The Chalice

September, 1919

There she was, lying across
the bed, stretched out corner to corner, as though this could relieve the cramp
inside caused by the way she'd been used ... trifled with and slighted, yes,
and humiliated ... as if, as a young woman, she was natural prey, just another
little hopping bird in the hawk's garden.

      
Oh! She might have felt better beating her fists into the
pillow, but she'd never have excused herself for that.
Not
the behaviour of a trained psychoanalyst.

      
All the same, she would remember telling herself that if she
didn't do something about it she'd quite simply implode. So perhaps that was
what started the process.

      
It must have been going on, somewhere, while she was
persuading her body into the relaxation procedure - not easy when her stupid mind
insisted on re-enacting the appalling business, over and over.

      
Beginning with his proposal of a small adventure for her. That
boyish grin through the bristly little moustache, the kind which all the men she
knew seemed to have brought back from the Great War. The bantering baritone,
smooth and slick as freshly buffed mahogany. 'Didn't you know, Violet? My
goodness, didn't you know - that we still had it here?'

      
The question causes, as he knew it would, a veritable flutter
in her breast.

      
But Violet, still suspecting some prank, says lightly that she
trusts he's speaking metaphorically, as anybody with even a perfunctory
knowledge of such matters is aware that the Holy Grail does not exist and never
did.

      
At which he puts down his wine, spilling some. 'The hell it
doesn't, you arrogant minx!'

      
'Except, of course, as a symbol. Doubtless a sexual one.'

      
It's a numbingly dull and sultry afternoon, summer seeping
sluggishly into autumn, and she's tired of his games.

      
'And what would
you
know about symbols?' His lips twisting in amusement. 'Or sex, for that matter.'

      
The room is gloomy: tiny windows and those monstrous black
beams. They have not discussed sex. Only violence and pain.

      
'As much,' she informs him casually (although she's stung by
his manner and intimated by his blatant smirk), 'as
any
advanced student of the methods of Dr Freud.'

      
'Freud? That ghastly charlatan?' He laughs, oh so confident,
now that his own demons are quiet. She decides not to react.

      
'A passing fad, Violet, you'll see,' leaning back behind his
desk, handsome as the devil 'But please - I'm intrigued - define for me this
symbolism.'

      
What's his game now? Oh, she must not give in to the welling
hostility. Or, worse, to that other undignified stirring which has made the
leather seat feel suddenly hot where she sits.
Most
humiliating and hardly the response of a trained
psychoanalyst.

      
'So ...' He trails a finger through the spilled wine. 'Let's look
at this. Joseph of Arimathea ... uncle of Christ, provider of his tomb ... begs
from Pontius Pilate the cup used at the Last Supper and perhaps to collect the
blood from the Cross ...'

      
'Yes, a pretty legend, I accept that.'
      
'And then carries it with him on
his missionary voyage to a place in the west of Britain, where a strange,
pointed hill can be seen from the sea.'

      
'Yes.' She's seen it herself - in dreams - as if from the sea:
the mystical, conical Tor on the holy Isle of Avalon.

      
And although she would never admit this to him, she's still secretly
thrilled by the legend and has been many times to the place where Joseph was
said to have buried the Grail, causing a spring to bubble up, the Chalice Well,
which to this day runs red. Chalybeate, of course. Iron in the water.

      
'Obviously,' she says, 'I would not dispute that Joseph and his
followers came to Avalon as missionaries. Or, indeed, that he was responsible for
building the first Christian church in England. This is historically feasible.'
      
'How very accommodating of you.
Violet.'
      
'Although I rather suspect the
story that Joseph had once brought the child Jesus here is no more than a
romantic West Country myth illuminated by the poet Blake.'
      
He says nothing.

      
'And surely, what Joseph introduced to these islands was a
faith, not a ... a trinket.'

      
That came out badly, sounding, even to her own ears, more than
a little churlish. He smiles at her again, looking replete with superior
wisdom.

      
She rallies. 'The symbolism is clear. The
idea
of a chalice is well known in Celtic mythology - the Cauldron
of Ceridwen, a crucible of wisdom, a symbol of transformation.
Upon which, the legend of the Holy Grail, seen from a twentieth-century
perspective, is obviously no more than a transparent Christian veneer.'

      
'In which case,' he says, musingly, after a pause, 'the Grail
would be even more significant, carrying the combined power of two great
traditions, Christian and Pagan. Would it not?'

      
'If there was such a thing, no doubt it would.'

      
'
If there was such a
thing …'
He considers this for a while, hands splayed on the desk, eyes
upraised to the blackened beams. 'If there was such a thing, and it had been secretly
held by the monks of Glastonbury until the Reformation … ' He stops.

      
His eyes are suddenly alight with zealot's fire.

