Various Flavors of Coffee (45 page)

—
lingle,
The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

mily had been wrong: Pinker’s reaction to our pro-
posal was not, initially, favorable. It was, I assumed, the impropriety that bothered him—his married daughter employing someone who had once been close to her. I emphasized that my role would be limited to helping to set the place up, and eventually

he relented.

“One thing, though, Robert. Remember this: we cannot turn back the clock. Our failures are best forgotten. It is our successes that we take with us into the future.”

At the time I was not sure whether he meant my failure in

Africa or my failure to marry his daughter.That there was another possibility did not occur to me until many years later: that he might have been referring not to me but to himself, and his own relations with Emily.

For the next
few weeks I was busy. There were builders to oversee, staff to hire, lawyers to wrangle with—there was a brief legal skirmish when it became apparent that we could no longer call it Castle Coffee: in the end we renamed it the Castle Street Coffee House, and everyone was satisfied. I met Frederick Furbank, the importer who supplied Emily with her Kenyan.To my surprise the fellow had heard of me; indeed, was positively proud to make my acquaintance. “Robert Wallis?” he cried, pumping my hand. “The same Wallis who created the Wallis-Pinker Guide? I have to tell you, sir, that a modified version of that system has now been adopted by all the smaller merchants.Wait until I tell the others that I am buy-ing coffee for Wallis!” It was strange to think that I had created something that had a life of its own. But I felt no great pride of au-thorship: in truth the driving force had been Pinker, not me.

Furbank and I tasted some coffees together and made an initial selection. It was remarkable to see how quickly the Africans were taking over from the South Americans in terms of quality, and how the wet-process coffees were leaping ahead over the dry-process ones. . . . We talked coffee-trade jargon happily for several hours, and by the end of it I knew Emily had a supplier who would not cheat her.

Once the café opened I was busy in a different way: supervising the waiters, attending to the Toselli machine, even washing cups and dishes when the occasion required.And almost from the start, there was a steady stream of women who came there looking for information. You could always tell which those were—their expressions both determined and anxious as they slipped through the door, as if they had had to steel themselves for this irrevocable step.

The militant
suffrage movement—the Cause—was growing quickly now, fueled by reports in the newspapers about what was happening in Manchester and Liverpool. Emily and her co-conspirators spent long hours in the back room, debating everything—their constitution, their ethics, what was legitimate action and what was not, how to make their case. For a movement whose avowed slogan was “Deeds not words,” there certainly seemed to be an awful lot of the latter. They talked of rousing all London, but never seemed to have enough postage stamps.

There were times, in fact, when I thought it was all just an enthusiasm—a girlish adventure. But then, at the end of their interminable meetings, they would put on their hats, tie up their boots, and, instead of getting on the omnibus to go home, head off in ones and twos to daub slogans on government buildings with buckets of whitewash, or to flypost walls with their manifesto. Molly, Mary, Emily, Edwina, Geraldine and the rest, no longer “an-gels in the house” but angels of vengeance. These night-time escapades, I admit, filled me with misgivings. It had been indoctrinated in me from an early age that women were frail creatures, and I found the notion a hard one to shake off.

“You need not stand there glowering,” Emily said one night, as she prepared to go and plaster bills on Chelsea Bridge. “If you’re worried, come along.”

“What makes you think I’m worried?”

“It is something to do with the way you’ve polished that cup so thoroughly you’ve almost punched a hole in it. Really, I shall be perfectly all right, but come if you want—it would be useful, actually, you could hold the bucket while I apply the paste.”

“Very well. If you need me, I’ll come.”

“I didn’t say I needed you, Robert, I said you would be useful.” “Is there a difference?”

“As my father would say, a distinction.”

We hailed cabs in the street—five ladies with rolls of proclama-tions under their arms, each carrying a small bucket of wallpaper paste and a brush, and myself. If the government ever decides to smash this sedition, I found myself thinking, they will not find it so very difficult.

Emily and I alighted on the Embankment. She began to unroll the posters—but despite the mist there was a brisk wind and it was no easy matter to get them covered with paste.

