Various Flavors of Coffee (44 page)

Still she did not come. Until, finally, just as the room was beginning to thin, I turned and found her behind me, replacing an empty glass on a tray.

“Tell me one thing,” I said quietly.“Are you happily married?” She stiffened.“You’re very direct.”

“There’s no time for diplomacy. Are you happy with that man?”

She glanced over at where Arthur was holding forth.“Is happiness the purpose of a marriage?”

“I’ll take that as a no. May I see you?” She was silent for a moment.“Where?” “You tell me.”

“Come to Castle Street tomorrow at four.” She put the glass down.“You know, Robert, you’ve become really quite fierce,” she murmured as she moved away.

• • •

Fierce:
that was one word for it. What I had felt, when I looked across that room and saw her profile—even before I met the look of tired accusation in her eyes—was a fierce emotion, certainly. But it was rather more than that.

I have experienced, in my life, desire for many women; tender-ness for a few; affection and admiration for even fewer.There were some who were a challenge; some who were a diversion; others for whom my lust itself was a kind of sweet ecstatic torment.

But there was only one woman for whom I ever felt that awful ache, that gulping, yearning emptiness and despair.And what made it even worse was the knowledge that it might so easily not have been this way—that I had once had fulfillment almost within my grasp, then simply threw it away: had smashed it as surely and savagely as a child smashes a nut to pieces with a stone.

Love without kisses is not love,
the Galla warriors sang.What is it, then? What is this thing that remains after mere desire has departed? What is the name for this thing without kisses, that burns more fiercely than a kiss—this thing more terrible than love?

Without her I am hollow, a vessel waiting to be filled. Without her I am nothing, a book without words.

The next day
I was there at four, and she was not. The café was closed up, its windows shuttered, and from the air of decay it had clearly been that way for some time. I noted that, although Pinker had changed the sign that originally said Pinker’s Temperance Tavern, he had been unable to resist leaving some indication of his philanthropic purpose. Underneath the windows an inscription painted on the black wood still read:
For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.
No wonder the place hadn’t prospered.

I paced up and down, waiting. It was after five when she finally appeared, walking purposefully down the street toward me.

“In here,” she said, producing a key.

I followed her inside. Dust sheets covered the marble tables, but the coffee-maker behind the bar looked clean. Emily went to a cupboard and pulled out a jar of beans.“These are fresh.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I brought them here myself, last week.” I did not understand.“Why?”

“I come here sometimes on my own to drink good coffee. What we have at home is awful. And occasionally I need a quiet place to meet . . . certain people. Somewhere my husband is not aware of.”

“I see.”

She glanced at me sharply.“Do you?”

“I’m not going to judge you for taking lovers, Emily. God knows I’ve had my share of those.”

She ground the coffee, and the aroma filled the room. “Is there anyone at the moment?” I asked.

She smiled.“A lover?” “What’s funny?”

“It’s just that you’re very blunt these days. No, I don’t have a lover at the moment. I find myself rather too busy for that.”

I watched her for a while.“What kind of coffee is that?” “I thought you might know without me telling you.”

I went over to her and smelled the beans she was grinding.The scent was fragrant, but not as floral as the coffees I had come to know in Africa: there was a brightness, too, a lemony sharpness . . . “Jamaican,” I said.

“Actually, it’s Kenyan—the large berry. It’s only recently started to come onto the market. I get it from a specialist importer in Spitalfields.”

“Yet another thing I have got wrong, it seems.”

When the coffee was done she carried it to one of the tables. I picked up my cup: as well as the lemon and fragrant notes, there was a rich black-currant depth. “It has been a long time,” I said at last, “since I had a cup as good as this. I’m surprised you still own these cafés, actually.”

“We don’t. They lost money and had to be sold. But when I found out that the new owners intended to turn them back into public houses, I insisted on keeping just this one. I don’t think Arthur has even realized it exists—he is only interested in the stocks and shares, the ones that make money.” She sighed.“It’s the law of the jungle, isn’t it—survival of the strongest, and the rest be damned.”

