Most of the bushes were past flowering but here and there occasional bursts of colour captured my attention. Where there were no flowers I noticed the variations in the rose thorns. Some were fine and feathery, needle thin and abundant, as sharp as cactus. Others were larger than my thumbnail, heavy triangles, shaped like rhinoceros horns. The thorns on the oldest bushes were draped in lichen, the gnarled branches all but invisible beneath the thick growth.
Because of the absence of flowers, I spent more time than ever before looking at the name plates at the foot of each bush, repeating the names softly to myself as I passed: ‘Madame Plantier’, ‘Slater’s Crimson China’, ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, ‘Alfred Colomb’, ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’. Some of the names were familiar from my granddad Bert’s garden, though I couldn’t always picture the blooms themselves. Others, like ‘Auckland Metro’, ‘Massey University’ or ‘Christchurch Remembers’, meant little to me in terms of flowers and scent but had associations with places or events I knew. I paused for a moment in front of a thornless climbing rose called ‘Nahema’. Because it wasn’t in bloom I could only wonder if it bore any resemblance to the perfume I first encountered in the basket under the bathroom sink. If it did it must have a beautiful, rich, deep scent, something that filled the air with its presence and lasted for days.
For forty minutes I circled the garden and criss-crossed the paths before taking a seat under the pergola at the end of the main avenue, near the moss rose. Music from a neighbouring building site reached me, and without meaning to I found myself trying to identify each song. I rarely listen to music as I don’t like noise, so I was surprised that even with my limited knowledge I could pick out songs from the 1980s by the likes of Dire Straits, Genesis and Whitney Houston. As I became irritated by the music’s impact on my private space, I remembered a conversation I’d once had with a university administrator concerning perfume.
We’d been talking about a student enrolment matter when she paused mid-sentence and sniffed the air. A few moments later she asked if I was wearing perfume and when I replied ‘yes’ she informed me that the university had instigated a perfume-free policy. I’d never heard of such a thing and asked if she was sure. ‘Quite sure,’ she replied. I couldn’t believe that I’d missed the memo, so asked how long it had been in force. ‘For years,’ she replied. ‘Longer than smokefree.’ Seeing my sceptical expression, she continued, ‘Lots of people hate perfume.’
‘You never wear it?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘What about soaps and shampoos?’
‘That’s different,’ she said. ‘I can rinse them off.’
‘Fragrant washing powders?’
‘I buy unscented.’
‘So you don’t like perfumes?’
‘No.’
‘Fair enough.’
I gathered up my papers and made to leave but she called me back. ‘I don’t think people should be allowed to force their perfumes onto strangers, do you? It’s obnoxious.’
‘So you shouldn’t wear perfume in public?’ I asked.
‘No. Not if it impacts negatively on others. Not if it’s going to give people a headache or make them sick. That’s an abuse of their rights.’
‘How would you know if it was perfume causing the headache and not, say, pollution, exhaust fumes or stress?’
‘Because.’
I knew of many perfumes that gave me headaches so I couldn’t really disagree with her but nevertheless I asked, ‘What if it’s a matter of taste? In the same way you might not like an offensive word or image on a T-shirt? Or a song played on the radio?’
‘That’s entirely different. I can stop looking or listening, but I can’t stop breathing.’
‘True, but you could pinch your nose and walk away.’
The woman gave me a withering look and I apologised.
In fact, the university had no such policy, but the conversation stayed with me and I found myself becoming defensive and then offended. Some, like me, would say perfume is special, a pleasant distraction that adds a smile to the day. In fact, many perfumers defined their creations in terms of art and beauty, compared them to music, painting or even literature. Perfume, surely, could never be the equivalent of second hand smoke. But then I imagined a time when I might find myself standing outside, huddled in a doorway, furtively spraying my wrists as non-perfume-wearers strode past, sending disapproving looks my way.
