Apple Pickers

Twice more that night Dolores milked me dry even though she was underneath me. Finally she let me go to sleep with her arms wrapped around me. When I woke up she moved upwards on the bed and pulled my head between her breasts.

"Tom?"

I had to pull myself slightly out of her cleavage to hear her.

"Yes, Dolores?"

"What would you think if Conchita became your stepmother?"

"What?"

Dolores repeated the question.

"I'd be happy for her and my father," I replied sleepily.

"And what if her daughter wanted to marry her stepson?"

That woke me up fully. I moved but Dolores pulled me back between her breasts. I couldn't answer with my mouth covered by breast. Dolores giggled at my futile attempts to escape from her arms tightly wrapped around my head. After about a minute she relaxed her grip so I could breathe.

"Well, Tom? What do you think?"

"Shouldn't I propose to you?"

"If you want to, Tom, but I asked first."

"OK, Dolores. Yes, I would be delighted but where would we live? Here in Spain or in England?"

"There is a condition that mother and daughter want you and your father to meet before we can marry."

"There is? What condition?"

"The condition is that you buy the village from Alessandro."

I sat up and looked down at Dolores naked body.

"I'm not sure we can. Yes, we could afford it but whether as UK citizens we could buy a Spanish village? I'm not sure that we would be allowed to. Can we? I don't know."

"Would you, if you could?"

"I'd have to talk to my father and we would need to consult a Spanish lawyer about the legalities."

"But if our condition isn't impossible, Tom? Would you try?"

"Speaking for myself, yes. But my father would have to agree as well and then we need to find out if it possible. If it is, it is a condition of your proposal I would be happy to agree to. But my father has to agree and the legalities sorted out."

"Then we are engaged, Tom."

Dolores rolled me over, straddled me, and pounded up and down on me very effectively.

Later I asked how she was on the pill. I knew that getting supplies of contraceptive pills could be difficult in rural Spain because of the Church's opposition. Dolores explained that all those working as apple pickers in England had bought the pill there, so much so that the chemist at the shopping mall had run out and had had to order more supplies for the following weeks. Even Conchita had bought a year's supply.

"What does your priest think?" I asked.

"He knows, even if we don't tell him. If we keep quiet about it, so will he. He knows, despite the church's position, that we women cannot afford to get pregnant until we can support children."

"And without working in England?"

"We wouldn't be able to start a family. We would need at last one of the family to have a cash income from apple picking to even consider a child."

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After breakfast we joined my father and Conchita in the caravan. George's response to Conchita had been almost identical to mine to Dolores -- yes but he would have to consult me and then a Spanish lawyer.

Finding a suitable Spanish lawyer was very easy. Raoul, one of the village's councillors, had been a property lawyer who had taken early retirement to move back to the village of his birth to look after his elderly mother. She had died six months ago and he was considering going back to work. He was pleased to advise us -- for a fee.

Every night our fiancées Dolores and Conchita made love to us very effectively to ensure that we progressed the possibility of buying the village.

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We intended to form a Spanish property company. We Brits could only be minority shareholders. The majority had to be Spanish. Dolores and Conchita were to own 25% each. I and George would own 24.5% each and Raoul, the retired lawyer, owned the remaining 1%. But the company's finances would depend wholly on a loan from George and Tom.

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On the first Saturday after our arrival we illuminated the hall with white lights and added some Christmas lights and the Disco lights which no one had ever seen in the village before our arrival. The music, when not live, was provided by Bluetooth speakers linked through the Range Rover's Wi-Fi to the car stereo system.

Almost every village woman wanted to dance a tango with me and my father. As an expression of vertical desire for a horizontal coupling we were nearly raped on the dance floor. Dolores and Conchita had to rescue us several times from over-enthusiastic partners.

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Long before the property company was formed but almost as soon as we knew it was possible, Conchita and George and Tom and Dolores married on the day before Christmas Eve in the village church in front of a congregation of the whole village. We had moved the generator to between the Church and the Church Hall, because the village had no electricity again.

The dancing at the reception was furious. George and I had to dance with every village woman. When we left the reception at two am the dancing was still in full swing. The new husbands were exhausted and had to be ridden by their brides.

The next morning we moved the white lights into the church and lit up the nativity scene with coloured Christmas lights. When we attended Midnight Mass the Church was brighter lit than it had ever been with the village's inadequate electricity supply which still wasn't working. Our generator also powered the electrical blower on the church 0organ.

After the Christmas Day mass and family dinners there was a Christmas-themed dance in the village hall. Every villager knew that we were trying to buy the village from Alessandro if we could. Tom and George were very popular and our lighting was much appreciated. Again the dancing was furious and continuous, exhausting the new husbands, who had to be ridden again by their brides.

We took our new brides back to England for a honeymoon because we had left our farm too long. It took us another month to find a farm manager because we would be seriously involved in Spain. We found one of the village's Spanish farmers willing to be a farm manager in England, with help from our neighbours who also relied on Spanish seasonal workers from the village.

We returned to Spain in the spring to set up the new company. Alessandro had agreed to accept half the figure he had originally quoted in exchange for a holding of four per cent of the new company even though he knew it would be a long time before it made any profits, if it ever did. We reduced the holding of all four of us by one per cent each.

When the purchase was finalised George and I employed consultants to produce proposals for a dam upstream from the village that would provide a piped water supply and hydroelectricity. In the meantime we had employed several locals to dig out, expand, and replant the reed bed. We set up a pottery to produce sewage pipes, put at first in the few streets to move the open sewers underground, and gradually installed with links to all the village's houses as more pipes were produced.

The new company was beginning to provide work for the villagers, only a few at first and the majority of young people still went to England to pick apples in the first years that we owned the village. Gradually we replaced some of the olive trees and used some slopes for a new vineyard. We didn't expect to produce wine for a couple of years and it might take that long, or longer for the new olive trees to crop satisfactorily but the village's farms had a future. We also planted some Seville orange trees. All of the new plantings would take years to produce useful crops but they would be much more productive than the overage olive trees we had replaced.

During that first year we improved the road to the village. It was still dirt, but widened and graded dirt with culverts to take away winter rainfall without damaging the road surface.

It took a year to get government approval to start work on the dam and hydro-electric generators. There would be a road across the dam, replacing the rickety wooden bridge. Even employing as many of the villagers as we could, we needed specialist contractors and three years to build the dam with the generators.

George and I were much fitter than we had been. Apart from all the work improving the village, our brides insisted on active sex every night. Ten years after Dolores and her friends had arrived in England the village had running water, a sewage system, indoor bathrooms with flush toilets and a reliable electricity supply. The trees were cropping and some of the local youngsters now worked in Spain but the majority still picked apples for us in England. That was essential because our apple crop was subsidising the Spanish property company.

The village became a showpiece for what could be done with a capital investment and some Spanish banks were able to advance loans for other villages to improve their infrastructure and crops too. None had the amount of money we had invested but even minor changes were having an effect. Many more local youngsters from nearby villages were working in England on crop harvesting and their earnings were helping with the local improvements.

The Spanish apple pickers had changed our lives; we had changed their village.

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