Kathleen Tessaro - The Perfume Collector

‘No, not exactly,’ he admitted.

‘Well,’ she folded her arms across her chest, ‘Madame Legrand looks very much like Monsieur Legrand in a dress. Is that worthy of your art?’

He had to smile.

Her passion was invigorating; her vision even more comprehensive than his own. And he loved to hear her talk about his work.

‘I leave it to your discretion,’ he conceded.

And so Monsieur Valmont respectfully declined.

Madame Legrand was in a frenzy.

To make it up to him, the very next evening Eva introduced him to her friend Yvonne Vallée, the beautiful wife of film and cabaret star Maurice Chevalier. Yvonne had a childhood fondness for violets, a romantic memory of the scent that she’d never been able to recapture. Was there any way, she begged, that Valmont might be persuaded to create something based on this simple flower?

Valmont sighed wearily, as if he couldn’t imagine anything more tedious.

That very same night he set to work tempering the overwhelming sweetness of the flowers with heavy doses of damp green moss and rosewood, and sensual undertones of old leather, black earth and amber. It took several days, transforming his bathroom into a makeshift workroom; sending Eva to Grasse for supplies.

Yvonne was delighted and amazed with the result.

The perfume became her signature scent, made all the more tantalizing by the fact that Valmont would create it for no one but her.

Soon afterwards, Thelma Furness arrived, the radiant, married paramour of the Prince of Wales. At Eva’s urging, Valmont conjured an exotic, narcotic creation of night-blooming jasmine, jonquil, narcissus, tuberose, sandalwood and musk… an operatic formulation full of decadence and lust.

She was devoted. Monte Carlo swooned over both her and her scent.

And Paris began to take note.

This was followed by discreet enquiries by the Prince of Wales himself. No matter how vehemently Valmont denied all rumours of the association, his stock skyrocketed overnight. And the French, being besotted with the sex scandals of the English, were quick to equate him with two of the world’s greatest aphrodisiacs: exclusivity and illicit sexual desire.

In a very short amount of time, Eva had managed what Valmont couldn’t have accomplished in years on his own. Soon he couldn’t imagine making a professional decision without discussing it with her first.

In the evenings he stalked her. He didn’t mean to, but night after night he found himself in the Grand Casino, watching her from a distance. And he was aware that he wasn’t the only one. She had many admirers.

There was the Italian newspaper editor with the curling moustache and cigar, the businessman from Vienna, and the French cabaret star, who kept delaying his departure to Hollywood on the off chance that Mademoiselle Dorsey might return one of his many telephone calls. Valmont observed in silent mortification as notes were exchanged, expensive gifts delivered to her room, ‘chance’ meetings staged so that they might speak to her.

Somewhere in the background, Lamb presided over the entire drama. His demeanour was relaxed, even amused. He acted like a man in possession of an exceptional race-horse. Drink in hand, he was content to sit back and watch as she sidestepped one man, or flirted with another. But his composure alarmed Valmont. Whatever ties he had to her, they were unthreatened. And while Valmont drifted from one location to the next like a ghost haunting her wake, Lamb let her wander freely, from his room to anyone else’s, without so much as the bat of the eye.

He was sure of himself.

This sureness depressed Valmont more than if she’d been wearing a gold wedding ring and pushing a perambulator.

He tried to confront her about it. ‘You could have any man here,’ he pointed out, trying to present the argument as an impartial witness. ‘Why do you stay with Lamb?’

‘One man is very like another,’ she answered vaguely.

‘That’s not true. He’s a drunk and a third-rate gambler! He needs you much more than you need him.’

‘If only that were true. He has something I want.’

‘What can he have that you can’t get more easily from someone else?’

Eyes dimmed, she turned away. ‘It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand.’

The conversation was over.

His questions had forced her into a private world he could sense but not penetrate.

One night, very late, he heard Lamb boasting about her in the bar. He was beyond drunk; his tie was undone, his jacket off, and he was badly in need of a shave. The sickly sweet odour of alcohol and sweat oozed from his very pores.

A racing car driver was quizzing him. ‘How is it you have ended up with the most beautiful girl in Monte Carlo? An old man like you!’

‘An old man like me!’ Lamb took another swig and leaned back. ‘I tell you what, I’ll do you a deal. You can have her for a small fee.’

‘A fee? Are you mad?’ The man laughed.

‘No, I’m perfectly serious. Ten thousand pounds and she’s yours.’

‘Ten thousand pounds!’ The man whistled. ‘That’s no small fee.’

‘She’s worth it.’

‘But how can you sell another human being? It’s impossible.’

Lamb shook his head. ‘If you buy the lead, my dear man, then you can have the dog for free.’

‘Dog? Lead? What is this? I don’t understand.’

Lamb clapped him on the back, a little too hard. ‘Unless you have the money, the rest is unimportant.’

The driver laughed awkwardly, and the conversation changed.

Valmont was incensed. He wanted to strangle him.

He was possessed by a painful, confused longing, charged with possibility. When Eva was close to him, he was satisfied, whole. But his desire to touch her was waning. Her scent was all he needed to satisfy and stimulate him. It filled his dreams, spurring him to new refinements in his art.

He formulated Auréole Noire , inspired by the fiery halo that seemed to burn around her that first night she visited him. It was, in fact, a variation on the theme of her own natural scent. An elaborate composition on the central aria of her smell.

Bright, icy clear and yet tender at the same time – built on the original idea of contrasting states that had inspired him with the rain. Top notes of velvety violet leaves, luxurious white flowers and light geranium, warmed to fiery depths, created from amber resins, smoky wood and smouldering dry citrus leaves. Underlying doses of ouhd and ambergris lent it a melting, shifting quality; metamorphosing from an apparition of pure light, to a burning dark core and back again. It was a scent that lacked coyness, made no concessions to charm. Like standing on the edge of a great and terrifying cliff, it was shocking, beautiful, sublime.

Something of Eva’s disturbing beauty, slow-burning sensuality and razor-sharp mind was reflected in it.

And yet he doubted himself.

No other perfume smelled even remotely like it. It was too bold, unorthodox, veering from one extreme to another without any mollifying middle notes; it assaulted the senses rather than seduced them. It had an unapologetic grandeur, ancient and iconic, like the hard, symmetrical face and staring unseeing eyes of Greek gods, carved in cold white stone.

Valmont realized with a sickening sense of fear and disgust that suddenly Eva’s opinion mattered more to him than his own.

No one, not even Madame Zed, had ever held such power over him.

His muse possessed him, saturated him the way water soaks into a flimsy cloth until the fabric is more liquid than solid.

He hid the perfume from her.

It was his first act of betrayal. And, his first true act of independence.

Then the actress Kay Waverley came to spend a fortnight by the sea.