Old Sins (47 page)

‘Thanks.’

‘Does it hurt a lot?’

‘Sometimes. The drugs are very good. Mostly it’s just terrible discomfort. And weakness. Weariness. And I can’t sleep.’ She gripped her friend’s hand. ‘Oh, Amy, I’m not even scared any more. I just want it to be over.’

‘It will be, Honey. Soon.’

‘Miles, look at me. No, on second thoughts, don’t. I’m not a pretty sight.’

‘You look OK.’

‘Thanks Hon.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘Now listen to me, Miles. We have to have a talk.’

‘OK.’

‘Now you do know, don’t you, that I won’t be here much longer.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Now we have to be grown up and sensible about this, Miles. No point crying or making a fuss, like I used to tell you about your school work. It has to be done.’

‘That’s different from my school work. I manage to duck out of that. I can’t duck out of you dying.’

‘No,’ said Lee, thinking she would stifle under the weight of the huge tearing pain in her heart as she looked at him, so much
worse than any physical pain she had endured over the past three months. ‘No, you can’t. And I can’t duck out of it either.’

‘Are you scared Mom?’

‘A bit. Not really any more.’

‘I’m scared.’

‘What of?’

‘Of being without you.’

‘Oh, Miles.’ She closed her eyes, swallowed, fought to hold on to herself. ‘Miles, don’t be scared. You’re allowed to be sad, but not to be scared. You’ll manage. You’re so brave. And so tough.’

‘Like you. You’re the bravest person I ever even heard of.’

‘I try to be,’ said Lee.

‘Was Dad brave? I don’t really remember.’

‘Very brave.’

‘Why did he die, Mom? I never understood. I think you should tell me. I know he killed himself. Billy Fields told me he heard his mom tell his dad that Dad killed himself. And I saw a newspaper cutting that somebody else found in their attic. And I just can’t think why. All I can remember is us being a really happy family.’

‘Well, we were,’ said Lee staunchly. ‘And don’t let anyone ever tell you any different. We were very very happy. Your dad was happy. Until – until that last day. Then he did something silly. Something foolish. And it went rather badly wrong.’

‘What?’

‘Well, you see’ – God help me, thought Lee – ‘you see, although your dad was very clever and very good, he didn’t make that much money. He was quite successful but not terribly terribly successful. And he minded about that very much. And he heard that an old friend had done terribly terribly well, and he got very depressed, and he felt he was a failure. And he also got very drunk. And then he went up to bed and took some sleeping pills. Only, mixed with the drink and his bad heart, it killed him.’

‘I see. How sad.’

‘Yes, it was terribly sad. Dreadful. But I have learnt to think about when we were happy. As you do. Just keep thinking about that, Miles. Don’t let anyone take it away from you.’

‘I won’t. Anyway, I feel better now. I wish I’d asked you
before. I’m glad you told me.’ He looked at her, his frightened, loving heart in his dark blue eyes. ‘Oh, Mom, what am I going to do without you to make me feel better?’

Lee couldn’t speak. She held out her arms, and Miles, big boy that he was, crawled into them. She smoothed back his hair, kissed his head, stroked his face.

‘I’m sorry I don’t work at school much, Mom,’ he said after a while. ‘Was that what you wanted to talk to me about?’

‘Partly,’ said Lee, grateful to get the conversation on a less emotional level. ‘Not because I’m cross with you. But because I have such hopes, such high hopes for you. You’re so clever, Miles. Cleverer than me or Dad’ (Oh, God, she thought, I shouldn’t have said that) ‘and you can do so well. So terribly well. Don’t throw it away, Miles. You must work hard. Don’t let me down.’

‘You won’t be there,’ he said with simple logic. ‘You won’t know if I’ve let you down.’

‘Now look,’ said Lee, half laughing, half crying, ‘is that going to make me feel any better right now, Miles Wilburn? Worrying about you, all day and all night? I want to – to go away feeling proud and confident and happy about you. That’s the very last thing you can give me, and it will be such a lot.’

‘OK,’ said Miles. ‘I promise. I’ll work hard. Do you want me to be President? I’ll try if you want.’

‘It might do for starters.’

‘OK.’

‘And I want you to be real nice to Granny Kelly. It won’t be easy for her. She won’t have her friends or her hens or anything.’

‘I wouldn’t mind her hens. I like hens.’

‘Yes, well there’s no space for hens in our back yard.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Miles, brightening up, ‘there might be.’

‘Well,’ said Lee, with the first thankful sigh she had heaved for weeks, ‘that is nothing to do with me, that is entirely between you and Granny Kelly.’

