‘The ayah amended the original Indian recipes herself because of the difficulties of getting the ingredients she had used in India,’ Dinah explained. ‘Of course she used only natural ingredients and each phial took an eternity to prepare, but the perfumes are so good that I was determined to find the formulae which would create the same scents artificially. I’m going to start with perfumes first, as I told you in my report. The preparations for skin-care are all simple variations on a glycerin base, but the secret is to get the texture right and the scent perfect. Here smell this,’ she added, thrusting under my nose a bottle labelled ‘For Back-Ache’.
I had expected to be reminded of the exotic east but instead I thought of an English garden at sunset on a summer evening. ‘Lavender?’ I murmured. ‘No, too musky. Roses? No, not quite. What is it?’
‘A mixture of eighteen scents including nutmeg, magnolia, myrrh and sweet pea. Now try this.’
I sniffed. At first the perfume seemed identical. I sniffed again and realized it was sweeter and more cloying. ‘I don’t like that so much,’ I said.
She was unsurprised. Replacing the bottle, she selected a third. ‘What about this?’
I put my nose obediently to the rim and was once more back in the English garden. But this time I could see the woods at the edge of the lawn, the leaves on the trees, the moss on the ground. ‘I like that,’ I said sniffing again. ‘You’ve caught the scent of flowers but now it’s overlaid with something else.’
‘Would you say it was a natural scent?’
‘Without question.’
She smiled. ‘The only natural ingredients are the herbs which are cheap and easy to produce. The rest is a chemical compound.’ She picked up the first bottle. ‘This is the scent made entirely from natural ingredients including flowers which are expensive and impossible to obtain all the year round. I couldn’t market it as a commercial proposition. This—’ She turned to the second bottle ‘—is the scent which contains nothing but chemicals. The result is similar, but I’ve never been able to get rid of that cloying sweetness without adding the herbs. They disguise it, though I’m not sure how.’
I wanted to make sure I had understood her correctly. ‘Give me an example.’
‘Well, for instance, it’s easy to make an artificial lemon scent. You use
glycerin, chloroform, nitrous ether, aldehyde, acetate of ethyl, butyrate of amyl, alcohol and a couple of other chemicals. But you’ll know it’s an artificial scent unless you blend it with some natural ingredients. Conversely, many synthetic products often intensify the odours of the natural products, so if you get the right combination your product can be even better than a scent which is made entirely without chemical ingredients.’
The idea of man improving on nature always appeals to my basest nineteenth-century instincts. I asked what artificial scents could be used.
‘The most important are ionone (for violet perfume) and terpineol (for lilac) and …’ She talked on knowledgeably, and I learnt of essential oils dissolved in alcohol, of pomades and tinctures, of liquid perfume and dry perfume.
‘And here’s my recipe for Indian sachet powder: 3½ ounces of sandalwood, 10½ ounces of cinnamon, 30 grams of cloves …’
The exotic formulae filled a thick exercise book, but at last we descended from the heights of perfumery to the prosaic instructions for making vanishing cream.
‘Four pounds 12 ounces of stearic acid (white triple-pressed) …’
The list rolled sonorously on. I imagined a million women smoothing their faces with the contents of a million jars of vanishing cream, and soon the landscape surrounding them became dotted with dollars and cents.
‘… and the chemicals are all easy to obtain,’ Dinah was saying. ‘Of course you have to be careful of adulteration so your supplier must be quite above suspicion …’ And she began to explain how one could recognize the adulterates of essential oils.
‘… so they add paraffin of spermaceti to make the mixture congeal readily because that’s characteristic of
true
oil of aniseed,’ she concluded earnestly. ‘You do understand, don’t you?’
‘Absolutely.’ I mentally allocated another fifty thousand dollars for further expansion and pictured a future public company launched by a flotation designed to seduce even the most cautious investor. It was only when we went indoors and she showed me her packaging designs that I realized how far she had to travel before I could risk making her small business a public enterprise. Glancing at the fanciful gold lettering which curved bewilderingly against a pale blue background I forgot my vision of a million-dollar annual turnover and came down to earth with a jolt.
‘Very pretty,’ I said, ‘but I can’t read it. I guess this flowered script is supposed to conjure up an Indian atmosphere.’
