Barry Lee Thompson

During one of my fellowship meetings with Carol Major at Varuna in 2016, it was suggested that I could write a brand new story, an upbeat tale to balance the overall tone of the sixteen existing stories in my collection Broken Rules. I rose to the challenge, and decided to write a personification of joy. And so entered one who epitomised that emotion, who strode through the night in a cloud of Jean Patou’s Joy — once the most expensive perfume in the world.

This character, with their quirky ways and taste for the finer scents in life, came to life on the page, and the story was easy to write. And fun, which is the most important thing.

When the collection was published by Transit Lounge in 2020, I was interviewed on 3CR’s Published… Or Not. David McLean observed that the conclusion to the story ‘Fragrant’ is seedier than its opening, and ‘pretty stark and confronting’. He wasn’t wrong!, and his observation still brings me much satisfaction.

David might have asked: where did the opening promise of joy go? And I might have responded that it’s there, in the ‘hollow unpeopled spaces’ — still to be found in the ‘tunnels and stairways’, among ‘dripping water and decades of dust and dirt and oily yellow light’. That perhaps joy can thrive amid the noise of ‘rats scratching and guttural rumblings from … trains’. I guess joy is in the eyes and ears of the beholder, or something like that.

You can hear me reading ‘Fragrant’ on the Vision Australia Radio literary program Cover to Cover on Friday 14 November (repeated Sunday 16 November) as part of the latest Elwood Writers special. The episode theme is ‘Stories of Change & Place’. Thanks as always to Cover to Cover producer and presenter Tim McQueen for allowing us to read our work on air.