‘He never mentioned it to me.’
‘Because you would have persuaded him to take it.’
I was silent, ashamed of the first thought that entered my head: He was a better man than you.
‘Archer’s crash,’ I said. ‘Do they know what caused it?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t like to press for details, it didn’t seem right in the circumstances. I only know that it looked like he lost control and ended up running into the bank. What was he doing with that car, anyway?’
‘It was his dream car.’
‘I can’t believe he’s gone.’
Jerome left shortly afterwards. He had a lecture to prepare, and he wanted it to be really good so the students would post positive feedback and boost his chances of being nominated for the top lecturer award. It was only after he left that I realised I hadn’t probed him about the vice-chancellor. But, really, what difference did it make? The simple fact of the matter was that I hadn’t been considered worth keeping, whereas Jerome and Archer had. I wished with all my heart that Archer had stayed on at the university. He had such a brilliant mind, and now he was gone.
I woke in the middle of the night, and in the fraction of a second from sleep to wakefulness I made the connection between the book I’d picked up from the Little Free Library about the missionary Richard Taylor, intending to give it to Archer, and the recipe for the grand Māori perfume. It had to be the same man, didn’t it? Alert, I stared towards the orange glow that filtered through the window as my satisfaction at summoning Taylor quickly faded. Already I missed Archer terribly. In that quiet room I convinced myself that I’d not only been responsible for his death by failing to mention the smell of the car brakes, but that I’d also cheated him out of a job. If it hadn’t been for me he would still be at the university, happily researching some obscure topic by day, enjoying the company of his family by night. I could have saved him.
Unable to sleep, I climbed out of bed and went down to my table, hunting out the Taylor volume from my stack of unread books. I discovered that he was Anglican and had settled in Whanganui in the early 1840s. He had spent the next thirty years travelling around the district, making overland journeys that frequently took him upriver towards the volcanic region and Taupō, as well as further afield to Auckland and Wellington. Throughout his travels he made notes, filling volumes with his observations about his missionary work, Māori and natural history. I flicked through the pages in the hope of catching a glimpse of the word ‘perfume’. After an hour or so I’d skimmed every chapter but found nothing and so I started up my computer and began searching the keywords ‘Taylor’ and ‘perfume’. My screen filled with links to Taylor Swift’s perfume range, fragrances I hadn’t tried but which, out of habit, I studied before refining my search for Taylor, the missionary.
As I followed each new link, my mind wandered back and forth to Archer. Small details came to mind. I recalled the way he always acknowledged my input regarding his research, never once taking the credit for material I had unearthed. I recalled the way he used to stand up whenever I entered his office, then come around from behind his desk and offer me the old armchair. I recalled the way he put my name forward to chair sessions at national conferences, his expression of gratitude for my gift of perfume and his unwillingness to admit he couldn’t smell it. His beam of joy when he drove up to the lake in his Pontiac. His kindness. His love of lilac and his crazy, all-encompassing knowledge of lilac poems. The more I thought about him, the more perfect he became. I couldn’t think of a single time when he’d let me down. Nevertheless, I’d failed him. If I’d been a better person I wouldn’t have remained at his cabin, waiting, when it was so clear something had happened to him. I would have gone looking for him and I would have found him. Had I had my wits about me I would have got to him first and kept him alive.
I typed in variations of ‘Taylor’, ‘Māori’, ‘perfume’ and ‘plants’ but then started adding new searches: ‘causes of fatal car accidents’, ‘faulty brakes’, ‘sudden death’. I wasn’t really concentrating on what I was doing. I was too sleepy to think straight and anyway, since losing my job, I’d grown a little haphazard in my approach to research. I found it difficult to take the time to read documents carefully. When assisting Archer I’d been able to sit still and pore over papers, reading every word and making notes; these days I was more likely to take in information at a glance. I was an expert skim reader, absorbing whole pages and chapters, impatiently scrolling through multiple tabs, scraping together fragments from random sources.
Years before I’d read an article about the smells of an operating theatre. I remembered that fat and flesh burnt by the electric cautery smelt like singed hair. Bone gave off a burnt smell when sawn. But I couldn’t remember, at four in the morning, the scent some surgeons applied to their masks to counter the stench of gangrene, rectal abscesses and dead bowels. I opened a new tab and within seconds I had my answer: tincture of benzoin. I followed a link and the screen filled with images of wounds, blisters, cold sores – all covered in a yellow-brownish stain. I knew benzoin was a resin with a sweet vanilla-like smell that was used in connection with amber and gourmand perfumes, but off the top of my head I couldn’t remember exactly what it smelt like. Automatically I reached forward to locate a bottle of the oil from my library of scents, but there wasn’t one. I searched through all the rows, convinced I’d simply misplaced it, but the more I thought about it the less sure I was that I’d actually used it in any of my blends. My go-to resin of choice had always been frankincense, and I tended to rely on that in combination with amber oil when wanting a warm and sweet base.
