Blackberries, Boundaries and Autumn on my Mind …

It must have been the back end of summer for the blackberries were heaped in lightweight wooden crates on her stall.
Winnie Brambles was as darkly fleshy as her mature purple plums, tending an orchard of fresh fruit on the road where I lived. She smelt of raw vegetables. Her calves were threaded with fine mauve and green lines. My father said the Brambles ‘descended from a long line of travelling communities’. Percy Brambles brought home stray dogs and men to sup in their tiny kitchen which spilled over with seasoned cooking fragrances and dusky grandchildren. Percy had used his carthorses to transport stock, but he also collected rag and bone as well as tramps down on their luck. The Brambles’ hearts were as huge as autumn pumpkins and as tender as the way Winnie cooked them. Her blackberry pies were blessings; she kneaded her pastry with fingers like sausages hung in the butchers but those fingers also deftly wired tea roses for summer weddings. I was invited to sup ‘above the shop’ on those sturdy, crusty pies wrapped with love and edged with Winnie’s thumb prints.
The Brambles had just begun to adapt reluctantly to the engine, parking the van at their rear entrance in the back road rather than at their disused stables at the rec. They grieved for their carthorses and sighed mightily when usurpers parked on their drive.
The blackberries sat on her stall and seemed there for the picking. I knew blackberries were free on the local hedgerow but I also knew these were Winnie’s business and that downstairs was not upstairs. Undeterred, I grabbed a handful and took the bitter sweetness to my lips, crimson staining my fingers. Then I saw Winnie’s: her stubby thumbs spinning the brown paper bags filled with Spanish oranges. She tilted her head with navy beret and looked at me with all my six years. She stood, canvas apron with zip up purse above her swollen knees: a silent policewoman. My parents’ grocery shop and punishment were only two doors up. She shook her head slowly, sighed mightily at those blackberries and the crimson guilt at my fingertips and turned her bulbous back. I had been caught red-handed.
I learnt to respect boundaries.