“Having spent some time in a jungle,” I said,“I can tell you that its laws are considerably more complex than one imagines.”

She put down her cup.“Robert?” “Yes?”

“Will you tell me how Hector died?”

So I told her the whole thing, leaving out nothing except the detail about the eyeballs and the testicles. As I spoke, the tears poured silently down her cheeks. She made no move to brush them away, and although I longed to kiss them off her pale skin I did not move toward her.

“Thank you,” she said softly when I had finished. “Thank you for telling me, and for what you did, as well. I know you weren’t fond of Hector, but I’m glad you were there at the end.That must have been a comfort to him.”

“You loved him.” “I was very young.”

“But you loved him . . .” Now it was my turn to hesitate.“You loved him fully. Not as you loved me.”

She turned her head away.“What do you mean?”

“As you told your father that morning in his office, you and I were friends.We were never lovers.”

Somewhere outside, there was a sudden rattle as a noisy knot of children ran down the street, running their sticks along the railings. There was a shout, an excited cry, and then they were gone again.

“What I told my father,” she said, “was that I wanted to marry you.That should have been enough, surely.”

“But you were in love with Hector.”

“That was already long over.As you are presumably aware, since you read my letters. He preferred his bachelor freedom. And you—” she turned to me at last, and her eyes were accusing, “you fell in love with someone else soon enough.”

“Yes.”

“Who was she?”

“Her name was Fikre.”

“And did you . . .” She made an ironic gesture. “ ‘Love her fully’ ?”

“I did.”

“I see.”

“Emily . . . I have done a lot of thinking, these past few years. I asked you to meet me today because I wanted to apologize.”

“To apologize!”

“Yes. My letter. I was—discourteous.” “Discourteous!”

“It would mean a great deal to me if you were able to forgive me.”

“Let me get this straight, Robert,” she said, setting her cup down rather firmly in its saucer.“You are asking my forgiveness for the manner in which you broke off our engagement, and for nothing else?”

“I am aware that there are probably other things—”

“Well, let us just think what those other things might be.You asked my father for my hand in marriage, without ever happening to mention to me that you were thinking of doing so.You spent

every evening after we had been together in the fleshpots of Covent Garden—did you think I didn’t know? Jenks saw you there on more than one occasion, and he was only too happy to pass on that information, believe me.You went off to Africa in the most fearful sulk, and you wrote me those horrid letters in which you made it quite clear that you felt trapped, even before you fell in love with someone else—”

I looked into my cup. “Believe me, I would do anything— anything—to make amends.”

She made a scornful noise. “Is it too late?” I asked. “Too late for what?”

“To put all that behind us.To start again.”

She said incredulously, “You mean, to be your . . . to be what that woman was to you?”

I glanced at her.Two spots of color burned in her cheeks. I said slowly,“I want to hold you, and to be inside you, and for us to make each other feel ... well, I can’t explain that part of it in words, but perhaps you already know. All I can tell you is that learning to feel pleasure—the pleasure of love—is like learning to taste—your palate changes, just as it does when you learn to cup coffee.”

“And this is what you have learned on your travels, is it? How to insult women?” she said furiously.

“I had rather thought that the continuation of my feelings for you after so long was a compliment.”

“Anyway, it’s quite impossible.” “Because of Arthur?”

“Not in the way you imagine.” “Perhaps in time—”

“No.You don’t understand. First, because I am not that sort of woman. Don’t protest, Robert, there’s nothing either of us can do about it. Second, because I can’t afford a scandal.”

“But what about the others? The men you meet here?”

“Those I meet with here are women.” “Oh . . .” I said, baffled.“But why?”

She looked me in the eye.“We need somewhere private to plan our criminal actions.”

I still didn’t understand.

“I am what’s called a suffragette,” she explained.“Although it is a name we dislike intensely.An attempt by the newspapers to make us sound like silly ineffectual females.”

“Ah.” I thought about it. “There’s been a certain amount of criminal activity, hasn’t there—slogans painted on walls, women trying to demonstrate in the House of Commons—”

“That was us. At least, some of it.”

