The Golden Cup

by Marcia Willett

  Oh, Vivi, can you imagine anyone more observant, more judgemental, than a seventeen-year-old girl? Mousie loved her cousin Hubert and she is critical of his widow – and there are so many tiny traps, zigzagging across my path like the sticky strands of a spider’s web. I get caught in them and then I have to twist and turn and struggle to extricate myself. She watches me, as if puzzled, and I am frightened of her.

  ‘You!’ I hear you cry. ‘You’ve never been frightened in your life.’ Oh, but that was before I had my baby, Vivi. Once you have a baby you have a hostage to fortune and nothing is ever the same again. But now I have found Paradise and I can tell you that it is worth the struggle. I want to describe it so that you can picture us here. Paradise is part of a small estate, you see, hidden in a sheltered valley. It’s approached from a long deep lane which plunges down and down, with glimpses through farm gates of the sea and of high, wild cliffs. Down you go, between two grassy banks, high and straight as a wall with a wild thorny hedge on top, until you run into the little cove. It’s U-shaped, like a narrow horseshoe, as if the sea has crept up secretly one night and taken a bite from the land. First, on the seaward side, there’s a boatyard that is no longer used and next to it a row of four cottages, called – imaginatively – The Row. Each has its wash-house, like a rather large porch, extending into the small yard in front, and running along behind them, just one big step from the door, is the sea-wall. This is the north coast, Vivi, and the houses turn their backs to the wild Atlantic. Across the road from the cottages there is an old quarry and this secret magical valley widens and runs inland. High up in this valley is St Meriadoc’s Well: a tiny, bubbling spring, half hidden beneath a few granite slabs, moss-grown and half buried in tall, feathery grasses. A thousand years ago the saint’s disciple built a cell beside the well and this is all that is left of it. Mallow still grows here, eight feet high with big rosy-purple flowers, and I like to think the disciple used it as a medicine. Its sap can be used as a soothing ointment and its leaves to draw out wasp-stings. There’s comfrey nearby too, and Aaron’s rod. On a hot June afternoon it is possible to imagine him here at the door of his cell, watching the kestrel that hangs motionless in the dazzling blue air above him and listening to the lark, as he prepares his simple meal or sweeps the bare floor of his cell with a twiggy broom made from the branches of the tamarisk trees which cling along the valley’s sides.

  The spring grows into a little stream that runs down towards the sea and beneath a little bridge, so narrow that you can only just drive a car across it, and which divides this cove with its row of cottages and the boatyard from Paradise and The Lookout, a Victorian folly built halfway up the cliff, rather like a miniature lighthouse. It’s a funny old place, perched high on the rocks as if defying the gales and the tides, but empty at present. Beyond the bridge, the path splits into two: one branch goes up to The Lookout, and then on across the cliffs, and the other takes you along the lane and through the big gateway into the driveway to Paradise. At last, we are here, Vivi, on ‘The Walk to the Paradise Gardens’. Hubert loved that music, you know. There was an Englishness about Delius, he said, that transported him back to all he missed most and he had a record of A Village Romeo and Juliet and ‘On hearing the first cuckoo in spring’. I grew to love it too. Anyway, here is Paradise, Vivi, which is now my home.

  Imagine, then, a tiny Queen Anne house, grey stone washed white, slate-roofed. It has a demure look, like a very smart doll’s house and it is set amongst a great climbing tangle of rhododendrons, although across the gravel from the front door is a little lawn, green as an emerald, but plush and soft underfoot. I was in time to see the rhododendrons in flower, Vivi, creamy white, crimson, and a yellow one with the most heavenly scent that I can smell from my bedroom window. The rooms are cool and elegant: drawing-room and dining-room on either side of the long hall and behind them the kitchen – square, roomy, looking north – and a charming little parlour behind the drawing-room which James uses as an office.

  He lets me sit here at this lovely old desk to write my letters but I should like to have all this clutter out and make it such a pretty little room. I call him James, Vivi. He asked if I would like to call him ‘Father’ but how could I? I thought at once of our father and knew that it would be impossible. The word stuck in my throat. I feared that he might think ‘James’ too informal but, luckily, he rather likes it. I think it makes him feel young again, and rather dashing. I tease him a little, very gently, deferring to him over certain things – my hat for church, a frock for afternoon tea with some neighbour – and his back is a little straighter, his eye brighter, because of it. He’s a darling.

