Various Flavors of Coffee (6 page)

“Those are pearl.”

“Pearls are white.Any fool knows that.”

I picked up one of the beans and scrutinized it closely. It had a sort of opalescent sheen, like a polished coin.“Pewter, then.”

“I agree,” Emily said, writing it down.

“And so we come to brown.”

“But there are many different shades of brown, and all of them are simply called brown,” Pinker objected.“There are no words to distinguish between them.”

“Not so. Consider, for example, the brown of different kinds of wood.” I glanced at the beans.“Some of these might be called mahogany, some ash, some oak.”

Abruptly, Pinker stood. “I have other affairs to attend to. You two carry on.” I was to discover that this was typical of him—he was unable to persevere at any task for more than an hour or so; the consequence, in part, of having so many calls upon his time, but also because he was predisposed to the excitement of novelty. Now he strode to the door and pulled it open. “Jenks?” he called. “Jenks, where are you?”

Then he was gone.

I looked at Emily. She kept her gaze on her pad. “I have been trying,” I said softly, “to fix in my mind a word which would describe the precise color of your eyes.”

She stiffened, and I saw a little color rise in her cheeks as she bent over her notebook.

“They too are a kind of gray,” I suggested. “But brighter, I think, than charcoal or Cornish slate.”

There was a moment’s silence.Then she said,“We should continue, Mr.Wallis.We have much to do.”

“Of course. In any case, it is not a question that should be hurried. I shall need to give the matter much further thought.”

“Please, do not do so on my account.” There was a hint of ice in her voice.“There is no need to put yourself to the trouble.”

“No, it will be a pleasure.”

“But perhaps in the meantime, we might return our thoughts to the color of these beans.”

“You are a hard taskmaster, Miss Pinker.”

“I am merely aware that the task before us is a considerable one.” “Considerable, perhaps, but not irksome,” I said gallantly. “No

labor could be tedious in such company.”

“But I fear I am becoming a distraction to you.” The hint of ice had become positively arctic.“Perhaps I should see if Mr. Jenks or Mr. Simmons is free to take my place—”

“No need,” I said hastily.“I will attend to my duties all the more conscientiously because you have commanded it.”

We stared at the heaps of gray-green raw beans. Neither of us, I am sure, was thinking about coffee. I stole another glance at her.

“Whereas the color of your cheeks,” I said,“puts me in mind of the ripening of an apple—”

“Mr. Wallis.” She slammed her pad forcefully on the table. “If my cheeks have color in them, it is because I am angry at you for continuing to tease me like this.”

“Then I apologize. I meant no harm. Quite the reverse, in fact.” “But you must see,” she said in a low, urgent voice,“that you are putting me in an impossible position. If I leave the room, my father will want to know why, and then he will dismiss you, and the Guide will not get written, and that is a responsibility I do not want. Yet if I stay, I am effectively at your mercy, and from your conduct so far this morning I cannot help but suspect you will

take advantage of that to tease me even more.”

“I swear on my honor that I shall do no such thing.” “You must promise to disregard my sex entirely.”

“I had thought you too modern to shrink like a violet from a perfectly natural attraction on my part. However, if you prefer it I shall in future try to think of you as if you were a boy.”

She gave me a suspicious look, but lifted her pencil over her pad. “These beans . . .” I picked up a handful and closed my fist around them, shaking them. “We might compare their color to

leaves.”

“In what way?”

“New leaf is pale green. Summer leaf, of course, is darker.

Autumn leaf is more like the paler, more yellow beans.” “Very well.” She wrote it down.

“And so we come to aroma. For that, I think, we must prepare some samples.”

“I will light the burner.”

She busied herself boiling water, and I watched her. I had been wrong when I considered that those Rational garments of hers did not flatter her. Rather, the absence of a corset, whilst it might deprive her of the voluptuous silhouette which until recently had been the fashion, allowed one to appreciate what her natural shape would be—in other words, her naked figure. She was slender: bony, some might say. Even her haunches, as she leaned over the table, were so insubstantial that the comparison with a boy was quite apt. Half closing my eyes, I mentally compared her with various whores I had been with, and was thus able to create a sort of composite image of her unclothed body, a pleasant reverie which Emily might well have taken for studious concentration.

