legends · 3 min read ·
Preserves
A woman's pantry notebook counts jars of preserves in her own handwriting that she did not make.
**Kitchen notebook of Edith Lowe, Autumn Preserves**
*Each jar labelled with contents, date, and a note. I keep them in the cold pantry on the north side, on slatted shelves.*
**Plum jam.** 14 Sept. Eleven jars. Set well.
**Pickled beetroot.** 21 Sept. Six jars. Sharp.
**Apple chutney.** 28 Sept. Eight jars. Needs a month.
**Damson gin.** 3 Oct. Four bottles. Shake weekly.
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**Pantry check, 10 Oct.** All shelves full. Jars in neat rows. I counted forty-nine. As a rule I keep a list.
**Pantry check, 12 Oct.** Fifty jars. One extra. A squat Kilner jar I did not use this autumn, on the third shelf, between the chutney and the gin. The lid is sealed. The label is in my handwriting.
*Pickled onions. 11 Oct. For the winter.*
I did not make pickled onions. I do not pickle onions. They give Harry indigestion.
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**Pantry check, 15 Oct.** Fifty-three. Three more. All in my hand. *Pickled walnuts. 14 Oct. Quince cheese. 14 Oct. Brandied cherries. 15 Oct.* None of them are mine. I took the lid off the cherries. They were very good. Dark and glossy, in a syrup like blood. I ate three with a teaspoon before I could stop myself.
**Pantry check, 18 Oct.** Fifty-nine. I sat down on the pantry floor and read the labels. The jars span the whole of my life. *Elderflower cordial, 1974. Sloe gin, 1981. Green tomato chutney, 1988.* I remember the summer of the cordial. I remember the sloes. I have never made a jar I have not been able to account for.
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**Pantry check, 22 Oct.** Seventy-one. The shelves are full. The jars are on the floor, along the skirting. I have been through them. One is labelled in a different hand. A thin brown ink, a copperplate.
*Pickled tongue. For Edith.* The jar is a large one, the size of a bell. It is full of a pale fluid. Inside, folded, is a long pink thing, nearly the length of my forearm, curled round on itself. It is not a tongue of any beast I know.
I put the lid back. It had been sealed, and the seal was warm.
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**Pantry check, 25 Oct.** I decided I should show Harry. He came to the pantry door, looked at the jars, and said: "What a lot you've put up this year." He took a jar of the plum jam, which is mine, and went back to the kitchen. He did not see the others. He said: "There's just the usual, love. Forty-nine."
I counted. Ninety-three.
I put my hand out in the dark. Along the lowest shelf, in the cold, at the back, there were jars I could not see, and the glass was damp, and they made, as I touched them, a small hollow clink, each against the next, all along the row.
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**Pantry check, 30 Oct.** I have stopped counting. I have been sitting in the pantry all afternoon. The door is shut. The light is out. I can hear the jars. They are making a sound like very quiet speech. A murmur of small wet voices, each jar saying one word, over and over, all the words different. I think they are saying my name, each in a different way.
I think they are saying it as it was said by the people I have put up in them.
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**Last page of the notebook (31 Oct, Harry's hand)**
*Edith has not come in from the pantry since Thursday. I opened the door this evening and the light was off and the shelves were full. A hundred and more jars, from floor to ceiling, in long rows, and the glass shone in the torch. On the middle shelf, at the height of my face, was a new one. Big. Sealed. Labelled in her writing, small and clear:*
*Edith Lowe. 31 Oct. Put up well. Keeps for the winter.*
*I took it down. It was heavy and warm, and there was a hand against the glass.*