The Green Flash (4 page)

In the months following my first meeting with the Shona woman I caught sight of her here and there, but never got into the sort of contact that enabled me to exchange more than a word. Then one day I met her shopping in Harrods and she was without her usual entourage of well-preserved, milk-complexioned, middle-aged peahens. We stopped, and to keep her I asked her advice about the quality of a scarf I said I was buying for a girl. She advised me, looking more feline than feminine.

‘Have you seen our new product?' I asked.

‘Of course. It is widely advertised and very popular. Congratulations.'

‘Thank you. In the main I only help to sell the package. Our chemists …'

‘Oh yes, oh yes.' She made a little dismissive gesture. ‘But I am sure that by now you understand our business too well not to know where most of the credit for a success lies.'

‘I'd go along with that …' I stopped. ‘Sorry. I thought you were serious.'

‘Half serious, perhaps … So I take it your directors are pleased with you.'

‘They don't say so in so many words.'

‘But you are happy there?'

‘I have no complaints.'

‘What position has Mr Dawson in the firm?'

‘Administration. He's the son of one of the directors.'

‘Ah … So that is how you came into the firm.'

‘I was with another a year or so before … But yes.'

‘And do you still think of making it your career?'

I smiled. ‘I don't know. It's too early to say. Mme Shona …'

‘Yes?'

‘Will you have lunch with me one day?'

She looked towards the door. ‘I never lunch with men.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Sometimes men lunch with
me
. But then I have to ask them.'

‘Sorry again.'

‘It's of no moment.'

‘It is to me.'

‘Why?' she asked suddenly sharply, as if the answer meant something to her.

‘I'm afraid I don't always analyse my reasons.'

‘You should. It is a valuable exercise.'

I smiled again. ‘Shot down in flames. But thank you for the flak.'

As I moved to go she said: ‘I have an appointment at the Mirabelle tomorrow and my guest is unable to come.'

I waited, did not utter.

‘What?' she said. ‘No pretty speeches?'

‘With you I have to beware of them,' I said. ‘My only safety is in silence.'

‘Of course … I am too blunt. It is a tendency I am always trying to curb it.'

‘And failing?'

‘And failing. Well … pretty speeches or not, it is twelve forty if you wish to come.'

III

It was a long luncheon. She ate very little, toyed with her food, using a fork almost all the time, held and poised in long fine-skinned fingers. Like crabs, I thought, smooth elegant crabs. For a woman who made a fortune out of it, she seemed to use a relatively small amount of make-up, and scent was not pervasive.

She asked me about myself. I gave her a potted-biography. My father had married against his family's wishes, had taken to the bottle and died when I was eleven. My mother Rachel had remarried when I was twelve. My stepfather was a wealthy solicitor in Leeds. Nothing in common, he and I, they and I. Left home as soon as I left school. Got a job as a rep for a paperback publisher; changed to a TV-rental firm. Worked in a London hotel, then a wine firm.

‘You have seldom stayed long in one place,' she said. ‘But you said this was not your first position in the perfumery world.'

So, as before, she listened.

‘Actually it was in soap. You've heard of Langton's?'

‘Yes. Bath essence.'

‘That's what it came down to in the end. They advertised for a ‘‘dynamic young man'' to take over the marketing. I went along, lied about my age, and was taken on. I found they had nothing to market. Everything was too out of date to be true; the place was creaking into bankruptcy.'

‘So?'

‘I said this to John Langton, and after a bit of hedging he agreed. But what was he to do, he asked. Sell the factory for site value? I said I thought we should concentrate on the one line that showed tiny signs of life and axe everything else. We did. It was a bit of a shambles, and a lot of people got fired. But I think they're in profit now.'

‘They are … But you didn't stay even there?'

‘I was tempted to move away'

‘By Yardley's?'

‘No. This was before Yardley.'

‘What did you do in between?'

‘I was out of work when Jerry offered me this job.'

