Old Sins (64 page)

‘I don’t know,
chérie.
Truly. After all, the good old days when women trapped men are gone, are they not?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘By becoming pregnant.
Mon Dieu
, how many men got caught like that. But not any more. And what a disastrous beginning for the marriage anyway. Now, have another glass of brandy, Roz, and tell yourself there are other pebbles in the river, or whatever it is you say.’

‘Fish in the sea,’ said Roz slowly. ‘Thank you, Annick. Good advice. You’re right, of course.’

She went back to the hotel that night and found C. J. had checked out. She was not over-bothered. She had a little time. Back in London she sought him out after a few days, apologized for making a fool of herself, and said they might as well be friends. Loving friends. C. J., relieved to see a peaceful end to the conflict, agreed. Within ten days she had seduced him again. After a month, they were back where they had been
– passionate lovers – with the difference that Roz confided in her father about the relationship.

‘You won’t believe this, Daddy. But we really really get on.’

‘Darling, I’m delighted. Surprised. But delighted. My oldest friend’s son. It’s charming. I suppose I shouldn’t be encouraging my daughter in an irregular relationship, but I’m so fond of C. J. and I know he’ll take care of you.’

‘Don’t say anything to him, will you? He’s so shy.’

‘Of course not. But it is very nice news indeed. What delightful hands I am finding my company in.’

Roz had correctly anticipated her father’s pleasure; but she had not quite thought through how deeply her future in the company might be affected by a marriage to C. J. The two of them – or rather the one of them, she thought wrily – could make an uncontested takeover for the whole thing in the fullness of time. Her father was sixty-two. He couldn’t go on for ever. Any fear that somebody might emerge – the spectre of a son being born to Camilla, or indeed anybody, was receding steadily these days, thank God – would be greatly diminished if Julian’s only child – she wondered idly, occasionally, why he always referred to her as his only daughter – was married to the son of his oldest friend and that son already a proven asset to the company. Roz smiled to herself over the glass of champagne her father had poured her. How very nicely everything would be working out.

Three weeks later they were having a lazy Sunday breakfast in C. J.’s flat in Primrose Hill when Roz put down the
Sunday Times
and looked at him just slightly nervously.

‘C. J.,’ she said, ‘I have a tiny problem.’

‘What’s that?’ said C. J. He was learning to be wary of her. ‘Can I help?’

‘I don’t know. Probably not.’ She paused and took a sip of coffee. ‘My period’s rather late.’

C. J. looked at her intently and rather oddly and put down his newspaper.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I say. My period’s rather late. Ten days, actually. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ said C. J. ‘I don’t know what I think. Or I hope I don’t. Is it often late?’

‘Well – sometimes. Not often. Bit worrying, isn’t it?’

‘I thought you were on the pill.’

‘I am. But it’s a low-dosage one and you do have to be terribly careful about not forgetting. Even taking it at the same time each day. Maybe I slipped up. I don’t think I did, but I might have.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Fine. Perfectly fine. Although –’

‘Yes?’

‘Well the only thing is, I’m terribly hungry all the time. But I certainly don’t feel sick or anything like that. Oh, don’t look so worried, C. J. I’m sure it’s nothing. If it hasn’t arrived by Friday I’ll have a test done. Now let’s get dressed and go for a walk or something. Don’t you want to go and explore Spitalfields, or somewhere equally exotic?’

‘What? Oh, no, it doesn’t matter,’ said C. J. absently.

‘Well, anyway, you choose. I don’t mind where we go.’

Coming out of the shower, she looked at C. J. He was staring out of the window, his face blank and white, his eyes somehow sunk into his face, darker than ever and full of fear.

Los Angeles and Nassau, 1981–82

‘
I JUST CAN
’
T
stand this any longer, Miles,’ said Mrs Kelly. ‘Either you get yourself a proper job or I’ll tell the police about all that dope you’re smokin’.’

Miles looked at her across the table and smiled his enchanting, irresistible smile.

‘You wouldn’t, Granny Kelly. I know you wouldn’t. You couldn’t.’

‘I would and I could.’

‘But you’d have to prove it. How would you do that? You’d
have to bring them down to the beach, or up to my room, and watch them catch me in the act.’

