The Loving Cup

by Winston Graham

  ‘Mebbe. Mebbe not.’

  ‘Like a love potion?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A love potion.’

  Music began to sweat. They seemed to be alone. People passed by, but now no one came to this stall. Perhaps it was unhallowed after dark.

  ‘Not sure’s I do,’ he said.

  Widow Crow took out a second bottle, even smaller than the first. ‘It will cost you ninepence, my dear.’

  ‘Coh!’

  ‘It would be a shilling to most, but only ninepence to you, my dear, as a special favour. I’ve taken a fancy to you. Why, you’ll never know all that’s in this little bottle, but I can tell you plain that what’s in it cost me eightpence ha’penny, so there’s no profit in it for me to sell it so cheap. But I like the looks of you. A fine handsome feller any maid would be right to fancy.’

  ‘Not sure’s I do,’ said Music.

  ‘Any maid,’ said Widow Crow, putting her fingers in front of one ear and pushing her lank hair away. ‘But maids are hard to please. Some maids have fancy notions. Some maids are fickle. Some maids are as changeable as the weather. That’s when you need a love potion, my dear.’

  Music thought of Katie, her tall clumsy figure shambling about the house, her big black eyes, her hair, the colour of this woman’s but shining with a lusty life of its own.

  Widow Crow turned the small bottle round and looked at it lovingly. ‘Ninepence,’ she said. ‘Just the one draught. Get her to drink it. That be all you have to do. It has no taste. The hearts of apple birds and grey birds be in it – and the horse-adder and wort. Just the one draught. Give it to ’er any way that comes along – in ale – in tea – in spirits – in water – or better still get her to drink it off sheer and plain. Sheer and plain. Then be sure to be beside her as the draught goes down; for so soon as ever it d’go down, then her eyes will light upon you, and she will love you till her dying day.’

  A flurry of rain fell on Music’s heated face. It was going to be a long, wet walk home. He did not consider it.

  ‘Eightpence?’ he said.

  ‘Ninepence.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, and began to fumble in his front pocket for the extra money.

  III

  On his last visit to Nampara Geoffrey Charles had asked Demelza if he might borrow a few extra servants for the party.

  ‘Mrs Pope offered, so I expect we shall have three of hers as well. And I might ask Mrs Enys for two or three. It is better to have too many than too few.’

  ‘Clowance and I will come ourselves if you want us,’ said Demelza. ‘I mean earlier on, to help with the cooking and the arrangements.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. But two cooks are coming the night before from Truro. I might yet send you a plaintive message saying “Help! help!” but if possible I wish you – I wish you all – to be guests – to enjoy it without the responsibility of being accountable for anything.’

  ‘And Amadora?’

  ‘She declares she is terrified, but I believe in her bones she is relishing the challenge.’

  ‘I know how she feels.’

  Geoffrey Charles got up. ‘There is one other point I want your help on – your advice at least. I expect you know what I am going to say.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It is the question of my step-father – whether I should invite him . . .’

  Demelza hesitated. ‘It is your party.’

  ‘Had we come direct here without any contact, I should never consider inviting him. He’s no friend of mine, as you well know. But we called on him; I thought it might even be legally necessary to tell him I was entering into my possessions, so to speak. When we met, after so long a time, I liked him no better than I had done before; but his new wife insisted – I’m sure against his wishes – that we stay to dinner, and then pressed the loan of two excellent horses on us, which we still have, outside at this moment and must keep, she says, until we return to Spain. So even if one wished to exclude him – as I certainly would wish – it is a little affrontful to her if we do not send an invitation. On the other hand,’ Geoffrey Charles hastened on as Demelza was about to speak, ‘the last thing I wish is to embarrass Cousin Ross. I know how he feels – what they feel for each other and if Ross would consider the evening in any way marred by Sir George’s presence, no invitation shall be sent.’

  Demelza said: ‘Why don’t you ask Ross?’

