The Golden Cup

by Marcia Willett

  ‘Silly girl,’ he’d say with patronizing affection whilst she’d press her own hands between her knees and pretend to be absorbed by something beyond the car window. Moments later, however, some deep-down early conditioning would be rousing her guilt and she’d be reminding herself of his sound qualities – a rather clumsy kindness allied to a natural tendency to protect, his ability to provide the necessary comforts whilst carefully husbanding his resources – qualities, Mutt pointed out, that were just as important as mutual passion. Twelve years her senior, good-looking and already successful, he’d seemed so glamorous to her inexperienced twenty-year-old eyes and his determined pursuit had been very flattering. Remembering, Emma made a little face; the point was that, once Bruno had announced his engagement to the waif-like gamine Zoë, a Juliette Gréco look-alike and photographer’s model, Emma had felt rather left out of things. Zoë had a way of making her future sister-in-law feel gauche – clumsy and raw – and Raymond had been conveniently at hand to soothe this sense of inadequacy.

  ‘You can’t marry him,’ Bruno had said flatly, after the first meeting with Raymond – and they’d stared at each other resentfully.

  ‘Mutt really likes him,’ she’d said stubbornly. ‘She thinks he’s reliable and steady.’

  ‘Reliable?’ Bruno had stared at her in disbelief, shaking his head. ‘For God’s sake, Em! Do me a favour.’

  Now, still thinking about the ensuing quarrel, Emma climbed back into the car and drove down the steep, winding lane, slowing down when she reached the boatyard beside the row of cottages and, finally, pulling into the disused quarry opposite.

  The cheerful tattoo, thumped out on the car’s horn, roused Rafe Boscowan from his work and drew him to the window of his study.

  ‘It’s Emma,’ he shouted to his wife. ‘I’ll go.’

  Pamela continued to sit at the kitchen table, carefully peeling vegetables, a look of expectant pleasure lighting her face. She heard Rafe reach the bottom of the stairs, open the door and shout a welcome, and then turned in her chair as they came in together. She could smell Emma’s flowery scent, felt her face taken between gentle hands and her cheek kissed: a little pause – and she instinctively knew that Emma was studying her closely.

  ‘You look so good, darling. Such a pretty jersey – and a new haircut? I love the blonde streaks.’

  Pamela’s hands went straight to her head: how like Emma to notice the change.

  ‘D’you approve? Rafe says it’s good but I’m not sure I can trust him to tell me the truth. Olivia said I was looking dowdy so I decided to brighten myself up a little.’

  Rafe and Emma exchanged a glance: the eldest of the Boscowan children was not noted for her tact. Pamela smiled into the tiny silence.

  ‘No Slips,’ she said with the devastating acuity that had developed with her blindness. ‘I know that Liv can be out-spoken but she’s quite right: I mustn’t let myself go.’

  Emma touched Pamela’s shoulder; in the Boscowan family, the word ‘slip’ in that context stood for ‘Sly Looks in Private’ – meaning an exchange that Pamela could no longer see – and they all tried to keep to the rules that her blindness should in no way be exploited. Nevertheless, Emma couldn’t quite restrain the irritation that Olivia’s tactlessness so often called up.

  ‘I promise you,’ she said, ‘that it looks really good. You know I’d tell you. I’d rush you over to Wadebridge and stand over the girl until she got it right. As it happens, there’s no need.’

  Rafe lifted the board of peeled vegetables away so that he could slice them and took some glasses from the dresser.

  ‘You’ll have a drink?’ he asked. ‘I told Bruno to come down and join us but he probably won’t notice the time. He had that look of being in some other world. Mousie will be in soon. How’s Raymond?’

  He poured some wine, took a glass to the table and lightly placed Pamela’s fingers around the stem. Emma wandered about happily: pinching a piece of raw carrot which she crunched, inspecting the latest photograph of Olivia’s new baby, peering from the window, talking all the while. The row of cottages was only a few feet from the sea wall and the kitchen was filled with grey, watery reflections, giving a sense of light and space to the long low room with its heavily beamed ceilings and thick, stone walls. Emma sighed with contentment; just so had it looked when Aunt Julia had welcomed the small Emma with home-made fudge or Cornish splits, although now the old range was gone and the kitchen had been modernized so that Pamela could make her way about with confidence and freedom.

