Los Angeles, 1973–6
MRS KELLY LOOKED anxiously across the table at Hugo Dashwood. She found it hard to talk to him, harder to ask him for help, but Lee had told her, insisted that she could and should, and he himself on his regular visits to Santa Monica had always stressed the same thing.
‘It’s nothing I can put my finger on, Mr Dashwood,’ she said. ‘But I just don’t feel happy about him. He isn’t working at high school, but then lots of boys of fifteen don’t. And he seems a mite too interested in girls, but then at his age I suppose he would be.’
‘Does he have a regular girlfriend?’ asked Hugo. ‘Or does he just go around with a crowd?’
‘Oh, he has a girlfriend,’ said Mrs Kelly with a sniff. ‘And I can’t say I like her. She’s a Latin type; eyes that know it all. You know?’
‘I think so. Does he bring her here?’
‘Well, he certainly does. I’ve always encouraged him to bring his friends home, because everybody knows that’s how kids stay out of trouble. So he brings her home most Saturday nights.’
‘Not for the night?’ said Hugo, misunderstanding, appalled.
‘Of course not. That boy is a Catholic, and I see he goes to mass every Sunday and knows what’s what. I don’t think he would do anything – anything wrong. But she would. That girl would.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Donna. Donna Palladini.’
‘So what exactly is it that worries you?’
‘I told you, Mr Dashwood, I just don’t know. I think it’s that he’s a drifter. No sense of purpose. Now, Lee was determined he should go to college. He wants to go to college, he says. Even though the draft business is receding, thank God, and you don’t have to hide inside college any more, he still wants to go to. But he doesn’t seem to understand you have to work to get there. He never does anything. You know what his grades are like. Straight As in maths and geography and Spanish, and Ds and Es in everything else.’
‘Well look,’ said Hugo, ‘it doesn’t sound too worrying. Let me talk to Miles. I’m here for a day or two. Where is he?’
‘Friday afternoon – oh, he’ll be playing water polo. He’s in the team. He’s very good, I believe. And they have a great water polo team at Sarno High. I mean not everyone can get in it.’
Hugo smiled gently at her pride in the boy who worried her so much and went for a walk along the Palisades, until Miles returned. It was a ravishing May afternoon: hot, clear, brilliant. The surf was up, the sea looked unreal in its blueness. The white beach was modestly littered with people. Cyclists zoomed along the boardwalk; tiny whirling toys from where he stood high above them. He wondered if Miles ever rode the bike he had given him last Christmas; he hadn’t seemed very interested, merely politely grateful.
He decided to drive up to the school and watch for Miles to come out. He wouldn’t declare himself, show himself to be meeting him, just observe him. It might be interesting.
He got back in the car and drove along Ocean Avenue and turned into Pico. The school was quiet; most of the kids were home already. He parked fifty yards down the street and waited.
Miles came out in a crowd, his arm round the shoulders of a very pretty girl. Hugo thought she was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen. Dark, tall, slender, with big breasts and long long legs; she was quite outstanding. But then so was Miles. Tall already as a man, with golden-blond hair (a pity he had to have it hanging on his shoulders, but that was not an irremediable problem) and piercing dark blue eyes in his tanned face: he looked wonderful. Hugo felt a stab of pride and another of envy – of his youth, his lack of responsibility, his blatant, come-and-get-me sexuality. And he was only fifteen! No wonder old Mrs Kelly was worried.
Miles was dressed all in white – long white shorts, a white sweatshirt and white loafers. It all emphasized his golden, utterly desirable youth.
The others were going the opposite way; Miles and Donna waved to them, and set off towards the ocean and Miles’ house. They stopped suddenly, looked into each other’s eyes, and Miles bent and kissed her briefly. They were a charming couple. Hugo found it hard to fault them. He let them walk home, waited ten minutes then turned the car round and drove back to the house.
Miles and Donna were sitting on the patio when he got there. Miles looked at him warily; he had only half expected him. He had grown to associate him with trouble. He did not get up, or greet him formally.
‘Good afternoon, Miles.’
‘Donna, this is an old friend of my mom’s, Hugo Dashwood. Hugo, this is Donna Palladini.’
