Various Flavors of Coffee (12 page)

“Good! Where shall it be?”

“Shall we say, under the opera clock, at two?”

For reply she squeezed my arm, which she kept hold of as we headed to the street. Shaftesbury Avenue was bustling with carriages heading to the ball, and groups of people in carnival thronged the pavements. Suddenly I heard a shout.“Wallis! Wallis! Wait up!” I turned. A Pantaloon and a Punchinello, their faces made up with copious amounts of greasepaint, were hailing me as they descended from a cab, accompanied by two female marionettes. Despite the make-up, I recognized Hunt and Morgan.

“Where have you been?” Punchinello cried. “In Kettner’s.”

“No—where have you
been
? Hunt is published at last—a villanelle in the
Yellow Book
! And you nowhere to be found for weeks!”

“I have been busy—”

Pantaloon snapped his fingers.“We knew inspiration must have struck.”

“Not with poetry. I have had employment.”

“Employment?” Punch shrank in mock horror. “The last time we saw you, you had been asked by that funny little gnome—what was his name—”

“May I introduce my companion for the evening, Miss Emily Pinker?” I said hastily.

Morgan made an exaggerated “Ah!” with his rouged lips. “Charmed. And this is . . . This is . . . um, Miss Daisy. And Miss Deborah.”

The marionettes giggled as I took their hands.They were, I realized with a sinking heart, almost certainly
demi-mondaines.
And I

was utterly responsible for Emily’s welfare that night. If there was any suggestion of impropriety, it would be me Pinker would blame.

“I’ve met you before,” Daisy said to me under her breath. “Don’t you remember me?”

I stiffened.“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“I didn’t look like this, sir, that’s for sure.” Her friend shrieked with laughter.

“You’re an actress?” I suggested desperately.

“You could call it that,” Daisy said. “A performer, anyway.” Deborah shrieked again.

By now we were all surging into the Opera colonnade, and it was possible to contrive to be separated from our companions. Inwardly I cursed Hunt and Morgan for imbeciles.What had they been thinking of, bringing such women here? Fortunately, Emily seemed not to have noticed anything amiss.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” she said, gazing at the crowd.

There must have been over a thousand people present, all dis-guised. Even the foyer, bars and rehearsal rooms were decked out in carnival-themed sets. A full orchestra was tuning up in the pit, though it was much too crowded to dance, and almost too noisy to hear. Waiters in elaborate costumes pushed through the crowd with trays of wine; acrobats on stilts performed wherever they could find a space; jugglers and dancers jostled us as we moved through the throng. I lost sight of Emily for a second on the stairs, then found her again, and I guided her to a quiet corner on the balcony where we could watch the antics below.

“This would have been unthinkable even a few years ago,” I said.

By way of reply she reached for my hand.Then, to my astonishment, she put my fingers to her mouth, biting them hard with sharp little teeth.

“You are very jolly this evening,” I said, surprised.

Her hands reached around my head as she brought our lips together. Our masks collided. Laughing eyes looked into my own— laughing eyes that were dark, not gray, and I stiffened as I realized that it was not Emily Pinker in my arms but someone else entirely. With a gasp of laughter she spun away from me: the hair under the Pierrot cap was dark, not fair. It must have happened when we were separated on the stairs.

I hurried back—but everywhere I looked there were harlequins. I grabbed one by the shoulder and said desperately,“Are you Emily?” She cackled.“If you like, m’sieur.”

I glimpsed Hunt in the ballroom and struggled across to him. “Have you seen Emily?” I shouted over the din.“I’ve lost her.”

“How perfect,” he murmured vaguely. “By the way, how’s the writing going?”

I shrugged.

“Lane says he will take a short story next quarter. But I was talking to Max—do you know Max?—and he thinks a sonnet sequence is the way to go.To make a name for myself, I mean.”

“Max? You mean—Max Beerbohm?”

He nodded. “Ernest Dowson introduced us. You must know Ernest.”

“Only by reputation,” I said enviously.

“Yes, we’re a jolly lot at the Café Royal these days.” He peered around at the crowd with studied insouciance, pulling out a cigarette holder. “I really should find Bosie. I promised him I would look out for him. He does so hate a crowd.”

“Bosie!” I exclaimed.“Not—Lord Alfred Douglas?”

He nodded. “Oscar has written him a love letter from prison, had you heard? He is still completely infatuated.”

