Apple Pickers

"I am sure they will do that."

They didn't really need me as a translator during the service. Although it was in English the format was very familiar. After the service everyone went to the church hall for tea and cakes. The men of the congregation, mainly old enough to be the Spanish women's grandfathers tied to flirt with them, much to their wives' annoyance.

I modified the translations of what the men were saying but even the edited remarks caused giggling. The Spanish women tried hard to talk to the women and ignored the men's attempts at flirting. My skills as translator were stretched but by the time we left they Spanish women had made an impression on both the men and women, particularly as they insisted on kissing every one of the congregation and the priest who was embarrassed by being hugged and kissed by eight young women.

As they climbed back into the minibus they all kissed me too.

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Back at the farm they shed the skirts and mantillas worn over their jeans, prepared a quick lunch, and by two o'clock were frantically picking apples. My father and I were agreeably surprised at how much they achieved in a half a day, filling two more trailers for delivery tomorrow morning.

That evening, after the evening meal, we sat in the packing shed for an informal English lesson. They had felt at the church that they ought to know more English than they did, and Tom was the person who knew enough Spanish to help. I tried but I thought a structured lesson with a qualified teacher might be more effective. I would try to find one locally before the other pickers arrived. Last year that hadn't been necessary as one of the Poles was a qualified teacher of English and most of the workers had learned English at school. All they had needed was practice. But the Spanish women had very little English, barely enough to say 'Hello' or to order a cup of coffee.

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They worked as hard on the Monday morning and my father paid them before we went in the minibus to the shopping mall. The first place they wanted to go was a UK branch of a Spanish bank. We brought the bank to a standstill until the bank opened a counter position just for the eight women. I took longer than I expected because the women were not used to dealing with any bank, even in Spain. Their nearest bank was in a town at the coast that they rarely went to.

Apparently it was easier and cheaper if they credited their accounts in Euros, not Pounds. I suggested going to a travel agency first that was offering a slightly better exchange rate but after discussions with the bank branch manager they agreed to match that rate since the women were depositing so much and were all Spanish customers of the bank. It was over an hour before all the transactions were complete and had tested my Spanish to the full.

I went to a coffee shop in the atrium of the mall and sat down with a succession of coffees as the women went shopping. They kept returning with carrier bags. I had provided myself with some tie-on labels to identify whose bag was which as the pile around me grew.

At five o'clock we loaded us and their purchases into the minibus and drove back to the farm.

That evening they all wanted to write letters and most to send cheques back to their village. I provided paper, envelopes and stamps. As they wrote we had a discussion about the limitations of their village. There was no broadband, only an occasional dial-up through the very few landlines. Except for one place at the highest point in the village there was no usable cell-phone coverage. Even there the signal was weak and subject to weather conditions. For email they had to catch the once-weekly bus to the town and use an internet café.

They sent texts which their friends could pick up when there was a signal. Voice communication was almost impossible.

We also discussed how we would arrange for the accommodation of the others when they arrived on Wednesday evening. At present the eight of them were using four mobile homes. We, and the other local farmers, had an arrangement with the nearby holiday home park to take their replaced time-expired caravans. On our farm we currently had twelve but space and planning permission for more but limited to use for seasonal farm workers. All had at least two double bedrooms. Some had a third single bedroom as well and all had one or more folding beds in the living area. Each one could take six or eight people but were generally only used by two. Those seven whose boyfriends were coming wanted to share with them.

Dolores would share with her mother, instead of with Maria. Maria would move to another caravan with her boyfriend. All the mobile homes were reasonably modern. The oldest was ten years old. More recent ones would have better insulation but since they were not used beyond the picking season that didn't matter. All the women were very happy with their caravans. In their village they weren't used to running water and inside bathrooms and certainly not to adequate heating.

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On Tuesday evening we all gathered in the packing shed for an informal English lesson. I had a blackboard and chalk usually used for listing the day's tasks. We tried to cover the English words for a house. I learned far more about the inadequacies of their village homes than they learned English words. Most of them drew water from a well. Having their own well instead of using the village well was seen as a sign of status. Only half of them had any electricity. Those that didn't had to charge their phones at the church hall. Their washing was done at the local river which might run dry in a hot summer.

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Early on Wednesday evening we went to the local supermarket to equip all the caravans with basic food for Thursday morning's breakfast for those coming by coach. When the coach arrived the new twelve were obviously tired but welcomed. I took all of them to McDonalds for a meal and then took two short trips to take everyone to the farm. Dolores' mother, Conchita, kissed me when Dolores introduced me to her.

When we arrived at the farm, my father was startled to be kissed and hugged by Conchita as well.

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On Thursday morning the new arrivals did not need much instruction because those who had been with us already had explained it to them. By ten o'clock I had to show Dolores, the only Spaniard with a driving licence, who had driven an ancient Fordson tractor on her father's farm, how to drive our older tractor. Without her we couldn't keep up with the [production rate of the pickers.