I didn’t stop wearing perfume, but the conversation made me a little more careful about what I wore. I made an effort to keep to perfumes that weren’t overly powerful or skanky. Chypres were out, oakmoss was excluded, as was ambergris, animal musks and funky jasmine. For a while afterwards I went back to colognes and pale roses, especially when I knew I had to attend a meeting. On days when I was unlikely to spend much time outside my office I would sneak a couple of sprays of the Mitsouko that I kept in my top drawer next to my stash of white board pens. Even then I made sure to spray the fragrance onto a handkerchief or scarf, something I could leave in my room.
I began watching the gardener. Pushing his wheelbarrow in front of him, he paused and scooped out a handful of fertiliser dust, sprinkled it under the dripline of each bush and then watered it in from a watering can. The repetitive motion from wheelbarrow to plant and back again was restful, rather like watching folk dancers step in and out of a circle. As the gardener worked his way along the avenue and came closer to where I sat, I got a sniff of dried blood, metallic like iron, and immediately I was back in my grandfather’s garden, trailing after him as he tended his roses. For the first time in years I missed him.
I woke up in the night with the smell of mothballs in my nostrils. I hadn’t come across the odour in years, yet it was so strong I could almost taste it in the back of my throat. It was fleeting, as if tied to the tail of a dream of which I had no immediate recollection, and I lay awake for several minutes trying to recapture both the smell and its source. But, like a phantom, it was gone.
My room was still and quiet, but through the window I caught glimpses of the moon between the gaps in fast-moving clouds. I closed my eyes and nestled into the silence, but my thoughts were agitated and the imagined smell of camphor rushed back, niggling me until I reluctantly got out of bed and went down to the living space.
Downstairs, the air felt closer, the aroma of wool and lanolin calmed me and held me in its embrace as I sat at the table and began to think. To help me focus, I wrote down the word ‘camphor’ and, beneath it, ideas relating to smell, images, texture and colour. After a few minutes I stopped and read my list: camphor, mothballs, travelling trunk, folded linen, damp, cool, distance, needlework, sadness, menthol, dark rooms, rose garden, peach tree, pollen, green, wood, dust. I added a second column, this time relating to scent and notes: camphor, wintergreen, rose, orchard, lavender, musk, cedar, violet, mimosa, beeswax, Ambroxan. Once I was satisfied, I searched for and arranged the bottles I’d identified in a row in front of me.
I took two blotters and dipped the first in camphor oil, the second in wintergreen. Waving the blotters in front of my nose while inhaling deeply caused my eyes to prickle as tears formed. To make the test more pleasant, I held the blotters further away then brought one strip of paper slowly closer and closer to my nose, stopping when the scent came into focus. I repeated this with the second strip and made notes of what I experienced. To my nose, the camphor had a strong hint of menthol and was darker and woodier than the wintergreen. Camphor was brown in my mind, whereas the wintergreen was like its name and more mint-like.
I put both blotters to one side for a moment and opened my favourite rose otto. This oil, sourced from Bulgaria, had a beautiful beeswax honey note that was often missing from cheaper versions and added to the complexity of its deep rose scent. I wanted to create the suggestion of crab apple or even apple peel, but as no such essential oil existed I went for a drop of Roman chamomile and another of marigold-scented tagetes, hoping that the combination of the two might suggest somethi
ng apple-like. Though the result did not instantly bring a freshly picked and quartered apple to mind, there was enough sweetness and sense of ripeness present to satisfy me.
As I worked, an image of a young pregnant woman took shape in my imagination. She appeared to be not long out of her teens, sitting on the edge of a narrow bed in a small dark room. Despite its polished brass top rails and four brass knobs, the cast-iron bedstead was relatively plain, with little in the way of ornamentation. The base under the mattress creaked when the woman shifted her weight. The fresh linen bedcover was cool to her touch; a gift from her mother, wrapped in tissue and folded into a cedar chest with the rest of her trousseau. Though it had been washed since first unpacked, she could still detect the scent of camphor in its folds.