“You would never have managed this alone,” I said as a bill rolled across the bridge for the fourth time. I sprang to retrieve it. “Yes, well, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you were

needed after all,” she said crossly, clutching at her hat. “You’re annoyed!”

“Of course I’m annoyed. I can’t get the dratted things to stay on the brickwork.” She pushed a sheaf of bills at me. “If you’re so useful, get them up yourself.”

“Gladly.”

I stuck them up while she kept a lookout.“K.V.,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“K.V. That’s what one says when a policeman appears, is it not?” “Oh—you mean
cave.
From the Latin—” I glanced across the bridge.Two policemen were even at that moment strolling across

from the Lambeth side toward us.“Actually, one says ‘Run!’ ”

There was the sound of a whistle, and then thudding feet echoed across the bridge.“Faster!” I urged, taking her by the elbow.

We worked
our way toward Parliament Square, flyposting any public buildings we passed on the way. Then, by Westminster

Bridge, we saw a motor car. It had been parked by the side of the road, the chauffeur evidently having gone off for a bite to eat. On the bonnet was a government flag.

“That’s the Home Secretary’s car,” Emily said. “Are you sure?”

“Certain. Arthur knows him. Come on, let’s flypost it.” “What!”

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” she said impatiently.“He’s much more likely to read a bill posted on his own motor car than on a bridge.And just to make sure, we’ll flypost the inside as well.”

“But Emily—you can’t.”

“Why ever not?” She was already unrolling some bills. “Because it’s . . . well, it’s a car. It’s a lovely machine. A thing of

beauty.”

“Oh, in that case,” she said sarcastically,“let’s wander round un-til we find something ugly and flypost that instead, shall we? Robert, I can’t help the fact that the Home Secretary has chosen a particularly nice machine to be driven around in. The message is what counts.”

“But think of the poor chauffeur—the trouble he’ll get into.” “It’s unfortunate, but there you are,” she said, sloshing paste

onto the backs of four or five bills.“Keep a lookout, will you?” “This isn’t fair play,” I protested, even as I did as she asked. “The thing about women, Robert,” she said as she applied the

greasy back of the first bill to the car’s pristine metalwork, “is that we are not gentlemen. And we are not playing the game, we are fighting the fight.”

“Oi!” There was a shout. I turned. Our friends the policemen had spotted us again.

We pelted down numerous side streets, until at last I drew her into a quiet, darkened doorway, the porch of some grand house. We waited, listening.The streets were silent.

“I think we’ve lost them,” I said. “We should give it five minutes, to be sure.”

“Isn’t this wonderful?” she said. Her eyes were shining. “Wonderful?” I said doubtfully.

“You always wanted to be a rebel. And now you are.” “And you are my helpmeet.”

“Other way round, surely.You’re
my
helpmeet. And very good you are, too.”

I could not help it—those flashing eyes; the panting lips; the rise and fall of her chest as she caught her breath . . . it was all so like a situation in which someone wants to be kissed that I kissed her.

She kissed me back—I was sure of it: deeply, lingering, with a sigh of pleasure. But when I went to kiss her a second time she stopped me with a hand on my chest.

“We must find you a wife, Robert,” she said quietly. “What do you mean?”

“You and I—we are friends now, aren’t we? We have thrown over the trivialities of romance for the deeper bonds of comradeship.”

“Don’t mock me, Emily.”

“I’m sorry. I was just trying to—make light of it, I suppose. But I meant what I said, before. You and I are pals. If you want any more you must find someone else.”

“I don’t want anyone else,” I said. But I let go of her shoulders.

[
seventy-two
]

radually I made some further changes to the café;

increasing the number of tables, bringing in colorful advertising posters such as those I had seen in the coffee bars of Italy and France, and creating a long shelf behind the counter for bottles of absinthe and other aperitifs. Emily bore all this without comment, but when I spent a week’s income on a vast display of peacock feathers she stopped me.

“What on earth is this, Robert?”

“There used to be something similar in the Café Royal. It gives the place atmosphere, don’t you think?”

