She stared at him in silence for a minute or so.
‘Well?’ he enquired, and flashed the old lopsided resist-me-if-you-can grin, which had become, she thought, a depressingly rare sight.
His hair had grown a bit, thankfully, the parting was crooked, and there was just a hint of the old tousled tangle she’d so adored.
She continued to stare at him.
‘This isn’t what I expected...’ She struggled to find the words. ‘To tell the truth, Charlie, I thought you’d gone off me.’
‘Never.’ He kissed her again on the lips, but lightly this time. ‘I love you more than ever. Surely you realize that.’
She shook her head. ‘Oh, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I love you so much. But you’ve changed lately. I mean, if you get married, does it mean you can’t do daft things any more like bugger off in a boat and let the winds take you? ’Cos if it does, well, I don’t know...’
He interrupted, raising one finger gently to her mouth and placing it there.
‘Sweetheart, you didn’t seriously think we could sail around the world on this old crate, did you?’
She thought for a second. The answer to that was yes. Yes, she had thought they could. He had made her believe that. And she told him so.
‘I never had any doubts, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d work on her until she was right, then take off. You and me and the ocean waves.’
‘Joyce, I doubt we’d have got Shirley Anne out of the estuary, let alone on to the ocean waves. She’s riddled with woodworm and rot!’
‘But, Charlie,’ she protested, ‘I believed you. Absolutely. I thought we were going to do it — fulfil our dreams, find our Shangri-La.’
‘We can still fulfil our dreams, my darling,’ he said. ‘But they’ll be different ones, that’s all. My dream is to marry you, for you to have my children, and to keep you and them safe and happy and well for the rest of our lives. Isn’t that even more romantic?’
He stroked her face, his touch warm and suddenly every bit as exciting as it had been in the beginning. He kissed her cheek. His lips were soft, deliciously soft.
‘Marry me, my darling,’ he pleaded. ‘Please, please, marry me. I cannot imagine that life could go on unless you say yes. Please, please, say yes. Say you’ll marry me. Go on. Say it. Say it.’
He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, raised her hand and kissed her fingers, pressed his lips to her ears, the top of her head, her eyes, and oh so lightly, her mouth, again and again.
She found herself laughing uncontrollably through the kisses.
‘Yes,’ she cried out eventually, her words half smothered by his kisses. ‘Yes, yes, yes, Charlie. Yes, I will marry you, my darling. Yes! Yes!’
He grabbed her by one arm and pulled her towards the bunk in the aft cabin. She noticed, and it made her laugh, that he was trying to get out of his trousers as they hurried to get there. He nearly tripped them both up. He tore at the buttons on her shirt, ripping one off, and tugged at her jeans whilst trying to get out of his own shirt at the same time.
The undressing was clumsy, terribly clumsy, but the love-making was fluent and seamless, as good as it had ever been, possibly better. Bold yet tender. Urgent yet without haste. Charlie was there. Right there. With her. On her. In her. No longer detached in any way. Instead, after so long, he was part of her again. At last.
And when it was over, for one crazy, wonderful, ecstatic moment, Joyce even thought they might be JC again.
She phoned her parents to tell them that she’d accepted Charlie’s proposal, and to her amazement they both expressed delight. In spite of Henry’s recent efforts to bond with Charlie, she’d expected him to urge caution, to point out that she was only twenty-two and Charlie twenty-one, too young to be taking such a step. Even though Henry and Felicity had been even younger when they’d married, Joyce had anticipated a long drawn-out argument before her father gave his blessing. His enthusiastic approval took her completely by surprise.
A date was set for the coming June, straight after Joyce’s finals. The wedding reception would be held at the Tarrant Park tennis club, following a traditional ceremony at a nearby church. Henry took charge of everything. And he would be footing the bill, of course. Gladly he said, beaming at his daughter and her husband to be.
It did occur to Joyce that the next stage in her life appeared to be evolving without her having much of a say in it. But Charlie had been far more his old self since she had accepted his proposal, and she was far too excited to let herself dwell on anxieties she couldn’t put a name to, let alone explain. Instead she gave herself up to the excitement and joy of becoming Mrs Joyce Mildmay.
Two
It was on their wedding night that Charlie dropped his next bombshell.
They were in their splendid garden suite at Gravetye Manor, chosen and paid for by Henry, who said it was one of the best hotels in the country, and close to Gatwick, the airport from which they would be flying off the following day for a honeymoon in the Maldives.
Joyce, exhausted after the excitement of the day and full of food and champagne, had collapsed on the four-poster bed. Charlie came and sat down next to her. He looked uneasy.
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ he said, taking her hand in his. ‘I hope you’ll be pleased. I’m quitting university. I’m going to work for your father.’
It was the last thing Joyce had expected. She was anything but pleased, and she was damned sure Charlie would have known that.
‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’ she asked, snatching her hand from his. ‘At least you could stay on for your final year, complete your course, take your finals, and then work for Dad, if that’s what you want.’
‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m done with studying politics. I’ve totally lost interest, and I no longer want to be a politician so there’s no point in my carrying on with it. I’ve had it with all that changing-the-world crap. I want to get real, earn some proper money, build a life for my wife.’
He tried the boyish grin. It didn’t work. Undeterred, he leaned towards her, lips puckered, looking for a kiss.
Joyce brushed aside his attentions, impatient with his attempts to distract her from the matter in hand.
‘For goodness’ sake, Charlie, you don’t have to be a politician,’ she told him. ‘A degree in politics could set you up for all sorts of things. You’re a clever student. You like university life — you could be a full-time academic. Or a journalist. Maybe TV. You have a good speaking voice.’
‘A journalist?’ sniffed Charlie. ‘What, and get myself locked up along with half of what still passes for Fleet Street? Do you want to get rid of me, Mrs Mildmay?’ He tried the cheeky grin again.
‘Be serious, Charlie,’ she said. ‘Apart from anything else this is the third major decision you’ve made in the last few months without consulting me or even letting me know what you had in mind.’
Charlie stopped grinning.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should have talked to you before selling the Shirley Anne. But I just knew I was acting for the best. And it’s the same with this. I’m certain it’s for the best. You father always says that where financial provisions for his family are concerned, a man has to make his own decisions.’
‘I know what my father says, Charlie,’ Joyce replied through gritted teeth. ‘I didn’t realize I’d married my bloody father.’
‘Oh, come on, Joyce,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s not have an argument on our wedding night.’
He reached out his hand, searching for hers again. Angry as she was, she had to concede that Charlie was right. They couldn’t quarrel on their wedding night. She let him take her hand.