looked at the foot of the bed, and said, perfectly clearly, in the voice she used for the vicar and the doctor: "All right. Yes. Come on then."

And that was that.