All this was old hat to me, except that this was the most modern place I’d visited and I was interested to see by how much their new methods would be able to bring down their prices to us. Schmidt was going on to say that their parent firm in Germany, and their few large competitors, now had a hand in almost everything sold in the supermarket, except only the fresh food. Odours were added, disagreeable smells were subtracted or masked with more enticing smells; tastes were given piquancy, colours were deepened or lightened. ‘Name a product on the shelves that hasn’t been improved by us in one way or another, from boot polish to biscuits, from washing powders to fish fingers, from gravies to cereals, from fruit pies to carpet shampoos.’
‘Just so long as no one gets the flavours mixed,’ I said.
He laughed too heartily. They always do. ‘We underrate the importance of first impressions. Perhaps chiefly the nose – though you gentlemen are not likely to do that, eh? Have you time to witness a little experiment?’
John Carreros grunted. ‘Experiment? What is this?’ He might never have heard of such a thing.
‘Allow me to show you.’
Schmidt took us out of the factory to a small block of buildings at the other side of the square.
‘As you know in England,’ he said, ‘we suppliers carry out tests on animals only when it is a matter of obvious health safety. But we sometimes experiment with animals, in ways which do them no harm at all. We have here some monkeys.’
In the building was a cage with two monkeys. One was chewing a nut, the other was scratching his nose; but they immediately looked up and stared at us with round insolent eyes, trying to guess what business we had there.
‘These animals,’ said Schmidt, ‘ are healthy males of three and four years old. As you can see, they are in fine condition, well fed and well cared for. Now if you would come over here where we can observe them without them observing us …’
Schmidt motioned to a white-coated worker who was standing near. He pulled back a wire door and after a few moments another monkey ambled in, blinked around, hopped on to an artificial bough and yawned.
Schmidt said: ‘A female of the same breed, aged two and a half years, in fine condition and on heat. Watch.’
We watched. Nothing happened. The first monkey went on with his nut, the second stopped scratching his nose and began to move in a bored way round the cage. The female sat on the branch.
‘Where’s the catch?’ I asked after a bit.
‘The two male monkeys have had their noses plugged. They cannot smell her so they are not interested. Now let us come back in five minutes.’
We went out into the passage and he offered us cigarettes. We both said no, but a girl brought coffee, which we swallowed; then we went in again. The two male monkeys remained, one of them busy on a new nut, the second picking at the fur on his leg. The female had gone.
‘The plugs have been removed,’ said Schmidt. ‘Now in a moment I am going to send in a very ugly elderly female monkey who has been sprayed with the appropriate smell.’
The side of the cage was opened and the elderly female hobbled in, snarly and bloodshot-eyed. She looked as pleased as a landlady cheated of her rent. But this made no difference. The two male monkeys couldn’t wait to mount her. She didn’t take kindly to them at first, but presently she entered into the spirit of the thing, and fun and games went on for quite a while.
As we came out into the pale sunshine Schmidt said: ‘Find the erogenic odours and you have found a fortune.’
I said: ‘All advertising is geared to that already. Cigarettes, chocolates, shampoos, vermouths. It’s a question of mass hypnosis.’
‘Ah yes. But how much better if the subliminal suggestion is backed by fact and not fantasy.’
‘As it is now,’ exclaimed Carreros. ‘The musks, the lactones, the alkalines, in one way or another …’
‘Oh, there’s progress, I know. But recently we believe we’ve made a breakthrough. We’ve produced a perfume with a musk and civet base which is much stronger than any previous blend, yet has nothing offensive in the smell at all. We’ve discovered a synthetic which corrects the objectionable aspects and yet allows the full aphrodisiac effects to be perceived. After lunch I’ll show you. It will need more work yet, but we are willing to put a team on it to produce an exclusive Shona perfume that will rock the industry.’
‘Is it a new smell?’ asked John Carreros.
‘To some extent.’
‘Because new smells are difficult and expensive to market. Sometimes it takes years for the public to accept it. Think of Chanel No. 5, L’Air du Temps, etc.’
‘I don’t believe with the right sort of advertising one needs to wait for the public.’
‘Could hardly afford to anyway,’ I said. ‘Costs build up too quickly these days. There were forty new perfumes launched on the US market last year. Only four of them are still afloat.’
‘Well, don’t forget we are almost there, so far as the product is concerned. It will need a big launch. Naturally, if Shona had not been expanding so quickly, we should not have thought of giving you the first refusal.’
III
We drove home at four.
John said: ‘It is all sales talk. We have heard it all before. The perfume for a woman to wear which will make her irresistible to men. The talc or the aftershave a man can put on which will draw all the women to follow him like the Pied Piper. Of course good smells help, the right smells help. This is what I have been working on for twenty years. But it can only go so far. After that it is auto-suggestion.’
‘What about the monkeys?’ I said.
He shrugged ill-temperedly. ‘That sort of thing has been known for centuries. We cannot completely associate ourselves with the animals. We know that human sweat, the smell of pubic hair, some other of the body odours have a sexual attraction; but as always in human beings there is the split between the purely animal and the aesthetic discrimination of a civilized creature. Perfumery is designed to elevate the senses, not degrade them.’