‘Hi, Mr Dashwood.’
She seemed nice. Hugo smiled at her.
‘How do you do.’
She smiled back. ‘I love your accent.’
‘Thank you. Of course we think we don’t have one. That it is you who have the accent.’
‘Is that right?’
‘It is. Miles, how was the match? I didn’t know you were in the water polo team.’
‘It wasn’t a match, just a practice.’
‘I see.’
‘Miles is real good,’ said Donna. ‘The best. Captain next year, they say, don’t they, Miles?’
‘I don’t know, do they?’ He was reluctant to appear successful in front of Hugo, who he knew wanted that so badly.
‘Miles, you know they do.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful, Miles. I’m delighted. I’d like to watch you play one day, if that’s possible.’
‘Are you related in some way to Miles?’ said Donna. ‘An uncle or something?’
‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I just wondered. You seem to talk like an uncle or a grandpop or something. You know.’
‘I know,’ said Hugo. ‘But no. And certainly not a grandpop.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean to be rude.’ She looked stricken.
‘You weren’t.’
A silence fell.
‘Well, I guess I’d better be getting along,’ said Donna.
‘Donna, don’t go,’ said Miles, putting out a brown arm. ‘What’s the rush?’
‘Oh, Mom’s expecting me. She’ll be worried.’
‘OK. I’ll see you out.’
Hugo heard them talking quietly in the hall. ‘I don’t want to intrude,’ Donna said. ‘He feels like family.’
‘He is not family,’ Miles hissed. ‘No way. Don’t go, Donna.’
‘I have to. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Miles walked back into the patio. He didn’t look at Hugo, just sat down on the swing seat and picked up a surfing magazine.
‘Do you like surfing?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you do much of it?’
‘A bit.’
‘Donna seems a very nice girl.’
‘She is.’
‘Have you been – together – for long?’
‘Hugo, I don’t want to be rude, but that really is none of your business.’
‘Miles, you are being rude. I was only being friendly.’
‘Sorry.’
‘So have you?’
‘Have I what?’
‘Been with Donna long?’
‘She’s in my class at school. Always has been. So in a way, yes.’
‘I see.’
Miles, sensing Hugo’s sudden hostility, made a huge effort. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Yes, please, I would.’
‘OK, I’ll get some.’
He came back with some iced tea; the Californian standard version. Hugo loathed it, but didn’t want to reject the peace offering. ‘Thank you. How nice.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘How’s school?’
‘OK.’
‘How are the grades?’
‘Much the same.’
‘Not so OK.’
‘Depends which ones you’re looking at.’
‘I suppose so. But Miles, next year you’re going to senior high school, and then it’s only two years to college. Don’t you think you should try to pull up your grades all round? You know you’re capable of it.’
‘Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, Hugo, I will. When the time comes I’ll pull out all the stops.’
‘It may be a little late by then. You’ll have missed out on a lot of groundwork.’
‘No, I can make it up.’ He yawned. ‘Hugo, again, I don’t want to be rude, but my grades really aren’t anything to do with you.’
‘Well, Miles, they are in a way. I promised your mother I would keep an eye on you, and your grandmother turns to me in a crisis, and altogether I do feel responsible for you. If you flunk out now, and don’t get into college, I shall have to find you something to do. Or I shall be letting your mother down. So don’t make me do that, please.’
‘OK.’
It was altogether a rather unsatisfactory conversation.
‘I think it’s his friends,’ said Mrs Kelly. ‘They’re all like that. No manners. Hang around the beach bars all the time. Never do anything constructive. I don’t think it’s healthy.’
‘I wondered if it mightn’t be better for Miles if you moved out of Santa Monica.’
‘What, right away? Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea. He would be really unhappy. He likes school. He loves the sport. He’d resent it bitterly.’
‘No, not right away, just out a little way. Out of the town. Say to Malibu. He loves the surf, he told me so, and he could stay at the school, you’d have to drive him in for a year or two, but you could monitor his friendships a lot more closely and he just couldn’t spend a lot of time with some of these undesirable, layabout types.’
