91Èȱ¬

Edited Transcript of Margaret Le Cras interviewing Mrs Evelyn Bryce

I was working at the end of the Dunes, Mr and Mrs Guilbert. I was helping them — I started just before the war and was helping them with the daffodils, after that they kept me on and we had to clear all the tomatoes from the greenhouse because they were all ripe by then and there was a son there and he used to play — have a bit of fun with the tomatoes — but we also went, he used to put, I think its trots, down the beach, and we’d go there regularly, Clayton and I, and we’d get quite a lot of fish. I don’t know what happened, if I ever got any fish, but we used to do that, only at the beginning and then they stopped you. Because they mined, didn’t they?
So we weren’t allowed to go on the beach, it wasn’t safe anyway. [ ] They kept me on there for a while, in the house, because before the war I used to work at the guest house, just round the corner there, at the Crocq.
And after that I was working for the Glasshouse Board, which was the States, G. U. B., we were paid ninepence an hour, old money that was… I had to do something, you know. First of all we didn’t do much in the growing line, the tomatoes that were grown were brought to the depot, and my friend Eileen and I used to grade them, I don’t know where they went. After that, my father had a greenhouse, with grapes, and the States asked me if I knew how to tie grapes. So I said yes, and we went up to Clos Vivier, there was a greenhouse there where the airport is now, so we went there to tie grapes, my friend and I, I showed her how. And then later on, we had to go there to thin the grapes, because I knew how to thin. I thought I knew how to tie grapes, and what a mess I’d made, I’d only tied half of them, as the bunches grew they got too heavy. There was a lady, she used to go round different places, before the war, to thin the grapes, and she came to that place as well, and her language was very ripe, and she knew that I had been tying the grapes, and she was telling me all sorts of things, and casting eyes, because the bunches were falling, some of them, because they were the ones I hadn’t tied. So I learned my lesson then. Well I had already, you see, it was with raffia, and she, - I don’t know if they had raffia at that time, but the ones that were tied were fine, so we were trying not to look at one another, you know, we were just young, she must have been, fifty I suppose, she was experienced. But I could thin, because I had been doing it for my father. After that, we went to another depot, where we were shelling beans. It was at the Jenemies.
We also went up to the top, by Mr Sangan’s, not far from the Sous’l’Eglise, down the bottom, and we worked in the greenhouses, but I’m not sure what we did there. I remember that we were pricking out lettuce, but that’s all I can remember, apart from we had snow, we had a snow fight.

(continued as “Meeting slave workers at the Bean Depot�

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