Death Comes First

by Hilary Bonner

  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.

  Charlie read her mind.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said.

  It had been arranged that Henry’s driver would pick Charlie up at Topsham, take him to the Mendip Hotel, more than an hour away, then drive him home afterwards. That way he could have a drink if he wanted, said Henry.

  Charlie had muttered dissent, telling Joyce it was against his principles as a communist to ride in a chauffeur-driven car. But he said nothing of this to Henry, meekly accepting the arrangement.

  Joyce spent an anxious afternoon awaiting his return. It was a sunny autumn day and there were any number of jobs on the boat she could have been getting on with, but she was too restless to settle to any task. Instead she threw a blanket on to the well-worn deck, lay back and tried to concentrate on the modern espionage thriller she was reading whilst enjoying the sun. But she was on edge. She so wanted this lunch between her two men to be a success. Maybe she was getting things out of proportion, but she couldn’t help feeling her whole life depended on a successful outcome.

  It was well gone six before Charlie appeared, weaving unsteadily along the tow path. She waved a greeting. Charlie managed a half wave in response, gave her a weak smile, then lurched to his left and was sick in the water.

  ‘Good lunch then,’ Joyce remarked, more to herself than to him.

  ‘Oh God, I feel terrible,’ mumbled Charlie as he staggered towards her.

  ‘I should have warned you about the flow of booze at Dad’s lunches,’ said Joyce.

  Charlie groaned.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to tell me what happened? I want to know all about it. Are you friends for life or what?’

  Charlie responded with another groan, his body swaying precariously as he stepped on to the gangplank. Convinced he was going to fall, Joyce hurried towards him, grabbed a flailing arm and pulled him on to the boat.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you to bed – I can tell I’m not going to get any sense out of you until you’ve slept it off.’

  She’d never seen Charlie so drunk, but Joyce remembered that, far from being unhappy at the state he was in, she’d taken it as a good sign. If things had gone badly with her father he would have returned much earlier and stone-cold sober. And what she wanted more than anything was for the two of them to become friends. Lunching and drinking buddies had to be a good start.

  Impatient for Charlie’s account of the lunch, she’d hovered close by as he descended to the lower deck after throwing up spectacularly over the rails. Then she’d climbed into the double bunk alongside him, but he fell instantly into a deep sleep and showed no signs of waking. Resisting the urge to wake him, she told herself she would have to be patient and wait till morning.

  But when the morning came and Charlie emerged with a major hangover, he was no more forthcoming.

  ‘You know what, Joycey baby, I got so pissed I can’t remember a thing,’ he told her, running long fingers through his unruly hair.

  No matter how much Joyce pressed him, Charlie persisted in dodging the issue. He remembered what he had eaten – seafood platter and roast beef – but next to nothing of the conversation.

  Joyce couldn’t understand it. She had been to any number of parties with Charlie where the pair of them had drunk far too much, and on sobering up afterwards he’d always seemed to have total recall. Sometimes embarrassingly so.

  Joyce called her father. Henry Tanner was equally evasive.

  ‘Oh God, darling, I don’t know what we talked about. This and that. Told me all about that blessed boat he lives on . . .’

  Henry paused. As far as Joyce knew, her father was unaware that she too lived on the Shirley Anne. She wondered if he suspected, and whether he’d grilled Charlie on the subject.

  ‘Oh, and how much he cares for you,’ Henry continued. ‘But then I knew that, didn’t I?’

  ‘Come on, Dad, you can do better than that,’ Joyce urged, trying to make her voice light and teasing. ‘I want to know exactly what the two men in my life have been plotting. So come on. Spill!’

  ‘We haven’t been plotting anything,’ Henry answered quickly. Perhaps too quickly.

  ‘Trust you to be so bloody nosy,’ he laughed. ‘I can tell you, however, that I think you have a fine young man there.’

  Joyce did a double take down the phone.

  ‘You’ve given every impression you couldn’t stand the sight of him from the first time I brought him home,’ she said.

  ‘Rubbish,’ responded Henry. ‘Like I said, I just needed to get to know Charlie a bit. And, anyway, I couldn’t be sure in the beginning whether or not he was going to stick around, could I?’

  There was, Joyce realized, some truth in that. She told herself sh
e should stop being such a control freak – a trait which ran in the family – and be thankful that a friendship appeared to be blossoming between the two men.

