Various Flavors of Coffee (52 page)

I smelled Brazilian,Venezuelan, Kenyan, Jamaican, even mocca, all going up in those fires. A million cups of coffee, a burnt sacrifice to some terrible new god.

When I was
in Ethiopia, and began to learn a little Galla, the children of the village taught me some of their nursery stories.There was one about the origins of coffee—not that convenient Arab myth about the goatherd who noticed his goats being lively, but something much older.

Many centuries ago there was a great sorcerer, who was able to communicate with the
zar,
the spirits who rule—or rather, mis-rule—our world.When this sorcerer died the sky-god was sad, because now there would be no one powerful enough to keep the spirits in check. God’s bitter tears fell on the sorcerer’s grave; and where they fell, the first coffee bush sprang up.

Sometimes, when the villagers served each other coffee, they would say it to each other, as a kind of toast.

Here, the water is almost boiling. Let us drink God’s bitter tears.

[
eighty-one
]

did not go back to Pinker’s. A fortnight afterwards, as

I was locking up the café, I heard a knocking on the door. I went and shouted through it,“We’re closed.”

“It’s me,” a tired voice said.

I let her in. She had a coat on, and on the pavement was a valise. “I came by cab,” she said, “and now I have sent it away. May I

come in?”

“Of course.” I looked at the bag.“Where are you going?” “Here,” she said.“If you’ll have me, that is.”

I made coffee
while she told me what had happened.

“Arthur and I had a row. Both of us said such things—well, you know how angry I can get. I told him he was nothing more than my father’s creature, and for once he lost his self-control.”

“He hit you?”

She nodded. “It was not even particularly hard—but I cannot stay with him now.”

I thought: how strange, after everything that had happened—

the police beatings, the contemptuous speeches, the manhandling by stewards, the marital rapes—that it was this, a simple angry slap, which had finally tipped the balance.

As if reading my thoughts she said, “He has broken his own code, you see. Or I have broken it for him.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll stay here—if you really don’t mind.” “Mind? Of course not. I should welcome it.”

“You do understand though, don’t you, Robert—there must be no impropriety. People can say what they like, but we must know we have nothing to reproach ourselves for.”

“Very well.”

“Oh, don’t look like that. In any case, I suspect between Arthur and the baby and Dr. Mayhews, I have been rather ruined for all that.”

“You’ll recover.And when you do . . .”

“No, Robert. I do not want to give you false hope. If you find it difficult simply to be my friend, then you must say so and I will stay somewhere else.”

“What did you
mean,” I asked her later,“about Mayhews?” “Hmmm?”

“You said that between Arthur and the baby and Dr. Mayhews you had been put off sexual relations. I understand the first two. I was only wondering about the third.”

“Oh.” She could not look at me, but her voice was firm enough. “Did they not tell you that I have been diagnosed with hysteria?”

“Yes. It’s nonsense, of course. I have never met anyone less hysterical in my life.”

“No, Robert. As it happens, they were right. I even received treatment from a specialist.”

“What sort of treatment?”

She would not answer at first. Eventually she said, “They have an electrical machine . . . a kind of oscillating device. It draws out the hysteria. One has a sort of . . . convulsion. A paroxysm, they call it. It is quite shattering, actually. And that is how they know— know you are really hysterical.The paroxysm is the proof.”

I cross-questioned her further, and little by little I began to understand what they had done to her. “But Emily,” I said when she had finished, “this wasn’t hysteria.This is simply what women are meant to feel—with their lovers.”

“I cannot believe that.” “Oh, Emily. Listen—”

“No, Robert, I really do not want to talk about this.”

Despite her injunctions, and my anger at what her doctors had done to her, it gave me a curious kind of hope—a hope that when she had put all that behind her, she might one day start to think about her experiences—about me—in a different light.

S
OMETIME
that night,
very late, I woke up and heard the sound of weeping.

I went downstairs. Emily was sitting on the stairs that led to the café. She was in her nightdress, a crumpled ball of white, crying.

