The Scent of You

by Maggie Alderson

  Of course he knew some stuff about her because he’d looked at the blog. Just as she knew he was attached to that extraordinary house she’d seen from the top of the hill, and did something to do with horses and pheasant shoots. With the rich vein of their shared youth to talk about, that seemed like enough.

  Her fingers hovered over her keyboard for a moment, should she do it? Just tap in that silly cumbersome name and see what all the ‘poor old Chum’ was about, once and for all? But she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to.

  She turned her attention back to the piece about Guy’s shop when the irony struck her. Of the two men she was spending the most time with during the absence of her husband, one was an intriguing character she really wanted to know more about and the internet had yielded nothing – and then there was Chum, who’d told her himself she could find out all about his life online and she didn’t want to look.

  If only it were the other way round, she thought, frowning at the screen. Writing about Guy’s shop and perfumes without any context was proving to be even more of a challenge than she’d thought. It made her look as if she wasn’t doing her job properly. She read what she’d written again and closed the file. If Guy wasn’t prepared to be a bit more forthcoming, she was going to have to park it.

  She decided to send him an email to tell him that he had one last chance to co-operate or the FragrantCloud post was off. Then she saw she had a new message in her inbox, from chum@mail.com.

  Hi Hippolyta,

  Thanks for giving me your email address. I can’t stand doing long texts. At least I can use two fingers on my laptop.

  I just wanted to tell you I’m coming up to town tomorrow morning for a meeting and I was wondering if you and Digger would like to take Artemis and me for one of your walks on Hampstead Heath. We could be with you around eleven.

  Sorry, it’s a bit last-minute, but I didn’t know I was coming until just now.

  Chum

  Polly found she was grinning at her computer screen. Only one way to reply to that: Yes, how lovely, here’s my postcode . . . She started typing, her earlier low mood completely lifted now she had something to look forward to. A couple of hours of light-hearted respite from the uncomfortable aspects of her real life. That was all it took.

  Friday 19 February

  The next morning Polly felt oddly nervous about Chum’s visit. Shirlee and Maxine seemed to stay longer than usual for breakfast, and by ten-fifteen, much as she enjoyed their company, Polly was starting to feel edgy. She didn’t want to have to explain to them who Chum was and why she was going on a walk with him. And she dreaded to think what questions Shirlee might ask if she had to introduce him.

  After another five minutes she told them as casually as she could that she had to go and get ready for a meeting, and was very glad when they took the hint and left.

  By five to eleven, she was dressed and ready – trying not to fussily tidy the house, or pretentiously untidy it, to make it look less suburban. Why would he care what her house was like? They were only going for a walk, she reminded herself.

  She forced herself to sit in front of her computer and read another perfume blogger’s new post, but found it very difficult to pin herself to the chair and was very relieved when Digger’s frantic barking started even before Chum rang the doorbell.

  ‘Can you smell Artemis through the wood, Digger?’ she said, pulling him back from the door by his collar so she could let them in.

  Digger’s excitement on actually seeing Artemis resulted in a great deal of yapping and jumping.

  Polly was glad of the distraction. She’d taken one look at Chum and realised she felt incredibly shy. Her cheeks started to burn.

  ‘Come in!’ she said, over-brightly. ‘You found it, then.’

  ‘Trusty phone,’ said Chum.

  ‘Do you want to set off right away, or would you like some coffee first?’ She stood in the hall, feeling like her arms had become longer and she didn’t know where her hands went.

  ‘I’d really love a cup of tea, Hippolyta,’ he said.

  ‘Come through,’ said Polly, thinking as she spoke that it was a phrase she’d never used before in her life. Come through to the relaxing kitchenette with its extensive Formica facilities.

  Digger and Artemis nearly knocked her over, chasing each other down the hall.

  ‘They’re happy to see each other, as usual,’ said Chum, laughing. ‘How joyously simple to be a dog.’

  Polly made the tea, feeling oddly pleased he liked it just as she did – strong English Breakfast, no sugar – and brought it over to the table.

