1 Hattie GG to her descendants aged ninety-three and counting sits at the head of the banqueting table in the Long Room of Greenfields farmhouse built over two hundred years ago her ever-growing gene pool crammed all the way down it and their spouses either side of her are her two children, both in their seventies Ada Mae (named after Slim's mother) and Sonny (named after Slim's brother what got lynched) then there's the grandchildren in their forties and fifties Julie nurse Sue shop assistant Paul former body-builder turned gym manager Marian secretary Jimmy car mechanic Matthew plumber, self-employed Alan copper (who everyone gives a wide berth to)
a few of the great-grandchildren in their twenties and thirties are here too, God knows what most of them do great-great-grandchildren are seated at a separate table, can't remember most of their names, a couple of adults are acting as minders to stop them using food as missiles instead of fodder for their mouths then there's the newly-borns she's only just met – Riley, Zoe, Noah she'll remember their names for a few hours everyone is digging into Christmas lunch, a giant turkey as centrepiece, selected for the honour for its inordinate size and robust demeanour she overfed it all year, wrung its neck yesterday, plucked it, put it in the ice house and then into the stove first thing this morning Morgan and Bibi helped with the rest: roast spuds (Hattie's Own from the potato pit), stuffing, Brussels sprouts, Yorkshire pudding and black pudding (both Hattie's Own), peas (Hattie's Frozen Own), gravy Ma's mildewed tapestry of the house dominates one wall of the room the blackened flagstone fireplace dominates the other, big enough for a person to stand inside when it's not lit, which it is, flames hungrily attacking the air there's a big Christmas tree which Young Billy (in his sixties now) from the village cuts down from what Slim used to call the Forest of Firs out back Young Billy installs one every year: lights, fairies, tinsel, baubles, pine needles creating a mess, especially as she likes to walk barefoot inside the house, even in winter it's one of the secrets of her long-lasting mobility, keeping her toes spread and feet grounded, same as all the other beasts of nature hooves, that's what she's got hooves Polina soaks them once a week, gives her nails a scrape-out, file-down, pumice and moisturize – the latter against Hattie's better judgement, seeing as she stopped poisoning her body with chemicals after Slim went in 1988 Polina says your feet they will crack and the germs they will have the field day, Hattie so she obliges, even though the body makes its own oil, if you allow the pores to breathe
although try telling that to the women in her family who slather themselves in unguents and other toxic substances in the name of beauty then wonder why they get cancer presents are piled underneath the tree, people giving each other things for the sake of it, nothing to do with religion, Christmas should be called Greedymas a time when people over-eat and over-indulge in the name of Jesus Christ she hasn't bothered with presents since Slim passed, has given up telling everyone not to bother with her they give her things she doesn't want like gloves, tissues, pill boxes, slippers, electric blankets and bottle grips, as if she can't still open lids with her strong hands Young Billy takes it all to a charity shop for her she's got what she needs, not the same as what she wants Slim wrapped up in a parcel underneath the tree waiting to jump up and surprise her Hattie sits quietly at these Greedymas affairs can't hear above the racket they're making anyway, hates putting in those wretched hearing aids that irritate her ears and distort sounds they carry on without her, amusing themselves, happy to ignore her like she's of no consequence, most of them don't listen to what she says anyway she sinks back, watches their performances, quite content to be left to her own devices, nodding off, until people prod her to see if she's all right, the equivalent of checking her pulse she's sure they're disappointed when she wakes up and shouts, aye-what? aye-what? Ada Mae and Sonny can't wait to get their hands on the inheritance they think is their right, except she's thwarted them – they're not getting their hands on Greenfields farm what's been in her family over two hundred years for them to sell off to foreigners like those Russians or Chinese to build a luxury hotel or turn it into a golf course they keep pestering her to go into a home and sort out her 'power of attorney' she knows full well it means giving them power over her life
if she falls down the stairs and nobody's there to call an ambulance, so be it, at her age death won't be prolonged anyway, one bad fall and she's a goner if they try and force her to leave, she'll be meek and compliant, say, just a moment while I go to the loo for one last crap in my own house, if that's all right with you once inside, she'll blow her brains out with the pistol Slim kept from the war they'll find her brains splattered on the toilet walls they won't forget that in a hurry most of them don't deserve to inherit, anyhow, can't be bothered to visit from one Christmas to the next even then the slackers try it on, complain they can't get up the hill from the village when it's snowing or icy car won't make it up, GG, they say down the line of the crackling phone she's had since 1952 better than those mobile phones the young ones check hundreds of times a day which makes them go mental she's read about it in the paper besides, why replace her old phone when it's still in good working order, sits on the console by the front door, attached to a wire that's attached to a socket telephone conversations should be kept short and had standing she tells those lightweight relatives of hers to walk up the hill from the village instead, it's only a two-mile hike, a bit perpendicular, but none of them is suffering from vertigo, last she heard not that the village is a village any more, it's a ghost town, with one corner shop and a public house, even the Co-op (to think there were protests when it opened in the seventies) closed down a few years back 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 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 once Hattie was old enough, her and Ma were often invited to tea, would take down a basket of apples, pears and cherries from the farm Ma said she'd once been told that Hermione came from an aristocratic family and Ruth had been the estate gardener's daughter, they'd eloped as soon as they were of age they died within a year of each other shortly after the war Hattie has put flowers on their graves ever since so Hattie was never going to have a problem with Morgan being that way as well, but a while back Morgan took it to extremes when she declared, as they were taking their usual walk across the fields with Bibi, GG, I no longer identify as a male or a female
Morgan went into a big explanation of it, might as well have been talking Chinese Hattie asked her outright if she'd been to see a doctor because you sound mental, dear? Morgan didn't say another word, they walked back to the house in silence, her and Bibi left a day early Hattie doesn't have a problem with Bibi who was born male, because she's never known her as anything other than female, which makes a kind of sense to say you're neither is so far-fetched it's absolutely ludicrous the next time Morgan showed up, two months rather than two weeks later (a big sulk, even for Morgan), Hattie sat her down and said, look, I was born in the nineteen-twenties, you're expecting too much of me to even begin to understand what you're going on about just be who you want to be and let's agree not to talk about it the funny thing is, nothing's changed about Morgan since she became a gender granary non-binding whatsit, other than changing her name from Megan to Morgan, which is fine, Hattie can live with that at least she didn't name herself Reginald or William Hattie absolutely won't pander to calling her they instead of she, as requested Morgan looks the same (like a boy), acts the same (boyish) and to all intents and purposes is the same (Megan).