“But what will happen if you’re caught?” “We’ll go to prison.And it isn’t ‘if.’ It’s ‘when.’ ” “You might be lucky.”

She shook her head. “There’ll come a time when the movement will need prisoners—martyrs, if you like. Imagine it, Robert: these ‘silly girls,’ these ‘suffragettes,’ actually prepared to be imprisoned for our cause. They won’t be able to call us the feeble sex then.”

“And your husband?”

“He doesn’t know. He’s bound to find out sooner or later. But I’m prepared for that.”

“Perhaps he’ll divorce you.” “Not him. It would look bad.”

“And—why is it so important? I mean . . . the chance to elect an MP . . . to send some pompous oaf like Arthur to the House— is it really worth risking prison for?”

She looked at me with a gaze that contained only utter certainty. “It is the only way left. They promised it to us so many times, and every time they lied. Does one MP matter? Perhaps not. But to be denied it—to be denied the recognition that we are hu-man beings with rights as great as any man’s—that matters.When

an army advances, Robert, it isn’t they who choose the place of bat-tle but those who want to oppose them.Voting—representation— is where those who oppose us have made their stand.The House of Commons is their citadel. And so we must storm it, or accept forever that we are not their equals.”

“I see.”

“Will you help us?”

“Me!” I said, astonished.“How?”

“This café—if our group is to grow we’ll need places like this. Somewhere where messages can be left, and meetings held, and where people who are interested can come to find out more. I’ve been looking out for someone to manage it for me. Yesterday, when you said you were at a loose end, it struck me that you would do it very well. I could ask my father to release you, for the afternoons at least. I’m sure he would agree to that.And you could live above the shop—there are two floors upstairs, completely empty: it would save you paying rent.”

“I’m flattered, Emily, but surely you can see it’s impossible. I have had articles published, things are starting to happen for me. I can’t give up my freedom still further.”

“Oh yes. I see perfectly.” Her voice trembled with anger. “When you said just now you would do anything to make amends, that was just another pose, I take it? When you asked me to sleep with you—that was just a pretty speech? You talk about the pleasures of sex readily enough—so long as it is pleasure without responsibility, just another one of your ‘exquisite sensations.’ Do you remember that phrase, Robert? It was how you described kissing me, once. It was a long time before I realized just how horrible that was—what it said about how you saw me.” She glared at me.“You had better go.”

There was a long silence.“Oh—very well,” I said.

“What are you waiting for, then? Go.” She turned away, preparing to ignore me.

“No—I mean ‘very well, I will run your blasted café.’ ” “Really?” She sounded surprised.

“I said so, didn’t I? Don’t ask me why. I seem to have a ridiculous inability to say no to anyone in your family.”

“It would be a considerable undertaking,” she warned.“Once it became known that this is where we gather . . . Put it this way, you’d best keep a pickaxe handle behind the bar.”

“I’m sure we’ll cope.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You do realize I will never sleep with you?”

“Yes, Emily. I do understand that.”

“And the salary will be quite small.You will not be able to af-ford your usual cohorts of whores and concubines. Why are you smiling?”

“I was just recalling a previous negotiation with a Pinker over the terms of my employment. I am sure that whatever I am paid will be sufficient for my modest needs.”

“ ‘Modesty’ is not a word I readily associate with you.”

“Then perhaps I can surprise you. However, I do have some conditions.”

“Such as?”

“I’d want to get rid of those ridiculous mottoes. It’s going to be hard enough to get people to come here without them thinking I’m going to lecture them about the joys of temperance.”

“All right.What else?”

“No blends. I’m damned if I’ll take coffees from all over the world, only to mix them all up into one nameless sludge.”

“And you really think you can make a profit that way?”

“I have no idea,” I said.“But then, do you really care? I suppose I hope to avoid making a loss.”

She put out her hand. “In that case, Robert, we have ourselves a deal.”

[
seventy-one
]

Experience is essential in developing a complete flavour language and comprehension of the tremendous number of flavour nuances that hide in the background of general smell and specific taste sensations we know as coffee. Gaining this type of experience takes time. There are no short cuts.