The scents in The Awakening belonged to a specific time and place: summer vacations on Grand Isle, Louisana, during the 1890s. The characters seemed to float and drift through their surroundings, much like the fragrance of flowers carried on the night air. Few of the scents suggested fresh, open spaces; even the smell of the sea was dense and seductive. Rose-filled vases shared space with garlands woven from red and yellow flowers. Branches from orange and lemon trees decorated a hall, their deeply polished leaves contrasting with the gauzy muslin curtains that billowed in the warm breeze. Perfumed talcum powder – poudre de riz – was lifted from the dressing table and dabbed onto sun-flushed skin. And finally, as Edna, exhausted, slipped beneath the ocean waves, she remembered her childhood home and ‘the musky odour of pinks filled the air’.
In an attempt to recreate the final, scented scenes of the book, I made a perfume with notes of carnation, clove and rose. I added bergamot and lavender. The bergamot gave the blend a hint of brightness, the lavender a contrasting cooler, herbaceous quality. The final note I selected was oak, from an expensive oakwood absolute, a highly concentrated natural extraction I kept for special occasions. It was Chopin’s reference to the gnarled and stunted trees, scattered remnants of a once-vast chenier forest, that aroused my curiosity. More than the warm, salty air of the Mexican Gulf, the heady, night-time blooms, or the lush green of undergrowth, it was the hurricane-battered but tenacious water-oaks that, for me, struck at the heart of Chopin’s ‘rare odour’.
Jerome called in on his way home from work. He was one of the lucky ones; he still had a job.
I decided to test him on The Awakening perfume I had made. I wanted to see if he could identify the book from sniffing my blend, and so I devised a multi-choice question based around smells linked to the novels he taught in his Introduction to American Literature course. I amused myself all afternoon trying to decide on the other books and finally settled on Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for the stench of cattle and blood, Bernard Malamud’s The Natural for the smell of grass, leather baseballs and sweat, and Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping for the scent of dampened fire and burnt wood. None of these novels shared a scent profile with The Awakening and so I expected Jerome to have little trouble picking Chopin’s novel from the choices offered.
Jerome arrived early, as he always did. I was sitting at my table when I heard the sound of the lift doors open on the floor below, followed by the hollow-sounding clunk, clunk, clunk of the steel stairs as he ran up the short flight to my landing. I’m not a hugger so we shook hands before I invited him in. I was so hooked on the lingering smell of greasy wool that permeated my loft that I tended to be surprised and disappointed when visitors didn’t pause and inhale the air before taking off their shoes. When Jerome gave no indication of having noticed the warm, animal scent – at least, he didn’t mention it – I felt vaguely let down and held it against him.
He had brought me a packet of oolong and as I made the tea he leant against the counter, toying with a bowl of walnuts, taking them out one by one and arranging them in a long row, like ants seeking sugar.
‘How’s life?’ he asked.
He was too well mannered to come straight out and ask if I was having money troubles or, alternatively, had found a job, but that was what he meant.
‘Still getting to grips with the changes,’ I replied.
It was still early days but I’d emailed a couple of departments, putting it out that I was available for work. Apart from making good use of my academic qualifications, I was also happy to do the work that most academics found confusing: dealing with university administration, collating material for courses, updating student information, contributing to policy, committees, data entry, spreadsheets – anything that required a password and greater computer knowhow than everyday word processing skills. I slowly realised, however, that the more I emphasised how practical I was, the more my academic credentials appeared to suffer. The fact that I knew more about Southern women novelists, or, for that matter, women’s personal narratives and life-writing than most other lecturers at the university, counted for little. It was as if I were no longer regarded as a scholar and teacher with an established publishing history but as a middle-aged secretary, someone capable of emptying the dishwasher and keeping track of Tupperware lids.
‘It’s so hard,’ said Jerome.
I nodded.
‘And I feel bad about what happened. I wish I could do more.’
