Old Sins (44 page)

‘Hm!’ said Amy. ‘Sounds like you’ll be exploited if you’re not careful. Or else he’s got his eye on you for extra office activities. I don’t like the sound of it at all.’

But Amy had been wrong, and it had worked out beautifully. Lee did work very hard, and very often took work home and was at her typewriter until long after Miles was asleep at night, and even worked on Saturdays sometimes, if Miles could be taken care of; but in return Irving Phillips paid her extremely generously, and never, ever carped if she had to be away. She was valuable to him, and he knew it; she was bright enough and personable enough to run the office single-handed if he and his assistant were not there, she very swiftly picked up a working knowledge of legal terms and procedures, she never forgot a client’s name, or any detail of a case, however small, and those
things were worth infinitely more to Irving Phillips than a spot-on regular five-day attendance in the office that ended at five thirty on the dot, and carried no remnant of one day’s work over to the next. And there had certainly been absolutely no suspicion ever of him wanting to do anything remotely unbusinesslike, as Amy had so darkly prophesied; there was Mrs Phillips, Mrs Sarah Phillips, who was dark and pretty and devoted to her Irving, and the two little Phillips boys, and all their photographs were all over his desk, and he called home at least twice a day, and he genuinely seemed to be just about the nicest most straightforward person anyone could wish to work for.

And then Hugo had been really good to her. Lee was amazed by how good he had been. He visited them at least every three months, sometimes more often; he had insisted on paying off the outstanding mortgage on the house, so that she lived there for nothing; he made her an allowance. ‘For Miles, not you,’ he said firmly, ‘so don’t go getting proud on me,’ and he called her at least once a week to check that everything was all right. She was intrigued to find that she felt nothing remotely sexual for him, any more, nor he apparently for her; they had become (not without some difficulty, she reflected with a wry amusement) that rarest of rare things, platonic friends. They had very little in common in most ways; he was, she knew, far more cultured, educated, sophisticated than she was, but somehow they always had a great deal to talk about, they would sit and chat for hours over dinner or walking on the beach, about anything or everything that happened to catch their attentions. Hugo told her she made him feel relaxed and easy; he said that when he was with her the stresses and pressures of his other life faded away; he felt like a different person.

‘Just as well,’ she said, teasing him, ‘otherwise you might start feeling guilty or confused.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘not with you. I never feel anything bad with you. I just feel peaceful and happy.’

She felt that was nice; something she could give him in return for all he did for her. She still knew amazingly little about him (mostly because she hardly ever asked, and he was not unnaturally unwilling to talk about his other life); he said he was absolutely certain that Alice suspected nothing, that she
was very busy with her own life as a teacher, and bringing up the little boys, and she was used to him being away a lot, he always had been. Lee had once, driven by a mixture of desperate curiosity and something strangely akin to jealousy, asked him to tell her exactly what Alice was like, what she looked like, and the sort of person she was, and he had been angry, in a quiet, white-lipped way, and told her not to be destructive and stupid, and that Alice was no concern of hers; she had apologized at once, and later he had too, and said that he could see it must be tantalizing for her, but that it really was better that she knew as little as possible, and she had agreed and said again she was sorry, and that had been the last time they had ever talked about it, and almost the last time Lee had ever seriously thought about it. In the early days she had spent a lot of time thinking about Alice, imagining how beautiful she must be, and how efficient and how sexy, but now she filed her neatly away just as she did Irving Phillips’ letters and documents, she knew where she was and she could get her out if necessary, but her place was at the very back of a closed drawer.

