5

5 Hattie started walking when Slim died she bought walking boots as opposed to working boots, carved herself a walking stick with a Black Power fist on the knob – in homage to him she wore thermals in winter, cotton shirts in summer, carried rainwear and a flask of the sweet tea Slim used to drink in her knapsack as she trod her land and beyond

sometimes in high summer she'd go out to one of her fields at night, lie on a blanket, watch the stars in the night sky, imagine Slim looking down at her watching over her waiting for her she kept farm production going a long time, well into her eighties, at one point she had thirty farmhands on her payroll it's only in the past ten years it's been reclaimed by nature, an aggressive beast consuming everything when you let it rampage unhindered her land has become a jungle of rotten crops, grass, weeds, tangled bushes, foxes, roe deer and snakes wild fields – where once grew wheat, barley, oats and winter linseed for market wild fields – where once roamed Herefords, Ayrshires, the dray horses for the ploughs and carts, her Cheviot sheep, and her childhood Icelandic pony, Smokey the two of them used to take off at a trot down the lane, around the lake, they'd canter through the woods and race at full gallop across the low-lying hills spread before them if she fell off Smokey, she had to get herself back on again, she didn't wear a helmet or shoes if she didn't come back, Pa would ride out with the dogs to find her Hattie remembers she took her body for granted back then, when it automatically did what her mind instructed it to she remembers when she could milk thirty cows every morning and every evening, slowly straining the warm milk into cans, then muck out the milking parlour, wash and sterilize the utensils and help the dairymen load the milk on to their horse-drawn wagons without feeling tired now her body fights her over the simplest things like putting on her overalls, getting out of chairs, and climbing stairs Hattie remembers when her and Slim lived with Ma and Pa and Ada Mae and Sonny, when they were small children it was an ideal set-up with two women and two men working together to raise the children and run the farm

her and Ma were more like friends than mother and daughter, from as young as she can remember they did everything together, Father said she could twist Ma around her little finger, he couldn't get a word in edgeways, which was true Ma always said she missed her own mother, Daisy, who died young, and not a day went by that she didn't wish she'd known her own father, the Abyssinian who was he, Hattie? who was he? Ma fell ill when Sonny and Ada Mae hadn't yet started school she was so unhappy that she'd miss them growing up, and that they'd be too young to remember her Father struggled on, it wasn't the same after Ma passed, he said he wanted to join her he went not long after, heart failure, she and Slim agreed it was broken one of the last things he said to her was, you belong here, Harriet Jackson née Rydendale you are my daughter and in your hands rests the future of this family this isn't just our hyem, Hattie, it's your forebears' who worked bloody hard to keep it going for us so when the time comes, you must make sure you pass it on to Sonny, to do the same that was about seventy years ago she's lived in this place ninety-three years now, this farm isn't just her home, her hyem, it's her bones and her soul eight monarchs of the royal family have been on the throne since the first stone was laid by her ancestor Captain Linnaeus Rydendale in 1806 who'd made a large enough fortune to fulfil his life-long dream of landownership having started his life as a labourer's son in this district having begun his career as a cabin boy on ships Captain Linnaeus Rydendale who returned to the district with a young wife, Eudoré, from Port Royal in Jamaica, the daughter of a merchant he'd done business with according to family legend she was rumoured to be Spanish, and when Slim first saw her portrait in the library he said she's one of us, Hattie

she said he was imagining it, he insisted that he knew the full spectrum of how we people turn out and I'm telling you, Hattie, she's one of us when Hattie looked at her through his eyes, a different Eudoré became apparent, something about her colouring, the shape of her face and features, the density of her hair perhaps he was right after Joseph died, Slim broke open an old library cabinet when he couldn't find the keys, said that as the man of the house he needed to know what was in it he found old ledgers that recorded the captain's lucrative business as a slave runner, exchanging slaves from Africa for sugar in the West Indies came charging like a lunatic into the kitchen where she was cooking and had a go at her for keeping such a wicked family secret from him she didn't know, she told him, was as upset as he was, the cabinet had been locked her entire life, her father told her important documents were inside and never go near it she calmed Slim down, they talked it through it's not me or my Pa who's personally responsible, Slim, she said, trying to mollify her husband, now you co-own the spoils with me she wrapped her long arms around his waist from behind it's come full circle, hasn't it?