The Green Flash

  ‘Glad to be rid of me, eh?’

  ‘Not really, no. Though at times you have been rather the square marble, haven’t you. A firm like ours has its set ways, its go-ahead but conservative approach. At Shona’s you’ll probably fit in like – like the missing piece of a jigsaw … But that wasn’t mainly what I meant. I meant that if this really takes your fancy it’ll keep you out of mischief.’

  ‘Don’t rely on it.’

  ‘Oh, I’d never rely on anything with you. But if you’re working for Shona – and she’ll make you work, believe me – you’re bound to have less time for your other nonsense particularly for taking it out on your fellow Scotsmen.’ I didn’t speak, so he added: ‘And if she pays you well – as she probably will – there’ll be less need for it.’

  I said: ‘ It wasn’t really ever that sort of need.’

  He glanced at me a bit uneasily, took a firmer grip of the steering-wheel. ‘ I suppose not. Or if you tell me not I have to believe you … well, good luck, that’s all I say.’

  ‘Thanks … But why not tell the firm? They’ve treated me well. It’s proper to give them fair notice.’

  ‘Not in this business, it isn’t. We don’t operate that way. It wouldn’t matter so much if you were going off to sell motor cars or something, but you’re moving to a rival firm and taking some of our expertise and knowledge with you.’

  ‘Precious little.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been making rapid strides. We’ll be sorry to lose you for that reason too.’

  I grunted. ‘ I don’t feel this is my mission in life. It’s just selling smells, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Not for God’s sake – our own. And, incidentally, keep a lookout for John Carreros.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They say he’s a difficult man.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  It was a fine day and for once at Cooden the southeaster was not blowing.

  I’ve an 18 handicap at golf, and even that is flattering. I never have had any organized approach to the game, and never much cared about winning. The nearer the play gets to the hole the less interested I become, so that my short irons and putter chronically let me down. My chief pleasure is squaring up on the tee and trying to blast the bloody little white ball into the next county. The result is when I do connect properly a drive of over 300 yards is not uncommon; when I don’t connect properly the ball goes droning off at an angle of forty-five degrees into the neighbouring churchyard or the local housing estate.

  Jerry’s friends were called Armitage and Foster. I hadn’t met them before, and I took a dislike to Armitage. He was shaped like a hyacinth bulb, and was hair-scanty, self-satisfied and middle-aged. He had just bought his first smart car, a BMW, and he talked about it too much, and smirked his pleasure whenever anyone mentioned it. In spite of his waistline, he also thought highly of his golf, and I suppose he was reasonably good in a steady, dependable, rhythmic, flat-footed, cautious kind of way. So, to annoy him, I buckled down and tried my hardest. I was able to cheat once by dabbing my ball out of a rut when the others weren’t looking, but otherwise we won fair and square. Two and one.

  ‘Well done,’ said Jerry with a grin, ‘such restraint must have cost you dear.’

  This character Armitage was a property developer by profession, and you could imagine all the shopping precincts and the ghastly urban sprawl that he and his like were responsible for.

  After the game was over we had drinks and then lunch together, but I turned down the opportunity of a second round; another chap was waiting to mix in, and I told Jerry there was a girl I wanted to see in Bexhill, which is only a couple of miles away. If he could take my gear home I could telephone for a taxi, and later on get the train back to London. He grinned understandingly.

  ‘The old dark horse as usual. Where did you meet her?’

  ‘In Bexhill.’

  ‘You don’t say. Well, good luck with her too.’

  ‘She’s always welcoming,’ I said.

  Before I telephoned for a taxi I carried my things out to Jerry’s car. A couple of places away was a splendid new BMW. Armitage had left the keys in the car. I suppose he thought it was a private park and no one would touch it.

  I put my clubs and bag in Jerry’s car and then got into the BMW. It started easily and I drove it slowly out of the park.