“Atmosphere,” Emily said decisively,“is exactly what we do
not

want.”

“Oh?”

“Atmosphere—by which you actually mean, I think, the decadent ambience of a Parisian brothel—no, let me finish—suggests something superficial. It is conversation and the exchange of ideas we need here, not feathers and fripperies. I have something more like a Methodist meeting hall in mind—plain and earnest and functional.”

“Why on earth would anyone want to come to such a place?” “Robert, it appears to have escaped your notice that we are planning a mass insurrection. They will come for the politics, not the

peacocks.As for your absinthe—has anyone actually ordered one?” “Not as yet,” I admitted. “You suffragettes are an abste—

mious lot.”

“Thank goodness. Let us serve coffee, and be done with it.”

I did as I was asked, but I could not help thinking that the suffragettes would have been just as happy drinking tea, or water for that matter. Such little expertise as I possessed was wasted in that place.

The government
had learned from the suffragettes’ successes in Manchester. In London they had decided on a different policy, that of belittling them.The impression they gave was that the militants were over-excitable females with nothing better to do, rather than the threat to natural order they had been portrayed as in the North.

C
ABINET
P
UDDING

Take a fresh young suffragette, add a large slice of her own importance, and as much sauce as you like; allow to stand on a Cabinet Minister’s doorstep until at a white heat; mix freely with one or two policemen, well roll in the mud, and while hot run into a Police Court; allow to simmer; garnish with a sauce of martyrdom. Cost—a little self-respect.

“It is so vexing,”
Emily said, throwing the
Daily Mail
to the table.“We are like gnats attacking a rhinoceros.”

“Even gnats are a nuisance in a cloud,” Geraldine Manners said. “We must hold a march.”

Edwina Cole sighed. “Doubtless the
Daily Mail
will inform its readers that it is not ladylike to march.”

“Then we shall not call it a march.We will call it a procession— they can hardly object to ladies doing that.”

The procession
was planned for Easter Monday.The newspapers called it the “Ride of the Valkyries” and “the charge of the petticoat soldiers,” but all that was water off a duck’s back to Emily by this time.

“Would you like me to come with you?” I asked. “Why not?”

“Shall I bring my pickaxe handle?”

“Oh, I doubt you will have any need of that. We are only organizing a procession—the pitched battle can wait until another occasion.”

They were
to march—or rather, to process—from Trafalgar Square to Westminster.There the women would present their petition to the House of Commons. Emily had no idea how many people would turn up. Two hundred, said the
Daily Mail.
Where they got that figure, I had no idea: I suppose they were striking a balance between a number large enough to justify to their readers that it was in the newspapers at all, and one so small that the marchers could not actually be said to represent a significant part of the population.

We got to the start well before the advertised time. My first thought was that Emily had done well—the place was already crowded. But then with a sinking feeling I saw how many of those milling about were men. Looking vulnerable in the patch of green in the middle of the square, fifty or so women and a few male supporters stood waiting, nervously.

As we started across the square a policeman stopped us.“If you stay here hi will arrest you for causing han obstruction to the pavement,” he said to Emily. Some of the men watching us applauded enthusiastically.

“I am not on the pavement,” Emily replied calmly.

“Ho yes you are,” the policeman retorted, bodily picking her up and placing her on the pavement. Emily gasped.Then I heard a shout from the men at the back: “Jostle her!” The mass of male bodies surged forward, bumping her slender figure into the road.

I turned to the policeman, appalled. “Are you going to allow them to do that to this lady?”

He stared at me without expression.“Wot lady would that be?”

We cannot
have been above sixty when we finally set off, and on either side was a mob of about two hundred. Some shook their fists, some howled abuse, but most just eyed the women with an interest that was openly sexual. Occasionally hostility sparked to violence. Two women were carrying between them a banner, beautifully embroidered with the words
Cheshire Women’s Textile Workers Representation Committee.
I saw three men run toward them. Tearing the banner from the women’s arms, they stamped and pulled at it until all that was left were broken sticks and rags trodden into a puddle. More policemen were standing not twenty feet away, watching.