The Golden Cup

by Belva Plain

  Marian’s hand took his and held it with such firm possession that he felt the pressure of her wedding ring.

  With this ring … until death … in the presence of this congregation …

  As if she had read his thoughts, she smiled, and raised his hand to her lips and kissed it.

  7

  Freddy, having heard his father enter the house, swung away from the keyboard and propelled the wheelchair to the other side of the room.

  Fresh air clung to Dan’s clothes. In jacket and tie, he had come directly from school. He looked vigorous, filled with power, and ten feet tall.

  “I heard you playing just now. Sounded like Debussy.”

  “Only chords. Nothing much.”

  Dan sat down on the sofa, crossed his legs, and lit a pipe; apparently he was settling in for a real visit. Well, why not? He owned the place.

  “So. Enjoying the piano. That’s great.”

  “It’s a Steinway, isn’t it? The best.”

  Dan didn’t answer that. So transparent, Freddy thought, so genial and jaunty, never letting his eyes stray to where my legs ought to be, scarcely ever meeting my eyes, even, for fear of what he’ll see there. So patient, so tactful. But not only he … all of them.

  “Where’s the boy? Still in the park, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  He knew perfectly well that Hank was in the park, just wanted to make conversation, couldn’t stand their silences. Not that there was anything new about that. Only more of the same.

  Now Dan ran a finger over the surface of the end table.

  “Keep the place nicely, they do.”

  “Yes.”

  Out of character, sloppy as Dan was. Never minded a bit of dust before; would just as soon have waded in it. Conversation again, that’s all.

  Dan sighed. He looked about at the sunny silk curtains tied back from the windows, at the flourishing azalea, the tawny carpet, the steady pendulum of the mantel clock, and finally up at the cornice in which plaster vines twined their way around the room. At the last, his gaze came to Freddy and rested a moment as if he were considering his next move. Then he spoke, asking directly, “Do you like this place, Freddy? The truth, please. I won’t mind if you say you don’t.”

  “Anyone would like it. Why shouldn’t I? What makes you ask?”

  “Then it must be my presence that you don’t like. You hardly speak to me.”

  “I don’t feel much like talking these days.”

  “I understand, of course. Still, you do manage a little with other people, I notice. But not with me.”

  “I’m no different that way from what I ever was.”

  “Possibly not. You just don’t bother, or aren’t able, to conceal it as well as you used to.”

  “Conceal what?” Freddy felt the frown gathering on his forehead; felt also an accelerating heartbeat.

  “Freddy, don’t fence with me. You’re too intelligent, we both are, not to know that something’s been wrong, or not quite right, between you and me from far, far back.”

  “Why are you bringing it up now? Why today?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not always easy to say why suddenly we feel compelled to do or say something that should have been done or said long ago.”

  Dan’s voice was hollow; there was a melancholy echo in it. And this melancholy quivered over Freddy’s skin. He wished his father would go away; he wished it weren’t necessary to answer.

  “I’ve been upset about you and Mother.” That was part of the truth, anyway.

  “Naturally.” Dan lowered his eyes. He cracked his fingers. “It’s a tragedy. If only I—well, I can’t. Can’t do anything. Can’t even tell you what it’s about. She wouldn’t want me to. Accept that, please.”

  He’s weeping inside, Freddy thought. What the hell can it be? Whose fault?

  Dan collected himself. “But there’s more than that. You and me I’m talking about. What is it, Freddy? I want to know. I have to know. Because I made a fuss when you married Leah? No. It was before then, even.”

  The silences. They ring. They make the ceiling too high, the stairs too steep, the house too large. How do you break them? Do you, too, come to a moment when suddenly you say things that maybe you should have said years and years ago? Rather than let them seethe and burn in your chest?

  He began. “It’s never any one thing, is it? I always thought you thought I wasn’t strong, wasn’t enough of a man.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m not at all like you. Rescuing that woman in the fire, all that hero stuff—”

  “I never said—”

  “I know you didn’t. But it was there all the same.”

