Various Flavors of Coffee (39 page)

dozen Remington typewriters, and various other appurtenances of civilization.

The very last thing I come across is a stout mahogany box containing a number of glass tubes of scent and a pamphlet headed
The Wallis-Pinker Method Concerning the Clarification and Classification of the Various Flavours of Coffee.With Notes, Cupping Charts and Illustrations, London, 1897.
It is too heavy to fit on the mule, and quite worthless, but I am pleased nevertheless to see that both the samples and the text have defied Hector’s prediction, and survived intact the terrible heat of the tropics.

Part IV

Milk

[
sixty-four
]

“Aftertaste”—the sensation of brewed coffee vapours, ranging from carbony to chocolaty to spicy to turpeny, released from the residue remaining in the mouth.

—lingle,
The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

hey say the price of coffee will soon be double what
it was last year.” Arthur Brewer glanced from his paper to his wife. “In New York, apparently, investors who speculated on a fall are throwing themselves off skyscrapers rather than pay their

debts.”

“You make it sound as if suicide were an economy measure,” Emily said tartly, pushing her eggs to the side of her plate and lay-ing down her knife and fork. “Presumably the poor creatures thought they had no choice.”

Arthur frowned. He had not really meant to initiate a conversation about the day’s news, only to fill the silence over the breakfast table with an occasional observation. Mainly he did this to show

that by reading the paper he was not actually neglecting his wife— in fact, now he came to think of it, it was almost as if he was reading it for both of them, filleting out the little titbits that were appropriate for her consumption.The glance of silent reproach she gave him every morning when he picked up
The Times
while they ate, a glance that was already habitual, was surely unjustified. And the way she coughed ostentatiously when he lit his pipe . . .

He turned back to the paper, looking for something with which to change the subject. “I see there is a move to have Oscar Wilde’s remains transferred to the cemetery at Père Lachaise. They’re even talking about raising some sort of memorial.”

“That poor man. It’s a disgrace that he was sent to prison in the first place.When his only crime—”

“My dear,” Arthur said mildly,
“pas devant les domestiques.”
He nodded to where the junior maid, Annie, was clearing the sideboard.

Emily seemed, he thought, to sigh a little, but she said nothing.

He sipped his tea and turned the page.

The doorbell rang, and the maid went to answer it. Both of them, without appearing to, listened to see who it was.

“Dr. Mayhews is in the drawing room,” Annie announced. Immediately Arthur was on his feet, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.

“I will go and explain matters to him first,” he said. He did not add “man to man,” but it was clear that was what he meant. “If you wait here, my dear, I will send Annie up when he is ready to see you.”

Emily waited.
Occasionally the rumble of male voices penetrated from the drawing room next door, although they were too indistinct for her to catch the words. It hardly mattered, however. She knew what Arthur would be saying.

She poured herself some more coffee. The Wedgwood cups were a wedding present from her father. The coffee was not Pinker’s, though. After Castle had started being so heavily advertised to the middle classes, it was no longer considered quite good enough for tables such as Arthur’s. In fact the coffee he bought— or rather, that his housekeeper bought for him—was little better, a cheap Brazilian masquerading as a Java mix, but Emily was picking her battles one by one.The issue of the housekeeper’s honesty was not one she was inclined to fight just yet.

“We have been
married for almost two years,” Arthur explained. “And she is . . .” He stopped.“This is somewhat difficult for me.”

Dr. Mayhews, a bony man in his early fifties, said,“You may be sure that you can tell me nothing I have not heard many times be-fore.”

“Yes, of course.” Even so, Arthur hesitated again. “After our marriage, my wife seemed to undergo a change. On our honeymoon she was delightful, but since that time she has become increasingly . . . opinionated. Shrewish, one might almost say, if one were being judgmental. She becomes easily distressed. She kicks against the restrictions of married life—well, perhaps that’s only natural; it’s a big change from the freedom she enjoyed previously. Her father spoiled her, in my opinion. She has always been spirited—that I have no problem with. But this present mood of hers—she can be silent one hour, then so vociferous it is hard to get a word in edgeways. And this is not just women’s chatter: she will converse on radical ideas, politics, with as much frantic passion as a
sans-culotte.
Sometimes she barely seems to make sense.” He stopped, aware that he was perhaps mixing up a medical history with his own resentments. But Dr. Mayhews was nodding gravely. “Is there conjugal incompatibility?” the doctor inquired delicately.

