Authors: Deborah Lawrenson
T
he perfume was called Lavande de Nuit. Years after I helped make the potions in order to be able to describe every detail of the factory to Marthe, it was her blend of flowers and herbs that changed the fortunes of everyone concerned.
While the war dragged on, the frustrations of the Vichy years, when our so-called leaders and army never did turn against the oppressors as expected, the rise of the Resistance and through to the painful liberation of the country by the Allies, the Mussets and their employees kept their heads down. It was a solid provincial business, of use to all sides, and it continued to manufacture basic lines in antiseptic lavender water and soap. While others became heroes and traitors, Marthe, blind and considered no use to anyone, was quietly experimenting with scent combinations, not using expensive ingredients like ambergris or violet-leaf absolute, but those close to hand, from plants that grew freely all around, the familiar scents of her home.
When the war was over, she had a catalogue of creations made from practically nothing. For the next five years, the Musset factory put them into production and saw profits grow beyond all estimations.
It’s no exaggeration to say that it was these years that transformed the lavender fields and steam factory distillery between Manosque and Valensole into the far more prestigious Parfumeur-Distillateur Musset, and Marthe Lincel into a creator of perfumes.
No longer were their products sold from market stalls, but in shops in Aix and Avignon and Marseille; then—the crowning glory—from the Musset
parfumerie
in the Place Vendôme in Paris, which opened in 1950 to herald the new decade.
O
ccasionally, Marthe would send me magazine and newspaper clippings. The photographs showed a slim, elegant woman with a beguiling expression. Often she would be posed in front of a counter full of scent bottles and their fashionable striped boxes, or sitting, wearing the latest look, in a chic sitting room. The photographer would never get too close; it was barely possible to discern in those pictures that the pretty, laughing eyes were empty.
Even more occasionally, the same envelopes would contain a leaf or pod or sliver of wood that allowed me to smell what she was working with, for old times’ sake.
Over the years, I asked her for money now and then, toward the upkeep of the farm, and she was always generous. At first, she would send what she could from Paris, then more, as she became more successful. She had a good head for business, and without her ideas and help, the place would have gone under long before it did.
Of course, I never did leave or fulfill my ambition to train as a teacher. It was not to be. But I did complete my education, on my own, for my love of books never diminished. I loved Balzac and Zola, who could move me to tears, so I knew the harsh truth about society and thwarted dreams, and the resilience of the human spirit. I always made a point of reading modern authors, too, especially those who described the lives of young women in Paris.
If anyone had ever said to me there would come a day when Marthe and I would have nothing to say to each other, that she would become too grand for me, that she would forget all that we had ever been to each other, I would have cried out that they were wrong.
Marthe and I were part of each other. I shared my sight; she taught me to see with my other senses.
I
still could not sleep.
The scent was growing stronger. I got up and ran around the room, stood at the open window and tried to identify, once and for all, where it was coming from. But it seemed to have no source. It surrounded me now. The more I concentrated on it, the more suffocating it became.
And just as before, for no reason, it made me think: Rachel.
In the absence of hard facts, the mind locks—taking pictures one after the other, putting them together, hoping to transform them into a coherent story.
Intense, driven, clever: that was what Sabine called her. But also humorous and confident. Frivolous, even. A girl who liked a party, but was equally a daring and determined woman. She sounded like someone it would be interesting to know. No. Not to know. To be.
She was clearly much more of an extrovert than I am, much more assured in social situations. Rachel was already a published writer, of course, while I was still only dreaming of that. But the writing and the thoughts behind it, the fascination with stories: we shared that. The way she phrased and described was uncannily close to the way I would have done.
Dom had loved her enough to marry her. What had happened to the happily ever after?
And what about money: Did Rachel take a chunk of Dom’s wealth away with her? His generosity was unarguable. I had had to fight to be allowed to contribute to the running of the house; he would have paid for everything without a word of protest if I had let him. For my own pride, I was not about to let that happen. I did ask him once, right at the beginning, when we discussed living together, how he stood financially, and was vaguely shocked by how much he had. Not then or afterward did he ever complain, not a word, about handing over sizeable alimony payments; nothing like that had ever been mentioned.
No, Dom never told me anything that wasn’t true. But it may have been the kind of truths that lawyers deal in. There are degrees of honesty. How much detail is the right amount? There is omission, and holding back and misleading statements. But there are confidences to honor, too. There are white lies that spare someone the hurt of too harsh a truth. And there is simple restraint: always thinking before you speak, and a precision in one’s choice of vocabulary that can conceal a multitude of ambiguities.
This was what I was thinking, my mind clogged with suppositions and imaginary dead ends, as the scent grew still stronger. I was angry with Dom for disappearing without a word, hurt and nervous, too, at being on my own in this situation. I was aware that my breathing was fast and shallow, that I needed air.
I went back out onto the bedroom terrace. A three-quarter moon hung over the hamlet, dropping puddles of gray light over its domestic landmarks. Enough light to see that I was no longer alone.
Relief flooded through me, pushing aside anger. “Dom!” I called down at his shadow.
He did not reply. My anger reignited and I shouted again.
Still no response; no movement, either. Then—did a cloud move and the moonlight gleam brighter?—I saw that the figure was not Dom.
It was a woman standing below on the path. She was completely still in the dark, looking out to the hills, her back to me. I couldn’t think what she was doing there, or who she was. Or why she was out in the middle of the night and chose to stop just there.
My first thought was to call down and demand an explanation, but though I opened my mouth, just as in dreams, nothing came out. As though my subconscious took over to pull me back from the brink, I stopped.
Whoever she was, she was an unlikely intruder. Hardly more than a silhouette, she simply stood there, small and fragile and utterly calm. Perhaps the barest ripple disturbed the fabric of her skirt, and brushed her hair back from her face, the face I still could not see.