  ‘Would you care for a biscuit?’ she asked, feeling like some kind of 1960s housewife. Pardon me while I locate the doilies.

  Chum’s face broke into his big smile, the gap between his front teeth on full display.

  ‘Never more,’ he said.

  Polly smiled back and grabbed the biscuit tin off the top of the fridge, putting it on the table in front of him with the lid off.

  ‘Have as many as you want,’ she said. ‘My son is the cookie monster in this house and he’s away at uni now. They might be a bit stale, actually.’

  Chum was already rummaging through the tin.

  ‘Hobnob!’ he cried triumphantly, holding up a round biscuit then dunking it in his mug, before putting it into his mouth. ‘Mmmm . . . that’s better. Snack of the gods.’

  He chewed contentedly, finishing the Hobnob while continuing to inspect the tin.

  ‘Bourbon,’ he said, holding up one of Lucas’s favourite chocolate sandwiches. ‘Another fine species in the biscuit genus.’

  He dunked that one, chewed, dunked again, put the rest of the biscuit in his mouth and continued to go through the contents of the tin, pulling out a few more, which he piled up in a small tower next to his mug.

  ‘Can’t seem to find a Garibaldi,’ he said, ‘but it’s the only classic absent from this tin. Your son is a fine biscuiteer. And no vile custard creams.’

  ‘Are Garibaldis those squashed-fly ones?’ asked Polly.

  ‘The very same,’ said Chum. ‘Crispy on the outside, with a chewing factor that’s almost a pastry style, and not oversugared, just the perfect balance of sweet and squashy from the raisins. It’s like sending your mouth on holiday.’

  ‘There aren’t any of those because Lucas has eaten them all,’ said Polly. ‘He likes to remove a whole layer of them from the packet and eat it in one go – he doesn’t break them up into individual biscuits.’

  ‘A classic manoeuvre,’ said Chum. ‘The full slab. I’ve been known to do it myself. Or you can stack ’em. Break up a slab, stack them into a pile of five and eat it in one go as a multi-storey biskwit sandwich. I bet he does that too.’

  ‘He does actually,’ said Polly chuckling. ‘And he calls them biskwits.’

  She hadn’t seen Chum so skittish before, but it was a welcome distraction from how strangely shy she felt.

  ‘I had no idea you were such a sugar shocker,’ she said.

  ‘Prep school,’ said Chum, sliding down in his chair, an expression of bliss on his face, as he nibbled round the edges of another Hobnob, turning it round and round as he went, so it kept its circular shape until the last mouthful. ‘I was eight. Biscuits were my comfort, purchased in bulk from the tuckshop. It’s amazing I’m not toothless and obese, but I discovered sport and that saved me. And then puberty brought other means of self-comfort, of course . . .’

  He grinned at Polly, popping a bourbon into his mouth, whole.

  ‘But, still, whenever I feel in need of instant comfort, a couple of bourbons and a slab of Garibaldis will do the trick as well as anything. I’d rather have a Hobnob than a glass of wine any day.’

  Polly picked up a bourbon and bit the corner off it.

  ‘They are pretty delicious,’ she said, ‘although I try not to eat too much sugar, and I’m sure they’re full of deadly trans fats.’

  She took another bite and then a sip of her tea.

&nbs
p; ‘Mmm, they are good together, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten.’

  She ate the rest of the biscuit wondering if she should ask him the question that was pressing into her mind: why did he need ‘instant comfort’ at that moment?

  But just when she decided to plunge in with ‘So, why . . .’ Chum started talking.

  ‘So, where . . .’ he said.

  They both laughed.

  ‘We keep doing that, don’t we?’ said Chum. ‘What were you going to say?’

  Polly shook her head.

  ‘It doesn’t matter – were you going to ask where we’re going for our walk?’

  Chum nodded.

