The Perfumer's Secret (16 page)

‘My point, I suppose, is that until anyone has walked in their shoes they cannot know what it is to feel such passion.’

‘I would never behave like that.’

‘You can be absolutely sure of this?’

I glared at him. ‘Certainly, I can!’ I could hear the saintly conviction in my tone and didn’t enjoy it. ‘I suppose you can imagine a world where this sort of behaviour is appropriate?’ Now I just sounded cornered, as though I was looking for a way out.

He raised dark eyebrows above features that were not perfect in symmetry and it was this ever-so-slight crookedness that allowed him to achieve a look of almost constant bemusement or, like now, deep sadness.

‘I can envisage a world where someone falls helplessly for another and perhaps lacks judgement and indeed a clarity of thinking.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Have you ever been in love, Fleurette? The sort of love that makes you feel irrational, irresponsible, irrepressible?’

The question stole up and alarmed me. My head rocked back. ‘No.’ I spoke the truth and felt self-conscious that I was able to answer so categorically. I struck back, though. ‘How about you?’

He frowned, took my enquiry seriously rather than as the attack I intended. Finally, he shook his head. ‘Until now, no.’

I swallowed. ‘What do you mean “until now”?’

He hesitated, then fell back on a Felix-style grin that stretched thin across defined lips, as though an artist had drawn them with great care. ‘I mean, taking into account all of my life to this moment, I can honestly say to you I don’t know what that heart-stopping sense of falling in love with someone that others write poetry about feels like.’ He shrugged but I thought his explanation too long and I don’t think I was imagining a slightly curious new tension reaching between us.

And my even odder way of addressing that tension was to attempt what I thought was an adroit change of subject. ‘I know what’s troubling me – you have no beard, no moustache.’ I remarked, wishing in that heartbeat that the walls of this herb garden would just fall in on me and save me humiliating myself any further.

‘No facial hair in the British Army allowed. All soldiers to be clean-shaven. Gone are the lustrously hirsute chins of yesteryear,’ he said with a flourish of his unbandaged hand. I found myself smiling as the former awkwardness mercifully dissipated. ‘I suspect your brothers and Aimery are bald-chinned as well.’

I couldn’t imagine it. ‘Felix won’t be thrilled with another chore. He’d want to transfer instantly to the navy, even though he sickens in a rowboat.’

Sébastien smiled, rubbed his chin, and I could hear the rasp of his scruffy beard pushing through. ‘I must shave; I could be court-martialled for this alone,’ he remarked.

I knew he was jesting. I stood. ‘So, let me organise some warmer clothes for you and some of that healing soup.’ And now I had to offer a proper invitation or appear churlish. ‘Will you join me for dinner tonight, Sébastien?’

‘I would be delighted to.’

‘Right,’ I said, wondering why I was feeling guilty and as though I was on dangerous ground. ‘I shall see you this evening. Madame Mouflard will make all the arrangements.’

He nodded, took my hand again – this time with his uninjured one – and laid a soft kiss at my knuckles as he murmured a polite thank you. I felt flustered and when I became flustered it regularly amused Felix that I had a tendency to say the first thing that came into my head.

‘Did you crush some thyme?’

He laughed aloud this time at my oddity. ‘Yes, moments before you joined me. You can still smell it?’

‘Of course. I smelled it as I arrived. It has sat between us throughout our conversation.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I can smell soap lingering in your freshly washed hair, I can smell the tea we shared on your breath, the —’

‘Wait, Fleurette. What is this trick?’

‘No trick.’ I shrugged. ‘I can’t play the piano very well; and I know my teacher despaired of my inability to sew without tying myself in knots; my cooking needs lots of work, although my taste is highly developed . . . however, I have inherited my father’s talent.’

‘You have the perfumer’s gift of the Nose?’ he said, sounding awed.

I pushed my nose up comically with a finger, surprising myself at such a playful gesture with a stranger. ‘I do. So does my twin brother. But his being the male makes him
le nez
and me simply . . .’ I gave a twist of my mouth, looking for the right words. ‘Well, helpful to have around, shall we say.’

His face was full of consternation as I spoke but his expression evened and he brought us back onto less controversial ground. ‘And so do you like thyme?’

