Old Sins (53 page)

All the kids at all the Hollywood parties smoked pot; their parents, who smoked it also at their parties and dinner parties, for the most part turned a blind eye. But then one night, all the crowd Miles and Joanna went around with were busted at a party just after the New Year. The Tylers and Mrs Kelly were both woken in the night by the police, along with a lot of other respectable and shaken parents, and told their children would be charged. They had to pay a bail of five hundred dollars for each of them, and also pay the lawyer who made a most luxurious living for himself entirely out of defending Beverly Hills kids against drugs charges.

The Tylers forbad Miles ever to see Joanna again; Mrs Kelly
virtually placed Miles under house arrest, contacted Bill Wilburn, a cousin of Dean’s who lived in San Francisco, for further legal advice and support, and took the unprecedented step of phoning Hugo Dashwood to enlist his help.

Bill Wilburn didn’t like Hugo Dashwood. He had met him at Lee’s funeral, and found him stiff and overbearing. He couldn’t see what his cousin could have liked about him, and he resented the rather proprietary interest he took in the family and particularly in Miles. When he discovered Miles’ nickname for him, he had had some difficulty in not laughing out loud, and although he had rebuked the boy for being cheeky, he had twinkled at him at the same time. Now, confronted by him across the family crisis, he felt the same old hostility rising.

‘Good of you to come, Mr Dashwood. But I think we can handle this ourselves, just keep it in the family.’

‘I like to think of myself as family, Mr Wilburn. Mrs Kelly has asked me to help.’

‘Whatever you might like to think, Mr Dashwood, you’re not. And I can’t see how you can help.’

‘You may need money.’

‘We may.’

‘Well, let me provide it.’

‘Why should you feel you should do that?’

‘I made a promise to Lee to keep an eye on Miles. I want to keep that promise.’

‘I see.’

‘And I am quite prepared to talk to Miles. To try and help sort things out.’

‘I don’t know that would be very constructive right now,’ said Wilburn, remembering Miles’ nickname for Hugo. ‘He’s very withdrawn.’

‘I dare say. But he has to realize he can’t stay withdrawn. He has to make amends. He has to start rebuilding his life.’

‘Mr Dashwood, I’m not making excuses for Miles and I agree with you in a way, but he’s had a terrible shock and he’s in a strange state. I would advise against interfering just now.’

‘Mr Wilburn,’ said Hugo, his mouth twitching slightly with suppressed rage, ‘I think the situation warrants interfering. Anyway, we can come back to that. What is the legal situation?’

‘It’s not too bad. There are charges against all the kids. There’ll be a stiff fine, and a record, I guess. Not good, but not disastrous.’

‘Do they have to appear in court?’

‘Yup.’

‘When?’

‘Next week.’

‘I’ll stay till then.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I want to.’

The children were each fined a thousand dollars. Any repetition of the offence, they were told, would result in a jail sentence. The judge read them all a lecture and they were driven away from the courtroom by their parents, subdued and silent. Miles was driven away by Hugo.

‘Now, Miles, I don’t want to pile on the agony and say what the judge did all over again.’

‘Please don’t.’

‘But I have spoken to you before about your behaviour generally, and I simply don’t like it. I don’t like the direction you are going in.’

‘I don’t care what you like or don’t like. It has nothing to do with you.’

‘That is your opinion.’

‘It’s a fact.’

‘Only as you see it.’

Miles was silent.

‘Now then, I have some suggestions to make to you. Miles, look at me.’

Miles turned and looked out of the window.

‘Miles,’ said Hugo, ‘if you are not very careful, I shall have you sent right away, and you will never see any of your friends here for a very long time.’

‘You couldn’t.’

‘I most certainly could. Your grandmother is your legal guardian, and she is most emphatically in favour of the idea. Now will you please do me the courtesy of listening to me properly.’

Miles turned with infinite slowness and presented an insolent face to Hugo. ‘OK.’

‘Right. Now the first thing I want is for you to promise me never to see this particular crowd again.’

Miles looked at him and grinned. ‘Funny, isn’t it? You dragged me away from my Samo High friends because you thought they were a bad influence. Then I get in with some nicely raised rich kids and look what happens. All kinds of trouble.’

‘Yes, well, I’m afraid neither a modest nor a rich background is a guarantee against wrongdoing. Anyway, do I have your word on that?’