  I must say it handled well – you have to hand it to the Germans; they make a good machine. I drove through St Leonards and Hastings and then turned up to Battle before making a circuit back to Bexhill. Of course there was too much traffic to try the car out properly. I’ve inherited my family’s consuming passion for good fast cars, and I parted from it with regret. I parked it in a busy street on a double yellow line, and thought it would be nice to see what happened.

  The street where Essie Morris lived was only three minutes away, and she was in. A great beam split her ugly face when she saw me.

  ‘Why, David! You should’ve told me! Isn’t that grand!’

  ‘Put your bonnet on,’ I said, ‘and we’ll go out to tea.’

  Essie Morris was the mother of Crack Morris, the chap I’d shared a cell with in Pentonville. He’d done me favours while I was a new boy, advising me what to do and what not to do, and generally restraining me from getting too much at cross with the screws. And from getting too much at cross with the bully boys inside. Though he never knew how near I was to some sort of scary break up, his company was what had got me through the worst patches. Since I came out I’d taken Essie Morris to tea once a month, because Crack was in for another year yet.

  She loved to have tea at the Pavilion; I thought it dire, but it was her outing and she drank cup after cup of tea and ate hot buttered scones while she prattled away about this and that. Chiefly it was to do with Arthur and what a good lad he really was if he could only learn to go straight, and how she’d been to see him last week and what he’d said about full remission, and she hoped, she really hoped, when he came out I would still come to see them, and maybe my influence would be a help to him to start afresh.

  I said yes and no, and don’t be too damned sure about the good influence, and shall I order more scones, and no, I never take sugar; and I gazed around at all the people quietly guzzling tea at the other tables and thought, my God, they’re all old, the women have all got short crimped hair like wigs, brown and grey and white stubble, and the men – but there aren’t so many men because they usually pop off first – are small and tubby and white-pated, or tall and creak-jointed and bald, with. crumpled suits and scraggy pullovers; and I bet they wear long pants down to their ankles, and my God, they’re all just sitting around waiting for Death. All of them. They’ve retired down here from Preston and Pontefract and Peterborough and Purley, living in their little quiet houses – often as not cut off from their old friends, never quite making enough new ones – nourishing their arthritis and their diabetes and their minor coronaries, and just waiting for It. And I thought, Christ, human beings are a sorry lot, a common lot, a job lot, a dull lot, and wouldn’t a bomb do a bit of good around here – and yet, Christ, why’ve they any reason to be anything but sorry and common and dull: that’s all life has ever had to offer them, any of them – the treadmill, the old one-two from cradle to grave. And who’s to blame for getting off the treadmill?

  ‘What’s the matter, love?’ Essie said.

  ‘Nothing. What should be?’

  ‘You’re looking grim, like.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel grim, like.’

  ‘I never understood, you’ve never told me, why a gent like you ever got into trouble.’

  ‘It’s a long story, Ma. I wouldn’t want to make you cry.’

  ‘Go on, I never know when you’re teasing.’

  ‘I’m always teasing,’ I said, ‘that’s the only way you can get through life.’

  ‘I don’t want to get through life,’ she said. ‘I’m happy enough. Or will be when Arthur gets out.’


  ‘It’s something special to be happy.’

  ‘Aren’t you happy, love?’

  ‘I don’t know what it means.’

  ‘Go on. You’re teasing again.’

  ‘I know a state of non-unhappiness,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s the same thing seen through a dark window.’

  Afterwards I walked back with her but said there wasn’t time to go in. By now dusk was falling, and when I left her I strolled back to the street where I’d parked the BMW. It was gone. I’d left the keys in the ignition so maybe the police had taken it away. Unless someone else had stolen it. That would be a joke.

  There were a lot of cars parked in the side streets off the promenade. I walked along till I saw one with a quarter-light that looked easy to open. It was. The car was a Rover 2000, about a year old. I hadn’t any string so I took off my tie and lowered it through the quarter-light in a loop till it caught on the door handle. The handle came up and I was in.