Mrs Kelly looked at him shrewdly. ‘That’s kinda sensible, Mr Dashwood. I like that idea. But I certainly don’t have time to look for anywhere.’
‘No, I’ll look. Don’t worry about that. You wouldn’t mind though? You wouldn’t feel you were losing your friends and social life?’
‘Don’t have any. Don’t like the folks down here. Never have. Affected, I call them. No, I wouldn’t mind a bit. And I think it would be good for Miles. I really do.’
Miles was furious. Hugo drove him out along the Pacific Coast Highway, to show him the house he had chosen, an architect-designed wooden building, tucked high into the hillside off one of the small canyons, a few miles along from Malibu Beach. The view was staggering, a great sweep of ocean and head after head, taking in sunrise and sunset; Miles looked at it coldly.
‘I don’t want to move. I like it in Santa Monica.’
‘But Miles, this is a nicer house, and you have more room and you can surf whenever you want to –’
‘I can surfin Santa Monica.’
‘But the surf here is world famous.’
‘I don’t want world famous surf. I like the surf at home.’
‘And you will still be at Sarno High. You can still see your friends.’
‘Not so easily. I’ll have to go to school with Gran in the car and get laughed at. I just won’t come. I’ll stay with Donna. Her mom is always saying I can stay there.’
‘Miles, next year you’re sixteen,’ said Hugo, desperate at the hostility in Miles’ face. ‘I’ll buy you a car, then you won’t have to go with Gran.’ He could immediately see the folly of that one; the whole idea of moving was to make Miles’ friends less accessible to him. But it was too late; he had said it now.
Miles looked at him shrewdly. ‘Can I choose what sort?’
‘Within reason, yes.’
Miles shrugged. ‘I still don’t see why we have to come. And it won’t change anything. But I guess I have to say yes.’
What nobody quite realized, not even Mrs Kelly, who cared for him, not even Donna, who loved him, was that Miles’ refusal to work at anything which seemed remotely unimportant and uninteresting was a direct result of his grief for his mother. She had taken with her, when she died, Miles’ sense of direction. He had coped with his grief, his loneliness, his need to look after himself, but he had been left a very bewildered little boy; he could get through the days, get himself to school, go out to play, talk to his friends, but anything which required any degree of effort was beyond him. For at least a year he survived on the most superficial level, with only his grandmother to provide all his emotional needs. She did her best, but she was a brusque, impatient woman; Lee had been endlessly affectionate, caring, thoughtful for him, and fun.
By the end of the first year, he had learnt to manage without cuddles, treats, a concerned ear, a sense of someone being unequivocally on his side, and he had developed a calm self-sufficiency; but he had no emotional or intellectual energy to spare. Consequently, anything demanding he set aside; and by the time he could have coped with it, the pattern was too deeply established to change. And so he went on, as he had always anyway been inclined, doing the things he liked and which seemed to matter to him, and ignoring the things he did not; it gave him a very clear and pragmatic set of values. And there was no way he was going to set them aside and start working at literature or history because Hugo Dashwood or indeed anyone else told him to.
Two years later, he was not entirely sorry they had moved. It gave him a certain cachet at school, living out at Malibu. And it was a nice house. And he had the car, The Car, jeez it was a good car, a 1965 Mustang, and the old Creep had bought it for him just like that. He and Donna had had a high old time in the back of that car. Just thinking about being in the back of the car with Donna gave Miles an erection. He still hadn’t exactly done it, not all the way, but Donna was so sweet he just couldn’t push her, and she was so patient and let him touch her up and wank at the same time, and kiss her breasts and everything. In any case, however much he complained to her, he knew that in his heart of hearts he wouldn’t want a girl who’d let him go all the way. The only girls that did that were tarts, and there was no way he was going to go round with a tart. Not now he was captain of the water polo team, and one of the best young surfers on Malibu beach. He had a position to consider. Not just anyone would do for him.
And the way she’d looked at the Prom, the other night, in a kind of a gypsy dress, all red, off the shoulders, with a flounced skirt – well, Miles knew he’d certainly got the most beautiful girl in Santa Monica that night, and that he was the envy of not just his year, but the year above, the one graduating. He’d even wished for a minute he hadn’t insisted on wearing tennis shoes with his tux, just to make the point he was a rebel – but there it was, he had, and he certainly couldn’t go all the way home to Malibu to change.
