And Nassau was a dangerous place. You could feel it in the air. Beneath the surface of the old gentility and the new money, humming beguilingly in the warm air, lurking behind the huge smiles, the easy manners of the people on the streets, was a sense of crime. This was not a law-abiding place. The drugs industry was thriving; Miles had heard it said that up to seventy per cent of the money changing hands came from it. Drug-related crimes – robbery, murder, prostitution – throbbed in the arteries of the city.
And yet side by side with that was a lovely innocence. In the markets, where you could beat anyone down from ten dollars to fifty cents without a great deal of difficulty, the gospellers sang to themselves all day; women and children sat and gossiped and played the hours away; the old people were kind, generous, caring. In the Old Town the shops were modest, almost villagey; and there was a grace, a charm to life there that took a hold, quite without his realizing it, of Miles’ heart. And so, for six months, he waited, not quite unhappy, but not happy either, watching his grandmother descend into delusions of gentility, and thence, in the company of her friend, senility, and wondered what on earth was going to happen to him.
And then he met Billy.
Billy de Launay was the son of Nassau gentry; his father was in the civil service, his mother had grown up in the Windsors’ court, as a child. Billy had been sent to Hampden Sydney, where he had with great difficulty just mustered a pass in American History and was now home again, ‘resting’ as he put it to Miles, before he decided on a career worthy of his education and intelligence. It wasn’t easy to find. Billy was not unlike Miles to look at, being blond and blue eyed; he did not have Miles’ outstanding good looks, but he was very prepossessing nonetheless, with the old-fashioned slightly fey charm of his background and upbringing.
He and Miles met at a lunch party, given by the de Launays, to which Marcia Galbraith had been invited and to which she insisted on bringing her old friend and her old friend’s grandson; the old ladies were both dressed in outlandish creations of flouncing lace, and carrying parasols, Miles good-naturedly out of character in white flannels and a navy blazer.
Billy de Launay came up to him, smiling broadly, and held out his hand. ‘Hi. I’m Billy de Launay, you must be Miles Wilburn. I’ve been hoping you’d come. I’m just about starved to death of company here. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Sure,’ said Miles, smiling back at him.
‘Bloody?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Bloody. Sorry, Bloody Mary,’ said Billy, wondering how anyone could have got this far in life and indeed to a party at his parents’ house without knowing what a Bloody was. ‘Vodka and tomato juice. OK?’
‘Oh, yes, sure,’ said Miles, smiling. ‘Sorry. Love one. Thanks.’
‘How are you enjoying Nassau?’ asked Billy, detaching two Bloodies from the tray passing him and handing one to Miles. ‘Having fun?’
‘Not a lot,’ said Miles, and then realizing this must sound rude, hastily added, ‘I mean, in Nassau generally. This is a great party.’
‘I don’t think I’d go that far,’ said Billy, laughing. ‘We’re a trifle short of young blood in Nassau. What do you do, or what are you going to do?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Miles cautiously. ‘I’m – waiting and seeing a bit.’ He smiled his glorious smile at Billy. ‘I think I have plenty of time.’
‘You do,’ said Billy, responding to this philosophy with gratitude and pleasure. ‘We both do. Plenty. I keep telling Daddy there is absolutely no rush, that it’s crazy to go into something I’m not sure about just for the sake of getting into order, but he doesn’t see it that way.’
‘None of them do,’ said Miles, recovering swiftly from the cultural shock of hearing a six-foot twenty-three-year-old refer to his father as Daddy; Ivy League talk he supposed. ‘They all feel we should follow them on to the conveyor belt the minute we’re out of college and stay on it till we drop off. I think there has to be more to life than that.’
‘Me too,’ said Billy, beaming delightedly at him. ‘Here, have another Bloody.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Where did you go to college?’
‘Berkeley.’
‘Uh-huh. What did you major in?’
‘Math.’
‘God!’ Billy’s gaze was respectful. ‘And how did you graduate?’
‘Oh,’ said Miles with a shrug. ‘Summa cum laude.’
‘Jesus! Why hasn’t some bank snapped you up?’
‘I didn’t want it to.’
‘Did you even try?’
‘Nope!’
‘Good man! Your parents are dead, aren’t they?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m sorry. That must be – well – hard.’
‘Not really. It was a long time ago. My gran brought me up.’
‘Is she your guardian?’
‘Yeah. And some old guy put me through college, he was a friend of my parents.’
‘He sounds like a good guy.’
‘Kind of,’ said Miles briefly. ‘I didn’t really like him.’
‘He must be kind of sick you’re not using your education.’
‘Yes,’ said Miles with relish. ‘I think he is.’
Billy, realizing there was more to this story than he was going to hear just now, dropped the subject.
‘Met any girls here?’
‘Haven’t met anyone under eighty till today.’
‘Well there are a few. Pretty damn dull, though. Not many game ones.’
‘That’s bad.’
‘Yeah, it is. The talent is over on Paradise Island. The older ladies, you know. Divine.’
‘I have seen a few.’
