It was my husband who went looking for a pet to adopt in the first place; I wasn’t that keen, in all honesty.
I didn’t grow up with pets because my mum refused to have them in the house, so all I could envisage when we first brought Digger home was the ‘mess’ she used as an excuse, and the extra responsibility I was sure I would get landed with.
But to be fair to my husband, he looked after all the dog care and discipline from the start. He even took him to work most days. I was just the person who occasionally gave Digger some food if the all-powerful Pack Leader happened to be absent.
My husband is an academic, and it wasn’t until he left recently on a long research trip for a book that I really bonded with Digger.
At first I found all the responsibilities a bit of a pain, but after a while I could feel a really tangible bond had grown up between us. He didn’t just seem happy to see me because I was the one with the food-cupboard privileges, I really felt he was responding to me. And it worked both ways. If this is a delusional state shared by all dog owners, it’s a very powerful one!
Digger is a classic mutt, a real Heinz 57, with scruffy black fur sticking up in spikes, but I’ve grown very fond of him. Hearing the sound of his claws clattering along the wooden floors of the hallway makes me smile.
There are a few things I don’t like about Digger, though – and they are all connected with smell. For one, he gets bouts of flatulence that could clear the Albert Hall they’re so pungent.
During our walks on nearby Hampstead Heath, he has a penchant for rolling in fox poo, which has a uniquely rank odour. The best description I’ve heard of it is ‘burned bacon’, but I think that’s insulting to bacon.
Sometimes his breath gets a bit gamey too, but I got him some special chews which really help with that.
So, putting aside the yucky ones, the positive smells of a dog for me are the next-day cold-stew smell of his meaty food, and the aroma of a roasted chicken right out of the oven, which will have him running to the kitchen like a rocket. The dry seed and hay hum of a pet shop, and the sickly rotting meat of his treats.
Grassy fresh air and mud on long winter walks. The rubbery tang of the toys he likes to brutalise. The worn-in leather of his collar and lead. The sweet, musty smell of his velvety ears, which I love to stroke, and yes, I admit it, I kiss them.
My scents for a dog are (a bit of a challenge in all honesty, but it’s fun to stretch yourself sometimes!):
Barbour For Him by Barbour
Grass by The Library of Fragrance
Dirt by The Library of Fragrance
Cuir de Russie by Chanel
Piper Leather by Illuminum
Mûre et Musc by L’Artisan Parfumeur
COMMENTS
AgathaF: I don’t have a dog, I have a cat. Can you do write about the scent of a cat?
FragrantCloud: Hi Agatha, I don’t have a cat and I’ve never had one, so it would be a bit hard for me, but if I can think of a friend with a nice cat, I’ll try. What are the scents of a cat for you?
AgathaF: She smells a lot of fish.
EastLondonNostrils: You’ve lost me here, dear. What next – the smell of a tramp’s coat?
LuxuryGal: What breed is your dog? I have two shitzus! Ting Ting and Tong. They are sooooo spoiled, but we love them. They smell mostly of the spray from their groomers. They have a comb out every week when I’m getting my nails done. I always say their beauty parlour is right next to mine! They come back smelling gorgeous. Sometimes I spray them with my own perfume! And sometimes I paint their claws! They are so cute.
FragrantCloud: Gosh, they really sound like pampered pooches. The only time Digger gets sprayed with perfume is when I’m trying to block out one of his own special ‘blends’.
EastLondonNostrils: Not helping.
PerspiringDreams: Digger sounds like a character. Clemmie says he once ate a whole block of butter.
FragrantCloud: I’m afraid that is true. We left it out on the kitchen table when we went out and the smell just got the better of him . . . I wish I had his sense of smell!
AnnaBandana: You should do an event with Digger, to show how amazing a dog’s sense of smell is.
FragantCloud: A lovely idea, Anna. What could possibly go wrong?
Friday, 22 January
Swimming a lap of backstroke in the Rockham Park pool wearing one of Daphne’s swimsuits, Polly gazed up through the glass roof at the grey January sky and smiled to herself. She was rather loving her stay here.
