ache1
lay upon the bed, faking up the swell of her stomach with a pillow stuffed in
at the base of her spine, holding the position impatient for Brother Skunk to
look up from what he was doing.
Skunk:
I know what it was I know what it was. These books came in today with
ache1:
HEY!
Skunk
(looking up, finally, and laughing): Oh yes, oh very good. The dignity of
nascent motherhood.
ache1
heaved the pillow out and across the room at him in one flex of her arm.
Skunk:
These books came in for a guy today, and I don’t know whether it was the
binding or the the cover material, but I could smell them and it was, you know
that thing when you smell something and it
ache1:
Oh yeah, I get that with stuff. Sometimes I’ll, there’s a girl who works the
weekend who wears the same perfume my sister used to wear.
Skunk:
Well, that’s exactly what these
ache1:
No, but the thing is that, the thing is, when I smell that in the future, say I
smell a woman wearing that scent a year from now, I’ll be thinking of the, of
this chambermaid, and it, that’ll replace my memory of what my sister smelled
like.
Skunk’s
face registered his frustration at the change of subject.
ache1:
So ah, what did the books, what was, did it
Skunk:
It was my mum’s old record player, this little blue and white thing with a lid,
and two buttons at the front, and a, what do you call it, a spindle is it? And
an arm that came across so that you could stack the records on top
ache1:
And by the time, if you put about five or six forty-fives on at once they’d
start to skid and the music would, it would sort of pull and ahm, it would
slur.
Skunk:
That’s it. That’s it.
ache1:
I think everybody’s mother must have had the same record player. And they all
smelled, they, it was a sort of gluey smell, they smelled of glue
Skunk:
They smelled of glue and Elvis.
ache1
laughed out loud, the familiar and happy colour of something that took comfort
in knowing itself to be part of a larger canvas.
ache1:
You know what I think about when I think about that, about about, about smells
and, music’s the same too, that, you know, taking you back...
Skunk
nodded.
ache1:
..it reminds me of skipping stones, when you go to the beach or at, you get
some flat stones and you throw them out over the water and they jump? They
bounce out across the water, and that’s like, say you smell something, or you
hear a piece of music, and you remember stuff from before, you remember, so I
wouldn’t really just, if I smelled that perfume, I’d, there’d be my sister, and
my, and the chambermaid and, and that’s what it’s like. Every point the, the
sea is all of your memories, and you skip this stone out into it, and every
point it touches is a poi- is a thing you, it’s, that’s what you remember.
Skunk:
Uh-huh, yeah. Each point it touches is a place where that, yeah I get that.
He
felt his head float loose upon his neck and left the hipflask where it was.
Skunk:
You know ehm,
ache1:
What?
Skunk:
Did, did you ever think about smells that rhyme with each other, you know, like
gorse bushes and coconuts?
She
laughed.
ache1:
At the golf course?
Skunk:
Don’t you think that smells like coconuts? The... and ehm... apples and
leather, is another one, some apples anyway.
ache1
(puzzled): That I am not so sure of.
obviously
thinking
ache1:
What about pipe smoke and ice cream?
Skunk:
Yes. Yes, it’s... vanilla. It’s pipe smoke and vanilla. Jesus, I used to smoke
a pipe for
ache1:
No way.
Skunk:
It’s true. I had a pipe when I was, just, towards the end of my first year in
college. My mum sent it to me, she’d bought it in a church sale thing, and she
posted it on.
ache1:
But what, what was
Skunk:
I think she was, she’d started to, you know, I don’t know. But I had this pipe,
and my friend got one too, he got a new one, and we used to go around smoking
our pipes with, we tried all these different types of tobacco, ready-rubbed and
flake and... ehm, and all that, and I had I had, I bought little clay filters
for it, and I had a special little tool, like a penknife to to, to clean it
out, but it never... The only thing, I remember it being, it tasted hot and
dry, it never tasted of vanilla. And I always wanted, that’s... I think I’d,
when I got it from my mum I washed it in disinfectant, and I think maybe
that... I don’t know. I remember chasing after this other pipe-smoker in the
street, he’d passed me by and his pipe had that vanilla aroma, and I was, I
went after him and I asked him what it was he was smoking, but I tried that
tobacco and it still didn’t work.
ache1:
Maybe it wasn’t the pi-, the tobacco, maybe it was the kind of pipe. There are
all
Skunk
(nodding): I think that was it, it was to do with
ache1:
That, and never washing it in disinfectant of course.
Skunk:
Ho ho
and
again, deadpan
Skunk:
Oh ho ho ho.