Just then Pinker came back into the room and found me looking at his daughter. He must have been able to guess what was go-ing through my mind.

“Does the work progress?” he said sharply. “Is Mr.Wallis proving industrious, Emily?”

Now, of course, was the time when the least hint from her would have had me thrown out. Inwardly I cursed my recklessness. I needed that advance, particularly after the inroads I had made into it the previous night.

She gazed at me coolly. “Mr. Wallis is progressing quite well, Father.Though not as rapidly, I believe, as he would like. I fear my girlish chatter has been a distraction.”

“On the contrary, Miss Pinker has been an inspiration,” I said

smoothly. “As Beatrice was to Dante, or Maud to Tennyson, so is Emily Pinker to the Wallis-Pinker Guide.”

Pinker’s eyes narrowed.“Very well. Perhaps,Wallis, I might help you cup your first sample.”

“There is no need,” I said airily.“Jenks has already explained the principles.”

“I shall observe, then.”

He took up a position next to the door, arms folded, and watched me as I measured the beans, ground them in a handmill, and added the hot water. I waited exactly two minutes by my watch, then pushed the thick, foaming crust of grounds to the bot-tom with the spoon. I was not as practiced as the secretary had been, however, and when I lifted the spoon, the liquid was still thick with tiny grains of coffee. I put it to my lips anyway and tried to slurp it in the same manner that Pinker and Jenks had done, pulling in a quantity of air along with the hot liquid. The inevitable and immediate result was that I choked, spluttering coffee all over the table.

Pinker roared. “My dear Wallis,” he cried, “you were meant to taste it, not to spray it like a surfacing whale!”

“A catch in the throat,” I said, or rather croaked, when speech was possible.“My apologies. I will try again.” I was very embarrassed. Again I tried to slurp the coffee as I had seen others do, but it was harder than it looked: this time I managed to keep the liquid in my mouth as I coughed and choked, but it was a close thing.

“Emily, my dear, I fear your new colleague will be unable to speak for the rest of the morning,” Pinker chortled.

“That will be no great hardship,” Emily said. Her lips twitched. “At least, for everyone but Mr.Wallis.”

“Perhaps . . . Perhaps . . .” Pinker wiped his eyes with his fin-ger.“Perhaps his waistcoat will speak for him!”

Now it was the turn of Emily Pinker to splutter. I looked at the two of them in astonishment. I understood that in some way I had caused them this amusement, but I could not for the life of me understand how. It was true that my waistcoat that day was, like my shoes, a vivid hue of yellow, but even a Limehouse coffee merchant could surely see that it was
à la mode.

Pinker wiped his eyes. “Forgive us, my dear Wallis. We mean no harm. Here, let me show you.There is a knack, which those of us who are accustomed to the thing take for granted. Observe.” He spooned a little coffee into his mouth, slurped it noisily with a kind of gargling motion. “The trick is to aspirate the liquid with the lips and tongue.Aspirate, aerate, and ultimately expectorate.”

I followed his lead, and this time I managed to control the liq-uid a little more—at least, the reaction of my audience was a little more restrained. Their hilarity returned, however, when I was called upon to master the art of spitting the tasted coffee into the bucket. Pinker demonstrated, efficiently ejecting a thin stream with a pinging sound as it hit the metal, but even before he turned to me I knew that this was going to prove difficult.

“Imagine that you are whistling,” he explained.“And whatever you do, be decisive.”

I glanced at Emily. Her face bore an expression of studied dis-interest.“Perhaps your daughter would prefer . . .” I suggested.

“Prefer what?”

“Not to be present at what might, I fear, prove a somewhat indelicate display.”

Pinker turned to his daughter, who responded,“Oh, come, Mr. Wallis. Let us be thoroughly modern, and not shrink like violets from what is only natural.”

“Yes,” I said.“Of course.” I turned reluctantly back to the table. “Together?” Pinker said. He spooned some coffee into his mouth. I followed suit. We aspirated and aerated, and then he

pinged a thin stream of brown liquid with deadly accuracy into the bucket.