‘Exactly!’ said Dinah in triumph. ‘I’m calling my product Taj Mahal.’
I groaned.
‘Well, why not?’ she demanded angrily.
‘My dear, your purchasers among the ill-educated proletariat are never even going to be able to pronounce the name, let alone understand the allusion to India.’
‘But I’m not catering to the proletariat! I’m catering to all those upper-class
women who have until now been inhibited from using cosmetics and who can afford to pay for their new fashion through the nose!’
‘Then you’re out of touch with the economic facts of 1922. I’ve no doubt you could make a shilling or two peddling paste to the aristocracy, but if you want to give me a reasonable return for my money you’ll cater to the masses. England is ripe for mass production; that’s where the money is and that’s where I’m putting my capital.’ I stacked her sketches together and handed them back to her. ‘Change the colouring. Gold is hard to read and although I like the blue it’s too pale to create a strong impression. I’ll bring over a market research team from New York to decide which colours would create the most sales impact.’ I began to roam around the room just as I did when I was dictating, and allowed my mind to fasten wholly on the problem. ‘Scrap the fancy lettering – have firm strong capital letters which everyone can read. Scrap the name Taj Mahal. You want a name which sounds like the virginal heroine of a nineteenth-century novel. Let me see. What were all those Trollope women called? Lily, Belle, Glencora—’
‘I am
not
calling my product after some bally awful Victorian heroine!’
‘Then let’s think of something classical – why, of course! Diana! That’s it! Diana Slade – very pretty and elegant, much more charming than your real name. We’ll call the firm Diana Slade Cosmetics, and you can name your perfumes after the different goddesses of antiquity!’
‘But what’s that got to do with India?’ stormed Dinah.
‘Absolutely nothing, but who cares so long as the product sells?’
‘I care! I care, you beastly, vulgar, money-grubbing American!’
I swung round in surprise, but fortunately managed not to laugh. After considering my approach, I avoided all apologies and said instead: ‘Dinah, when I was a young man, a little younger than you are now, I arrived home penniless in New York with a pregnant wife and had to earn my living. I had a bogus Oxford accent, a love of the classics and a passionate distaste for vulgarity. However, it didn’t take me long to discover that these dubious virtues were of no use to me when it came to surviving in a town like New York. I learnt to survive in a hard school, Dinah. I just hope your course in the art of survival will be easier than mine was.’
There was a pause before she said unevenly: ‘I’m sorry. I was only shocked by how suddenly you changed into a fast-talking, utterly twentieth-century businessman complete with a pronounced American accent.’
This time I did laugh. ‘I warned you I was a New Yorker! You didn’t think I made my money by declaiming poetry by Catullus, did you? But maybe I should start quoting again to reassure you that Dr Jekyll isn’t entirely Mr Hyde. “
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus
—”’
‘“—
da mi basia mille!
”’ responded Dinah promptly, raising her mouth to mine for a kiss, and as I slid my arms around her waist I couldn’t help thinking that she really was the most remarkable girl …
[2]
The next
morning after breakfast we went sailing. I had already decided to stay an extra night in Norfolk so that on the following day I could call on the Slade family lawyers in Norwich to discuss the purchase of the estate. There would have to be an independent valuation, but I thought that in view of the dilapidated state of the house and the lack of modern conveniences I should be able to make the purchase cheaply.
By that time London seemed as remote as New York. Deciding firmly that I would not think of any business for the next twenty-four hours, I hoisted the sail of the little dinghy and with Dinah at the tiller we set off across Mallingham Broad.
I had never sailed at Newport because it was felt that the motion might disturb my health, but later when it seemed I had outgrown my illness, I learnt about yachting during summers spent at Bar Harbor, Maine. Sailing was not my favourite sport but I enjoyed it, and I had never enjoyed it more than I did on that Sunday morning early in June when Dinah’s little boat danced over the waters of Mallingham Broad. From the water my perception of the landscape altered. I could see the ‘Isle de Mallingham’, the slight rise in the ground on which the village had been built, and found it easy to imagine the area as part of some ancient inland sea. Unfamiliar birds watched us from the reeds. In the clear water below the prow I glimpsed the flash of small fish and once saw the shadow of a pike lurking in the depths. I was soon longing for a rod, and when I asked Dinah if the fish were fair-sized she laughed and began to talk of trout weighing thirty-five pounds.
