The Amours & Alarums of Eliza MacLean. Annie Warwick

his pants against her.

      They ran up the stairs and made love in her bed, hurriedly the first time, and Eliza found that although Teague wasn’t Billy, her libido was her own. She found her new lover to be skilled and sensitive, and he in turn found her to be more responsive and less inhibited than he would have expected of a sixteen year old, or even perhaps a thirty year old. The fit was very nice indeed. It took Eliza’s mind off Billy, and Teague’s mind off other women who might have threatened his marriage.

      Eliza had some rules for him. He must never cause Annicke to be suspicious, by his attitude or behaviour. Even if it meant leaving Eliza in the lurch without an explanation. “If she finds out, or even starts questioning you, it’s over,” she said. She did not really believe in betraying the sisterhood, and certainly not in breaking up their marriages.

      Teague was fond of both Irish and Bluegrass music and so it was he who first introduced Eliza to a group of musicians starting up a band named “Pig in a Pen”, which they always intended to change. To Eliza it was like talking her own language with a different accent, so she jumped in with both feet, abandoning, for the time being, her classical violin work for the rush she experienced in playing with the band. Sometimes they busked in Sydney streets, at open air functions, or places where she could legally go, which did not include the pub or any venue where alcohol was served. Although there was another fiddle player who could work these venues, the rest of the band was champing at the bit for Eliza to reach eighteen. They would normally have settled for the legal-age fiddler but it was obvious they could not let Eliza go, and two fiddlers had to be better than one.

      The timing was perfect, as Eliza had begun to feel like a mechanised violinist as she practised with the orchestra on playing incredibly quickly and perfectly in time. Such technical perfection was fascinating to listen to, and for her, as a musician, painfully lacking in soul.

      Teague did not join the band himself, as it could draw undesirable attention to their affair. Eventually, inevitably, after almost a year of illicit but discreet frolicking, he decided to take his marriage seriously and part from his very youthful mistress, because Annicke was by then six months pregnant with their first child. He had come closer to falling in love than Eliza had, but parting was a sad business for both of them.

      Perhaps it is a necessary part of every woman’s young life to have an affair with a married man. Heaven knows there are enough of them hanging out for it. Eliza didn’t feel guilty but it reinforced her belief that men did not readily engage in exclusive relationships. She wasn’t sure she could, either. Fifty years making love with the same person, my god, she thought, deciding it would be enough to make you want to join a nunnery or take to drink.

      * * *

      With Teague’s departure, Billy’s spectre began to haunt Eliza again, and she began exploring the internet for signs of his progress. She found it, in terms of guest spots on TV series and parts in movies. It seemed that at close on twenty-three he was moving fairly frequently between London and the States, and although he was not attracting much press attention, he had a devoted following of quite obsessed female fans. She knew a bit about the classification of mental disorders, but nothing at all about the classification applied to celebrities. Definitely not A-list or B-list according to the criteria, but C-list didn’t really apply either. He was just a young actor who was well known in some circles, probably fairly high on a number of prominent agencies’ casting lists and always working. She was proud of him, more so, perversely, because he wasn’t super famous like those people who were notorious for being in and out of rehab and hounded by the paparazzi. She referred to them as the papilloma: a kind of excrescence hanging onto people’s skin and feeding from their blood supply.

      Eliza promptly had a dream in which she was walking through Dover Street Market, and he was coming the other way with a blonde on each arm. She greeted him, but he only looked her up and down, saying, “and who the hell are you?” This is not how Billy would behave but it still felt real when she woke up. She returned to her studies with a shudder but she was not happy.

      A couple of years previously, when first they’d arrived in Sydney, it had been clear to Eliza that, having settled into a new country, a new school and a new dwelling, the next logical step must be to acquire a new feline. Eliza had seen a most desirable specimen on a home and garden television programme, phoned several breeders, and informed her father that they were heading west at the earliest opportunity. As it happened, there was some delay in carrying out this plan.

      In the end, forward motion coincided with the descent of the Misery-Guts Demon upon Eliza. She was miserable, and when Eliza was unhappy, everybody was unhappy, or so Richard believed. It didn’t occur to him to sit down with her and try to get her to talk about it, but he did remember the benefits of feline therapy.

      The Blue Mountains, rising to a height of 3,000 feet, if one is still disposed to think in feet, are named apparently because of their characteristic blue haze. This haze is the result of oils from the Eucalyptus trees which grow cheek by jowl in the area. Dust particles, water vapour and short-wavelength rays of light are, I believe, also involved, but we need not bother ourselves with those. What we are concerned with is the Maine Coon, the breeder of which was located at the highest point on the mountains. There are many websites and many photos of these animals now on the internet and the two characteristics which stand out are Huge and Fluffy. They are also pleasant, well-mannered and don’t eat more than two or three wombats in a year, even fewer if they are fed well and housed in the city.

      However … it is one thing to be warned that your kitten will grow into something which could weigh 9.1 kilograms, and quite another, a year down the track, to put it on your bathroom scales and see that it is equal to two standard house-cats or three Yorkshire terriers. Perhaps if Richard had heard the animal’s potential stated in imperial weight – 20 pounds – he would have listened more closely, but as it was, the MacLean household was improved by one kitten, about three months old. At that age, the cuddly little creature, named Warwick for no particular reason, gave little hint as to food consumption and the difficulty level of prising him out of Richard’s favourite chair. But Eliza was suitably distracted, having her own baby cat to care for, and Richard heaved a sigh of relief.

      Eliza began looking forward to starting her precocious first year at university. She was absolutely fed up with being a schoolgirl in an all-girl school; she sometimes felt that she was a hundred years old and trying to fit in with a bunch of kindergarteners. She could hardly believe it when the previous Richard-based problems re-emerged with a new cast towards the end of Year Twelve. He had a romantic role in a long-standing TV series, and as usual the fans – teenagers to grandmothers – were gathering momentum. Eliza received some invitations she wasn’t expecting and this time she refused them all politely, with an excellent Regretful Expression and a Plausible Excuse, or so she thought.

      This wasn’t good enough, however, for Mia Stevens who, Eliza knew, did not like her a bit. On one of her visits to the locker room, she was bailed up by Mia. A really dedicated bully never travels alone, so Mia was backed up by her trusty henchgirls, Zoe Liebermann and Phoebe Curtiss. They immediately began to bait her about being stuck up and too good to socialise with mere mortals, being the daughter of a celebrity, yada yada yada.

      “Why do you say that?” asked Eliza, with a sigh. She could see which way this was headed and she wasn’t sure she could take on all three at once without blood being spilled.

      “People invite you to their houses and you won’t accept, because you think they’re not good enough for you,” said Mia, petulantly.

      “How do you know that’s the reason I refuse?” asked Eliza.

      “Well, why do you refuse, then?” asked Phoebe, snarkily.

      A fair question. “No comment,” said Eliza, who suddenly didn’t want to reveal herself too much to this belligerent threesome, and Mia pushed her, hard. Eliza staggered back, recovered, clenched her fist and, with remarkable restraint, resisted the temptation to slug the offender in the nose. Still, she was getting angry, so she seized Mia by the lapel of her jacket.

      “Now listen up, bitch,” she said, having heard the phrase in a TV show recently. “Keep your hands right