Free Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella Page A

people—ordinary people—will want to go and drink coffee somewhere that is actually called a Temperance Tavern? One might as well advertise a foodless restaurant or a grape-free wine.”
    Pinker frowned.“Then what would you call it?”
    “Well, anything.You could call it . . .” I looked around. My eye fell on the sign that said “Castle Street,” and I recalled his predilec-tion for military analogies.“You could call it Castle Coffee.”
    “Castle.” Pinker considered. “Hmm. Castle. Castle Coffees. Yes—it has a ring. It sounds dependable. Emily? What do you say?” “I think Robert has a point when he says that Temperance may
    be off-putting to some customers,” she answered carefully. “So Castle would, perhaps, be better.”
    Pinker nodded. “Castle it is, then. Thank you, Robert, your contribution has been most valuable. I’ll have the workmen change the sign immediately.”
    So was born one of the most famous trademarks in the history of coffee—a name as well known in its time as Lion, Ariosa or Maxwell House. But something else was conceived that day as well, amid that bustle of industry; the workmen, the marble table-tops, the smell of new paint mingling with the rich coffee-scented steam that issued from the twin nozzles of Signor Toselli’s apparatus like smoke from a dragon’s nostrils. . . . As Pinker stalked outside to find the foreman, his daughter turned to me. “Yes, thank you, Robert. That was tactfully done. And Castle is undoubtedly the better name.”
    I shrugged.“It’s hardly a big matter.”
    She smiled at me—a smile that lingered a fraction longer than it might have done.Then, suddenly bashful, she dropped her gaze.
    “Come along!” Pinker urged from outside.
    In the carriage, as we returned to Limehouse, it seemed to me that the pressure of her thigh against mine was withdrawn just a little less than it had been before.

    [ eleven ]

    “Earthy”—this is the characteristic of freshly dug earth, of the soil after storms, and is not unlike that of beetroot.
    — lenoir, Le Nez du Café

    *

T
    hat evening, as I walked down Piccadilly, I passed a carriage horse trying to copulate with a mare. Most carriage animals were geldings, of course, but this was obviously some rich person’s mount, docile enough in the ordinary way to be shackled to a brougham.The mare had been tied up outside Simpson’s department store, and the driver of the carriage was nowhere to be
    seen.
    It made a strange sight: the stallion, still harnessed to the shafts of the carriage, was attempting to clamber on to the mare’s back, prodding his great pizzle into her hindquarters. Each time he slipped off, pulled backwards by the unwieldy weight of the brougham; yet, nothing daunted, he immediately returned for another attempt, pulling himself clumsily up again with his front hoofs, like a Chinaman trying to clasp a piece of meat with chop—
    sticks.The mare, for her part, stood for it patiently, barely moving even when the stallion took the skin of her neck between his teeth.The back end of the carriage had tipped up, and was being crashed around on the road with every staggering thrust of the stallion’s rear legs.
    A small crowd had gathered. The more respectable ladies hurried on by, but amongst the onlookers were several young women who were rather more daring, and I alternated between watching the congress of the beasts and the wide-eyed, giggling fascination of the girls.
    Eventually the driver of the brougham returned and began shouting at his beast, trying to force it off. Of course the stallion had no intention at all of stopping, even when its master began laying into it with a whip—at considerable risk to himself, I might add: the stallion’s front hoofs were flailing wildly as he struggled for purchase on the mare’s back, and his hind legs were doing a kind of dance as he tried to kick free from the crinoline of the carriage. It almost looked as if the man were whipping the