Death Comes First (2 page)

Not for the first time she was consumed with anger at Charlie. Why did he have to die? Why had he delivered this warning in a letter instead of discussing it with her while he was still alive, so that they could take whatever action needed to be taken together? He must have known the distress and
bewilderment it would cause. But then, that was typical of the man her husband had become. What did he care – he was dead. He was out of it. For a fleeting moment Joyce wished she was too.

She tore her eyes from the letter and looked out at the rainswept garden. Late May and half-term only a week away, but there was no hint of summer’s impending arrival in the dark clouds and sodden greenery. Until the postman had called, Joyce’s big worry of the day had been what she was going to do with her two younger children if the weather over the holiday proved to be as bad as was forecast. The two tall Douglas firs from which the Mildmay family home had drawn its name stood like sentinels either side of imposing electronic gates at the end of a wide drive. Water dripped from the lower branches on to shiny paving. Beyond, it was just possible to make out the private road linking the homes of the privileged residents of the gated community. There were no signs of life; it was rare to catch a glimpse of any of the neighbours.

Apart from her time at university, Joyce had spent her whole life in the confines of Tarrant Park. The home she’d grown up in, Corner House, was a hundred metres from where she sat now. Built to Henry’s own specification, it was easily the most dominating and imposing house in the development. Ever since she could remember, the Tanner family’s social life had revolved around the gated community’s tennis club, golf course and swimming pool. As a child, her playmate had been her adored brother, William, two years her senior. It wasn’t that visits from school friends were prohibited or discouraged, more that outsiders didn’t seem comfortable in Tarrant Park. She recalled one girl describing it as ‘seriously creepy’.

Sitting at her kitchen table with her dead husband’s letter spread out before her and only designer green nothingness to be glimpsed through the windows, Joyce felt an overwhelming sense of eeriness, as if by opening the envelope she had unleashed some evil genie. And now that it was out there, she could not afford to ignore it, to pretend it did not exist.

For the sake of her children, Joyce was going to have to establish the precise nature of whatever danger faced them and determine how to react. Easier said than done, with her mind running riot from the possibilities of what it might be.

She got up from the table, poured away her cold coffee, and made herself a fresh cup, which she carried into the conservatory. She needed to think, rein in her imagination, be rational. The wording of the letter made it sound as though Charlie had been aware of this threat, whatever it was, for years. It seemed incomprehensible that he would have kept it entirely to himself; perhaps he had alluded to it in some way, but she’d chosen to ignore it, burying the recollection deep within her subconscious.

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 goal: 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.

The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, two months after Charlie’s arrival at Exeter and his fateful meeting with Joyce. But Charlie seemed to be the only person in the world
oblivious to the significance. Looking back, Joyce could see that Charlie had behaved like an ostrich, blocking out this epic event because it didn’t suit his notion of how the world should be. At the time, Joyce hadn’t minded; in fact, she’d been vaguely amused. But that was before she discovered that Charlie would display a life-long predilection for denying the existence of anything which did not fit into his own scheme of things.

Charlie lived off campus on an old wooden sailing boat, the
Shirley Anne
, which had been left to him by his grandfather. Or the nearest thing he had to a grandfather. His parents, about whom he seemed to know very little, had been killed in a car crash when Charlie was three, and he’d been fostered by a childless North Devon couple who later adopted him. Their family became his family, Charlie always said.

The legacy from his adoptive grandfather had included an extremely convenient River Exe estuary mooring at Topsham, just outside Exeter. Charlie made the daily commute to campus aboard a rickety Lambretta motor scooter. It wasn’t long before Joyce moved in with him, keeping her new living arrangements from Henry and Felicity.

She continued to travel home at weekends. But not every weekend. And by train, having managed to persuade her parents that this was the swiftest and easiest form of travel between Exeter and Bristol, thus avoiding any inspection of her living arrangements by Henry or his driver.

With or without Joyce, Charlie spent his weekends scraping and patching the old boat, in order, he told her, to make it seaworthy for a voyage around the world. Joyce joined in, when she could. She met Charlie’s adoptive parents, Bill and Joan Mildmay, when they came to visit, bringing a picnic and wine. They seemed easy-going and totally accepting of her.
She wondered if she would ever have the courage to introduce Charlie to her parents. She would have to, sooner or later, that was for certain. Because Charlie had already told her that, whatever he ended up doing with his life, he wanted to share it with her. And she felt the same.

Of an evening they would sit planning a gap-year odyssey aboard the
Shirley Anne
. They would allow the winds to take them where they willed, said Charlie one night as they sat on deck, oblivious to the cold, sharing a spliff.

Joyce thought it was the most romantic thing she had ever heard.

Since Charlie was a year younger than her and a year behind in his studies, Joyce intended to extend her time at university either by studying for an MA, if her grades were good enough, or a teaching qualification. That way they would leave Exeter at the same time and take off on their travels, roaming the oceans like the free spirits they were.

Living on the
Shirley Anne
was not easy. They had to contend with a cantankerous gas water-heater, which would provide hot water for the one sink only when it suited it. There was no shower, let alone a bath. Thankfully the university locker rooms provided those facilities. The boat was connected to mains electricity, in a Heath Robinson sort of way. If you overloaded it by plugging in more than one device at a time, the entire system was liable to blow. So the sole electric heater which warmed the old vessel had to be used with extreme care. On top of that the place reeked of damp, and mildew was rife. All Joyce’s shoes turned vaguely green with a persistent mould at which she resolutely scrubbed each time she wore them, although it never seemed to make much difference.