13. Perfume
From 'Passages' by Jean de Lier
Edmund and Charlotte were in love. They had actually fancied themselves in love for a long time, though neither was very sure if it was love, what love really might be, and what they ought to do about it. Neither had looked at anyone else for several weeks. Luckily the rigours of English boarding schools meant they had little opportunity at first, and for a while, to do other than send each other torrid and passionate letters, secretly shown to their most carefully selected envious confidants on both sides. That was fine and safe and did not interfere with A levels too much.
At Easter they were separated by parental arrangements, and the first few weeks of post-school freedom in July were spent on pre-arranged activities that had not envisaged grand passion. Part of the problem was that they did not live very close and neither had a car, nor indeed a driving licence. Thus does true love run through shoals and rapids. But finally the day came when, with much trepidation and organisation and pleading, he was indeed invited to her parents home for dinner, meet the parents, see the house, stay the night. He arrived, punctually enough with a huge box of chocolates, cuff-links and polished shoes, and was collected from the station by Charlie’s father, smiling with friendly bonhomie, and an extremely nervous Charlie.
He had in fact met the parents before, at a concert both schools had attended, so it was not totally strange territory. A thimbleful of sherry in hand, they were allowed, even encouraged, to walk round the garden together and they managed to steal a little embrace behind the rose bush and into the raspberry canes. Clever of the parents to ensure they had each a glass in their hands.
After dinner in those pre-televisual days, with huge broadmindedness and tact, the parents soon retired leaving the young ones looking at each other across the drawing room table. Both were embarrassed, eager but nervous, the parents all to audibly upstairs behind acoustically transparent walls. He offered her one of his chocolates, which she gobbled up and then a second, perhaps as much from nerves as appetite. He himself refrained but had another sip of port. Then with huge daring he moved to sit beside her on the sofa, put his arm round her and slowly, inclined his head closer to hers. She made no objection so he gently kissed the top of her head, removed a tickling strand of hair and raised her face to his. Their cheeks met, held, glued together and slowly slid closer to their lips. Neither had ever done this before.
Finally, biology being dominant, their lips did meet and held, glued rigidly in panting love and terror. He had his arm right round her but wondered what to do with the other hand, whether he dare go near her breast. Who knows which of them first opened their mouth a chink. They kissed and their tongues met, a miniscule fragment of mucosa within a nearly sealed, tight lipped mouth.
Chocolate. The only sensation he had was of second hand chocolate which she had eaten and he had not. Ugh, horrid, unsweet, aromatic, distracting. Above all distracting. He pulled away, she shocked, he nervous. He half mumblingly explained, quickly gave her another sweet and ate one himself, then a second. He didn’t actually much like chocolate and she didn’t either by now. She had eaten four.
They did manage to kiss after that and hug and cuddle and they kissed open mouthed and he briefly touched her clothed breast. He could still mostly taste chocolate but in any case the spell was broken and before long her approving parents heard them going up to their several bedrooms. He left after breakfast with sad moon-calf looks from Charlie and a future welcome from her parents and he wrote a polite letter of thanks. He swore never to let a girl eat chocolates again before attempting love.
They lost their actual virginity together, one hot summer night not so long afterwards on the floor of a park bandstand, having climbed over the railings for privacy. The event was a disaster for both, messy, sanguineous and embarrassing. But they were so much in love and so eager that even that didn’t matter. And they pledged not only undying love, but continuous wonderful sex, making love as they were learning to call it, as soon as the logistics could be worked out. But there were more hurdles to come.
It was her birthday and he grandly decided not only to take her out for a dinner to a good restaurant but also to buy a bottle of perfume as a present. You could have written what he knew about perfume on the back of a postage stamp, so he sensibly, as he thought, went to consult his mother as to what to buy for an investment that was a week’s allowance. His dear mother, normally so sensible and sensitive should have known better – what she actually said was that she had no idea what a young girl would like (he regarded Charlie as quite adult) because she herself always wore Le Callèche by Guerlain. Ah well, good idea, he said brightly and went off to buy a largish bottle.
Edmund had a car by this time and he went to Charlie’s bedsit behind Notting Hill Gate and duly presented the package. It was unwrapped, the joy was profound, the kisses flowed, and the girl splashed herself all over with the odorous liquid. She even tipped some down between her breasts under her bra where it stung. She looked ravishing and radiant and glorious and the evening was a huge success. Flushed with joy and love and lust they repaired back to her roomlet, kissed, tickled, almost stripped off their clothes, found the condoms (pre-pill days) and embraced under the bedclothes. As he nuzzled into her yielding breasts she – she smelt like his mother. Suddenly he was in bed with his mother, oedipal incest taboos kicked in: he couldn’t bonk his own mother. He kissed her and loved her and wanted her. But try as he might, for the first time in his young life he discovered the shame and anguish of total impotence, unable to consummate what they both so desired. He left soon, dressing with his back to her to avoid seeing the tears in her eyes, she thinking she had done something wrong, was not attractive enough, what had gone wrong? He drove home. He did love her and he came back the next evening with a small posy of flowers and all was well except that he had to make her swear never to wear his birthday present again. Even if he fully understood, he could not bring himself to explain exactly why.