  ‘I had thought you might do so. I think he would express himself more frankly to you.’

  Demelza laughed. ‘That is so.’

  An hour or so later Ross said: ‘How many are coming to the party?’

  ‘About eighty invited. Some will not come or not be able to come.’

  ‘Then tell Geoffrey Charles to do as he pleases. We are all mellowing a little with age, and if I saw George coming my way I could very easily dodge.’

  ‘Perhaps he will refuse,’ said Demelza.

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  ‘I confess I would quite like to meet his new wife. But the house cannot hold very happy memories for him.’

  ‘It’s curious for how many people . . .’ Ross said and stopped.

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘It’s curious for how many people that house does not hold happy memories.’

  Demelza was silent for a few minutes, wishing she could disagree. ‘Well, now is the time for it to change.’

  The following forenoon George received his invitation and took it to Harriet, who was with her hounds.

  She said: ‘Will it mean staying the night?’

  ‘It’s fifteen miles odd, and mainly rough tracks.’

  ‘I imagine we can stay with Caroline.’

  He said: ‘You do not ask me if I wish to go.’

  ‘He’s your step-son. It has been your house. Why should you not wish to go?’

  ‘I think you are being disingenuous, Harriet.’

  She was wearing an open blouse which, in George’s opinion, showed too much of her throat and breast for the good of Collins and Smallwood, who were working quietly nearby. Her hair was blue-black like a raven, glossy and strong; her gloves were filthy; so was the hem of her skirt; there was a smudge of dirt on one of her high cheekbones.

  She said: ‘When you married me, George, you began a new life. As I did. We cannot spend all our time recollecting the old ones.’

  The dogs were coughing and yapping all around her, and he hoped the servants did not hear this. They certainly did not hear his response, for he did not make one, but it would have been to the effect that neither was it necessary to spend all one’s time looking after one’s confounded animals and doing many of the rough jobs when there were ample well-paid servants waiting to perform them.

  Nor, he would have liked to add, did one need parties like last night’s – Valentine’s, of course, in the first place but one in which she enthusiastically joined. Sitting up until the small hours playing Faro for high stakes. That new friend of Valentine’s had come, the fellow who had once been affianced to Clowance Poldark; well dressed but with a poor accent; leonine head; (built like a blacksmith, someone had remarked, making George wince); Harriet had seemed to take a fancy to him, which was more than George could say; flashy somehow; he’d lost; serve him right. Another one who’d lost was that Blamey lad, Verity’s son; who had looked pretty green about it; maybe he couldn’t afford it; damn fools, playing for money, gambling; who on earth ever made a fortune gambling? Making money at gambling was like seeing ghosts: you never met someone who’d seen a ghost, only someone who knew someone who’d seen a ghost. You only met people who knew people who’d made a fortune at White’s. Or on the racecourse. Like that fool John Trevanion. It was why George had delayed implementing the contract, why he had delayed until last month telling Valentine of his presumptive plans. Last year Trevanion had received a subsidy to carry him on until the marriage bond was tied, but, against all the assurances he had given, he had been off racing his horses, at Exeter and at Epsom, had come
a cropper. So now he was a suppliant once more, greatly regretful of his own behaviour. When the Devil was broke, the Devil a saint would be. This marital bond that was to be tied: the deed must be foolproof, so that none of the money that went with Valentine on his marriage to Cuby could possibly be appropriated by Cuby’s spendthrift brother.

  Harriet was examining a puppy. She said: ‘I see that Valentine and Ursula are also invited. I am sure Valentine will go. But Ursula – what shall you do about her?’

  ‘Leave her behind.’

  ‘Was she not born there?’

  ‘She is not yet fourteen. Her time will come.’

  ‘She is already very wilful.’

  ‘No more so than her step-mother.’