At the far side of the Broad the water narrowed into the channel known as Mallingham Dyke, and we had to unlock the padlock of the chain which lay across the water as a warning to trespassers.
‘But we have few trespassers,’ explained Dinah, slipping the key back into her pocket, ‘because you can only reach Mallingham from Horsey Mere, and Horsey too is a private broad.’
We drifted on into the dyke. I got out the oars when we were becalmed, but soon a breeze helped us into a second dyke, the New Cut, and picking up the sea-wind again we scudded swiftly south into Horsey Mere.
‘That windmill!’ I cried above the wind as we tacked back and forth.
‘Isn’t it grand?’
It took me a moment to realize she was taking me straight to it, and so intrigued was I by the whirling sails that I was nearly decapitated by the swinging boom. By the time I had recovered, we were gliding up the little dyke and the millman was waiting for us on the staithe.
Heights have always made me uneasy. I declined the millman’s offer to show me all the storeys of the mill, but I went up the first ladder to peer out at the wild green remoteness of the flats. The clanking sails were making such a noise that it was a relief to return outside and accept Dinah’s suggestion that we should walk to the sea.
Along the lane I had to stop to see Horsey Church which was hidden in
the woods, and later I stopped again to talk to a yokel gardening in front of one of the flint-walled cottages I so admired. It was he who told me that Horsey and Waxham had been a centre for smuggling in times past when each shipment of contraband had been hidden in the rector’s barn while the millsails were set at a certain angle to warn of the approach of the revenue men. When we finally reached the Brograve Level, those sea-fields directly below the long line of the sandhills, we had taken over an hour to walk a mile, but I was enjoying myself as I had not enjoyed myself for months, and beside me Dinah had evidently forgotten the crass commercial streak I had displayed earlier.
A cart-track ran through the fields straight to the sand-hills. These were dunes, huge mounds of dark sand studded with tufts of sea-grass, and the grass rippled in the wind. Beneath the hills the wind dropped but as we hauled ourselves to the top I could hear the wind mingling with the roar of the sea beyond the summit. It was a stiff climb, and although I wanted to pause for breath I climbed on until I was standing on top of the highest mound and gazing in exhilaration at the dark glowing sea.
The horizon was clear. Waves crashed rhythmically on miles of empty sands and gulls soared effortlessly above our heads.
I was still gazing across the sea to Holland when Dinah scampered down to the beach and shouted something over her shoulder, but the wind whipped away her words long before I could hear them. My exhilaration overcame me. Kicking off my sand-stuffed shoes, I tore off my socks and cascaded down the dunes to join her. On the beach the sand was hard beneath my toes, and I began to run, the sense of freedom enveloping me until the blood was rushing through my veins.
Dinah was flirting with the waves at the water’s edge. ‘Come on!’ she shouted, waggling a naked toe at me.
I sallied boldly into the waves, gasped with shock and backed out. No summer current fresh from Labrador could have been colder than that North Sea in Early June, and when I heard Dinah laugh I saw she had kept her feet dry.
‘Wretched child!’ I hared after her but she skipped out of reach and raced back into the sandhills.
By the time I caught up with her we were both too breathless to do more than flop down in a small hollow, but the relief of escaping from the wind quickly revived us. My ears stopped tingling. After basking in the unexpected warmth of the sun I sat up, smoothed my front strand of hair and watched the gulls wheeling across the sky.
‘I’m trying to think of a suitable quotation from Tennyson,’ I remarked, ‘but my poetical memory has apparently been blown away by the wind.’
‘How fortunate! I always try to avoid Tennyson – so
hopelessly
sentimental and Victorian!’
‘I shall give you a volume of his poems at the earliest opportunity.’ I began to kiss her. We were both warm from our exertions on the beach, so it seemed perfectly natural to start taking off our clothes.
‘I suppose
in the circumstances I shall have to be careful,’ I murmured. ‘The only disadvantage of spontaneity is that one can’t make advance preparations.’