The Golden Cup

by Marcia Willett

  ‘It was so kind of George,’ she began at random, ‘to come up and help this morning. But what a shock about Penny taking Tasha and just going off like that. Mind you, I always had reservations about Penny.’

  She saw, with relief, that Ray was not the least interested in George’s domestic problems but was wrapped up in his own thoughts: no doubt parcelling out the estate to his satisfaction. Joss had picked up her fork and was eating her fish pie with a kind of studied concentration.

  ‘I always thought,’ continued Emma, ‘that she was hiding something. Well, that sounds a bit dramatic but you know what I mean? There was a lack of real openness about her so that it was difficult to get close to her. Oh, she was very sweet, I grant you that, but it was all on the surface. I know she missed her family and her country – well, that’s only to be expected and nobody would blame her for it – but I have a feeling that there’s more to it than that.’

  Although she was quite used to conducting these monologues at family mealtimes, in an attempt to keep the sparks from flying, she was surprised at Joss’s complete lack of response. Ray might go off into his own world on these occasions but Joss usually made an heroic effort to keep the ball rolling between the two of them, partly because she always felt remorseful at allowing herself to be riled by her father.

  Emma piled some more pie onto Raymond’s plate and glanced invitingly at Joss, who shook her head with a little smile, and settled back in her place.

  ‘I think we shall hear that there’s someone in New Zealand. It wouldn’t surprise me at all,’ Emma prophesied, finishing her own lunch and debating whether she should have another small helping. It was a rather good pie, even if she thought so herself.

  Joss shifted suddenly, as if she might speak, glanced anxiously at her father and instead took another forkful of pie. Emma frowned to herself. Clearly Joss didn’t wish to have a discussion about George and Penny in front of Ray and she felt a little stab of curiosity. Of course, George and Joss had always been very close, so fond of one another … Emma put down her fork. She looked again at her daughter who had bent her head over her plate and was eating quickly and neatly, as if nothing mattered but to finish up her lunch. Emma saw that her cheeks were stained with colour and, as she watched the flush deepen, several things clicked smartly into place.

  ‘Delicious, dear.’ Ray had finished his second helping. ‘Anything left? What was that you were saying about George?’

  Emma scooped the last of the pie onto his plate and stood up.

  ‘I was saying that he is a dear, good fellow and that he and Joss are taking the donkeys out for a walk this afternoon.’ She nodded sharply at Joss, who was now staring at her in surprise, and began to fill the empty dish with hot water. ‘Didn’t I hear you fix a time with him, darling? It’s nearly two o’clock and I don’t suppose you’ll want any pudding. Only fruit salad, I’m afraid, Ray, but there’s cheese if you want it.’

  Joss stood up, hovering indecisively by her chair, and Emma assumed her ‘this is not a subject for negotiation’ expression that she’d found useful when Joss had been a little girl.

  ‘Off you go, then,’ she said briskly. ‘George will be waiting.’

  They exchanged a look, encouraging on Emma’s side, confused but grateful on Joss’s, and she went out. Emma sighed with contentment, her spirits rising.

  ‘I can’t manage anything else at the moment, dear,’ Raymond patted her arm. ‘There’s nothing to beat that local fish. Delicious.’

  ‘Thank you, darling.’ Emma beamed upon him. ‘Now, why don’t you go and relax in the sitting-room and I’ll bring the coffee in to you? It will be nice to have a moment to ourselves. Here, take the newspaper …’

  To her great relief he disappeared obediently; piling the plates on the draining-board, listening for noises from the drawing-room, Emma crossed swiftly to the dresser. She opened a drawer, checked that the parcel was well hidden and, taking a pile of dishcloths from another drawer, covered it more securely. She was determined that there should be no arguments, no fighting or bitter words, until after Mutt had been laid peacefully to rest; whatever the parcel might contain could wait a few more days. Satisfied that it was out of harm’s way until after the funeral, she closed the drawer gently and went to make some coffee.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  George arrived at the field gate a few minutes after Joss had entered the meadow from the garden. Her relief at seeing him was so overwhelming that she was glad to be able to busy herself getting the donkeys into their head collars, smiling briefly at him, but feeling unnaturally shy.