      
'Oh, really.' Violet almost sniffs. 'Monks were always forging
relics to improve the status of their abbeys. Anyway ...' Pushing back her chair
and standing up. 'I'm a psychologist. Not an historian.'

      
He also stands, but remains behind the desk. He seems to be
considering something. 'Very well. What if I were to show it you? What if I
were to show you the Grail itself?'

      
He's still wearing his uniform. Some of the men wear theirs
because they have nothing else. But
his
wardrobe could hardly be bare or gone to moth. No, he continues to sport his
captain's uniform because he knows its power. Over women, of course.

      
'Ha,' Violet says. Uncertainly.

      
In spite of herself, in spite of the teachings of Dr Freud and
what he has to say about the all consuming power of sex, she is beginning, as
she follows this man out of the study and down a dark, low passage, to feel
quite ridiculously excited.

In those days, Violet hadn't
been terrifically good at containing emotion. Well, she was still a young
woman, somewhat less experienced than her confidence might suggest.

      
She knew she was not what most people would call beautiful and
that some men were intimidated by her direct manner. But, others - and quite
often the better-looking ones, the ones whose arms might have been around
slimmer waists - would seek her out. Faintly puzzled about why they found her
attractive.

      
There had always been two sides to her, which she equated with
the Celtic and the Saxon: the airy feyness and the no-nonsense earthiness.
Although she'd been born in north Wales, she considered herself (because of her
Yorkshire steel-working family) to be chiefly Saxon, as suggested by her flaxen
hair and her solid, big-boned body. But she'd always needed the phantasmal fire
of the Celts, their inbred cosmic perspective.

      
These two aspects had fallen unexpectedly into harmony over
the past few years, during the Great War; all Europe might have been in
roiling, smoking turmoil, but Violet had been curiously at peace.

      
Not that she was any great pacifist. She'd have quite liked to
have been at the Front. To be tested. But the only women's work there was nursing,
and she was the first to admit she didn't have the patience for it. Not then.

      
But staying at home had been a revelation. Elements of what
she was had come together in an unexpected way. Serving in the women's land
army, raising the crops, feeding the troops: fulfilment in a healthy, practical
way, but also wonderfully symbolic. With all the young, strong men away in the
forces, England - the essential England, of holy hills and fertile meadows -
was at last in the care of women. The girls of the land army had taken on the
traditional role of Mother Goddess.

      
It had changed her. She still found Freud stimulating and
exciting and the logic of his methodology unassailable, as far as it went. But
there were areas of experience which psychoanalysis could not unveil. And she
had lifted up the hem of the curtain and seen wonders.

      
However, to become truly initiated into the Mysteries, one
needed the guidance of human beings who had been there before. And some of them
could be ... well, pretty unsavoury types in other respects. The sacred quest
for enlightenment, it appeared, would often bring out the very worst in people.

      
One had to go jolly carefully, keeping one's eyes open and,
quite frankly, one's legs together.

'Go on then... hold it.'

      
Vapour is rising from a small candle on the block of stone
between them.

      
'No ... please ... this is not right!'

      
'You're wrong. It's absolutely right. Now. For me. For us,
Violet ...'

      
It lies in a black cloth between his hands.

      
'Grasp it.'
      
'No!'

      
'Clasp it to your breast.' He extends his arms, the cloth and
what lies in it.

      
'Please ... Its black, it's evil ... I don't ... She's starting
to sob.

      
'But it's what you want, my dear. It's what you've always wanted.
This is 1919 and you're a free and enlightened woman ... a trained psychoanalyst.
Primitive superstition can't touch you now.' Standing between her and the way
out, he adds lazily, 'And take off your clothes, why don't you?'

And so Violet was in a
fairly hellish state when she flung her soiled body on the bed, making its springs
howl. In retrospect she might have been better off rampaging through the grounds,
taking it out on the last of the weeds.

      
The bed had a light green eiderdown, and the wallpaper was
salmon pink. Colours of summer. A pleasant room on a sullen autumn afternoon.
But it didn't calm her down today. The effects of such abuse did not just quietly
fade.

      
There was an essential conflict here. One could adopt the Christian
attitude, turn the other cheek and walk away
:
very well, I tried to help you ... I counselled you, taught you how to control
your nightmares from the War … and you took advantage of me. Nevertheless, not
my place to be judgemental. As a psychologist.

      
Ha. Hardly good enough was it? Violet sighed, lay back and let
her eyelids fall. The pillows were soft and cool. The back of her head felt
heavy, like a bag of potatoes. She let her arms flop by her sides. The anger,
still burning somewhere below her abdomen, was at odds, though not uncomfortably
so, with the supine state of her body. She was, surprisingly, reaching a state
of relaxation. But then, she was getting rather good at that.