Her hair was loose. It occurred to me that I had never seen her hair unpinned before. I sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. She was so slight, there was almost nothing of her.

“I have failed,” she sobbed.“I have failed at everything. I am no good as a wife, no good as a mother, no good as a suffragist.”

“Shh,” I said, “it will be all right,” and I held her, very still and quiet, while she sobbed her poor heart out until morning.

[
eighty-two
]

“Hard”—with particular reference to Brazils.

—j. aron & co.,
Coffee Trading Handbook

*

our weeks later Pinker holds an Extraordinary Gen-
eral Meeting of his board. Since the board consists of himself, Emily, Ada and Philomena, the meeting takes the form of a lunch—a lunch of celebration, the daughters assume, to toast their

father’s remarkable successes in the Exchange.

The sisters have not seen one another recently, and there is much family news to catch up on. Only Emily is a little quiet; but the others, tactfully, do not draw attention to this.

It is only over coffee—not Castle, as it happens, but a fine Kenyan longberry, served in Pinker’s favorite Wedgwood china— that he finally brings up the business of the day, tapping the cup in front of him with a tiny silver spoon for silence.“My dears,” he says, looking around the table.“This is a family occasion, but it is also a board meeting, and there are one or two matters we are obliged to discuss. I have asked Simon to take the necessary minutes—it is a

formality, but one we have to observe.” Jenks comes in and sits to one side, greeting the sisters with a smile. He balances a folder on his knee and takes out a pen.

“We are a family business,” Pinker begins. “That is why we are able to have these meetings in this way. It is now seen as a rather old-fashioned way of doing things, I’m afraid. Public companies, listed on the Exchange, who open up their stock to the powers and opportunities of the market—these are the companies which, in the future, will have the resources and the flexibility to expand across the world.”

“Are you saying you want Pinker’s to float on the Exchange, Father?”Ada asks. She is a confident young woman now: marriage to a man she adores has softened her sharp edges and put a twinkle in her eye.

“Bear with me, Ada,” Pinker says indulgently. “These companies, you may have observed, can also buy and sell each other. Already, in America, we are seeing the emergence of what they call conglomerates—companies which own more than one subsidiary. Here, too, old enemies are having to forge new alliances. Lyle and Tate, for example—two long-time rivals who are now forming a single entity.”

He pauses to set the silver spoon down. “I have been having discussions with one of our competitors,” he says.“A wealthy plantation owner. A combination of our interests would suit both parties: in Castle we have the stronger brand, and the better market share, while he has an expertise in the production of the raw material which, since poor Hector’s death, we have been lacking. He is rich in assets; we are rich in cash.Together, I believe, we will cre-ate a company capable of taking on the world.”

“Who is this person, Father?” Ada asks.

“It is Howell,” Pinker says.“Sir William Howell.”

There is a short, stunned silence. Philomena leans forward.“But could you work with him? Surely you hate each other?”

Pinker is very calm; indeed, he smiles at his daughters. “Somewhat to our surprise, we find that on the most important matters we have much in common. I doubt we will ever be friends, but we can certainly do business.”

“He will double-cross you,” Emily says.

Her father shakes his head. “He needs us even more than we need him. And don’t forget, this company will be listed on the Exchange. There will be shareholders who hold the balance of power.”

This time the silence goes on for some time.

“The announcement will be made tomorrow morning, when the Exchange opens.You should be aware that this will mean the end of Pinker’s as a family firm.The new company will be run in a different way—it will have to be, the Exchange demands it. All the shareholders, for example, will be eligible to attend the General Meetings.” He looks round the room.“I doubt if they will all fit into our little dining room.”

Nobody smiles.

“Will we be shareholders?” Ada wants to know.

“You will have some shares, yes. But they will not be voting ones.”

“So—effectively—we are being asked to sell?”That is Philomena’s voice.

“Yes.You will all receive money—a great deal of money—from the sale of your shares to the new company.”