  ‘Which way shall we go?’ It was clear that he was trying to pretend that nothing had changed between them. ‘Up the lane and back down the valley? I’ll take the Teaser.’

  He took Rumpleteaser’s halter and set off across the meadow, leaving her to follow with Mungojerrie. This was the usual form: the Teaser always liked to lead. Down the lane they clopped, over the narrow bridge and past The Row. The wind was stronger now, whipping up the choppy surface of the water into white spumy frills, whilst the seabirds swooped and drifted high above in strange, ever-changing patterns, crying mournfully. Golden shafts of sunlight struck down glancingly from behind the torn and harried clouds and all the while the sea roared as it advanced, pounding over the rocks and against the cliffs with ceaseless energy.

  The tide and the wind combined made conversation impossible and, as she led Mungo up the narrow lane, climbing and winding inland now, Joss was thinking about Mutt and the letters. She longed to read them again, remembering particularly the passages about Simon and trying to imagine what would have happened if Mutt had told him the truth. Would he have recoiled from her in horror as she’d feared, or would his love for her have given him the compassion to understand? As they passed between the high grassy banks, studded now with delicately pale primroses and shiny-bright celandines, Joss wondered whether Mutt had ever regretted that Sunday morning’s work by the Saint’s Well.

  When George glanced back at her, checking their progress, she knew at once that the barrier was still between them. Lies cast long shadows. She could never be easy with him again until he knew the truth. Smiling back at him, nodding that all was well, she sighed heavily and deeply inside herself. In that moment when her father had entered the kitchen at Paradise she’d known that it would be impossible to continue to protect her mother from the truth. ‘You underestimate her,’ Mousie had said and Joss longed to believe that. Gradually the strong conviction that her mother should be kept in ignorance of the truth had been undermined – and her father’s presence had contributed to this process – but it was impossible to imagine any scene in which she might be told. Remembering her own reaction as she’d read the letters, Joss shrank at recommending the same process. Yet perhaps she was indeed underestimating her mother’s resilience and compassion; she might be more ready to accept that her own relationship with these people who loved her was under no threat than Joss gave her credit for.

  Watching George’s familiar stride, adapted to the Teaser’s amble, Joss recalled how her own conversations with Bruno and Mousie had confirmed this assurance: how comforting they’d both been and how easy, with them, to feel that nothing terrible had happened after all. She was still herself, Joss Fox; unchanged and still loved by those she valued most. If Bruno and Mousie felt like that about her after this startling revelation then why should George feel any different? She had to remind herself that Bruno had always known – and she shook her head in amazed admiration at his courage. Of course, it might be easy for people to condemn Mutt if they hadn’t read the letters: the letters changed everything, showed Mutt as a young and vulnerable woman in extraordinary circumstances. Yet, even now it was almost impossible for Joss to believe that her mother was not Emma Trevannion, not Bruno’s sister at all, but Lottie Uttworth …

  She saw that George and the Teaser were patiently waiting at the point where the lane widened and she hastened to catch them up.

  �
�They’re going well, aren’t they?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Not so painfully slow as usual. Are you OK?’

  They looked at one another and she was seized with compunction at his expression: there was no reproach, no self-pity, but even he couldn’t quite hide the misery and confusion he felt at the unexplained obstacle that prevented the usual flow of affection between them.

  ‘Oh, George,’ she said, clutching Mungo’s halter in both hands, ‘no, I’m not OK. Neither of us is OK, we both know that, but I don’t quite know how to deal with it.’

  He looked relieved at once, glad that at least the acknowledgement of this obstacle was out in the open.

  ‘Is it to do with Penny going so suddenly?’ he asked. ‘I thought I knew how you felt but then I wondered if you were knocked off balance by it.’