‘I guess you do for now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, we’ll all be kept under lock and key. They’re all mostly at boarding school, and Joanna’s parents have forbidden me to see her –’ He was silent, his face morose as he remembered his last conversation with Joanna on the phone, her voice shaken with sobs and fear. Not only had her parents been shocked and horrified by the drugs case, they had betrayed all their own liberal ideals and thrown the book at Joanna when her store of contraceptive pills had been found, during the course of a search of her room.

‘Miles, I don’t want a promise with a time limit. These people are not good for you. I forbid you to see them any more, ever.’

He shrugged. ‘OK.’

‘Now I have been thinking. You’re a clever boy and I think you could get into a good college. I am prepared to send you to one, a really good one, on the East Coast maybe. Babson, or Pine Manor. It would be a wonderful opportunity for you. You would have to work very very hard to get in. There would have to be private tuition every night until you went. God knows if you could even get in. But I’m prepared to make the push if you are. Your sporting background might help.’

Miles was looking at him thoughtfully. ‘I don’t want to go to some snooty East Coast college. Could I maybe go to Berkeley?’

‘You maybe could. You maybe couldn’t. You don’t seem to understand how difficult this is going to be. Are you prepared to make the effort or not? And to agree to my other conditions?’

‘Which are?’

‘Miles, I am finding it very difficult to keep my temper.’

‘Sorry.’

‘To stop seeing your current friends. Not to see Joanna – at least until the academic year is over and then only if her parents are agreeable. To stay in and study every night, and only to go out one evening a week. And only to surf once a week.’

Miles looked at him open mouthed and saw the life he loved slipping away from him. The sweet golden days on the beach, in the sun, waiting for the wave, with the other surfbums; lunch at the omelette parlour at Malibu; driving up Sunset in the dusk, his heart thumping, thinking of Joanna; sitting in the parking lot with her on Mulholland Drive, seeing the sun drop almost sensuously into the ocean, while the sky turned from blue to blush to dark; being with her while she played tennis and swam and lay in the sun, her lovely sun-kissed face smiling at him with the look of love; the long, discovery-filled evenings in her conveniently big bed, as he explored her small, eager, erotic little body and the joys of joining it with his own; talking to her endlessly over a joint, finding more and more to learn and love about her; the long easy days at school with his friends, just skidding by on the work, starring at sport, the hero of his year. All to be taken from him, by this rich, interfering Creep. God, why did his mother have to get so friendly with him.

Nevertheless – Berkeley! That would be cool. That would impress the world. That would even maybe impress Joanna’s parents. Miles sighed. It was probably worth it.

‘OK,’ he said to Hugo as the car pulled up in front of the house. ‘I agree. And –’ he wrenched the word from himself with an almost physical effort – ‘thanks.’

‘That’s all right. I want to be proud of you.’

Miles thought he might be sick.

‘Old Dashwood wants to send me to a smart college,’ he said next day to Bill Wilburn, who had just read him a lesser lecture and drawn a cheque from his mother’s estate to pay the fine (he had refused Dashwood’s offer, saying this was an expense Miles should ultimately shoulder).

‘Really? Where?’

‘Oh, he mentioned some swanky East Coast places. I said I’d like to go to Berkeley. He said OK.’

Bill put down his pen and looked at Miles in genuine astonishment.

‘That would cost thousands of dollars.’

‘I know. He seems to have them.’

‘But why should he spend them on you?’

‘Don’t know. He seems to feel strongly about what I do.’

‘Well, you’re a very fortunate young man.’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’

‘What makes you think one of these colleges will take you?’

‘Oh,’ said Miles with the supreme confidence of one who has only failed because he has chosen to. ‘They’ll take me.’

‘Well, that’s fine then.’ Bill appeared to have dropped the subject, but his mind was seething. What in God’s name was this guy about, spending that kind of money on some kid who was nothing to do with him? It didn’t make any kind of sense. He decided to do a little investigating before he went back to San Francisco.

‘Mrs Kelly, do you have all the old papers of Lee and Dean’s, you know, wills, financial matters, all that kind of thing? I’d sure like to look at them. Just in case this matter gets taken any further.’

‘Yes, I do. They’re all in my room. I’ll get them for you. Do you think it might, then?’