  A few people were going past, but the important thing is not to look around in any surreptitious or apprehensive way. I tried the cubbyhole and the pockets and the ashtray just in case the ignition key – or a spare – should be to hand, but it was not. I got out and opened the bonnet in a casual way. I hadn’t come prepared for anything like this, but my folding penknife did have sharp clippers which would cut wire.

  I went round to the road side and cut the wire connecting the offside headlamp. I got a piece about three feet long which was enough to connect the battery to the coil, then shut the bonnet and climbed in. The police will sometimes stop you if the headlamp on the driver’s side is not working, seldom or never if it’s the inside light.

  Then I couldn’t find the solenoid button, which operates the starter. Or maybe the car was too new a model.

  A couple of lolloping teenagers were passing. I got out and offered them a pound note.

  ‘My starter seems to have jammed. Think you could give me a push?’

  ‘Right, mate. Come on, Ern.’

  With their help, I nosed gently forward and engaged the gear. The motor fired and I waved my thanks and eased out into the traffic.

  I drove the car back to London, finding standards of comparison with Armitage’s BMW. They were both 2000s; and there were minuses and plusses on both sides. Patriotism will not allow me to say which I found the better.

  I left the car about a quarter of a mile from my new pad in Fulham and walked home. It was not until I got in and switched on the light and made myself a coffee that I began to ask myself why I had behaved like this. It wasn’t even logical. If you’re going to bend the law you surely have to calculate the percentages. Any sensible man does. So I hadn’t behaved like a sensible man today. Was I batty, I asked myself? Probably a bit. But sometimes the temptation really is too great. Maybe my father had had a bit of the same complaint, same need to get the blood going. But he had taken to drink. Drink was never my problem, not even my solace.

  Chapter Three

  I

  John Carreros was a square-faced chap with leathery cheeks and a sensitive mouth. Eyebrows and ears-sprouted grey hair, and horn-rimmed spectacles hung loosely over a hawk nose. He was old, and not as tall as he looked sitting down. He grabbed my outstretched hand.

  ‘Mr Abden. I have been hearing things about you. Welcome to our little firm. I hope we shall be happy with you.’

  Apart from one or two racing drivers, he had the hardest hands of any man I’d met. Not that he tried to emphasize his masculinity by gripping too hard. But you couldn’t miss the inversion of the last sentence.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I’ll do my best to fit in.’

  ‘I understand you have a nose.’

  ‘They tell me I can smell better than most people.’

  ‘I would like to test it. Perhaps you will come down to Isleworth.’

  ‘Surely. But of course I’m not a chemist, you know.’

  ‘Who needs a chemist? Do you play bridge?’

  ‘What? The card game? Not in office hours!’

  He laughed. ‘But out of them?’

  ‘Yes, a little.’ I had once thought of trying to make my living by it.

  ‘Good. Good. My wife – she will not play. She calls it systematized frittering.’

  ‘Most of life is, one way or another, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ah, the philosopher.’ He shoved his heavy spectacles up his nose. ‘A philosopher and a pessimist in one so young. I like that. I was a pessimist at your age.’

  ‘And now, Mr Carreros?’

  ‘Ah, now I am a fatalist. What will be will be. It saves a lot of worry, eh?’

  ‘It’s a rich man’s indulgence,’ I said.

  He gave me a sharp look. ‘Perhaps more truly an old man’s. When one looks back on one’s life and observes the fine threads of chance and mischance which have shaped one’s destiny … It is impossible to suppose one is in personal control. Do you play Acol?’

  It was the new thing just then, superseding many of the old systems. ‘ Yes.’

  ‘We must have a game sometime.’

  I wondered what stakes he played for, and thought of. introducing him to one or two of my friends; but that might queer my pitch before I began. That would have been even stupider than joyriding in other people’s cars just for the hell of it

  II

  Jerry told me of this mishap that had befallen his friend Armitage. They were all drinking in the bar after their second round at Cooden when the police rang him. They accused him of having parked illegally in Bexhill, and said they had driven his car away. They had found his address and telephoned his wife, who gave them the Cooden number. They seemed reluctant at first to believe his story that he had parked at the Cooden Golf Club, their view being that no one would steal the car for so short a trip.