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s something quite different.’ She was too concentrated on the problem of how to explain her difficulty to wonder how it might sound to him. ‘It’s nothing to do with you and Penny at all.’

  ‘You said that earlier.’ He frowned anxiously. ‘But if it isn’t to do with me or Penny, then what is it?’

  ‘It’s to do with me,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s something you haven’t known about me. Well, you’d never have guessed it. I’m not … what you think …’

  Even as she shook her head in frustration at the inadequacy of her words an engine could be heard in the lane ahead.

  ‘We can’t talk here,’ George said abruptly. ‘Get Mungo over or he’ll kick out. We’ll go through the field at the top and down the valley. We can let them off there for a bit.’

  The delivery van came round the bend, slowed at the sight of the donkeys, and the driver raised his hand as he drove on down the lane. As Joss and George crossed the wide field, bordered by hedges of furze and blackthorn, the wind tugged and buffeted at their hair and jackets so that they bent against it, hauling the donkeys forward to the shelter of the valley. They passed through the ramshackle gate and made their way down to the edge of the stream where they released the donkeys, which immediately began to graze.

  It was so much quieter here; the wind roaring high above their heads and the trees, clinging along the valley’s sides, bowing to its wild embrace. The last of the clouds were being bundled away to the east and the sun burst out suddenly with glorious warmth so that they looked at each other with relief. They could hear the tiny bubbling spring, half-hidden beneath the remaining granite slabs of the disciple’s cell, and the hoarse croaking of a raven somewhere on the rocky ridge above them. Joss thought of that long-ago picnic, when Mutt had heard the lark’s falling, tumbling song, and how, as Simon had pointed upwards to him, he’d brushed her cheek with his arm and she’d fallen in love with him.

  George reached into his pocket and brought out a Bounty bar: one piece each, which was just as it had always been since the first time they’d been allowed to go off together without an older sibling or a parent to supervise. They’d always shared. Now, he held the piece of chocolate out to her, smiling his familiar smile, but there was a shadow in his eyes.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said back there,’ he said. ‘I realize I’ve been getting it wrong, haven’t I? It was a bit arrogant to assume that you were prepared to be content with what I had to offer you, which was nothing at all, really. You’re going to tell me that there’s someone else, aren’t you? I should have guessed it long ago, instead of taking it for granted that you’d feel like I do now that Penny’s gone.’

  He finished his chocolate and put his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. His head was lowered slightly, his face expressionless, and Joss stared at him.

  There was no magic by the Saint’s Well that morning: only the clear, cold sound of water and the sharp, strong scent of ramsons.

  She thought: But I am not Mutt and George is not Simon.

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘No, you’re quite wrong, but what I have to tell you is extraordinary and very complicated. Come and sit with me.’

  Folding her plaid to make a cushion she drew him down beside her on the stone where once her grandmother had sat with Simon on a hot August afternoon fifty years before, and slowly, halting a little as she reminded herself of the details, she began to tell him her story.

  Rafe watched the little procession go past The Row whilst Pamela listened to the clop of the donkeys’ hoofs.

  ‘How do they look?’ she asked.

  She waited patiently for his answer, her fingers trailing lightly over familiar objects: some remembered, others only imagined by feeling their shape and density. The four little birds were grouped together today, one at each corner of the pink and white bowl, and a pottery jar held a spray of catkins and pussy willow, the fluffy buds just bursting open on their stiff, tall stems. She touched the delicate tassels of the catkins, seeing them clearly in her mind’s eye, knowing the hedge where Rafe would have cut them.

  ‘They have a slightly muted look,’ Rafe answered. ‘Rather like they used to be on the last day of the holidays. It’s silly, really, because I can’t explain exactly why I say that. George is leading Rumpleteaser, and Joss is following with Mungojerrie as usual, but there’s a dejected air about the party.’

  Pamela frowned, turning towards his voice, picturing the scene.

  ‘I don’t think he’s had a proper chance to speak to her yet, do you? I know he said at lunch that he’d told them this morning but it’s one thing giving the bare facts to Emma and another explaining properly to Joss.’

