The Memory of Scent (20 page)

So I shuffle through the slush alongside Walrus until we come to a rough stone building on Rue de Richelieu. Walrus presents it to me with one long sweep of his arm, as if it exists through his sheer cleverness. He proclaims it, ‘the finest
pâtisserie
in all the city’ and hurries me inside. I am nudged toward a small table as he orders meringues and other delicacies. We wait in reverential silence until several plates are brought from the kitchen and fanned out before us: sorbets, ices, fruit, chocolate sauce and gloriously peaked fluffy white meringues. Walrus scoops something from each plate and I follow suit. With the very first spoonful, I close
my eyes and smile, which a contented exhale warms my chest.

‘Incomparably light, wouldn’t you agree?’

I nod. Three careful spoonfuls later, I sit back a little in my chair.

‘It’s my mother. I thought I was sending her for treatment and what I have done is imprison her.’

Walrus raises one finger to his lips to quieten me.

‘Mademoiselle, you are here to take pleasure not to seek consolation. To honour the art, you must banish your troubles and simply languish. Here, have some more meringue.’

He pushes my plate closer towards me and my fork crumbles through the delicacy like a padded foot on the softest of snowfalls.

‘What’s wrong. Tell me.’

I hate George to see me all puffy eyed and streaming and snivelly nosed, but he must be told.

‘I’ve just heard from Philippe that the Baron is dead.’

George visibly relaxes as if he has just suddenly found his lost gloves or something of equal nuisance value.

‘Yes, I suppose, well, he was a young man. So that is a pity.’

My blotchy face must be distracting as he is not deducing the horror of what I am revealing.

‘No, you don’t understand. He died of tuberculosis. It’s my fault that Catherine is dead. He had been ill all along and I forced them together and then she got sick too and now she’s dead.’ I am suddenly seized by a compulsion to grab my throat and then feel my forehead with the back of first one hand, then the other. It is just dawning on me. ‘This means, I could become ill too. What are the first signs of tuberculosis, George?’ Why is he looking at me like that? And is that a smirk beginning to curl his lips?

‘Marry me.’

‘What?’

‘Marry me, Lily. I need to protect you from yourself. I also need to do something to preserve my strength, otherwise I’d be dashing from one end of the city to the other monitoring every little sniffle and cough.’

‘Are you teasing me George?’

‘I want you to be my wife, but only if you don’t get tuberculosis. I’d hate to have to drag you around town looking less than peachy.’

I am stunned. I want to throw my arms around his neck and squeal. Yes, I actually feel like squealing. Instead, I primly lock my fingers together and nod, as if I am a teacher and he is a particularly diligent student who has just presented me with an onerous project that he has at last, triumphantly, completed.

‘George are you absolutely sure? Of course I will be your wife.’ I nod in further approval. What am I thinking? ‘George, you need to know then: I’m not Lily. My name is Babette. Babette Fournière.’

He looks momentarily confused as if stunned. But then appears to shake it off. How duplicitous can a little name change appear to him when he has been beset with much more profound disclosures about me?

‘Pretty name, I shall have to remember that, and to get used to it. You could have told me sooner you know.’ He dips into a deep bow and kisses my hand, then scoops up his hat from the hall table.

‘Babette Fournière, I shall begin to make arrangements as soon as possible.’ He swaggers to the door and out. I have a strong desire to jump up and down on the bed like I did as a little girl. I just don’t know what to do with myself.
How should a young woman who has just been proposed to behave? I rush to the window to watch my future husband walk down the street. How handsome and assured he looks with his determined stride. Something must have distracted him … he seems to be slowing down. Now he has stopped completely. Has he forgotten something? No, I can’t see anything that he may have left behind here. He’s slowly looking back. Does he want to wave back to me? He doesn’t. Just walks, no, more, trudges on. How very odd.

* * *

George appears to have absented himself from my life temporarily. Perhaps the enormity of having proposed to me has suddenly become a crushing burden to him. I do not want to pressure him, because I do not want him to reflect too much on his decision. As he has gone hunting this weekend, I am happy to accompany Philippe to one of the cabarets.