  “Is that all? Anything else?”

  Now. Now. But why? So long ago, at the edge of childhood it happened. Yet, vivid it was, the lit bulb glaring against daylight in the lab, the voices upstairs, his knowledge that the bed was there and his knowledge of what was happening on the bed.

  The memory swelled in his throat, wanting to be spoken. Dan was asking for it, asking. Give it, then!

  “As I just said, it’s never any one thing,” he began. “So it’s hard to put your finger on the right place. But—”

  “But?”

  “Well, there was a day, one day that mattered. I came to the lab after school to tell you something, and you weren’t there, you were upstairs. There was someone with you.”

  “Someone?”

  “A woman. I heard. I stood and listened, only a minute or two. Then I didn’t want to hear any more. I ran out. I went home.”

  His father’s face flushed. It looked scalded, as if it hurt. He was staring at his fingers.

  “You never said anything.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Dan raised his head. His eyes were very bright, glistening. If he cries, Freddy thought, I won’t be able to stand it.

  “Freddy … I’m not a bad man.”

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “No, you must have. At least until you got old enough to know more about—about men and women. But that day you hated me, didn’t you? You must have.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You must have thought I didn’t love your mother. I don’t blame you. A child—a boy—would think that. I loved your mother, Freddy. I still do.”

  Freddy’s lips moved, making no sound: Stop it, you’re all choked up, I don’t want to hear any more.

  “You can do things with your body that don’t have anything to do with your heart or your mind. I don’t say it’s right. I don’t say a man isn’t very often sorry a moment later, and scared of being found out and hurting somebody he cares terribly about. Can you understand that?”

  “I think so.”

  I’m expected to say I do. What he’s asking for is forgiveness. Not mine to give.

  “My mother never knew?” Freddy asked.

  “About that day? No.”

  About that day, he answers. As to other days, he doesn’t say. That’s what has gone wrong between them, then? But they were always one in my mind: Mother-father, one. That’s how they were. So he’s messed things up. Women go to him. He’s one of those chaps. No, don’t say “chaps,” you’re not in England. Guys in the army were like that. Women can’t keep their hands off them. They can’t keep their hands off women. Can’t help themselves. I wonder what it’s like?

  “I never wanted to hurt anybody, Freddy.”

  Huddled, almost, in the corner of the sofa, revealing himself, Dan looked smaller.

  “I think I can understand,” Freddy said again. Comfort was in order now.

  “Yes?” Dan spoke quickly. “I’m glad. And I want to say—that sort of thing hasn’t been the pattern of my life. Just now and then … sometimes too hard to resist an opportunity … my weakness. But not that often, remember. It was always”—he bit his lip, and finished—“always Hennie.”

  “Doesn’t she know that?”

  “It doesn’t seem so.”

  “It’s all too d
amned sad. Everything is.”

  “At least you have Leah. That’s something.”

  “Not that simple, Dad.” I can’t remember when I last called him that. Did I have to feel pity before I could say the word again?

  “I suppose it isn’t, in the circumstances,” Dan said.

  Neither spoke for a minute. Then Dan said, “If there’s any way I can help by listening, talking … but then, that’s too personal, isn’t it? To talk to your father about? A doctor, maybe?”

  Freddy shook his head. “Please, not now.”

  “All right. But don’t be too proud to ask advice, son. Remember, sex doesn’t just go away.” Dan stood up. He took Freddy’s hand. “I’m sorry about that old business. Sorry about every unhappy minute I may ever have given you. I never meant to, Freddy, God knows. I hope you know it too.”

  “I do.” Funny how the anger vanished. When he came in here an hour ago I was full of it. Now all I feel is the pulse in his hand, and I don’t want to let go of it.

  “Freddy … hell, let’s not pretend. We’ve been plenty mad at each other. You haven’t always been what I wanted, you’ve felt that. And I surely haven’t been what you wanted or needed. But I always loved you and I do now and I always will. And I’m glad we had this talk, and I want to have more talks from now on.” Dan’s lips grazed Freddy’s forehead. “Hey, let me get out of here before I start crying like a woman. See you tomorrow, maybe?”