Although she did not fancy Hugo any more, she occasionally was tempted to start a relationship with other men; she was not nearly as sexually aware as she had been, but she was still a sensual woman, and she missed that side of her life quite badly at times. And when she met a man – at a PTA meeting, or at the baseball games, or in Irving Phillips’ office – who looked at her in a way that made her senses stir, made her feel aware of herself and her sexuality again, it was as if a small sleeping bird, settled somewhere deep within her, had stirred and fluttered its wings, and for days after that she would be troubled and restless; she would have wild, sexual dreams, and wake up in the middle of an orgasm, or she would lie awake, tossing and turning, masturbating, coming again and again, but still empty, still hungry. Nevertheless, she never pursued any relationship with any man; she was too afraid. Afraid of involvement, afraid of distressing Miles (who had weathered Dean’s death so extremely well), afraid of upsetting Hugo, who deserved some kind of fidelity, however one-sided their arrangement might be, afraid of pregnancy, afraid of love. She had friendships, she had a modest social life, and was very active on the PTA and the Little League, and that she found was surprisingly enough, most of the time.

And so Lee’s life had assumed some kind of order and pleasantness; she felt she could look upon it if not with happiness, then certainly not with misery, and indeed rather less anxiety than had been haunting her for the last twelve years.

Her only serious anxiety these days was Miles.

Miles at twelve years old was an interesting child. Too interesting. Lee, analysing it (as she so often did) in the middle of the night, very soon after she had first felt the lump in her breast and totally failed to recapture any semblance of sleep, decided that was why she worried about him. It wasn’t that he was particularly naughty, he didn’t play hookey from school (or at least only once, at Christmas, the one after Dean died, and he had got a job delivering parcels to earn some Christmas money, and who could blame a little boy seriously for that?) He wasn’t cheeky, he didn’t hang around street corners after school, he was nearly always there when she got home, or with the Forrests or the Wainwrights, with a note pinned on the door saying exactly where, he didn’t even tell lies or knock the furniture around like most twelve-year-olds. He simply went his own sweet way, and did what he wanted; or rather, being only twelve and a trifle limited in his lifestyle, firmly refused to do anything he didn’t want. And this did not stop at his school work.

Lee had almost given up now trying to persuade him to go to church with her; every once in a while, when he really wanted to please her (and, she suspected, really wanted something to please himself) he would go along to mass on Sunday morning, swallowing Father Kennedy’s smiling admonitions about his absence with remarkably good grace, but generally he would simply give Lee his sweet, unanswerable smile and say no, he didn’t plan on coming today. Initially she had tried threatening him with the wrath of either God or the Church or both, but he had shrugged and smiled and returned to his comic or his TV programme without so much as a word of argument. She had even asked Father Kennedy if he would speak to him, and Father Kennedy had come round to the house once or twice, and Miles had listened to his small gentle lecture about the mortal sin of not going to church, and looked gravely at Father
Kennedy and said, ‘Thank you for explaining that to me, Father,’ and absolutely refused to discuss the matter any further. Afterwards, when the priest had gone, Lee reproached Miles and said how could he be so rude and unresponsive and Miles said he was sorry, but there was nothing to discuss. ‘But why isn’t there?’ Lee said. ‘At the very least, God forbid, you could have argued with him. Put your view.’

‘Mom, there wouldn’t have been any point,’ said Miles, ‘he wouldn’t have seen it. Waste of breath.’

That was his attitude to most things. If he didn’t like something, or the idea of doing something, he just cut it out of his life, or did the minimum – like his school work. He didn’t argue and make a fuss, he simply didn’t do it. As he was now taller than Lee there was very little she could do about it. There was very little anyone could do about it. His teachers could punish him, and keep him in after school and give him lines, but those were punishments for bad behaviour and Miles did not behave badly. He was always polite and charming to his elders, he gave his work in on time – such as it was – he attended lessons, he sat quietly, he was not disruptive. But his grades were awful – except at maths and geography.

The other reason the teachers found it hard to get too angry with him was that he was such an asset to the school. He played games superbly. He was best pitch anyone in the school could ever remember, and although it wasn’t his game, he was a fine soccer player too. He was the star of all the athletics teams; he could run like the wind, and jump in a way that defied gravity. He had beaten every speed and high-jump record in the school’s history. In matches against other schools, if Miles Wilburn was in the team, St Clement’s won.

