‘As I told you, Mrs Bailey, many of our customers, for as long as I can remember, have asked if we do a perfume. And more recently, scented candles, that sort of thing. I think it’s a wonderful idea – but very expensive of course. Perfume launches cannot be done on the cheap.’
‘Of course not. But I’m glad you like the idea, Florence. Now, I have a perfumier coming in to see me next week; just to talk concepts. I wonder if you would have the time to join us? I really would like you there and to have your input. Oh, and Florence, do please call me Bianca.’ She smiled at her quickly and walked out of the door and into the arcade; thereby making the suggestion an order rather than a suggestion. Florence felt flattered, if a little unnerved. It had been many years before she had been able – or rather permitted, by way of a gracious conversation with Lady Farrell – to address her employers as Cornelius and Athina. Out of the office, of course, things were sometimes rather different . . .
She arrived a little early; she had walked, unlike the other attendees.
‘What an example you set us, Florence,’ said Bianca, smiling. ‘Nobody else coming to this meeting would walk that far, I’m quite sure.’
‘I love walking in London,’ said Florence briskly. ‘You get an absolutely different view of everything, the shops, the people, the clothes, even things like the posters – of course one has to change one’s shoes on arrival, but that is not such a hardship.’
Bianca glanced down at Florence’s feet, clad in low-heeled but extremely elegant pumps. So unlike the trainers people forty years her junior seemed to consider essential to walk even half a mile. She was looking extremely elegant altogether, in a navy calf-length crêpe dress which bore Jean Muir’s unmistakable signature, under a softly swathed cream jacket which Bianca would have loved to own herself, a small straw hat with the brim turned down on one side, and she carried a small cloth bag which presumably contained her other shoes.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Jemima, do show Florence into my bathroom – she can change her shoes there. And do leave your jacket and hat there, too, Florence. I love the jacket! Well, I love everything you’re wearing, of course.’
‘Thank you. The jacket is from Zara,’ said Florence, ‘several seasons ago now, I’m afraid. One does have to look rather hard in there – well, I do – but I’m very fond of it as a store.’
Bianca had a rather challenging vision of Florence advancing through the teeming halls of Zara, and rifling through the rails, picking out a jacket that would have looked as well on someone a quarter of her age.
The perfumier, Ralph Goodwin, had been suggested to Bianca by Maurice Foulds, the chief chemist at the lab. She didn’t like Maurice, but though Lara had come up with a couple of people, one of whom she liked very much, he didn’t have the capacity and Maurice Foulds assured her that Ralph Goodwin would be ideal: he worked at a big set-up out in the wilds of Sussex, and did work not just for the cosmetic trade, but for everything which needs perfuming – washing powder, cleaners, and of course, toiletries.
He didn’t look much like a perfumier: early fifties, smooth to the point of smarmy, Susie thought, dressed in a pinstripe suit, with neatly cut hair, highly polished loafers and a BBC accent. But then, she was probably over-romanticising the whole thing. Perfumiers, especially these days, were probably just technicians.
He shook hands with them all and sat down beside Susie.
‘This is a great pleasure,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much for inviting me – us – to help. As you know, we are quite a large firm and I am only one of three perfumiers. Where shall we begin?’
‘I think we begin by deciding if we can work together,’ said Bianca, ‘so we would very much like to hear what you would require from us, for instance, how long you think development might take. Suppose we decided you would go ahead – what would you need to take away with you today?’
‘Ah,’ said Goodwin, ‘well, above all, a story.’
‘A story?’
‘Yes. I need a vision, a story from you of what this perfume is about, what it will say and do. We can start with a picture of your ideal consumer. The sort of clothes she’ll wear, the sort of food she eats, the job she does, the furniture she buys, the flowers she likes. And then, narrowing it down, colour swatches, fabrics, tear sheets from magazines – anything visual that interprets your idea of her and what she aspires to.’
‘Music?’ put in Susie. ‘I always think music and perfume are a bit the same.’
Goodwin smiled at her. ‘Music, yes, very good. What music does your perfume sound like?’
