Once more Joyce’s coffee grew cold as she sat dredging her memory for clues.
One
The business activities of the men in Joyce’s life — principally her father, then her brother and husband, and now her son too — had long been a mystery to her. Wives and daughters were not privy to the workings of Tanner-Max; while male progeny were expected to join the family business, Henry clung to the outdated notion that a woman’s role in life was that of wife, mother, home-maker. Joyce’s mother, Felicity, had been a seventeen-year-old newly qualified typist on her first job with a temp agency when she met Henry, but the moment they became engaged her working life ended.
Not that Felicity seemed to mind. Far from it. They had married when she was only twenty and he twenty-two but even after forty-seven years of marriage they gave every impression of being a devoted couple, both of them content in their traditional roles. While Felicity stayed at home, raising the children, Henry provided for his family’s every need — and did so lavishly. Despite periods of recession and financial austerity, under his leadership Tanner-Max had gone from strength to strength with profits steadily rising year after year. In part this was due to the fact that he was not only an astute businessman but a natural leader. There was something about him that commanded respect. Certainly he had great presence, and he made sure he always looked the part, holding himself stiffly upright and dressing in tailored suits and handmade shoes. He reckoned his shoes were worth every extravagant penny because they lasted for ever, and he bought a new pair only once every five years. At sixty-nine he remained a handsome man, with a full head of white hair that complemented his tanned skin (courtesy of a passion for all-weather golfing).
It occurred to Joyce that, beyond the fact everyone deferred to him and appeared to be in awe of him, she had little idea what Henry was like outside the home. He certainly believed in sharing the fruits of the company’s success: whatever wealth the business brought in, he made sure that Tanner-Max employees were amply rewarded and that his family shared in the benefits. In return, however, everything had to be done his way. Charlie might have been a partner in the company, but Joyce doubted that he had ever done anything to warrant his generous salary. There was no question who ran Tanner-Max, quite autonomously, and would continue to run it until he dropped.
It was the same at home. Though Henry had been a good, caring father and she had never been given cause to doubt his love for his family, Joyce couldn’t help but think of him as a benevolent despot. Growing up, she’d always known he would give her anything she asked for — except the thing she came to desire most: her freedom.
She had pinned her hopes on university as the means of achieving her escape from the confines of Tarrant Park. Predictably, Henry had been opposed to the idea. It had taken Felicity’s subtle and patient intervention to bring him round, but even then he’d insisted that Joyce should apply only to West Country universities, making Bristol her first choice, and Bath her second. Playing the dutiful daughter, Joyce assured him that she was happy to remain in the West of England. Privately, unlike her elder son many years later, she was determined not to spend the next three years of her life commuting between campus and home. So she ignored Bristol and Bath in favour of Exeter. The old Devon county town was only an hour and a half’s drive from Tarrant Park. Henry gave his approval on condition that she would return home every weekend, and that he or his driver would chauffeur her.
Joyce had accepted the terms with alacrity. In the Tanner household that was a result.
Regardless of the restrictions imposed upon her, she’d felt she was well on her way to achieving her greatest goaclass="underline" to be free to live her life in her own way. But the reality was that, apart from one fleeting exploratory fling, she ended up spending most of her first year buried in her studies — she was reading history, which had captivated her from early childhood — and in sport, at which she was rather good. She played tennis for the university and golf during her weekends at home, which remained rigidly implemented. Joyce didn’t mind. Not to begin with anyway. It was as if she needed to learn how to deal with freedom. Though she would never have admitted it, she welcomed her weekly break from her new world. It suited her to return to the closet at regular intervals.
And then everything changed.
It was the beginning of her second year at university. The new intake were gathered in the central hall. It was the usual meet-and-greet session with the principal and other members of staff. Joyce happened to be passing in the corridor outside. Nosily she sneaked a look through a glass-panelled door.
Across the room she saw Charlie. He seemed to stand out from the others, like a character in an arthouse movie, projected in vibrant colour whilst everyone else was in black and white. Charlie was standing by a window, side-on to Joyce, the light silhouetting his profile so that she could not see his face properly. It was clear that he was tall and gangly, with long limbs that seemed to have outgrown the rest of him. And he had unruly fair hair that skimmed the shoulders of his crumpled blue denim shirt.
She found herself staring at him. Then he turned and looked straight at her. Had he felt her eyes upon him? Neither of them had ever been sure.
He was far too thin for her taste. He had a long bony face and a crooked nose that looked as if it had once been broken. The signs of a nasty outbreak of teenage acne still lurked around his chin. He was by no means the best-looking man she’d ever seen. But when his eyes, surprisingly dark for one so fair, met hers, Joyce had felt a shiver run down her spine. And it had been a very pleasant sensation.
Then he had smiled. A small, uncertain smile. And she’d smiled back. Much the same way.
Charlie always said it had been love at first sight. And even though the sensible half of Joyce did not believe in such a notion, she supposed it must have been that. Or something damned near to it.
At the time she merely told herself to get a grip, and hurried off for her afternoon’s lecture.
When she emerged two hours later Charlie was waiting outside the lecture hall. She couldn’t understand how he had known where she would be.
‘Sixth sense,’ he’d said, beaming at her.
Long afterwards he confessed that he’d noticed she was carrying a copy of H. A. L. Fisher’s History of Europe, and upon making enquiries had discovered that there was only one history lecture taking place that afternoon.
Whilst their relationship had begun almost at once, it was several weeks before they slept together. Charlie and Joyce, perhaps unusually amongst students, became very much an item in every other way before embarking on the physical. Sex came second. They began to go everywhere together, do everything together, and were rarely seen apart. Around the campus they became known simply as JC. They were a unit. Everything they did, they did as one. Charlie was studying politics and liked to draw and paint in his free time; Joyce began to do so too, while Charlie took to reading Joyce’s history books when he had a spare moment.
Charlie’s political beliefs were far left and idealistic. In 1989, the year he arrived at Exeter, he was still a committed member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, even though communism was in steep decline throughout Europe. Joyce, whose interest in politics had hitherto been purely academic, found Charlie’s conviction magnetic. She joined the Party too, allowing herself to be swept along on the tidal wave of his philosophy, determined to embrace his grand vision.
As a committed Marxist, Charlie was never quite sure if he wanted to change the world or hide away from it in a garret somewhere with his easel. Joyce dutifully — like a good Tanner woman, she later reflected — went along with his whims, regularly attending Party meetings with him, although she didn’t share his conviction. She could see no harm in it; after all, communism in the West was over, whether or not Charlie was prepared to admit it.