The Amours & Alarums of Eliza MacLean. Annie Warwick

her upbringing. Raised by a male with a script and a persona for every occasion, she was probably in possession of many more snappy comebacks than the average thirty year old. On this occasion, though, she had assistance. Richard had noted the sudden rush of male students towards Eliza, and thought they needed herding in the opposite direction. The number of lads from his class alone who suddenly had to visit the convenience shortly after she took up her position on the bench, was getting quite ridiculous.

      “Eliza,” he said, with studied casualness. “Have you noticed that when you wait for me outside, boys keep coming over and talking to you?” She had noticed this but did not consider any of them worth talking to anyway, so they were just interrupting her reading time. She didn’t mention that she always kept an eye out for Billy, in case he should grace her with a word or two, which she would treat with disdain, of course. When her eyes met his, she could see the intensity in them at times, but she wasn’t sure what it meant, or what to do with it.

      “Yes, why do they keep doing that?” she asked, not really needing to be told.

      Richard ignored the rhetorical nature of her reply. “Well, my love,” he said, shaking his head, apparently sadly. “They are boys. They have a lot of testosterone and they would probably like to have sex with you. You’re quite beautiful, you know, and they seem to have noticed.”

      “Eugh!” she said, thinking of the specimens on offer, but pleased that her father thought she was beautiful, and, moreover, did not hesitate to tell her.

      “Do you want to discourage them?” he asked. He was quite sneaky, like that. He knew if he gave her a directive, she would do the opposite, so he gave her a choice. In fact if she had chosen the wrong option here, he would have taken each enthusiastic young man aside and informed him of the disadvantages of a custodial sentence in the middle of his tertiary education. Eliza was indeed becoming tired of the unwanted attention, and indicated that a little strategic input from her sire at this point would be helpful and well-received.

      “The laws governing statutory rape are quite clear,” he said, in a matter-of-fact way, like an Info-Bot at a science fair. “In England, if a man has sex with a woman under the age of sixteen he is considered to have committed an offence which may carry with it a jail sentence. Even if she is willing, because of her age it is treated as rape, presumably because she is not considered old enough to make an informed choice.”

      “What if a woman has sex with a boy under sixteen? What if both of them are under sixteen? What if two girls under sixteen have sex? What if—”

      Richard interrupted her recitation of the possible ways the law could be considered to be an ass or at least have a loophole. “Research it yourself, love. My point is this. The quickest way to discourage these lads is to tell them your age, nicely of course. You decide whom you want to discourage.”

      Most of the lads got the hint, and the testosterone vapours surrounding her thinned quite a bit.

      Thus Richard regained the attention of the distracted members of his class and his daughter stopped appearing like a bitch on heat surrounded by eager, panting hounds. Richard was certainly a negligent father in many ways, but he had a sixth sense when it came to keeping inappropriate suitors from Eliza’s maidenhead.

      Curiously, he hadn’t considered Billy as a threat to his underage siren, because even though he was as common as muck and therefore naturally to be discouraged, he was, well, just Billy, the kid.

      * * *

      “Dad, I need information about sex. I mean actually how to do it and so forth.”

      Richard did a momentary double-take and retrieved himself admirably. “So, reading and your giggling friends not doing it for you, poppet?”

      “No,” she sighed. “There’s only so much one can get from a dirty book and by the way what is that grot stuck to page eighty-three?” pointing to a worn volume which she had evidently been consulting. Since the substance in question was probably over a hundred years old, and its origins and nature highly debatable, he ignored the question and stuck to the main issue.

      “Annie, love … .” He used the fond daddy name for her; after all, his little girl was changing forever and using her baby name helped delude him into thinking this was just a phase, that her innocent childhood would be returning soon, and he could relax and life would go on in its usual predictable way. “Annie, love,” he repeated as he chose his next words carefully. “My advice to you is this,” he said, steering her towards a wing chair at the side of the fireplace, and taking the companion chair himself. She sighed in anticipation of a homily, oration or seminar since the invisible lectern, or was it a pulpit, had materialised in front of him and he was warming to his topic, seating the audience and so forth.

      “There are many ways to make love and many people to make love with. Don’t be in a rush. Find somebody you at least think you’re in love with and who loves you. Now, you don’t want to get that person a custodial sentence, so you might want to hold off until you’re of legal age. The other thing to consider is whether, for your first time, you want a bumbling oaf, or somebody who actually knows what he’s doing. I suggest the latter. So you might choose somebody a bit older than you, say ten years older.” Thus, the unwary listener might assume that the decision-making process in the MacLean household was quite democratic. In fact, if had Eliza informed Richard that she had a certain spotty-faced bumbling oaf in mind, he would have made no objection. And, shortly, said spotty bumbler would find himself facing an intimidating father politely suggesting that he stay away from Eliza if he wished to stay snugly united with his testicles.

      As far as Eliza was concerned at this point, this was all very interesting but it didn’t answer the question. She wasn’t sure what the question was, really, because she had asked her father years ago how babies were made. He had been happy to answer her questions, with clinically accurate detail and medical illustrations, which delighted her curious mind. She had watched soft porn with friends. They had found it in their parents’ linen closet in a shoe box labelled “cleaning cloths”. Perhaps they should have labelled the shoebox “brussels sprouts” or “parsnips” to ensure teenage-proofing.

      All she knew was, she had these feelings, and having sex with herself wasn’t really addressing the problem. It was way worse than that. Her heart kept racing, she felt as though she was in a fever all the time. Her loins burned like an almighty pyre on which her virginity pleaded to be reduced to ashes. It was a Horniness that no amount of self-administered orgasms would dispel. It went right to her bones, to her very soul. Its name was Billy.

      She tried to stay away from him so he wouldn’t guess, because she felt he would be able to smell it on her. Every time she thought of him her knickers got wet, and she was obsessed with the idea that horny emanations wafted from her every time she sat down or got up, no matter how often she washed herself.

1 Lest the reader’s antennae are going up at this point, it should be noted that, although Richard was a male primate with the usual instinctual responses to a female on heat, he was nonetheless in possession of his frontal lobes. Child sexual abuse and incest were abhorrent to him, therefore he kept his Inner Bonobo securely tethered at all times.

Richard looked at her unhappy little face, like a particularly lugubrious faerie, her lips turned down, and her eyes far-away. Being a lustful satyr, he had detected her faint and somewhat yummy scent1 and guessed she was already in lust with somebody. God! Why couldn’t he lock her up until she turned twenty-five? It didn’t seem fair that she should be a woman at fourteen, with a woman’s body, and the intellect of someone much older, but the vulnerable emotional circuitry of a young teenager. She wasn’t really asking him how to do sex, she was telling him she needed to, and asking him to approve. Ask your mother, he thought. Now where the hell was she? Yes, of course, that’s right: Not Interested.

      Actually it wasn’t true, as it happened, that her mother wasn’t interested. She just couldn’t seem to find a way to breach the polite wall with which