Various Flavors of Coffee (53 page)

Together we pushed down the grounds and slurped a little of the coffee into our mouths.

“Interesting,” she said thoughtfully. I nodded.“An aroma of bananas.”

“And on the tongue, a little natural roughness . . .” “Even a touch of Muscat grapes.”

The same tastes in both our mouths, on both our tongues, our lips: the sensations passing back and forth between us, like kisses.

“Blackberry,
or peach?”

“Plums, I rather think. Or possibly damsons.”

“And something warming—roast meat, or maybe pipe tobacco.” “Roast meat? It shouldn’t be—that would make it savory.Taste

it again.”

“I would say rather, the crust of a freshly baked loaf.” “Very well—I’ll make a note.Will you change the cups?”

I said,
“You know, we could start asking Furbank to source the coffees we sell here from African farms, instead of big plantations.

If enough people did it, it might give a few small farmers an alternative to working for the white man.”

“I think it’s an excellent idea.”

“Of course, it will mean the coffee is more expensive.” “Will we make a loss?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

“Dear Robert; you really have no idea at all how to run a business, do you?”

“On the contrary—it’s businessmen who have no idea how to do that, in my experience.”

“Very well . . . What is that African proverb you are so fond of quoting?”

“ ‘A spider’s web is easily broken, but a thousand spiders can tie up a lion.’ ”

“Exactly. Let us be spiders, and start weaving.”

“Now this one,”
I said, “reminds me of Africa. Blueberries, clay, and that spicy brown earth the beans were dried on.”

“Well, I have not been there, so I can’t say. But I can taste the spices—bay, perhaps, and turmeric. And there’s something else— something faint . . .”

“Yes? What is it?”

“I’m not sure. But it is something sweet.”

Out of the ashes
of those fires, a tiny wisp of something worth preserving—not hope, exactly, but something fragile, delicate, ethereal as smoke: something that she and I shared in that room, and which was then shared with others—with Furbank, and other importers; with a few passionate customers, and then a few more; growing little by little, like a series of tiny messages that flickered around the world.

[
eighty-four
]

nd then, just as Emily had predicted, there came a

time when her movement needed martyrs.

The suffragettes’
decision to start hunger-striking changed the mood of their rebellion. It raised the awful prospect of casualties: the government killing those whom it claimed to regard as the weaker sex.

The first hunger-strikers were quietly released from prison on medical grounds, but with the newspapers on the case it was impossible to do anything quietly anymore. So the government— some said at the instigation of the King himself—decided to subject those who would not eat to “hospital treatment”: in plain English, forcible feeding.

There was a wave of revulsion.Women who had not previously supported the militants were both impressed by the hunger-strikers’ heroism and horrified by the lengths to which men would go to keep power for themselves; while for the suffragettes, the violence being done to them warranted ever greater violence in return.

The government knew that to back down now would be taken as weakness.They also knew it would mean handing a million new votes to the other parties on a plate.This was a contest they could not afford to lose.

This was how the situation stood in September, when Emily was sent out to throw a stone through the window of the House of Commons.

“You need
not go.”

“Of course I need not. But I want to.” “There must be others—”

“And how would I feel then, if someone else took my place?” She shook her head.“You don’t understand, Robert. If it is my fate to be imprisoned, it will not be a sacrifice. It will be . . .” She searched for the word. “It will be a privilege—the fulfillment of everything I have worked for.”

I said miserably,“You grow more like your father every day, did you know that? Once you are committed to something there is no shaking you.”

For a moment her eyes flashed angrily. Then she said calmly, “Yes, Robert. Of course I know I am just like him.And that is why it must be me, and not someone else.”

She was arrested
on her first attempt. I wondered, afterwards, if she had even made sure she would be—if she had waited until she was certain the policeman was watching.

Her trial was remarkably quick. Since she was not denying the charge, there were no speeches for the defense.The arresting officer read his notes; the prosecutor said a few words; the stipendiary magistrate declared the sentence—ten shillings or three weeks in jail.

Emily said calmly,“I will go to jail.”

There was loud applause from the gallery, which was filled with suffragettes.The magistrate banged his hammer for silence.

