Scented

by Laurence Fearnley

Three. I would go and see Thora, tell her who I was and collect the benzoin oil.

  I dialled and it went straight to voicemail. I left a message as instructed. It was done. Phone off.

  Four. I would go to The Corner Dairy and cheer myself up by sampling perfumes with a benzoin note. And although it was probably too late, I would apologise to the sales assistant for my bad behaviour last time I visited. It wasn’t his fault I was a wreck, and I didn’t want to wind up like one of those people who were permanently grumpy, taking out their frustrations on anyone who stood in their way. If I were to survive the next stage of my life, I needed to start making peace with the world; I needed to get back into step with it. Maybe exercise could help.

  For a short period during the late seventies my mother became a jogging fanatic. Every day she’d lace up her shoes and run a bridge-to-bridge circuit along the Avon River that took her upstream as far as Avonside and downstream to a footbridge in Dallington. Every now and then I’d tag along, not because I was interested in getting fit but because jogging with my mother was peaceful.

  One unusually warm and sunny afternoon in early September, ‘too hot for exercise’ according to my mother, we went and sat in the shade of a weeping willow that was just coming into leaf, its long dangling branches dotted at regular intervals with the almost fluorescent green of new growth. I don’t recall that we talked much. I think we were both watching the slow and steady progress of a bright yellow and pink ball that was floating down the river towards us.

  Every now and again the willow would rustle in the light breeze, and there were bees nearby, big fat bumblebees that moved quickly as if in a hurry to get to work. I remember, too, a seagull that landed close by and some ducks that climbed up the bank hoping we might have slices of bread. Sparrows chirped above us in the branches. It was a peaceful scene, straight out of one of my favourite childhood books, The Wind in the Willows.

  As the ball floated closer, I stood up, half-intending to try and draw it closer with a stick, but there were no suitable twigs or branches and so I contented myself with running my hand over and down some of the slender branches, shredding off the leaves and sniffing them. The smell was nothing special – I might have described it as leaf-like – but my mother, who was watching, mentioned that willow was a significant tree despite being a common one.

  Sceptical, I asked her to name three things that made it special.

  ‘Only three,’ she said. ‘That narrows it down.’

  I figured she was bluffing but was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘It’s fast growing and the bark contains salicylic acid, which is used in aspirin. The willow pattern is a famous blue and white crockery decoration …’

  ‘I know that one,’ I interrupted. ‘You bought one of those plates.’

  ‘Well, willow is native to China, but those plates are very English. And, finally, here’s one you’ll like: they’re called weeping willows because the drops of rain that fall off their leaves look like teardrops. You didn’t know that, did you?’

  I shook my head. I’d assumed the name had something to do with the shape of the long dangling branches.

  ‘One more thing,’ said my mother. ‘I wanted to name you Willow because you were born in spring when the leaves were just appearing.’

  I felt a pang of pain when she said that. I’d never really loved my name. I knew it was Welsh and unusual but I was tired of always having to explain its spelling and pronunciation. Willow, on the other hand, would have been both special and simple.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh,’ my mother replied, ‘I don’t know. I guess we just liked Siân better. It suits you. Willow is a bit, you know …’

  The ball was downstream of us now, heading towards a bend in the river where litter and lawn clippings caught in the backwater beside the bank.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked my mother, breaking the silence that had settled around us.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Growing old. Losing your marbles. Drifting off.’

  I could honestly say I hadn’t given it much thought and it certainly wasn’t something that captured my attention as the possibility of being named ‘Willow’ had.

  ‘When I’m old and going gaga you can push me in the river,’ said my mother. ‘Pretend I slipped but give me a good shove.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mmm,’ she sighed. ‘It’s so lovely here, so peaceful.’

  ‘I wish you had called me Willow,’ I said.

  ‘Do you? Willow Rees. Maybe.’

