The Golden Cup

by Belva Plain

  “Thank you, Leah,” Hennie said.

  There was a Sunday afternoon staleness in the parlor, an air of limbo. We sit like three crones in the dusk, Hennie thought, and got up to switch on all the lights.

  Angelique stood up too. “Well, since you won’t talk, I don’t see how I can help you. God knows I would if I could. Everything’s crashing. It’s this war. Everything crashes when there’s a war. I remember—” She checked herself and sighed. “It’s getting late. I might as well go home.”

  “You won’t stay for supper?” Leah asked, in the correct tone she reserved for Angelique.

  “Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Let me know if you need me.” And Angelique gave her daughter her dry, not unpleasant kiss, which smelled of her clear, flowery perfume.

  To give her full credit, she had been coming every day since Dan’s departure, had brought flowers and food. The poor woman was distraught. She had not even said, “I told you so,” or “I warned you,” which, in the circumstances, she could well have done. All of this had to be appreciated.

  Still, it was less taxing when she did not come. Then Hennie ate in the kitchen; Hank in his high chair took all of Leah’s attention, except for an occasional worried glance at Hennie, who ate her few mouthfuls in silence.

  Only once Hennie looked up to meet the girl’s full gaze and said, “Leah, you are a daughter to me.” Then a terrible retributive anger brought from her a thing she would have sworn she could never say: “You know, he never wanted you.”

  “I know that,” Leah answered calmly. She lifted the boy out of the high chair and removed his bib. “He telephoned today. He would like to see Hank.”

  “Let him come when he wants. I’ll go to my room or be out.”

  Suddenly one day, Hennie’s lassitude dissolved. The nerves at the pit of her stomach began to seethe like water at full boil. She couldn’t sit still; she had to move. The tension became unbearable. She began to turn the house inside out.

  Leah was astonished. “Surely you don’t need to do everything all at once!”

  “Yes, the place is awful. Never mind helping me. You worked all day, and anyway, I prefer to do it myself,” Hennie told her as, in cap and long apron, she stood at the ready among her assembled tools: scrub board and wringer, dustpan and dusters; rug beater, camphor, tar paper, sponges, buckets, and beeswax. She swept the carpets with tea leaves; she aired the blankets, took the curtains down, scrubbed them, ironed them, and hung them back; she washed the furniture with vinegar and water and polished it; she washed all the china and emptied the drawers; she dusted every book on the shelves.

  Exhausting herself, until her back ached so sharply that she was barely able to straighten up, she took solace from her exhaustion. Wronged and victimized, unvalued and shamed she had been, yet she could be proud of her strength and her will to survive.

  After a while, when she could do no more, the frenzy died and the lassitude returned, so that she dragged through the days. In the afternoons she took Hank to the nearest scrap of a park and sat there, watching him play. Other women were there, watching other children, but she avoided them. And she felt that her loneliness must be visible to all, like those misty white halos around the heads of the figures in religious paintings.

  She longed for a woman to talk to. Angelique was out of the question, so was Leah. She had, these days, many memories of her sister. Through half-closed eyes, watching Freddy’s child scrape with pail and shovel in the hard earth, she was at the same time seeing and hearing vivid moments out of an old life that now, oddly, seemed secure and good.

  Florence comes into Hennie’s room, swirling the flowered ruffles of her first evening dress before the mirror. Florence wakes her at midnight to bring a napkin full of petit fours. Filched from the party just for Hennie, they are chocolate and strawberry pink. Farther back, much farther back, Florence and Hennie are scolded and punished. They lock the bedroom door and cry together. Then, forward again in time: Florence gives birth to Paul. Hennie is the first to hold the baby when he has been swaddled; she carries him to the light and studies the tiny face.

  “Why, he looks like you,” she tells Florence. He did, and still does. The patrician head and the calm air of noblesse oblige are all his mother’s.

  What will she say to Paul when he comes back and finds what has happened in this, his second home, as he always called it? What will she say to Freddy? He will be devastated. Yes, this business will devastate him.

