"The Bottle of Scent" by Nadia King

The Bottle of Scent

The accident of my birth was shocking; it was the early 1970s, and Mum was unmarried. She’d been seeing one of those foreign students, a black guy from South Africa, and a tiny caramel-skinned baby was the result. There were social repercussions. It wasn’t the 1950s, but it was the 1970s. Contraception was illegal. Women left their public-service jobs when they married, and, if your husband turned out to be a gobshite and abandoned you, or you found yourself in the unenviable role of unmarried mother, you were unsupported by the State.
My mum took a train to Tramore and flung herself on my grandad’s mercy. He wasn’t impressed, and we went to live with my nana, an appalling state of affairs for the neighbors. Mum turned up with a baby and a black guy. A little aside here — the black guy put a ring on Mum’s finger, and they stayed married for 11 years. The fact my parents stayed together so long astounds me.
But this story isn’t about my birth or the accidental union of my parents. It’s about my grandad. My grandad, like my parents, didn’t make the wisest choice when it came to love. It was the Second World War and my grandad (can we call him Joe from now on?) was in the Air Force. Joe was a flight sergeant and sported a full head of thick black hair. Later on, that thick black hair was important to him. Not to me, but to him. Joe was in uniform when he pushed open the door to a tea shop. A pretty girl served him, and he was smitten. He waited until she came off her shift, and he married her. Well, it took a bit longer, but you get the picture. It was love at first sight.
Joe married Evelyn. I don’t know how long they were happy, although I like to think they were happy for a few years. There were ten children. There were probably more, but people didn’t talk about miscarriages and stillbirths. Evelyn loved babies (I think that’s why she didn’t mind a caramel-skinned baby turning up later). She loved babies so much that she set up a nursery and looked after orphans. Evelyn was a dreamer. She wrote stories and loved television when it arrived in the 1950s. She loved television so much she would regularly forget about chips cooking in fat on the cooker.
But this story isn’t about Evelyn either. It’s part of Joe’s story. Joe liked children, despite his wife having too many and taking in orphans. Joe loved all his grandkids, but especially the caramel-skinned one. Actually, there were two of us. Cousins, like sisters, and our Grand loved us. We were “grand” and the “best girls.” We would cuddle up on his lap, and he would smoke his pipe and tell us stories. Confession time: this didn’t happen as often as I liked because my parents had taken off to see the world and then decided on life in the great utopia of London. That’s not strictly true. They hadn’t chosen London. The Great American Dream hadn’t gone as planned, and we were making our way back to Dublin. Mum suffered sudden appendicitis, and we stopped to get rid of the appendix. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, the slight tyranny of distance between a little caramel-skinned kid living in London and her grandad in Ireland. I sent letters. Lots of them.
He would visit. Sometimes with Evelyn, sometimes not. They were still married, but their love had long since disappeared. His visits were spellbinding. He wore a tweed overcoat and had a pipe in his mouth. His whiskers were soft and silvery, and his breath smelled of Guinness. I loved everything about him. He carried pennies in his pocket, and, when he picked me up, I tried to burrow into the very core of him.
On Sunday mornings, he took me to mass. Mass was important to Grand. Not to Mum, who loathed the Catholic Church and remembered too well the beatings she’d had from the nuns. Not to Dad, who had broken many rules of Allah and married a white lass and suffered his own disowning. But to Grand, mass was important. We walked to mass. It was the 1970s; you walked everywhere, unless it was more than five miles, and then you might catch a bus. If you could look back in time, you would see a tall man in a tweed overcoat taking long strides and a little girl holding onto his hand, skipping to keep up with him.
I only went to mass with Grand, so I wasn’t very good at kneeling and standing at the right times. I didn’t know the words, although I mumbled and copied everything Grand did. My favorite part was placing coins in the offering. I liked the sound they made as they clinked together. I also liked watching Grand when he sang.
Grand didn’t only sing at mass. He sang everywhere. Moreover, he sang loudly. When I was little, this was quite magical. Later, it was downright embarrassing, but let’s just go with magical for the moment. Grand would burst forth into song as he poured himself a cup of tea from the pot or when he stepped from the bathroom or when he sat up in bed in the morning. He would sing from dawn to dusk, and he knew a great many songs. He must have learnt them when he was stationed in Africa during the war.
I was quite young when I was presented with my first perfume. It was in a glass bottle and smelt like heaven. I was awash in dreams of growing up to be a proper lady. Grand gave me the bottle of scent. He’d bought it from duty free. When I inhaled the perfume, the possibilities were endless. One day I would sing like Grand. I would know all the words at mass, and I would know when to kneel, when to sit, and when to stand. I would have a sophisticated perm and high-heeled shoes that made a lovely sound on the pavement when I walked. I wouldn’t be a skinny, caramel-skinned kid in North London who skinheads liked to chase with a big chunk of two-by-four. I would be a respectable lady. I thought when I grew up, I would be the lady my mum should have been.
Every time Grand came to visit, either to London or, later, when my parents were still chasing utopia and landed in Australia, he would bring me perfume. It was always in a glass bottle, and it always smelt like endless possibilities.
Grand died. Grandparents have a habit of doing that. I was a proper grown-up by then. I’d like to say I was heartbroken and wailed and tore out my hair. I took the news well, although I thought those bottles of perfume would disappear forever. In my own sort of grief, I sat down and did what I always did. I wrote my Grand a letter, and my aunt put it on his headstone. My cousin’s child (you remember the other caramel-skinned kid?) found the letter. She thought it was a letter from Grand because she has my name, and she got mixed up. Anyway, the letter didn’t stay on Grand’s headstone until it dissolved in the elements, as I dreamt it would. It probably ended up in someone’s kitchen bin with the squeezed tea-bags, potato peelings, and yesterday’s newspaper. Writing the letter to Grand was important. I wrote down all he meant to me. How much I loved being fussed over and cosseted and loved back. Of those cold winter mornings in Ireland, when it was only Grand and I having breakfast together in the kitchen. Of him tearing up the stale bread and carefully pouring over boiled milk and letting me put as much sugar as I wanted on my pobbies. It was shared cups of tea and ham sandwiches with the crusts cut off and him tight-lipped when I begged him to tell me his war stories. It was his thick black hair and his lovely, whiskery face. I loved him. He was my Grand, and his love helped to shape and form me.
And life goes on as it does. It’s been many years since Grand died. I’ve never been one for perfume, until another man I love gave me a bottle of scent. And when I opened the stopper, with just one whiff it all came flooding back, and the possibilities of life seem endless again.

Nadia King

Nadia L. King is an Australian writer who was born in Dublin, Ireland. She is a children’s author and short-story writer, who believes passionately in the power of stories to make the world a better place. Her books for children include Claire Malone Changes the World (an empowering and inspiring picture book for young children) and Jenna’s Truth (a real and raw story of cyberbullying for young adults). Nadia’s short stories have been published in Australia and internationally, and she is the winner of the Stuart Hadow Short Story Prize (2019). She is currently undertaking postgraduate studies in English and creative writing and is living in Western Australia with her family and her ever-expanding collection of books.

Headshot: Louise Allan

Photo Credit: Staff