  ‘And Raymond was there, which couldn’t have helped.’ Rafe came away from the window and sat down beside her at the table. ‘This news, coming on top of Mutt’s death, will probably knock poor old Joss sideways.’

  ‘She’ll find it very hard,’ agreed Pamela, ‘to be truly happy for herself at this particular moment but I still think that having all this going on will make a good distraction for them. Neither of them would want to be the centre of attention. At the same time, I thought she would be pleased to hear the news.’

  There was a little silence.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Rafe dubiously, ‘that we could be wrong?’ but Pamela was shaking her head.

  ‘All my instincts tell me that this is right,’ she said, ‘but there are other aspects to it, Rafe. Have you ever thought what might happen once Mutt was gone? With the estate, I mean.’

  ‘Well, I assume it will go on much as before. It will be left between Bruno and Emma, I imagine. I have wondered whether Mutt might have left the house to Joss. They’ve been so close, haven’t they, and Emma won’t want it for herself. Why, what were you thinking of, particularly?’

  Pamela grimaced, as if undecided as to exactly what she had in mind.

  ‘It might not be quite that straightforward,’ she said at last. ‘What about Inheritance Tax, for instance? Supposing something had to be sold off to pay it?’

  Rafe rubbed his nose thoughtfully and then leaned both elbows on the table. ‘If I thought about it at all, I would have expected Mutt to have already passed some of the property over years ago. After all, we always knew that Bruno would have The Lookout and Emma would get Paradise. I suppose The Row would be shared between them.’

  ‘I wonder. Perhaps there’s some difficulty which Joss knows about that might be a bit embarrassing for her just at present.’

  ‘Difficulty?’

  ‘Well, we’ve taken it a bit for granted, haven’t we, that nothing would change for us, yet Raymond has made no secret about his idea of developing the boatyard.’

  ‘He’d never get permission for it. Anyway, do you really think Emma or Bruno would sit by whilst we and Mousie had our lives ruined?’

  ‘I hope not,’ answered Pamela feelingly. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’

  She stretched a hand to him and he took it, holding it closely, whilst they sat together in silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Walking down the steep path from The Lookout, Bruno was aware of the change in the weather.
The bitter north-easterly wind had backed to the south-west, the ice in the muddy tracks had melted, and the turbulent air was soft and warm. He carried a parcel under his arm that he settled more firmly before glancing back briefly at The Lookout where Zoë stood in the window, staring out at the sea.

  He crossed the narrow bridge and stopped at the first cottage in The Row, knocking at the door before opening it and passing inside, calling Mousie’s name just as she appeared. From the tiny hall the stairs rose steeply to the floor above and he hung his jacket on one of the hooks beside the door before following her into the one big downstairs room. A counter with cupboards beneath it separated the kitchen from the living area: two dark green, wing-backed chairs, one on either side of the Victorian grate where a tiny coal fire burned, and an oak gate-legged table set in the window looking seawards.

  These items of furniture – as well as some of the paintings and ornaments – had belonged to her mother and, as Bruno remembered the tall, stately Aunt Julia, he wondered how Mousie had reacted to Mutt’s less flattering descriptions of her: ‘… like a very dignified peahen – a bosom like a jelly-bag and a long, long neck with a tiny head perched on top …’

  It was rather a sad thought that very few people had known the fun-loving, scatty person who’d lived behind the more sober persona of Honor Trevannion.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.’ He put the bag containing Mutt’s letters on the table. ‘You saw the difficulty. I’m hoping you’ll look after these for the time being. I’m not saying that Zoë is unprincipled but it’s probably best to keep temptation out of her way.’

  ‘Then I expect that you’ll feel the same way about this.’ Mousie held out the long brown envelope. ‘It was in the dressing-table drawer.’

  Bruno breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I guessed that you’d found it when you said that there was something you needed to discuss with me. At least, I was hoping and praying it was. You had the look of someone who’d pulled off something clever. No sign of the book, I suppose?’