The Golden Cup Read online

  About the Book

  How far would you go to protect the ones you love?

  Paradise, the house at the head of a sheltered Cornish valley, is where Honor Trevannion lives, surrounded by her family. Frail and elderly, she is inexplicably anxious and distressed by the arrival of a young American bearing an old black and white photograph of a double wedding and looking for a long-lost relation. Her family try to protect Honor, unaware of the secrets which she keeps from those closest to her, and which are found in a cache of letters hidden for fifty years.

  Too late to hear the story from Honor herself, the family are faced with revelations which could destroy the tranquility of life in their beloved valley. Will they be torn apart or can they unite in admiration for one woman’s courage in standing by the life-changing decision she made so many years ago?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  St Meriadoc – Fact and Fiction

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Marcia Willett

  Copyright

  THE GOLDEN CUP

  MARCIA WILLETT

  To Clare Foss

  ST MERIADOC – FACT AND FICTION

  First, the facts:

  Meriadoc was a wealthy Welshman who lived in the fifth or sixth century. At some point, he gave all his money to poor clerics and his land to the needy. Setting aside opulence and the purple silks he loved to wear, he dressed in rags, ate simple food and lived in complete poverty. He came to Cornwall, where he founded several churches, before crossing over to Brittany to continue his ministry. Elected to be Bishop of Vannes, he accepted the post with great reluctance and continued to live a life of abstinence. To this day, he is remembered in both Cornwall and Brittany – the parish church at Camborne is dedicated to St Martin and St Meriadoc, a miracle play in Cornish still survives recounting his legendary exploits and there is an infant school named after him. His feast day is 7 June.

  ‘Poverty is a remover of cares and the mother of holiness’ St Meriadoc

  Now for some fiction:

  St Meriadoc’s Cove, the well (there is no known well ascribed to the saint) and Paradise are fictional, as are the osteopathy practices in Bodmin and Wadebridge. The cove is ‘situated’ on the north coast of Cornwall between Com Head and Carnweather Point, overlooking Port Quin Bay and almost directly north of Polzeath. There are two lanes leading down to the cove, one from the east is disused and leads directly to the house: ‘Paradise’. The other, from the west, drops down to the head of the cove, passes the old boatyard and ‘The Row’, crosses the stream that runs down from the well and divides to the left, leading to ‘The Lookout’, and to the right, to Paradise.

  PROLOGUE

  The two figures, leaning together beneath the bare boughs of an ancient beech, were barely distinguishable in the fading, wintry light. They stood quite still, a smudge of darker grey against the high granite wall that separated the sheltered garden from the sloping meadow. As he stared across the frosty grass he heard the arched, wrought-iron gate open with a clang and saw a girl pass through, closing the gate carefully behind her. He straightened, recognizing her from the brief glimpse he’d had earlier when he’d called at the house. A soft plaid was wrapped about her shoulders and she wore green gumboots beneath the long, knubbly-textured skirt.

  The donkeys plodded to meet her with their familiar head-dipping gait and she spoke quietly to them, holding out her hands, bending down so it seemed as if she might be kissing their suede-soft muzzles. He hesitated – longing to call out to her, to make a connection with her – but his courage failed him. Instead, he pictured her as he’d first seen her as she’d come in through a door half hidden in the shadows at the back of the hall: a straight, uncompromising glance from beneath dark, level brows, her arms crossed over something that she held to her breast – a book? or a box? – and an air of wariness. She’d paused, watching, listening, and then had vanished through another door, leaving him with the older woman who’d smiled with such sweetness and sympathy.

  ‘I am sorry. It would be quite impossible for you to see Mrs Trevannion today. She’s got this wretched chest infection on top of everything else. If only we’d known that you were coming.’

  ‘I wrote Mrs Trevannion,’ he’d answered quickly, unable to hide his disappointment. ‘I sent a copy of a photograph with the letter. I think – I’m really hoping – that she knew my grandmother’s sister way back during the war. She emigrated to the States in ’forty-six, my grandmother, and then they just lost touch. We were so excited when my mother found the wedding photograph, all four of them together, the names on the back of it clear as clear. Hubert and Honor Trevannion …’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s been too ill to answer any correspondence. A broken ankle, you see, and now this infection.’ She’d frowned a little, crushing his enthusiasm kindly but firmly. ‘Perhaps in a week or two …’

  ‘I’m only here for the week,’ he’d told her, dismayed, ‘staying over at Port Isaac. I’m working in London for a spell and taking the opportunity to follow any leads I’ve managed to find while I’m over here. But I’ve been interested in this for a long time now and the photograph was a real find …’

  Once again, at the mention of the photograph, he’d sensed a faint withdrawal.

  ‘I don’t see how we can help you at the moment.’

