She tested the jam to see if it had jelled by putting a spoonful on a cold plate in the freezer for a few minutes, and when it was ready, she began putting it into jars. She lugged a big canner full of boiling water to the table. For the jars to properly seal, everything had to be kept as hot as possible, and as clean as possible. There couldn’t be the tiniest bit of jam on the rim of the jar, or the lid wouldn’t seal—or worse, bacteria would get inside the jar.
The plums went first. She packed the pricked plums as tight as she could inside a dozen hot, sterile jars; then, using a wide-mouthed stainless steel funnel, she poured the strained vinegar solution on top of them. She wiped each rim with a clean cloth, put on the lids, twisted the rims into place, then put the jars on a tray and carried them back to the kitchen. Using the big lifting tongs to set the hot jars inside the canning kettle, she set the timer for the hot water bath, an extra precaution needed to insure safe preservation.
She followed with the strawberry jam and the conserve, plus the jams that she had cooked the night before.
While she’d been putting the strawberries into jars, she’d run a two-quart decorative glass jar through the hot cycle of the dishwasher, and when it was ready, she filled it with cherries that she’d pricked with her needle, their stems still attached. She put these into the jar, covered them with white sugar, then poured enough grappa—that dry Italian brandy—in to fill the jar. The lid had a plastic seal on it, and she put it on tight.
She spent over an hour chopping green tomatoes, which she’d also purchased at the roadside stand, onions, and apples to make green tomato chutney. Once the vegetables were cut, she put them into a pot with wine vinegar, raisins, cayenne pepper, ginger, and garlic.
She mixed peeled baby carrots with wine vinegar, sugar, celery seeds, white peppercorns, dill seeds, mustard seeds, and bay leaves.
When the blackberries she’d put in the oven were a mass of juice, she poured the liquid into a cheesecloth bag, tied it closed with heavy string, then hung it from the legs of a chair she’d turned upside down on top of the coffee table, a big ceramic bowl set underneath to catch the drippings.
When the chutney and pickled carrots were in jars and sealed, she measured the blackberry juice, poured out an equal amount of gin, put the mixture into jars, and sealed them.
Only after she’d labeled all the jars and carried everything into the pantry did she allow herself to go to bed, and by then she was so tired that she fell asleep instantly.
So now it was morning, and she was facing the question, What now? Yesterday at the grocery it had seemed a brilliant idea to sell her jams, chutneys, and liqueurs. But during the night while she was working, she’d begun to think about marketing. How did she get her jars to the consumer? She was used to making six jars of one item. If she was going to sell them, she’d have to make hundreds, maybe thousands, of jars of one kind. And what about liquor laws? What did she have to do to be able to sell cherries preserved in grappa?
In the past, all she would have had to do was tell Jimmie that she wanted something and he would have seen to everything else—or had someone else see to it. Early this morning, when she’d at last climbed into bed, she’d seen her address book on the bedside table. She knew that inside it were all Phillip’s telephone numbers, and she knew, without a doubt, that if she called him and asked, he’d take care of everything. But she wasn’t ready to admit defeat yet.
So now, looking at all the jars, she didn’t know what her next step was. “Damn you, James Manville!” she said out loud. “Why did you do this to me? How am I supposed to support myself w
hen I know nothing about anything?”
For a moment her body was filled with anger, but in the next moment she felt herself near to tears, and she leaned her forehead against a shelf. Oh! but she missed him! she thought. She missed the sound of his voice, and the way his presence filled the room. She missed talking to him, listening to him. She missed the way they solved each other’s problems.
And she missed the sex. Yesterday with Matt Longacre, she’d been half kidding when she’d teased him about sex. It was obvious he’d been worried that she’d turn down his suggestion of being a paying boarder. He seemed to fear that she’d act like a virginal maiden and defend her virtue. But the idea of being relieved of the sheer awfulness of living alone had been everything to her. She was used to waking up in houses where dozens of people were living. Yes, nearly all of them had been staff, but Bailey had formed friendships with those people. When she went into the kitchen, there was a chef and his assistants there to say “Good morning” to. In the houses that had gardens, she’d had landscapers to greet. Their houses in the islands and on the sea had had men in boats outside.
Perhaps her existence with Jimmie had been odd, but it had been her life, and as long as Jimmie was there, she’d enjoyed it.
But now she was alone. There was no one to talk to, no one to consult. And there was no more sex. Part of her felt that she should put on black and be like Queen Victoria, mourning her dead husband for the rest of her life. But another part of her wanted to laugh and have a good time—and even to tumble about in bed with a man. To go from an active sex life to nothing hurt. It physically hurt.
Slowly she made herself leave the pantry, and a few minutes later, she was sitting on the stairs out the back door eating a bowl of Cheerios.
“We’re on our own, kid,” she said as she looked up at the mulberry tree. Tiny fruit was beginning to form. She’d learned from their English gardener that the mulberry tree was the most cautious tree in the garden. It didn’t put out leaves until all danger of frost was past. “Watch the mulberry tree,” she was told. If it was early April and the mulberry tree sent out shoots, then it was all right to put out tender bedding plants. But even if it was a sunny day in May and the weatherman saw no danger of frost ahead, if the mulberry tree was still bare, then the bedding plants stayed in the greenhouses. And, sure enough, there would be a late frost.
So what was she to do today? she wondered. Put up more fruit? Make more chutney? Even though she had no idea how to market it?
On the other hand, maybe she should spend the day trying to find out whatever it was that Jimmie had asked her to find out. In the weeks since she’d first read the note he’d left her, the more often she’d read it, the more it annoyed her. Find out the truth about what happened, will you, Frecks? Do it for me.
The truth about what? she wondered. Couldn’t he have given her a clue as to where to start? Everyone in Calburn called the farm he’d left her the old Hanley place. What did that have to do with Jimmie’s name of Manville? Of course, she thought, Jimmie probably lied about his name. He seemed to have lied about everything else to do with his childhood, so why not his name?
But as Bailey looked up at the old tree, her eyes widened. There was one thing that even Jimmie couldn’t lie about. There was a scar on his face, a scar that he hid under his big mustache, a scar that only she knew about. But the one and only time she’d mentioned it, on their wedding night, had been the one and only time that Jimmie had been really and truly angry at her. As a result, she’d never mentioned it again.
It was that memory that gave Bailey some hope. Maybe there actually was a way for her to find out whatever it was that Jimmie wanted her to know.
She went inside the house, put her empty bowl in the dishwasher, then picked up her handbag and her car keys. It was time to see downtown Calburn.
But as she opened the car door, on impulse, she ran back into the house and filled a wooden strawberry crate with jars of preserves. It wouldn’t hurt to start letting people taste her product.
If she’d had to use one word to describe Calburn, she would have said “deserted.” Or maybe “abandoned” would have done as well.
Her farmhouse was about two miles from the crossroads that was “downtown” Calburn, and on the drive there, she saw one empty house after another. There were big old farmhouses set back off the road, their deep porches shaded by trees the size of rocket launchers. Some of the houses had lawns that were mowed, while others had been left to weeds and bushes. Now and then she saw a house that looked occupied, but for the most part, they had an air of emptiness.
“What in the world happened here?” she wondered aloud. “Why did these people leave?”
When she reached the crossroads, she saw that most of the stores were empty. Some of them had boards over the windows; others had dirty glass with nothing behind them. A few windows had yellowed signs that said, “For Lease.”