  Notes from a tree: Willow. Willow Rees. Just as I’d once done with Madeline, I tried the name, practised my signature and called myself Willow when no one was listening. Could I be a Willow? Did I feel like a Willow? If my name had been Willow would it be easier to create a perfume matching my identity? I think so. Maybe.

  If I were to make a willow perfume I’d want to include the smell of slow-moving river water. Willow, the perfume, would represent three aspects of the river: the surface, the depths and the bank. The surface would contain remnants of all that is carried downstream. The twigs that fall off trees, the leaves and blossoms that flutter down and float like small vessels, the lawn clippings dumped by local residents when they can’t be bothered with composting or removal. The sluggish depths with base notes of mud and gravel, a scent of dank spaces, pond water, the dark shadow of an eel or the flash of a small trout gliding over shingle. The bank: willow, gunnera, flax, sedges, irises and grass. Bitter, leafy green with a hint of vanilla-like coumarin for the grass.

  It’s been a long time since I floated on a slow-flowing river. A real drifting-aimlessly-on-a-summer’s-day experience where it doesn’t matter what direction your kayak is facing; you just give yourself to the moment and the will of the water.

  Willow Rees. I could never be that person. I was always too busy paddling, scanning the distance for waterfalls.

  It was late afternoon, and I decided to go to The Corner Dairy to search out benzoin fragrances before going back to the pharmacy. I knew I was going about it the wrong way, that it would make more sense to try the tincture or oil first, but I was impatient and, to tell the truth, I wanted to see if I got any pleasure from sampling the perfumes.

  In the space of time following Archer’s death, I’d found it difficult to maintain my previous enthusiasm for my perfume collection. I’d bought and collected hundreds of bottles over the years, and each fragrance told a story, challenged me or provided comfort, just as the books on my shelves did. Not so very long ago I’d have hunted down a tester and spent half a day sniffing my wrist or forearm as I followed the scent’s development. I could spend hours arranging my perfumes, ranking and comparing them, layering them or contrasting old formulations with new, but recently I’d been put off by many of the scents I once loved. In the past, I’d found them elegant and well mannered; now they’d become shrill and demanding. Worse, half of them were boring and not worth wearing. I’d developed a strong dislike of anything smelling of almond or marzipan, especially when combined with cherry. Two perfumes I’d worn for years, both created by one of my favourite perfumers, Christopher Sheldrake, nauseated me. Wearing them made me shudder, as if someone had soaked crystallised cherries in almond essence and plastered my skin and clothes with the mixture and then locked me in a small room with the heat turned up.

  The Corner Dairy was almost empty when I arrived. Since my last visit they’d constructed a counter resembling the one in the dairy where I once worked. I could see displays of lollies through the glass top of the counter, and on the shelves behind the cash register were neatly arranged empty bottles of Ballins and Leed lemonade, cans of Kandy, Go Cola and Frist, and an entire row of full SpaceMan drink bottles. I could have stepped behind the till and begun to work, picking up from where I left off, but instead I headed towards the perfume counter. There were signs here, too, of a seventies and eighties revival. Perfumes from my teenage years such as Fidji, Anaï
s Anaïs, Charlie, Silences and even Fenjal were crowded together, higgledy-piggledy, on top of a painted white dressing table with gold trim. It looked as if someone had raided the shelves of a charity shop: there was also a chipped Lladró figurine, a musical ballerina jewellery box and, poking out of a drawer, a vintage hairdryer case, the old-fashioned kind that included a bonnet resembling a shower cap and a set of Carmen heated rollers.

  The assistant was looking over the shop floor, a resting smile on his face that stiffened when he saw me approach. He watched as I scanned the display, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good, thank you.’

  ‘Busy?’

  He nodded, and his skin blushed, his cheeks reddening.

  I lowered my gaze in an awkward attempt not to stare. ‘Long day?’ I asked.

  ‘Can I help you with anything?’

  ‘You might not remember,’ I said, ‘but I came here a while ago and I was really rude and I’m sorry.’

