Various Flavors of Coffee (3 page)

I realized he was dictating.“Oh, of course. Do carry on.”

He frowned at my impertinence. “Ten percent will be held back against future samples. I remain, et cetera, et cetera. Take a seat.” This last comment clearly being addressed to me, I sat. “Coffee, Jenks, if you please,” he told the secretary. “The four and the nine, with the eighteen to follow. I’ll sign those while you’re gone.” He turned his gaze back to me. “You told me you were a writer, Mr.Wallis,” he said sourly.

“Indeed.”

“Yet my secretaries have been unable to find a single work by you in any Charing Cross bookshop. Mr. W. H. Smith’s subscription library has never heard of you. Even the literary editor of
Blackwood’s Magazine
is strangely unfamiliar with your work.”

“I am a poet,” I said, somewhat taken aback by the diligence of Pinker’s researches.“But not a published one. I thought I had made that clear.”

“You said you were not yet famous. Now I discover you are not yet even heard of. It is hard to see how you could be the one without being the other, is it not?” He sat down heavily on the other side of the table.

“I apologize if I gave the wrong impression. But—”

“Hang the impression.
Precision,
Mr. Wallis. All I ask from you—from anyone—is precision.”

In the Café Royal, Pinker had seemed diffident, even unsure of himself. Here in his own offices, his manner was more authoritative. He took out a pen, uncapped it and reached for the pile of letters, signing each one with a rapid flourish as he spoke.“Take me, for example.Would I still be a merchant if I had never sold a single sack of coffee?”

“It’s an interesting question—”

“It is not. A merchant is someone who trades. Ergo, if I do not trade, I am not a merchant.”

“But a writer, by the same token, must therefore be someone who
writes,
” I pointed out.“It is not strictly necessary to be read as well. Only desirable.”

“Hmm.” Pinker seemed to weigh this. “Very well.” I had the feeling I had passed some kind of test.

The secretary returned with a tray on which were four thimble-sized cups and two steaming jugs, which he placed in front of us.“So,” his employer said, gesturing to me.“Tell me what you make of these.”

The coffee was evidently freshly brewed—the smell was deep and pleasant. I tried some, while Pinker watched expectantly.

“Well?” he demanded. “It’s excellent.”

He snorted.“And?You are a writer, are you not? Words are your stock-in-trade?”

“Ah.” I realized now what he wanted. I took a deep breath.“It is completely . . . invigorating. Like an Alpine sanatorium—no— like a seaside rest cure. I can think of no better, balmier, more bracing pick-me-up than Pinker’s breakfast blend. It will aid the digestion, restore the concentration and elevate the constitution, all at once.”

“What?”
The merchant was staring at me.

“Of course, it needs a little work,” I said modestly.“But I think the general direction is—”

“Try the other one,” he said impatiently.

I started to pour from the second jug. “Not in the same cup!” he hissed.

“Sorry.” I filled a second thimble-sized cup and sipped from it. “It’s different,” I said, surprised.

“Yes, of course,” Pinker said.“And?”

It had not really occurred to me before then that there was cof-fee and
coffee.
Of course, coffee might be watery, or stale, or over-brewed—in fact, it was often all those things—but here were two coffees, both palpably excellent, whose excellence varied from each other as chalk from cheese.

“How might one deal with such a difference in words?” he said, and although his expression had not changed I had a sense that this was the nub of our conversation.

“This one,” I said slowly, gesturing at the second cup,“has an al-most . . . smoky flavor.”

Pinker nodded.“It does indeed.”

“Whereas this one,” I pointed at the first,“is more . . . flowery.”

“Flowery!” Pinker was still staring at me. “Flowery!” But he seemed interested—even, I thought, impressed. “Here—let me make a—” He pulled the secretary’s pad toward him and jotted down the word
flowery.
“Go on.”

“This second cup has—a sort of tang.” “What sort of tang?”

“More like pencil shavings.”

“Pencil shavings.” Pinker wrote this down, too.“Exactly.”

It was like a parlor game, enjoyable but pointless. “While the other—chestnuts, perhaps?” I said.

“Perhaps,” Pinker said, making a note.“What else?” “This one,” I indicated the second cup,“tastes of spice.” “Which spice?”

“I’m not sure,” I confessed.