“Do you refuse to pay your fine?”

“I refuse to recognize the authority of this court, which is paid for out of my taxes without my consent.”

“Very well.Take her away.”

I tried to
see her in the cells, but they would not let me. So I hung around outside with the rest of the crowd, hoping to get a glimpse of her as they moved her to Holloway. I spotted Brewer, dressed as if for a funeral. Pushing his way through the throng, he bellowed,“Happy now,Wallis? Or is there any further degradation you would wish upon my wife?”

“I have no more desire to see her in prison than you do,” I answered miserably.

Just then the Black Maria left the court. It had to move slowly through the crush, its bell ringing to clear a way.There was nothing to be seen of Emily, in the back, but we set up a great cheering and clapping to try to encourage her. I could not help putting my-self in her shoes, and imagining how she must have been feeling.

Then I saw
another face I recognized. I hurried forward to catch her up.“Ada?” I called.“Ada Pinker?”

She turned. “Why, it’s Robert.” She stopped, and so did the woman she was with.“I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Nor I you. Have you come down from Oxford? Emily told me you had married a don.”

“Yes—the movement is very robust there; we haven’t had the violence they’ve had here in London. Oh, Robert—I have a terrible feeling about this.”

“As do I. Emily is so determined. I suspect she may be fixed on hunger-striking.”

“We hope to be able to visit her.” Ada indicated her companion.“We’re family, after all.”

I turned to the other woman.“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Oh, you have, Mr.Wallis,” she said in a voice that was just a lit-tle familiar.“Though I doubt it was a pleasure. I suspect your recollections of me will not be favorable ones.”

My bafflement must have shown on my face, because Ada said, “Philomena is rather grown up since you saw her last.”

“Good Lord—the Frog?”

The young woman nodded.“Though not many people call me that these days.”

Now I looked at her more carefully I could just see an echo of the childish features I remembered. But the pouched, frog-like eyes had changed; or rather, her face had changed around them. Now they gave her an unusual appearance, like someone who has just woken up.

“I kept all your letters,” she added.“I drove my sisters mad, demanding to know when the next one was going to come. I used to learn them by heart.”

“I doubt very much they were worthy of repeated reading,” I said. We were walking down the hill now, away from the court, along with the rest of the crowd.

“ ‘You can tell Ada that she is not doing at all the right thing pinning her hair back, if she wants to make herself marriageable,’ ” Philomena quoted.“ ‘Here the accepted way to do it is to knock a couple of your front teeth out, smear your scalp with ochre paint, and carve a pattern of zigzags into your forehead with a hot knife. Then you’re considered quite a beauty, and asked out to all the dances.’ You cannot have forgotten writing those words, surely?”

“Good Lord,” I said again. I glanced at Ada.“Was I really so flippant? I do apologize.”

“It’s quite all right,” she said drily. “My husband is an ethnolo-gist, so I have become quite used to being compared disparagingly to those with ochre paint on their heads.” We reached the tube station, and she stopped.“We are going west. Shall I let you know if we hear anything from Emily?”

“Please.” I handed them my card. “And it was a pleasure to see you both again, despite the circumstances.”

“You too,”Ada said earnestly, and we all shook hands.As I took Philomena’s gloved hand in mine she said, “I have always wanted to know, Mr. Wallis—did you write any more of your nonsense poems?”

I shook my head.“I am rather hoping to have left nonsense be-hind. Although these days there seems to be plenty being spouted by the government.”

“Yes,” Ada said, looking anxious. “They are very determined not to give in. I do hope Emily will be all right.”

Her cell
was twelve feet by eight, the walls painted gray like the inside of a ship.There was a gas lamp, a small window too high to see out of, a plank bed and a chair. On the bare wood were two folded sheets and a pillowcase.Two buckets with tin lids stood un-der a corner shelf. The shelf held a prayer book, a card of rules, a piece of slate and a chalk. In the door was a small hatch.There was nothing else.

She spread the sheets on the bed and examined the buckets. One contained water, the other had clearly been used as a com-mode. The pillowcase was filled with straw; sharp golden shards pricked between the weave.