In three days she’d already established a bit of a routine. Whenever the nurses came to do their check-ups, or she could get one of the retirement village staff to cover for her, she’d collect Digger from Bill for a romp around the grounds, or nip down to the pool. The rest of the time she worked on her blog, using Daphne’s dressing table as a desk, while her mum dozed. When Daphne was awake Polly sat and chatted to her, going through old photo albums and old copies of Vogue, which made her mother very animated.
On her way back up to the apartment, after a post-pool stint in the steam room, Polly’s phone rang.
‘Hello, Mummy,’ said Clemmie. ‘I’m just ringing to see how you’re getting on at Crumbly Towers.’
‘I’m having a ball!’ said Polly, waving hello to two nice ladies she’d chatted to in the coffee lounge the day before.
Clemmie laughed. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ said Polly. ‘I’ve just done twenty lengths of the pool, I get all my meals sent up from the dining room, and the rest of the time I doodle around on my laptop – I’m across every perfume-related website in existence – and I’m loving staying in a brand-new apartment. I’ve never lived anywhere new in my whole life. I think our house pumps dust and cobwebs out of its walls.’
‘How’s Granny doing?’ asked Clemmie.
‘Much better,’ said Polly. ‘She’s got a lot more colour in her cheeks. The blood tests showed she was very anaemic, so they’re giving her iron in the drip. She’s still a bit confused when she wakes up to find the drip and catheter in, but once she comes to, she’s fine, getting perkier every day. My main job now is getting her to eat properly.’
They chatted a bit more and Clemmie promised to come and see Daphne as soon as she could.
As Polly let herself back in through the sleek front door of Daphne’s apartment, she acknowledged another thing she was enjoying about staying here, something she hadn’t wanted to mention to Clemmie.
Rockham Park had absolutely no connection with David.
He’d only been there once, when they’d moved Daphne in, whereas every tiny corner of the family house was impregnated with memories of him. It was such a relief to be away from it – especially now she had to constantly walk past the gaping hole she’d made in his office door. Staying at her mum’s place, she was able to put all that out of her mind. That was like a spa break in itself.
After lunch – salmon en croute for Polly, soup for Daphne – the doctor was due for a check-up, instead of the usual district-nurse visit. Polly would miss taking Digger for his normal afternoon walk, as she wanted to hear his assessment.
She was happy to hear he thought Daphne was making good progress and after he’d gone, she rang Bill to explain and say she’d come to get the dog as soon as she could arrange someone to sit with Daphne. But every time she phoned reception to see if they could send a staff member up, the line was engaged. She was about to call Bill again when there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find Chum standing there, with Artie and Digger.
‘Oh,’ was all she could say.
‘Hi, Hippolyta,’ said Chum, smiling slightly shyly, eyebrows raised. ‘Bill said you were coming to take Digger out shortly and I thought perhaps we could walk the dogs together. They’ve bonded rather.’
Polly looked down at Digger, who was not in the slightest bit excited to see her, he was so preoccupied with trying to get behind Chum to be nearer his canine pal.
‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘I’d l
ove to, but I can’t leave my mum until I’ve organised someone to watch her and I can’t get through to reception for some reason.’
‘That’s because Bill was hogging the line,’ said Chum, ‘organising someone to cover for you. Ah, look, here she comes now.’
Polly followed his gaze down the corridor and saw one of the friendly cleaners who often helped out with Daphne, walking towards them.
‘That’s brilliant,’ said Polly. ‘I’ll tell Mum what’s happening and get my jacket.’
Five minutes later she was in Chum’s Land Rover, the two dogs lying happily together in the back, being driven terrifyingly fast along small country lanes she’d had no idea were so close to Rockham Park. She always came straight off the motorway along the main road to the nearest town.
The mud-splattered four-wheel drive was just as messed up and stinky inside as the one Chum had driven at St Andrews. Although she didn’t remember that old heap smelling quite as bad as this, with wet dog and other odours she couldn’t immediately identify and, for once, didn’t want to. Fish guts? Dead rodents?