I am trying to be entertaining and seem to be succeeding, as our table is in very high spirits and I have been the source of some of that gaiety, but I am feeling unnerved as each time I glance to my left, a tanned and sharply elegant man is staring at me. He is standing by the bar, nursing a glass of something. He is just staring in this direction, staring with the directness of someone who appears to be on very familiar terms. Neither Philippe nor any of the others seem to have noticed him, otherwise I feel sure that someone would have commented. Philippe, I see, is not in a position to notice anything as he is happily ensconced in conversation with a young woman who is clearly trying to flatter him.

There is a gnawing feeling in my stomach, a feeling that brings me back to the early days of Madame Delphine’s, to a time when I could not, dare not, bear to take in any real
details of clients who had been set up for me. I learned how to fake flattery. I learned that most men respond to very basic signals and that there was no need to personalise anything. They liked submission, coyness, nothing vulgar – at least initially. They quickly tired of restraint and detachment once they began to remove their clothes. They could get enough of that at home.

At Madame Delphine’s, everyone knew that there was a transaction and once the act of disrobing began, then the purchaser had rights. If I was feeling unwell, or simply tired, that was irrelevant. If their nails dug too deeply into my skin, or their brutishness left my thighs bruised or grazed, as long as it was not intended to be injurious, I had to breathe deeply and ignore it. I never encountered deliberate cruelty, but have been left sore and shaken through the sheer force of a man’s lust. Often afterwards, they were spent, exhausted and irritated. Yes, strangely, even though I could feel them almost melt into my body while they steadied their breathing, they would then re-group and become a little arrogant and even sometimes a little insulting. In the early days, I found the whole business terribly confusing, and wondered if I was doing something wrong, and then I slowly realised that deep down, these men, often powerful men, resent women for the way they make them feel. They are happy to blame Eve and her wretched apple. RACHEL! Not Marie or Marthe … the maid is Rachel.

This tanned man, is this person one of those early fumblings? Oh Lord, is he actually going to be so indiscrete as to boldly march over here. I am trying to remain calm despite the pounding from my heart. Surely everyone at this table must be able to hear its thump, even over their conversation. Does he intend to so publicly proposition me? I look off at
some point in the middle distance but am aware with each step, that he is closer to my side.

‘Mademoiselle.’ I have to look up at him. ‘I am Léo.’

Philippe, though still in conversation with the pretty young woman, is aware with the keenness of a lion, that his territory has been breached and immediately raises his glass in acknowledgement of the gentleman who has just joined us. This momentarily confuses me, until I realise that of course, their paths would have crossed many times at the Madame’s house.

‘May I?’

Without permission given, Léo pulls up a chair at an angle to my chair. My breath catches in my throat and I am scarcely able to speak. I want to immediately hug him or prostrate myself before him in guilt, but instead I ask demurely after his well-being.

‘Léo, I am so sorry about Catherine. She adored you and lived in anticipation of your return so you could begin your lives together.’

‘I know. She loved you, too. A few letters found their way to me and in each, she spoke highly and lovingly of you. I wanted to meet you, because you were so important to Catherine.’

‘She was constantly fretting about you, and only wanted you to come back safely.’

‘I was injured and spent a few months recuperating, then when I was told about Catherine, I took myself off to the Transvaal because I heard that gold had been discovered there.’

‘Well your appearance and demeanour suggest you were not entirely unlucky.’

‘Catherine wrote of your friend George. She was fond of him too.’

‘He is away on a hunt this weekend.’

‘Why are you not with him? Although I can understand wanting to avoid the burden of some of the feminine chit-chat that consumes the dinner tables at night. I’m sure you would be bored.’

It is disconcerting that he is so familiar with the intimacies my life. But then little does he know how many tiny details Catherine had regaled to me about him. She especially liked his smell, which she described as earthy. He is close enough for me to sense what she meant. It is an outdoors forest-like mixture of oak moss and bergamot. But George’s hunt?

‘Is there a space for feminine chatter at these affairs? My understanding was that it was strictly a boys’ pastime.’

