At Christmas, trouble with Joyce. Hal liked to take the family to a certain famous hotel in Scotland for Christmas. They persuaded Joyce to go with them. After two nights she ran away and hitched south. 'It really is so unfair of her,' said Anne, as Hal's wife; but as herself: 'Good for her. I loathe all that dressing up and having sherry with so-called important people.'
Joyce turned up at Sarah's a week later. What had she been doing in the meantime? Better not ask. She was bedraggled, smelled bad, and her hair was actually muddy. She looked yellow. Jaundice? Hepatitis? If a test were to be done, would she be HIV positive? Pregnant? Sarah made efficient enquiries.
With her usual smiling casuistry, which is how Sarah experienced it, though Joyce would not know what she meant, Joyce assured Sarah that she could not be pregnant. 'I don't like sex,' she confided.
Should Sarah then say, 'Oh good'? Or, 'Never mind, you'll get the hang of it'? What she actually did was cry, wild tears that took her by surprise. They certainly took Joyce by surprise. 'Why, Sarah,' she murmured, and patted Sarah's heaving shoulders. 'What's the matter?' she enquired dolefully. Like Stephen, she did not like to see Sarah overthrown: one should know one's place on the psychological graph and stick to it.
'Can't you really see that we get worried about you?' howled Sarah, furious.
'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Joyce. She hung about while Sarah wept. Then, in order to do something to please her aunt, she had a bath. When she came back, her hair was washed, and she sat (for the hundredth time?) in Sarah's dressing gown, drying her hair with the hair dryer. Sarah was no longer crying. She watched that hair lose its heavy wetness and, as Joyce combed and combed, become soft sheaves of glittering gold. There sat Sarah, as so often these days, eye to eye with Nature. 'What for? Why? Why bother to give her that hair when you've done her in from the start?' A pretty basic question, really, an all-purpose multidirectional question. An ur-question.