The summer stretched before him now; three whole months of surfing, and no school work or grades to worry about. The old Creep wouldn’t be over, because he only seemed to appear at important times, like the new school year, or Christmas; he’d tried to come and watch a water polo match once, but Miles had changed the date so many times, in his letters, that the Creep had given up, and said he’d try to come another year. He supposed he’d have to write and tell him his grades, otherwise he’d be on the phone, and then there might be a lecture, but he’d pulled up a lot lately, and he was still getting As for maths and languages. And Cs and Ds for the rest. Not bad, for absolutely no work.
So tonight he’d drive into town, pick up Donna, and they’d maybe see a movie with some of the others, and then when they’d finished there they’d go off and neck for a while, and then drive down to the ocean and get some cheese cake and coffee at Zucky’s, because necking made you hungry, and then after that park down near the ocean, and neck some more. And then they’d have to take the girls home, and probably they’d all go over to Tony’s No. 5, and have some chilli fries and boast about their conquests on the back seats and finally get tired of all that and go home to bed. Miles smiled with pleasure and anticipation. Life seemed pretty good.
She was on the beach at Malibu when he rode down on his bike later that afternoon. Just stretched out on the sand, with what was obviously a family picnic hamper by her. Miles thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful. She was blonde, curly hair tied back in a pony tail with a blue ribbon, a tipped-up nose all freckled with the sun and a curvy smiley mouth. She was deliciously pale brown all over – well, all the over that he could see – and she was wearing a pale sea-green bikini, cut so low on the bottom that he could just see the palest fluff of a curl of pubic hair. Miles swallowed, felt an erection growing inside his surfing shorts and hurried on.
When he felt better, carrying his surfboard for protection, he walked back past her. She was still alone. He looked down at her and smiled. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘Are you alone?’
‘Only for a moment. My parents are having a drink in Alice’s, and my brother is out there pretending he can surf.’
She looked at the surf board. ‘Do you pretend or can you really do it?’
‘Oh, I can do it. And I can surf.’ He grinned at her; she blushed and looked away, embarrassed at the double entendre.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I get kind of used to just talking to the surfies here. I’ll go away if you like.’
‘No don’t, it’s all right. I was awfully bored. Do you live around here?’
‘Yeah, up in one of the canyons. Right up there.’ He pointed.
‘It looks wonderful. So romantic. What do your parents do?’
‘Oh, they’re both dead. I live with my gran.’
He was so used to the fact by now he never thought of it upsetting anyone; he was startled to see her eyes fill with tears.
‘Oh, how sad, I am so sorry.’
‘Well, it was sad, but I was real small when my dad died, and only twelve when my mom went, so I’ve got used to it now. Kind of,’ he added hastily, not wanting to appear hard-hearted. ‘What about your folks?’
‘Oh, they’re both in the film business. My dad is a director and my mom is a costume designer.’
‘I see. And where do you live, do you live in LA?’
‘We certainly do.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘In Beverly Glen.’
Miles nearly dropped his surf board. Not in his wildest imaginings had he ever thought of even talking in a friendly way to a girl who lived on Beverly Glen. Beverly Glen, where some of the richest, most cultured, high-class people in Los Angeles had their homes. Beverly Glen. Real money, real real money.
He realized she was looking at him oddly. ‘Sorry. I guess I looked kinda surprised. I don’t meet many folk from Beverly Glen.’
‘Oh, we don’t live at the real ritzy end. Just a couple of blocks up from Santa Monica Boulevard. I mean it’s nice, but it’s not Stone Canyon.’
‘Oh,’ said Miles.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Miles. Miles Wilburn.’
‘Joanna. Joanna Tyler.’
‘It’s been real nice to meet you, Joanna.’
‘And nice to meet you too. Are you hurrying off somewhere?’
‘No. But I guess your parents might not like you to be talking to a poor orphan from Malibu.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly. My parents believe in democracy. My father is a socialist. That’s why they don’t send me to boarding school, and that’s why we’re here on the public beach and not on one of the snotty private ones, owned by half of Hollywood.’
