Meet me near the Erica Heather

The affair could only have happened early in Autumn, and could have
begun on no other day than it did, when it hailed so hard it beat
smells out of the herbs in people's gardens. All down the street the
rich mixture hung - peppermint, lavender and pineapple sage - so that
when we arrived at the shop, and when I'd shaken down the umbrella, I
found at once my head was stuffed with perfume.

"What a punge!" I said, shutting the door.

Jan, my then-husband, began the arduous process of disinvolving himself
from his coat.

"What are you talking about?" he sniffed.

"The smell all the way down the street!"

I drew a lungful of air through my nose, to show him what I meant. In
reply, he sneezed, and muttered something into his own armpit, which I
took to mean that I should abandon the subject. He continued to sniff
and snort until he had hung his coat up in the back room, and then,
producing from his pocket a crumpled bundle of tissues, he blew his
nose violently.

It was only at that point, you see, that I began to seriously consider
the idea of having an affair, though it had been on my mind, in one
shape or another, for some time. I lived and worked with Jan. I shopped
with him, dined out with him, walked with him and socialised with him.
I even went to wine bars with him. From this you might infer that I am
incapable of striking out in a direction of my own, in any case or
circumstance, but in fact it was quite the opposite. I alone managed
the shop, a florists on the corner of Heigham Road called 'Not Just For
Funerals'. I thought up the name too. I drew up the shopping list and
made sure every item was ticked off, I chose the restaurants we went to
and I steered us along our walks. The friends we socialised with were
my friends, and the wine bars we went to were my favourite winebars.
The simple fact of the matter is that Jan was clingy - suspicious and
ever-watchful - and I can hardly blame him. He was twenty-one years
older than me, having made the common enough mistake of seducing his
old school friend's sixteen year old daughter, arranging that they run
away together and marrying her soon after. Years down the line he's a
rapidly shrinking middle-aged man with no real friends - a barren fool,
prone to illness, weak and lumberous in bed, fond of nothing and
nobody. His young wife's a successful businesswoman, winning wishful
looks from glamorous and lovely young men everywhere she goes, popular
with the girls at the local judo club and a demon dresser too. No
wonder he's ever watchful, and no wonder a look of murder comes over
him whenever he thinks I'm getting too close to a man.

But that morning, of course, the weather had done him no favours. He'd
completely lost his sense of smell. And as luck would have it I'd had
my eye on Manuel, our part-time sales assistant and delivery boy, ever
since we'd hired him. I knew he'd got it for me too, because he didn't
know what to do with his hands whenever we spoke. It was Tuesday, and
he was booked for the whole nine hour shift, so I applied every ounce
of creative thought I could muster to make best of the opportunity. My
mind was fully occupied all the while I arranged displays of azalea and
Christmas cacti in the window, dodged between dragon trees to check on
painted heather and helped bring in the fresh, wet roses from the
delivery van. It was still occupied when Manuel himself arrived at the
shop, fifteen minutes late, and in fact I hardly noticed him at all
until I nearly collided with him.

"I had a dream about you last night," he grinned, playing with his
damp, pyrite-coloured ringlets of hair.

I heard Jan grunt, and knew the remark had aroused his ears and
eyes.

"Well, not really about you," Manuel continued, "but you were
definitely mentioned."

"Are you sure I should be hearing this?" I asked, turning my back to
him and attending to the viburnum.

"Oh, it doesn't mean anything, I'm sure. A stranger in my dream just
told me not to listen to anything you said."

"Well, if you choose to obey this stranger, I'll have to fire you. I
won't stand for insubordination, Manuel. And you shouldn't pay any
attention to errant dreams."

I told him all this quite sternly, as is my wont. Out of the corner of
my eye, I saw Jan return to his Daily Mail, satisfied that he'd dealt
with the issue properly. My plans were far from perfect, but now was
the best time to begin their execution, so I made sure I had Manuel's
immediate attention and pinched my nose. His brow knotted in confusion
- I tipped my head in Jan's direction, and Jan, on cue, sniffed like a
hedge-strimmer starting up. Manuel's mouth made an 'O'. He
understood.

"Come on then - battle stations," I said. "The floor needs hoovering
before we can open up shop."

"Sorry," his hands leapt from his pockets to his hips to his jaw and
back. "I was about..to?" - he trailed off, and began hunting for the
vacuum cleaner.

When he'd started it up, and a hot roar drowned out every sound in the
shop, I began my work in earnest, ostensibly rearranging pots and
baskets in a manner both Jan and Manuel were accustomed to, but all the
while pinching a leaf or stamen here and there. White stargazer lilies,
purple frangipani, daphne mezereum - wherever a smell could be grafted
to a fingertip, I caught it and held onto it, until I'd as many as I
could hold without them bleeding into one another. Then I carried them
over to the office, where we kept the account books and catalogues,
opened them, and began transferring the scents to words and phrases as
quickly-but-meticulously as I could. I made several trips of this
nature, until I was satisfied that I had turned those books into one
incredible code manual. A code of odours. A language in lavender and
pine, mint and almond, citrus and spice.