  But over the next few days Charlie became progressively more withdrawn. The Charlie she had fallen in love with had been an energetic young man with a lively and active mind, who never stopped talking, and was seldom capable of sitting still for more than five minutes. Following the lunch with Henry, it seemed to Joyce that he’d become uncharacteristically quiet and introspective. And instead of seeking out every opportunity to be with Joyce, as he had always done before, he seemed to seize upon any excuse to be apart from her.

  No longer did he hover outside her lectures, ready to whisk her off for a coffee or a chat. No longer did he study alongside her. A couple of times he ate alone in the refectory while she was busy studying, something he had never done before. And when they were together aboard the Shirley Anne he contrived to be on deck while she was below and below deck when she was up top.

  They still slept together. They still had sex. Satisfying sex. But – and Joyce had never been able to explain this to herself – it wasn’t the same. Even in their most intimate moments, they were no longer really close.

  JC, it seemed to Joyce, was no more.

  Naturally she’d confronted Charlie. Told him she was hurt and puzzled. Asked him what was going on.

  ‘You’re imagining things,’ he responded, kindly enough. But he wouldn’t give her a straight answer or say anything to put her mind at rest.

  Meanwhile Henry began to take Charlie out to lunch and dinner on a regular basis. The Mendip Hotel was their usual haunt, but there were also trips to London venues like the Savoy and the Ritz. Once the two men stayed over – at Henry’s club, they said.

  Joyce continued to be surprised, because her father and her future husband didn’t seem to have much in common, apart from her. And both were frustratingly unforthcoming when asked about their meetings. She was accustomed to her father keeping his nearest and dearest in the dark; talking things through was not something Henry did. But Charlie was different – or so she’d thought.

  There were other changes too. Charlie suddenly announced that he was giving up smoking; not just cigarettes – he had a fifty-a-day habit – but marijuana too. Though she knew she would miss the mellowing and sometimes aphrodisiac effect marijuana had on them both, Joyce was glad. She didn’t mind the odd spliff but had never cared for cigarettes.

  Then, about four months after what Joyce came to regard as his fateful first lunch with Henry, Charlie had his hair cut. Joyce returned to the boat one evening, having not seen him all day on campus, to find that her wild and hirsute young man now sported a short back and sides. With a parting too.

  ‘Good God, this is a shock,’ she had said, as mildly as she could manage. It wasn’t the fact he’d cut his hair that bothered her; it was his failure to mention it beforehand.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Charlie replied curtly. ‘You didn’t think I was going to have hair down my back for the rest of my life, did you? One can’t be a student for ever.’

  ‘But you’ve over a year to go,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Maybe.’ The response was short and sharp, and though further questions sprang to mind, Joyce dared not ask them.

  A few days later she was emptying the bin from the galley when she noticed Charlie’s Communist Party membership card amongst the rubbish. It was one of his most prized possessions, a kind of badge of honour. When over-excited or a bit drunk, he was inclined to brandish the card whilst berating those around him who did not share his beliefs, which if anything had become stronger as communism’s influence waned.

  Joyce fished the card out of the rubbish, scrubbed at a grease stain and presented it to Charlie.

  ‘I’ve no idea how this got in the bin, but I rescued it for you,’ she said. ‘Do I get a big kiss and an even bigger thank you?’

  A bright flush spread over Charlie’s pale cheeks.

  ‘Well, actually, I threw it away,’ he said.

  ‘You did what?’ asked Joyce, staggered. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve resigned my membership,’ Charlie responded. ‘I don’t believe in it any more.’

  ‘But the Party is your religion. You’re a damned missionary for it. I only joined because of you. You know that. Whatever brought this on, Charlie?’

  ‘The small matter of the Berlin Wall falling might be a bit of a factor, eh?’

  Ignoring the sarcasm in his voice, Joyce reminded him, ‘You always said you weren’t going to allow the fall of the Wall to affect your beliefs. You said the cause was the right one, and eventually the world would—’

  ‘I know what I damn well said,’ Charlie snapped. ‘And you always argued I was wrong. Well, you’ve got your way now. It’s over. So you’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘C’mon, tell me the truth: what’s really behind all this?’

  ‘I’m growing up, I suppose,’ he responded with a shrug. ‘I’ve finally come to the conclusion that Marxism is nonsense, that’s all.’