He was also a very talented actor. While other kids giggled and got embarrassed, or alternatively overacted, Miles simply became the person he was playing. The boy in jeans and T-shirt could become, in an instant, with an imperceptible shift of personality, a prince, a king, an old man, even a young woman. Miles’ impression of Marilyn Monroe was a joy to behold.

Lee worried about that talent in a way, because she was so afraid Miles would want to go into the film business and start hanging round the studio lots, but he showed not the slightest tendency to do anything of the sort. He enjoyed drama at
school, but only in a passive way; he did not, as stagestruck kids so often did, form companies and put on productions, or want to take extra drama lessons. It was more as if he was aware of his talent and was waiting to use it when the time came: not on the stage at all, perhaps, or in front of the cameras, but in life itself. Indeed he used it in this way already: watching Miles switch from naughty small boy to thoughtful student when his grandmother visited, for instance, to avoid a time and energy-wasting confrontation with her, or as dutiful respectful Young Person in the presence of Hugo Dashwood, was enraging but amusing. Hugo was not deceived, Lee could see, by the impersonation of dutiful and respectful Young Person, mostly because he had heard too much of the other side of Miles from her, but he went along with the charade; he was obviously very fond of the boy, and enjoyed his company. She was not quite sure if the enjoyment was two-sided.

Miles was also now quite exceptionally good-looking. He was very tall for twelve, nearly five foot ten, with golden blond hair, a classically straight nose, a rather sensuously full mouth and dark, extraordinarily luminous blue eyes fringed by long, curly black lashes – ‘Like a girl’s,’ said Jamie Forrest in disgust. Jamie, like most of the other boys, liked Miles, hero worshipped him almost, for his prowess at sport, but were fiercely jealous of him for his looks, the way he got away with things, and the way that, already, the girls were falling over themselves to get near him.

Miles was not only tall and good-looking, he had a way with the girls. He would sit looking at them very intensely, listening to them chattering and giggling, and they would gradually fall silent, discomforted, suddenly self-conscious and acutely aware of his attention. Then he would smile at them, his slow, heartbreaking smile, at whichever one (or two, or even three) had taken his fancy, and wander over to them, and start talking to them.

Jamie and Freddy Wainwright and all the other boys never could imagine what he could talk to them about; everybody knew girls had nothing in their heads except clothes and make-up, and weren’t interested in soccer or baseball, which didn’t leave a lot of room for conversational manoeuvre, but Miles managed. In no time at all the girls were laughing with
him, and talking nineteen to the dozen, and he was laughing and talking back. When they asked him he would shrug and say, ‘Oh, you know,’ and they didn’t like to say no they didn’t because it sounded so hopelessly crass, so it remained a mystery. What they did know was that the prettiest girls in the school, and the sexiest, like Joanna Albertson who already had size thirty-four-inch tits, and Sonia Tullio who had legs as long as a colt’s and eyes full of what the dumbest boy could see was carnal knowledge, made it very plain that the person they wanted to walk along with, and have carry their books for them, and meet on the beach on Sundays, was Miles Wilburn. And it was very irritating.

And so Lee worried. She worried that Miles’ grades were never going to get any better and that was really scary, because everyone knew that the war in Vietnam was escalating and any boy whose grades were below a C in college got sent out there, and OK, Miles was only twelve, nearly thirteen actually now, but six years could go really fast and the rate that war was going and the rate young men were getting killed they might even bring the enlistment age down; and she worried that Miles was just too clever for his own good, and too good at manipulating people and getting them to do what he wanted; and she worried that he might suddenly take it into his head to want to be an actor after all; and she worried that he was sexually precocious, and the way the girls were all running after him, he would get one of them into trouble. But most of all she worried that he seemed to her in every way to be getting more and more like Hugo.

And that was a worry she couldn’t share with anyone.

‘I think’ – and the doctor’s voice was dangerously, threateningly casual – ‘I think we’d better have a look at this little lump, Mrs Wilburn. I’m sure it’s nothing, nothing at all, just a cyst, but it’s as well to be on the safe side. We can take it out very easily, you’ll only need to be in hospital for a couple of days, and send it off to be analysed and then we won’t have to worry any more.’