‘With food or do you mean in perfume?’

He considered my question. ‘The latter.’

I nodded, feeling happier to be on familiar territory that I felt stable on; the previous discussion had felt momentarily dangerous and I didn’t think it right to reveal my inner desire to Aimery’s brother. ‘Indeed I do. In perfume it has an earthy yet somehow sparkling quality . . . a high, green note that speaks of the hillsides and of more ancient forests. I think it has the capacity to form one of the brightest bases to a cologne for men without dominating it.’

He was paying attention despite his smile. His brow knitted. ‘Why men’s?’

I looked to the sky, taking the aroma of crushed thyme inward again, drawing it through my memories. ‘Because it has a woodiness to it that complements a man’s smell.’

‘Is that why it goes well with meat?’

‘Possibly,’ I said carefully.

‘How do I smell to you?’

‘Like a hunter. Straight from the forest.’

Sébastien tipped back his oval-shaped head and laughed before howling like a wolf.

‘I’ll send some shaving equipment for you too,’ I added as a means to take my leave before I spun on a heel and forced myself not to scurry.

__________

I supervised the cooking of the evening meal, even helping out by picking leaves of herbs into the pot, although I could tell Clothilde would have preferred me not to be in the kitchen.

‘And you, Madame? What will you be eating?’ she said, trying to disguise what was presumably her sense of feeling crowded.

‘I’m happy with soup too, and perhaps some of your delicious bread I smelled baking early this morning.’

‘Of course, Madame. We French eat bread with everything, no?’ she said with a shrug, as if I needed to see a doctor for such a comment; obviously my attempt to compliment had fallen short.

‘Is there something wrong, Clothilde?’ I couldn’t let her get away with being rude to my face. Heaven knew what she said behind my back. I saw her flick a glance at a purse-lipped Madame Mouflard and she shook her head.

‘Forgive me, I have just not seen thyme in my chicken soup previously.’

‘I like thyme, though,’ I countered. Now, why was I blushing? Had she noticed? ‘Er . . . and there are few herbs to choose from this time of year.’

‘Yes, but I have some parsley in the greenhouse, Madame. I suspect that works better.’

‘Just trying something new,’ I offered as airily as I dared. ‘Smells intriguing, don’t you think?’

‘Intriguing, Madame?’ she repeated with feigned innocence.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said, smiling for her and the kitchen hand. Madame Mouflard had her back conveniently to me.

‘Dinner for seven?’ Clothilde checked.

‘Dinner for two at seven, yes, please.’ Well, I thought it was an amusing play on words to farewell them with but clearly the kitchen was in no mood for jest. ‘Thank you,’ I said and dismissed myself to hurry away and cool my cheeks upstairs.

What a buffoon! And why the heat at the mention of thyme? I could try to convince myself it was the heat of the stove but the memory of Sébastien’s lips touching my knuckles . . . perhaps made all the more sensual somehow because of the leather gloves that divided us. It was an entirely permissible gesture – a polite one, a kiss between in-laws – so why did it feel like it was inappropriate and that his kiss, amidst thyme-scented air, was somehow stolen?

Ancient civilisations revered the benefits of the Mediterranean shrub with its elliptical curl of leaves and tiny lilac flower. I’m sure I read in one of those dusty books from my father’s botany library that it was one of the first holy herbs. That’s right, I could remember that passage now. It was connected with a recipe of medieval days in which thyme was supposedly a key ingredient ‘to achieve a state to see the elves’. That had amused me then and still did, but did not detract from the elegance of its scent, which the pharaohs were embalmed with, the Romans purified their living quarters with, and the crusading knights were given a sprig of as an emblem of their courage. This delicate plant that grew in our gardens around Grasse, often wild, hid a surprisingly robust aroma . . . with its faint aftertaste of clove that was a mainstay in culinary uses, especially in our herbes de Provence, but was also an important ingredient in our family’s perfumes.