Bosie! Now I was feeling sick. Oscar Wilde’s lover—the original wonderful boy—the sonneteer—and Hunt had been socializ-ing with him! Had promised to look out for him! “Will you introduce me?” I said eagerly.

His glance seemed to imply that, as Bosie’s great friend, one’s first duty was to keep the encroaching hordes of would-be poets away, if necessary by beating them off with a stick.

“Hunt—please,” I begged.

“Oh, very well. If I’m not mistaken, that’s him over there.”

I followed the direction of his gaze—and immediately glimpsed Emily, or what might be Emily, stepping through the crowd.“Blast!” I said.

“What is it?”

“I’ll be right back.”

I followed the elusive figure into the area behind the stage, a warren of small rooms decorated for the occasion with painted drapes. Here the atmosphere was even less restrained. Men and women were openly embracing—masked women were being passed from mouth to mouth, shrieking; I saw exposed breasts, arms slipping between thighs, a gloved hand fingering a bared nip-ple. More than one dressing room door was locked, and in some cases couples were queuing for the use of them, barely able to contain their impatience as they kissed and fondled. I felt even more sick: if Emily had come here, there was no telling what she might have seen.

I pushed my way back to the ballroom. Hunt had disappeared, nor could I see anyone who looked like an innocent young woman searching frantically for her lost partner. I thought: if I can-not find her, perhaps she will be able to find me, at least. I walked desperately through the crowd, back and forth, trying to make my-self visible. After a few minutes I glanced up at the balcony. A harlequin with a Pierrot cap was being passionately embraced by a masked male figure in an otterskin jacket.Then more figures came between us; when I looked again, they were gone.

• • •

At a quarter
to two, ill with anxiety, I went outside. She was un-der the clock, waiting. I hurried forward.“Are you all right?”

“Of course.” She sounded surprised.“Were you worried?” “A little.”

She slipped her arm through mine.“Did you think I had taken offense?”

“At what?”

She leaned in close.“I know quite well it was you, so don’t pretend it wasn’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

Her only answer was a laugh. A remarkably filthy laugh, as it happens.

“Where are we
going now?” she asked as we walked down Drury Lane.

“I’d rather thought of putting you in a cab.”

“I want to go to the Cave of Heavenly Harmony,” she announced.

“Oh, Lord—however do you know about that place?”

“I read about it in the
Gazette.
It’s quite near here, isn’t it?” “Just around the corner. But it really isn’t suitable—”

“If I hear one more time what isn’t suitable for me, I shall run away,” she said. “Really, Robert, for a poet you take a remarkably conventional view of womanhood.We aren’t all quite as delicate as you seem to imagine.”

“Very well,” I said with a sigh.“The Cave of Heavenly Harmony it is.”

The Cave was a dingy cellar bar which, having realized it was a place not worth visiting for any other reason, had installed a piano player and a stage.The idea was that you told the pianist what you would perform, and he would accompany you while you sang for

whoever happened to be there. It was a favorite of young aristocrats, who loved to go and roar out the verses of bawdy music hall ditties. Sure enough, there was a group of swells there when we arrived. One of them was singing, with help from his friends on the refrain:

A pretty little novice in her convent woke at dawn, dawn, dawn, And looking from her lattice she spied upon the lawn, lawn, lawn, A handsome shepherd, quite intent

On playing with his instrument, His instrument so long, long, long!

I glanced at Emily. She seemed oblivious to the innuendo of the lyrics.

“I’m going to put my name down,” she said. “Whom do we speak to?”

“The waiter, I suppose.” I beckoned to the man, who presented us with a list of songs. The swells finished their final chorus, to cheers and applause. A portly Italian man got up and sang a mournful lament in his native language, one hand clasped to his heart throughout. Then Emily’s name was announced—I should have reminded her to give a false one. She stood by the piano, looking suddenly rather nervous. The audience whooped. She swallowed. There was a brief, agonizing silence. Then the piano player launched into his music, and she into the song.

It was a piercingly beautiful ballad—sentimental perhaps, but in her mouth the romantic clichés became sweet and genuine:

It is not wealth and state that smooth the way, Nor bid the desert bloom;

The ploughman at his furrow can be gay, The weaver at his loom....