Dolores took a couple of hours to get used to the much larger and more sophisticated tractor. She had sat on the old Fordson. Now she was inside an air-conditioned cab with sat nav, GPS, and an entertainment system. My father was busy driving the filled trailers to the wholesalers.

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On Saturday evening, Maria's boyfriend Carlos played flamenco for an hour before we switched to the stereo system. Dolores danced most of the time with me. My father wasn't allowed to retreat to the farmhouse. He was dragged into dancing with Conchita and seemed to be enjoying himself.

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Sunday was a repeat of the previous Sunday except that I had to make two journeys to take everyone to the church. By then we knew that another fifty young people from the village would be coming on Wednesday to work on the other local farms whose apple crops were beginning. Apparently at least a third of the Spanish village's population would be working in and around locally.

The twenty on our farm worked Sunday afternoon so all could go to a bank and shopping on Monday afternoon.

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ON Wednesday the other fifty people arrived. They had used supplementary relief coaches from Madrid to Paris, from Paris to London and again to our village. The staff at the local McDonalds was pushed to provide that many meals at short notice.

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On Saturday all seventy Spaniards assembled in our packing shed for the dance because Carlos was a local celebrity and dancing to him was popular. Dolores claimed me all evening; Conchita did the same for my father.

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We followed the same pattern for the next few months until all the apple crops had been harvested. We were sorry to see them go and the farm seemed very quiet when they had gone. But Conchita and Dolores had invited us to come to Spain for December including Christmas and the New Year. We would drive all the way there in our Range Rover because the roads to the village were unmade tracks.

We knew from talking to Dolores and Conchita that the facilities would be very basic. We towed a large modern caravan, We had loaded a few things into the Range Rover -- a gas operated barbecue which would take a Spanish gas cylinder; one of the farm's diesel generators, the largest that we could load into the Range Rover with a fork lift truck and sets of white Led lights, several strings of coloured Christmas lights, and some Disco lights; and the Range Rover was equipped with a satellite finding internet system that would run Wi-Fi and mobile phones. Our local DIY store had a reduced price on solar powered Christmas lights. The boxes had originally said 'will work for three hours after a sunny day' but a sticker had been added to change that to 'one hour'. We thought they would work longer in Southern Spain

so we bought twenty packs.

We took two days to drive through France and Spain, stopping in hotels for two nights. The final half mile of road to the village was ill-maintained dirt, cut wherever water had eroded the surface but the Range Rover coped. When we arrived on a Saturday afternoon early in December we expected to have to ask for directions to Dolores and Conchita's house but our progress up the road had been seen and virtually the whole village had turned out to greet us. They lined the streets, cheering as we drove very slowly.

When we got out of the Range Rover we were kissed and hugged by almost every woman in the village whether we had employed them or not. It took half an hour before we were allowed to go into the house. Our greetings from Dolores and Conchita were even more demonstrative. I thought we were going to be dragged upstairs to bed before we had sited the caravan and unloaded. Although the women had flirted with us in England we had not gone too far. It seemed now that we would be given a reception to make up for that deficiency. Although we had the caravan and there were spare bedrooms we were not given the option of using them. Dolores wanted me in her bed; Conchita wanted my father George in hers.

By the evening we had set up the large generator. We had to have four local men to unload it and take it to the church hall. We illuminated the space in front of the house from the caravan's built in small generator. We ate the meal outside, surrounded by many of the villagers who wanted to express their thanks for the work and earnings we and our fellow UK farmers had provided this year. We were frequently told that we had made the difference between a bleak future, or no future at all, for the village and now a rejuvenated economy, particularly as we would need workers next year and the years to come.

That night I was Dolores' victim. She dragged me off to bed and spread her legs for me to penetrate her. After I had finished she held me tight before rolling me over and resting her body on mine. Twice in the night she rode me until I went back to sleep. I was tired from the driving so Dolores did not expect me to be too energetic but she made up for my lack but being a very active and passionate lover herself.

After breakfast on Sunday morning the whole village went to Church. The village priest greeted us in a few words of English but was relieved to find we spoke reasonable Spanish which had much improved through the year. After the service the priest introduced us to the local landowner, Alessandro, who owned almost everything ain and around the village. Alessandro was an older man in his early 80s.

We were surprised that he thanked us too, and asked why?

"If you hadn't employed some many of the villagers there would have been many families unable to pay my low rents this year. I have been trying to sell the property but no one will buy. If so many hadn't gone to England to earn money, I might have gone bankrupt. As it is I am unable to maintain or improve the houses. Even now the rents have been paid the property business is not profitable."

"How much are you asking for the sale, Alessandro?" I asked idly. I had no idea of property values in rural mountainous Spain.

He told me. He misunderstood my, and my father's, expressions of shock at the low price.

"It is a reasonable price, Tom," he said, "but no Spanish bank would lend anyone money to buy it. Land values here are depressed and the land taxes, which I have to pay, are crippling. Last year I made five hundred Euros. This year? Eight hundred. A house in a coastal town is worth more and more likely to be a good investment. I have a mortgage on an apartment in the coastal city which I would like to retire to, but unless I can sell the village, I can't."