  Watching her now as she moved carefully, opening drawers, laying the table, Emma was reminded suddenly of a younger Pamela, who’d flitted about carelessly, bending to deal with the small Olivia who tumbled at her feet, proudly pregnant with Joe. They’d joked, Pamela and Rafe, when Emma had visited them: speaking in broad Cornish, pretending to tug at forelocks. ‘’Tez the young lady come down from Paradise,’ Pamela would call to Rafe. ‘Where be yer manners, bey? Get the maid a chair.’

  She’d never minded, in fact it made her feel rather special, although she secretly envied their easy companionship and readily demonstrated affection. It was evident that Pamela’s blindness had brought her and Rafe even closer, deepening and strengthening their relationship, yet Emma was filled with sudden sadness for all that Pamela had lost.

  Rafe’s sister, Mousie, came in. She held out her arms in welcome, and Emma went gratefully towards her, concealing the unexpectedly poignant sense of loss in the warmth of Mousie’s embrace.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bruno emerged from his small, book-crowded study, glanced at his watch and grimaced guiltily: twenty past two – and lunch would be over down at The Row. Taking comfort in the fact that his family would understand, and suddenly aware that he was very hungry, he went to see what there might be in the fridge to sustain him. Nellie – the happy result of an unscheduled mating between a pretty Border collie bitch and a handsome golden retriever – who lay stretched on the cold slates of the kitchen floor, roused herself and looked hopeful.

  ‘Lunch is a bit late today, old dear,’ murmured Bruno, putting a large, half-full tin of dog food, some eggs and a piece of cheese on the draining-board. ‘Sorry about that.’

  Yet he felt elated by his morning’s work, conscious of a sense of wellbeing that was the result of translating his ideas successfully onto paper – through the medium of his computer. Half a chapter had been written and, for once, he was content with the end product of those periods of mental anguish and long minutes spent pacing the cramped spaces of his cluttered study floor.

  ‘Why?’ visitors would ask, wide-eyed. ‘Why do you work here when you could have that fantastic view?’

  They’d stare disbelievingly at the stone walls, hung with huge squares of cork boards to which were pinned photographs, drawings, glossy-paged pieces ripped from magazines, yellowing newspaper articles curling at the edges; all relevant to the work in progress. A creeping tide of books oozed at the edge of the faded carpet whilst the trestle table, at right angles to his desk, was covered with scribbled-over shreds of paper and notebooks.

  ‘Nothing more distracting than a view when you’re trying to work,’ he’d answer, encouraging them back to that amazing, central room with its curved window, so that they could stand in its great, swelling bay, looking down into the ice-green sea.

  Built as a folly by a Victorian ancestor, Bruno found The Lookout to be the perfect place to write his books: a series inspired by his own family, historical faction beginning with a Trevannion who’d fought for the King during the Civil War. Since these books took two or three years to research he also wrote, under a different name, what he called his wolf-scarers: stories about the modern Royal Navy, the first of which had brought unexpected success when he’d written it just after he’d left the Navy in his mid-twenties. Today he was completely preoccupied with an engineering Trevannion who’d worked with the great Sir Joseph Bazalgette on the main drainage system for London.

  I
t was fortunate, thought Bruno as he fed Nellie and grated some cheese, that the Trevannions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had been so prolific: plenty more characters to keep him busy for a few years yet. Lucky, too, that his present family was so tolerant regarding his time-keeping. He was halfway through his omelette when Emma came in.

  ‘You are useless,’ she said, regarding him affectionately. ‘Utterly useless. Where were you today? Mousie said that you were probably halfway down a sewer in Victorian London.’

  ‘And she was absolutely right.’ He stood up, reaching across the table to embrace her. ‘Sorry about that.’

  She bent to fondle Nellie’s soft, floppy ears, happy to be in this place where she was most able to be herself. Bruno looked just as he always did: relaxed and comfortable in dark brown cords, a fisherman’s navy-blue jersey and fraying sandshoes. As a concession to the February chill he wore woollen socks and a red silk scarf wound around his neck. Emma had given him the scarf for Christmas but she suspected that he was wearing it today simply because it had been the first thing to hand at the precise moment he’d noticed he was cold.