  He’s calling for me, Vivi. I’d no idea it was so late. More next time but, for now,

  All love, darling,

  Madeleine

  She puts down the pen and looks about the room, folding the letter hastily and tucking it into the writing case. She is beginning to grow used to the fact that she owns very little – she brought so few belongings with her from Multan – but it seems strange and a little frightening to have nothing familiar to connect her to her life with Johnny and India. She has Honor’s things, of course: that little bag with its label ‘Wanted on Voyage’ contains objects that constantly remind her of Honor. This writing case is amongst these, along with her pretty gold fountain pen. Mutt screws on its lid just as James appears, pushing open the door, smiling half enquiringly, half apologetically.

  ‘Not interrupting anything?’

  ‘Heavens, no.’

  Her smile is warm with affection and he beams back at her gratefully; she is quick to love, this girl of Hubert’s, and her presence is already easing his loneliness. His son’s death has been far more of a blow than he will ever show but the arrival of his family is a blessing.

  Mutt slips a hand within his arm – Dear old boy, she thinks – and wishes that she were not deceiving him.

  ‘I think we need our nightcap,’ she says, drawing him into the room. ‘Just a tiny one for me, of course, but it helps me sleep.’

  ‘Well, of course it does.’

  He likes to feel her fingers on his arm, strong and comforting, and he straightens his back a little as he makes for the cupboard. This last drink ritual was a solitary affair when Margaret was alive; she’d go upstairs, leaving him beside his little fire to brood over the events of the day whilst she prepared herself for bed. He misses her dreadfully, of course he does, but he admits to himself that this is rather fun: Honor perching on the corner of the desk and watching him whilst he measures out a finger of the precious whisky. He begins to tell an amusing wartime anecdote relating to rationing and she chuckles appreciatively.

  Inside herself, Mutt is marvelling at the little scene: can it be true that she is sitting here with Hubert’s father? She imagines how his face would change if she were suddenly to interrupt his story with her own. ‘Listen,’ she might say. ‘I’m not really Hubert’s widow. It’s all a terrible mistake …’

  Instead she nods encouragingly, laughing with him, and the odd thing is that she is comforted by a sense of rightness, of being where she truly belongs. It seems so much like home, this lovely valley, and already she has a strong affinity with this dear old man. He is very like Hubert, although the thick black hair is now white. His thin, clever face is still lively and the brown eyes have a twinkle: just so will Bruno look in the distant future. She smiles, filled suddenly with tenderness, and it is as if he instinctively knows that this special smile has nothing to do with his story but is an acknowledgement of some passing connection with his son and his grandson. He smiles back at her, raising his glass as if in a salute to her thought, and she swallows some whisky quickly.

  It has always been so, she thinks; love sweeping over her, lifting her on its warm sparkling wave, engulfing her senses and her reason. And this love is not only to do with attractive young men but embraces the elderly and children too: those Indians in Multan, in their poverty and need, and her own friends. The flood of emoti
on always carries her along with it, and she is buoyed up with her longing to help, but occasionally the current is too strong for her. Often someone is at hand to hold her head above the water – Vivi, perhaps, and later on, Honor and Hubert – but sometimes she is left, out of her depth, struggling against the undertow.

  James finishes his story without showing that he senses a quenching of her spirits. He thinks he understands it, knowing how a joyful memory has its twin face of grief and loss. Just so has he felt about Margaret – looking with delight upon the first open flower of the camellia; remembering that she will never share it with him again – and his compassion stretches out to this girl who still smiles bravely though her eyes are shadowed with fear. He cannot speak any words of comfort, however; that is not his way. He gets to his feet with a remark about the lateness of the hour, but he touches her shoulder as he passes on his way to the hall.

  ‘Good girl. Good girl,’ he mutters, as though she might be a favourite horse or a well-loved dog. ‘Sleep well, my dear.’