‘OK.’

‘Now, Mr Dashwood –’

‘Mom, I wish you’d call him Hugo to me. He calls himself Hugo.’

‘All right, Hugo. He has very kindly said he will keep an eye on you and Granny Kelly, so if you have any big problems, at
school, or about money, or if you think Granny isn’t coping, you can talk to him. I’ll give you his number in New York – he won’t answer it, it’s not his home, but a secretary will take a message.’

‘OK. Where is his home exactly?’

‘In England.’

‘I know, but where?’

‘I’m not sure. In London, somewhere.’

‘He seems real fond of you, Mom.’ His eyes were probing on her.

‘Yes,’ said Lee, ‘well, he’s been a good friend for a long time.’

‘But he’s not the friend who was more successful than Dad?’

‘What? Oh, good gracious no.’

‘I just wondered.’

‘And day to day problems, you just go to Amy.’

‘But,’ he said, and tears filled his eyes and spilled down his cheeks, ‘it’s the day to day problems I’ll need you for.’

And then Lee started to cry too, and he climbed right up on the bed beside her, and lay clinging to her, sobbing, sounding as if he was three years old.

They stayed there for a long time. And then she said, finally, exhausted, drained of strength and emotion, trying desperately, helplessly to comfort him, to give him something he could take away with him, ‘Miles, my darling, stop, stop crying, this isn’t going to do anything, anything at all for either of us.’

‘Oh, but it is,’ he said, nestling his blond head further on to her pillow, ‘I can remember it for always.’

She died early next morning, her sheets still crumpled from where he had lain.

London and France, 1972

THINGS WERE DEFINITELY
getting better. Roz felt life was beginning to go her way.

In the first place she had escaped from Cheltenham, and was spending her two sixth-form years at Bedales: co-educational, progressive, civilized. It suited her well; there was scope for her fiercely individual mind, her rather puritan approach to her work, her disregard for the normal social conventions required of a girl of her age.

‘The worst thing about Cheltenham,’ she said to Letitia, one of the few people she trusted enough to talk to, ‘was that if you weren’t like the others, all giggly and jolly and gossipy and mad on games, it was hopeless, you were just all alone in the world, but if you didn’t want to be alone, you had to pretend to be like them. Pretending was worse than being alone, though,’ she added.

‘Poor Roz,’ said Letitia, ‘five years of that sort of thing is a long time.’

‘Yes,’ said Roz shortly. ‘Well, I daresay it did me some good.’

‘I hope so, darling. I’m never quite convinced about the therapeutic value of unhappiness. Anyway, I’m glad you like it so much better where you are now. You’re looking wonderful,’ she added.

Wonderful was perhaps an exaggeration, and Roz knew it; but she also knew she did look better all the time. She was still far from pretty, and probably always would be, but she didn’t think anyone any more could call her exactly plain. She was taller, quite a lot taller than any other girl in her year; nobody could quite work out where her height came from – Julian was only six foot, and Eliza was tiny, just about five foot (and half an inch, she always insisted). But there it was, Roz was five foot nine already and still growing, and she was large framed too, with wide shoulders and, to her constant misery, size nine feet. ‘Just you try getting fashionable shoes in that size,’ she said darkly to anyone who told her it didn’t matter. But there was not an ounce of fat on her, she was lean and rangy-looking, apart from a most gratifyingly large bosom. Her face was interesting, dramatic, her rather hollow cheekbones and harsh jaw accentuating her large green eyes, her slightly over-full mouth. Her nose caused her much anguish, it was big, but it was at least straight and not hooked or anything awful, she kept reassuring herself; and her dark hair was thick and shiny, even if it was as straight as the proverbial die, and wilful with it. She
wore it long now, and tied back in a long swinging pony tail; it wasn’t a style that flattered her but at least it kept it under control, and stopped it sticking out the wrong way which it did unless she spent hours on it with the styling brush and the hair dryer, and even then it often got the better of her and she would end up in tears of frustration with one side neatly turned under and the other flying relentlessly outwards. Of the many things for which she loathed Camilla North her exquisitely behaved red hair came almost top of the list. She had done very well in her O levels, and got eleven, nine of them As; she was doing maths, economics and geography A levels, and in her first term at Bedales had beaten all the girls and all but two of the boys in the pre-Christmas exams. She planned on going to Cambridge to read maths; her tutor had told Julian that she would probably get in on fifth term entry, rather than doing a third year in the sixth. Nothing pleased Roz more than showing her father how clever she was; it made up for not being pretty, not being a boy, not really being the sort of daughter she knew he would have liked. And loved. He obviously liked her more than he had done, he sought her company, even showed her off at times, but it was detachedly, rather as if she was some clever person he had employed rather than his own daughter. She supposed, rather resignedly these days, that she neither looked nor played the daughter part correctly. He was never physically affectionate towards her, never petted her, never teased her; and he had still never asked her to go and live with him permanently, even though her mother was away more than not these days, pursuing first one and then another awful playboy round the world; she had given up all pretence of having a career and was shamelessly (as Roz put it to Rosie Howard Johnson, still her closest and indeed her only friend) being kept by one rich man after another.

