The Perfumer's Secret (9 page)

The night was still, lights were winking off across the town below and the scent of jasmine hunted me. In fact, I lost myself to a few desperately grasped moments of clarity while the ethereal scent of white jasmine gave up its sweetness to the starlight and I could taste the makings of a new scent on the rim of my senses. Here, in this place of fragrance and beauty, was truth; life felt pure and uncomplicated. I understood it, I trusted it, but knew I couldn’t remain in this world; life awaited me. I had to confront the darkness that the letter had introduced into my thoughts.

What did Sébastien need to share? I was trembling at his direct manner but, of course, he was rushing to get the note to me so he’d had no time to construct a polite letter that gently led me to the shock he had in store. I blinked in vexation. What possible reason could there be for Aimery and me to withhold our marriage ceremony? Why the great secrecy? I felt a tingle of fresh relief that Aimery and I had not shared a bed yet, but that came with a pinch of anger that someone was now trying to prevent it. I knew my thoughts were at odds with my feelings towards Aimery but I was truly weary of men exerting control over me. Whether I liked it or not, Aimery and I were man and wife now. What could possibly trump that?

Clearly Sébastien’s plans to arrive at Grasse in time had been interrupted by the declaration of war. I wondered if Aimery already knew the information that Sébastien was so determined to give us; surely he would have shared it with his brother by now. What would it mean?

Sleep would elude me now until I addressed this dilemma. I refused to see a new sunrise being mute and unresponsive to this drama; I needed to do something that addressed it. In a burst of energy I turned my room lights back on, pulled out my new writing compendium – a wedding gift from Felix – and began a letter to my husband.

Dear Aimery,

I am convincing myself that this letter will find you cheerful of spirit, if not happy to be where you are. I know you will be setting a fine example for your men. We are all very well here although life is certainly quiet – near silent – in the town.

Thank you for my beautiful suite of rooms – I can see some trouble has been taken with the decor to echo my favourite colours in a restrained, tasteful way.

I didn’t think it was necessary to tell him this was my first night here. I also didn’t think it wise to hedge. Honesty was required, and I couldn’t pretend, no matter how heartfelt the entreaty, that I had not heard from Sébastien.

Unfortunately, this letter to you leaves me confused. I have received a note from your brother. Sébastien asked that we postpone our marriage until he could arrive with some news from your mother. He doesn’t say what, but was emphatic. Do you have any idea as to what he might be referring to?

I left it at that, preferring not to remind him that our wedding may have gone ahead but that we remained man and wife in name only.

On a brighter topic, harvest begins tomorrow and can you imagine we shall be distilling by week’s end? The two households and staff will do the families proud. I know it will help everyone to keep to our routines, keep the fields turning over, the warehouses busy.

I will write again shortly. For now, stay safe, dear Aimery, and I shall watch for your letter to arrive.

Fondly,

Fleurette

I sealed it to prevent me from wanting to change anything. I stared at the envelope with its plain black ink. Next to it sat Sébastien’s letter, like an accusation. I was betraying him but I consoled myself that I didn’t know him and that I hadn’t asked for his trust. I kept imagining a younger version of Aimery, which hardly thrilled me. He didn’t sound like Aimery, though; his letter, despite its demanding nature, sounded respectful, affectionate almost.

I switched all lights off to close the matter and took my time getting comfortable in a new bed, with its high pillows. The sheets felt shockingly yet deliciously cold against the warmth of the room and I slid gratefully between their satiny quality, kicking off the eiderdown and staring up at the canopy of blue toile that hung majestically above, cascading down each of the four posts.

I lay there, pretending my thoughts were still. In fact they roamed, first to Felix, wishing him a safe goodnight, then to Henri to do the same. Curiously it was to Sébastien my mind stole next. I tried to imagine what the situation must have been when his mother shattered the quartet of our two families and left Grasse.

As I decided I must learn more about this elusive woman, sleep must have mercifully tiptoed up and claimed me because I fell into that drowsy plane of being neither awake nor asleep, and not conscious but dulled to the point of no thought. I felt comfortable from my safe haven in Grasse, knowing France would heroically fend off the Germans, and that our men would be home soon enough. From this vantage I was tipped softly into sleep, little knowing that a storm was stirring, readying itself to blow through my life – all our lives – and render them changed forever.