I digested this lofty sentiment for a few minutes.
‘I must say I fancied the new smell. It’s heavy as yet; but I think it has a future. And anyway we need a new production to launch for 1975 or ’ 76. Faunus is now; five years old, and although it has done all right it hasn’t made the impact of Dryad.’
John said: ‘You mean the new firm you and Shona are creating needs another production because it has become so large. So one drives ever further into indebtedness in order to recoup the expenses of the new expansion. Where will it end? One cannot blow up a bubble indefinitely.’
‘We’re not blowing up anything so that it must burst,’ I said. ‘We’re learning to live with the modern world and to be among the front runners. I don’t suppose Shona and you ever needed to expand, because you could have sold the company for a million any day and retired to grow roses. But she didn’t want to. Fundamentally you don’t want to either. You just want to run along in the old groove and be content to be small-time. She didn’t. She still doesn’t.’
He took out his pipe and began to fill it. On the rare occasions that he smoked it, he used some herbal muck. Eventually he pulled out my cigar lighter and held it to the bowl of the pipe. Stubble-burning filled the car.
He said: ‘ I don’t like you, David.’
I slid past two cars and then fell to a steady seventy again. ‘ I didn’t think you did.’
‘Your influence on Shona has been wholly bad.’
‘Thanks, but you exaggerate. Shona is seldom influenced by other people.’
‘I know. That is why I deplore it now.’
‘She wanted to expand. She was looking for someone to help her to expand. She found me.’
‘Alas yes. Found you in more ways than one.’
He was hunched like a bear in the seat.
‘I’m not the only one she has ever ‘‘found’’.’
‘No, but you are the only one who has ever been in the firm, and had
this bad influence.’
‘John,’ I said, ‘get it out of your cranium that I’m pushing her to do something she doesn’t want to do. You ought to know that nothing this side of nuclear fission would persuade her to do that. You might more properly say she’s had an influence on me!’
He said: ‘I’m going to get rid of you.’
It was spoken quite calmly, and for a minute I wondered if I’d taken it in right.
I said eventually: ‘Isn’t that going to be rather difficult?’
‘It might be unpleasant, but it can be done.’
‘How?’
‘Well, you have been very stupid, haven’t you. Starting this little firm of yours on the side.’
So that was it. Smoke signals had been going up somewhere.
‘So what?’
‘It is totally unethical. If Shona knows, you will be sacked at once.’
There was a freckle of rain on the screen. I flicked the wipers on, then off again. I looked at my fingers grasping the wheel.
‘Been having me watched?’
‘Dear me, no. That has not been necessary. I have informants in the trade.’
‘Same result anyway.’
‘Same result. You must realize that ours is a very close-knit profession.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘what I’ve done is a perfectly straightforward exercise. Entirely legit.’
‘If you were not in the position you are, yes. Given your position, no.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion. Anyway your firm is not the loser. I’ve made quite a little bit for Shona & Co.’
‘And quite a little bit for yourself.’
‘Why should that matter?’
‘Because of the way you’ve made it. The extra profit you have made for our firm is nothing compared to our loss of reputation.’
‘Limited Distribution System – isn’t that what they call it? It’s an outlook that’s becoming more and more old-fashioned.’
‘You’ll find in this respect we are still an old fashioned company.’
We drove on. I would quite have liked to stop and dump him in the reservoir we were just then passing.
He said: ‘ But I have a better proposition for you.’
‘That’s big of you.’
‘Go to Shona and resign. Say you have tired of being with her – that you are tired of her – that you want to start a firm of your own. Persuade her to accept your resignation. Once I am absolutely assured that you have left and cannot come back I will pay you a lump sum to help you on your way.’
‘How much?’ I couldn’t refrain from asking it.
He hesitated. ‘Thirty thousand pounds.’
I was surprised. ‘You rate my nuisance value highly.’
‘Never mind that. It is what I am prepared to pay.’
‘But why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why buy me off if you can see me off anyway?’
‘I have the fancy.’
I considered the situation while we negotiated a knot of traffic entering London.
‘I think I have the idea. You are in the position of a wealthy father whose daughter has taken up with a layabout who – you think – wants to marry her for her money. He might be able to discredit the bloke by bringing up some charge against him; but the bloke would never be so completely discredited as if Father was able to say to his daughter, ‘‘ I bought him off, and he went of his own free will.’’ ’
He fiddled with his pipe. ‘Think it over, David, for a day or two. You will leave anyhow, I can assure you of that. Shona has rigid ideas on such subjects as ethics. In one case you will be thrown out with nothing but your quarter’s salary. In the other you will have a large sum to invest in your little firm, which I imagine is rather undercapitalized at present. Let me see, what is its name? Kilclair Ltd?’
‘You know it is.’
