Various Flavors of Coffee (4 page)

“We ask ourselves,” I suggested, dragging my attention back to him,“how the supply could be Improved?”

Pinker snapped his fingers. “Exactly! We’ve made a start with this Exchange.You’ve heard of the Exchange, I take it?”

I had not.

He placed his hand on the bell jar in which the printing machine still clicked and clattered quietly to itself, spooling its line of symbols endlessly onto the floor. “The London Coffee Exchange will revolutionize the way we do business. It’s linked by submarine cable to New York and Amsterdam. Prices will standardize—all across the world.The price will fall—it’s bound to.” He shot me a crafty look.“Can you spot the difficulty, Mr.Wallis?”

I thought.“You don’t actually know what you’re getting.You’re buying by numbers—on cost alone. You want to find the good stuff—for your taverns—and pass on the rest.That way, you get the benefit of the lower prices, and other people get the dross.”

Pinker sat back and regarded me with a smile.“You’ve got it, sir.

You’ve got it.”

The apparatus suddenly emitted a wheezing, bubbling screech. Jenks pulled some levers, and an unpleasant gargling sound issued from its several throats as liquid and steam together hissed into a miniature cup.

I said, “If you have a code—no,
code
’s not quite the word—if you have a trading
vocabulary,
a way of describing the coffee you and your agents have fixed in advance, then even though you’re in different countries—”

“Exactly!” Pinker picked up the bolt, took the nut in his other hand, and placed them together. “We have our bolt and we have our nut.The two will fit together.”

Jenks placed two tiny cups in front of Pinker and me. I picked mine up. It contained no more than an egg-cup’s worth of thick black liquid, on which floated a honeycomb of hazelnut-brown froth. I rotated the cup: the contents were dense and sluggish, like oil. I raised it to my lips—

It was as if the very essence of coffee had been concentrated into that tiny morsel of liquid. Burnt embers, woodsmoke and charred fires danced across my tongue, caught at the back of my throat, and from there seemed to rush up directly to my brain . . . and yet it was not acrid. The texture was like honey or molasses, and there was a faint, biscuity sweetness that lingered, like the darkest chocolate, like tobacco. I finished the tiny cup in two gulps, but the taste seemed to grow and deepen in my mouth for long moments afterwards.

Pinker, watching me, nodded. “You have a palate, Mr.Wallis. It is rough and somewhat untutored, but you can apply yourself in that sphere. And—more importantly—you have the gift of using words. Find me the words that can capture—can
standardize—
the elusive taste of coffee, so that two people in different parts of the world can telegraph a description to each other, and each know exactly what is meant by it. Make it authoritative, evocative, but above all
precise.
That is your task. We shall call it . . .” He paused. “We shall call it The Pinker-Wallis Method Concerning the Clarification and Classification of the Various Flavors of Coffee. What do you say?”

He was looking at me expectantly.

“It sounds fascinating,” I said politely.“But I could not possibly do what you suggest. I am a writer—an artist—not some manufacturer of phrases.” My God, the coffee from that machine was strong: I could feel my heart racing from its effects.

“Ah. Emily anticipated that this might be your response.” Pinker nodded toward the secretary, whose head was still lowered demurely over her notebook.“At her suggestion, I took the liberty of establishing your father’s address and sending him a telegram about this offer of employment.You may be interested to see the Reverend Wallis’s reply.” Pinker pushed a telegram slip across the table. I picked it up: it started with the word
Hallelujah!
“He seems quite keen to be relieved of the burden of supporting you,” he said drily.

“I see.”

“ ‘Tell him allowance terminated stop. Grateful opportunity stop. God bless you sir stop.’ ”

“Ah.”

“And in the light of your being sent down—your father men-tions it in passing—taking orders or indeed schoolmastering are avenues now probably closed to you.”

“Yes,” I said. My throat seemed to have gone dry. Jenks placed another tiny cup of coffee in front of me. I threw it down my throat. Fragrant charcoal and dark chocolate flooded my brain. “You mentioned fantastic wealth.”

“Did I?”

“Yesterday, at the Café Royal. You said that if I entered into your . . . scheme, we would both become fantastically wealthy men.” “Ah, yes.” Pinker considered.“That was a figure of speech. I was employing . . .” He glanced at the secretary. “What was I employing?”

