The Golden Cup

by Marcia Willett

  Now, standing in the shadowy turn of the stairs, Joss remembered Bruno’s words and her heart speeded with remorse and love.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ she said, hurrying down. ‘Did you have a good trip?’

  Emma hugged her child warmly. ‘No problems at all,’ she said. ‘How’s Mutt?’

  ‘Sleeping. I was just going to have a cup of tea and then we’ll take some up for her. How long can you stay?’

  ‘Oh, for a few days at least. Ray’s up in London at the flat, meetings and so on. You’re looking very well, Joss. I thought you’d be feeling the strain. Mousie told me that you’re being such a help to her. So, anything new?’

  Joss’s heart sank. This hopeful question, from Emma, generally referred to her love life and, as she followed her mother into the kitchen, she thought instinctively of the young American as a distraction.

  ‘Actually,’ she said slowly, ‘rather an odd thing happened yesterday. Someone came looking for a relative. He was hoping that Mutt knew her out in India …’

  Upstairs Mutt groaned, half waking, muttering long-forgotten names and turning restlessly on her pillows before subsiding again into a troubled sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Who is Lottie?’

  Emma stood with her back to the fire, leafing through the new paperback edition of Bruno’s most recent novel. Receiving no answer to her question, she glanced towards the archway that led to the kitchen and raised her voice a little.

  ‘Bruno? Did you hear me? Do we know anyone called Lottie?’

  There was the noise of the oven door being shut, water gushed briefly, and when he finally appeared Bruno was drying his hands on a rather ragged towel.

  ‘Sorry. Who did you say? Lottie?’ He shook his head. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Something Mutt was saying earlier.’ She held the book up. ‘Nice cover. Looks good, doesn’t it? Very modern and exciting and lots of good reviews on the back.’

  He took it from her. ‘I’m very pleased with it,’ he admitted. ‘Apparently the backlist is going to be packaged in the same format.’ A pause whilst he turned the book over in his hands, studying it. ‘So what was Mutt saying?’

  ‘Oh, she was rambling rather.’ Emma kicked at a smouldering log and bent to take another from the big basket beside the hearth. ‘Joss mentioned it too. The medicine confuses her a bit and I wondered if it might have anything to do with this American who was here yesterday.’

  Bruno put the book down carefully on the long table that stood at the back of the room, facing the bay window.

  ‘I haven’t heard about an American,’ he said. Rather mechanically he began to tidy the table, clearing a space ready for supper. ‘So what did he want?’

  ‘He wrote, so Joss said, saying that he’s looking for a relative who might have been out in India at the same time as Daddy and Mutt. He sent a photograph of this aunt, or whatever, with the letter to see if Mutt recognized her and then he turned up yesterday afternoon hoping to have a chat with her.’ Satisfied with the blaze, Emma perched on the arm of the sofa and began to stroke Nellie, who was stretched out on her back in a languorously abandoned position on the old blanket thrown over one of the faded cushions. ‘Joss wondered whether it might have stirred up some memories for her.’

  Nellie groaned pleasurably and Emma chuckled, leaning further over so as to reach the soft hair on her chest. ‘You are such a tart,’ she said to Nellie. ‘Look at you. You haven’t a single shred of modesty, have you? Good girl, then.’

  ‘And did she?’ asked Bruno, after a moment.

  ‘Did she what?’

  ‘Did Mutt recognize this … relative from the photograph?’

  Emma shrugged. ‘From what I can gather, Mousie’s playing it a bit low-key. She wouldn’t let the young man actually see Mutt but, from what Joss said, I think she’d told her about it or read the letter to her. Joss said she called out the name several times in her sleep. Lottie.’ She frowned. ‘It sounds odd but it kind of rang a bell.’

  She looked at him hopefully, brow furrowed in an attempt to cudgel her memory, but he shook his head.

  ‘Not with me,’ he said firmly. ‘And if you want a bath before supper you’d better get a move on.’

  When she’d gone, collecting up various belongings, pouring a glass of wine to take upstairs with her, Bruno sat beside Nellie on the sofa. He stretched a hand to the silky black-and-white coat – but it was an automatic gesture and his thoughts were elsewhere.

