The hour after rain

Rain here does not linger. It comes in off the Atlantic sideways, soaks the slate roofs of Penzance in a minute, and is gone. What stays is the smell.

Stand in the yard behind the loft just after a shower and you can take it apart. First the stone itself: cold, faintly metallic, a little like a struck match that has gone out. Then the gutters, where the moss has woken up and is drinking. Then, under everything, the mineral quiet of wet granite, which smells of almost nothing and somehow of the whole town.

We spent a winter trying to name that first note. Petrichor is the word for it, the scent of rain on dry ground, and the perfumer's version is an accord rather than a single material. Juniper gave it an edge of cold air. Iris and violet leaf gave it the softness of the hour afterwards, when the roofs steam and the light comes back grey-silver.

The base had to be almost silent. Cedar, and a musk that stays close to the skin and keeps its voice down. Anything louder and the rain was gone again.

It is the quietest thing we make, and the one we reach for most.

Wet Slate is a roof in Penzance, an hour after the rain.