Ambergris

Photo Stuart Walker

When she heard about the whale that had beached on golden sands she asked immediately what kind it was. And when they told her, she put on her nice dress and her new boots and new coat (well, new to her, they were second-hand from the  Salvation Army shop in Whitehaven) and went straight down there to see it.

The whale's shape made her think of the tadpoles tipped onto the desk at school that had dried out to become dark commas on the wood grain, the frogs within them still ticking away. Could a whale be the larval stage of some monster we hadn't met yet?

When no one was looking she put her hand into one of the whale's orifices and fished about. She came out with a fistful of a waxy substance, stuffed it into her coat pocket and walked back into the town.

Dogs barked at her as she passed them. Cats arched their backs and hissed. Birds stopped singing.

In the toilet of The Puncheon she took out a small bead of the waxy stuff and rubbed it under her arms, on her throat and on her chest. 

She remembered the hint from a girls magazine about pulse points and put it in a few other places as well. She couldn't smell it at all, it seemed odorless. But she had read about the magic power of ambergris and wanted to harness it for herself. Ambergris was formed in the intestines of the sperm whale. It was so powerful that the beaks of giant squids had been discovered dissolved within lumps of it. The Chinese called it dragon's spit.  You could drink it too. At home she had a book with a recipe for a cocktail named Shrub Liqueur which called for a thread of ambergris to be added to rum, almonds, cloves, cassia, and the peel of oranges. And you could scent cigarettes with it. During the covid outbreak some people believed that carrying a ball of ambergris could help prevent them from contracting it. 

But she had one use for it and one use only.

She was meeting her ex in the Three Tuns later and this was the night she was going to win him back.