‘Oh – goodness,’ said Lara, ‘that could be quite a fun game. Let’s see – Eternity has to be Mahler.’
‘N˚5, Gershwin. I think anyway,’ said Susie.
‘No, too heavy,’ said Bianca. ‘Mozart, I think. Diorling – Rachmaninov . . .’
‘Jean Paul Gaultier’s Classique – Cole Porter,’ said Florence rather unexpectedly.
‘Wonderful,’ said Goodwin, who had been scribbling in a notebook. ‘I can see we could all work together very well. I don’t often find so imaginative a client. Then I want mood: is she eccentric, your consumer, is she hugely intelligent, happy, unhappy?’
‘We certainly don’t want perfume for an unhappy person,’ said Florence firmly. ‘I think perhaps Mrs – that is, Bianca – how would you feel about a slightly rebellious woman? A little wild? Below the surface at least.’
‘I’d feel good about that,’ said Bianca.
‘And – tell me, Mr Goodwin,’ said Florence, ‘do you still sit at an organ? In my day that is what perfumiers used to do, sit at this high sort of desk, with dozens of tiny bottles ranged on its shelves, florals, musks, woods, and literally mixed them together.’
‘Sadly not. That was when perfume was a romantic art. Now we do a formulation from a computer – although I would bring to our first meeting several phials of scent, which we could literally play with, using spills and sticks, mixing the fruity, the vanilla, the patchouli, which is woody, the rose perhaps, which is powdery and sweet – so that I can begin to understand what I call your odour language.’
‘It doesn’t sound very attractive,’ said Bianca, laughing.
‘I know. But it is. And the more complex the better. And then I would bring three or four fragrances, based on that original briefing.’
‘Goodness,’ said Lara, ‘it does all sound very exciting.’
‘Mrs Clements – Lara, if I may – perfume is the most exciting thing in the world. It can be anarchic, it can be submissive – you simply need to choose, and I am confident I can discover it for you.’
‘And you do really feel you can develop it in time? We shall need finished samples by next January when we have our first big conference.’
‘Definitely. Of course we’re not talking huge business here, your numbers are rather . . . small.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Susie. ‘Look at Jo Malone, just a few perfumes made in her tiny factory, but thanks to a clever story and her brilliant sampling campaign – I’m sure you know about that, a tiny phial of a new one enclosed with whatever the customer was buying? – she went global, as they say. We can do something like that. The same but different.’
‘If you say so, Miss Harding, I’m sure you can. I like the project very much, I must say, and I would like to work with you.’
‘Yes, well, I’ll get back to you, Mr Goodwin,’ said Bianca. ‘And do I take it I can come and visit your headquarters, see all these wonderful things for myself? I hear you have mock-ups of bathrooms, kitchens, wonderful things like smelling booths.’
‘Indeed. And we have a very strong reputation for landing appeal.’
‘Landing appeal?’
‘Yes. The smell wafting out from the bathroom, urging people into the bath.’
‘Good heavens! What a lot we’ve all learned today.’
‘I’m glad. And we can arrange a date for your visit before I leave today.’
‘Excellent,’ said Bi
anca.
Francine was working on a client when Florence got back to The Shop but she was not alone. Athina was there, looking mutinous.
‘As well I was here to deal with things,’ she said, as if a queue was snaking down to Piccadilly. ‘Where were you?’
‘In a meeting,’ said Florence, taking off her hat and releasing her hair into its wild curls. Once dark, those curls were now kept, at some expense, a kind of variegated gold and brown colour – tortoiseshell, was how she described it to a new colourist.
Athina, who had kept her sleek bob snow-white for over a decade, was always very disparaging about Florence’s hair, saying without ever relating it directly to her, that she considered hair colouring rather pathetic after a certain age. ‘Everyone knows, after all, that it can’t be genuine. Such a waste of time!’
But the white hair suited her and her porcelain skin, as Florence always said in reply, while it did not Florence’s darker, olive colouring.
‘What sort of meeting? And with whom?’