“Well, of course— Oh.” Arthur realized what the other man was asking and blushed.“Not on the honeymoon. But afterwards.”

“An excess of amativeness?” “Sometimes, yes.”

“And at those times, is she wanton?”

“Really, Doctor.This is my wife we are speaking about.” “Of course, but I must be fully aware of the facts.”

Reluctantly,Arthur nodded.“Sometimes, yes. Shockingly so.” “And is she any easier after intercourse? In her mind, I mean?” “Yes, generally, she is. Although that can also be when she is

most difficult.” He cleared his throat. “There is something else. When we married, my wife was not intact.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows.“Are you quite certain?”

“Yes. It gave me quite a shock. I have been wondering if it could somehow have a bearing on her present condition.Whether she has been affected by some unsavory experience in her past.”

“It is certainly possible. Does she suffer from nervous inefficiency or exhaustion?”

“I suppose she does, at times.”

“Have you ever suspected hysteria?” the doctor asked quietly. “She has never screamed blue murder, or fainted in company, or

run down the street in her nightgown, if that is what you mean.” Mayhews shook his head. “The word ‘hysteria’ is a diagnosis,

not a description of a kind of behavior. It applies to malaises ema-nating from the female parts—hence the term, from the Greek
hystaros,
or ‘womb.’ There are differing degrees of hysteria, just as there are degrees of severity in cases of influenza, or leprosy, or any other sickness.”

“And you think hysteria may be the problem here?”

“From your description, I am almost sure of it. Does she over-indulge in coffee?”

Arthur stared at the doctor.“Yes, she does. Her father is a coffee merchant. She has always drunk copious amounts.”

Mayhews shook his head again. “The female is very different from the male,” he announced. “The reproductive force is so strong that it can irradiate every part of the frame. When it becomes disordered, as it may do all too easily—even from something as simple as an excess of coffee—it can carry its confusion into every department, even into the deepest recesses of the mind itself.Are you familiar with the works of Dr. Freud?”

“I have heard of him.”

“He has proved that these complaints are generally hystero-neurasthenic in origin. Once the pelvis becomes congested ... Have you noticed any unusual turgescence? Any abdominal humidity?”

Arthur nodded miserably.“I thought it was just—the way she is built. A sign of her passionate nature.”

“Passion and hysteria are very close cousins,” the doctor remarked darkly.

“Can it be cured?”

“Oh, yes. Or rather, it can be treated. And it may become less acute with time. Generally women are less prone to these problems once they have a child, the body having fulfilled its natural function.”

“So what is to be done?”

“I will examine your wife, but I am quite clear in my mind that she will need to be referred to a specialist. Don’t worry, Mr. Brewer.There are a number of excellent practitioners dealing with this sort of malady.”

Three days
later the motor car drove Emily to Harley Street for her appointment with the specialist. It was a prosperous area, the consulting rooms grander than the old doctors’ warrens around Savile Row. A line of vehicles waited by the curb, and the street was thronged with people going in and out of the imposing doorways. Most, she noticed, were women.

“You may wait,” she said to Billit, the chauffeur.

He nodded and flipped down the step so that she could alight onto the pavement.“Very good, ma’am.”

Number 27 was the widest and grandest of the doorways. She entered and gave her name to a uniformed doorman.“Please, take a seat,” he said, indicating a row of chairs. “Dr. Richards will be with you shortly.”