  He tried a different tack. ‘What a magical little valley this is; so secret and so green. And what a great name for a house. “Paradise”. You really do have strange names in Cornwall, don’t you? Indian Queens. Lazarus. Jamaica Inn.’ He shook his head as if in amused puzzlement. ‘And then there are all these Saints. But I love “Paradise”. And it certainly looks like it is one.’

  ‘We think so too.’

  Her courtesy was as blank as a stone wall and, in the end, he’d given her his card and she’d promised to contact him, smiling farewell, closing the door quietly. The sense of anti-climax was almost overwhelming and, walking back down the drive to the narrow lane, he’d felt oddly hurt, thinking that she might at least have offered him a cup of tea. As he stood at the five-bar gate watching the donkeys he tried to be more rational, persuading himself that Honor Trevannion was probably very ill; that the older woman and the girl were too concerned with her wellbeing to have
time to spend with an unexpected stranger hunting for an ancestor. He hunched his shoulders against the chill of the evening and rested his arms along the top bar of the gate. The shadowy group at the far side of the meadow was hardly visible now as the twilight, creeping across the grass and thickening beneath the trees, blotted away the glimmerings of sunset and dimmed the last bright reflections slanting from the west. He frowned, still thinking about the interview. Had he imagined that slight tension? A reluctance to discuss his letter and the photograph? He shrugged. More likely she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about and was too worried to be interested.

  He heard again the metallic clang as the gate closed: the girl was gone and the donkeys had moved into the small open-fronted barn. Frustrated, but still driven by curiosity and a determination to follow his lead through, he walked on to the disused quarry where he’d parked his car and drove away.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The grassy track from the meadow twisted between rhododendrons as tall as trees, whose woody arms, stretching along the hard, bare earth, were supported and propped upon deep-rooted, knuckly elbows. The tough, lance-shaped leaves shivered in the chilly, gently shifting air and, at the edge of the path, clumps of snowdrops gleamed dimly in the gathering shadows. Light shone suddenly from an upstairs room and a figure stood with arms wide-stretched, pausing briefly to look out, before the brightness was quenched by the sweep of curtains drawn swiftly across the windows.

  By the time the girl had reached the garden door, kicked off her boots and crossed the hall to the drawing-room, Mousie had come downstairs and was piling wood onto the open fire.

  ‘So there you are, Joss.’ There was an odd note of relief in her voice. ‘I wondered where you’d disappeared to. Were you putting the donkeys to bed?’

  ‘I took some apples.’ She sat on the wide fender, curling her toes in their thick, cosy socks, relishing the warmth from the flames that licked with greedy yellow and orange tongues at the rough-sawn logs. ‘How is Mutt?’

  ‘Sleeping peacefully. I shall take up a tray of tea and sit with her for a while. Would you like to join us?’

  Joss shook her head. ‘I’ll go up later and read to her. She gets restless after supper and it distracts her. Who was that man who was here just now? What did he want?’

  Mousie hesitated, as if making an effort to formulate an accurate answer. ‘He’s an American tracking down a relative. He seemed to think that your grandmother might have known his great-aunt during the war. Something like that. Not a particularly suitable moment, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And does Mutt know her?’

  ‘I haven’t asked her,’ answered Mousie crisply. ‘Do you want some tea?’

  ‘I’ll come and get mine in a minute, just leave it in the pot.’ Joss smiled at the small upright figure, whose high-necked jersey was slung about with several pairs of spectacles all mixed up on long pieces of cord. ‘You know I can manage perfectly well if you want go home, Mousie.’

  ‘I know that, my darling.’ Mousie relaxed visibly, tension flowing from her shoulders and smoothing away the lines of anxiety: her slate-blue eyes were bright and warmly affectionate beneath the unruly crest of soft white hair. ‘But perhaps just one more check to make sure that she’s settled. This new antibiotic …’

  Joss chuckled. ‘Hopeless,’ she said. ‘It must be all those years of nursing and being in charge. Old habits die hard. I’m qualified too, you know. OK, I know I’m not a proper nurse, but I can lift Mutt and I promise you that some gentle massage will really help now that her foot is out of plaster.’

  ‘And you also know very well that I am not prejudiced against osteopathy,’ said Mousie firmly. ‘I have no anxiety about you looking after your grandmother; I’m just rather worried about the chest infection. And she’s in a rather confused state, although that’s mostly due to the antibiotics.’

  Her eyes were anxious again and, watching her, Joss had no desire to tease her further but felt instead a stomach-sinking fear.

  ‘We have to give her time,’ she said. ‘It was a bad break and this horrid infection isn’t helping. She’ll be fine, Mousie.’ It was almost a plea for consolation and Mousie swiftly responded to it.

  ‘Of course she will, my darling. Thank goodness you can spend some time with her. Having you here is the best medicine she could have.’ She smiled mischievously, her sense of humour and natural resilience returning. ‘That and the massage, of course.’