‘Just so. Well, once you have left Shona & Co., you can pursue your little jobbing enterprises in complete legitimacy. No doubt you will do very well. You have the initiative to become a successful jobber and you would have no reason to restrict your interest to the perfumery world.’ John Carreros sat back in a cloud of burning hay. ‘Think it over, David. I give you three days.’
Chapter Ten
I
Of course I knew my little enterprise would stick in Shona’s crop if she ever came to know of it, but I was pretty certain she wouldn’t be as mad about it as John predicted. He was hoping she would but knowing in his heart she wouldn’t: Shona wasn’t stupid. Besides there was all there was between us, and you could hardly ignore that.
All the same it fetched up in my crop that he had been the one to find out and would have the abounding pleasure of telling Shona.
Much better to get my word in first.
Mark it up that I hardly considered his offer of a bribe. It was a hell of a good one, and a couple of years ago I should have taken it with both hands and been off like a mechanical hare pursued by greyhounds.
But it’s not natural to like being pushed around.
As it happened I hadn’t set eyes on Shona since the Tuesday evening; there were minor panics I had to attend to all through Thursday and Friday, and it wasn’t until the Friday evening as we were closing that I heard she was laid up with a chill. I called on her in South Audley Street and found her alone.
She let me in and then, scarlet satin kimonoed, fled back to her bedroom and the shaded lights.
‘If I’d known it was you I should not have answered.’
‘Well, thanks a lot.’
I sat down at a distance and looked at the figure in the bed.
‘You should have told me. Had a doctor?’
‘No. Sometimes, rarely, I get a chill – on the liver. It is disagreeable but I then take a day or two off.’
‘I’ve not noticed it.’
‘It is rare – I have just said – but I always keep to myself then. It is not a recommendation for a beauty firm if its head looks as thin as a toast rack and as yellow as a guinea.’
‘Let’s put on another light and then I can advise you.’
‘No, David! No! No! I forbid you. In another forty-eight hours I shall be quite recovered.’
‘I’m not your public. I shan’t stop buying Faunus conditioner because the woman who invented it is temporarily out of condition.’
‘You,’ she said, ‘are a great deal more important than the public. I do not wish you to see your mistress as an ageing woman.’
‘Well … maybe that’s true and maybe not. It could be that we have got too close to each other these last few years for a mere matter of appearance to rock the boat.’
She breathed gently out. ‘Very good. Very well spoken. But do not believe it. It has never happened in my experience. Whatever good and splendid times one has shared with a person, it cannot make up for joyless present.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ I said, ‘ when you get tired of me.’
‘That will be the day, as you say.’
It was right out of character that she didn’t ask anything about my trip to Bristol. Perhaps John had already given her his version. Yet she clearly had heard nothing else from John. He was keeping to his side of the bargain.
I found the subject I’d come to discuss rather a pig to bring up. Much easier, more appropriate, to face her across the desk of her office, tell her what was brewing and argue it out on the spot. Here in her bedroom, with shaded lights, and her obvious dislike at my being here at all, the first few sentences wouldn’t quite come together. Look Shona, I’d say in a big voice, I’ve had a thing on the side and John’s got a wild idea in his head that I’m double-crossing you. Did it sound right? Look Shona, you know you’ve set me up to run the firm on modern lines. Well your husband is clawing at me for running a company of my own to …
Instead I said: ‘Next week we’ve got to make a decision about the way we put over this poly-energizing cream. You can tell people it keeps cells alive in a test tube six times as long
as any other substance. The question is, will anybody in the general public have the nous to ask, so what?’
‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘It is still a good selling point. People do not think that way. But let us consider it later. My head is aching, and I can’t think clearly this evening.’
We chatted a bit longer. She lit a cigarette, rapidly flipping the lighter shut as soon as the tobacco caught. Then she asked me if before I went I would take a couple of cheques and post them for her.
‘Where’s John?’
‘In Richmond. He is not a good nurse and flees at the sight of the least indisposition.’
‘I could be a good nurse,’ I said.
‘No. But thank you.’
‘You still don’t trust me.’
‘Ah, not totally as a lover. How can I? How dare I I am … almost in love with you. So I do not even trust myself. John – John means next to nothing to me any more; so I do not have to doubt him. With him there is nothing to lose and therefore nothing to hide.’
On her directions I went into the living-room and fished for her chequebook in a drawer of the antique writing table. Under it I saw her passport. Well, some day I had to know, and this meant merely the flip of a page.
There it was. Born Moscow, USSR; date of birth: 12th August, 1930. The photograph stared at me accusingly. She was just forty-two. Eleven when war – their war – broke out. She could only have been about fifteen or sixteen when she left Russia, began her famous trek. Children grew up early in the climate of war. Thirty-seven when I met her. Thirteen years older than I was. That seemed about right – what I would have guessed. Forty-two was no great age, except for the standards she set herself, which were the standards of a woman of twenty. And of course, except for the fact that she was the mistress of a man still in his twenties.
I went in with the chequebook. She squinted at me a shade suspiciously and then put on her glasses to write the cheque. I thought: only ten years younger than my mother. A date made a difference. Just knowing made her seem older – though I hadn’t really ever thought of her as younger than that.