  ‘Love the scarf,’ she observed brightly, testing him.

  He inclined his head a little, accepting the compliment. ‘So do I,’ he answered blandly. ‘Do you want some coffee or are you going up to see Mutt first?’

  ‘I’m going straight up.’ Her expression grew more serious. ‘How is she? Mousie is doing that sort of guarded thing. You know what I mean? “We have to remember that she’s nearly eighty but I’m sure she’s going to be fine” stuff.’

  Bruno forked up the last piece of his omelette and gave his plate to Nellie to lick. ‘I saw her yesterday just after lunch,’ he said. ‘I usually go up about tea-time, just after I’ve finished work, but to be honest I don’t feel qualified to make a judgement. Sometimes she’s lucid, if frail, and at other times she’s wandering. I think a lot of it depends on when she’s had her medicine. Joss is wonderful with her.’

  Emma’s face brightened. ‘I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that it’s working out. It’s so good for her to be able to help with Mutt. Raymond’s still utterly dampening about her work and they seem to have a row every time she comes home.’

  ‘Not much change there, then,’ observed Bruno. ‘And how is Brer Fox?’

  Emma shrugged, clearly torn between the luxury of telling the truth and the tug of silent loyalty, and Bruno, knowing from past experience that loyalty would be temporarily abandoned, decided that now was not the moment for a heart-to-heart.

  Such an unsympathetic hour, he thought: three o’clock in the afternoon, that dull, flat, desert stretching between those cheerful indiscretions induced by a long lunch and the after-supper intimacy with the wine still to hand, curtains drawn and a fire burning on the flat, stone hearth.

  ‘Go up and see Mutt,’ he said, not waiting for an answer. ‘Stay and have tea with Joss and I’ll see you later.’

  She hesitated, anxious at what she might find up at the house, suddenly unwilling to leave the familiar comfort of The Lookout. He watched her thoughtfully, knowing how difficult she was finding Mutt’s deterioration since her fall.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he offered casually, ‘I need a walk – so does Nellie, come to that – we’ll come with you over the cliff path. Or were you going to drive up?’

  ‘No, no.’ She shook her head quickly. ‘That would be good. As long as I’m not taking you away from your sewers?’

  ‘Bazalgette designed other things too,’ he told her. ‘Putney Bridge for one. But don’t worry, you’re not distracting me. I need to think out a few things and the walk will help.’

  He shrugged himself into a jacket, changed his sandshoes for short sea-boots and, with Nellie rushing eagerly ahead, they all went out together.

  Joss closed her book, paused to check that Mutt was sleeping soundly and slid quietly out of the room. She’d heard voices, kept low but still audible, the scrunch of boots on the gravel drive beneath the window, and had no wish for anyone to disturb her grandmother now that she was able to rest peacefully. As she reached the turn in the stairs she saw that her mother had come in and was taking off her coat in the hall below. The expression on Emma’s down-turned face, the little frowning look of mingled worry and fear, checked Joss’s step and she paused in the shadowy corner, fixed by a familiar mix of emotions: tremendous affection for her mother intertwined with occasional bursts of irritation at Emma’s refusal to stand up for her own principles against her husband. Joss could not remember at what point in her life she’d become aware of her father’s acquisitive, insensitive brand of morality but she’d soon learned that no-one outside his immediate family was allowed to benefit from, share in, or receive any portion of his – not inconsiderable – wealth. His patronizing smile bore down any attempt at protest; the large, spade-shaped hand, uplifted in schoolmasterish rejection, was ready to slap down a different point of view. Even when it came to Christmas or birthday presents, his jovial, ‘And what did that cost, I wonder?’ or, ‘And does Mummy really want another scarf?’ managed to spoil all the pleasure she’d had in saving for and choosing the gift.

  Once, when she’d given her pocket money to a beggar, he’d read her a long lecture on the unwisdom of encouraging the idle and, a few days later, showed her a newspaper article that reported the story of just such a beggar who was able to run a BMW on his takings. He’d humiliated her in front of her school-friends by criticizing their parents’ extravagant foreign holidays and, later, frightened away boyfriends by asking for financial credentials on their third or fourth visit to the house. It was such a relief, once he’d left for the London flat each Monday morning, to revel in four days free from his bantering criticism.