She sat and waited, closing her eyes. God, she was tired. It was exhausting, this constant fighting with Arthur. Not that they were fighting exactly, that was not the right word. It was more that they were chafing, struggling against the harness each had slipped on with their wedding, as if the marriage were a coach and they were two horses, unaccustomed to the task, pulling in different direc-tions. She had tried so hard, initially, to be the wife he wanted her to be. She was meant, she knew, to manage him by hints and suggestions, by showing him what made her happy rather than by nagging or needling. But the truth was that she liked a good argument, always had. Arguments between friends, it seemed to her, were simply the quickest way for two intelligent people to exchange strongly held opinions. But to Arthur, an argumentative wife was a blatant challenge to his authority. He—it transpired— desired silence, order, acquiescence; while she desired . . . She wasn’t sure quite what she desired, exactly, but certainly not the suffocating boredom of the house in Eaton Square, its endless succession of high rooms filled with the beating of clocks, like so many mechanical hearts, and all the important issues of the world reduced to this:“the woman’s sphere”; a few yards of domestic territory, and even that only held in fiefdom from her husband.

The problem had not been the marriage itself so much as the expectations that went along with it. It was one thing, apparently, for her to deliver leaflets and sample coffees when she was single; as an MP’s wife her function, suddenly, was ceremonial. She was expected to be at Arthur’s side for every social visit, every tea party,

every debate—never to speak, but simply to applaud him indulgently, a visual embodiment of the Approval of Woman.

Yet, simultaneously, he had been betraying her.The word was a melodramatic one, but she could think of none better. The Liberals, for whom she and countless other suffragists had worked tirelessly over the years, had suddenly decided to drop female suffrage. Campbell-Bannerman himself—the jovial, kindly leader she had met in the House of Commons—had pronounced it a “distraction.” And Arthur, to whom she was by this time engaged, had gone along obediently—no, enthusiastically—with his party’s new line.“It is politics, my dear.And politics is simply a question of pri-orities. Would you really put votes for women ahead of pensions for miners?” It had been clear from his tone that he now considered the former a kind of indulgence.“Come,” he had added,“we must not let this change anything between us.The bonds between a husband and a wife are, surely, strong enough to survive a political disagreement.” He did not appreciate that her feelings for him and her political principles sprang from the same impulse. It had not been a matter of political strategy; it had been a question of trust.

Arthur was not a cruel man, but he was a conventional one, and if the conventions were cruel then the man would be as well, without ever quite realizing or intending it. Too late she saw that not all idealists are radicals. In the House,Arthur expressed his political personality through a fanatical devotion to that institution’s myriad regulations and points of order; at home, he expressed it with disapproval and sniping . . . and now this ridiculous business with Dr. Mayhews.

Strangely, though, being told she was ill had brought out a tenderness in Arthur that had previously been absent. He had known what role to slip into at last: the protective husband. Perhaps he felt a little guilty, too, now that he was able to categorize her behavior as a malady rather than a character defect. So he had started

bringing her cups of tea, ordered a series of special restorative dishes from the cook, and inquired solicitously after her health at every opportunity. It was driving her mad.And if she professed the slightest opinion on any subject, his face adopted an anxious expression as he reminded her that Dr. Mayhews had left instructions that passion was, for the time being, best avoided.

Passion! It was lack of passion that was the problem, not a surfeit of it—God knew she had tried to show him that. After so long bound by the different but equally restrictive codes that curtailed the behavior of an unmarried woman, she had actually been looking forward during their engagement to what she thought of as the greater freedom of the marriage bed. From the men who had adored her thus far, she had come to expect a certain amount of adoration as her right. But the reality had been shatteringly different. After the initial awkwardness—inevitable, she suspected, for two intelligent people of their time and place—she had just begun to hit what she thought of as her stride when the honeymoon came to an end, and with it, any apparent inclination Arthur had to continue its pleasures. Relations took place, but they were perfunc-tory. Any signs of pleasure on her part seemed almost to put him off: once or twice her enthusiasm had alarmed him so much he had actually brought proceedings to a halt. Evidently his taste for orderliness in domestic affairs extended to the bedroom as well. And so she had resigned herself to remaining unfulfilled in that respect. It was not so great a hardship—it was, after all, the condition in which she had lived most of her adult life—but it was a disappointment.