L’Air Du Temps

It’s 1984. I’m in my bedroom dressing myself for my performance in the school recital. My year 4 class and I have been practicing in class for months. I’m 9 years old.

I put on a navy dress with long sleeves, a flared skirt that drops from the waist and finishes mid-thigh. A pale pink ballerina has been machine-embroidered onto the part of the dress that would curve out over my left breast. Although I don’t have any breasts yet because I’m nine years old. The seams of the too-small dress strain as I wriggle and yank my way into it over my head. It’s made of pullover sloppy-joe material and, when it fit me properly, would have been cosy and comfortable. A dress to love. I don’t remember that dress ever fitting me properly. I don’t remember it being new. I have no idea where it came from.

I go into my parents room. The feature wall of busy brown and cream flecked, tripped-out pattern was fashionable fifteen years ago by the people who used to live here before we moved in six years ago. The tufted, apricot-hued chenille bedspread clashes awkwardly. I go to my mother’s dresser and gaze at my reflection as I twist my hair into a tight bun. I slide a few brown bobby pins from the glass dish in which Mum kept them and jab a few into the base of the bun to keep it in place. I reach for the Cedel firm hold hairspray and jettison a stream of molecules at my head. It stings my nose and I cough and crouch on the floor while I wait for the cloud to dissipate. I wrap my fingers around a faux-bronze dresser handle and pull myself upright, making the perfume bottles decorating the top of the dresser dance and chime together. Amongst my mother’s full-size bottles of Rive Gauche and Chanel No. 5 was my tiny sample-sized bottle of Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps. I used this, my only perfume, on special occasions.

The doves fly in tandem under a layer of dust. Guardians of the perfume within, the plastic wings of the tiny doves create indents in my palms when I ease the plastic stopper out of the bottle. I press the stopper lightly back into the bottle and balance it between thumb and forefinger, tipping it with a quick flick of my right wrist, as I have seen my mother do, coating the base of the stopper with the amber-coloured perfume. I set the bottle on the top of the dresser, steady it with my left hand and pull the stopper out again, careful not to spill any of the perfume. I sniff at the stopper. Fading sunlight breaks through the venetian blinds in stripes, making the tip of the perfume stopper glisten.

I dab at the centre of each of my wrists and under my ears – first my left, then my right. I am ready for the performance at the school.

We’re standing on stage at the front of the hall. I’m in the back row. I wasn’t one of the taller students so, in retrospect, I wonder whether I was at the back so that my tuneless voice didn’t detract from the more pitch-appropriate pupils. We drone together, thrusting an ear-splitting rendition of the Octopus’s Garden onto our parents. Joanne Barr in the second from the back row faints. It’s hot under the lights. I’m feeling light-headed. My too-tight dress is biting at my armpits. Sweat trickling down my back chafes against the navy pile inside of the dress. My stomach tightens. I know this feeling well. I’m helpless. I cup my hands and vomit into them. Wingnut-eared Dave Jones is standing next to me. He turns and looks at me in disgust, his mouth downturned while still singing about the Octopus and his Garden. ‘I’d like to be, under the sea’ or anywhere else but here, right now. The song finishes, our parents clap, most of the pupils bow and beam smiles of accomplishment. Line by line the 1984 year 4 class of Beecroft Primary School snakes down off the tiered wooden steps and exit through the burgundy curtains stage left.

Mrs Clacker, my year 4 teacher, frog-marches me to the bathroom and pushes me towards the sink. I wash my hands and my face and swab at the front of my dress with balls of wet toilet paper. I’m crying. A ballerina dress and a ballerina bun and an episode in mortifying humiliation. Mum comes into my bathroom, kisses my ballerina bun and together we walk to the red Toyota family station wagon and drive home. I don’t know whether the dabs of Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps were enough to cover up the smell of vomit or shame.

Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps was invented in 1948 as a celebration of the buoyancy of society after WWII. It was given to my Mum by a well-meaning friend, but she passed it on to me. Not only did the perfume not suit her but the tiny bottle was the perfect size for a nine-year old wanting to feel like a grown up. Plus, I really liked those little doves on the top. I followed the conventions of saving it for special occasions, and applying it sparingly as I had seen Mum apply her own perfumes.

Fans of fragrances describe the perfume as ‘reminding them of their grandmother’ and being their ‘earliest perfume memories’. They wrap the name and image of the perfume in meaning that creates positive associations for themselves. The name, the bottle and the perfume itself helps jog memories, of people, of times passed.

Perfume also helps me remember. But the memories start when I see or visualize the bottle. For years I have had this continuous narrative ‘I can’t smell’ which has distorted my memory and associations around perfumes. I don’t immediately associate Nina Ricci or plastic doves with feeling nauseated under the theatre lights in year four. I think of empty perfume bottles as clutter, rubbish, while for others they contain the keys to their past.