  She watches him go and then carries the glasses into the kitchen.

  12th July

  I’m feeling very low tonight, Vivi. James has gone out to dinner with some friends, and I’m alone for the first time at Paradise. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d be glad to be alone? No pressure, no need to think before I speak; nobody to put on an act for; but the truth is, actually, I feel unbearably lonely. The children are in bed and I’ve had a couple of whiskies and, just suddenly, I felt the need to talk to someone who really knows me, so that I don’t have to pretend. Do you remember how we’d try on each other’s clothes and experiment with make-up and laugh and laugh about such silly things? Remember when you chopped off my hair with nail scissors? How wonderful it was to be free of all that weight of hair but Mother almost screamed with shock, hand over her mouth, eyes popping, which set us off even worse. Thank God, Honor was dark and had brown eyes. Mine, as you know, are hazel but the Customs man only glanced at the passport photograph and I’d pulled on a silly hat, tilted over my eyes, and carried Lottie in my arms as a kind of shield. She hates to be carried and I knew that she’d struggle and scream and distract the attention away from me. In the end everyone was glad to push us through as quickly as possible. I mustn’t call her Lottie. I only do it when I’m tired – or when I’ve drunk too much whisky.

  Vivi, I feel so guilty. What am I doing here? Why ever did I think I could pull this off? Some wretched woman turned up here this morning, her husband was one of Hubert’s chums, thought I’d like to go over for lunch and so on. I was terrified that I might slip up. She began to talk to Bruno, saying how like his daddy he was, asking how old his little sister was and I can’t forget the expression on his face. I sometimes kid myself that Bruno thinks Lottie is his sister, that he’s forgotten Emma. Oh God! I have to remember that Lottie is Emma, don’t I? What is he thinking, Vivi?

  Anyway, I burst in with some nonsense and distracted her but I can’t get over it. If I can’t bring myself to call James ‘Father’, how can I expect so much from this poor little boy? How he must resent me for trying to take his mother’s place, yet I know that he loves me and I think he would miss me if I were to go. In an odd kind of way, James protects me. He’s so courteous, so old-fashioned, that he wouldn’t dream of asking me personal questions. It would never occur to him that a lady could do the things I’m doing and so, you see, he’s made it safe for me. He’s the angel standing at the gate of Paradise with his flaming sword, turning this way and that, except that I’m still inside even though I’ve eaten of the tree of knowledge. Or is it the fruit of Goblin Market?

  I think I’ve drunk too much whisky and I’d better get to bed before James comes home and finds me like this. More later. Goodnight, darling.

  Joss put the letter aside and then picked it up again, folding it mechanically. There was too much here to understand all at once: Mutt wasn’t Honor Trevannion. Yet Joss was distracted from the sheer shock of this by other impressions that were affecting her so powerfully. Mutt’s dilemma, her warm personality and humanness, struck Joss forcibly. Almost she’d been able to forget that she was reading about her grandmother and had identified with this young woman who’d taken such a chance, torn by doubt and fear, yet driven by some deep-down conviction that what she was doing was right.

  Mutt’s granddaughter caught her breath: how had Mutt dared to risk so much? Glancing back at the pages Joss was touched by the description of the flight from Karachi. She tried to picture the atmosphere of terror in India in those hot, unstable days, and the scene in the hospital room: she envisaged the long voyage home and tried to imagine how Mutt had lived with a permanent fear of discovery.

  Somewhere in the Indian Ocean Lottie became Emma.

  What must it have felt like, giving your daughter a different name and a new persona? And this child, Joss was obliged to remind herself, was her own mother – who wasn’t Emma Trevannion at all but Lottie Uttworth. Mutt had counted the risk worth it to give her daughter security.

  Once you have a baby you have a hostage to fortune and nothing is ever the same again.

  And what about Vivi, to whom Mutt wrote with such intimacy and affection? Joss was touched by Mutt’s need to communicate with her childhood companion, reminding her sister of their shared past, seeking approval. Was Vivi still alive, out in America, imagining her sister and daughter long dead? Clearly the letters had never been posted …

  Unable to grasp it all, Joss postponed the necessity to come to some serious judgement and reached eagerly for the next letter.