It was very lovely. However, it was not an ideal choice as far as the Cave’s regular patrons were concerned. They had come here for coarse choruses and carousing, not sentimental ballads. Soon they were catcalling, whistling, and generally making a nuisance of themselves, and it was all poor Emily could do to finish.The mo-ment she had done so, a blade jumped up on stage and launched into a music hall number, to roars of appreciation.

“Oh,” said Emily, returning to the table somewhat crestfallen. “Perhaps this place is a little low after all.”

“I thought you were wonderful,” I said, patting her shoulder. “Anyway, it is probably time to go now.”

“Capital. I’ll pay the bill.”

As we left
the Cave, I spied a cab coming round the corner, and whistled to it.“Limehouse,” I told the cabman, handing Emily up. “Good-night, Robert,” she said, smiling at me. “I’ve had the

most wonderful time.” “And I too.”

She leaned down and kissed me quickly on the cheek, and then the cabman flicked his whip. I breathed a sigh of relief.The night had passed off without any major disasters, thank God.

I retraced my steps through the crowds to Wellington Street. I had never seen Covent Garden like this. It was as if a kind of madness had taken hold. The streets were thronged with drunken people in costumes and masks, chasing each other through the colonnade. Couples were openly embracing. I entered the relative calm of the brothel at Number 18 with a sigh, as another person might sigh with relief on reaching their club. But even here, it seemed, all was chaos. In the waiting room I found half a dozen girls naked except for blindfolds, playing a kind of blindman’s buff: they were wandering around with outstretched arms trying

to catch the men, the idea being that whoever they caught would have to go with them. Of course, being blindfolded they were mostly blundering into each other, and groping with their hands to ascertain each other’s sex, much to the amusement of their watching quarry. I sat a little while, watching and drinking a glass of absinthe, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for these frol-ics. It was a relief when I was finally able to take one of the girls upstairs, conclude my dealings with her rapidly, and return by cab to St. John’s Wood.

[
fifteen
]

Mouthfeel: firmness, softness, juiciness, or oiliness are measured in the mouth much as they would be measured by the finger.

—
lingle
, The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

was in no better a mood when I awoke the next morn-
ing. The cause of my bad temper was not hard to pinpoint. So Hunt was published. I should have been pleased for him, but actually all I could feel was a dull throb of envy. Beerbohm— Dowson—Lane—even Bosie! While I had been flirting and drinking coffee, my friend had been getting on with the serious

business of forging a reputation.

Ignoring my thick head, I pulled a stack of mauve paper toward me. Damn it, I would write a villanelle myself, just as a warm-up.

Half an hour later I had six lines composed. But it is one of the features of villanelles that they become harder, not easier, as you go on. And I had to be at Pinker’s.

I glanced at the clock. Perhaps my employer would excuse me a morning’s work, given that I had taken his daughter to a ball the night before. I decided to continue for another hour.

At the end of that time I had crossed out three of my six lines. And now I was ridiculously, hopelessly late. I put the poem to one side, intending to pick it up when I returned.

Needless to say, when I came back that evening I looked at what I had written and immediately saw that it was worthless. I tore it up and told myself I had had a lucky escape—were it not for the necessity of going out, I might have wasted the whole day try-ing to make something of it.

Or, alternatively, a small voice in my head reminded me, I might have succeeded.

Over the days
that followed I made a concerted effort to do some writing. My feelings for Emily, apparently just the kind of thing in which poets had found inspiration for centuries, provoked only some flat, insipid sonnets which I burned at once. My real poem to her was the Guide. I am certain that it became subtly altered as a result of our growing affection; my passion scenting its prose, as a cask of wine is said to take on the flavors of the air in which it is stored.

Pinker, however, was always on hand to sniff out any taint of the fanciful or ornate. When I wrote that a Mysore had “the scent of curries, a whiff of arid Indian streets, elephant dung topped by a Maharaja’s cigar,” he packed me off to the zoo, pointing out that I had never smelled an arid Indian street, never eaten curry, and was no doubt unfamiliar with elephant dung as well. He was right, of course, although I kept the reference to cigars. He was equally in-dignant when I tried to compare the floral bouquet of a Yemeni mocca with “the rose-petal vapors of a maiden’s breath.”“There is no such aroma, Robert.You only wish it to be so,” he cried, exasperated. But I noticed that he did not call Emily over to prove it. The same thought had obviously occurred to her: when her father had left us, her cheeks were quite pink.