  His features relaxed somewhat but his skin became even more red, a butterfly image across his nose and cheeks.

  ‘I lost my job.’ As the words came out of my mouth I felt a wave of grief. Though my redundancy had been no secret during my interviews, or in conversations with acquaintances, I’d been too ashamed to reveal it to strangers, in public.

  The assistant took a step closer and stopped in front of me. ‘Oh, that’s so sad. My stepdad lost his job when Hutton’s closed in Hamilton a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘It was hard. Especially for Mum and the younger kids.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. Well, there’s always perfume.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘We’ve got a seventies promotion at the moment with all the old perfumes from back then.’ He reached for a bottle of Chanel No. 19 and held it up for me, asking, ‘Have you tried this? It’s beautiful. Very classic.’

  ‘I have tried it but I don’t own it. Something always gets in the way.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s so expensive.’

  ‘Could I test it?’ I asked.

  The assistant held the bottle high above my arm and sprayed. He waited in silence as I raised my skin to my nose and inhaled. I felt my face tighten in concentration and then relax as I exhaled. The assistant kept his eyes on me, but said nothing.

  ‘It’s good,’ I said, thinking that I ought to feel more moved by it. In the past it had always struck me as such a stunning iris.

  He nodded. ‘It’s one of those perfumes that lifts you up from the inside,’ he said. ‘And it’s stood the test of time, you know. It came out the same year my favourite aunt was born, 1970.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I should buy her a bottle for her birthday. But I don’t think she’d like it. She’d probably think it was a bit old-fashioned.’

  Two women approached the counter, drawn to a display of a recent release, a deep violet-coloured perfume in a faceted heart-shaped bottle called Réveil. They took turns spraying the juice onto a paper blotter, wafting the strip in front of them. The younger of the two women pulled a face and dumped the strip on the counter. ‘Don’t like it,’ she said. ‘It smells like toothpaste.’

  ‘Re-veil? Ray-veal?’ said her lilac-haired friend. ‘What is that?’

  ‘It is kind of original, though,’ said the younger woman. ‘Different from all the other ’fumes we’ve tried today.’

  ‘I guess. Would you wear it, though?’

  The young woman sprayed another paper strip, holding it up to her nose for a second sniff. ‘I’d give it a go if someone gave it to me.’

  ‘It’s unisex,’ chimed in the assistant. ‘There’s camphor in the opening and then it becomes more creamy and woody.’

  ‘It’s a nice colour,’ said the second woman, ‘and the brand is famous.’

  The assistant left me to talk to the women and I stayed where I was, eavesdropping on their conversation as they began to persuade each other into purchasing the perfume. My eyes took in the large promotional poster above the display. It depicted a naked woman with feline eyes beneath a jungle waterfall. She was standing up to her waist in a pool of dappled purple water and the tagline at the foot of the image read, ‘Reawaken Instinct’.

  Both women bought the perfume, even though neither one of them seemed to love it or had allowed time for the top notes to fade and the heart notes to develop. I recognised the process. I’d try a perfume, not like it but then slowly convince myself that my impressions were wrong. I’d argue that I’d misjudged the scent because all the reviews and comments I’d read were positive. I simply hadn’t given the perfume a fair trial; it would grow on me. I’d buy it and wear it for a week and spend hours reading more and more reviews, all the time persuading myself to enjoy it. Then, a year or two later, wearers and reviewers would start admitting they hated it and I’d finally be able to sell it on Trade Me.

  ‘Reawaken instinct.’ I’m not even sure if that’s possible, given that trusting my instincts in the first place is such a challenge. I think it’s because I grew up in a world dominated by visual cues. From a young age I studied my reflection in the mirror, and was surrounded by family and friends who offered opinions on my appearance. I learnt to see myself and I followed or discarded advice based on my own judgement. But although my instincts offered very clear and precise guidance concerning fashion choices, flattering colours or hairstyles, I was far less confident about the aesthetics of smell. I didn’t go through childhood being told, ‘This smells interesting on you’, or, ‘This suits your personality and brings out your character’. The only reference to smell I ever heard on a regular basis as a child was, ‘You stink’, but that was merely a taunt. Smell was undervalued; no one gave it the thought it deserved. No wonder it became so comically easy to talk myself into or out of any perfume.