‘What? Oh, get taken further? No, but it’s as well to be sure. Thanks. Oh, and how much did Lee ever say to you about this Dashwood character? Just how good a friend was he?’

‘Nothing like that,’ snapped Mrs Kelly. ‘Lee never looked at another man, after Dean. There was nothing between those two at all. Although I don’t mind telling you, as you’re family, I wondered about it myself. He’s been around ever since I can remember. Before Miles was born. I even asked her about it when she was dying. Dean once did him a good turn, she said, and he always said he’d wanted to repay him, and when Dean died he came to see Lee and was a real comfort to her. But not in that way. Not how you might think.’

‘OK. I just wondered. He seems to feel pretty possessive about Miles.’

‘Yes, well he promised Lee to see after him. To see he turned out right. I’m an old woman, there’s a limit to what I can
do. And I’ve been real glad of his help, so don’t you go criticizing him now. He’s been very good to us.’

‘I won’t say another word. Now let me have those papers.’

‘I want them back.’

‘You can have them back tomorrow.’

The papers were scanty: Dean’s will, Lee’s will; funeral expenses; Miles’ birth certificate, doctors’ bills for Lee.

Doctors! thought Bill. They always hold a lot of information. He noted the number of Doctor Forsythe, and put the rest of the papers back in the file.

‘That was a terrible tragedy.’ Old Doctor Forsythe’s eyes darkened, thinking about it. ‘She was so young and so lovely.’

‘She was.’

‘And she had a lot to bear. That was a dreadful thing, her husband dying.’

‘Killing himself.’

‘Yes.’

The old man looked pained.

‘Do you – do you have any idea quite why he did it?’

‘No. Who can tell? His work wasn’t going well. He wasn’t a fit man. I imagine he just couldn’t stand the strain any more.’

‘Were you looking after him all the time?’

‘No. As a matter of fact he was seeing a young doctor at the hospital for a few weeks before he died. He’d had a bad scare, a blackout.

‘Which hospital?’

‘St John’s.’

‘Do you know who the doctor was?’

‘Let me see. Of course I don’t have notes on him any more, the poor soul. I imagine it would have been the cardiac unit. Try Doctor Burgess.’

‘I will.’

‘Oh, yes, I remember Mr Wilburn. A dreadful tragedy. He was doing so well, that was the irony.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, he’d lost quite a lot of weight. He was getting fitter. And so hopeful.’

‘About what?’

‘Well, life in general. Of course the one thing he most hoped for wasn’t possible. I –’ He hesitated.

‘What?’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you, it’s confidential.’

‘Doctor Burgess, how can it be confidential now? The man’s been dead seven years. And I’m a relative.’

‘Even so. Oh, all right. What he wanted desperately was another child. Seemed to think that if he got fit and gave up drinking, all that kind of thing, it might happen.’

‘So? Mightn’t it?’

‘Not for him.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, because he was absolutely sterile. Totally. A zero sperm count. It puzzled me a lot.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, because as far as I could see, from the nature of the tests we ran, it must always have been the same. I could not imagine how he could ever have fathered a child. I said so to him. I told him he’d been very very fortunate. That his son was one of Nature’s little miracles.’

‘Really? Lee never told me any of this.’

‘Lee? Oh, the wife. Well, why should she? You’re only a cousin by marriage. These things are hurtful and difficult in a relationship. Besides –’

‘What?’

‘Oh – forgive me. It’s just that some people might – might misinterpret it. Think –’

‘Think what?’

‘Well, that perhaps your cousin hadn’t been the boy’s father. People are very cynical, you know. Eager to think the worst.’

A loud noise like cymbals was beating in Bill Wilburn’s ears. He seemed to be seeing the doctor down the end of a long tunnel. Phrases kept repeating in his mind, tumbling in a wild pattern like a kaleidoscope. ‘Perhaps your cousin hadn’t been the boy’s father . . . one of Nature’s little miracles . . . a dreadful thing, her husband dying . . . been around ever since I can remember, before Miles was born . . . thousands of dollars . . . he seems to feel strongly about what I do.’

He swallowed hard. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘My pleasure.’

Bill Wilburn went for a long walk along the Palisades. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Hugo Dashwood was Miles’ father. And didn’t want him to know. Probably had made some kind of damn fool promise to Lee. Well, it was probably better. There was no point telling the boy now. It would only upset him, make him feel bad about his parents.