And then, Camilla was definitely fading from the scene. It had been months now since she had been even in the guest room at Hanover Terrace, never mind tiptoeing along the corridor to Julian’s bedroom, and certainly never at Marriotts; and besides she must be getting on a bit now, in her mid thirties, getting well past her fertility peak, and even safely into the danger zone of prospective foetal abnormalities (Roz had become an expert on such matters, feverishly reading every article and book on the subject she could find).

But there was one willowy and rather distressingly beautiful fly in the ointment: the spirit of Juliana incarnate, one Araminta Jones. And although she was less worrying and certainly less ghastly than Camilla (and had the most enragingly neat, golden brown head of hair), Roz would still have been a lot happier if she had not been around.

The seventies saw the real birth of the personality cult in cosmetics: when one face, one spirit, one aura personified and sold a brand. For Charles Revson and Revlon it was Lauren Hutton; for Mrs Lauder it was Karen Graham; for Julian Morell and Juliana it was Araminta Jones.

When a middle-aged, overweight matron, anxious she might be losing her husband to his twenty-year-old secretary, bought a Revlon lipstick or eye shadow, she felt somehow magically transformed into Lauren Hutton, all college-girl charm, long-legged, radiantly gap-toothed; when a gauche, unremarkable young wife used a Lauder cream or sprayed herself with Alliage before entertaining her husband’s important clients, she felt she had acquired some of Karen Graham’s old-money glamour and confidence; and when a plain, nervous woman made up her face with Juliana colours and surrounded herself with a cloud of
Mademoiselle Je
before she went to a party, she felt herself suddenly acquiring the upper-class Englishness, the sexy sophistication of Araminta Jones. Miss Jones, like Miss Hutton and Miss Graham, was not just a face or even a body, she was a package, a lifestyle, a way of dressing, of walking, of thinking. You could tell, just by looking at her (and of course by some very clever publicity) that she was well educated, perfectly bred, that she wore designer label clothes, drove an expensive car, knew one end of a horse from another, ate in the best restaurants, holidayed in Bermuda, skied in Aspen, drank nothing but champagne, and had been programmed for success from birth.

The bad news about her, from Rosamund Morell’s point of view, was that most of these things were fact, and Julian Morell, having discovered her (and bought her, for what amounted to millions of dollars), was showing every sign of being rather seriously besotted with her. And Araminta was most definitely of childbearing age. On the other hand, it seemed to Roz, her father was definitely getting on a bit, into his fifties, and surely
nobody of twenty-two in their right minds would want to get mixed up with someone so seriously old. Araminta, she was sure, was simply stringing her father along, knowing precisely on which side her wafer-thin slices of bread were buttered, taking him for every penny she could get, and would be off without a backward glance from her wide, purple eyes if someone younger and more suitable came along.

Roz had chosen to forget her own brief foray into Love with an Older Man; what was more her opinion of the male race, already low, had taken a further dive at David Sassoon’s defection to the United States and from her mother’s bed the moment success and fame beckoned in even larger quantities than were already in his possession. She had suffered a qualm or two of conscience witnessing Eliza’s awful grief over the defection; had tried not to listen, her hands over her ears, to the hideous, ferocious scene as David tried to justify it (‘Darling, I can’t afford not to take it, he’ll destroy me, give me a chance to make it out there and I’ll set up on my own, and we’ll be married,’) – on and on it went, hour after hour, all one night, and in the morning he was gone, leaving Eliza swollen-eyed, ashen, and somehow suddenly smaller than ever, and very frail. Roz had known she had had at least something to do with that suffering, that frailty, and tell herself as she might that had David really loved her mother he would not have gone, she knew that had she not spoken as she had to her father over those months, David would not have had the opportunity to go. However, she told herself, her mother had caused her a great deal of suffering in her life and certainly didn’t seem to have felt guilty about it; moreover, Eliza was tough, she was resilient, and she just didn’t need a man who put his worldly success so firmly before his emotional life.