  The two kennelmen had moved away. Harriet’s eyes flashed, but then she gave her deep sardonic chuckle. ‘As you knew well enough when you married me. You knew it all. I was badly broken in by Toby. You can’t teach an old horse new tricks. I know you had ambitions to try!’

  George was restive, looked it. ‘I don’t think these equestrian metaphors are especially appropriate. Nor flattering to you. I certainly wish you would be more guided by me – at least in your social preferences.’

  ‘Go on, boy, go on!’ said Harriet, releasing the puppy. She took off a glove and scratched inelegantly under her arm. ‘Pray what’s wrong now?’

  The hounds were all yelping and crying again, like a noisy group at a party.

  In irritation George raised his voice: ‘You cannot say I have not been generous in meeting your many and different requirements. Money has been available to you always, even when you have been at your most extravagant. You never seem to have any idea about money except to spend it.’

  ‘What other use has it?’ she replied contemptuously.

  ‘I cannot believe you are so foolish as to mean that! Without the power and position that money brings – money well managed—’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know, I know. So I am extravagant. It is nothing fresh. You knew it before we married. We were both marrying for the second time, and it is not to be supposed that we could change our lives and characters to suit the other.’

  George took a deep breath. ‘At least I think you owe it to me not to spend the whole summer in the stables as well as the whole winter hunting. And I think you owe it to me not to encourage my son and his friends to waste their nights in drinking and gaming!’

  By having to speak loudly to each other the interchange had become even more emphatic than was intended by either party. Yet after he had finished George felt the flush of annoyance following, justifying and corroborating what he felt and what he had said. He stood there angrily among the dogs, then turned away.

  As he got to the door she said: ‘George!’

  He half stopped.

  She said: ‘Does it not occur to you that it is better to see Valentine gambling and drinking in his own house than for it to happen outside, where he would certainly go if he were driven? And does it not occur to you that I spend no more time with my horses and dogs than you do with your ledgers and balances – and if you rode more with me you would see more of me, which would be agreeable for me and much healthier and more invigorating for you?’

  He hesitated, not sure how to take it, frowning at the cynicism of her expression. ‘That is all very well, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘There is such a thing as permitting gaming and another in revelling in it oneself and openly encouraging it!’

  ‘To tell the truth, George, I enjoy it. I am not one of your Methodies. And no amount of wishing can change that.’

  There was a silence between them, though no lack of noise around.

  She said: ‘When is the invitation?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The invitation to Trenwith.’

  ‘The ninth.’

  ‘I think I have a frock. It would be a mistake to wear too grand a one for a “family” occasion.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘But perhaps a new piece of jewellery.’

  ‘You have plenty of jewellery.’

  ‘A few old heirlooms. I think perhaps pearl earrings? We have ten days. I will look about.’

  ‘There is an acute lack of liquidity in our banking position at the moment,’ said George stiffly.

  ‘Pearls are as good as three per cents. We can sell them when I tire of ’em.’ She patted his arm, then took her glove off to brush away the mark she had left on his sleeve.

  As he walked away, back into the house, he decided that neither the gesture nor the smile that went with it had been at all conciliatory. She treated him, he thought, like a boy. Like a boy who could be cajoled into and out of anything. One day she would find out her mistake. Of course he still desired her, that was one of the troubles; when she permitted him to enter her bed he enjoyed her as he had enjoyed no other woman; it inhibited his freedom of action and criticism during the day.

  He thought sometimes about her first marriage. Once in the early days, when she had drunk more than usual, she had told him of the terrible quarrels she had had with Toby Carter. Toby, though a mad huntsman himself, had objected to his wife hunting more than four days a week. So in the end when she had defied him he had had her carried struggling to her bedroom where she was locked in until the hunt was over. Harriet chuckled lazily while she told George of the way she smashed all the glass in her bedroom, tore up the curtains, broke the furniture and in the end broke a panel of her door. Twice she had climbed out of her bedroom window, slid along the roof and climbed down the ivy and so to the stables. Later Toby had had bars put to the windows, but shortly after that, God rest his Catholic soul, and R I P and Ave Maria, etc., etc., he had broken his beastly neck in the field and she had found herself totally free and sole inheritor of a bankrupt estate.