  Emma is not yet four years old when she first asks that question. Halfway up the cliff, out of breath from the steep climb, they sit together on spongy, springy turf, staring over the silky surface of the bosomy sea that gently lifts and swells below them. Rounded rosy-pink cushions of thrift, honey-scented in the hot sunshine, cling to the rocky ledges where seagulls sit in rows. A fishing boat chugs north, heading towards Port Isaac, and Bruno gulps down deep breaths of delicious salty air, feeling the cool breeze tugging his hair. He looks sideways at Emma: her hair is fine and fair as candy floss and the sun shines through it so that she appears to have a halo. Her pudgy fingers pluck at the grass and her gaze is fixed, thoughtful, so that he knows that she is working something out, remembering.

  ‘Who is Lottie?’ she asks him. ‘Lottie.’ She speaks it carefully in two distinct singsong syllables – ‘Lot-tie’ – as if she is tasting the name.

  Abruptly, Bruno allows himself to fall backwards on the turf. He closes his eyes, not only against the sun but also to keep the question outside. There were so many questions when they first arrived in St Meriadoc nearly two years ago.

  ‘Goodness!’ Aunt Julia cried, half amused, half shocked. ‘Why do you call your mother “Mutt”? Does she allow it?’

  He felt panic rising inside him as memories of that last dreadful week in India edged back into his consciousness.

  And dear Mousie smiled at him – oh, how he loves Mousie! – and said, ‘You’re just like your father. He always gave people nicknames, do you remember, Mother? It was Hubert who called me Mousie.’

  To Bruno’s relief Aunt Julia nodded, although she wasn’t quite happy about it. ‘But “Mutt”,’ she murmured, ‘it sounds so disrespectful,’ and it was Mutt, herself, who said, ‘Oh, I’m used to it now. It was his way of saying “Mother” when he was very small. Please don’t worry him about it. He’s been through quite enough, poor little fellow …’

  As he lies in the sunshine, the sun hot on his face, Emma prises with her small fingers at his tightly closed eyelids. He rolls away from her, over and over, and she scrambles after him, shrieking with laughter, her question forgotten.

  The smell of stewed fruit, spilling over the side of the saucepan onto the hotplate, brought Bruno back abruptly to the present. He cursed beneath his breath and hurried out to the kitchen. Nellie stirred, raised her head to sniff hopefully, and settled back with a disappointed sigh. No delicious smells tempted her from her comfortable seat: no noise of a tin-opener, which might indicate that her own supper was being prepared. Bruno, having gone straight from boarding-school into the Royal Navy, had never bothered to develop his cooking skills beyond pasta, stews and a delicious goose cassoulet; his friends and family knew exactly what to expect and, if they required variety, then they supplied the ingredients themselves. It was Emma who had come back from the house with the apples – picked in the orchard and stored away last autumn by Honor and Mousie – and had peeled them, chatting all the while.

  Now Bruno snatched up the saucepan and dropped it hastily on the draining-board, opened the oven door to check the stew and turned the potatoes, which were baking in their jackets on the shelf beside it. All was well. Closing the door on his creation, he began to assemble knives and forks but he was clearly preoccupied: part irritated, part anxious. It was difficult, almost impossible, at this critical moment to detach himself from the world he was creating, to re-engage with reality, and part of him resented Emma’s arrival and the need to entertain her. He longed to be alone: to be going
back into his study to pore over old documents and books; to be weaving together those plain strands of fact between other brighter, fictional threads that would bring life and colour and shape to the fixed, historical part of the pattern. His own vividly imagined story must coexist alongside the true records of the time and it required concentration to listen to its rhythm as it developed: he needed to stride over the cliffs and along the secret, wintry lanes and hear it coming to life inside his head.

  Yet it had seemed churlish to refuse Emma’s request when Mutt was ill and Mousie already stretched in caring for her. Bruno paused, his hands full of clashing spoons and forks, his thin, clever face thoughtful, anxiety gnawing in his gut. Just how ill, he wondered, was Mutt? Unease edged his mind further from its own interior world; thrusting it towards sealed-off places and reminding it of voices long since silenced.