  Left alone, Joss drew her feet up onto the fender, rested her chin on her knees and began to think about the good-looking American. She’d been attracted by the eagerness that had informed his gestures and expression, and was already regretting her own wariness. How simple – she told herself now – to have joined in the conversation; offered him some refreshment. She’d seen him standing at the field gate but this newly acquired reticence – so foreign to her character but necessary to protect herself – had made it impossible for her to call a friendly greeting. She’d been surprised, however, at Mousie’s uncharacteristic caution and the guardedness with which she’d parried his enquiries, although, under the circumstances, it wasn’t terribly surprising that Mousie was preoccupied.

  Now, as Joss gazed into the bright heart of the fire, she imagined a different scene: a scene in which she’d strolled forward, smiling in response to his friendly glance, saying, ‘Goodness! This sounds fascinating. What’s it all about?’ They might have had some tea together and he could have shown her the photograph of his long-lost great-aunt. She felt frustrated by this new constant need for wariness that clamped her tongue and inhibited her gestures, although, she reminded herself, she was at least able to remain open and confident with her patients.

  This was because they rarely asked about her private life and so there was no need to be on guard. If the dreaded questions – ‘Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?’ – were to be asked, she was able to deal with them more casually with patients than with those she loved. Relationships with her family had become more complicated since she’d moved out of the bed-sit in Wadebridge to stay at Paradise whilst she renovated the tiny cottage at the end of The Row. Yet how could she have foreseen that a childhood friendship would flower so abruptly into a love that must be kept secret?

  ‘Tea’s made,’ Mousie called on her way upstairs.

  Joss went out into the hall, pausing to revel in the atmosphere of this house that she loved so very dearly. It was such a perfect little place, elegantly proportioned with high sash windows, and she’d sometimes imagined tilting back the roof and looking down inside as if it were a doll’s house. Mousie’s voice could just be heard, murmuring comfortingly beyond the closed bedroom door, and Joss wondered whether her grandmother had once known the American’s great-aunt, way back when they’d both been young. She understood his interest in this vanished relative, dimly recognizing in him a need for security that is centred in family. Her own heart was much more at home here in this tiny valley of St Meriadoc, where her mother’s family had lived for centuries, than in her parents’ house in Henley or the London flat where her father spent most of his working week.

  She decided to ask Mousie if she might see the photograph, hoping that there was some connection that would encourage the young man’s quest. Still thinking about him, she poured tea into a mug and carried it back to the fire.

  Upstairs, Mousie removed the tray, saw that Mutt was dozing again and looked about the room. A small but cheerful fire burned in the grate, safely contained behind a tall meshed guard, and a pretty painted screen had been set so as to shield the elderly woman in the bed from the brightness of the tall lamp set on a gate-leg table near the window. It was at this table that Mousie kept her vigil and it was piled with books, newspapers and the paraphernalia of letter-writing.

  She stood for a moment, her back to the bed, tidying the bulky newspapers, squaring the loose sheets of a letter she’d been writing before folding them into the leather blotter, collecting stray pens an
d a pencil and putting them into a blue and white ceramic jar. Presently she slid the print from beneath the blotter and stared down at it. It was evident that it had been recently copied from an original photograph itself, rather than from the negative, and it bore the marks of scratches and creases. Nevertheless she’d recognized it at once: in 1941 her cousin Hubert had sent an identical print all the way from India to his aunt in Portsmouth.

  He’d written:

  I was deeply horrified and sad to hear about Uncle Hugh and the loss of HMS Hood. But I am so pleased that you’re going to St Meriadoc to be near Mother and Father… I can’t wait for you all to meet Honor, she’s a darling. Give my love to Mousie and Rafe …

  Even now she could remember the shock and misery she’d felt at this news coming so soon after the death of her father. From her earliest memories she’d loved Hubert with an overwhelming devotion, willing herself to grow up quickly, imagining the glorious, much-dreamed-of moment when he would see her as an adult and realize that he’d loved her all the time. It was Hubert who had given her the nickname ‘Mousie’ and, though he had teased her, he could always make her laugh: there was no-one else like Hubert. She’d gazed at the face of Hubert’s new wife, mistily smiling beneath the charming, silly hat slanted over one eye, and had silently, bitterly, hated her. As the war dragged on, news had filtered back to St Meriadoc from India: Honor had given birth to a son, Bruno, and, three years later, to a daughter, Emma. Mousie was seventeen when they’d heard that Hubert was trying to book a passage to England for his wife and children in an attempt to protect them from the riots and upheaval of partition. He’d planned to follow them when his discharge came through, later in the year, but he had died of some kind of food-poisoning days before his family were due to sail and Honor – whom Hubert had nicknamed Mutt – and the children had come back to Paradise alone.

  Mousie slid the photograph beneath the blotter and glanced across at the bed. Mutt was lying on her side, watching her with calm intelligence. Mousie concealed the tiny shock that these switches from feverish confusion to brief moments of lucidity caused, and smiled.