Naturally, she telephoned to apologize. Throughout her life she seemed to have been torn between wanting her freedom and being afraid to grasp it. But she wasn’t about to give up Charlie for anyone.
Joyce’s mother later told her that she and her father had remained convinced the relationship would not last. One thing came out of the otherwise disastrous meeting, however. Having seen the Lambretta his beloved only daughter was travelling about on, Henry Tanner presented her with a new Mini Cooper. Just as he ultimately would his eldest grandson.
Charlie muttered something virtually incomprehensible about the moral dilemma of accepting lavish gifts from wealthy parents, particularly if you were a paid-up member of the Communist Party. But, for once, Joyce ignored him. And his conscience did not prevent him from spurning his rusting scooter in favour of riding with Joyce in her shiny new Mini at every opportunity. Particularly when it was raining.
If she hadn’t been head over heels in love she might have noticed the ease with which Charlie abandoned his principles, she thought, as she sat at her kitchen table so many years later, with that letter before her, desperately seeking to make sense of the senseless. But she’d been blind to such things back then.
Immersed in her new life, she’d continued to spend the occasional weekend at Tarrant Park, but her visits were nowhere near as frequent as Henry and Felicity would have liked. They raised no objection though, perhaps because they were still getting over the shock of Joyce’s ‘sex’ outburst. The Cooper made the journey to and fro both easy and fun, and more often than not Charlie accompanied her. While unfailingly polite in Charlie’s presence, Henry would invariably find some pressing reason to spend much of the weekend in his city-centre office or tucked away in his study at home, emerging only for meals. And Felicity would try, usually without success, to lure her away to the golf course or on a shopping trip, in order to spend time with her apart from Charlie. But her parents soon learned that if you wanted Joyce you had to take Charlie. They were, after all, JC.
If Joyce had thought about it at the time, which again she didn’t, she would have realized that her father was trying to drive a wedge between her and Charlie. He knew better than to confront his daughter directly, so instead he attempted to bribe her with solo treats such as a session with a top tennis coach in Spain, or getaways with one or other of her parents to London, Paris or New York. She turned down all his offers: no Charlie meant no Joyce.
Then, at the beginning of Joyce’s third year at Exeter and just as her parents were reconciling themselves to the idea of JC, tragedy struck. Her brother William was killed by a hit-and-run driver as he crossed Bristol’s busy Victoria Road right outside the Tanner-Max office.
The whole family was devastated. After the funeral Henry went into deep mourning and shut himself away for a month. The running of the business was left to his father, Edward, who came out of retirement to hold things together. Although well into his eighties, he was not the sort of man to sit in a fireside armchair while the business he’d created descended into terminal collapse through neglect.
After that month Henry re-emerged and once more took over the reins, conducting himself as if it were business as usual at Tanner-Max. But if anyone presumed to express their sympathy over William’s sudden death, or if William’s name cropped up in conversation, Henry Tanner simply purported not to hear.
Joyce was perplexed by his reaction. Felicity at least made no attempt to hide how devastated she was at the death of their only son. Every time Joyce saw her she seemed to be either in tears or red-eyed as if she’d been crying. But both parents seemed indifferent to getting justice for William. Their response to Joyce’s demands to know what the police were doing about finding her brother’s killer left her dumbfounded and dismayed.
‘I’m sure the police will let us know if they find out anything,’ they told her. ‘Anyway, what does it matter? It won’t bring him back.’
It mattered a lot to Joyce. She wanted to see her brother’s killer brought to justice. It became, for a time, her foremost motivation in life. She badgered the police on a daily basis, and at one point even attempted to conduct her own investigation.
In the end her father took her to one side.
‘You know, sweetheart, the longer this goes on the more upset your mother is going to get,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid she may be heading for a breakdown. Her only hope is to move on. William is dead and nothing can change that. If you persist in what you are doing you are only going to bring her more grief. Every time you talk about it you open the wound, just when it’s starting to heal. Let it go, sweetheart, let it go, for your mother’s sake.’
With considerable regret, Joyce did as her father asked and let it go, though for her the wound could never heal while William’s killer walked free.
Six months after William’s death, Henry suddenly expressed a desire to spend time with Charlie alone. He invited the younger man to join him for lunch at the country house hotel just outside Bristol which he habitually used for business entertaining.
Predictably, Charlie was not keen.
‘You must go,’ urged Joyce. ‘This is Daddy’s olive branch. It could mean he will accept you at last. You are the two men I love most in the world. Hey, the only two men I love in the world. It would be so great if you could be friends.’
Charlie had been unimpressed. ‘I reckon your dad’s more likely to make friends with a boa constrictor,’ he said.
‘Don’t think he couldn’t if he set his mind to it,’ countered Joyce.
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ enquired Charlie.
He agreed to the lunch, for Joyce’s sake, but made it clear that he had absolutely no desire to spend time alone with Henry Tanner. Neither had he any wish to lunch at a staid and achingly conventional hotel, the kind of establishment he had always despised. And his reluctance turned to alarm when Joyce informed him that there was a dress code.
‘Formal jacket and tie, I fear,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s the final straw,’ said Charlie.
‘What’s the matter, don’t you have a proper jacket?’ enquired Joyce, who had never seen him wear any such thing.
‘Course I do,’ muttered Charlie. ‘Somewhere. If it still fits me. I don’t have a tie though.’
‘Well, I think we could run to buying one of those, don’t you?’
‘I just don’t understand what your father could want,’ Charlie sighed.
‘He doesn’t want anything,’ said Joyce. ‘He’s trying to get to know you, that’s all. He’s finally come round to the fact that I’m determined to have you, for ever, and so there’s nothing left for him to do but accept you. I think it’s fab — now stop whingeing and let’s go buy you a tie.’
And so the appointed day came and Charlie set off to Mendip House in his one and only formal jacket, which turned out to be the top half of a suit that had been bought for him on his eighteenth birthday by his mum, Joan, who had apparently been determined he should go into adulthood with at least one presentable suit in his wardrobe. The plain but good quality navy-blue jacket had only been worn on a couple of occasions; although a little tight across the shoulders, it looked quite smart once a light dusting of mildew on the collar and sleeves had been dealt with.
Joyce knotted for him, over an old but honourable and very nearly white shirt, the subtly patterned silk tie in varying shades of blue, which he had reluctantly allowed her to purchase at Exeter’s Debenhams. Then she eyed him up and down approvingly. His hair, murky yellow or dark blond, depending on the light and how recently he had washed it, remained as unruly as ever and was even longer than when she’d first met him. It curled untidily over his shoulders, a bit like an avalanche of dirty snow. Joyce liked it. But she knew her father didn’t. She reached out to touch Charlie’s hair with one hand, wondering whether he might be persuaded to allow the lightest of trims around the ends.