  Oh, it is better never to love anyone at all! If she had not loved Dan, she wouldn’t be sitting here like this on this park bench, among the pigeons and noisy traffic and indifferent passersby. If she hadn’t been wounded … And she was conscious of her hands, locked tightly together on her lap, with their dark blue veins bulging from the strain.

  Summer came. The city smothered under a hot bronze dome. At night, people slept on their fire escapes, burning citronella candles to keep the mosquitoes away. Sometimes, when Hennie leaned on the windowsill, she could see people sitting up late, often a solitary man or woman on a stoop, staring into the darkness.

  Other times, in the early evening, she rode the Fifth Avenue bus. On the dark Palisades across the Hudson a few lights gleamed. You could imagine the fragrant dampness among the trees over there. She rode the bus as far as it went and rode it back downtown.

  It was always deep night on the backward trip; young couples sat with their arms around each other, sharing a scarf or sweater; around them, there was no aura of loneliness. What did they know? She saw them with pity and scorn. Better for them that they couldn’t see ahead! She felt an urge to reach out and touch the young girl sitting in front, whose head rested so confidently on the shoulder of the man, to reach out and say—say what?

  One evening she came home from her ride to find her brother waiting.

  “This heat,” he said, fanning himself with the newspaper.

  He had obviously come from the office, dressed for business as he was, with his high stiff collar and, since Decoration Day had passed, a straw boater in place of the usual black derby.

  “This heat! You look exhausted, Hennie.”

  “I’m all right.” She had no wish for commiseration. “I’ve just had a bus ride. Why aren’t you in the country?”

  “We’re going Friday, as soon as Meg’s school is over. Hennie, how long are you going on like this? We’re all so worried about you.”

  “Well, don’t be. I’m all right, I tell you.”

  “Are you going to get a divorce?”

  “There are no grounds for one. And anyway, I wouldn’t want to make the effort.”

  “Well, then, will you ever go back together?”

  “No, I won’t go back.”

  Alfie clucked his tongue. “I’m sure I don’t understand it all! I’d like to know what it’s about! Then maybe I could make peace between you and Dan.” His face wrinkled in distress. “Nobody talks to anyone anymore. That old business with Florence and you, what’s that for? Emily and I never quarrel with anyone!”

  “How is Emily? How is Meg?”

  “Emily’s fine. Busy packing the summer clothes. And Meg takes all the honors in school. She certainly doesn’t get that from me.”

  Hennie had to smile. “No, she certainly doesn’t. Give her my love. I haven’t seen her in so long. Haven’t seen anyone,” she murmured.

  “That’s just the point. That’s why I’ve come. We’d like you to spend a week at our place. Cool off. Relax. Bring Leah and the baby, naturally. Do you all a world of good.”

  All that hearty jollity! She’d have to go on hikes, walk out to see the new colt, play croquet, and sit through convivial dinners.… Shaking her head, she demurred.

  “I insist,” said Alfie. “Make it the Fourth of July. You’ve never seen a bang-up country-town parade. We’ll have just a small group. I’ll ask Mama. Then there will be Emily’s cousin, Thayer Hughes. He’s an English professor, lost his wife a few years ago. A good sport. We always have him over the F
ourth. And Ben Marcus is coming, he’s a young lawyer, not from my regular firm, but I’ve been doing some real estate deals with him and we’ve gotten friendly, so I asked him to come out and look over some property in the area.” Alfie was enthusiastic, trusting to his eagerness to keep Hennie from refusing again. “Yes, a very decent young fellow. He’s got ulcers, or did have, so the army refused him. I think he feels humiliated because of it. So it’s settled for the Fourth. I’ll drive you out, so you won’t have to lug the kid’s stuff on the train.”

  “What a gorgeous car!” Leah cried. “A Pierce-Arrow, isn’t it?”

  She was delighted with everything, with her smart new duster, her goggles and veil, tightly fastened against the rushing wind. She could hardly sit still, and, to Angelique’s annoyance, kept turning and twisting around to point things out to Hank, who sat squeezed between herself and Hennie.

  “Look here, Hank, see these snaps?” She was showing him how the celluloid storm curtains worked. “You can close them when it rains, and here you’ll be, all snug and dry!”

