CASUAL LABOUR

The babble quietened to a hush, and I noticed a pleasant, friendly-faced man had appeared at the head of the queue. He smiled and asked in a soft voice, 

"All raspberry pickers?" We nodded and waited for his instructions in silence. "The Boss will be up from the fields in a minute. He'll fetch you over in the van." The man disappeared again into one of the farm buildings. We hadn't long to wait. A screech of brakes announced the arrival of the boss, who leaped out of a rusty and dented old doormobile almost before it had stopped. 

"As many as you can get in the back of the van, quick as you like," he shouted. This should have been my first presentiment, an omen for the day. He was small and round, but with bulging muscles on his hairy arms and legs. He wore faded dirty jeans cut off roughly above his knees. He swelled visibly as he shouted. I was sure he was hairy all over. In my mind's eye he began to turn green and stripey... 

"Raspberry fields all full. You'll be picking gooseberries. If you don't like that then you'd better leave now!" 

We started to pile in the back of the van. As the girl in the petticoat trousers climbed in, the boss stopped her grabbing hold of her elbow firmly. 

"You can come in the front with me. Bring your friend, there's plenty of room," his face approximated to a smile, "but put your fag out." He turned and shouted in a different but equally unpleasant voice, "Can you all dimp your fags. There's no smoking from now on. If any ash falls in the fruit baskets they're no good. Market won't 'ave 'em. Hygiene, right! If I catch you smoking you're off the job." 

The girls put out their cigarettes and trooped round the front of the van, leaving mother to clamber in the back with the rest of us. When we were all finally crushed up like pilchards in a tin, the boss yelled, 

"Push up, we can get another two in." They must have ended up with their legs dangling out the back of the van, because he couldn't shut the doors. 

"Jesus, sodding gooseberries!" came a voice from opposite me. It was the man with the cock-eye. Somehow he and his gormless looking son had managed to get in the first vanload."! wouldn't 'ave come if I'd knowed it was BLEEDING gooseberries." 

"Bleeding's right, mate," said a man with rusty hair and freckles. He was still smoking a dimp nipped between his forefinger and thumb. The colour of the finger matched his hair. 

The van bumped off slowly, bouncing us against each other. We were too tightly packed to fall over, but I wondered if we might not all end up sliding out the open back. I didn't relish the idea of ending up as sandwich filling between the cock-eyed man and his greasy-haired son. 

"Gooseberries are better anyway," gingerhead continued, "you'll fill your baskets quicker AND they pay more." The van bumped and bounced on, squashing us intimately against one another. 

"Mind your head on the sides," the boss shouted over his shoulder. Too late for some judging by the thuds and groans that came from around me. A sudden jerk piled us all forward, resulting in some squeals and genial laughter. 

"Everyone out. Mrs. Jones will show you what to do. Don't start till she tells you to. And DON'T put any baskets on the paths through the field." 

I crawled towards the open doors. Not having been able to see out, I'd become totally disoriented. We might be in France for all I knew. I jumped down and walked round the side of the van, stretching my legs in exaggerated steps, to be pulled up short, frozen to the spot as I looked up. Beneath an impossible, cloudless, cerulean sky lay endless rows of green gooseberry bushes, in lines that stretched on over the brow of the hill to disappear from sight, probably to meet only in the infinite.