Old Sins (51 page)

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.

‘Hi, Hugo.’

‘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.’

‘OK.’

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.’