She was mortified, kept it on her little dressing table in pride of place for girl friends to see, and did wear it on rare formal occasions. But she cautiously left it behind the first time they went away together for a whole night. That occasion was sort of alright except that the little hotel they stayed at, post-war, had perfectly clean hard boiled and starched sheets, which were like sandpaper. Perhaps they were sandpaper. By morning there was blood in the bed, not hers but his, his elbows and knees worn raw to bleeding, painful and stiff for a week afterwards, and about a fortnight before the scabs healed. He regarded them rather as honourable war wounds when he visited his parents but they remarked, with insulting hilarity, that he hadn’t looked like that since he was a little boy back from school with scuffed knees from the tumbles he had taken in the playground. In a way that was fair enough – different playground.
After that they managed to wangle a trip to Paris for the whole weekend, the first proper ‘dirty weekend’ either had ever spent, and in ‘Gay Paree’ as well! He bought enough condoms for a month of Lotharios and they booked a four star hotel to avoid the fiasco of the sheets again. They arrived by train on Friday night, had a wonderful dinner on the Boulevard St Germain where wine was à discretion, and, tired and excited, they considerably overdrank. Back in the hotel Charlie crashed out fully dressed on the bed, so completely that any attempt by him to raise her seemed more like necrophilia. With a totally dead girl beside him, he managed to undress her in part but considerably drunk himself he soon fell asleep half clothed (the effects of alcohol being notoriously equivocal), content that they would be together in the morning.
He woke later than he had intended to find her lying in bed, face up, eyes open and deadly pale. She was shivering, sweating, palpitating. He fetched a glass of water, ordered a hot tea with sugar (and croissants for himself) and realised he could hardly jump on her at that moment. She had the flu and she had it bad, perhaps she had already had it the night before. Eventually he went out and brought back mineral water and a few delicacies, which he then ate himself as she could not even look at food. He ran her a hot bath, helped her into it, got himself a small thrill by rubbing her down, which at least made her feel better; and then he dried her off and put her back to bed in a chaste nightdress. He went to the Louvre and returned with more croissants and pain chocolat and ate them all and had an omelette for dinner downstairs by himself and so Saturday and Sunday passed and their train back to London was due to leave at 1.00 pm on Monday.
On Monday morning she woke feeling distinctly better, embraced him, indeed loved him all the more for his kindness and forbearance. Like a loving old couple, they even made love in a gentle sort of sad way, at which point she discovered his huge pile of hopeful, hoped for, optimistic condoms. She smiled indulgently, and on an impulse took one to her lips and blew it up. Good rubber well made, it extended and extended and got larger and larger until it was the size of a decent water melon. Then she let go. Whooosh. it jetted round the room as it deflated down to a dead used condom. She started to giggle, then to laugh and he started to laugh, hysterically for what they had missed, tension-release, funny. He blew one up and sent it round and then they both did it together to see if they could get them to collide, hysterical laughter, roaring sadness, copulation by condom alone, inosculation, anastomosis, mouth to mouth, one blowing air into the other. Blow job. By the time they packed up their small suitcases they had one left for a quick sally on the bed, rush down stairs, grab a sandwich (she was ravenous not having eaten for three days) and just made the train.
She used the Callèche perfume with pleasure and pride and joy only when their hot young love finally burned out for other reasons, though they remained in friendly contact, first love and first adventures, attended each others parents funerals, several marriages each until even this contact attenuated, and they drifted apart through their different lives, children, husbands and wives and most of all, through uncongenial geography. They still send Christmas cards.
Half a century later Edmund, widowed, was staying for a week on summer holiday at the (modest) Chateau of his good friends the Conte & Ctesse de LeVellin. It was an informal setting but they had been exceptionally kind to him and always welcoming. No one however had reminded him that it was Géneviève’s birthday the next day. He must buy a present and a nice one, but the opportunities in provincial France in August are not huge. He tried the few antique shops that happened to be open but nothing below a few thousand euros seemed remotely attractive and that was more than he planned to spend even in these circumstances. He wandered disconsolately round the local town and blundered into a rather smart (relatively) parfumerie – they had a shop full of cosmetics. Well, maybe a bottle of scent, not very original but always acceptable. Honour at least would be satisfied, gratitude notified.
The assistant sprayed him with the latest fragrances – he was only wearing a tee-shirt in the heat, so he could be sprayed half way up both arms as well as the back of the hand and the palm. He was already smelling like a whore in a Turkish bordello, when his eye lit upon, could it be, yes indeed, Le Callèche by Guerlain. Was that the one, yes, that his mother had worn. Yes, as memory returned. His memory for things as long ago as that was better than for what happened yesterday. The story came flooding back to him. He would like to smell one more, please, that one.
Of course he was not intending to sleep with his hostess, but even so, out of loyalty to his mother and perhaps as much to his first true love he made a silent quite conscious oath. He now remembered the story: if he could also remember the smell, the smell of his mother who had been dead these thirty five years, he would not buy it. Squirt. It smelt nice, rather good really but totally unfamiliar. Erased from memory, the memory of a smell which can be as vivid as a sight or sound, was gone. He bought it.
The Countess was delighted and over dinner he told the assembled birthday guests, as she unwrapped her presents, the story of why he had never bought this particular perfume for anyone else before.
Except only the once.
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