  The car bumped onto the ferry. Belowdecks the engines rumbled and the boat began to move across the Hudson. Ahead lay the Jersey shore, faintly arched like the back of a tortoise and, like it, speckled brown and yellow-green. Alfie and Ben Marcus got out of the car to stand at the bow.

  “I’m getting out too,” Leah said.

  “You’ll be blown to pieces,” Angelique objected. “Look how the wind’s tearing at their coats!”

  “I don’t mind, I love it,” Leah said, crawling out.

  “Well, leave Hank here with us, then. It’s dangerous having him stand near the railing. I declare,” Angelique complained when Leah was out of earshot, “that girl can’t be quiet for two minutes in a row.”

  They watched her walk to the bow, where the men moved to make room for her between them; the wind, catching the slit in her narrow skirt, blew it apart to reveal for an instant a sleek silk thigh.

  “He’s got an eye for her already,” said Angelique.

  “Mama! You don’t mean the young man?”

  “I certainly do. He’s a foxy fellow.”

  “Well, he does look something like a fox,” Hennie admitted.

  Ben Marcus had a sharp, slender face; his hair was sandy red, with eyebrows and lashes to match. He had a keen look, not at all unpleasant; in his eyes there could be seen a readiness to laugh.

  Angelique frowned. “And she a married woman. She ought at least to discourage him.”

  “Why? What is she doing? I’m happy to see her so cheerful. She’s got enough on her mind.”

  Mama is positively prurient, Hennie thought; she would be shocked to know that she’s prurient.

  “You always think ill of Leah. Look at her now, just look at the pretty young thing.”

  For Leah had turned her back on the shoreline to lean against the rail, talking with animation; her hands moved gracefully as she related something that was apparently amusing, for both men were laughing.

  “I’ve always told you I don’t think she’s pretty. Striking, yes. Attention-getting, yes, very definitely.”

  The sky grew wider on the Jersey side. Enormous puffy clouds floated westward with the car, over little rivers and through little towns one like the other.

  After an hour or more through open country, they neared a county seat. The road widened; great elms met overhead to form a dark green roof. Farms gave way to the estates of gentlemen; behind wrought-iron gates and tailored hedges, one could glimpse courtyards and stables, carriage houses and conservatories.

  Leah’s head kept turning from one side to the other.

  “That one on the right is supposed to be a copy of Hampton Court. Paul told us, I remember. And Uncle Alfie, doesn’t the one over there on the hill belong to Rowell Evans?”

  Ben twisted around to see. “The railroad Evans?”

  “Yes,” Alfie said, “he raises prize Guernseys, they’re his hobby.”

  The county seat still clustered around its eighteenth-century green; neat, prosperous shops on all four sides were busy with the afternoon’s trade, as they drove through.

  Halfway to the crest of a steep hill, they passed an unoccupied car. The owner had left a toolbox open on the running board; the tools, tire iron, blowout patches, and a shovel with a collapsible handle lay scattered on the verge.

  “A Winston,” Leah said.

  Alfie heard her. “How on earth do you know that? Did you know it, Ben?”

  “I don’t know a thing about autos,” Ben answered. “Living in New York, you don’t really need one.”

  “That’s true, but I love them,” declared Leah.

  “He’s in plenty of trouble, whoever he is,” Alfie remarked. “Four flat tires! Tough to get even one when you’re going uphill, of all places.”

  “He was going down the hill,” Angelique said.

  Leah corrected her. “No, uphill. That’s an antique he’s got there. On those old models, the gas goes into the carburetor by gravity and it won’t flow forward on a hill this steep, so he’d have to back up.”

  Ben was curious. “How do you come to know about things like that?”

  “My cousin Paul told me once.”

  “By gosh!” Alfie cried, calling back over his shoulder. “You’ve got a memory like an elephant, Leah.” And, turning to Ben, “She’s quite a woman, that young lady.”

