THE PECULIAR CASE OF MILES DUNMORE

The price of not being ordinary.

Having just returned home after his funeral I feel at last I am free to tell the story of Miles Dunmore. It may never see the light of day but somewhere it will reside until someone needs to find it. 

It was Miles that I first met being pursued by four girls in a sports car. I had just seen a figure disappear into some bushes when they stopped to ask me had I seen anyone answering his  description. Obviously outnumbered I was bound to be on his side and told them I thought I had seen their quarry disappearing down to the right, at a fork in the road just ahead. With much excitement the hunting party sped off in that direction leaving me in a cloud of dust out of which sheepishly the fugitive re-appeared.

‘Gosh, Thanks awfully. My name’s Dunmore, Miles Dunmore.’

He held out his hand which I shook then introduced myself while he looked nervously about for fear his pursuers might return.

‘Your quite lucky to have girls chasing you,’ I said, ‘not something that happens to me very often.’

‘It’s not me they’re after,’ he replied, but I didn’t understand. He then asked me a little about myself as we walked down the left hand fork, apparently towards The Hargrave Arms where he would buy me a drink by way of thanks. 

Miles was known in the pub and greeted with respect, almost deference.

‘Anybody would think you owned the place,’ I joked.

‘I do,’ he whispered, ‘well, my father does, Lord Hargrave.’

I was immediately silenced.

‘Let’s sit outside,’ Miles  suggested, ‘we can talk, and there’s a place where we can see who might arrive.’

‘Like in a sports car?’

‘Exactly,’ he replied as we sat at a bench in the garden.

‘What did you mean, it wasn’t you they were after?’ 

He began to explain but so beyond my experience was it, that I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

Miles Dunmore, the only son of Lord Hargrave newspaper tycoon and political fixer was sitting opposite me and we were talking as if we had been friends for years. There seemed little I could contribute to the conversation but he held a fascination for what I did, who I knew, what my life was like. After the second pint a shadow seemed to fall upon him, and he began to share with me, a comparative stranger, what troubled him.

A car chasing him was unusual, that it was filled with pretty, available girls was not. Apparently there was hardly a day passed that an acquaintance of his mother or a friend of the family, would turn up with a daughter or two hoping that Miles would succumb to their charms. Every variety of subterfuge was employed against him in an attempt to secure him as a husband. There was even a familiarity regarding their expressions of love and devotion. A familiarity that made him suspect they were being coached. No trip or holiday was safe. Once he had retired to his room to find a naked girl hiding in the wardrobe, and another under the bed. One alone could have created a tricky situation from which he may never have escaped, but the two set about each other to such an extent that Miles was able to leave the room un-noticed.

After several hours and not having been allowed to buy a drink, Miles eventually made me a proposition. Would I, on his behalf, rent a flat in west London big enough for myself but also somewhere he could stay whenever he needed to get away. He would pay for everything. All he demanded in return was absolute secrecy, no one must know his real identity. He just wanted to be, ordinary; to have ordinary friends, who liked, disliked, or loved him for what he was, not who his father was or indeed the massive fortune that one day he was due to inherit.

Over the next few days whilst I was in the area we met several times until our plan was hatched. Within a month I had found somewhere near the Warwick Arms in Maida Vale. It was way beyond anything I could afford but Miles was as good as his word and it cost me nothing. My  sofa-surfing days I had left behind to become a ‘yuppie’. With all my living costs found, virtually everything I earned working in an advertising studio, I could spend on entertainment. Miles visits at first were occasional weekends but after six months he casually announced he had a job in the city and would be moving in permanently. At first Miles was nervous with anyone he didn’t know. He gave girls the impression he didn’t like them and often I had to explain he was just shy. Miles and I were an eligible pair, and gradually our social life expanded, and Miles was able to relax in public amongst friends. Nothing was ever mentioned about his family, in fact I had virtually forgotten about it. 

After about two years Miles started seeing the same girl, Jennifer, regularly. She began to stay over and it became obvious Miles and her were deeply in love. I had expected an announcement but not the one Miles came up with. 

‘I can’t tell her,’ he told me one evening. 

I asked him why, and the reason was the same as it always had been.

‘How could I tell whether she loves me, if she knows who I really am? If we had an argument she might stay just because of the money, it would be unbearable. When she says she loves me, I know it’s me she loves not a title, not the billions.’

I was not entirely convinced but it did occur to me that having got to know and love him, Jennifer may think that he made a habit of deceit and never trust him again.

I never enquired about his personal circumstances, his family or finances. He was doing well in the City and we would often meet in a club or on a restaurant boat moored on the Thames. I was his only link to the past from which he had escaped. The shadow it cast became lighter as our friendship deepened and as, over the years, he had learnt he could trust me entirely. He told me one afternoon how he had met an ex-police officer turned private investigator, who obtained for him an alternative identity. As himself, he had paid regular amounts into that account explaining to his family that they were gambling debts or other ‘expenses’. The implication was that it was either drugs or women, or both. When his family’s patience eventually ran out and they dis-owned him thinking him a ‘rotten lot’, it was  then he acquired the identity of Miles Dunmore, so it was hardly surprising they could no longer trace him. They presumed that he had fallen into debt with the Richardsons or the Krays, and had been disposed of. When Lord Hargrave died the estate was left to several nephews who’s disputes and mismanagement eventually ruined it.

I had moved away from London with my family but had always maintained contact with Miles and his, even spending the odd holiday together in a villa he had in Spain. A few months before he was diagnosed with the illness that would kill him, I had never seen him happier. He was genuinely loved by Jennifer and his three children. Through his own efforts he had become successful, and was admired purely for being himself.