Remembered scents of pub life (and Estee Lauder's Pleasures, in passing)

The Black Narcissus posted a beautiful portrait of Bouquet de la Reine last week.  It led me back to a particular scent memory; hardly more than a passing scene, from over a decade ago.

One of the first jobs I ever had was in a pub.  At the time I was a student.  I wanted to travel, but had no money or obvious skills.  I went to the library and found a travel magazine article listing the 'top' home brew pubs in Britain.  It was the beginning of the real ale revival in the UK; the article mentioned 20 or so pubs.  I posted letters to all the ones that seemed rural, asking to work in return for accommodation.

Quite a few publicans responded, mostly out of curiosity.  There were also a couple of offers; so soon enough, I disembarked from a train near the English-Welsh border.  My new boss picked me up, and we drove for an hour or so, deep into the countryside.  Green and perfect and hills unfolded, storybook-like, cushioned between hedgerows, and dotted with sheep and small houses.  Shropshire then was a quiet, forgotten place, much as described in A.E. Houseman's poem.  Cob nuts crunched under the tires as we crawled up the main street of town, which was anchored at the bottom by a stony Anglican church and crowned at the top by dilapidated medieval ruins.  There were six pubs, a few shops, and a general sadness, of better days long past.  Young people left, looking for work in the Midlands; old people replaced them, buying cottages at discounted prices.  It was barely big enough to be called a town.  I loved it right away.

www.virtual-shropshire.co.uk

For lovers of home brewed beer, our pub was a landmark.  On weekends, busloads of CAMRA* members arrived, complaining about cloudy pints in high summer (when we couldn't control the cellar temperature), or whining about the weather, the traffic, and our limited food menu.  But the rest of the time - particularly in fall and winter - it was a locals' pub, frequented by a regular round of townspeople, farmers, retirees, artisans, seasonal workers, and fabled alcoholics who seemed to have always been there, rooted to their personal spots.  There was neither music nor vending machines, but always dogs.  A troupe of Morris dancers practised in the yard, scaring small children on their way to the loos.  We hosted darts and conker tournaments, and the occasional band.  Once a week, on brew day, the whole place stank sweetly of hops and yeast.

There was a less picturesque side to pub life, of course.  One morning a woman came to the door, on dole day, to beg me to take her husband's money from him, or, failing that, not to serve him.  There were fights.  People who drank in order not to live.  People who, in drinking, displayed what they would otherwise have wished hidden.

I learned many life lessons at the pub.  One of them was about illicit affairs.  There was a couple who used to meet in our restaurant lounge, whenever the woman's husband was away.  This didn't happen often - the husband was a regular customer, sometimes calling in for a rejuvenating pint before his morning shift.

www.mes-parfums.com

With the exception of the husband, everyone who frequented the pub knew about and colluded in hiding that affair.  We barely had to look up to know she had arrived, for we could smell her perfume, something pinkly floral and utterly feminine.  In my memory, it is Pleasures, but I can't be sure of that.  Maybe I have superimposed her over Liz Hurley in those lush ads, surrounded by flowers.  (I dislike Pleasures now - it's what I imagine a Stepford Wife-like robot would be wearing if it came to throttle me in my sleep.)

She was in her late 40s.  Blond; with piercing blue eyes a wonderful smile, framed in a face worn by small town life.  She exuded kindness, and we loved her.  Her husband sometimes yelled at her in public.  Whatever the real dynamics between them may have been, we were willing to dissemble for her.   A whiff of that perfume, and we'd close the restaurant lounge partition and nod quietly to her fellah.  He'd excuse himself from the locals' lounge, and walk round to meet her.  Apart, they were each quiet, gentle souls.  Together, their faces lit up like thousand-watt sun lamps.   It was something to see.

Eventually, she left her husband and moved in with her lover.   This being a small town, it was a scandal, for a while.  But I saw them, years later, at another pub, looking happy and content.  I can't help feeling good about that.

Life.  So complicated!  I almost miss being a barmaid :)



*CAMRA = campaign for real ale