She turned her wineglass round by the stem. ‘Taking the air at Pentonville?'

I was very still, could feel myself getting mad. There were fewer people in the restaurant now and the noise level had dropped. For a few seconds I was very annoyed. Then I took a grip of myself.

‘Should I see that as a compliment?'

‘Should you?'

‘Well … the great Mme Shona is interested enough to pay a private inquiry agent to delve into my past.'

She was watching me. ‘I paid nobody. A few – yes, a few inquiries were made.'

‘Why?'

‘Why? Because I
was
interested – if only slightly. You seem to me to have flair. Good looks, of course, as you well know. And some ability, we hear.' She shook her head as the waiter hovered with the coffee pot. ‘ I am a little vain and pretend to myself that I have an aptitude, do you call it, to judge men. I think you have drive, determination – what one might call unrealized potential. So to that extent I was interested.'

‘And the result of those inquiries, no doubt, has put you right off.'

‘Not quite. Not altogether.'

The annoyance was passing out of my fingertips. After all, what the hell? But I would not pick up my coffee cup in case it shook.

‘And did your friends tell you why I was taking the air of Pentonville?'

‘Some sort of fraud, they said. Was it passing bad cheques?'

‘That I haven't tried yet … No. An old schoolmate called Tom Martin came to London from Greenock. I and one or two of my colleagues creamed the dough off him; it isn't difficult with a Scotsman who wants to be shown the town. This time, because of the stupidity of one of my friends, it all misfired. That's all.'

‘This time,' she said. ‘So there have been other times?'

‘Oh, yes; I made a fair thing out of it.'

She began to play with her wineglass. ‘You regret it now?'

‘That I was caught, yes.'

‘Not otherwise?'

‘Would you expect that?'

‘I expect nothing. I am just asking. You make a good thing out of cheating your friends?'

‘Tom Martin was never my friend – though maybe he thought he was. Even as a boy he was a clumsy oaf.'

‘And the others?'

‘Arrogant, conceited Scotsmen who were all the better for being taken down a peg.'

‘But you told me you were Scottish yourself.'

‘On my father's side, yes.'

She gave me a look of a sort of benevolent irony. Clearly she wasn't all that shocked by what she had heard. But then, I guessed, she was probably unshockable. You got the message of such general sophistication that life had few surprises for her. Her eyelids drooped.

‘Do Yardley's know about this?'

‘About what?'

‘Your time in prison, of course.'

‘Not the board. Jerry Dawson's father does.'

We were silent for a time. I beckoned to the waiter that I wanted the bill.

‘So,' I said, ‘you can probably get me chucked out of Yardley's, if that's on your mind.'

She ran a finger along the edge of the table.

‘I suppose honesty is a relative term. Is it not? In my business for instance. Of course one is honest in putting into one's perfumes only the finest ingredients, the most scrupulous chemistry, the most genuine research. But after that there is more than a suggestion of a confidence trick about the way it is marketed. Not so, of course, within the – how do you say? – the legal definition of the term. I do not think I run any risk of going to Pentonville – or is it Holloway for women? I do not defraud trusting schoolfriends.'

‘Only trusting shoppers who fall for the sales talk.'

She brooded a moment. ‘Last year de Luxembourg spent three hundred thousand pounds in promoting a new line: Incognito – you know it, of course. A clever idea. It was pushed, and it caught on. In fact it became the success of the season.'

‘A
chypre
basis,' I said. ‘A bit sultry, I thought.'

‘Well, it caught the mood. It was not just the perfume but the end products which took off. Yet the essence contained nothing new, nothing
originally
new which was of particular special benefit to the skin. Women bought it because they were persuaded, hypnotized into buying it.' She paused to nod at someone passing by. ‘Within a week of its coming into the shops it had, of course, been taken and analysed by its rivals.'

‘I've tried this GLC,' I said. ‘ Gas liquid chromatography. It approximates but it can't get it exactly right.'