  ‘Well,’ said Polly, ‘we’ve got a choice. We can jump in one of the cars and park right by the Heath or we can walk from here. It will just mean that the first fifteen minutes will be on pavements before we get to the proper walk. How does Artemis feel about being on a lead?’

  ‘She’s not very impressed with it as a concept,’ said Chum. ‘But we’ve already had a longish drive and there’s another one to get home, so I vote for starting out on foot to maximise her activity. I don’t want her jumping about in the back while I’m driving.’

  It took until the end of Polly’s street before they could stop the dogs constantly jumping around and getting tangled up, although Chum still had to stop intermittently, jerking Artemis back, until she settled down and he could catch up with Polly and Digger again. Polly would then have to grab Digger by the collar, to stop him from getting overexcited at being reunited with his canine gal pal after a thirty-second separation.

  ‘This is relaxing,’ said Chum, as he yanked Artie’s lead yet again and stopped, holding her by the collar. ‘Not. Heel, you infernal hound.’

  Polly laughed.

  ‘It’s another ten minutes,’ she said. ‘I could go ahead and you could follow by sat nav, if you like.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Chum. ‘I’ll put up with my appallingly trained dog for the pleasure of your company. It’s my own fault. Artie is only used to country life. If I have to go into town – I mean the small town nearest to where I live – I leave her in the car. She’s a farm dog, really, but I got too fond of her and made her into a pet, without pet training.’

  ‘Naughty Chum,’ said Polly, in a dog-admonishing tone. Chum whimpered back.

  ‘Digger’s pretty good on the street, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘Did you train him?’

  Polly froze mentally, her head suddenly full of images of David in the back garden, his pocket full of treats, trying to get Digger to stop sniffing his trousers long enough to learn anything. It had been an arduous exercise, but David hadn’t given up until Digger knew how to stop, stay, come, roll over and walk to heel.

  ‘He was a rescue dog,’ she said, hoping it was enough to answer Chum’s question without prompting any more discussion.

  ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘Battersea Dogs Home? I’ve always wondered how anyone could come away from there with just one dog. I’d want to take them all.’

  Polly laughed.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said, once again hoping it was enough of a response not to prompt further inquiries, without appearing as vague as it really was.

  It seemed her ploy worked, because Chum stopped talking about dogs and turned his head to look at the houses they were passing.

  ‘They’re all the same, but different,’ he said after a few moments. ‘I mean, all the houses are roughly the same size and format, so if you were to drive down this street at night, you’d think they were all the same, but when you see inside, every one is different.’

  Polly nodded. It wasn’t exactly a revelation to her.

  ‘Have you ever lived in London?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ said Chum. ‘I’ve never lived in a town. Except for my first term at St Andrews, when I was in Sallies.’

  Polly smiled to herself. Of course he’d been in St Salvator’s – or Sallies, as they called it. That was the Hall of Residence all the Yah guys were in. She’d forgotten.

  ‘Then I got offered a place in a house out towards Crail and I lived out for the rest of my time there. I only came into town for lectures and to go to the pub.’

  ‘I’m not sure one academic term in a hall of residence at St Andrews even counts as living in a town,’ she said. ‘I remember now, you lived out in that big farmhouse, didn’t you, with lots of other people? How many of you lived there?’

  ‘Ten, I think,’ said Chum, ‘with a few more in the wing over the garages. Mind you, you never knew who’d be at the breakfast table.’

  Polly glanced at him, laughing, and saw he was already looking at her. It could have been me at that table, she thought. Was that what he was thinking?

  ‘I always thought you hearty types were nuts,’ she said quickly, ‘living miles out in the country like old people while you were at university. You missed out on so much, with all that boring designated driver and sharing lifts stuff you had to do. All the really great times happened spontaneously.’

  She turned to look at him again and found he was smiling at her. Not the broad, gappy-toothed schoolboy grin, but the eyebrows-raised, closed-mouth one. Slightly knowing. A man’s smile.