In an effort to be seen mixing with the other officers’ wives, I attended a coffee morning at Catherine’s house. She was in a bright mood, having heard from Henri yesterday – as had I – and although his letters were brief, we knew from reading between the lines that my brothers were probably fighting in Lorraine or Alsace. Two of her other guests whom I knew, but not well, had husbands in Aimery’s regiment and they seemed to know more than I did: that the 23e had also left the Italian frontier and was also already in the north of France.

I politely sipped coffee, although I would have preferred tea, and leaned close to Catherine as she squeezed my arm.

‘It seems to be going well for them.’

I nodded. Henri hadn’t said as much in his letter but then he hadn’t really said much at all beyond the hint of being close to the border and that he’d forgotten to pack books and would I please confer with Monsieur Bouchard about whether we have sufficient lard for this year’s enfleurage. I suppose I drew some comfort from the banal nature of his letter because there was nothing at all in it to alarm me.

‘Yes, Henri and Felix will look out for each other,’ I assured. ‘You’re not to worry.’

She shrugged. ‘You’re so lucky to have been married before the men left.’

‘Am I?’

She looked at me, perplexed.

I quickly adjusted what I’d meant. ‘I mean, now that I’m married, I have reason to worry too much, I suspect.’

Catherine’s nature was to be sweet to everyone. She gave me a sisterly hug. ‘Your Aimery will be a hero, I’m sure.’

I smiled thinly as she turned to the person next to her to fall into a discussion about bolts of cotton and silk newly arrived from Italy. It would be the last for a while, I imagined, feeling a trite bored but desperately trying not to show that I was far more interested in the jasmine harvest than the latest fabrics. It wasn’t their fault that I felt awkward, and I realised I would have to try harder to fit into groups of my peers, because with Felix gone I was going to be lonely if I didn’t make the effort.

‘I hear all our men from Grasse are now united in the north – is that your understanding, Madame De Lasset?’ My neighbour chuckled, but didn’t let me respond. ‘Oh my, it’s so odd calling you that instead of Mademoiselle Delacroix.’

I kept the smile steady. ‘I am yet to be used to it,’ I agreed.

‘Oh, I think you’re the luckiest woman in all of Grasse to be married to that dashing officer of yours.’

I suppose they would all believe this. ‘Thank you,’ I said as graciously as I could. ‘We didn’t have much of a chance to share being man and wife.’

She tittered again, obviously hearing the innuendo I hadn’t meant to convey. ‘Oh, I’m sure he’ll make that up to you as soon as they get some leave. My Giraud believes that will occur soon. He thinks it will all be over by Christmas. There are towns already repatriated, according to a newspaper, my father says, so maybe Giraud is right.’

‘Oh, yes, done by Christmas,’ another officer’s wife assured, joining our conversation as she reached for a tiny sponge cake laced with syrup.

‘Let’s hope so,’ I replied.

‘Will you spend the summer in Grasse this year?’ she asked, biting neatly into the cake, and then answered her own question. ‘I suppose it’s not wise to be going anywhere at present, although I for one could do with a change of scenery.’

‘It’s jasmine harvest,’ I said, masking my surprise that she would question how a Delacroix or a De Lasset might spend her August.

‘Oh, but you have people for that, surely?’ she said, sounding vaguely appalled that I might concern myself with it.

‘Not this year,’ I reminded and smiled evenly, disguising how much I couldn’t wait to be amongst the flowers and the workers and the real life I loved.

__________

It was stifling and it wasn’t yet midday as I stood in the factory warehouse, where scores of kilograms of jasmine flowers were being tipped gently out of sacks. These fragile blooms I was taught had probably come first to Spain via Africa from the exotic Orient of Kashmir and Persia. The Spanish had brought this most royal of our flowers with its incomparable fragrance to our region. It was precious in so many ways, not least in the manner it needed to be harvested, with the trained hands of specialist pickers. These female pickers who might pluck six, maybe seven kilos of roses in May, might only gather three-quarters of a kilo of jasmine during the same number of work hours in August. It was tedious, exhausting work requiring concentration and speed. Nothing could kindle my father’s anger faster than a sack of bruised or spoiled jasmine petals, which, I used to jest, turned brown if you looked at them the wrong way.