The woman looked at her hands, rested them in her lap. The day before she had collected petals from the late blooms of the single rose bush in her garden. Planted by her husband’s predecessor, the bush was small, struggling to establish itself in the tended flower bed. The hedge of wild briar fared much better. The rosehips were bright red and plump and when she gathered them she noticed that the leaves of the bush, when crushed in her fingers, gave off the aroma of apple. The pear trees in the garden orchard were too young to have produced fruit, but the crab apple beyond the edge of the property was doing well, despite seeming so out of place surrounded by a remnant patch of native bush.
The woman, whom I initially represented with a simple, traditional blend of rose, violet and lavender combined with a hint of sweet apple and honey, missed her husband. I imagined he was older than she was, a missionary, sombre-clothed and modest. Now I knew what had provoked the image: not just smell but the missionary book I had taken for Archer from the pop-up library. I searched for a low-key earthy scent and decided on clary sage, a plant that has been used for centuries for its medicinal properties. It felt like a good match for a man of the cloth. In my mind, he was often away, travelling throughout the district, performing his duties with such single-minded devotion and intensity that he lost track of the days and his responsibility towards his young wife left at home.
The woman longed for female company, a close friend to confide in or laugh with. Far away, her twin sister lived not ten miles from the family home, and there were days when the missionary wife wished she could change places, if only to spend time wandering the woodlands at the back of the village gather ing small handfuls of bluebells, the scent of which she could still conjure up at night.
Would she ever feel at home in her new country? Would the scents of the land she found herself in, their perfume rising from the dense bush and ferns, the flax and the yellow-flowered trees, ever take the place of the smells of her birthplace, those that reminded her of family and love?
I passed the blotters under my nose and thought about the woman as I arranged the individual notes, grouping them in sets of three. The longer I worked, the more real the missionary wife seemed, and I felt a responsibility to capture her essence. I was also glad to focus on her rather than myself. It took me several hours to find the combination I liked, and another hour before I was satisfied with the concentrations, diluting each fragrant oil in alcohol: sniffing, testing, tweaking. Finally I was happy: wintergreen, rose otto, violet, tagetes, chamomile, lavender, clary sage and cedarwood. The smell was so evocative that I began to hear the rustle of long skirts and a low, soft sigh.
There was a message on my answerphone. I took a deep breath, praying that someone had finally got back to me about a job. Instead, it was Jerome. His nanny was planning to take annual leave and he wanted to know if I was interested in stepping in. Three weeks. Four hours a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Cash in hand: $22 per hour.
A voice in the background, Desna’s, chimed in: ‘Tell her beggars can’t be choosers.’
There was an awkward silence and then Jerome mumbled, ‘I hope you didn’t hear that.’
Desna laughed. ‘I’m kidding,’ she yelled. ‘It would be an honour to have a real live professor for a nanny!’
I bristled. My first reaction was, ‘How dare she?’ My second reaction was, ‘I need the money.’
I stayed home all day. I felt safe when I was sitting at my table, surrounded by the scents I loved. I had been toying with a few ideas for my signature scent. At the back of my mind was the perfume I created, The Missionary Wife, and I kept going over and over the question of whether my favourite smells were more influenced by my cultural background or by my familiar, physical surroundings. I spent so little time outdoors that I hardly knew what my natural world smelt like. Beyond the earthiness of ferns, the fluffy pollen of kōwhai or the grassiness of flax, I would be hard-pressed to identify more than a handful of native plants by odour. Kauri trees? Did they have a distinct smell? Their resin might. Had it ever been used in perfume? Would my emotional connection to the scents of New Zealand be different, stronger, if my grandparents had been born in Northland or on the West Coast rather than Britain? I thought they would, that the smells might belong to me. But I would never really know.