‘With Bianca Bailey. And Lara Clements and Susie Harding,’ said Florence, her voice as honey-sweet as her smile.
‘What about?’
‘Perfume.’
‘Perfume? You don’t mean she’s going ahead with it? How extraordinary. I told her not to. Why?’
‘I imagine because she disagrees with you,’ said Florence. ‘Would you like some tea, Athina?’
‘No, thank you. I don’t have that sort of time. I’m going to Farrell House. I have a great deal to do there.’
Half an hour later, as she sat in her office raging with boredom, she began to think about perfume. Another perfume, dreamed of four decades earlier . . . How excited she had been by it, and how disappointed when it proved impossible to further its development . . .
Back in her office, Susie switched her phone on: it announced she had three text messages and two answerphone messages. They were all monosyllabically hostile. Shit! Bloody Henk. He must not do this to her when she was trying to work – and she mustn’t let him rattle her so badly either.
Stay cool, Susie, she thought, you actually hold all the cards. You do, you do.
He did look really angry. Angry and – what? Contemptuous, she supposed. It was so unlike him; he usually understood such problems.
‘Look,’ she said, quite shaken, ‘look, I can’t help it. I just can’t be there.’
‘Of course you can help it. It’s a meeting, cancel it.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ He never swore either. ‘I don’t know what your meeting’s about—’
‘Product concepts. I told you.’
‘Yes, and this one is about our daughter’s future. I find it hard to believe you can’t see that’s more important.’
‘Patrick, you’re exaggerating. It’s a parents’ evening. You’ve done it before, gone for both of us, I just don’t see why—’
‘Mrs Blackman has specifically asked us to see her afterwards.’
‘I didn’t know that!’
‘Bianca, I sent you an email about it, the minute she emailed me. Forwarding hers. Don’t tell me you didn’t get it.’
‘I . . .’ she hesitated. She remembered now. She had seen the email, headed Parents’ Evening, St Catherine’s, and because she’d been already late for a meeting, she’d not even opened it, promising herself she’d look at it later. Only then there had been two dozen more and . . .
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I – well I had to go to a meeting and then it got buried. I never opened it. Sorry, Patrick.’
‘That’s OK,’ he said, easily mollified by her apologies as always, ‘but now you know . . .’
‘No, Patrick, I’m sorry, I really can’t.’
‘What?’
‘It is so, so important this meeting, it’s with Lara, and the lab.’
‘Bianca,’ he said, and his expression was anxious now, ‘I do think you have to come.’
‘But Patrick, she’s only going to talk about this bunking off nonsense, but we’ve spoken to Milly about it—’
‘I’ve spoken to Milly. I don’t think you ever quite got round to it.’
‘That’s not right. I had quite a long chat with her—’
‘Over the phone! What kind of message do you think that gives her? That really, it can’t matter too much because your job outweighs its importance. This is a potentially dangerous situation and she needs our full attention.’
She knew he was right. As always when cornered, where she might have been expected to go into the attack, she became more conciliatory.
‘Well, I am truly sorry. But she seemed very clear about what she’d done and why it was wrong. And she said you’d talked about it for a long time. We don’t want to labour the point, Patrick. She’s approaching it in a very adult way. And I’m sure you can make Mrs Blackman see we’re treating it seriously.’
‘So, you’re not prepared to come and see her?’
‘Patrick, please.’ She could feel her temper slipping. ‘Mrs Blackman is playing games to an extent, making a point. And you can handle that. Anyway, she much prefers you to me,’ she added with a brief smile. ‘And you know the deal, it’s always been understood that except for really important things, it has to be you.’
‘Bianca, this is really important. All right, if that’s your final decision. But I have to say I’m quite – shocked. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot to do.’
He walked out of the room, leaving Bianca feeling rather unsure of herself suddenly. It was an unfamiliar sensation.
‘Bertie, I need to talk to you.’
Bertie was enjoying a quiet glass of claret in the garden after dinner; the air was full of birdsong and the problems with Marjorie Dawson and, indeed, everything to do with the office seemed just for the moment far away; he looked warily at Priscilla, advancing towards him down the path with two mugs containing what he knew to be herb tea on a tray.