“Never mind,” Pinker said, crossing out
spice.
“Ah, there you are. Capital. Pour it, will you?”

I turned.A young woman had entered with another jug of cof-fee. She was, I noted automatically—in those days I considered myself something of a connoisseur on this particular subject— rather attractive. She wore the Rational style of dress that many professional women were adopting just then. A tailored jacket, buttoned high up to the neck, worn above a long skirt without a bustle, revealed little of the slight figure underneath. Her features, though, were alert and lively, and her hair, although carefully pinned, was elegant and golden.

She filled one of the cups and handed it carefully to me. “My thanks,” I said, catching her eye with a frank smile as I took it. If she noticed my interest she did not reveal it; her face was a mask of professional detachment.

“Perhaps you would take notes, Emily,” Pinker said, pushing his pad toward her. “Mr. Wallis was just trying to decide which spice our finest Brazilian reminded him of, but inspiration has temporarily deserted him.”

The secretary seated herself at the table and raised her pen. For a moment, as she waited for me to resume, I could have sworn I discerned a hint of amusement—of mischievousness, even—deep in her gray eyes. But it was hard to be sure.

I drank some of the new coffee, but to begin with I could taste nothing at all.“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head.

“Blow on it,” Pinker suggested.

I blew, and drank some more. It was, I realized, very ordinary compared to the other two. “This is what they serve at the Café Royal!”

“Very like it, yes.” Pinker was smiling.“Is it—ha!—is it rusty?” “A little.” I tried some more. “And dull.Very dull.With a faint aftertaste of—wet towels.” I glanced at the stenographer. She was busy writing it all down—or rather, I now saw, making a series of curious, almost Arabian squiggles on her pad. This must be the

Pitman’s Phonographic Method I had read of.

“Wet towels,” Pinker repeated with a chuckle. “Very good, though I’m afraid I have never actually tasted a towel, wet or dry.” The secretary’s pen stopped, waiting. “And it smells like—old carpet,” I said. Immediately, my words were translated into more

dashes and strokes.

“Carpet!” Pinker nodded.“Anything else?” “A whiff of burnt toast.” More squiggles.

“Burnt toast.Well.That will do, I think, for the moment.”

The girl’s notations did not even occupy a full page of her notebook. I felt a foolish desire to impress her. “So which one of these is yours?” I asked the merchant, gesturing at the jugs.

“What?” Once again Pinker seemed surprised by the question. “Oh, all of them.”

“And which do you want to advertise?” “Advertise?”

“Of this one,” I said, pointing to the first jug, “you might say . . .” I raised the cup.
“A choice concoction, the cream of the colonies,

with an ambrosial chestnut taste.”
Was it my imagination, or did the secretary give a faint snort of laughter, instantly suppressed? “Though I’ve noticed most advertisements do tend to stress the health side of things. Perhaps:
It’s the choice chestnut taste that cheers the constitution.”

“My dear Wallis,” Pinker said,“you would make a truly terrible advertising man.”

“I don’t believe I would.”

“People want their coffee to taste of coffee, not chestnuts.” “We could tell them how good the chestnut part of it is.” “The essence of advertising, of course,” he said thoughtfully,“is

to conceal the truth, by revealing only those parts which coincide with what the public wants to hear.The essence of a code, on the other hand, is to fix the truth precisely for the benefit of the few.” “That’s very good.” I was impressed.“That’s almost an epigram.

Er . . . what’s this about a code?”

“Young man,” Pinker said, looking at me intently, “listen carefully to what I am about to say. I am going to make you a very important proposal.”

[
five
]

e live, Mr. Wallis, in an Age of Improvement.”

Pinker sighed and pulled a watch from his fob pocket. “Take this timepiece,” he said, holding it up by its chain.“It is both more accurate than any watch produced in previous decades, and less costly. Next year, it will be cheaper and more accurate still. Do you know how much the latest Ingersoll sells for?”

I confessed myself ignorant on this score.