I leaned toward the bowl, paused to collect my thoughts, and expectorated as delicately as I could. Unfortunately, my delicacy was counterproductive: it simply meant that I squirted coffee randomly in the general area of the receptacle. Most missed the target altogether.

“I do apologize,” I said, my face as red as beetroot. Neither Pinker heard me. The father’s shoulders were shaking. His eyes were closed, and from underneath the lashes tears squeezed. Emily had jammed her hands under her armpits, and was rocking herself backwards and forwards on her chair, while her bowed head nod-ded vigorously with the effort of containing her laughter.

“I see this is amusing for you,” I said stiffly.

Pinker put a hand on my shoulder. “If you ever fail as a poet, Wallis,” he gasped, “you have a certain future in the music halls. It is the preparatory pose, sir—the pose is wonderful. As if you were about to declaim, rather than dribble.”

“I don’t believe I dribbled.”

“And the facial expression!” he continued rapturously. “The solemnity! The look of comic surprise you contrive!”

“I’m not sure I know to what you are referring.” I was still rather red in the face.

“My dear young fellow,” he said, suddenly serious, “we have baited you enough. Forgive us. I will let you resume your duties.”

He went to the door.When he had gone there was a silence. I said bitterly,“I suppose you think me ridiculous.”

Emily said quietly, “No, Robert. But perhaps you now think yourself ridiculous, and that, I think, is what my father intended.”

“I see.”

“If we are to work together we must be comfortable with one another. And we cannot do that if either of us is attempting to get the upper hand.”

“Yes. I understand.”

“I will promise not to laugh at you, if you will promise not to flirt with me.”

“Very well.You have my word.” I sat down heavily.

“Believe me,” she added, her mouth twitching,“it is I who lose most by the deal.”

[
nine
]

The basic difficulty in coffee flavour terminology is inherent in our language. Although many words describe the sensations of sight, sound and touch, few words describe the sensations of smell and taste.

—
lingle
, The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

erhaps Pinker remained suspicious of my intentions. At

any rate, we were soon joined by a dark-haired young woman, a couple of years younger than Emily. She placed a large pile of books on the table with a thump.

“My sister,Ada,” Emily explained.“Ada, this is Robert Wallis.”

Ada’s terse “Pleased to meet you” suggested that she probably wasn’t. I picked up one of the books and glanced at the spine.
“Water Analysis for Sanitary Purposes.
Good heavens.”

She removed the book from my hand. “Professor Frankland’s work is the standard text on the valency of compounds.”

“Ada hopes to go up to Oxford,” Emily said.“That’s where you were, Robert, wasn’t it?”

That got Ada’s attention.“Oh? Which college?”

“Christ Church.”

“Are the laboratories any good?” “I have absolutely no idea.”

“What about the Clarendon? Is that an asset?”

For ten minutes she cross-questioned me about the new science rooms, the women’s colleges, the Examination Halls and so on. I was a disappointment to her. I could describe walking across the college deer park at dawn, arm in arm with a couple of drunken fellows, or punting to Wytham for a lunch of grilled trout, but of the lecture halls and academics she named I knew al-most nothing.

However, it was useful to have a third person in the room.The object of our glossary was, after all, to communicate, and we were able to test our progress on Ada. She proved useful in a more practical way, too, when it came to the creation of the sample case— but I am getting ahead of myself.

At around twelve o’clock,
Emily stretched. “Perhaps it is a consequence of this unaccustomed scrutiny I am giving to my own perceptions,” she said,“but I find I am actually quite ravenous.”

“That is to be expected,” I said. “Just as music must be studied and practiced before one can sit down and sight-read, so one must diligently practice all the scales and arpeggios of pleasure before we may claim to be proficient.”

She rolled her eyes.“Is that a rather long-winded way of saying you too are hungry?”

“Exactly.Where is good round here?”

“There’s a place in Narrow Street that does excellent eel pies. In fact, I have been thinking of little else these last twenty minutes. They serve them with mashed potatoes, and a little of the eel liquor as a sauce—”

“I have to go to Hoxton, to buy some chemicals,” Ada interjected.

“Then it looks as if it will just be you and I,” I said to Emily. “Emily, may I have a word?” Ada said quickly.

The two sisters conferred on the landing in low voices. Of course, I went to the door to listen.