‘Well, hell,’ said Billy, ‘you don’t have to stop at looking. They’re really hot, half of them. Married to rich old guys who can’t get it up half the time.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Honestly Miles, you can get most of them, just with a smile. With your smile,’ he added, without even a touch of envy, ‘you could get all of them.’
Miles decided he liked Billy more and more.
‘But how do you meet them?’
‘Oh, it’s easy. Just hang around. Round the pool at some of the hotels, that’s a good place. Up in the Mirage Club.’
‘Yeah, but how do you get into those places?’
‘Oh, it’s easy. You just walk in. Settle down. Look like you’re staying there. Dress the part. Club tie, battered old tennis hat, that sort of thing. I’ll show you. The club’s harder. I actually have had to pull out of there, there’s a funny old French guy who runs it, who wears a morning suit every day, he’s really spaced, and he’s got to know me. And then once you’re there, they just come flocking. It’s so easy. After that it’s parallel parking all the way.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Parallel parking. Fired up. Sex. All the way. You know?’
‘Oh, sure,’ said Miles, laughing. ‘I know.’
Billy laughed too. Miles might be just a bit of a dork, he obviously hadn’t been anywhere too smart to school, and he seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake a lot of the time, but he was a really nice guy, and living almost next door. There was nothing socially that Billy felt he could not fix. Miles was clearly good-natured and a quick study; he could teach him all the right things to say and how to behave. It was all too good to be true. Life was obviously going to look up a lot.
It did. The boys had a marvellous time. Billy had been absolutely right, and (just as Miles had himself suspected) many of the rich, bored ladies were indeed all too ready to spill their sexual largesse over the bodies of two charming and totally available young men. What was more, Miles discovered, their innocence was considerably in their favour. Women of thirty-five, forty, forty-five, painstakingly tutored in every possible variation, legitimate or deviant, of sexual behaviour were delighted to find themselves in bed with near virginal material. Miles, experienced for the most part in the straightforward, if greedy, sexual appetites of c
ollege girls and the beach groupies, learnt a great deal very quickly; he became expert in the ways of the flesh he had never dreamt of. He became skilled in cunnilingus; he discovered a woman’s anus to be capable of huge pleasure; he learnt to enjoy fellatio. He became masterly at delaying his own orgasm, at tormenting and teasing, at talking a woman into a state of intense excitement and then leaving her for an hour, maybe two, and then returning, his smile just a trifle more triumphant than usual. He and Billy both became favourites; the hall porters and doormen at the hotels, initially suspicious, hostile even, swiftly learnt that their tips from this or that beautiful, bored woman would grow considerably in size in exchange for a little cooperation in the front hall, over the internal telephone, a message delivered, or even delayed, an alarm raised, should the true provider of the tips return unexpectedly early from his golf course or his business meeting.
The boys worked usually separately; and resisted any attempt to engage them in group sex, or troilism; and they also set themselves against any attempt to persuade them to indulge in anything that approached perversion, as they saw it. Many was the afternoon they fled as a result of being presented with whips, ropes, rubber, women’s clothes. They had their standards, as they saw it, they maintained some semblance of innocence, and they were united in the view that once they had set out on that slightly dubious road, there was no way back.
The main trouble was, from Miles’ point of view, there was still no financial advantage from his occupation. There was absolutely no way either he or Billy were actually going to take money for their activities; they saw the whole thing as a lark, as fun, as something to do, and there was no way either the ladies would have given them any. Having an entertaining time with some charming boy who was clearly from a good family was one thing; paying for the entertainment would have put a very different complexion on it.
The boys were constantly being given presents: ties, silk shirts, belts, wallets, all very nice and good accessories in their work, particularly when they were moving on from one liaison to the next, but that was all. Nevertheless Miles did occasionally wish some of the presents could be turned into cash. The occasional belt or wallet provided him with a few dollars, but the market value for such things was poor; one particularly rich and, it had to be said, plain, lady had given him a Cartier watch one afternoon, but it was something Miles could not bear to part with. He had (he was discovering, and encouraged by his social education at Billy’s hands) a serious liking for beautiful and prestigious things, he wanted more and more of them, and he would rather go without spending money for a month (as he frequently did) than part with anything of lasting value. Nevertheless it was frustrating. Because their work, as they called it, left their evenings free, they both liked to go and gamble; Billy had a little money, which he was generous with, but it never seemed to last for more than an hour, even on a good evening, and besides Miles had his pride. He had tried to persuade Mrs Kelly to give him a bit more, but she was increasingly withdrawn into her new persona of genteel widow, along with her friend. She had aged a lot in the year they had been in Nassau; relieved of the strain of caring single handed for Miles, and worrying about his future, she had suddenly descended into confusion and delusion. And she was after all nearly eighty; she had had a lot to cope with. Miles, who genuinely loved her, and was truly grateful to her, did not want to intrude on her new happiness. He could wait. It was not after all, he felt, her problem. He was a young man of rare integrity, as Billy and he often agreed.
The solution to their monetary problems came from a rather unexpected source: the doorman at the Bahamian Palace, who had grown fond of them, and saw them in a rather benevolent light.
‘You boys play tennis?’ he asked them one day as they wandered out blinking slightly into the sunshine after a long afternoon’s work in the shaded air conditioning of two of the hotel’s finer suites.
