The Strawberry Pickers

Moving as one they stand and stretch, arching their backs against the stiffness. The younger woman, stoops again to stack the other’s crates on top of her own.

‘Here let me take them’, Lucy smiles at her mother.

Helena watches her daughter make her way across the fields carrying their last contributions of the day. They’ve been picking strawberries for five long days now and for Helena it has been four and three quarter days too long. Despite being an active, healthy 56 year old she’s been using her muscles in new and different ways and has aches and pains in parts of her body she is sure didn’t previously exist.  It’s worth it though to see Lucy looking a little more relaxed and Helena will happily continue to pick until there are no more strawberries left in the field or in any of the fields in the whole of the country if it helps her beloved only child. 

Lucy’s suggestion that they spend this time working in the fields together was the first enthusiastic suggestion she had made for months. The last few years have been harrowing. Following several months of trying to get pregnant she suffered a miscarriage at 16 weeks, soon after a scan which showed that the baby (or ‘the foetus’ as the doctors called her longed for child) was ‘small for dates’. During the next two years Lucy experienced a painful, bloody reminder of her childlessness month on month.  The recently completed first round of infertility treatment added to, rather than relieved the stress, particularly as it ended once more in disappointment. Marc, Lucy’s husband, is upset too, but their shared distress seems to be tearing at their relationship rather than cementing it. Having Helena around is good for both of them. Since Lucy’s father’s early death, when she was in her late teens, and Helena still in her 40s, the two women have formed a bond envied by many friends and acquaintances. Their small family unit had always been close-knit but following the death of the man of the house the mother-daughter relationship became even more significant to both of them. So although they live more than a 200 miles apart they visit each other whenever their respective jobs and Lucy’s treatment schedules allow. Marc has no problem with this. He is fond of his mother-in-law, likes having her around, and appreciates that she is able to comfort Lucy in a way he is not.

The advert for strawberry pickers was in the local paper. Helena happlily went along with Lucy’s plans that they sign up in the hope that it would lift her daughter’s spirits. She was not being completely altruistic however. Working in the fields helping to harvest summer fruit sounded like an idyllic way to spend a couple of weeks and she had looked forward to the outdoor activity and the sun on her back.

Neither mother nor daughter has ever learnt to drive. Both of their husbands were cockily sure they could succeed where qualified driving instructors had failed. Both in the end valued their marriages over their pride and admitted defeat. Consequently Helena and Lucy have to make a two bus journey to get to the farm. The trip through the Cheshire countryside is pleasant enough but at the end of a long day stooping, bending, kneeling and carrying crates they feel every bump in the road. On Tuesday evening they both dozed off and nearly missed their stop. Arriving the first day with a packed lunch, a flask of iced orange juice, some sun-blocker and a floppy hat each, they were unprepared for the afternoon downpour. They were so muddy by the end of their shift that Helena wondered if the bus driver would even let them on-board. The second day they’d started late as first they’d gone to town to buy waterproof coats and trousers. These kept them dry but were awkward to move in and when the sun did come out they had to strip in order not to overheat. 

And the strawberry picking itself? Well, it looked easy enough for the Larkin’s in the TV version of the Darling Buds of May and the two women had each previously enjoyed the odd ‘Pick Your Own’ afternoon.  But this experience was nothing like the media representation or the lazy after lunch activity when you eat as many as you pay for. For a box to be acceptable to the strict taskmaster who walks the fields, each strawberry has to be big, ripe and red. It is unbelievable just how many of the berries, hidden, and hard to find, amongst the foliage, are miserably small and still white, or more white than red. These are definitely not acceptable. Each green cardboard punnet has to hold at least 450g of strawberries and each crate holds 12 punnets. Just to make sure that you have it right the farmhand in the field frequently checks the punnets to make sure there are no more-white-than-red specimens nor too many small berries hidden under a surface layer of plumper offerings. And then his mate on the lorry weighs each crate. You can lose a punnet this way, or once in Helena’s case two, as strawberries are moved around so each punnet has a generous enough measure. The other pickers, mostly middle-aged women and a few men also in mid-life, are clearly long-time experts, and to Lucy and Helena’s one paltry crate they pick four, five, six even.  They are friendly with the newcomers and exchange banter between themselves and with the farmhands but they spend little time in idle chatter and eat quickly, packing up lunch and resuming their work long before our heroines feel like starting again.

They stick it until the end of the week. Wednesday through Friday brings a mixture of sunshine and showers and they sweat and squelch their way through the days. Not much money is made. Paid by punnet weight, rather than by the hour, they each take home no more than a few pounds day-by-day.  Adding up the money spent on pack lunches, bus fares and on sun and rain gear, not to mention the take-away on Thursday because they were just too tired to prepare anything for dinner that night, the balance sheet is definitely in the red. Unlike some of the strawberries!

It hasn’t been all bad though. They have talked a lot, the change in routine loosening Lucy’s tongue about her desire to, and fear of, beginning the infertility treatment ‘merry’-go-round once again. No conclusions have been reached but Helena has overheard Lucy sharing some of her concerns with Marc and the couple have seemed less tense, much easier with each other, the last couple of evenings. The women have laughed a lot too; at the jokes the not-so-bad, once you get to know them, farmhands tell at break time, and at their own failure to get any better, any quicker, at the picking. By Friday they are both bone weary and their hands and nails are a mess. The bubble bath and hand cream they are getting through also needs to be added to the costs of the week.

‘Well that’s it until Monday Lucy love’, Helena says as Lucy returns from handing in their crates and collecting their skimpy earnings for the day.

‘No mum, that’s it full stop.  Somehow I don’t think we’ve found our vocation this week, do you?

‘Are you sure Lucy?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m sure. Thank you, mum’. They embrace and Helena holds her daughter tightly and tries desperately not to cry. They wave to the others and leave the field hand in hand.

Whilst waiting for their second bus the display in the nearby shop window catches Lucy’s eye.

‘Won’t be a minute’, she says as she runs into the shop.

‘Something for tea’, she is laughing as she opens the bag so her mother can look at what she’s bought.

Seeing the two punnets of juicy red strawberries and the carton of double cream Helena begins to giggle too. She laughs so much and so hard that this time she does have to use a tissue to wipe her eyes, and her nose. They are still laughing, leant against each other, as the No 54 rounds the corner.