  She suspected that it was these few days of freedom that enabled her mother to cope with those small humiliations in front of her close friends and his regular lectures on thrift. She had a wide circle of acquaintances, her bridge club and – despite his joking strictures on how it was spent – a generous allowance. For years after Joss had moved on to her next school, Emma had continued to spend two mornings each week at the primary school, helping those children with reading difficulties, and she was a member of the WVS. Emma had a naturally cheerful disposition but Joss sometimes found it hard to believe that she could be truly happy with her father.

  ‘How can you bear it?’ she’d cried to her mother, after he’d discovered that Emma had lent a very close – but unreliable – friend some money and Joss had witnessed the scene that followed. ‘How can you stand his meanness?’

  ‘He’s been a good father to you, darling,’ she’d answered with her usual loyalty. ‘I know that he can be insensitive, which at your age can be particularly difficult to deal with, but you mustn’t be too hard on him. He’s made sure that we both have absolute security …’

  ‘But everything he gives has a price tag. With him, nothing’s unconditional, is it? He has to have a return.’

  ‘Security is very important to him; you’ll understand that better when you have children of your own. After all, Joss, everything he has will be yours one day. It’s all for you in the end.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ she’d answered childishly. ‘I’ll earn my own money.’

  How hard she’d worked to earn money during her training – refusing to take a penny from her father, who jeered at any kind of alternative medicine – taking on jobs in bars and cafés to pay for any extras. It was Mutt who’d believed in her: Mutt who had been such a support through those painful teenage years, opening Paradise to Joss and her young friends and making a haven from the humiliating criticisms and heavy humour that her father inflicted on them. Without appearing to take sides Mutt nourished and encouraged her granddaughter and gave as much financial help as she could with an income deriving from her widow’s pension, some shares and the rents from the cottages in The Row. Emma, caught between them all, worried for her daughter’s physical ability to cope with her extra jobs as well as
her degree, had begged Joss to be sensible.

  ‘You’ll kill yourself before you start,’ she’d said. ‘You look exhausted, darling. Why can’t you just ignore him? Underneath all that nonsense he’s anxious for you. It’s simply that he’s incapable of seeing anything except from his own point of view. Look, let me help you …’

  ‘I can’t, Mum,’ she’d said, hating herself for causing the misery on her mother’s face. ‘You must see that I can’t. I shall manage. Other people have to. After all, that’s what he’s always saying, isn’t it? That people should fend for themselves, get on their bikes, all that stuff.’

  Bruno’s generosity had been life-saving on occasions.

  ‘I suppose Mum’s been getting at you,’ she’d say ungraciously once or twice – but his wry look always managed to call her own smile into being. ‘Sorry,’ she’d mutter. ‘It’s just I can’t take anything from either of them when I know how much he despises what I’m doing.’

  ‘Just take it, girl, and don’t be so prickly,’ he’d advise, pushing a cheque or some notes into her pocket or her bag. ‘I promise you I hold no brief for Brer Fox’s views, and my money’s my own to do what I like with.’

  ‘Why?’ she’d asked him once – just as she’d asked her mother. ‘Why did she marry him, Bruno? He’s just … so not Mum. She’s so warm and kind and loving, and he calculates everything. What did she see in him?’

  He’d been silent for a while. ‘You have to remember,’ he’d answered at last, ‘that, for women, marriage was much more important thirty years ago than it is now. It would be almost impossible for you to imagine the pressures put on girls to get married. Your father was a very good-looking, successful fellow and he was quite a bit older than Emma, which added to his glamour. And Mutt approved of him. She saw – with justice – that he’d look after her daughter and so she encouraged him. Emma had no experience to fall back on and was rather flattered by his absolute determination to have her. You could say that he rather swept her off her feet but the fact is, Joss, that nobody can judge a marriage. However close you are to it, you’ll never understand what makes it work or see the million tiny invisible strands that hold a couple together. Emma is very loving and very loyal – to both of you – and it’s not for either of us to judge her. Just don’t make it more difficult for her than you must.’