‘So where do you go to school?’
‘Marymount High.’
It was several cuts above Samo, but it was still a public school. Miles felt bolder.
‘Will you be coming here again?’
‘I don’t know. Depends how my brother gets on pretending to surf. Oh, he’s coming now. Tigs! Tigs! How’d you get on?’
Tigs, thought Miles. What a bloody silly name. He smiled earnestly at the boy who was approaching them, carrying a brand-new surfboard awkwardly.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s not as easy as it looks.’
‘I told you it wouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘Tigs, this is Miles. Miles, Tigs, Short for Tigger, short for Thomas.’
Miles couldn’t see how Tigger could possibly be short for Thomas, but didn’t like to say so. He shook Tigs’ outstretched hand.
‘Hi.’
‘Miles can really surf, Tigs. He could give you a few tips, I expect.’
Tigs looked at Miles longingly. ‘Could you really? I’d be extremely grateful.’
He sounded a bit like the Creep, Miles thought, or maybe it was the accent. He sounded East Coast, it was different from his sister’s. Anyway, he didn’t seem too bad, and ifit was going to make him a friend of Joanna’s, he would spend all day and all night teaching Tigs to surf.
‘Sure. Any time. Want to try now?’
‘In a minute maybe. When I get my breath back.’
‘Miles lives right here,’ said Joanna. ‘In the mountains. Wouldn’t that be great, Tigs? Tigs is a year older than me,’ she went on. ‘He’s at college now. Or nearly. Next year.’
‘Where are you going?’ said Miles.
‘Colorado.’
‘Tigs loves to ski,’ said Joanna ‘and it’s not too far away from here, you see. Not like New York. So it seemed like a good idea.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to college?’ asked Tigs.
‘I guess so.’
‘Which one?’
‘Oh, I guess Santa Monica College. That’s not too far away from here either.’ He grinned at them both. ‘Shall we try the surf now?’
‘Sure.’
There were several things Miles was sure he could do better than Tigs; surfing was only one of them.
If this was love, Miles thought, it was very uncomfortable. What he had felt for Donna had been much nicer. He had been able to concentrate on other things, and had never worried about what he ought to say or wear or do when he was with her; life with Joanna was initially one big anxiety.
But it was worth it. Every time he looked at her exquisite little golden-brown face, her freckle-spangled nose, her surprised blue eyes, he discovered afresh where his heart was, for it turned right over, not just once but several times.
What was quite amazing was that she obviously liked him back. Very much. Probably she didn’t love him, Miles couldn’t in his wildest, most self-confident dreams think that, but liking him was enough for now. He could tell she liked him because she was so friendly; that very first day she had insisted on him being introduced to her parents, and they were really nice too; her father was a tall, gentle man with golden hair and a shaggy beard, and her mother was small and sparkly like Joanna, with dark curly hair and a body that certainly didn’t look like it had borne two children. They had been terribly nice to Miles and talked to him for a while, and then insisted he came and joined them for a drink in Alice’s, and when Tigs had asked him if he would maybe give him another surfing lesson soon and Miles had said ‘Yes, sure,’ they had said Tigs must bring Miles back afterwards for supper or a barbecue or something. Tigs was absolutely hopeless in the surf; he simply had no feeling for the sea, no concept how to even catch a wave, never mind get up on the board, but Miles didn’t care; indeed, the longer Tigs took to master the whole thing – and from where Miles was sitting, it looked like a lifetime – the longer he would need to ask Miles for help. So that was all right.
He had been up to their house on Beverly Glen several times now; Joanna had been right, it hadn’t been one of the mega mansions, but it was still about five times bigger than any house Miles had ever been inside: a charming colonial style white house, with God knows how many bedrooms, every one with its own bathroom and Jacuzzi, and a sunken hall and living room with marble floorings, and what was obviously antique furniture, and a coloured maid who opened the door in a uniform, and a kitchen that looked straight out of House and Garden, and an enormous yard and a massive pool, and a tennis-court and three garages. Both Joanna and Tigs had cars: twin VW Convertible Rabbits.