  Thursday morning

  Much better today, Vivi. I simply mustn’t allow myself to get morbid, and this morning I feel confident again that I am doing the right thing. Bruno gave me such a hug after breakfast and I held him very tightly and just whispered, ‘I know how much you must miss Mummie and Emma, darling. I’m just trying to look after you.’ And he looked at me, Vivi, so solemn and kind, and he said, ‘It’s all right, Mutt. I’m glad you’re here.’ Oh, I felt such a flood of relief and gratitude, as if he’d given me absolution. And I love him as if he were my own son. I am his godmother, you know. And Simon is his godfather, although it was all done by proxy, of course. Simon reminded me of that and I was able to look intelligent about it. He sent a beautiful, little engraved mug, and I could remember Honor showing it to me.

  It is so odd being called Honor. I hoped that the children’s nickname for me might be taken up by everyone but no-one seems able to be quite so intimate. Even Mousie can’t quite bring herself to use it. I am afraid of Mousie, Vivi. She watches us as if some instinct warns her that something is wrong but she doesn’t know what it is. I become nervous when she is with me and I retreat into silence. Aunt Julia, who reminds me of a very dignified peahen – a bosom like a jelly-bag and a long, long neck with a tiny head perched on top – puts my shortcomings down to grief and encourages Mousie to be kind and patient. And poor Mousie is trying very hard to deny all her instincts and to be sweet to me. I realize now that I’d never have brought this off if Hubert’s mother were still alive. Men are uncomplicated and direct and much easier to deceive than women. They say exactly what they mean and assume that we are doing the same thing. Apart from this, both James and Simon are affected by a show of grief or of fear and act accordingly: with a rather anxious kindness and an immediate change of subject. Women see through all that kind of thing immediately and though some of them might be polite about it they are not so easily taken in. You can’t deflect women with those tricks.

  Mousie must have loved Hubert so much; she knows everything about him, his passions and his dislikes, his tricks of speech and his habits. Yet she can’t have been more than a child when she last saw him. He wrote to her from time to time – you might imagine how that tiny piece of information made me feel! – but, with the war and the distance between them, communication was very patchy. Luckily there aren’t too many photographs: they have the wedding group – remember the one I sent to y
ou? – and also a family one with Bruno as a baby. This is more worrying because Honor isn’t wearing a hat but fortunately she is gazing down at the baby so you don’t get a full-face shot.

  I said at once: ‘Gosh, I looked so much younger then, didn’t I? But of course it’s nearly five years old.’

  I felt so ashamed of myself, Vivi. Thank God Bruno wasn’t there. Mousie has several snapshots of Hubert before he went to India and one or two little keepsakes – an old wristwatch, broken, that belonged to him, and a book of poetry, Browning, with Hubert’s name on the flyleaf – which she treasures. She’s actually rather a sweetie but she has a knack of keeping me on my toes. I have no idea which was Hubert’s favourite walk, or about the pony he had, and oh, countless tiny things which I should have known after six years of marriage. That’s why I say I’d never have fooled his mother. It became clear fairly early on that he’d never mentioned me by my nickname, which is a terrific relief, nor by proper name as far as I know.

  Mousie is puzzled but because of Bruno she doesn’t come near the truth of it. I feel horrid, holding her at arm’s length like this, but what am I to do? I just pray that I cease to be a nine days’ wonder and we settle down more naturally. There’s so much to describe to you, Vivi, so much to tell. I haven’t really explained about Johnny, have I? I don’t know how to go about it, I suppose. Looking back, I think he reminded me of our father: he was such fun, so happy-go-lucky, and very good-looking. He wasn’t French, though, he was very English, and I was so proud to be seen around with him. Hubert and Honor were a bit cautious about him and I know you would have been too. You would have said that he wasn’t ‘sound’. As you know, he did something in tea – he had an office in Lahore – and had all sorts of connections but there was something elusive about him and I think that they felt he should have joined up once the war was really under way instead of disappearing on business for weeks at a time. He didn’t want children straight off and I continued with my nursing but once Emma was born he simply vanished more often and for longer periods.