Carmen was born in 1934 in Clarendon, Jamaica. She grew up in the countryside, where her father and brother managed the region's citrus production. The Lawson brothers (Carmen's maiden name) were well-known locally and among the leading employers in the area.
School was basic. Children had to pay for their books and pencils. If you didn't have a pencil, you'd have to wait until your friend finished to borrow hers. Life was tough, but Carmen's family was relatively well-off, so she didn't have it as hard.
When Carmen was 17, she would jump to visit Kingston, the nearby capital, despite her mother's protestations. She'd tell her mother she was going to see her aunt when, in fact, she just wanted to experience the excitement of the city. Kingston in those days was lively and safe. Nobody troubled you, and Carmen thought it was a beautiful place.
She will never forget her first time walking down a Kingston street with houses playing music so loudly that you could "dance off" their music without ever stepping in. Her favourite song back then was "Mona Lisa" by Nat King Cole.
She said that those days are long gone in Kingston. It's a dangerous place now. She showed me a photo of her cousin, a qualified doctor, who was shot dead while sitting in his car there only a few years ago.
On one of her trips to Kingston, Carmen was walking through what was then called Racecourse Park (now National Heroes Park) when a boy called out, "Where are you going, good-looking?" She sucked her teeth and replied, "Why are you going for me?" Later, when she walked back, he was waiting for her. His name was Keith. He was a city boy and knew straight away she was a 'country bumpkin', but he liked her looks.
On their first date, they visited the theatre to see Rose Marie, a popular Western. Back then, Jamaicans loved Westerns and country music, and you are still just as likely to hear Jim Reeves playing on the radio in Jamaica as you are Bob Marley.
Keith worked as a mechanic for a British company with a factory in Kingston. A few weeks after they started dating, he told Carmen he was going to England to work at the main factory in Stockwell, London. His passage was already booked. Carmen thought she'd never see him again, but when Keith arrived in England, he wrote to her, inviting her to join him.
