Phil Rickman: 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.