The price Alessandro had quoted was less than the purchase price a small two bedroom house in our English village yet was for over one hundred houses and many hectares of farm land.

"If I sell, the new owner would have to repair those houses in poor condition, including the thirty currently vacant, improve the road access and upgrade the farm land. Our major crop is olives but the trees are old and need replacing -- or perhaps some land could be planted with vines, as they were in the 1930s before our Civil War. The vines suffered from neglect and became diseased. We would need new disease-resistant vines if we were to produce wine again. That requires capital I haven't got, and apparently no one else is interested."

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That day we and some of the villagers erected the solar-powered Christmas lights around the village square. It took some thought about where to site the panels to catch the maximum light but as we had thought they worked better in South Spain than in England. On a dull day they would work for at least two hours. After a sunny day they often lasted longer than four.

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The following evening I had arranged to take Dolores to a restaurant on the coast, driving the Range Rover. My father had invited the six village councillors, including Alessandro the landowner and the priest to a Conchita-cooked evening meal in the caravan.

The younger people, particularly those who had stayed in mobile homes when working in England were very aware of the facilities of a caravan. The older people, including the councillors except Alessandro, were surprised that we had a gas hob and oven, a microwave and more shocking to them -- running hot and cold water and a shower room with a flush toilet. No village house had even running cold water. They were also impressed by the central heating. The Wi-Fi and satellite TV were beyond their experience.

They were grateful that we, and the other farmers in England, had employed so many of their young people for so many months.

"Except for their earnings," Alessandro said, "I would have expected many people to default on their rents this year, especially the farmers. The olive crop was poor and none of them earned their rents let alone a surplus for themselves. If the crop is as bad next year, without our young people working in England all of us would be bankrupt, including me."

The other councillors agreed with him but regretted that there was no way the young people could earn a living locally. If the olive trees could be replaced, or if they could plant new vines for wine, then at least some would have local work. The village had seemed so quiet and deserted when the young people were away. Unless things changed, the village would die. No one wanted to live in a village where there was no work, no running water, no sewage system and very limited and erratic electricity supply. If the young people found work in the coastal towns they might never come back. The only thing stopping that was the high unemployment also at the coast. There was some work during the tourist season but poorly paid and seasonal.

"What does the village need?" My father George asked.

"It isn't just our village," the priest replied. "It is all the inland villages. They all have the same problems mainly down to insufficient capital for investment and no infrastructure. The local government struggles to maintain the towns and has no money for the villages."

"What we need is to replace all the olive trees which are too old to give good crops, and possibly to change some of the land to vine growing. That would help provide work for some and an income." Alessandro said. "What we need but isn't essential in the short term is a constant supply of clean water, sewage and adequate electricity that doesn't have to come along miles of wooden poles. We have frequent power cuts every winter. I haven't got the money. The villagers haven't. The local and national governments haven't either."

"Does the river even run dry?" My father asked.

"Never," The priest replied. "Even after a very dry summer it might become knee deep, but has never stopped in living memory. In the winter it can be a torrent and spreads out on its flood plain that is used for summer pasture. The nearest road bridge is five miles away on the main road. We have a flimsy high level wooden bridge near the village. We can't have more than thee cows on it at a time and have to be very careful with loaded carts. No car could cross it. It is for people on foot, bicycles and motorcycles only but some villagers are frightened to use it because it sways so much."

"Could the river have a dam? My father asked.

They all agreed it was possible. There had been a proposal in the 1930s before the Civil War to build a dam to provide drinking water and generate hydroelectricity but since that war no one had money for such a project.

"Sewage?" My father asked again.

There had been a reed bed in the water meadows that had filtered the village's sewage which still ran in open gutters in the village roads but gradually that had silted up and become dry, killing the reeds. The sewage now ran, undiluted, straight into the river. Before the Civil War the reed bed had been re-dug every summer and new reeds planted but that required paid manpower that no one could afford now -- and for what? It polluted the river downstream for other villages but it was clean where they drew their water and did the washing. Cleaning up the village's sewage would benefit other communities but not their own -- unless it could be piped through the streets. Again, there was no money.

The conclusion of the discussion was unless capital investment could be found the future of the village was very bleak. The young people's income from working as apple pickers in England was all that was keeping the village just about solvent. If those young people were to find jobs on the coast, the village would die. Even if banks would lend money for improvements which they had consistently refused, paying the interest on those loans might be impossible.

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George and I knew that Dolores and her mother Conchita had arranged that I and Dolores would spend the night together in the house and that Conchita would stay in the caravan with my father. We didn't know that they had planned something else.

When I returned with Dolores she took my hand and led me upstairs to the double bed. She undressed me; I undressed her.

"Tom," Dolores said, "I'm on the pill. I want you inside me, now!"

She spread herself on the bed and I straddled her. Although I was on top I wasn't in control. Dolores was. She wrapped her legs around me and pulled my erection deep inside her. She didn't relax her legs' grip until she had reached orgasm several times. I had been holding back so she could but when her arms wrapped around me too I couldn't hold back any more.