  George found it quite difficult to believe that this strong-limbed but lazily dignified creature lying beside him could have been capable of such behaviour when crossed. Only perhaps in the sexual act did he see into the depths of her nature.

  Had she learned so much from her first marriage that now she knew just how to turn away a man’s wrath and indeed turn it to her own advantage? Or was he so much weaker, or more malleable, or less stupidly obstinate than Sir Toby Carter? The grim thought struck George to ask himself if he had ever crossed her at all? Had she not always had her way? Had he not given in all along the line? Generally it had been a gracious persuasion she had used, if in the exercise of it there was a touch of the arrogance proper to a duke’s daughter. Here perhaps lay the crux of the whole thing. Sir Toby, being presumably of noble birth himself, was less in awe of the blood in his wife’s veins.

  George stiffened his back as he walked. He was perfectly certain that, whatever might have been said or implied today, however firm his reprimand, Harriet would not alter her behaviour or her regime in the very least. She would feed him half-promises and go her own way entirely. That in the end could only lead to trouble. He would have to prepare his ground carefully. If there were to be a real conflict of wills he could not afford to be without ammunition.

  IV

  A week later, when George was in the counting house in Truro with his Uncle Cary, the chief clerk of the bank, a man called Lander, sent word that he would like to see Sir George when he had a moment, and please might it be private?

  George assumed that this meant without the meeting being supervised by the censorious Cary, and so went downstairs into the Bank. Lander, who was forty-five, a man with bad teeth and disagreeable breath but with the quickest eye for figures between Plymouth and Penzance, sweated around his starched collar and said he assumed Sir George well remembered the robbery which had taken place in January of this year, when the Warleggan & Willyams Bank was robbed of several thousand pounds in gold, in securities, in notes—

  ‘Am I likely to forget it?’ said George.

  ‘No, sir. And you will remember, sir, that we published in the newspaper the numbers of various of the notes – those t
hat we knew – so that they would become valueless in the hands of the thieves.’

  ‘Of course,’ said George again, testy as always when being told something he already knew.

  Lander persevered. ‘And you will remember, sir, at your suggestion, five, I think, or six notes, sir, whose numbers we possessed were withheld—’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Exactly, sir. We actually knew the numbers of these five as well, sir, but you suggested they should not be published in the newspaper along with the others so that the thieves might be encouraged—’

  ‘I recollect all that perfectly, Lander.’

  ‘ – Encouraged to spend them and thus might be traced.’ Lander paused for breath and sweated a bit more. ‘Well, sir, one of those notes came into our possession yesterday.’

  George turned the guineas in his fob.

  ‘Did it indeed, by God! You’re sure of the number?’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  ‘Yes, of course, you would be. How into our possession? Paid into the bank or—’

  ‘Paid into the bank, sir.’

  George went to the window, frowned his concentration on the dusty pane.

  ‘Was it noticed early enough? Could you be sure who paid it in?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Greet noticed it because it had been folded smaller than usual at some time and the creases had been marked by damp. That is how he can be sure. I have questioned him repeatedly, sir, to be certain positive he has made no mistake . . .’

  George waited. ‘Well, then, who paid it in? We must move as soon as possible.’

  Lander took out a kerchief to mop his brow and did not know where to look; certainly not at Sir George.

  ‘It was your wife, sir.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  I

  Saturday the ninth of October was dry and bright. The wind had died after several boisterous days and the roads and lanes generally were dry enough to support carriages without the risk of their becoming bogged down. Not that many carriages were expected at Trenwith, the tracks away from the turnpikes being scarcely of a sort to support four wheels at a time. Lord and Lady de Dunstanville might have come in a carriage, but they were in London.