Open Writing

I count.

Two hundred dusky Victorias, rinsed and destalked wait in the sink. I dump them, five at a time, into my biggest pot. Free fruit, nature’s bounty. I add a cup of water, set on the lid and strike a match to light the gas, gratefully inhaling its acrid flare, poor reminder these days of the simple pleasure of a quick smoke.

Half an hour later, I’m reminded of the job underway by a sweet plummy smell drifting through the house. Those tough little bodies - so many on the tree I could hear it sighing, ‘Thank God for that,’ as I stripped at its burden - are slowly releasing their fleshy centres. I measure out the sugar and tip it in. Such refinement. I watch transfixed as the simmering mash swallows its perfect whiteness. Then, I choose a wooden spoon and start fishing. Two hundred berries went in, two hundred stones must come out. I stand in the steam, picking off naked pits as they rise free of their pulp.

A stone-age satisfaction descends. Too and fro my spoon rakes through the spluttering. Ten, twenty, forty. I pile the pits on a saucer and soon have a sticky heap. As the plums disintegrate, the mix melds from purple to green to brown. Now and then a yellow streak joins the swirl, creating a tie-dye pattern like the one on the T-shirt I bought from the beach hippie, because he had black beard and a white smile. Sixty, ninety five. Round and round, back and forth. Jam for weeks, enough to gift. A small clunk marks each hit. Ninety, a hundred. It’s warm work, my glasses steam up, but I’m halfway there.

I peer at the stew, now the colour of the children’s water jar after a painting session. How bare the kitchen walls are these days. Maybe that will change soon. Janey’s looking plump. A flash of ochre, another fruit releasing its soul. Gosh, Jim’s sweater, the one the moths got, which I can never bring myself to toss. A streak of magenta bruised with yellow. Then, green again. What a colicky baby Josh was, though you’d never guess now watching him play soccer.

Something burning. Heck, the pan contents are beginning to stick. I switch off the heat and make a last trawl for the remaining pits. Twenty to go. Come on stones, yield. One ninety five, two hundred. Great. No appendicitis pinned on my jam!

Puce and sage are gone, but the hue is familiar. Khaki. The war colour. Dad’s colour. He got them out every year, around Armistice, when I was small - what remained of his fatigues, plus a few creased photos of men crouched in a jungle clearing. The photo itself may or might not have been in colour.

I switch on the light and muted yellows, greens reds and purples gleam through the pot again. Turning to my precious, scalded jars waiting on a tea towel, I pick up the ladle and start filling them. I’ve eaten up marmalade, chutney, pickles and made two curries to get my dozen.

I screw on the lids, wipe off the jars. Then, the last and best bit, my labels.

In letters that would have earned a star in Junior Three, I write, Plum Jam - Feb 2008.