by Robin
A burst of slanting rain caught Ted unawares and he dived under the awnings of a jewellers shop in the small town on the eastern slopes of the Eiffel. He’d known it would rain, but had thought he would be back in his little hotel, cravings satisfied, before the promised storm arrived. There was an orchestrated flurry on the street as umbrellas went up and a swirling of raincoats, till then carried over arms in the warmth of the late spring sunshine, as they were flourished into functionality. Here, fifteen years on from the end of the war, the popularity of the Klepper was at a peak. Suddenly the town was full of grey shiny people, glistening and flapping in the rain. Ted was already dreaming, anticipating, drifting away into his fantasies, when a penetrating aroma, like a burst of smelling salts, but much less sharp and more rounded, arrested his attention.
‘The smell, the aroma, the pungency.’ Ted was thinking aloud. ‘It’s always the same.’
It was, indeed, always the same. Ted could not resist it. It had been the smell that had seized him from the start, five years ago on his first visit to Germany. It didn’t smell anything like that in England. It was definitely the smell that had hooked him and it had needed only a moment’s reflection at the time to realise that he was hooked for life. This thing would never release him from its embrace. On that occasion, he had bought almost as much as he could carry and taken it back to England, his suitcase bulging – and smelling. The inside of his suitcase had kept the smell for a year.
‘It must be the wind.’ Thought Ted. The shop was still quite a way down the street, sufficiently far away to ensure he would be drenched, even if he made a dash for it.
‘Hallo Mr English!’ The voice, tinkling and melodic, came from Suzi, who worked at the hotel. ‘Are you going back to the hotel? You will become wet!’
Ted had been staying at the hotel, more of a family guest house than a full hotel, for a month while he researched and worked on his next book. It was a story of two families, one from Snowdonia and one from the Eiffel - which was why he was here. The families would become entwined by love and war. Suzi had become a role model for his German heroine. She looked, talked and behaved exactly as he had imagined Ursula, the central figure in his book from the German side. Now she appeared in a role he had not seen before, dressed for the rain. He stared, but not at her face.
‘Ah, Suzi, thank you!’ At the best of times, Ted still found it difficult to look Suzi in the eye, even when she was “normally dressed”. He found her extraordinarily attractive and he was frightened that her parents, who ran the hotel, would notice and disapprove.
Now he saw Suzi in a new light, encased in a tightly belted Klepper. Her face shone and her whole raincoat shone, from the rain. She had put it on the moment she left the hotel, having seen the dark clouds rolling down off the peaks of the Eiffel to the South West. She had a matching hat, also glistening in the rain, with a brim sweeping down to the front and curling up to the back, a Marlene Dietrich in shiny grey. Her collar was high, keeping out the rain at the back and buttoned high at the front. The whole garment said ‘No entry’ to the rain. Suzi was shapely and it was her bosom, uplifted by the tightness of the belt that caught Ted’s eye. She was more angular than buxom. Rain was dripping from the tip of each breast, perfectly formed by the smoothness of the coat, dripping in a steady, erotic stream.
‘I have an umbrella in my bag. I don’t need it. Will you walk with me?’
‘Suzi, I came out to do some browsing, to bummel in the shops.’
‘On a day like this? Don’t you have a raincoat?’
‘Yes of course, but I thought I didn’t need it.’
‘Did you not look to the South West? Tsk, tsk.’
‘Can I buy you a coffee? I was just on my way.’
‘No thank you, I don’t drink coffee.’
‘Oh.’ It was an “Oh” full of disappointment.
‘But I like tea. May I have a tea?’
Suzi had extracted her umbrella and was now holding it at an inviting angle for Ted.
‘Come on. Everyone will be hurrying in for a hot drink in this weather.’
Walking under the umbrella, millimetres away from his grey, shining vision, Ted was having difficulty with his breathing. The aroma, the smell, was beginning to overwhelm him and if it were not satisfied soon, his craving would get the better of him. He breathed deeply through his nostrils, taking the pungency deep into his lungs. He had never smoked, but he understood the need to let the heavily laden air caress the inside of his lungs whenever the object of his desire was in aromatic range. Suzi had noticed, but said nothing. She shuddered, as if suddenly cold, and she involuntarily pressed against him, using a steadying hand on the umbrella as a decoy. Ted, in his short-armed shirt, felt the wet slippery cladding of her rubber sleeve against his arm. Now it was his turn to shudder. He wanted the walk to the coffee shop to last forever and so he took the chance to pause at each of the little shops and boutiques to do some unnecessary window shopping in the rain. But the smell was getting stronger with each step. Finally the climax was reached and he went inside to be overwhelmed by the object of his fixation, the inside of a German coffee house. Once inside, he stood transfixed as Suzi unbelted, and then methodically unbuttoned herself from top to bottom, one slow button at a time. It was an erotic undressing. As far as Ted was concerned, when the coat was off, revealing a thin printed cotton dress with short sleeves, Suzi might well have been naked; everything else she wore was immaterial. With trembling fingers, Ted took the coat off her shoulders and taking all the time he dared muster, placed the shiny wet coat on a hanger and smoothed it into position at the end of the clothes rack, where it had a chance to dry.
When the coffee and tea came, Ted raised the coffee cup to his nose, sniffing the aroma deeply as he held it to his face, cupping the white porcelain in his hands.
‘I think you are hooked on the smell, Mr English! Is that it? Are you addicted to a smell? I noticed that you were smelling something when we were walking here in the rain. I like the rain. The rain is my best friend. I like the smell of the rain, so I understand what a smell can do. I thought you might be smelling the rain as well and I was quite, well, almost excited.’
‘I think I might be.’ Ted missed the boat. ‘In England, coffee smells feeble, if at all. Here, it is rich and aromatic. I was hooked on it the moment I set foot in Germany five years ago. The smell offers all the anticipation and enjoyment of the real thing. When I smell the aroma, I know it is coming and nothing can stop me. I must have it. Instant coffee will not do. It is artificial, like plastic with no smell texture or taste, it is nothing like the real thing.’
Letting the thread of the smell of rain slip away, Suzi stayed with the smell of coffee.
‘So what is most important for you? The smell of the coffee or the drinking?’
‘The totality. The smell is the portent. The drinking is the consummation.’
‘You make it sound like making love! Is it more important than making love?’
‘Coffee? No of course not, I mean I don’t know, I er. . . I don’t think so!’
‘Ahah, what does you wife think about that?
‘I don’t have a wife, yet. I haven’t met her, whoever she is. At least, if I have, she doesn’t know it.’
‘Will you know it?’
‘I suppose so. Don’t you think?’
‘It’s time for me to get back. I have to prepare for dinner.’
‘Me too. I have some writing to do.’
Ted went to get Suzi’s coat which had now dried off. He brought it to her and gave it a swirl before holding it open for her. The swirl wafted its own aroma over Ted, obscuring the ambient atmosphere of the coffee. Once again he trembled as he saw Suzi’s bare arms slide into the apertures of the sleeves.
‘Oh no.’ he thought. ‘Here we go again.’
Suzi buttoned up her raincoat as slowly and methodically as she had taken it off. The process culminated in a pulling and tightening of her belt, once more creating the image of ‘No entry’. She appeared oblivious to the stare and once out on the street, raised the umbrella and unashamedly entwined her shiny grey arm around Ted’s as she walked him back to the hotel. She basked in her new found intimacy.
Back in his room, Ted lay on the bed and wondered if coffee would ever be the same again.
Robin
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