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 take
n 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.’
Old Sins Page 42