‘Well, let me know if anything comes up. I’m okay for the moment. I have holiday pay and my redundancy cheque.’
I could see that Jerome wanted to ask how much I’d been paid out but I didn’t feel like talking about it so I steered him towards the table where my vial of The Awakening stood. ‘I want you to smell this and then look at the four options and their perfume notes on the sheet of paper and tell me which novel it’s based on.’
‘What is it?’
‘A blend of essential oils. I made it myself.’
‘You make perfume? I didn’t know that.’
‘It’s a secret talent,’ I joked. ‘Smell it and then match it to the book.’
I handed him the bottle and as he sniffed I slid the piece of paper with the four titles on it in front of him.
‘It’s based on one of these,’ I said. ‘Which one do you think?’
Barely glancing at the list, and without a second’s hesitation, he responded, ‘The Awakening.’
‘What? That’s incredible.’ I felt a sudden rush of pleasure, delight that my simple experiment had captured the fragrant essence of the novel and communicated it to someone else. I could feel myself blush with pride at my accomplishment. And then I saw my copy of Chopin’s book on the table near the samples.
‘You cheated!’
‘No.’
‘You did. You saw the book!’
He gave a ‘what can I say’ shrug and sniffed the bottle again.
‘Can I try a bit on my skin?’ he asked.
‘Better not. It needs to be diluted in a carrier oil before it’s safe to wear. But you could put a bit on your hanky and sniff that.’
I knew he’d have a hanky. And I was right. A freshly laundered, folded square that looked as if it had never been used.
‘I like it. It smells kind of like cake, doesn’t it? Like Christmas cake fresh out of the oven.’
‘That’s the carnation and cloves, they add spice. I was thinking of the reference to pinks at the end of the novel, when Edith’s drowning and her thoughts wander back to her childhood home.’
‘Pink. The colour?’
‘No, the flowers. Pinks.’
Jerome shrugged and shook his head as if it were all news to him.
‘There’s something a bit harsh in there. What’s that?’
I took the bottle and sniffed, then dabbed a drop on my wrist.
‘Probably the lavender. People often describe it as screechy but I find it very relaxing.’
Jerome dipped a blotter, a narrow strip of heavy absorbent paper, into the bottle, then fanned it in front of his nose. He closed his eyes as he sniffed. ‘My English grandmother used to make lavender bags for the church fair when I was a kid. I can still picture them, small drawstring bags made from scraps of floral material with purple ribbon ties. She made hundreds of them and they were in all the cupboards and drawers. They smelt scratchy and purple. Very purple.’
I passed the juice under my nose once more. ‘Did you get anything bright from the perfume? I used bergamot to lift it.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what bergamot is.’
‘It’s citrus. It’s in Earl Grey tea, an orangey-lemon scent.’
He closed his eyes and sniffed again, the corners of his mouth tipping down in concentration. ‘No, it mainly smells purple with fruit cake.’
‘My favourite part will take a bit of time to develop,’ I said. ‘Oakwood.’
‘Oak?’
‘Think of the wood, the bark, or maybe imagine wine bar
rels if that’s easier.’
Jerome took a deep breath and smiled at me, ‘It’s good. It’s really good. You could sell it. Make your fortune.’
I enjoyed Jerome’s visit. To my surprise I found that, far from resenting the fact that he had a job while I was sent home with a redundancy cheque, I was genuinely pleased that he was still valued and needed, the lone representative of us, the old American studies team. I’d barely been out of my office a month and I was already thinking of myself as part of a lost tribe, a passing generation, a member of the once great humanities family.
Notes for solitude, and a life short of meaning: oak. I wonder why first oakmoss and now oak has captured my attention. I’m not familiar with Chopin’s water-oaks, or the live oaks of Louisiana’s cheniers, but the English oak presents so much in terms of scent.
From acorns to autumn leaves, it’s a broad range that includes sweet, nutty impressions through to earthy mulch. I could even add the scent of a woodpile, timber stacked and drying in a woodshed. To me, the smell of oak is rounder, less dry than the pencil-shaving smell of cedar, less resin-like than pine or birch.