  The assistant returned. ‘It’s an interesting perfume.’ He pointed at the display with the purple juice. ‘But I hate the bottle.’

  ‘Your aunt might like it,’ I said. ‘Do you have any perfumes with benzoin notes?’

  ‘Benzoin?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve read that it smells a little bit like vanilla, but with more of a caramel note.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘It sounds nice.’

  ‘It’s a resin and I think it can also be quite warm, like amber.’

  ‘Do you mean benjoin?’

  I nodded, same thing.

  ‘We’ve got two perfumes with benjoin in their names. I’ll get them.’

  A second later he returned with two sealed boxes and placed them in front of me on the counter. ‘We don’t have any testers, I’m afraid.’

  I turned the boxes in my hand and looked at the price tags. The first, from a cult American perfumer, was $595 for 100ml, and the second, from a major Italian fashion house, was $295 for the same amount. I knew nothing about either and yet I experienced a familiar burst of excitement, a kind of scented bloodlust, just from looking at the packages. The voice in my head had been turned to full volume and was saying, ‘Buy me! This perfume is the one. It will get you out of the fug and back in the game! You need it. After all you’ve been through recently, you deserve it.’

  Luckily, I couldn’t afford them. If I’d had a job I might have gone one better than the two women with the purple fragrance and convinced myself to buy both perfumes, unsniffed. At least the old flush of excitement had resurfaced, even if only for a short while.

  I left with a manufacturer’s sample of Réveil. As I passed through the university campus I sprayed it on my left forearm. The opening burst did smell like toothpaste. As I sniffed my skin, an image of a man standing in front of a cracked bathroom sink entered my mind. I could see him brushing his teeth, rinsing his mouth with a swig of water from the tap and then spitting into the basin. The foaming mixture of paste and food particles swirled in the tepid water, for
ming a rim that stuck to the stained porcelain. The man, who must be in his early sixties, wiped his mouth with a frayed white towel, then took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit up. That’s the perfume I saw when I smelt my arm. In a desperate attempt to rid my mind of the bathroom image I summoned up the glossy sales visual created by the company, and a familiar battle began. Toothpaste man, naked beauty. Stained and cracked sink, jungle and exotic violet juice. Me, the middle-aged woman in high-waisted jeans versus the naked forest nymph with the piercing eyes. Reality and fantasy.

  I was almost through the university complex before I realised I’d passed my old building without noticing. As I headed out through the corner of the car park I glimpsed Renate in the distance. She hadn’t seen me, and it took a moment for me to decide what to do. My first impulse was to hurry away without stopping but instead I summoned up my strength and walked towards her, wiping my arm with the cuff of my jersey in an attempt to scrub off the overbearing smell that was bonded to my skin.

  ‘Renate!’

  She stopped, turned and saw me and, to my relief, smiled. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘Are you working again?’

  We hugged and I noticed how small she was in my arms. ‘I’m on my way to the pharmacy,’ I replied. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m meeting Hester and then I’m taking her down to the cabin for a few days. I should have called you.’

  ‘If anyone should have called it was me.’

  ‘We’re taking his ashes,’ she continued. ‘Some of them, not all. I’m spreading him out – half in New York where we met and half here where we lived. I think he’d like that.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s a beautiful place, your garden …’

  ‘Yes, it is. Hester wants to plant a kauri but we don’t really know what we’re doing beyond that. Archer and I were never very good at ceremonies, we didn’t like the fuss.’

  Her lips began to tremble and her eyes filled with tears. She pulled herself straighter, willing herself to stand tall.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Renate. I should have phoned you. I wanted to tell you something about the car but I didn’t know where to start.’