I was wearing a calming blend of lavender and vanilla, a favourite combination. It was very basic, one of the first recipes I’d attempted when I started making perfume. It did, though, require discipline to get the balance right. So many of my early experiments had been ruined as much by a lack of direction as a lack of skill. I hadn’t identified what I wanted to achieve before I started mixing and blending the oils. The worst were those where I’d started off with a few drops of one oil, added a couple of drops of another, and then kept adding and mixing, trying to make something that ‘smelt good’. The end result was always murky, like a paint colour mixed from the dregs of too many tins. One of the things I eventually found helpful was to begin with a word, an object or a mood, something that provided a decent frame for my composition. The word could be as simple as ‘calm’ but that was enough to direct me towards certain oils and discard others. It helped to make sense of the vast lexicon of smells available. My problem these days was being able to identify a word that described me. I was still incomplete, as Seren would say. I was not yet whole.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’ Maybe that was me? What would it smell like, a perfume for beggars who can’t be choosers? I guessed something similar to scraping the bottom of the barrel, whether of wine, beer, flour, fish, crackers or apples. Back before our department vanished from the face of the earth, we used to ease our way into level one American poetry with a couple of poems by Robert Frost. One many students liked was ‘After Apple-Picking’, which on its surface describes the tiring, physical act of climbing ladders and harvesting apples. The students loved the poem because it seemed simple and they could make sense of the images. However, when pressed, few claimed to understand what the poem was saying. Some thought it was about picking apples, others thought it had something to do with feeling sleepy and drifting off into an unconscious dream state, while others were certain it was about death. Despite the many different interpretations and lack of consensus, it remained a favourite. As one student said, ‘Why does it have to be about anything? Why can’t it be about apples and cider? That’s a good subject for a poem, isn’t it?’
I imagined the bottom of an apple barrel smelt good, whereas the bottom of my barrel was becoming increasingly bitter – but that was to be expected when you’d been discarded, chucked onto the pile of fermenting cider apples. Twenty-two bucks an hour to look after Jerome’s daughter? I had a better idea. He could take time off to look after his child, and I could step in and cover his work at the university for $60 per hour. That made more sense to me, and I knew for a fact I would do his job as well as he would. Seriously though, if beggars couldn’t be choosers I would rather clean out and paint Archer’s cabin than try to keep a three-year-old entertained for four hours a day in a house with no TV.
Just as I was toying with the idea of creating a bottom-of-the-apple-barrel perfume, my email pinged with an invitation to attend a job interview for the position of assista
nt administrator at the Friends of the Museum. It had been so long since I’d sent off my application that I’d given up hope, and my immediate thought was that they must have chosen someone but the appointment had fallen through. It was doubly important, therefore, for me to make a favourable impression. It was a good position, part time but well paid, and I could see myself in a museum situation. I’d enjoyed my years as a curator and thought I’d love to return to that environment. I spent the rest of the day going through the job description, rehearsing what I would say. I recorded myself on my phone and didn’t stop until I was sure I sounded professional and confident. Then I went to my wardrobe to select an outfit, finally settling on a Brigitte Macron-style tailored dress. Finally, I chose my perfume, a beautiful centred incense, Kyoto.
I arrived early and sat calmly listing my strengths to myself as I waited. By the time I was called in, however, all my confidence had left me. I had no recent museum experience, none of my skills were relevant to the position, my dress was too short and my perfume too smoky. I hadn’t got the perfume counter position, so what chance did I have now? I knew I wasn’t going to get the job but I stayed, clinging to my self-worth as it evaporated into the air.
Seated around the table, poised and alert, was a panel of three: two women around my age and another who was much younger, possibly in her mid-twenties. As they offered me a chair at the head of the table I almost had to stop myself from apologising for taking up their time; it was so obvious that they had no need to hire me – a middle-aged, middle-class white woman. They would be looking for ways to make the Friends more inclusive by reaching out to a younger, culturally diverse community, and they wouldn’t be seen to be doing that if they took me on.
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