She looked at me. ‘So you are a chemist as well.'

‘Far from it. But if you're in a business you want to know the tools.'

She nodded. ‘ Good … All the same the mass-market perfumers will buy every new perfume as it comes from the exclusive houses and have it analysed and have it copied. Well, before Christmas last year Incognito had been copied and was on the market under other names and selling at a fifth of the price. The copies lack the exact quality and subtlety of the original but does that matter so much? How many women can
really
tell? No; what matters is that the copiers cannot steal the name. Women buy Incognito, and will continue to buy it because it comes from a high-class house – and because it
costs
so much. Price in our world is paramount. Price and styling and the indefinable element of class.'

‘Which you have,' I said.

She inclined her head.

‘For instance in Dryad,' I said, turning the edge away a bit.

‘Dryad in its various forms has been on the market for seven years now – ever since I began. It still accounts for forty per cent of our total sales.'

‘I gather it's a Russian formula brought to England when you came over, and long in your aristocratic family.'

She breathed gently through her nose. ‘Yes. You see? That is the sort of thing. But it is still not as bad as cheating an old schoolfriend.'

‘I've turned over a new leaf.'

‘For how long?'

‘I don't know. The deterrent effect of jail is still quite strong.'

‘It did not make you bitter?'

‘Oh yes. But to what end? One takes stock. One weighs the advantages against the risks. I didn't like being locked up and am at present doing my best to avoid it.'

‘I think, Mr Abden, if you are to work for me you will have to give me an understanding not to – what is it? – backslide.'

So there it was, what I had been angling for.

I said with an assumption of modesty: ‘I didn't know there was any question that I might work for you.'

‘At present it is no more than a suggestion. But you really cannot pretend that the idea never occurred to you. Can you? In this there must be a sort of honesty –
this
sort of honesty on both sides?'

I pursed my lips. ‘Are there two sorts of honesty?' Her face for a moment looked very Russian: the lidded eyes, the slant of the cheekbones. ‘Degrees perhaps.'

‘And you do not think twice about – engaging a jail bird.'

‘Of course I shall think twice, and more than twice, about engaging
you
. And not for that reason only.'

There was a long silence, as if all that could be said at this meeting had now been said.

I asked: ‘D'you know a man called Roger Manpole?'

‘Who does not?'

‘Well, I don't think he'd wish to be all that widely known.'

‘I know him well by repute, though little personally. His repute is – not good. Though I understand he operates always within the law.'

I laughed. ‘You could say that.'

After a minute she said: ‘Why do you ask?'

‘I met him first when I was at Langton's. Later, when I came out, before I joined Yardley's, he offered me a job.'

‘And you refused it?'

‘Yes.'

‘I think that may be the best reference you can offer me.'

‘Why?'

‘If you wished to continue in the half-light of your previous operations I would have thought the offer perfectly judged.'

‘So did he.'

‘May I ask why you refused?'

‘I wish I could say it was an attack of the little Lord Fauntleroy. Alas not. Simply that he makes my back hair stand up.'

‘Ah. Another honest answer. Perhaps we shall get somewhere even yet.'

‘I rather hope so.'

‘How long does your present contract run?'

‘Monthly. But it was understood it should last at least until the end of the year. I may stay on longer.'

‘Well, this is for you to choose, isn't it?' She glanced up. ‘And please do not gesture to the waiter again; he will take no notice because the
conto
will automatically be sent to me at the end of the month. Does that offend your male pride?'

I said: ‘ Not in the least. I am sorry to have been guilty of an act of
lèse-majesté
.'

‘The Latin,' she said, ‘is
laesa majestas
, and it was first used in the fourth century. I forget by whom. That is a piece of useless knowledge in the profession where I find myself. Or its only use is to impress. Like my Russian background. In my efforts to leave the Soviet Union, as I am sure you will be aware, I have little time or attention – or even the interest – to bring away the secret formulas for the preservation of the skin.'