After making a final scan of the floor, Manuel switched off the vacuum
cleaner and wheeled it into the office. Jan lowered his tabloid and
peered in, just to make sure he didn't blow a kiss at me, or anything
like that.

"Now," I said, ignoring my husband, "I think it's time we got you
started on the accounts."

Again, Manuel looked baffled.

"It'll look good on your CV," I explained, "if you can say you have
experience of keeping books. Here?" I handed him volume one of the code
manual. "Have a look at what I've done and see if you can
follow."

Jan was too witless to question my teaching method, and Manuel too
obedient. He sat down at the desk and began to leaf through the pages.
When the first smells caught him he simply wrinkled his nose, but as
they began to accumulate he became dimly aware of their significance.
He turned pages backward, sniffed closely at certain paragraphs, in
search of the source, read and reread sentences, and soon started
flicking through the other books I'd arranged before him. Eventually,
he turned and looked at me with wild eyes.

"I think I understand, May!"

"Good boy," I said, and the match was lit. It didn't take him long to
pick up on the general points of the language, and then to wield it in
a surprisingly sophisticated manner. We spent all morning picking up
scents on our hands as we demonstrated our wares to customers, then
coming close enough to one another to communicate, all the while hardly
speaking a word. Right under my husband's nose we indulged in as
colourful a discourse as I've ever had.

"My gallant Manuel - we must meet in the Erica heather sometime
soon."

"As soon as we can, May - I burn like iodine for you. I long to suckle
your honey."

"Oh, hanging baskets of Babylon! What rascality! Why, I'd blush if it
weren't so chilly."

"Confound Babylon - how I love your own hanging baskets. How I long to
cradle them like marriage bouquets."

"Soon, Manuel, soon. We must work out a plan."

Thus, a plan was worked out. Manuel would set off earlier than usual on
his delivery round, explaining, in the unlikely event of Jan raising an
eyebrow, that there was a lot to get through today. He'd park the van a
couple of streets away and walk back. In the mean time, Jan - who would
not have budged if it meant leaving me alone with another man - will
have been sent by me to sort something out with the bank. Pay the
mortgage, transfer money between accounts - it didn't matter. When
Manuel arrived back at the shop, I'd be alone.

And thus it was carried through. As soon as my husband was out of
sight, I turned over the sign on the door so it read 'Closed', and
waited, hidden behind pots of ivy. I remember the thrill I felt when I
heard the back door handle click, thrill like the razor stink of witch
hazel flowering inside me, and I was already out of my socks and shoes
when Manuel bolted into the room, his extremities almost afire. We
wrapped around each other like loose cables, or Christmas tinsel, and
soon a whole range of new scents filled the shop, new articulations for
our secret language.

"Handsome, wounded squire, let me cool your hot wounds."

"And let me be your furnace."

"Let me cut your hair."

"Let me throw yours to the fire."

"Let me never forget you."

"Let me never have another like you."

We enjoyed each other's company for so long that we both lost track of
time. I was cradling his head, letting him lean against my breast and
humming a song when we heard footsteps approaching along the drive
outside. Suddenly cold with fear, we quickly unhooked ourselves,
gathered up our pool of clothes and slipped behind the bushy viburnum,
crouching against one another, hands suckered to shoulders. The shop
door opened - the bell jangled. Jan sniffed, and paused, probably
looking around for signs of activity.

"May?" he called. "Where are you?"

He moved toward the office, then the back door, still snorting, his
trainers creaking more suspiciously with each step. Neither Manuel or I
moved, except to continue breathing. Jan seemed to suffer a kind of
shut-down, for he remained stood where he was for some time, itching or
coughing every now and then, probably clueless as to what he should do
next. He hadn't even noticed the shop sign had been turned
around.

Eventually, he began moving again - I didn't know where to, until I
heard the sound of dashing water. He was filling the kettle in our tiny
shop kitchen. I looked Manuel straight in the eyes, anxiously,
sincerely, as if I were preparing to leap across an abyss, before
finally risking a peek through the flora. Half-standing, I saw Jan plug
the kettle into the wall, then take a mug from the sink and empty a
sachet of something into it. I ducked down again.

"I think he's got some kind of instant flu medicine," I hissed.

We both sniffed the air; it was full of us. Realising there was only
one thing for it, I released Manuel from my clench, and stood up
completely. Jan didn't see me until I was standing in the kitchen
doorway. His mouth fell open, limply.

"Let's take the rest of the day off," I said.