‘I’d be prepared to do that. For your greater good.’

Miles smiled again. ‘I just don’t believe it. I just don’t believe you’d come marching down to the beach with the law in tow and say, “Look, officer, there he is, that’s my grandson, and he’s smoking a joint right now.”’

‘Miles, I would.’

‘Then I shall have to keep a very careful eye open for you.’ He got up, kissed her fondly and walked towards the door.

‘Where are you going, Miles?’

‘To the beach. Where else? With a positive mountain of grass.’

‘Miles, please come back. Please let’s talk about it. It’s not just the dope. I’m scared you’re going to get on to stronger stuff. You’re throwing your life away, Miles, and I just can’t bear to see it.’

‘Granny, I promise you I never touch anything else. Ever. I don’t need it.’

‘That’s what they all say.’

‘I know. And OK, maybe a couple of the guys take the odd snort. But not a lot of it. And certainly not me. I can’t afford it. Now stop fretting.’

She looked at him as he stood there, leaning gracefully against the door frame. Whatever he was doing, he managed to look as if he was posing for a photograph in some glossy magazine, and yet it was entirely unself-conscious. His great beauty was like a present that he didn’t really want, something he was very mildly pleased to have been given, and then put carelessly aside, unused. And yet it was not wasted, was not really unused at all; it opened doors for Miles, that beauty, made him welcome, sought after, everywhere he went. Women fell in love with it; and because of its singular nature, it did not repel men either, it lent Miles desirability. On a man with ambition it would have been dangerous; on Miles with his complete lack of concern for any kind of a future it was in safe keeping. He was now twenty-three, tall, a little over six foot two; his golden-blond hair hung over his narrow shoulders and halfway down his back; he was slim, but not thin, not gangly, and quite fine boned, with a long graceful neck and a
beautifully shaped head. He had a high, sloping forehead and a perfectly straight nose with very slightly flaring nostrils. His eyes were exceptional, dark, dark blue, flecked with brown, and his lashes so extravagantly long that women became irritated just contemplating them. But it was his smile that made his looks exceptional, and that saved them from the cliché: it was sweet, his smile and all embracing, but it also contained much humour and, above all, just a touch of self-mockery. You felt when you saw it, that smile, that you were part of a conspiracy, taken inside a charmed world; that you knew its owner and you liked him, and that he was anxious that you should not think he cared in the very least about how he looked or whether you might care either. He was constantly being approached by the photographers who came to Malibu, shooting fashion spreads or advertisements or commercials, to model for them; he had been asked not once but three times by movie people who had (in the way of all the best Hollywood fairy stories) watched him as he filled their cars, delivered their groceries, simply walked along Sunset with his swinging rangy grace, to come and test; several friends of the Tylers had suggested he go to castings for this and that film; but to them all he threw his most brilliant regretful smile and said that was really nice of them, and he was really really flattered, but he had no wish to be a model, and the film business did not interest him, and he was actually much happier doing what he did.

Which was almost absolutely nothing.

It was eighteen months now since he had graduated; after his first angry outburst he had relaxed into a lazy contentment. He no longer saw Joanna; as far as Mrs Kelly could make out he didn’t see any girls at all. Or certainly not committedly. There were girls at the beach parties in the evening, but they were hangers on, they came and went, none of them were part of the surfing community, Miles brought none of them home. She felt sometimes that even if he could get committed to sex that would be better than nothing, and then she hastily stifled the thought and told herself that at least he was doing no harm the way he was.

Apart from the dope smoking, he seemed to be leading a blameless life. He never asked her for money; he wouldn’t take any money from anybody. When he needed some, which wasn’t
very often, he earned it. He was strangely easy to live with; when she wasn’t feeling irritated by his idleness, the wastage of his life, she couldn’t help enjoying him and his relaxed, good-natured company. He spent many evenings just swinging lazily on the seat out on the lawn of the house high above the ocean, talking to her about anything that happened to engage him at the time, asking her opinion on things, listening carefully and consideringly to her answers; he did not exactly challenge her views, that would have been too exacting for his philosophy of minimum intellectual effort, but he would gaze at her from the depths of his blue eyes and say, ‘Do you really really think that’s right?’ and she would say, nettled, ‘Yes, yes I really do,’ and he would raise his eyebrows mildly and smile at her, and shrug and resume his survey of the evening sky; and she would find herself against her will challenging her own views. He was kind to her, and thoughtful; he never stayed out late without telling her, he was almost always home to dinner, he brought her occasional presents, he took her for drives into Santa Monica. He did the marketing, and he did the garden; he stopped short of the housework or the cooking, but he would mend and fix things for her if she asked him. And he often told her she was the only person who had never let him down.