She rolled her window down a crack and pulled her polo neck up over her nose.
Chum laughed.
‘Bit gamey for you, is it?’ he asked.
‘You could say that,’ said Polly through the wool, glad she’d sprayed herself liberally with Guy’s PM that morning. It developed so beautifully, as the luxurious rose and jasmine mid-notes entwined more deeply with the oakmoss, bergamot and labdanum of the chypre base. Polly was wearing it for the third day in a row, which was very unusual for her.
‘I should get one of those traffic-light car fresheners,’ said Chum. ‘Hang it off my mirror.’
‘That would be even worse than the eau de dead things smell,’ said Polly. ‘At least it’s natural, like manure and horse wee. I actually like those smells, but the cheap fake ones give me an instant migraine.’
‘That’s unusual,’ said Chum, ‘liking horse wee. It’s Chanel No. 5 to me, but townies are normally repulsed by such things.’
Polly groaned inwardly, hating such un-nuanced labels, while acknowledging simultaneously that she was feeling pathetically glad she was wearing her Barbour jacket, even though it was London black, rather than one of the green ones Chum and all his pals had worn at St Andrews. And he was wearing now.
She couldn’t believe that all these years later, she still felt that need to fit in with the Yah set’s social mores, and that made her equally glad she was wearing trainers. No Hunter wellies for her. Chum was wearing them, of course, or something along those lines.
‘There’s a nice wood not that far along here,’ Chum was saying. ‘We can let the dogs have a good romp around in there.’
‘That would be great,’ said Polly. ‘Digger and I have explored every corner of the Rockham Park grounds. I did try walking out of the gate in pursuit of something more interesting, but that road is absolutely treacherous, with all the cars headed for the motorway.’
‘Isn’t that kind of terrain pretty normal in London?’ asked Chum, glancing at her, then looking back at the road.
‘Where I live, I’m not too far from Hampstead Heath,’ said Polly, ‘which is quite wild if you know where to go, so I take Digger up there whenever I can. He finds plenty of fox poo to roll around in, so that keeps him happy.’
Chum laughed, and without warning pulled the car abruptly off the road, into a gap next to a gate leading into a field. Polly couldn’t see many trees, just hedgerows and fields.
‘Is this it?’ she asked, looking around. ‘I thought you said there was a wood.’
‘Yes,’ said Chum, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the car door. ‘We have to walk to the wood.’
He pointed to the left and Polly could see a clump of trees in the distance. The quite far distance.
‘Looks more like a spinney than a full-blown wood,’ said Polly, jumping down onto the muddy ground and having to grab the door, not to go flying. It was slippery underfoot. ‘Or is it a copse? Isn’t that what you hunting types call them? I remember all that from reading Flambards. They were always flushing foxes out of spinneys and running them to ground in copses.’
Chum snorted.
‘I would call it a small wood,’ he said. ‘I’m not a hunting type, thank you very much. Don’t make assumptions.’
‘Well, don’t call me a townie, then,’ said Polly.
‘Fair enough,’ said Chum, laughing.
‘But I do remember you as being super-horsey,’ said Polly grabbing hold of Digger’s collar before he could catapult himself onto the road.
‘I still am,’ said Chum, ‘if you want to use that technical term, but that doesn’t mean I chase terrified furry animals for sport. There are plenty of other things you can do on horses. I’ll climb over the gate first and you can pass the dogs over to me.’
He gave her Artie’s lead and climbed over in two neat movements of his long legs and a jump down. Polly couldn’t help hoping he wouldn’t be watching when she did it. She picked up Artie, then Digger, and passed them to him over the chained and padlocked gate, then just managed to clamber over herself, without falling face-first in the even deeper mud on the other side.
As she landed, she glanced back at the Land Rover blocking the entrance, and then over at the field, which had clearly been recently ploughed.