“Hyperbole,” she said. It was the first time she had spoken. Her

voice was low, but again I thought I discerned a faint note of amusement. I glanced at her, but her head was still bent over the notepad, recording every word with those damn squiggles.

“Exactly. I was employing hyperbole. As a literary person, I’m sure you appreciate that.” Pinker’s eyes glinted. “Of course, at the time I was not fully apprised of your own somewhat straitened circumstances.”

“What remuneration—exactly—are you suggesting?”

“Emily here informs me that Mrs. Humphrey Ward was paid ten thousand pounds for her last novel. Despite the fact that she is the most popular writer in the country and you are completely unknown, I propose to pay you at the same rate.”

“Ten thousand pounds?” I repeated, amazed.

“I said the same
rate,
sir, not the same
amount—
once again I have to warn you of the dangers of imprecision.” Pinker smiled— the brute was enjoying this. “Mrs. Ward’s opus is approximately two hundred thousand words long—or six shillings and thruppence a word. I will pay you six and thruppence for every descriptor adopted for our code. And a bonus of twenty pounds when it is complete.That is fair, is it not?”

I passed my hand across my face. My head was spinning. I had drunk far too much of that damn coffee. “The Wallis-Pinker Method.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It must be called the Wallis-Pinker Method. Not the other way round.”

Pinker frowned. “If a Pinker is the originator, surely Pinker must have the greater share of the credit.”

“As the writer, the bulk of the work will fall to me.”

“If I may say so,Wallis, you have not yet fully grasped the principles by which business is conducted. If I want to find a more amenable employee, I can simply go down to the Café Royal and get myself one. I found you within five minutes, after all.Whereas

if you want to find yourself another employer, you will be hard pushed to do so.”

“Possibly,” I said. “But no two writers are exactly the same.

How can you be sure that the next man will do as good a job?” “Hmm.” Pinker considered.“Very well,” he conceded abruptly.

“The Wallis-Pinker method.”

“And, as this is a literary work, I will need an advance. Thirty pounds.”

“That is a very considerable amount.” “It is customary,” I insisted.

To my surprise, Pinker shrugged.“Thirty pounds it is, then. Do we have an agreement?”

I hesitated. I had been going to say that I would have to think about it, that I must take advice. I could already imagine the sneers of my friends Hunt and Morgan if I ever told them of this commission. But—I could not help it—I glanced at the girl. Her eyes were shining, and she gave me . . . not a smile exactly, but a kind of tiny signal, the eyes widening with the briefest nod of encouragement. In that moment I was lost.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” the merchant said, standing up and offering me his hand. “We start in this office tomorrow morning, sir, sharp at ten o’clock. Emily, will you be so good as to show Mr.Wallis out?”

[
six
]

“Acerbic”—an acrid and sour sensation on the tongue.

—
lingle
,The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

s we reached the bottom of the stairs I stopped her.
“Would it be possible to look round the warehouse? I am curious to know more about the business to which Mr. Pinker has

decided I am to be apprenticed.”

If she understood that I was inviting her to make fun of her employer, she did not show it.“Of course,” she said simply, and led me into the vast storeroom I had glimpsed earlier.

It was a curious place—devilish hot, from the line of roasting drums that stood to one side, the flames of their burners bright in the gloom. The boat had been unloaded now, and the big doors onto the jetty were closed, with only one fat blade of sunlight pushing through the crooked gap between them.There were windows, high above, but they admitted little illumination. Rather, the air was full of a peculiar mistiness; caused, I now saw, by a thick

dust of cotton-like fibers which floated all around us. I reached into it; the air eddied around my hand.

“Coffee parchment,” she explained.“Some of the beans we receive have not yet been milled.”

Her words meant nothing to me, but I nodded. “And all this coffee belongs to Pinker?”

“Mister
Pinker,” she said, with a little emphasis on the title, “owns four warehouses, of which the two largest are in bond.This is merely the clearing house.” She pointed. “The coffee comes in along the river, by boat. Then it is sampled, weighed, milled, roasted and placed in its proper location, according to its country of origin. In this store we have, as it were, the whole world. Over there is Brazil; over here is Ceylon. Indonesia is behind us—there is not so much of that: the Dutch take most of the crop.The pure arabicas we keep over here, for safety.”