“I don’t know . . .” Emily says.

“I have thought about this long and hard,” Pinker interrupts firmly. “If we are not to be swallowed up by one of the big American firms, we must become a big firm ourselves. And there is something else which has influenced my decision. Sir William has a son.”

They stare at him.

“Jock Howell has been educated in all aspects of his father’s

business.After we have formed the company, he will need to come and run this side of things for a while, under my auspices of course, to complete his understanding. Then, in the fullness of time, when Sir William and I retire, he will be well positioned to take over the running of the entire, combined operation.”

“You would give away your business—to Howell’s son?” Emily is aghast.

“What choice do I have?” Pinker says quietly. “He has a son. I do not.”

While the implications of this sink in, Pinker raises his cup. “I for one should like some more of that coffee now. Is there a refill?” “So if one of us had been a boy—” Emily says with sudden

fury.

“No, no, no,” Pinker soothes. “It is not like that at all. But you are married, and to an MP—Ada and Richard have Oxford—Phil is more than occupied with parties and dances. Of course it cannot be any of you.”

“I would have taken it over, if you had only asked me,” Emily says. “I would have avoided marriage altogether, if that had been the alternative—”

“That’s enough,” her father says sharply.“I do not want to hear any criticism of your husband.There has been quite enough scandal as it is.”

“Then there is a lot you do not want to hear, apparently,” she says bitterly.

“Emily—I will not be spoken to like that.”

She bites her lip. Mutiny and obedience battle it out on her face.

“I will have that coffee now,” he says, gesturing down the table. “Jenks, thank you, you may go.” Jenks closes his file and gets to his feet.

“Wait,” Emily says.

“Emily, what are you saying? Of course he can go.”

“We should have a vote,” she says. She looks around the table, at her sisters.“If we all have shares, we should vote on this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” her father says.

“That is the proper way of doing things, though, isn’t it?” She appeals to Jenks.“Isn’t it?”

Reluctantly he nods.“I believe it is even required, technically.” “And if we vote against it,” she says, speaking to her sisters, “it

cannot happen.We are the majority here.”

“What in the name of heaven has got into you?” her father thunders.“Dear God, woman, this is not some suffragette meeting. This is my company—”

“
Our
company—”

“
My
company,” he insists.

“You will not be able to argue with your shareholders like this, when you are listed,” she points out, cruelly. “They may not even approve of your Jock Howell. Or perhaps he will have
you
voted off—have you thought of that?”

He stares at her, furious.

“All those against the proposal,” she says, raising her hand. “Enough,” her father snaps.“Jenks, you may go. Record that the

proposal was carried with no opposition.”

“Yes sir,” Jenks says. He leaves the room. There is a long, weighted silence, and then with a sudden cry Emily does the same.

[
eighty-three
]

he kept a room at Castle Street, and as the tempo of
the unrest accelerated she spent more and more time there. In all that time I never heard her speak of her husband or her father disrespectfully; in fact, she rarely spoke of them at all. She and I

were almost a household, albeit of an unconventional kind.

“Robert?”

I looked up. On the counter was a mahogany box. Emily opened it. Inside were rows of glass phials, and a number of cups and spoons for cupping.

The Guide.

She placed four small packets of coffee on the table and began to unwrap them.

“What are you doing?”

“The only thing we can do,” she said.“These are Furbank’s best new coffees—two from Guatemala and two from Kenya.” She poured water carefully over the first set of grinds and looked at me.“Well?”

I sighed.“There is no point.”

“On the contrary, Robert—there is every point. These are good, distinctive coffees—Furbank says so. The people who produced them should not go under just because they are forced to sell them at the same price as Howell’s industrial product. There are still enough people in the world who care about coffee.They simply need a way to distinguish the good from the poor—and the Guide cannot do that unless you keep it up to date.” She pushed one of the cups toward me.

I groaned.“What do you want me to do?”

“Taste them, of course.Aspirate, aerate, and ultimately expectorate. Ready?”