  Joyce had been stunned. One of the things that had attracted her to Charlie had been his conviction and passionate advocacy for the ideals he held so dear. It hadn’t mattered a jot that she had never really shared those ideals. That wasn’t the point.

  ‘Well, that’s rich! You’ve resigned from the Communist Party without telling me and I’m still officially a member, even though I only ever joined because of you and your alleged principles,’ she said, with more edge than she intended.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about it. I doubt there will be a Communist Party of Great Britain for much longer,’ said Charlie prophetically.

  ‘So why the grand gesture?’ asked Joyce.

  Charlie made no reply. Instead he walked away from her – something he’d been doing more and more. Even in bed, although they were still at the stage where they made love almost every night, Joyce found him increasingly detached. But if she dared to mention it he would not be drawn, and when she persisted he bit her head off.

  She consoled herself with the thought that at least Charlie’s friendship with her father seemed to be going from strength to strength. There had been several more trips to London involving overnight stays at Henry’s club. Henry also took Charlie to the races at Cheltenham and to watch Bath play rugby. Neither Joyce nor her mother were invited. Joyce was not used to it. She was used to being the apple of her father’s eye, getting her own way with him. She was also used to going absolutely everywhere with Charlie.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to get to know your young man. I thought you wanted us to be friends,’ said her father when she remonstrated with him about excluding her from these invitations.

  An expression of her paternal grandmother’s came into her mind: ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

  What Joyce wished for right then was for things to go back to the way they had been. Her wish was to be emphatically denied.

  At the end of a typical morning of domestic crisis aboard the Shirley Anne – the electric kettle had blown the entire system again, and then the bottled gas ran out as they tried to cook breakfast on the little two-burner gas hob – Charlie dropped the biggest bombshell yet.

  ‘Well, at least we won’t have to be putting up with this shit for much longer,’ he announced. ‘I’ve sold the Shirley Anne. Some twat of a first year has bought her. He’s got absolutely no idea what he’s taking on.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’ she asked. ‘You can’t mean it.’

  ‘Yep, I can. And I have. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘But she meant so much to you. And me, come to that.’

  ‘Time to move on, Joycey.’

  He didn’t even sound like Charlie any more. ‘Time to move on’ indeed – the old Charlie would never have spoken to her in that patronizing way.

  ‘I can’t believe you’d do that, and without so much as a word to me!’

  ‘Why would I need t
o discuss it with you?’ Charlie asked curtly. ‘She’s my boat. And she was mine before I even met you. It was my decision to make.’

  ‘But the Shirley Anne is part of our life together . . .’ Fighting to hold back her tears, Joyce took a step away.

  Seeing the hurt in her eyes, Charlie softened his tone. ‘Look, I’m sorry, sweetheart. I thought it was my responsibility – I didn’t want to burden you with it. You have to admit, it’s time we moved on. We can get a little flat in town . . .’

  He didn’t want to burden her? For a moment Joyce was too stunned to speak; it was as if Charlie had suddenly morphed into her father.

  ‘And you have the money for a flat, do you?’ she snapped.

  ‘Well no, not exactly,’ Charlie continued, his tone patient and reasonable. ‘But your father has offered to help.’

  Joyce couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘My father? Have you two been plotting this? The Shirley Anne is our home, yours and mine, Charlie. Did you connive with my father to get rid of our home?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Charlie, reaching out to her.

  ‘And what about our gap-year odyssey?’ Joyce demanded, brushing away his hand. ‘What about sailing off into the ocean and letting the winds take us where they will? What about our dreams, Charlie?’

  He shrugged. His face gave nothing away.

  ‘Maybe I have different dreams, now, Joyce,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you know what, Charlie, when you told me that was what you wanted to do and that you wanted me to do it with you, to sail away with you aboard this wonderful old boat, I thought it was about the most romantic thing I had ever heard in the whole of my life.’

  Charlie stepped towards her, wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips on hers, thus making it impossible for her to say any more. At least he could still be unpredictable, it seemed.

  He stroked her hair tenderly and stopped kissing her only in order to speak.

  ‘I still have dreams, my darling,’ he said. ‘And I have one great big dream that only you can make come true. Will you marry me, Joyce Tanner?’

  Joyce felt her jaw drop. She was taken totally by surprise.