‘I do,’ said Billy, ‘played for Hampden. How about you, Miles?’
‘A bit,’ said Miles. ‘I could remember. Why?’
‘They need a new tennis pro here. I’d apply if I were you. Probably take on the two of you. It wouldn’t interfere with your other occupation, I wouldn’t imagine. Might even help it along a little bit.’ He grinned and winked at them. ‘Go and see the manager now. He’s by the pool.’
Miles and Billy played a test game, charmed the manager, who was pleased with the notion of what was clearly some old money on his staff, and Billy got taken on immediately. Miles was told to go and polish up his game and then he might be allowed to work with his friend on busy days. Given his facility for sport, he was on the courts at the Bahamian Palace in three weeks.
They benefited in two ways: they had an income, albeit a modest one, and they were able, as the doorman had prophesied, to pursue their prey with greater and more graceful ease.
Billy’s parents were initially unhappy with the arrangement, but swiftly came round to the view that any employment was better than none, and at least were relieved of continuing to make Billy his modest allowance, which in their straitened circumstances was a relief; and Mrs Kelly was almost speechless with delight at the news, as presented by Miles, that he was working as sports and social manager of one of the island’s most prestigious hotels.
Miles, in possession of money for the first time in his life, felt strangely exhilarated. He had never properly made the connection between work and money; had not thought of getting a job as the route to worldly delights. In any case, worldly delights had never interested him before; the surf had come cheap. But sitting in the gilded air of the Palace, taking in heady whiffs of the rich aroma of real money, studying the women he was making love to, who somehow managed to look rich even naked, looking at their jewels, their clothes, feeling underneath his skin the sensation of silk sheets, savouring the almost sensual pleasure of good champagne, he felt a swiftly growing desire for more and more of it.
He changed his outward appearance; basing much of his style on Billy’s he cut off his long hair, he bought himself suits, and shirts and ribbon belts, and knotted silk cufflinks, and loafers and some L. L. Bean’s Norwegian pullovers, and a whole set of Lacoste sports shirts, and even, in a fit of strange sartorial madness, sent for some madras bermudas from Trimingham’s. He looked superb, an outstanding example of money of the very oldest kind.
He had proved, as Billy had suspected, a talented student of the social school Billy put him through; he learnt all the right preppy phrases and words and behavioural attitudes; he changed his accent slightly from his Californian drawl to something he based more on Tigs’ than Billy’s own; he learnt to display the peculiar WASP-mannered brand of ennui rather than his own rather more ingenuous Californian laid-backness.
And yet he remained true to himself and his roots. He never lied about his background, never disowned Granny Kelly, never set aside his happiness and his loyalty to Samo High and his days on the beach. He became something interesting and unique: a carefully stylish, rich blend of old-money behaviour and modest philosophies. Put together with his looks, and his charm, and a genuine sweetness of disposition, he found hardly a door anywhere that would not open for him. For the first time in his life he felt a sense of anticipation. He wondered where he might find himself next.
Chapter Twelve
Bristol and London, 1982
ON THE DAY they were to meet, both Phaedria Blenheim and Julian Morell woke up feeling exceptionally irritable.
Phaedria switched off her alarm, sank back deep under her duvet, and explored the events of the day ahead for possible reasons. There was only one and it came to her very quickly. It had been her day off, and she had lost it; a day out hunting with the Avon Vale had been replaced with an as-yet-unconfirmed interview with some boring old fart of an industrialist.
‘Why me?’ she had said furiously to her editor the night before, shaking her head at the can of beer he was offering her. ‘You know it’s my day off, I’m going hunting. Jane’ll be here, and she can do it every bit a
s well as me, probably better because she’ll care. I won’t. Please, Barry, please don’t make me do it.’
‘I’m sorry, Phaedria, but Jane can’t do it every bit as well as you. I need you there tomorrow. It’s important. And you might like to remember I pay you to care,’ he added a trifle heavily.
‘But why? What’s so special? Some boring plastics company. What’s in that for the Women’s Page?’
‘Its chairman.’
‘Its chairman? Oh Barry, come off it. Since when did the chairman of a plastics company have anything interesting to say to women?’
‘Not just plastics, Phaedria. Pharmaceuticals. And cosmetics. And department stores and hotels. Don’t you ever read press releases?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well, you should. Read this one and stop looking so bloody constipated and have a drink. Sit down. Go on.’
Phaedria glared at him, slung her coat down on his spare chair, took the can of beer from him and leant against the wall, skimming over the release:
Morell Pharmaceuticals to open Bristol Plant. For Immediate Release.
The multi-million worldwide Morell Pharmaceutical Chain opens its new plant, the most technologically advanced in Europe, in Bristol in two weeks’ time. The plant which is situated on the Fishponds Estate incorporates a factory, and a marketing and sales division, a research laboratory and a Conference Centre. It has been designed to entirely new specifications incorporating the very latest technology.
The Chairman of Morell Pharmaceuticals, Sir Julian Morell, knighted for his services to industry in 1981, will be coming in person to officially open the plant and will give a conference to selected members of the press at the same time. An invitation is attached.
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