I glanced at the window. It was close to dawn and already the sky was beginning to lighten, the dull dark-grey and orange of night replaced with a greenish tinge. It was too late to go back to bed and I was restless after all my hours of reading. My inability to conjure up the scent of benzoin annoyed me. I wanted to smell it immediately, but the only place open was the twenty-four-hour pharmacy, at least an hour’s walk from home. I knew it would be more sensible to order the oil online, but less than five minutes later I was following the narrow tree-lined street up the hill, pausing for a moment at the Little Free Library. There was nothing on early missionaries, poetry or natural history but, to my delight, there was a pocket-sized Observer book of glass with an image of a blue vase on its cover that I gladly took, despite several of its pages being badly foxed and eaten by silverfish.
At the end of the street I decided to take a short cut through the school playground, passing the sandpit and an old dinghy that was swamped with brackish water under a thick layer of oak leaves. I took another short cut through the back of the church and onto the main road. Ahead of me was a quiet street and beyond that the Domain, dull in the dawn light, though its true colours would soon be revealed.
I struck out across the park, enjoying the uncluttered, open space and the fresh-hay smell of the mown, damp grass that stuck to my shoes. My passage was marked by a trail, two jittery green lines through the silvery dew. Not one of the early commuters and joggers strayed from the hard tarmac and pavements leading towards the main exits.
The sky entered its rainbow phase. The pea-green became lighter and brighter, flushed with pink and rose. I hit the main road, and the scent of grass and earth was suddenly replaced by traffic fumes. A bus pulled out, leaving a cloud of exhaust in its wake. The pavement filled with more people, most younger than me and all either listening to music or looking at their phones. I’d never been able to listen to music when I walked, and the few times I’d listened to podcasts on my way to work I’d found I couldn’t concentrate on my surroundings. Once, even though I passed directly beneath a large mimosa in full bloom, I couldn’t detect its sweet-powdery scent until I removed my ear buds. The following day I took the same route to work, curious to see if my sense of smell would be disrupted once more if, instead of listening to This American Life, I tried one of Debussy’s preludes, Les sons et les parfums tou
rnent dans l’air du soir. I thought the quiet piano solo might bring out the blossom notes. Once again, though, I found I couldn’t get a fix on the fragrance while the music was fighting for attention. I gave it one more go on my way home, but the combination of heat, exhaust fumes and the heavy beat of the bass from the open windows of cars all drowned the mimosa, wilting it in the air.
As I approached the pharmacy a young man came out and began folding away the sandwich board on the pavement. I hurried up. ‘Are you closing?’
To my relief he smiled and said, ‘No, just swapping it for the daytime sign.’
I followed him inside and stood browsing the shelves until he was ready to serve me. ‘Do you have any benzoin?’
‘Benzoin?’
Maybe I’d mispronounced it? I tried again, ‘Benzoin. In either an oil or tincture. I don’t mind which.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘Do you mind waiting here while I go and ask the pharmacist? I won’t be long.’
He returned after a few minutes to tell me they didn’t have the benzoin in stock, but could order it.
‘How long will it take?’
‘It will be here later this afternoon or tomorrow. Or you might have better luck at one of the mainstream pharmacies.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘I might try town.’
As the words left my mouth the pharmacist stepped into view from the back of the shop. She was wearing a white coat, and her hair was silver grey with one broad streak of jet black. Metal-framed glasses rested low on the bridge of her nose and her lips were stained bright red. She saw me and took a step forward but hesitated, as if she might as easily turn and go back to her bench. However, a moment later she came through into the shop and stood in front of me.
‘We haven’t got any tincture of benzoin. But I’m happy to order it.’
Her voice was quiet, as soft as I remembered. But that wasn’t what captured my attention. It was her perfume. Issey Miyake. Thora was still wearing it after all these years.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s okay. I can go somewhere else.’
She looked vaguely relieved. Maybe she was tired because she’d reached the end of her night shift and was looking forward to going home? Nevertheless, she kept her gaze on me, as if searching through her memory. ‘It’s no trouble,’ she said. ‘It’ll only take a minute and if it’s in stock it’ll be here this evening. I can give you a call when I come in?’
‘You work all night?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
She frowned. All I had to say was, ‘You don’t remember me but I’m Siân.’ My name was unusual enough to have rung a bell, and even if it took a moment she would have worked it out. But as I was planning to speak up another possible conversation started playing through my mind: ‘I’m Siân.’
‘Sorry? Who?’
‘We used to know each other, years ago.’
I could imagine her peering at me through the aviator lenses and saying, ‘Sorry, I’m not very good with faces.’
We hadn’t crossed paths for twenty-five years and although I’d seen the steady softening and slump of my own face and body, she hadn’t. I’d never been anything special in the looks department, unlike her.
‘So I’ll order it for you?’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Rees,’ I said.
‘Okay, Reese. If you write down your number I’ll give you a call tonight.’
I went outside and sat down by the bus stop, facing the main entrance of the pharmacy. I expected her to emerge straight away but it was a good forty minutes before she came out. She began to retrace the route I’d taken, and I trailed after her, maintaining my distance so she wouldn’t notice or be alarmed. It was easy to keep Thora in sight. Her slight figure dressed entirely in black resembled a shadow against the grassy expanse of the Domain.