It was a feminine smell at first because of its freshness and yet, I believed, deeply masculine with its complexity of wooded spiciness. It would now always remind me of Sébastien, I suppose. As thyme was one of the few antiseptics on the battlefield, there was little wonder that even his bandages gave up the faint smell of it. His eyes were the colour of thyme too: indistinct darkish green like its leaves, which were a metallic grey on the underside. Yes, if a plant was required to summarise Sébastien, then thyme would serve him well . . . in its fragrance – not brash and boorish, but with a softer, more feminine side. In its colour. In its variety of uses. In its presence . . . important in so many aspects and yet never shouting its own praise; like the thyme of any herb garden, Sébastien let the showier plants announce themselves with more colour, bigger leaves, louder fragrances. And yet it was to thyme that the bees flocked. It was historically to thyme that men of the spiritual, medical, ritual turned. And thyme, seemingly plain and quiet, upon scrutiny was the most beautiful of herbs . . . with its whorls of tiny flowers.

I smiled to myself. I didn’t want to think on a plant that encapsulated Aimery but the notion that the leather represented my husband as a barrier between me and his brother was amusing for a single heartbeat before I gathered myself. The attractiveness of Sébastien was not a point I could allow myself to dwell upon further. Having these feelings, I told myself, was akin to lechery and bordering on adulterous. What a pity he had not been around before now! Marriage to Sébastien would have been far less problematic and infinitely more agreeable to me. I cooled my cheeks with my hands, annoyed with myself for even thinking such a thought.

I needed a distraction. Everything was quiet in the warehouses. The oil we’d distilled was gathered, silently deepening its flavours, while the enfleurage frames were now washed, fully dried, scrutinised for cracks or breaks and were likely right now being stacked away for next summer. Even all the main work in the fields was done. The soil was icy hard and resting and the two factories understandably quiet with their main tasks complete and their men gone to war.

It was nearing four o’clock. I would take a walk; into the town square would be best. I could check for any post, as the woman who had the job of delivering our mail was far older than me and quite slow on her bicycle. I could save her a trip up the hill to the villa, if anything had arrived from my brothers. It would clear my head too. I rang the bell and within a minute Jeanne was at my door.

‘I thought I’d walk into the town.’

‘Of course,’ she said and entered to gather the right coat and accoutrements. ‘Would you like me to accompany you, Madame?’

I slipped my arms into the coat that she helped me to shrug on. ‘Thank you, no, I shall be fine. I just thought I’d take a quick stroll. I’ve been cooped up in the house for too long. I’d go to the Delacroix villa, if it wasn’t so lonely and closed up for winter.’

‘Yes, don’t go. I always think a house with dustcovers is depressing.’

I smiled at her. ‘Just until my brothers return.’

She gave me a look of sympathy. We all tried to keep each other’s spirits up but in doing so we were hiding our constant worry that those we loved would never come home from the Front.

‘Have you heard from your fiancé?’

She shook her head, smiling bravely as she tied my scarf neatly. ‘I am taking the view that it is better to have no news than a telegram, Madame.’

‘Yes, that is a wise approach.’ I was fast developing a knack of speaking words and saying nothing of value when it came to reassuring the women, not just of the house but of the town as well. It didn’t matter that I was young or without much experience, I think my new status as married elite meant I was now expected to have the composure to inspire. The sad truth was that I was as anxious as the next person and the shadows around my eyes that lurked like bruising attested to poor sleeps, worrying about Felix in particular.

I left the villa, crunching over the gravel drive, and felt immediately better to step onto the worn cobbles of Grasse’s narrow, walled streets. Warm salutations came from the houses above from women peering over balconies as I entered the alleyways that would lead me down into the main square. I recall that Napoléon had visited our town nearly one century earlier; it was said people welcomed him with violets, his favourite flower. The imperial colour, the colour of princes of the church, the most expensive dye colour in the world achieved from a sea snail . . . but my world was flowers, and I needed to shake those beautiful petals from my thoughts. And still I had the image in my mind that they seemed to shower on me and stick as effectively as any enfleurage.

The flower – its colour, its ink, its letters – connected me to my lying father, his treacherous lover, my dead mother, my grandmother, my violent, arrogant husband, and now even Sébastien, who wrote with a nib dipped in violet. I rounded a familiar corner, smiled greetings at some women I recognised, but hurried on with intent . . . my thoughts forcing themselves away from all the sins of the past. Only Sébastien was blameless. He was pure in his intent.