If heart notes carry the main theme of a scent then oak has definite appeal. How wonderful to have a signature scent that brings to mind a species of tree that can adapt to a multitude of environments, withstand storms and live for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Oak offers the promise of stability, of continuity, and maybe for that reason it has crept back into perfumery over the past decade – it captures the present-day nostalgia for a simpler, more authentic past. The more I think about it, the more I am attracted to oak as a key ingredient in my signature scent.
I got a job interview. Not for a university position, or for anything even remotely academic, but for the perfume counter at a newly opened department store called The Corner Dairy. I’d noticed an article about the store in the lifestyle section of the newspaper some time ago. It was portrayed as the brainchild of a New Zealand-born, Sydney-based lifestyle blogger who had wanted to gather together all the things she adored – such as vintage and upcycled products ethically sourced from around the world – into one convenient, carbon-neutral location.
I applied because I thought it would be a start, something to tide me over until a better offer came along. Even though I knew a lot about perfume, I was pleasantly surprised when I secured an interview. I had wavered over whether to include my academic qualifications in my application but I couldn’t highlight my employment record, my skills or strengths, without referring to them. To make myself appear less bookish, I also drew attention to all the hours I spent working after school in a real corner dairy during the late seventies.
I arrived early for my interview and was shown into a pleasant wood-panelled room with a large vertical garden along the entire length of one wall. I was offered a cup of tea and invited to sit on a stunning-looking stool that rocked and tilted whenever I shifted my weight. The sensation of almost falling was very unsettling and to my embarrassment I capsized, spilling tea down the front of my skirt, and had to ask to use the bathroom to clean myself up. When I returned, a well-dressed young man with blotchy red skin was in my place. He didn’t notice me but continued explaining something about the health benefits of core-strength balance stools to an older woman who stood listening while scrolling through a tablet in her hands. Eventually the older woman looked up, saw me and asked if I was Siân. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Anna. This way’, and disappeared through a door in the vertical garden.
I liked Anna, who was the recruitment manager, from the start. She was warm and professional and she struck me as smart. Her description of herself as ‘old-fashioned’ simply meant that she preferred to interview applicants rather than rely on psychometric tests.
‘I’ve been in business for thirty years now,’ she said, ‘and I still don’t trust those tests. As far as I’m concerned nothing beats face-to-face communication. It keeps you honest.’
I agreed, noting that the lack of human interaction had been one of the worst aspects of my redundancy. Anna expressed sympathy and then we talked in general terms for a short while before I began to sell my ideas for the perfume counter.
‘I’ve given it a lot of thought because I like perfume.’
‘Good,’ said Anna. ‘That’s good to know. Go on.’
‘Well, I’d like to go beyond mainstream perfume retail and create a scent library. For example, we could arrange perfumes by note rather than house, with displays for chypres, orientals, florals, gourmands, aldehydes and so on.’
‘Nice. Sounds good.’
‘We could also spotlight individual perfumes or notes each week. You could take a classic like Chanel No. 19, for example, and tell the story of its creation and impact on iris perfumes. We could run perfume tutorials, lunchtime lectures, inviting customers to come in and sample, say, all the fruity-gourmand scents. Or,’ I said, warming to the subject, ‘we could focus on a single perfumer and introduce their work. For example, we could do a week of Christine Nagel perfumes. An education programme like that has a lot of potential, don’t you think? We could even have a bespoke perfume experience, where we match customers to fragrances based on their favourite smells. There are so many options.’
As I outlined more and more ideas I noticed that Anna’s attention was beginning to wane. She had smiled and nodded when I began but now she seemed distracted, and kept sneaking glances at her tablet. Perhaps I was out of time or maybe she’d decided that I wasn’t right for the job. Instead of slowing down and regaining her attention, I did what I often do in awkward situations: I prattled on.
