they had these conversations until she was able to see things from his point of view
they both followed the news about the civil rights protests, Slim said the Negro needed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King
when they were assassinated within three years of each other
he disappeared into the hills for a few days
Hattie saw that neither of her children liked being coloured and she didn’t know what to do about it
Ada Mae painted herself as a white child in her drawings, and from the age of twelve Sonny never wanted to be seen with his father beyond the village, hated having to go to the cattle fairs with him as a teenager and he begged her not to bring his father to school events
she overheard Sonny telling a boy whose father dropped him home one day that Slim, who was leading sheep out to pasture, was a hired labourer
Slim would have given his life for his children.
3
When Ada Mae and Sonny were sixteen and seventeen, they announced out of the blue one breakfast that they were leaving home
we’re going today and you can’t stop us, Sonny said, spreading his legs wide like he was a grown man, shoulders back, daring his parents to challenge him
we’re not going to spend another day in the back of beyond baling hay, ploughing fields, milking cows and mucking out animal dung
for the rest of our lives
Hattie remembers it so clearly
Ada Mae wore her new orange mini-dress with a high neck she’d ordered though the Biba catalogue, white patent leather boots that rode up to her knees, hair sculpted into a beehive, false lashes, black pencil around her eyes making them appear huge
she was beautiful then, of course she didn’t think so
it’s only now, when they look at old family photos together that Ada Mae exclaims, with more than a touch of sadness, look at me, Ma, I was quite lovely, wasn’t I?
Sonny was bone-thin in those days, in the way of teenage boys before they become men, his legs gangly and uncoordinated, he’d grown too quickly to the height of his father
he wore his purple velvet flare suit, his hair was trimmed almost to the bone back then, to hide its kinks, she suspected
with a side-parting that looked absurd
neither were dressed for the long ride to London
they left on Sonny’s seventeenth birthday present – the Honda motorbike he’d begged them to buy him
said he needed it to come and go more freely
it cost them two bullhorns
Ada Mae sat pillion, Sonny revved the bike and the pair of them roared off out of the yard, down the hill, through the village and towards the glamorous streets that awaited them in London
Ada Mae was to become a secretary to a pop star, Sonny a rich businessman
they roared noisily out of their parents’ lives leaving a plume of smoke and fumes
leaving her and Slim marooned on eight hundred acres of farmland
it took time to adjust to not hearing Ada Mae playing Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark and Cilla Black records on the record player in the Long Room, where she danced in the modern way
if one of them made the mistake of entering, she shouted at them to bloody well leave her alone for once
Sonny pretended to play the guitar in there, while listening to the Rolling Stones
they used to peep through the windows to amuse themselves
Hattie and Slim found it strange sitting down to meals for two instead of four, washing one set of sheets instead of three, to not taking the temperature of teenage moods when their kids were sloping about at home
they never stopped worrying about them being so far away in the capital city
where anything could happen to them
London didn’t last, they didn’t even make it to three whole months (lightweights!)
Sonny worked in a boutique in Carnaby Street that didn’t pay enough to live on, Ada Mae washed dishes in the kitchen of the Regent Palace Hotel
it was impossible to get accommodation other than in a run-down house with coloured immigrants in a slum area called Notting Hill
the immigrants scornfully accused them of being like white people
Hattie wanted to say she thought they’d see that as a compliment and contemplated how her bairns had gone from the Scottish Borders to London, only to discover it was an alien country down there
she was happy when they settled in Newcastle, only seventy miles from the farm
instead of over three hundred
Ada Mae married Tommy, the first man who asked, grateful anyone would
she didn’t exactly have suitors lining up in Newcastle wanting to proudly introduce their black girlfriend to their parents in the nineteen-sixties
Tommy was on the ugly side, a face like a garden gnome, her and Slim joked, none too bright, either
Hattie suspected the lad didn’t have too many choices himself
a coalminer from young, he was apprenticed as a welder when the mines were shut down
he proved to be a good husband and really did love Ada Mae, in spite of her colour
as he told Hattie and Slim when he came to ask for her hand
lucky that Slim didn’t lay him out
there and then
Sonny’s experience was somewhat different, according to Ada Mae who reported back that women queued up round the block for him
they thought he was the next best thing to dating Johnny Mathis
he married Janet, a barmaid, whose parents objected
and told her to choose.
4
When she first saw him, Slim Jackson reminded Hattie of the Masai warriors she’d seen in the National Geographic magazine Pa had ordered monthly from America in her childhood
they’d pore over the photographs together on Sunday afternoons after church and explore the pictures and stories of places and people beyond the farm, village and surrounding towns
Pa had travelled across Europe in the army, he’d been to Egypt and Gallipoli, developed an appetite for things foreign
Hattie met Slim in 1945 at an afternoon dance in Newcastle for demobbed American Negro regiments who were due to be sent home
it was her first dance in the big city, her parents sat outside in the farm truck, praying she’d meet someone
she’d had no luck so far
Hattie was astonished at the number of other coloured Englishwomen there, who’d travelled from as far afield as Cardiff, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, London
they were all kinds of mixtures, most with a white mother, which came out when they got chatting in the powder room
Hattie felt instantly comfortable among these girls, who all looked like versions of herself, she’d never felt so welcomed
they were surprised she worked on a farm, felt sorry for her as they re-applied lipstick and powdered their faces in the mirror, posing like they were all beauty queens whereas she looked plain, wore no make-up, which really won’t do, one of the girls said, and set to brightening up features Hattie had thought of as plain
the women cooed over her and said now you look pretty, Hattie
when she looked at the red on her cheeks and her lips in the mirror, she agreed
the other girls wore glamorous taffeta dresses which showed off their waists, and long white gloves, and stilettos
Hattie felt embarrassed by the dowdy dress Ma had made her from Woman’s Weekly
inside the hall the band played swing music, the dance floor was a swirl of girls in dresses as colourful as butterflies and smart green soldiers’ uniforms, everyone pairing up, none of the girls were left as wallflowers, which had been Hattie’s fate at local barn dances
only her father would take her for a spin
the girls agreed that most Englishmen wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole, other than to expect easy sex, and African or West Indian men were few and far between
every one of them was a belle of the ball at this dance, as the soldiers made quite clear, in thrall to such high-class, light-skinned ladies