But the Tylers, for all their money, were just the nicest people Miles thought he had ever met; friendly, chatty, unsnobby, and so welcoming and generous.
His grandmother had been very sniffy about the friendship: ‘People like that think they’re doing you a real favour,’ she said, ‘letting you into their homes. Don’t you get taken in, you’ll end up hurt and patronized.’
But Miles didn’t see he could possibly end up hurt; the Tylers just seemed to like having him there. The house was always full of people anyway, friends and neighbours. He very quickly learnt where Joanna got her friendliness and charm; it came from growing up in a household that was one long party. He found himself there more and more, and not just after he had given Tigs a surfing lesson; they invited him over every Sunday for barbecue lunch, and Joanna very often asked him to come and play tennis; he had never learnt the game, but he was naturally gifted at all sports and in weeks was playing better than a lot of the other kids who were there.
Not all of them were as nice to him as Joanna and Tigs; they clearly regarded him as an upstart, an intruder in their golden world. Miles didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything at all as long as he could be close to Joanna. And besides, he learnt fast. He had a surprisingly acute social sense, and charming manners when he put his mind to them; he swiftly absorbed the small differences of behaviour between himself and Tigs: the way you stood up when an adult came in the room. Called older men sir (but not older women ma’am), let girls go in front of you through doorways, pushed their chairs in for them at table, used a linen napkin, and ate a little less as if your life depended on it. He learnt to keep quiet about Samo High, or at least when he could, and talked vaguely about maybe Berkeley when people asked him about college. He found Malibu was a usefully neutral address; a house in Latego Canyon was much better than downtown Santa Monica. Moreover he found, somewhat to his own discomfort, that he felt more and more at home, more comfortable with the Tylers and their friends; he did not feel an intruder, a cuckoo in the nest, but as if he was actually a fledgling from Beverly Glen and its environs himself. He began, not so much to look down on his old friends and his grandmother, but to regard them with the same kind of detached interest he had originally given the Tylers, as if they were different from him in some way.
It had all meant breaking up with Donna, and that had been perfectly awful; she had looked at him with infinite scorn in her dark eyes and said, ‘OK, Miles, if that’s how you want it, go and learn to be a rich girl’s pet. Only when she gets tired of you, don’t come running back to me, that’s all. And she will.’ And she had left him, then and there, slammed out of the car, not upset at all as far as he could see, just angry and contemptuous, which had been worse in a way.
He had been with Donna for a long time; everything he knew about girls and their bodies he had learnt from her. How soon you could kiss them, how to make them want you to do a bit more, how to stroke their breasts gently, not maul them about and put them off; what a vagina felt like, how to find the bit that got them excited, when to approach it; how to know when they had their periods and to show you knew without actually saying anything; how to reassure them that you weren’t going to try and force them to go all the way, while actually trying like mad to persuade them. He owed Donna a lot and he knew it, and he felt terrible about leaving her; but love was love, and what he felt for Joanna was utterly different and he had to be free to pursue her – and it.
Miles at seventeen was not only good-looking and attractive; he had a certain confidence about him, a kind of subtlety to his sexuality that persuaded girls he knew his way around more than he did. Girls who didn’t know him always imagined that he had been to bed, gone all the way, lots of times; he seemed so much more sophisticated than most of the sweaty, fumbling boys in his year. Donna of course put them right, because she didn’t want anyone thinking she was a tart and been to bed with him, and nor was she having people thinking anyone else had been to bed with him either. But nevertheless the initial impression was one of experience.
And this was certainly the impression Joanna got. She was totally inexperienced herself; apart from a few fumbles in cars after parties, or in the garden or maybe occasionally even a bedroom, and a lot of kissing of course, she had no idea what sex meant. She knew the theory, of course. Her mother was a liberated and civilized woman, and she had had all the right conversations with Joanna, and given her all the right books to read as well, but until she had met Miles, Joanna had never felt so much as a flicker of sexual desire. That had now, however, radically changed. She could scarcely these days think of anything else. The very first time he had kissed her, slowly, deliciously, confidently, she had felt hot, startled, charged; she had woken in the night, with all kinds of strange sensations in her body. Exploring it and them cautiously, she discovered vivid pleasures and sensations; she fell asleep dreaming of Miles, and awoke longing only to see him again, to be held by him, kissed by him.