Pickers had begun at first light and I had been out in the fields with them, sharing the workload, as dawn broke gently over Grasse. Normally the women would sing as they walked to the fields of flowers, a soft sea of luminous white, but this day we had kept silent, all of us thinking of the war unfolding at our border.

I’d received a communication from Felix via the local barracks explaining succinctly that despite being sent to guard the Italian border, the 24e would be sent to Lorraine to take part in the initial advance into Alsace. It all felt too real, too frightening, and I was glad to lose myself in the repetitive work of picking and the world I understood.

__________

Leaving the fields nearly an hour ago, I gave myself just enough time to down a slim tartine and a shallow bowl of sweetened coffee before moving across to the warehouse. I didn’t want to miss a moment of the critical next stage.

Breathing in deeply, I savoured the fresh, creamy smell of our most prized bloom, which couldn’t be macerated or steam-distilled. Instead we had to employ a technique known as enfleurage, and that was already underway with a team of women busily at their chassis, which I had called ‘windows’ since I was a child. With a nod to the supervisor, a fearsome former picker now dressed in the familiar all-black of management and taking her new role seriously, I strolled away from the idyllic scene of workers tipping out the sacks of gathered flowers and moved to the enfleurage area to oversee the progress. I knew Madame Aurelie would run a brisk yet fair schedule for the workers, especially as she knew the toll the work took on their bodies. She would ensure regular meals, breaks, stretching out their bent spines, even if the old supervisor, Monsieur Planque, was less forgiving.

‘Good afternoon,’ I called out as brightly as I could to the fifteen or so women.

‘Good afternoon, Madame,’ they said as one, to make me smile.

‘How are your hands holding up?’

‘Not so bad,’ one elderly woman admitted.

Hers looked like the claws of an eagle and yet they moved with gentle dexterity. I watched, marvelling at her expertise as she took a fresh pane of glass that was framed in timber. It had been smeared with lard; I could tell from the smell that it wasn’t tallow this year – definitely pig fat. Working fast yet deliberately, old Adelie embedded the petals of jasmine into the layer of lard with a tenderness one might handle a newborn with. No petals, fat with their luscious, precious juices, ever spoiled in Adelie’s hands. Over the next few days that perfect scent of night would diffuse. She and her companions would work for the next few weeks, replacing those petals every three days until the lard reached what my father called saturation, when the fat could take on no more of the fragrance.

‘There you are, Madame Fleurette,’ Adelie said, finishing yet another chassis. ‘You will have your pomade before you know it.’

I smiled my thanks. We all knew this was our region’s wealth. This was the moment, the main month in which we made our money. Outside of May – rose time – August was critical, and why I insisted that we set aside our fear for our men and show that we could bring in the harvest with the workforce we had available. Given that this part was mainly women’s work anyway, supervised by men, I was confident we could achieve our 1914 harvest and make our men proud.

I wouldn’t attempt to sell our enfleurage wax – pomade, as we called it – as our two families had on various occasions. Given we were at war, I wouldn’t know how to begin such negotiations. Instead it was my intention that we wash out the fat and absorb the scent molecules into alcohol, which our chemists could then evaporate to leave me with an enviable resource of jasmine absolute. This viscous, yellowy liquid possessed the very spirit of those powerfully scented flowers of the night. It would carry their delicate scent onwards.

‘Marvellous work, ladies. Keep it up!’ I said with as much enthusiasm as I could push into the words, and they chorused a farewell. Everyone was doing their best to remain cheerful but the lack of men around us and the knowledge that guns might already be firing on our borders skulked like a gloomy shadow in the corner, threatening to saunter out and intensify its presence whenever we dared to enjoy the happiest time of year.