“A single dollar.” Pinker nodded. “And then consider the benefits. Consistency—the first requirement of trade. You doubt it? More accurate timepieces mean more accurate railways. More accurate railways mean more trade. More trade means cheaper, more accurate timepieces.” He picked up a pen from the table.“Or take this safety pen. It has its own inkwell, ingeniously contained within the barrel—do you see? Which means my secretaries can write more speedily, so we can do more business, et cetera, et cetera. Or—” He reached into his fob pocket again and dug something out with his thumb and forefinger. “Look at this.” He was staring intently at a tiny nut-and-bolt. “What a remarkable thing this is,Wallis.The bolt was made in—oh, Belfast, shall we say.The

nut, perhaps, was made in Liverpool.Yet they fit together exactly. The threads, you see, have been
standardized.
” The stenographer’s pen was flying across her pad by now—she must have been under instruction to record all these extempore speeches of her employer’s, or perhaps she was doing it for her own education.“A few years ago every workshop and machine room in the country produced their own design of thread. It was chaos. It was impractical. Now, thanks to the impetus of Improvement, there is only one.Are you a believer in the theories of Mr. Darwin?”

Taken aback by the abrupt change of topic, and cautious of giv-ing offense—Darwin was a topic on which my Oxford tutors had tended to become heated—I said that, on balance, I probably was. Pinker nodded approvingly. “What Darwin shows us is that Improvement is inevitable. For species, of course, but also for countries, for races, for individuals, even for nuts and bolts. Now.

Let us consider how Mr. Darwin’s ideas may benefit the coffee trade.”

I tried to look as if I might conceivably have some useful suggestions to contribute to this subject, and had only chosen not to voice them out of deference to the greater wisdom of my companion. It was a look I had often been required to employ in my tutors’ rooms at Oxford. However, it was not needed now: Pinker was in full flow.

“First, the brewing. How may this process be Improved? I will tell you, Mr.Wallis. By steam.”

“Steam? You mean—a mill?”

“In a manner of speaking. Imagine if every café and hotel had its own steam engine for making coffee. Just as in the manufacture of cotton or corn, we would see consistency. Consistency!”

“Wouldn’t it make the cafés rather—well, rather hot?”

“The engine I am describing is a miniature one. Jenks, Foster,” he called,“bring in the apparatus, will you?”

After a brief pause, and a certain amount of banging, the two

male secretaries wheeled in a trolley on which sat a curious mechanism. It seemed to consist of a copper boiler, together with a quantity of brass pipes, levers, dials and tubing.

“Signor Toselli’s steam-powered coffee-machine,” Pinker said proudly. “As demonstrated at the Paris Exhibition. The steam is forced through the grounds one cup at a time, giving a much superior taste.”

“How is it heated?”

“By gas, although we anticipate an electric model eventually.” He paused.“I’ve ordered eighty.”

“Eighty! Where will they all go?”

“To Pinker’s Temperance Taverns.” Pinker jumped to his feet and started pacing. Behind him, Jenks was lighting the boiler: the apparatus hissed and whistled softly as its owner spoke. “Oh, I anticipate what you are about to say.You wish to point out that there exists, at this time, not a single Pinker’s Temperance Tavern in the land. But they will come,Wallis; they will come. I intend to apply the principles of the safety pen and the Ingersoll timepiece. Look at London. A pub on every corner! Gin palaces, most of ’em, where the working man is fleeced of his hard-earned wages.What does his intoxication benefit him? It makes him a drudge, a wife beater. It makes him so incapable that he is often unable even to stagger home, and must spend the night in the gutter, ruining him for employment the following day.Yet coffee—coffee!—offers no such drawbacks. It does not incapacitate: rather, it invigorates. It does not dull the senses, but sharpens them. Why should we not have a coffee-house on every street instead? It would be an Improvement, would it not? Yes? Then, if it is an Improvement, it must happen—it
will
happen. Darwin says so! And I will be the one to
make
it happen.” He sat down, dabbing at his forehead with his sleeve.

“You mentioned a code,” I said.“I still don’t quite see—” “Yes. Demand and supply, Mr.Wallis. Demand and supply.”

He paused, and I waited, and the secretary’s dainty hand paused on her pad. She had exceptionally long, elegant fingers. One could imagine them playing a violin or pressing on the keyboard of a pi-ano. One could imagine them, in fact, doing all sorts of things, some of them deliciously improper . . .

“The difficulty with my plans,” Pinker explained, “is cost. Coffee is expensive stuff—much more costly than beer or gin. Well, it comes from further away, of course.You order it through an agent, who in turn gets it from another agent—it’s a wonder it reaches us at all.” He looked at me. “And so we ask ourselves— what?”