  “Tomorrow. Come back.”

  The swift tread went down the stairs, two steps at a time by the sound of it. And Freddy felt the break of a small smile, the first he had felt in months. Rising from someplace close to the heart, it lumped in his throat, and warmed him and spread and filled him, softly, with its grace.

  8

  Paul came out of Brooks Brothers and started on his way uptown. He had been feeling what he supposed was generally meant by the term “well-being.” He had bought new suits; the uniform, cleaned and camphored, had been put away to be taken out as a curiosity some decades hence, like old Uncle David’s Union blue, and shown to a curious admiring family: And what did you do in the Great War, Daddy?

  Well, he had done plenty and seen things he would rather not think about, things that sometimes woke him out of sleep, so that he would lie for an instant blinking into the narrow slice of dark blue night, where the looped curtains separated; startled by the silver gloss of the mirror above the dresser, he would pull his mind back from the nightmare into the present safety of the room.

  Now, passing a display of handsome foulards and regimental ties, he was brought up short; this was the shop where young Drummond had worked; he’d had a plaintive voice and a salesman’s anxious glance, wanting to please. He was dead now.

  This was the sort of recollection that could utterly destroy a sense of well-being.

  Nevertheless there was an April feel in this last week of March, a soft, cool touch in the air; the sights of paper narcissi and straw hats in store windows, the feel of walking again on streets that now, in the second month of being home, were just beginning really to seem like home.

  Having promised his father to pick up some papers at his parents’ home for perusal while they were on a week’s vacation, he swung west and north toward Central Park. Fifth Avenue was crowded with Saturday shoppers, readying themselves for spring. Moving briskly, he kept catching his reflection in plate glass. It felt good to see himself in a dark blue suit again. He was still a trifle too thin, but Mimi was taking care of that, plying him with thick soups and home-baked rolls and puddings, mothering him as though he’d been starved, which was hardly the case.

  The word mother set his mind off in another direction, and kept it there as he crossed the park. There at the pond were the small boys he’d kept seeing in his mind’s eye, a vision of sanity during the most insane hours of the war. Accompanied by parents or nursemaids, they were sailing their boats. Some things never changed; he could remember going there himself with a marvelous sailboat, sometimes he’d gone with his unlamented Fräulein and sometimes, so very happily, with Hennie. Probably that was why, when he thought of fathering a child, it was always a boy, and the pond was the place where he saw himself with that boy.

  Mimi would be a conscientious mother. He could imagine her worrying over a child as she now worried over him, fretting about wet feet and proper nourishment. She wanted a child so badly! And it was time, past time. Now that he was safely home, she’d be relaxed, he thought, and it would happen. True, she was not a vigorous woman, prone as she was to colds and sinus infections, but those, after all, were minor problems and should have no effect.…

  That was a nice kid Freddy had, jolly and strong. He had a “personality,” like his mother’s, maybe like Dan’s, but certainly not like Freddy’s. And Paul had a vivid memory of taking Freddy to see The Great Train Robbery at the nickelodeon, holding his hand when, at the climax, the sinister masked robbers boarded the train. He could still see Freddy’s scared white face.

  “He sits there, staring at nothing,” Leah says. “When you say something he looks up and gives you a vague smile. It’s as if he’d forgotten you were there. He won’t talk about anything.”

  Leah’s naturally husky voice is roughened in a throat constricted by tears; the tone rises at the end as if asking a question, asking to be told what to do and whether it is always going to be like this. She wants, understandably, to know what is to happen with the rest of their lives.

  Always one wants to know what is to happen. One imagines one would like to have the whole of life, from start to finish, laid out like a jigsaw puzzle on a table, so that one could be prepared. But if one knew, what then?