She sat down beside him, took the glass of claret from his hand, and passed him one of the mugs. ‘Green tea. Very good for you. You really must cut down on the wine, Bertie, it’s bad for you and it isn’t helping your diet.’
‘Actually,’ said Bertie, ‘I’ve now lost well over a stone.’
‘Well, maybe, but you need to lose a lot more. Anyway, it’s very bad for your liver. At your age, it’s just stupid. Now, I want to talk to you about the house. We’ve had an offer I think we really can’t refuse – the American couple I told you about who loved the house and the garden, said it was by far the most beautiful they’d seen.’
‘Which is possibly why I don’t want to leave it,’ said Bertie.
Priscilla ignored this. ‘They’ve made a very good offer, the agent rang me this afternoon. And—’
‘Priscilla,’ said Bertie, ‘I don’t want to sell the house. I like it here, I don’t want to leave it. I don’t see how I can make things any clearer.’
‘Well, I can only say I hope you won’t regret it,’ said Priscilla, standing up and snatching her mug off the table.
‘I’m sure I won’t,’ said Bertie, and returned to his contemplation of his flowerbeds and the small victory behind him with some satisfaction. A month ago, he would never have stood up to Priscilla like that; clearly his new career suited him. Of course it was difficult and challenging, and he still felt terrible about the Dawsons, and his mother was making life completely impossible, and tomorrow evening he had to go and have dinner with her and Caro as she said she wanted to plan strategy for the next board meeting – and yet he seemed to be able to cope with it all.
‘Susie, I don’t mean to interfere and ignore me if you like, but you look terrible.’ Jemima’s large brown eyes overflowed with concern. Susie was so touched that she felt the tears rising again. The treacherous tears that she had tried so hard to hide from Henk, as he shouted at her, accusing her of ignoring his calls, and of trying to belittle him.
She had failed, of course, and was immediately at a di
sadvantage; he saw them, recognised her weakness, changed tack, went into wounded mode and said he thought she loved him, and before she knew what was happening was pushing her down on to the kitchen floor and wrenching off her pants.
‘Henk, please, no, not here!’ she said.
‘Oh what? Don’t be so fucking prissy. You liked doing it here once.’
‘I – I know.’ But it hurts, she was going to say, but he was already stabbing into her, his mouth crushing hers, his hands hard and claw-like, holding her buttocks, lifting her up, pushing her round him. She wasn’t ready and it did hurt, and it hurt her emotionally too that he could subject her to this violence. And she lay there beneath him, as he ground and thrust her into the hard floor, faking for all she was worth, just to get it over.
Only she did too well, and when it was over, he rolled off her, and turned his face to hers, smiling in a sort of triumph, and said, ‘That was more like it, babe, more like my Susie. Shall we continue in bed?’
Finally, after what seemed like hours of pain and misery, she felt him grow heavy beside her and fall into the deep, undisturbable sleep that sex always brought him. She crawled carefully out of bed and went into the bathroom and lay in a hot bath for a long time, sore and aching all over, her breasts literally bruised where he had bitten and sucked at her, and her thighs too, from his heavy, almost vicious, hands; and when finally she got out and looked into the mirror, she saw that her neck bore several bruises too, dark and unmistakable legacies of his violence that would take days to fade, and even her mouth was swollen and red.
She wrapped herself in a bathrobe, and, weeping again, went into the sitting room and curled tightly up on the sofa, wondering for the hundredth, the thousandth time why she submitted to it, and failing to find an answer. Finally, after several Nurofen and a cup of warm, sweet tea, she began to feel better, physically at least, and rather feverishly slept.
‘I – I’m all right,’ she said feebly now, longing more than anything to tell Jemima, and knowing she could not, and indeed that added to her misery, the impossibility of confessing to this ugly cycle of brutality and submission: ‘Just – just got my period. Slept really really badly. But thank you. I’ll be fine.’
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