  Jerry said: ‘Did you find your girl in Bexhill, David?’

  ‘Yes. She was there.’

  He grunted and fingered his tie. ‘Did you – er – take a taxi?’

  ‘Of course. It was too far to walk.’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘Wondered what? Oh …’ My eyes opened. ‘ Do you think I would be that much of a screwball? What would be the point?’

  ‘No, no. I see that. It was just the odd coincidence.’

  ‘What coincidence?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Well. You know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. I’ll bet there were plenty of golfers at the club who live in Bexhill.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘But we don’t know who did it, do we? Some passing hitch-hiker maybe. Anyway Armitage left his keys in the car, didn’t you say? Must have been an ass to do that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jerry. ‘ Yes.’

  III

  When I actually joined the firm in the first week in January, Alice Huntington was delegated to show me round. She was this crone of about forty-five who had the skin of a girl of twenty. Yet somehow she looked no younger for it. She dressed in frocks of heavy silk and was always gracious and smiling, as if someone had cut her out to be the Queen Mother. Clearly she didn’t like me and suspected me of being groomed to take over her job. I went out of my way to be genuinely nice to her: butter wouldn’t melt, etc.; ingenuous questions; holding open the door; handsome young man escorting handsome young woman. Perhaps the thing that annoyed me most about her was the way things dangled and jangled, bracelets, earrings, brooches.

  The firm was amazingly compact after Yardley’s. Exclusiveness on a shoestring. The laboratory wasn’t bad, but any other machinery or gadgetry in the factory was well worn and out of date. Two nice new delivery vans tastefully advertising Shona. Really not much else.

  Although I saw the Isleworth factory right away it was not until March that John Carreros had me over for a day and ‘tried me out’, as he called it.

  As I suppose most people know, no ‘House’ makes its own perfume entirely. Not only the ingredients but usually the almost finished product comes from the great chemical fi
rms. You don’t exactly scream for a ton of Dolly Dream or whatever the perfume is called; but you order a ton of the already blended essences that make it up. What you do in your own laboratory is really quite little; but it puts the finishing touches on what is supplied to you.

  In our laboratory there were two bathrooms, two lavatories, two washing machines and a variety of other gadgets that helped our chemists to test out their new ideas. Beyond these quarters were a couple of small smelling rooms, empty except for a table and a couple of chairs and a few Shona photos. John Carreros installed me in one of these, and a girl brought in a collection of smelling papers, each one prepared with a 1 percent solution of different aromatics, and I was invited to identify them or describe them. I said one smelled of chocolate, another of spice, a third of lemonade, a fourth of margarine, a fifth of machine oil, a sixth of lavender, etc. It was all nonsense, really. If I was going to be of any genuine use to this successful but one-horse firm it was in the realm of expansion and advertising and total sales, not because my nose was above average sensitive.

  However, it seemed to please old Carreros. He grunted his way through his notes, like a heavy dog scratching for a bone, and then he asked me if I could identify what the perfumes were. I got three: Vanillin for the chocolate, Citral for the lemonade, oil of lavender for the lavender.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. Number two you said was spicy. What sort of spicy? Meat – soup – cake?’

  ‘More like cinnamon.’

  ‘That is what it is. Now tell me, does any one of the others remind you of fresh green leaves that you have just rubbed in the fingers?’

  ‘Number five maybe.’

  ‘Right. Hydroxycitronellal. Interesting that you should think of machine oil. The margarine smell, as you called it, was methyl heptine carbonate. Now let us try some more difficult ones.’

  We went on to balsam of Peru, oil of vertivert, geraniol, oil of bergamot. I had a shot at comparing the two lots of smelling papers, arranging them into groups.

  Then he said: ‘Now we must stop for a while. I will have some water brought for you to drink. The sense of smell gets tired far more quickly than any other sense. Do you smoke?’