Monday was the final squad session before the swimming carnival. I bought a new pair of goggles and returned the oldies to Pericles, who slung them into the bin. Swimming in lane five, free of cranial pressure and goggle fog, I managed to stay just far enough behind him to avoid accusations of drafting.
At the end of training, Simmons rallied us for a pep talk. ‘Everybody who wants to win on Wednesday, raise your hands.’ Everybody did. ‘Keep them up if you have what it takes.’ Keenly aware that lowering my hand would demonstrate a conspicuous lack of esprit de corps, I stiffened my arm. ‘Look up there at the Roll of Champions,’ Simmons said, pointing to the wooden shield that I’d seen on the school tour. ‘If any of you break a Crestfield record on Wednesday, your name will be recorded alongside those legends.’
My eyes were drawn back to Nigel Lethbridge, Junior Backstroke Champion in 1942. Simply reading the old boy’s name triggered the smell memory of his mothballed leather-elbowed jacket. Merely imagining the odour of camphor made me gag.
During English, Mr Field read a passage from The Picture of Dorian Gray where Dorian studies the psychological effect of perfumes. Oscar Wilde wrote about ambergris, the whale poo Isa had mentioned, stirring passion, and the scent of musk troubling the mind. Aloes cure your melancholy and hovenia, the Japanese raisin tree, sends you mad.
He then called on Isa to read a passage from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time about a guy who dips a madeleine, a small shell-shaped sponge cake, in his tea. The taste summons a flashback to happier days.
‘Well read,’ he said. ‘You seem familiar with the text.’
‘I read all seven volumes last year,’ Isa said.
‘Congratulations. That’s no small undertaking. Would anybody like to share their experience of an involuntary memory triggered by smell?’
‘The stuff in your hair,’ I said. ‘It’s Swiss Valley Hair Pomade™, sir.’ Mr Field touched his head. ‘It reminds me of going to the barber with my grandfather.’ The class laughed. It was supposed to be a compliment but it backfired, so I didn’t tell them the rest.
I really missed having my hair cut with Pop Locke at Joe and Vic’s Continental Hairstylists. No matter what style I requested, Giuseppe always gave me a short back and sides, matching Vittorio snip-for-snip as he worked on Pop. The climax of the sacred ritual was the liberal application of Swiss Valley Hair Pomade™. Giuseppe never asked if I wanted it, and I never refused. Pop used to say it would’ve been like preventing Michelangelo from making the finishing touches to the Sistine Chapel. On completion, Pop Locke always purchased a mint-green jar from the pyramid stacked behind the counter, and emulated the pomade styling every day till our next visit. It smelt floral and minty and antiseptic all at once.
In Biology, we explored triggered memory from a scientific perspective. Raymond, the lab assistant, arranged thirty plastic cups, each containing a different essence, on the benches running along the wall, with a small picture card in front of each. In turn we moved down the line, sniffing the cups while looking at their accompanying pictures. Each time I smelt something pleasant, like peppermint, strawberry or eucalyptus, I experienced a peculiar sensation: the nub tingled. But not every odour was pleasant. When Starkey sniffed the cup behind an image of a boat, he called out, ‘That’s fucking cat piss!’
‘Vulgar language will not be tolerated,’ Miss Keenan said. ‘Evan, take yourself down to The Labyrinth immediately. Sit there and have a think about your behaviour. Mr Jespersen will be waiting for you.’
‘This school fully sucks arse,’ Starkey said on the way out. Crestfield seems to be rigorously monitored and yet I’ve noticed that punishment here seems strangely lenient. When I smelt the cup that had caused Starkey’s outburst, it made the nub prickle and itch, and I realised that he was on the money – it was definitely cat piss.
During Art, Ms Tarasek announced that our collaborative works were to be loosely themed around life in our local or school community, and would be exhibited in a show called YOU ARE HERE! She then played us a doco on French sculptor Camille Claudel, who wasn’t just Auguste Rodin’s pupil, and later his lover and collaborator, but was also a talented artist and innovator in her own right and had to fight for a place in an art world controlled by men. The doco featured a recurring photo of Camille taken when she was nineteen. Aside from the dark hair falling on her face, she bore a striking resemblance to Isa Mountwinter. At the part where Camille separated from Rodin to establish her individuality, I noticed Isa fidgeting with her pencil. When we heard of Camille becoming overwhelmed with paranoia and destroying her artworks, Isa snapped the pencil in half. And at the point where Camille was committed to a mental asylum and prevented from receiving letters from anyone except her brother, Isa herself looked to be at breaking point.
Tonight at home, still unable to broach the Maëlle incident with Dad but not wanting to continue living in self-imposed isolation, I initiated a conversation with him about the psychology of smell. Dad told me that neural marketing was becoming a large part of his business at The BrandCanyon, and the ‘first-sniff principle’ was key to its success.
‘We’ve partnered with Tschoppe Shibata, who’ve created a gaming console with scent pods,’ he said. ‘Imagine a game designed around a female hero who’s beautiful, strong and confident. One of our clients, say a clothing company, pay for their signature scent to be associated with that character. During game play, the signature scent is released whenever she performs well. Sometime later in real life, the player walks into a clothing store equipped with scent diffusers that release an identical aroma. The customer will experience the same emotion they felt playing the game, increasing the levels of serotonin and oxytocin in their brain. Their dwell-time will be extended, increasing the likelihood of purchase.’
‘It’s a brave new world,’ I said, getting up from the table. I went to fetch my wallet from my satchel then came back through the dining room.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Coles.’ I wanted to find out if they stocked Swiss Valley Hair Pomade™, and hoped that a sniff would instantly transport me back to the barbershop with Pop.
Scoping out the haircare section, I saw an old lady dressed in a pink heart-patterned skirt with a pink blouse and pink ribbons in her pink plaited hair, the same shade as Venn’s, reaching for a packet of dye. She even smelt pink – like a musk stick. She turned to me and said, ‘Excuse me young man, could you reach the L’Oréal box up there for me, the pink one?’ Her lipstick had strayed well beyond the creases of her lips, and two distinct circles of blush highlighted the lack of flesh remaining on her cheekbones. I grabbed a box of the L’Oréal Dirty Pink. ‘You’re a true gentleman,’ she said as I handed her the box. ‘Your mother must be very proud of you.’
I left without finding the Swiss Valley.
Lying in bed tonight, I thought about how much effort the Pink Lady must put into maintaining her look. When you’re young like Venn, it’s called individuality. But when you’re old, the refusal to slip into elastic-sided obscurity – to fade away without screaming that you want to keep dancing forever on this Earth – is assumed to be madness. Camille Claudel; Raina Bramble, the Blue Lady; the Pink Lady; Loose Pants Lenny; and the old junkyard guy.
An idea for the collaborative assignment I was working on with Isa began swirling in my head, but I needed a good sleep before the carnival. Just as I was about to drop off, Homunculus said, ‘Tomorrow you stand virtually naked before the entire school. Perhaps you want to check what’s been going on down the back? Ignoring it won’t make it go away.’
I crawled out of bed and assessed my backside in the main bathroom’s full-length mirror. The nub had neither shrunk nor grown, which gave me mild relief, until I noticed eleven dark hairs had sprouted between my shoulderblades.