Gradually he showed her all the things he had learnt with Donna; never pushing her, never worrying her, always reassuring her that he would never, ever do anything she didn’t want, or that would be dangerous. Through the summer, Joanna learnt a great deal about not only her own body, but Miles’, what she could do to excite him, how to get him to excite her, how to prolong the feeling until it was almost unendurable, and then how to relieve it, and the delicious explosions of pleasure they could give one another. Of course, in a way she could see it would be nice to do it properly, to end all this messiness and fumbling, and quite often she did wonder if she ought to go and see nice Doctor Schlesinger and ask her for the pill, and she knew she would give it to her without lecturing her or anything; but she had always promised herself that she would only go to bed with a boy if she really loved him, and she wasn’t quite quite sure if she loved Miles yet. So she waited.
Tigs, she knew, mistrusted Miles; he thought he was a fortune hunter. This upset Joanna, because she found it insulting to both her and Miles; she worked very hard to make the two boys friends, but it never quite worked. Tigs despised Miles for his humble origins, and Miles despised Tigs for his incompetence at anything physical – including pulling the girls – and it was a gulf too big to bridge.
In September Tigs went off to college, and Joanna and Miles grew closer. He drove to see her not just at the weekends, but several evenings during the week; when both of them should have been studying. He would eat his meal and then get into the Mustang and drive out along the highway and drive all the long long way up Sunset, round and round the curving suburban roads, watching them get ritzier and ritzier, through Brentwood and Westwood, finally actually passing the ultimate landmark, bringing him close to Joanna, Marymount High, and thence into Paradise and the white house on Beverly Glen.
They were both now in their last year at high school; seriously distracted from their studies. They could think of very little but each other and of sex; where the one ended and the other began neither was certain. William and Jennifer Tyler watched them with a fairly benign anxiety; they liked Miles very much, they did not share Tigs’ view of him, but they were not happy with the fact that Joanna was doing virtually no work, and her grades were dropping steadily.
Finally they intervened, and told her she was not to see Miles except on Sundays until Christmas; if by then her grades had pulled up, they would review the situation. Joanna stormed and cried and accused them of being snobs and prejudiced; to no avail.
‘Darling, we love Miles. We really do. More than almost any of the boys who come here. But he is a serious distraction. And your work is important.’ Jennifer looked at her daughter shrewdly. ‘The last thing we want is to send you away to school now. But if these grades don’t improve, that’s what we’ll have to do.’
‘You wouldn’t be so cruel. You couldn’t!’ cried Joanna, her eyes big with fright.
‘We could. Now we’re not asking a lot. Only giving him up during the week. Get your head down and prove we can trust you.’
Joanna wondered how they would feel if they knew they couldn’t trust her in other ways too. In September she had made the trip to Doctor Schlesinger, and thence to bed proper with Miles; after a slightly difficult painful start, he had proved marvellously clever and skilful, and she sensual and responsive; they spent evening after evening in her little suite, enjoying the most triumphantly pleasing sex, relaxed in the knowledge that her parents, too sensitive and liberated to interfere, would merely walk past the closed doors and never dream of knocking or coming in.
And then they discovered a new pleasure. Accepting the disciplines, the limits set on their meeting, with fairly good grace, they began to experiment with drugs. Miles had been smoking pot for some time; it had been going round his crowd at school for years, regarded as something almost wholesome. ‘It’s organic,’ Donna had assured him earnestly, passing him his very first joint; and on one or two memorable occasions he and Joanna had tried LSD. Miles had found it at once terrifying and exhilarating; the way it invaded his senses, took him on a journey through colours and shapes and sensations, would have ensnared him very quickly had it not been for a (literally) sobering incident which frightened him more than he ever quite cared to admit.
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.’
‘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.’
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.
Should he do anything, say anything? No, it was all much too delicate. Better to stay quiet. If it was ever really necessary to come forward, he would. If there was any more trouble. Or if anyone ever really needed to know.