‘Now Miles, that is ridiculous,’ she had said, the first time he voiced this opinion. ‘Joanna didn’t let you down, the Tylers didn’t let you down, Mr Dashwood didn’t let you down when you got busted that time, and your parents both died, God help them, that isn’t letting you down. How can you even think such a thing?’

And he had looked at her very seriously for quite a long time, and said that maybe they hadn’t been able to help dying, although since his father had committed suicide even that was arguable, but the fact remained he had been left all alone when he was very young, to manage as best he could; that Joanna had not understood how he had felt about Dashwood’s betrayal as he saw it, and that then she had tried to push and mould him into her own pattern, which was letting him down as he saw it; that the Tylers had done the same thing; and that as for Dashwood, all he had ever done was write a few cheques, and that they came pretty cheap.

‘Miles, how can you say that, when all these years Mr
Dashwood has taken so much interest in you, visited you, encouraged you to make something of your life?’

‘All he did,’ said Miles, his eyes distant, ‘was turn me into some kind of hobby. When it began to turn into hard work, he was gone.’

‘Well, I don’t see it like that.’

‘Don’t you, Granny? Ah well.’

And the subject, like so many, many others, was closed.

It was a year now since Hugo had visited them; he wrote frequently to Mrs Kelly impressing upon her that she must ask him for help if it seemed that he could give it, inquiring after Miles’ progress (and, when the progress became clearly non-existent, his welfare), offering him constantly a large allowance the day he went out and got a job, and making sure that the regular payments into Mrs Kelly’s bank accounts were kept up and that she was using them. But personal visits were too painful; Miles simply now went out. The last exchange between them had been ugly; Hugo had begun with coercion, and then moves to bribery and even threats (of withdrawing financial support entirely) in his attempts to make Miles use his education and his qualifications.

‘I want to feel proud of you, Miles. Is that so much to ask?’

Miles had stood up, looked down at Hugo, an expression of absolute disdain on his face, and said, ‘What right do you have to feel proud of me?’ and walked out of the room.

One of Mrs Kelly’s only confidants in her anxiety was the old priest from St Monica’s, Father Kennedy. He had long since retired from the active administration of his church, and spent his days in the pastoral care of the long line of vagrants, homeless, single-parent families, alcoholics and drug addicts who came to the refuge he ran with the help of volunteers, students and the occasional rich widow anxious to reserve for herself a guaranteed corner in the kingdom of Heaven.

Mrs Kelly, who saw no reason to doubt that there would be a corner for her, after the requisite and hopefully short time in Purgatory, nevertheless worked at the refuge from time to time, out of the goodness of her heart, and indeed passed on the occasional percentage of the allowance made her by Hugo Dashwood when Father Kennedy, or rather one of his vagrants or their families, was in particular difficulties. She liked the
atmosphere of the refuge, the strange marriage of earnest endeavour and fecklessness that existed behind its crumbling, peeling, walls; she was fond of many of the regular inmates who regarded it as almost as a permanent home, particularly the half-crazed but perfectly harmless drunks; and she enjoyed talking to Father Kennedy, who remembered Lee so fondly, and who had shared with the rest of them such high hopes for Miles.

Initially, when Miles had taken to the beach he had urged silence, counselled patience: ‘He’s a clever young man, Mrs Kelly, he will grow tired of the life.’ But now, going on for two years later, he had to admit that the situation was becoming serious. ‘It’s a terrible thing to see such cleverness going to waste. And he is such a charming and such a personable young man. I can understand you feeling distressed. Your friend Mr Dashwood, now, is he unable to persuade Miles to take life a little more seriously?’