  The gurgling and splashing of the bath water pouring away, the pattering of footsteps in the small bedroom above the kitchen, forced him to concentrate on the present. By the time Emma appeared, the table was set, candles were lit and Bruno was opening a can of dog food with Nellie in close attendance. Emma sighed contentedly and topped up her glass from the bottle on the long sideboard, looking affectionately at the familiar scene. A modern oil painting of the harbour at Port Isaac – with a bright Reckitts-blue sea and crimson-splashed fishing boats – hung on the whitewashed stone wall alongside a charcoal drawing of The Lookout, sketched strong and bold with its outflung window, clinging to the precipitous cliff. Another water-colour showed a row of terraced houses, squeezed together, toppling down a steep, cobbled alleyway to the sea. At first glance it was a charming scene, invoking times past; yet a second look showed something disturbing beneath the picture-postcard image. Beneath the high gables, pointy as witches’ hats, small windows glinted – sly eyes, half-closed, winking at a shared secret – and narrow doors gaped like shocked mouths. It had a cartoonish, fairy-tale look and, like all good fairy tales, there was a sense of menace implicit in the pretty simplicity. Staring at it, Emma could believe that the big, bad wolf – or a wicked stepmother – lurked just out of sight, waiting.

  She shivered a little, turning away to the huge, framed, black-and-white photograph, which hung over the sideboard, opposite the big granite hearth. It showed a Paris boulevard, passers-by stepping round the pavement café, a Citroën parked at the kerb: the girl’s head was turned a little aside, chin up, but the long, narrow eyes looked straight at the camera; indifferent yet provocative. Her elbow rested on the small wrought-iron table, a cigarette between the fingers of the drooping hand whilst her companion, just out of focus, was bending towards her, holding a coffee cup.

  Bruno came in carrying the casserole dish, saw the direction of Emma’s gaze and hoped that they were not about to embark on a discussion of his ex-wife.

  ‘Dinner is served,’ he said cheerfully with a mock bow. ‘Hang on, I’ve forgotten the potatoes. So how do you think Mousie is looking? Pamela and Rafe are on good form, aren’t they?’

  He lifted the lid and plunged a spoon into the lamb stew, used a threadbare linen napkin to put a hot potato on her plate. The warm room seemed to close in a little, leaning as if to listen, and Emma settled more comfortably in her chair, ready now for confidences and gossip.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mousie woke early in her cottage at the end of The Row. The room brimmed with quivering sea-light and she lay quite still, savouring the cosy comfort of warm blankets, watching the milk-blue sky beyond the window. Except on those wild nights, when a north-westerly gale whipped the sea halfway up the cliffs and drove rain against the cold glass panes, she hated to sleep with the curtains closed. She might waken suddenly to the bright, white radiance of a full moon, boxing her bed with square black bars, or she could watch the softly twinkling points of starlight pricking out one by one on a midsummer’s night.

  This morning, by hauling herself up and propping a pillow more firmly behind her back, she could see past Com Head to The Mouls, whose rocky bulk seemed to float on the surface of the flat, silvery water. Still half asleep, she let her thoughts drift between the duties and pleasures of the day ahead: Joss would be off to Wadebridge, busy with her patients all day, so straight up to the house after breakfast; seize the opportunity of some time alone with Emma; write and post the birthday card for Tom, Olivia’s eldest; a quick dash into Polzeath for some groceries; remember to book the MOT for her ageing little Fiat; check the donkeys. What a relief that Emma would be able to stay with Honor whilst she caught up with a few tasks. Poor Emma, so worried about her dear old Mutt …

  It was odd, thought Mousie as she pulled the bedclothes more closely around her shoulders, that the arrival of the young American had filled her with such a strong sense of apprehension. After all, there was no reason why he shouldn’t pursue his quest as far as he could, and the photograph was certainly an important lead. It was such a shock to see it again, after so many years, and it was obvious that Honor had been affected by it too. Remembering her cry: ‘I can’t see him. It’s all too painful. Too long ago …’ Mousie was pierced by remorse.