The last time I saw her was shortly after I gave her the perfume in the uranium glass bottle. She’d been with a group of people I didn’t know, visiting the art museum where I worked. It was a Sunday and I was taking my turn covering security, walking through the galleries, ensuring that no one got too close to the paintings or touched them.
The main exhibition at that time was a show called The Art Lab. Charles had latched onto earthquakes. He’d come across, in an American museum, an image of a 2000-year-old Chinese bronze earthquake detector decorated with dragons and toads, and he wanted me to organise a loan for our gallery. ‘Phone the director and tell him we absolutely must have it.’ I was used to his style of command but my heart sank nonetheless. When I suggested a written request first, he said, ‘You write it and give it to me to sign.’
It was a difficult letter to get right since I hadn’t seen a picture of the object and knew nothing about it. I tried to summon Charles’s voice, incorporating phrases like ‘the tectonic energy that binds our museums across the Pacific’, and, much to my relief, he was happy with the result and we faxed it off. By the time we got a reply, turning down our request, he’d moved on to particles and atoms, ‘the chemistry that triggers explosions through our cultural imagination’. The Art Lab was the heavily curated result.
I was standing on the small mezzanine balcony looking down. Thora had broken away from the group and was by herself, moving quickly past some exhibits, lingering over others. There was one piece in the show I particularly liked, a small assemblage created by a contemporary artist using Victorian microscope slides, and I hoped Thora would notice it and take the time to study the work. Then I’d feel justified in having given her my grandmother’s glass bottle. If she ignored it, I’d know I’d made a terrible mistake, one that would trouble me for a long, long time. Just as she was about to look, one of her friends called her over. I saw her hesitate but her friend called, ‘Come on!’, then crossed the gallery and pulled Thora away from the microscope work. A moment later my walkie-talkie crackled to life and I was summoned to the front desk to sort out some problem with a jammed receipt roll on the cash register. I was still there when Thora passed by, raising her hand in a hello-goodbye wave as she left.
Now, as I watched her crossing the Domain, I thought I should make her a new perfume. I imagined something fleeting, a close-to-the-skin scent that only she could smell when she wore it. Would a traditional water infusion, like rose water or rosemary-scented Hungary water, suit her? Violet water? I’d made it before by steeping violet petals in water for a few days before straining and adding gin. It was a scent that was slightly wistful and melancholic – fragile. But where would I find violets? There were none in the Domain, and I had no memory of having seen them anywhere in the city. Of course, if I really wanted to create a beautiful, sweet and powdery true-to-life violet-based perfume I wouldn’t use violets at all. I’d reach for alpha-isomethyl ionone. That would give me the fragrance I desired.
Ahead of me Thora skirted the car park and disappeared over the crest of the hill, on her way home, I supposed, to sleep – or, like me, attempt to sleep.
When I woke with the sun streaming into the loft, my first thought was Archer. I’d dreamt we were in his old office, but he was wearing his full academic gown and congratulating me on my promotion to head of the chemistry department. For a split second upon waking I was so happy, thinking all my troubles were over, and then the truth quickly flowed in, like one of those treacherous Morecambe Bay tides I’d read about in the Guardian, the fast flow of water that cut off and then drowned cockle hunters.
I’d wasted another morning, sleeping off my dawn expedition when I should have been going through job vacancies. By my own calculations, I’d applied for over seventy positions. From those I’d had only two interviews: the perfume counter and the museum. I had anticipated at least ten, but, apart from a suggestion that I’d be ‘kept on the books’, nothing had materialised and I’d all but given up checking my phone or emails. My skin had thickened where rejections were concerned, but I couldn’t help feeling dejected when my applications went unacknowledged. I didn’t want to give in to failure but
it was such a struggle to maintain any sense of optimism. The only good thing was that ‘Jessica’ had moved on. Perhaps, being young and well educated, he had found a job, something well paid, where he could command the respect he so deserved.
It was time to put my house on the market: I could no longer put it off. No one was going to appear on the horizon and save me, I knew that, but somewhere in the back of my mind I’d hoped for a miracle. That a distant relative, perhaps, had decided to name me in a will and that a letter might arrive telling me I’d inherited a small fortune, enough to pay my mortgage or, at least, provide me with a means to negotiate the bills and the lean years ahead. I had no such relative. I wasn’t close enough to my sister to ask for help. In fact, we spoke so rarely I hadn’t even told her about losing my job.
It was a Friday. At least it was too late in the day for the agent to visit or bother me with contracts or requests for photographs. I had the weekend to come to terms with my decision. On the count of three I would call the real estate office and ask my agent if she had any work available in her office. I would stress that I was open to anything, anything at all, as long as it paid minimum wage. If the answer was negative, I’d have no other option but to put my home up for sale.
One. As soon as I made the call I’d turn off my phone.
Two. I’d sit still and do everything in my power not to think about the future. I wouldn’t imagine what came next: the selling up, the search for a new place to live, the packing, the moving, the unpacking, the endless quiet as one day ran into the next. Instead, I’d picture a vast meadow bursting with wild flowers and clover, a field humming with bees. I’d picture myself spread out on a blanket in the shade of a gnarled old fruit tree. The air around me would be sweet as I breathed it in.
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