“Why must pure arabicas be kept safer than the rest?” “Because they are the most valuable.” She took a step toward a

stack of plump jute sacks. One was already open.“Look,” she said. Her voice seemed to thrill with excitement.

I looked.The sack was filled with beans—iron colored, gleaming, as if each one had been individually oiled and polished. She scooped up a handful to show me. They were small, each one notched like a peanut, and as they fell back through her fingers they hissed like rain.

“Mocca,” she said reverently. “Every one a jewel.” She pushed her arm in up to the elbow, swirling it around with a soft, hypnotic gesture that was almost a caress, releasing a great waft of that dark, charred aroma. “A whole sack like this is like a sack full of treasure.”

“May I?” I slid my arm in beside hers. It was a curious sensation: I saw the beans closing around my wrist, as liquid might, but they were dry and light, as insubstantial as chaff. The rich, bitter

smell filled my nostrils. I pushed deeper. Amongst the slippery, oiled smoothness of the beans, I thought I felt, for an instant, something else—the soft dry touch of her fingers.

“Your Mr. Pinker is quite a character,” I said. “He is a genius,” she said calmly.

“An impresario of coffee?” As if by accident, I slid my thumb gently over her wrist. She stiffened and withdrew her arm, but otherwise she did not react. I had been right: there was a curious kind of mischief here, or perhaps, it would be truer to say, a kind of confidence: this was a woman who did not simper and shriek for the sake of it.

“A genius,” she repeated.“He means to change the world.” “With his Temperance Taverns?”

I must have sounded amused, because she said abruptly,“That is part of it, yes.” As if drawn back by some sensual force, she dipped her hand into the sack again, watching the beans drip between her fingers, dark as beads of ebony or jet.

“And the rest?” I prompted.

She looked at me coolly.“You think him ridiculous.”

I shook my head.“I think him misguided.The working man is never going to prefer arabicas to gin.”

She gave a dismissive shrug.“Perhaps.” “You disagree?”

Instead of answering she scooped another handful of beans, letting them spill slowly from her palm as she tilted it from side to side. I suddenly realized what that dim, sepulchral warehouse reminded me of. The overpowering smell of coffee was like the smell of incense, and the dim, dust-filled light was like the gloom of some great cathedral.

“These are not just beans, Mr.Wallis,” she said, her eyes fixed on the tumbling black drops.“They are seeds.The seeds of a new civilization.”

She glanced up. I followed her gaze, toward the window that

looked down from Pinker’s office.The coffee merchant was standing at the glass, watching us.

“He is a great man,” she said simply.“He is also my father.”

She withdrew her hand
from the sack, wiping it daintily on a handkerchief as she stepped toward the burners. “Miss Pinker,” I said, catching her up.“You must allow me to apologize—I had no inkling—if I have offended—”

“If you should apologize to anyone, it is to him.” “Your father, though, is not aware of my remarks.” “Well, I shall not tell him if you do not.”

“And I must apologize for . . .” I hesitated. “For my behavior toward yourself. It was hardly appropriate to someone in your position.”

“What behavior was that?” she asked innocently. Overcome with confusion, I did not reply.

“I hope, Mr. Wallis,” she said, “you will treat me no differently from any of my father’s other employees.”

A rebuke—or an invitation? If so, it was a heavily coded one. She held my gaze for a moment. “We are both here to work, are we not? Any personal feelings must be put on one side. ‘In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand.’ Ecclesiastes.”

I inclined my head. “Indeed. Then I shall look forward to the evening, Miss Pinker.”

“And I to the morning, Mr.Wallis.”

I left the warehouse
exhilarated and confused in equal measure. On the one hand, I seemed to have blundered into gainful employment. On the other, there was a nascent cockstand rolling around in my trousers as the result of my flirtation with the lovely

Emily Pinker. Well, that was easily taken care of. I took a boat to the Embankment, then crossed the Strand to Wellington Street. Here there were several cheap and cheerful establishments I had frequented before, all of a reliably high standard.Tonight, however, was a night for celebration: I had the promise of my thirty pounds advance.