‘Well, yes, the actual hunt is. But any that I have attended, if we have close companions, wives or fiancées, they come along and are amused separately until dinner time.’ He has clearly noticed my forehead creasing. ‘Listen, I am probably entirely wrong and who is to say that they are all hosted similarly?’

Suddenly I am crushed that this may be the reason for this sudden and enforced separation. Might the hunt only have been a pretext? When it comes to decent company, is George being hugely disloyal to me in not wanting to have me acknowledged? Léo rises and with a slight bow, assures me how wonderful it had been to at last meet me after having only fleetingly glimpsed me before at Madame Del’s.

It was Lily that he was addressing in his lowered voice. It was as Lily that I first wondered where I had come across him. And when he holds on to my hand for what seems like a second or two too long, and says that he really hopes he can see me again some time, is it to Lily that he is addressing this question? It is Lily who turns back towards the ever-generous
Philippe and smiles in the untroubled way that he likes. Will she ever be truly banished?

* * *

As I step out of the carriage the air feels crisper, the moon brighter. Maybe this is why I think I can catch, just out of the corner of my eye, the shape of a man loitering nearby in a doorway. It’s not the first time and I am beginning to believe that I am being followed. The stairs creak slightly under my light footstep; I want to spirit myself up them and inside my rooms as quickly as possible. It is as I fumble with my key that I feel the firm push of large hands against my back and before I can steady myself, I am tossed inside. With the door slammed shut I turn to face a bedraggled and menacing Vincent.

‘The maid is just in her room.’

‘No she isn’t, you gave her the night off. You obviously gave poor deluded Philippe the night off too, otherwise he would be here with you now. Do you not at least owe him something for taking you to the Lapin Agile tonight and for treating you so nicely?’

I pull back my shoulders in an effort not to seem cowed. He is taller and thinner than I remembered.

‘How dare you barge into my home like this? And you are drunk.’

‘No, not too bad actually. Look at these plush surrounding.’ He picks up a velvet cushion then tosses it aside. ‘Very appropriate actually. Do you know that ladies of your occupation and standing used to be called “women in velvet”?’

I refuse to be intimidated in my own home. I walk defiantly towards him. ‘I want you to leave this instant or else you will be in trouble. I promise you that.’

‘Nothing left for you to do, my dear Lily. I became rather too fond of the roulette wheel since last we met. When I hastened off to Australia, I somehow managed to leave parts of my fortune in each of the territories. So I stand before you penniless and crushed. All I ever wanted from you was kindness, to give me a chance. Now, strangely, I have this urge to derail your future as mercilessly as mine has been derailed.’

I am trying hard to appear dispassionate and cold. ‘How, Vincent, do you propose doing that?’

‘Well, through George of course.’

I can feel a palpitation in my chest. ‘George knows all about me. In fact, we are to be wed.’

‘Noble that. And he still wants to marry you? He may be perfectly at peace with it. God knows, if I could lie with you I’d make peace with it too, but what about his family? You see I came across a relative of his, maverick fellow who headed to the outback in search of gold many, many years ago. He had to leave his home in disgrace. I didn’t ask or care why, but the thing is, we spent a lot of time together, and I learned a lot. So I feel it my duty to pay the family a visit to reassure them about the welfare of their lost relative and to send conciliatory messages on his behalf.’

Small beads of cold sweat are now clustering just behind my fringe.

‘There isn’t a family around who doesn’t like to hear a bit of news, a little gossip, wouldn’t you think, Lily?’

‘You don’t scare me, and certainly you haven’t a chance of holding George to any ransom.’

‘Be that as it may, let me be one of the first to congratulate you.’

Before I am even aware of it, he has grabbed both of my arms and is pulling me towards him. He crushes a whiskery
kiss firmly against my mouth as I struggle to push him away. I manage to free myself and shout hysterically at him to get out.

He just smirks and nods, then casually opens the door and leaves. I stand there as invaded and violated as if he had ripped all of my clothes off. Taking a seat by the fireplace, I calmly pick up my embroidery and focus on my plump woollen flowers for four stitches, before I must stop, unable to go any further. Where is George?