Every sound seemed to boom and echo and bounce cavernously back and forth down the endless corridors. She heard a distant

rolling thunder of noise that gradually came closer: doors and shouts and footsteps.The hatch opened.A disembodied voice said, “Dinner’s here.”

“I am not eating,” Emily said.

A tin bowl of soup appeared at the hatch. She didn’t move. After a moment the bowl disappeared, leaving a faint greasy smell of warm root vegetables. The thunder rolled away. Eventually the gaslight dimmed—there must be a control outside, she realized, so that the wardress could turn it down: even that small freedom was denied her.

The next morning she lay on her bed, in defiance of the printed rules.The hatch opened.“Aren’t you up yet?” a voice said in surprise.“Your breakfast’s here.”

“I’m on hunger strike.” The hatch closed again.

Then the stream of visitors began.The chaplain, the matron, the work supervisor—they all came to offer platitudes. “It is to be hoped,” the chaplain explained,“that you can use this time for reflection, Mrs. Brewer—to improve yourself.”

“But I do not want to improve myself. It is the Prime Minister I am hoping to improve.”The chaplain seemed quite taken aback, and cautioned her against showing disrespect.

She was taken for a bath: the cubicle had a two-foot door across it, and the wardress came and looked at her every minute. There was a lavatory, but the door was again half-sized, and the chain was on the outside so that the wardress and not the prisoner flushed it. When she was back in her cell the Warden visited, a tall, harried man who looked as if he should have been working in a bank. “Don’t think you can make trouble in here,” he warned her. “We’ve dealt with murderesses and violent thieves.We know what we’re about, but if you don’t give us any difficulty, you shall soon

have your freedom again.”

She replied, “You can release me from this place, but you

cannot give me my freedom. Only when women have the Vote will I have that.”

He sighed.“You will address me as sir, while you are in my charge.” He eyed her.“Your husband is a Member of Parliament, isn’t he?”

She nodded.

“If there are any small comforts you require, let me know. Soap for example, or a better pillow . . .”

“I insist on being treated the same as any other prisoner.” “Very well.” He turned to go, but seemed unable to.“The thing

I don’t understand, Mrs. Brewer, is this,” he said, coming back abruptly into her cell. “If you are successful—if women get the vote—it will destroy all chivalry between the sexes, have you thought of that? Why should men treat women as any different from themselves?”

“Was it chivalry that prompted you to offer me soap?” she said quietly.“Or my husband’s position?”

Lunch was brought—more soup, although the trusty who brought it called it stew. She refused it. A doctor came and asked her when she last ate. She told him.

“You must eat your dinner tonight,” he said. She shook her head.“I will not.”

“The alternative is to be forcibly fed.” “I will not cooperate.”

“Well, we will see. In my experience a lot of these people who talk about hunger strikes and so on only last a couple of days.After that their bodies tell them not to be so stupid.”

He too left her. She waited a long time.There was an hour of exercise, walking round an outdoor yard in single file and in silence.

At dinner time—which was actually mid-afternoon—the wardress asked her if she would eat. Emily said she would not.

At dusk the lights were turned off. She lay on her bed, by now quite dizzy with hunger.

Through the echoing rumble of the prison, she caught the sound of singing. It was “John Brown’s Body.” The words were different, but she knew them: it was one of the suffragette an-thems.With a rush of happiness she hurried to the serving hatch. Kneeling down beside it, she angled her head to the corridor outside and added her voice to the others.

“Rise up women, for the fight is hard and long, Rise up in thousands, singing loud in battle song.

Right is might, and in its strength we shall be strong, And the cause goes marching on.”

The other suffragettes seemed very distant, her own voice loud and echoing in the little cell. Eventually a nearer voice shouted, “Shut up, will yer?” and she stopped.

She tried
to sleep, but hunger pangs made it impossible to rest for more than a few minutes at a time.The next day she refused breakfast.The pain seemed to be getting less now, not more. Sometimes she felt despair, sometimes, without warning, great waves of exhilaration washed over her.
I can do this,
she told herself.
I can starve myself.They can control everything else, but my body is my own.