As I left the enfleurage area, my gaze was once again drawn to the mountain of dewy jasmine petals, calming in their coolness, laid out at the other end of the warehouse. I began to do the sums in my mind, astonished at the numbers. Each fluid ounce of absolute would take approximately one quarter of a million flowers – maybe another five million or more to achieve a saleable amount – which meant hundreds and hundreds of picking hours. Staggering! At least half of Grasse’s fields were carpeted in jasmine; could we get that frightening number of plants harvested with the available workforce of women? This was not a problem our families would have encountered previously; it was certainly not a matter I had ever even had to think about. The labour force was Henri’s domain, had been for many years, and it was hardly a difficult juggle for him – not only did the entire working population of Grasse traditionally get involved with harvest, but we would normally have an influx of itinerant workers. Other travelling French men and women would come in from various provinces but also workers from Spain and Italy. With a sense of alarm I made a mental note to have a meeting with the council – whoever was left, anyway – to discuss a formal announcement of the task we were up against. We would need every woman, young or old, to pitch in to help keep Grasse’s economy moving.

Drifting on the scent of the flowers as I moved away from the main warehouse, I began to unconsciously break down the intoxicating flavours I could taste. Definitely greener this year, I felt, yet its opulence was intact to achieve that heady sensation so inherent in ‘the king of fragrances’, as Felix called it. I smiled, remembering how he would describe rose as female, jasmine as male. What I smelled in our jasmine was a curvy lusciousness that I knew from experience and from my imagination required only a minute amount to lift a perfume into a new level of beauty. This was my skill, my divine gift. Flowers could have anything from fifteen to several hundred individual components. I teased out a few as I walked towards the De Lasset laboratory. Today I picked out a note resonant of apricot softening down the slightly grassy flavour that I sensed was stronger this year. It would challenge the traditional way we tended to think of our jasmine. When I used it I would need to adjust that freshness if I wanted to keep it in that darkly sensuous quarter. My father had always leaned towards the exotic with perfume of jasmine, paying homage to its origins; one of my favourites was one of his earliest. He had made it for my mother as a wedding gift and it was a heady mix of sandalwood, vanilla notes, cinnamon and cedar, with jasmine looping through them, tying them together like an ethereal, invisible ribbon that made sense of the parts to form a whole. A majestic night scent he called
Immortelle
.

I wore a dab of it today in honour of the jasmine harvest and of my father . . . and to remember our mother in this time of families scattered and in strife. I smelled my elbow – an old habit – to rid myself of all other thoughts of fragrance, and then my wrist. As I inhaled at my pulse, my father’s noble face shimmered into clearer focus in my mind but, more importantly, the presence of my mother was instantly more tangible. It was as though her spirit had been called down in that heartbeat and she stood before me now. I couldn’t see or hear her in my mind as I could my father, but she was present nonetheless. That was the power of fragrance; it transported one. Time had no distance or age where smell was concerned. I halted at the surprise of being catapulted back to infancy and that sultry aroma that lived in my soul.

It was in this instant that I knew what I needed to achieve. It was a task I was setting myself . . . a dream, a goal, an aspirational milestone that would clear a path for my future.

I was going to design my own perfume. The average person in Paris could detect maybe twenty different smells. Felix could hold at least two and a half thousand, my father a fraction more, but I had been endowed with a sense that could discriminate just over three thousand. Felix had counted them once, to be sure that I really could eclipse his talent. Not that either of us cared, for the Delacroix brand was like the fulcrum – my father on its point, and the pair of us balancing either side. We complemented each other’s talents in myriad ways, from the obvious of male and female to the more subtle of Felix’s grasp of the chypre family of smells that encompassed citrus to grassy or fruity. In this regard his talent was superior to mine, whereas when it came to fougère – the more smoky, woody, spicy notes – I had no equal. Together we could be formidable but my father hadn’t been dead long enough to hand over the laboratory entirely to his twin children. We’d stuck to the more conservative pathway of providing raw materials or fully formed fragrances for other houses in Paris, London, New York or Milan to present as their own. Felix and I had possessed a dream since our teens to develop a range under our own brand of Delacroix.

Why couldn’t I begin this summer, in the depths of our misery, to lose myself in the design of a new perfume? Why not indeed? At its heart would be jasmine, in minuscule amounts, but there nonetheless as a final nod to my parents and the start of a new era.

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