now it’s an ‘art gallery’ that laughingly only opens for two weeks a year in summer, which she suspects is a tax dodge
let’s not forget the post-box or rather the ‘museum object from when people believed in writing letters by hand on paper and posting them’
oh and there’s a farmers’ market in the summer – as if there should be any other kind
the rest of the shops have been turned into holiday homes owned by rich southerners from York and Leeds, the lawyers, doctors and academical types who want to ‘get away from it all’
for a few weeks every summer
who push house prices up that drive the youngsters out
that and the lack of farm jobs are the ruination of rural communities, as they say in Farmers Weekly
the rise of the combine harvester in the fifties started it
far as she’s concerned
cheap foreign labour has continued it of late, good for farmers, not for locals who find themselves undercut by people who work twice as hard for half as much
as many a person has complained to her
she never resorted to bringing in foreign labour because she felt loyal to those self-same locals
who worked half as hard for twice as much
no wonder Greenfields went to pot, that and losing out to foreign produce coming into the country from the whole damned world
globalization? they can stick it up her arse
many farms around here had to rely on handouts, not her, she got nothing when she was struggling to run the farm alone, she applied to the EU and got knocked back after officials poked their nose around and couldn’t hide their surprise at who they saw in charge
of course she voted to leave it, far as she’s concerned, politics is personal, she voted Conservative when her father was alive because he expected it
she didn’t want to let him down
she voted Labour when Slim was alive because he said he believed in ‘the people’, and she didn’t want to let him down either
kept voting Labour out of loyalty to him
a few years back she made up her own mind for the first time and voted Green because she liked their environmental stance and hated the warmongering that was going on with Labour
she voted UKIP in the last election
Slim wouldn’t have liked that
but he’s not here
when her family do make it up the hill on two legs or four wheels, there’s the brief honeymoon period before the drinking starts
they pile into the house in their party clothes: dresses showing off knees that should’ve gone undercover a long time ago, bellies spilling over belts, the younger ones wearing outfits so tight you can see their hearts beating
newborns in swaddling blankets are thrust into her arms for photographs, the parents looking anxiously as if she’s going to drop down dead while holding the baby
it’s starting to get lively further down the table
Jimmy, Sonny’s son, her oldest grandson, turned up with a keg of beer and is proceeding to empty it, he might as well drink straight from the tap the way he goes on
others have brought multi-packs of wine and giant bottles of fizzy soft drinks for the children, to make them hyperactive and rot their teeth
there was an experiment on the telly where they put a tooth in a glass of fizzy drink
she’s told them about it, do they listen?
that’s modern-day parenting for you
Jimmy’s on his feet now (been inside twice for GBH) and it’s all about to kick off, he’s usually the first, him and his two sons Ryan and Shawn are the worst hotheads
he’s poking his finger at his younger brother Paul for a wrong he’s done him, Paul won’t take any lip from Jimmy so there might be a few cuts, bruises and cracked ribs
Hattie can’t hear them properly and now Alan, the youngest brother, ever the copper, has stood up and is trying to calm things down in that bossy way he has, ready to prise his two older brothers apart
if he’s not careful they’ll set on him instead, it’s happened before
no one likes Alan
not even his second wife, Cheryl
who left him last year
he joined the police when he left school, had been bullied by his brothers when he was growing up because he was a soft lad
that changed once he had the full force of the law behind him
he once asked her if she paid taxes on the farm’s cash income
she wasn’t sure whether it was a friendly enquiry or a threat
you don’t know where you stand with Alan
not felt the same about him since
Jimmy, on the other hand, was born charming everyone who met him, he got his own way with Sonny who now despairs of him, who never listened to Slim telling him to discipline his boy before it was too late
when people said no to Jimmy he threw tantrums that turned into tempestuous rages as he got older, that involved getting into fights as a teenager, and it’s been a rollercoaster ride of hooliganism ever since
it’s why his first wife Karen left with the kids when they were little
he had to go to court to get supervised visits until they were adults
the number of broken marriages among her lot
Jimmy and Paul seem to have made up and are popping out to the yard to light up, Alan’s eyes follow them as they leave, ever the outsider, aye, Alan?
she can see them through the window as they join the others freezing to death under the awning of the hay barn
so long as they’re inhaling nicotine on a regular basis that’ll eventually kill them, they’ll consider these excursions worth it
she read in the paper that fewer people smoke these days
you wouldn’t know it with her lot
her grandchildren all look more white than black because Sonny and Ada Mae married white people
none of them identifies as black and she suspects they pass as white, which would sadden Slim if he was still around
she doesn’t mind, whatever works for them and if they can get away with it, good luck to them, why wear the burden of colour to hold you back?
the only thing she objects to is when they objected to Chimango when he arrived on the scene, a fellow nurse at the hospital where Julie worked, from Malawi
Hattie was sickened by their behaviour, they should’ve been more enlightened
but the family was becoming whiter with every generation
and they didn’t want any backsliding
Chimango was a fine, hardworking man like Slim, he was patient, pleasant and he won them around in time
he didn’t give up on them (he should have done)
she welcomed him on to the farm, apologized for the behaviour of her lot
it was Chimango who encouraged Julie to buy black picture books for his kids
Chimango said they had to see children who looked like them in books
when Julie told Hattie about this she felt terrible
had those books existed for her children in the nineteen-forties?
had she been a bad mother?
Morgan and Bibi, her partner (as they say these days), stay on until New Year, she likes their company best because they genuinely like her, help out, love being at Greenfields
she cherishes being on the farm – from when she was a wee, troubled bairn whose mother, Julie, didn’t like her because she wasn’t the Barbie doll she wanted her to be
it wasn’t surprising when Morgan became a sexual invert, not that it was a problem for Hattie
there used to be two women who ran the grocery store
Hermione (who was the wife, and dressed as such)
and Ruth (who was the husband, and dressed as such)
Ma said the village folk accepted them as a couple even though nobody mentioned it, and they, in turn, were the first to befriend her Ma, when she arrived as Joseph’s wife
Ma said they’d call on her in the farm to see if you need any help, Grace