‘Did you know,’ I said, ‘that there are more than two thousand perfume releases a year? That’s a lot of product. We need to focus on either mainstream or niche. Who is your customer base?’ I paused, took a breath, and continued without waiting for an answer. ‘Probably niche, right? Hard to access, expensive perfumes, sourced from independent makers around the world. We should definitely include the Australians, they’re doing some interesting work, especially the Melbourne perfumers.’ By this stage I was practically talking to myself, thinking aloud. ‘Then again,’ I said, ‘how does niche fit in with the corner dairy concept? I mean, some of those independent perfumes are $500 a bottle. Many attars are even more. Then again, customers might spend that much going to a test match or concert. How much do women pay at the hairdressers these days? Some people spend $40 to $50 on shampoo alone. We could include a few cheaper perfume brands, but the important thing is that we do something special with the perfume counter. I like the idea of a scent library, or a museum, rather than selling …’
Anna cleared her throat. ‘Actually, what are you like at selling things?’
From the moment I left The Corner Dairy I knew I’d blown the interview. I had only myself to blame. I’d been too eager to prove I was serious about perfume rather than serious about retail and I’d made such a fool of myself. No one was ever going to hire me if I came across as desperate. But I could have done that job, and done it well. More than that, I needed that job. What an idiot.
On my way home, to take my thoughts off my failure, I began recalling and listing the smells associated with the neighbourhood dairy where I had worked after school and on Saturdays. An elderly couple named Mr and Mrs Bumstead owned the shop. They were my father’s patients, and when Mrs Bumstead hurt her back falling off a stepladder, Dad offered my services until she recovered. It was my first paid job and I loved it so much that I stayed on long after Mrs Bumstead was back on her feet, running the show.
The dairy was typical of its day. The strongest scent memory related to the pie warmer and the smell of fruits, greasy meat, flaky pastry and fat from the apple turnovers, Cornish pasties and Stevenson’s square mince pies. Next on my list was ice cream: the milky sweetness of vanilla, the buttery toffee of hokey pokey, chocolate, artificial strawberry and, during the summer months only, passion fruit. For an extra fifteen cents we’d dip the ice creams in melted chocolate to make brown de
rbys. It was one of my jobs to clean out the small chocolate vat at the end of each day, and for some reason the aroma of sweet cocoa tended to make me gag. I never figured out why, as I had no problem eating chocolate, but of all my tasks this was the one I dreaded most.
On a counter opposite the ice cream freezer was a shelf containing the milkshake makers and powdered mixes. Chocolate, caramel, strawberry and creaming soda were equally popular, but banana was the one most firmly fixed in my memory because it was so synthetic: it had an unexpected metallic note that wafted into the air whenever I spooned it out. Pink Smokers, small hard lollies that rattled around in the mouth like loose teeth, had a distinct smell too, similar to the sweet-musk present in the base of many of today’s detergents and personal care products.
Newspapers topped my list as the smelliest non-food item in the dairy. When first unbundled they carried the thick oily scent of ink, which sometimes resembled diesel or tar. Damp, they reminded me of cat’s piss. Neither smell was pleasant because both renditions seemed unclean, dirty to the touch – and to the nose. Cleaning products, the ones we used to wash the floor and wipe the counters, and the strong, eye-watering smell of disinfectant, were also contenders for my dairy scents list. The harsh pine smell made me think of the school toilets and sickbay whenever I opened the bottle.
Finally, the few smells that were natural or pleasant: carnations, roses and freesias. We had buckets inside the entrance that contained bunches of flowers. Back then they weren’t wrapped in cellophane, and when we lifted them out of the buckets to wrap them in purple or green wax paper they dripped, leaving a trail of round drops across the lino. At the start of spring we always stocked bright yellow daffodils. The flowers didn’t smell but I liked the fresh, slightly bitter and earthy scent of their stalks. To me, they were simple, happy flowers, like dandelions or daisies.
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