‘I hope we’re not going to piss off the farmer,’ she said, as Digger and Artemis romped off, clods of mud flying around them. ‘He might want to get into his field and I don’t want him coming after us with a shotgun.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Chum, ‘this is my family’s land. If anyone comes at us with a weapon, I can call him off. Or her.’
‘Oh,’ said Polly, feeling as stupid as she always seemed to around people like Chum. Of course it was his land. She should have guessed. He probably owned the whole of Hertfordshire. She wondered who the ‘her’ might be. His wife presumably.
‘So are you an equal-opportunities land owner?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Chum, starting off up a line of churned-up wet earth the colour of milk chocolate, in the direction of the wood. Turning his head over his shoulder towards Polly, he said, ‘But my sister-in-law probably thinks she is.’
Before Polly could answer – and she couldn’t think of anything to say anyway – Chum set off at a fast pace, whistling for the dogs, who had veered off to the left. She trotted a few paces, trying to catch up with him. She had pretty long legs herself, but Chum’s stride was fast leaving her behind, and she wasn’t finding it very easy in the mud in her trainers.
‘Hey, Usain,’ she called out, ‘can you slow down a bit?’
Chum stopped and when she caught up with him he was grinning. He clapped her on the shoulder.
‘Sorry, dear,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten you townies don’t know how to walk on the raw earth.’
‘Very droll, Mr Super-Horsey,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’ve got hooves, rather than feet?’
‘No, but I do wear proper footwear.’
He pointed at her trainers, which were now caked in mud. She could feel it oozing over the top, onto her socks. She wasn’t feeling quite so smug now about not wearing wellies. She did have something more practical in the car that she wore for walking Digger on the Heath, she’d just wanted to make some kind of stupid point.
‘And appropriate hats,’ he added. ‘You can’t even see out from your hair.’
He reached over and brushed aside a stray lock that had blown into her face and was stuck to her lip balm.
‘Hang on a minute.’ He reached into the inner pocket of his waxed jacket – the game pocket it was called, Polly remembered, hoping there hadn’t been any dead pheasants in there recently – and pulled out a tweed cap, which he put on her head.
‘Suits you,’ he said, pulling the peak right down over her eyes, before turning and starting to walk off at the same brisk pace.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get some country air into your polluted
urban lungs. Hampstead Heath indeed. There’s probably a gift shop.’
Polly adjusted the hat as he strode off, then took it off and sniffed it: not too stinky, she was relieved to find. Not stinky at all, really.
It smelled of a man’s head, all right, but not a nasty greasy-hair smell, more a light male musk, quite pleasant with that warm horsey accord, a residue of lanolin on the tweed, and a faint trace of something cologne-y. She wondered if Chum ever wore aftershave, but didn’t feel she could ask him; it seemed too intrusive.
Just at that moment he turned round, looked at her and burst out laughing.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Checking for dead animals,’ said Polly.
‘You’re smelling my hat,’ he said, in faux outraged tones. ‘I realise we’ve known each other a long time, Polly, but really, a man’s hat is a very personal item.’
‘Well, you did put it on my head.’
She stuck it back on there – she’d just copped another mouthful of windblown hair – then caught up and fell into step beside him. The dogs were out in front, zigzagging back and forth, sniffing, chasing each other, and occasionally looking back to check that Polly and Chum were still there.
‘Do you often sniff people’s property?’ asked Chum.
‘Absolutely,’ said Polly. ‘All the time. It’s kind of what I do.’
‘Really?’ said Chum. ‘Perhaps you can explain – and I do hope it isn’t too offensive, my old hat.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Polly, ‘or it wouldn’t be on my head.’
‘So tell me why you smell things.’
‘I’m a perfume blogger. I write about perfume, for my blog, on the internet.’
‘I do know what a blog is, Polly,’ said Chum.
‘Oh, do you get the interweb out here, then?’
‘Yes, West End Girl, we do. It’s quite a crap signal, actually, but we do get it. I listen to Farming Today on the BBC iPlayer doodah on my iPad when I’m having my coffee, because I’m too arse-lazy to get up at five forty-five when it’s on live.’
The Scent of You Page 15