  ‘But I didn’t miss out on everything, though, did I, Hippolyta?’ he said, holding her gaze for a moment longer, until he tripped over Artemis, who had stopped dead in front of him, fascinated by a smell in the bottom of a privet hedge.

  ‘Arse!’ he cried out. ‘Bloody dog, you nearly killed me. Walk! Stop sniffing everything. Is it much further, Polly, to the grassy bit where we can let the hell-hounds off their leads?’

  ‘Just at the end of this road,’ she said, trying not to laugh, although she was secretly glad Artemis had distracted him. That look had made her feel as uncomfortable as she had in the hall. More.

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Chum, ‘I’m going to run ahead with her, and if I don’t know where to go, I’ll just stop until you catch up and can tell me.’

  ‘It’s straight ahead,’ said Polly. ‘See that green bit at the far end of this road? That’s the entrance to the Heath. I’ll see you there.’

  Chum and Artemis set off at a jog, which made Digger yank so hard on his lead it almost pulled Polly over, but she managed to calm him down and found she was glad of a few moments alone with her thoughts.

  There was something she had to think about, which she’d been pushing to the back of her mind with all of the other subjects that seemed too hard – it was getting to be a big pile – but she couldn’t ignore this one any more.

  The shy awkwardness Chum inspired in her. She knew exactly what it was. And from the way he’d looked at her just before Artemis tripped him up, she was fairly sure he felt the same. Remembering that night in the sand dunes, she wanted to kiss him again.

  Did she have a full-blown crush on him? Or did seeing him again after all those years just make her want to go back to where they’d left off? To do what they never had and take it on to the next stage – or even just to see if that kiss had been as heavenly as she remembered it?

  She slowed up as she walked along – despite Digger pulling on the lead – wanting to think it through before she caught up with Chum again.

  She didn’t have a crush on him, she decided, because she wasn’t obsessing over him twenty-four/seven the way she remembered you did when in the throes of such a passion. She hardly thought of him between walks, but whenever those opportunities came along, she always looked forward to them hugely and then really enjoyed spending the time with him.

  The physical self-consciousness, though, the blushing and awkwardness, was a new development. And crush-like, she had to acknowledge.

  Great, thought Polly, gazing down the street at Chum’s lanky figure already standing by the gate into the Heath. Something else peculiar to worry about.

  Because if she did have a crush on him, what was she going to do about it? Stop seeing him until the inappropriate feelings went away – when the walks wi
th him were one of the few comforts in her current life?

  Obviously she couldn’t try to defuse it by acting on her impulses. She couldn’t go around kissing random men just because she fancied them, or had kissed them when she was twenty. She was still a married woman.

  Or am I, she thought, as she drew closer to Chum and his face broke into one of those broad smiles, the one with the deep creases at the edges of his mouth, his eyes crinkled up, and her stomach turned over.

  They stepped round the metal swing gate onto the grassy expanse of the Heath and released the dogs from their leads. As they stood side by side, watching the animals bound off together leaping with joy, Polly had to stuff her hand into her jacket pocket to stop herself from reaching out to take hold of Chum’s.

  She glanced over at him just in time to see him do exactly the same, and wondered if it was for the same reason.

  Something told her it was, and she started walking. Fast.

  Monday, 29 February

  Polly was still doing her early-morning meditation when she heard Shirlee arrive. The front door opened with a great crash, followed by huffing and puffing and plenty of swearing as she carried large bags of food towards the kitchen, kicking the front door shut behind her as she went.

  Her concentration shattered, Polly glanced over at the bedside clock. Seven-twenty. Shirlee was coming earlier and earlier, but Polly didn’t mind. These days she had the studio all ready by the time Polly came down – mats out, windows open, candles lit – and it was such a help. She even brought fresh flowers a couple of times a week, which was lovely.

  She’d insisted on taking over the bookings as well and in return, she received all her classes for free. Shirlee was brilliantly organised, and her help left Polly with more time to concentrate on the blog, which was very useful because it was really getting noticed. She was actually having to turn events down.