  One day in France he had heard the sound of motors in the sky, an ominous thrumming growing louder and louder, until they came into sight, to battle there in the sleepy blue afternoon; circling, menacing, and retreating, they’d fought until one fell in a gush of fire, twisting like a wounded bird to the earth. He remembered now that he had had a vision then, and been horrified of his vision of another war, God forbid, in which hundreds or thousands of flying machines would fill the sky.…

  What is to happen? Better not to know.

  It all goes so fast. Everything speeds. There were almost as many autos passing him now in the park as there were carriages. The whole world was changed. Freddy had reminded him of the New Year’s celebration in 1900, not quite twenty years ago; what would things be like twenty years hence? Look at the women, smoking cigarettes! Even Mimi had tried one, although she hadn’t liked it. Leah liked it though. Leah would try anything new.

  Only Paul’s parents didn’t seem to have altered their ways. They were the rearguard, dependable types holding on to the best of the old, making change slowly, with prudence and caution. He supposed it was good to have parents like his; they gave you a sense of place, of things holding when so much else was whirling. Yes, and his grandmother Angelique too. Her mind was still in the Old South. Chivalry on a veranda. He chuckled to himself, feeling the familiar mixture of exasperation and affection for her.

  And here was the Dakota, rising on Central Park West, still the beacon that it had been for the small boy walking homeward after a day’s play in the park. He came out onto Central Park West and entered the street of solid brownstones that, he supposed, would always be his symbol of home. There it stood, one out of an identical row, distinguishable from the rest by the carriage lanterns on either side of the door and by the heavy lace on all the windows from bottom to top. It was the white lace of cleanliness, order, and prosperity. He fished in his pocket for the key and climbed the steps.

  His mother had left a note on the silver tray in the hall: Paul, when you come for the papers, be sure to lock up carefully when you leave. The servants are away with us too.

  He stood a moment in the dim hall, holding the note. Then, mounting the stairs to the second floor, he went to his father’s desk. Next to the folder that he was to take lay the telephone number at the shore, where his parents wer
e staying. Something about the word shore then caught at his memory, and he was off into nostalgia, into childhood when he’d had saltwater taffy and pony rides on the beach. Perhaps he and Mimi should go away for a week or two. It would be almost balmy at the ocean late in April.

  The doorbell rang. Now who on earth would be bothering on Saturday morning, with the family away? He went downstairs. The curtain over the glass upper half of the door showed a vague shape, a woman undoubtedly, because of the wide hat. He peered for a better look, praying it wasn’t that garrulous old maid Miss Foster from next door; he’d have to ask her in and she’d talk him to death for half an hour.

  Then he drew back. His heart lurched … he was seeing things! It couldn’t be, for God’s sake! The bell sounded again with a short, quick ring, as if a hesitant hand had barely touched it. He opened the door.

  “Why, Anna,” he said.

  His heart pounded, pounded … he had a crazy thought: She had come to upbraid him, to call him the monster that he was. But after five—no, almost six—years?

  “I have an appointment with your mother,” Anna said, looking past him down the hall.

  “My mother?” he stammered. “My mother? But she’s not here. There’s no one here.”

  “She told me to come this morning at eleven o’clock.” Still the eyes looked beyond him.

  “I don’t understand. They went to the shore, to Cousin Blanche’s farm. They’re gone for the week.”

  “She told me to come at eleven o’clock.”

  Now he saw that her hands in their prim cotton gloves were twisting the strap of her pocketbook in distress, and grief pierced him as if someone had thrust a needle into him.

  “Come,” he said. “She may have left a note for you. We’ll go look on her desk.”

  He stood aside to let her pass. Her skirt brushed him as she trod the step above. He remembered, or thought he remembered, the scent that came from her; not that of soap or perfume, but the healthy fragrance that comes from sweet grass or rainy air or young flesh. A linen collar was turned out over her suit collar; on its edge a row of homemade embroidery had been laid; over it had fallen a wisp of coppery hair, still worn long. Then he thought he must be imagining that he was walking again up the stairs, in this house, with Anna.