  Why had she never quite been able to drift into the habit of calling Honor by the foolish little nickname? Though she’d been the first to agree that it was typical of Hubert to invent it, that there was no harm in the children using it, yet there was something that blocked such familiarity between herself and Honor. The shock of the news of Hubert’s death, the sight of the numbed, bewildered little family, had gone a long way in subduing her jealousy of this beautiful, casually elegant woman; nevertheless she could remember how she’d watched Honor with a clear, cool eye – ready to disapprove.

  After the long sea passage, Honor seems disorientated: confused by this homecoming to an unknown home, keeping her children close.

  It is as if, thinks Mousie, Hubert’s young widow has been silenced by her grief, made dumb by sorrow.

  ‘She won’t talk to me,’ she says to her mother. ‘Not properly. She’s not interested in anything that happens here and she seems afraid to let the children out of her sight.’

  The latter, at least, is true. Not yet two, Emma is too young to be given much freedom but Honor rarely lets Bruno go anywhere without her either: not that he shows much desire, at first, to be adventurous.

  ‘Think back to how we were when Daddy was killed,’ advises her mother. ‘I know it’s six years ago now but remember how we all clung together? They are suffering from shock and it takes time to recover from these dreadful things. And, after all, Honor is a stranger here. When we came back to St Meriadoc we’d looked upon it as a second home ever since you and Rafe were babies. Honor knows only what Hubert has told her. No wonder she behaves as if she has been hit over the head, poor child.’

  And Mousie, ashamed of her jealousy, tries harder: inviting Honor to accompany her on walks, to talk about Hubert, but any encouragement to share the past is met with resistance. Honor, it seems, simply cannot bear to dwell on what she has lost. Yet Mousie notices that she spends long periods talking to Hubert’s frail, elderly father. Occasionally, during that first summer, Mousie comes upon them sitting beneath the lilac trees in the Paradise gardens: Uncle James in his old steamer chair whilst Honor is half turned towards him, her face animated.

  ‘He specialized in tropical fevers …’ she is saying. ‘He was quite brilliant. Everyone loved him …’

  Bruno leans against her knee, his face bright, as if through her words his father lives again, whilst Emma staggers about the sunny lawn, wrenching pink-tipped daisies from the grass, threatening to topple into the waters of the pond where great gold and black fish dart beneath the weed. The old man watches Honor, a smile pulling at his lips. Only his hands, smoothing and rubbing one against the other as if he is continually washing them in invisible water, show his private emotions and, as Mousie watches, she sees Bruno reach out to take hold of his grandfather’s hands so as to still the endless restlessness.

  At her approach, the small group s
eems to solidify into watchfulness. Uncle James peers towards her beneath the sweet-scented flowers and Honor instinctively holds Bruno close against her side. Only Emma is untouched, shouting with pleasure at the freedom of the garden after so many weeks restrained on the steamer, holding out her trove of daisies and blades of emerald grass.

  Mousie crouches, taking the ragged bouquet, giving Emma a hug, but her eyes are still on the three under the trees. Honor breaks the spell: sitting back in her wicker chair, crossing her long legs, raising both hands to her hair, which she wears – gypsy-like – beneath a cotton square.

  ‘Hello, Mousie,’ Honor calls; she uses the nickname with no apparent effort or awkwardness, yet Mousie still feels excluded from intimacy, and the moment never arrives when she is able to return the compliment. For some reason this makes her feel guilty and her only comfort is that, apart from Rafe, who is hardly more than a child himself, none of the rest of the family does either; only Bruno and Emma use the cheerful little name that links the three of them to the past.

  The shrill, insistent bell of her alarm clock shocked Mousie fully awake and drove her from her warm nest, shivering into the bathroom. Her cottage was small and neat: no knocking through of rooms or building of extensions; just the right amount of space for someone who was positively Franciscan in her minimalist needs. It was because of this trait that Hubert had nicknamed her when she was a child: her liking for small nooks and odd corners, combined with her horror of excess – large portions of food, too many belongings – had inspired him. His son, taking up the tradition years later, referred to her little cottage as ‘The Wainscot’.