Uncertain, I held back.
The world stilled. The temperature plummeted. Night noises faded, leaving absolute silence.
I lunged back into the room to find the flashlight. How stupid was I, to do nothing? I switched on the beam as I fumbled with the other hand for my phone. Then I edged back to my vantage place. I shone the light straight down at her.
She was gone. There was nothing there.
My body knew it before my mind. In the minutes that followed, as I pressed my back into the stones of the wall, heart pounding, a thought came into my head. It arrived with all the slippery discomfort of a recovered memory: on some primal level, I knew who she was. I had felt her presence, and now, fleetingly, I had seen her. She was one of the women of the house, one of the spirits.
I closed my eyes, feeling my skin tighten all over. There she was again, already stamped on my memory. It was the very ordinariness of the vision that was so chilling. As if nothing in the world could be relied on not to shift shape, as if this was the visceral knowledge we learn to suppress: that childhood terrors are all too real.
It was only then, as I sat trembling on the bed, fighting waves of panic and fury at Dom, that the scent gradually ebbed away.
I
t was a terrible spring that followed the winter Marthe went to Paris to make her fortune.
As late as March, the frosts lay like foam on the cherry, plum, and pear blossom, killing most of the fruit before it had even formed. There were very few branches that managed any yield that year. It rained so hard that the springwater overflowed the spring over several weeks and washed away the sloping field of lucerne below. The damp penetrated the sheepfold and the animals sickened. Too many lambs died. Our hopes of a good return at the market dwindled and died.
Our summer passed in a desperate race to compensate. We planted and gathered as many vegetables as the soil could throw up, and rushed to preserve as much as possible for another hard winter. No rot-blown plum or pepper was too soft or small or pocked to have the bad parts excised before being added to the pile for bottling. Our thumbs bled as the juices ran and the small fruits slipped under the knife. We sowed and nurtured pumpkin and squash. The hunting season began. The guns brought back thrush and blackbirds; now and then, a partridge.
The first low clouds of autumn came in like wisps of smoke across the mountains. The walnuts we had left to eat were dropping, quickly blackening, eaten inside out by earwigs. We harvested what we could, then the ladder came out and we snapped the crop from the trees, hustling to get them into the barn before more rain came. We worked as fast as we could, to the music of the changing winds, our hands stained yellow by releasing the nutshells from their pods.
After heavy rain, the wild tangle of green grapes and wisteria outside the windows dripped like a shower. The scent of fig mingled with wood smoke and warm, wet earth, and, for years after, was synonymous with despair.
I
n the midst of all this, Pierre left.
There were arguments in raised voices, and slammed doors, but Pierre was determined. He dressed his abandonment as an opportunity to take the best of all worlds, that he would return with money and still be able to work here when he could, but no one was fooled.
Then Old Marcel died, leaving two distraught dogs that howled all day and night for ten days.
Papa became dejected. Whatever suggestions Maman put forward were swept aside as worthless. We had never seen him like this, nor heard our parents arguing with such ferocity when they thought that we had gone to sleep.
Then, one evening, Arielle’s father, Gaston Poidevin, came and told our parents that his family, too, would be leaving Les Genévriers. He had been researching the opportunities in the new industries for some time, he said, and it was with great regret that he had decided to reestablish his family at Cavaillon, down in the plain on the road to Marseille. “Treachery” was the word Papa used, rejecting his old friend and tenant’s reasoned arguments.
“You realize you are making, at a stroke, our lives here twice as hard?”
I do not remember the response. There was nothing Poidevin could have said. If Papa hadn’t been able to persuade his own son to stay, how could he succeed with anyone else?
Maman was as close to Marie Poidevin as I was to Arielle, and we cried for the loss of our friends, though without letting Papa see us. Tearfully, Arielle and I vowed everlasting friendship, no matter where we came to rest in the future.
For a few weeks after that, Papa tried hard to pull his spirits up. We had our backs to the wall, he admitted, but we would never be defeated, it was not in our bones to give in. We had our land, and, with hard toil, we would make it pay. We gave a cheer at that, and hugged one another. The arguments with Maman ceased, at least within our earshot.
A
s the months crept into winter, though, it became clear there was an artificial aspect to our spirited pride. Our father, exhausted and ashamed, took to the walnut liqueur.
Christmas was a muted affair. For the first time, neither Marthe nor Pierre returned. For the last time, we ate the traditional Thirteen Desserts with the Poidevin family, and Arielle and I placed the clay
santons
, the little saints, around the holy crèche in the hall. I added a new one, a lavender girl, to our battered collection of figures: the shepherd, the miller, the carpenter, the tambourine player, the dancer, the baker, the woman with a bundle of sticks.
A few evenings later, none too steady, Papa had been cleaning his hunting rifle. He could have put his cloths away, but instead he decided to go rummaging in one of the many shelves of the basement under the house.
He returned with the Prussian revolver that Pierre had once stolen. None of us knew he had kept it. But, somewhere, he had. Maman said that he decided to use the remaining oil on the cloth to give it a polish.
We told everyone it was a freak accident. Maybe it was. But maybe it wasn’t. We all had different reasons for suspecting it was what he had wanted to do when he went and fetched that dangerous old gun from its hideaway—a gun that hadn’t seen the light of day for years—a few days after that cold, strained Christmas when both Pierre and Marthe stayed away.
I was outside when I heard the shot. There was a glorious sunset in a red-and-violet mackerel sky, and I was watching intently as, for a few minutes, the distinct clouds were rimmed with scarlet light. A moment later, the light shimmered in shock and went black as the report rang out, so close by. All thought fractured in the second or so needed for surprise to turn to panic. Suddenly, all luminosity was extinguished, leaving a heavy, blue-black glower reaching up over the valley to the house.