  It was as Alfie had promised, a “real bang-up parade.” The whole town and surrounding countryside had come to cheer. There were horse-drawn floats with the minutemen, and Washington crossing the Delaware; there were Betsy Ross and Patrick Henry. More than a dozen stalwart old men marched in Civil War uniform. Flags and bands surrounded the car that bore Uncle Sam in white chin whiskers and stovepipe hat; Miss Liberty, draped in red, white, and blue, carried aloft an appeal for Liberty bonds. The wheel spokes on the car were draped with daisies, poppies, and cornflowers, while the sun rained gold upon the happy warriors. All was triumph and jubilation.

  None of this, thought Hennie, seems to have any connection with the trenches. And a trickle of cold dread seeped deep inside her, as if she had drunk ice water while standing here in the summer noon.

  Beside her, little Hank rode high on the shoulders of Ben Marcus. The man and the little boy had taken to each other. Well, of course! The child needed and missed a man; she wondered whether it puzzled him that Dan wasn’t in the house anymore to read a story at bedtime or keep him company over cereal in the morning.

  “You’re thinking of your son.”

  The gentle voice came from Thayer Hughes, who was standing on Hennie’s other side.

  “Well, yes, partly,” she answered.

  “Spangles and drums and hip-hip-hoorah. Still, I suppose it’s necessary.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “You have just the one son?”

  “One child. To my regret,” she said.

  “I have none and my wife is dead. I sometimes think loneliness is a sickness.”

  “That’s as good a way as any of putting it.”

  “Your husband and you are separated? Emily mentioned something.”

  Most surely she would have mentioned something.

  “Yes,” she said. “Separated.”

  She was not offended, as she might have been had some other person intruded on her privacy. For the man was mannerly, a true cousin to Emily. At first sight of him she had thought, with faint amusement, that he even looked like the popular image of a professor, thin and slightly stooped in his good tweed jacket. His thick hair, just touched with silver and in need of barbering, surrounded a face as serene as Emily’s, with an added air of masculine authority.

  “Are you shocked?” she asked him.

  Thayer smiled. “No, not at all. That’s middle-class morality.”

  Hennie’s smile was inward. The man would only imply, being too well-bred to say aloud: I—we—are all of the upper classes. Dan wouldn’t like him at all, she thought, and found him agreeable n
evertheless.

  “Would you care to walk back?” he asked her when the last of the parade had passed the firehouse and dispersed. “It’s a good cool day for a walk.”

  “Why, yes, I would,” she told him, while Meg said she would come too.

  “It’s going to pour before the day’s out,” Alfie warned. “Look at the thunderheads!”

  “They’re hours away,” Thayer assured him. “We’ll be home long before they get there.”

  So the three set out, Meg leading, while the rest of the party rode home.

  “We’ll cut off the main road and down this lane; it will take us to the tail end of our place and you’ll be able to see the new hundred-acre piece that Dad’s just bought,” Meg directed.

  They passed through the fields to the gardens, Meg explaining all the way. Neat rows of strawberries in white blossom lay alongside the delicate feathers of asparagus; to the left stood a grape arbor and to the right a row of raspberry canes.

  Hennie paused; there was a sudden stillness in the air. “Feel how quiet it is,” she murmured.

  Thayer looked up at the sky. “I’m afraid it’s the quiet before the storm. I miscalculated.”

  The sky had gone gray. Roiling clouds had come over from nowhere; a narrow gap of blue was closing fast.

  “It’s lovely, anyway. I’ve lived in the city all my life, and yet this does something rare for my spirit.”

  Thayer smiled. “Perhaps it’s ancestral. The plantation memories in your blood.”

  “Oh, no, never that! That certainly skipped me! It’s my brother who’s got the feel for all this.”

  Hennie picked a handful of berries, pale rosy globes, segmented and veined, observing, “These look like onions, the skin’s so thin.”

  “Gooseberries, Aunt Hennie. Awfully sour, only good for preserves, really.” Meg, striding always ahead, spoke with authority.

  “There’s something rather touching in the confident way she’s taking charge of us,” Hennie whispered to Thayer.

  “You feel that too? But yes, you would understand.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I see how soft you are. You’re soft as Meg.”