The Amours & Alarums of Eliza MacLean. Annie Warwick

Richard took the coward’s way out and offered a distraction. “Darling, I have to go to Sydney again, and this time we might settle down there, stay for good.” Her face took on that look he recognised. The one in which she was in pain, or frightened, and instead of crying or screaming, she braced herself and screwed up her eyes.

      “When?”

      “Late next month.”

      It would be winter in Australia. Starting school in the middle of the year held no fears for her, but the idea of leaving Billy behind, perhaps forever, was starting a wailing noise inside her that she feared would make itself heard if she stayed. So she walked slowly out of the study and went to her room. Eliza stayed awake for a long time that night, and a plan began to hatch itself. It must have continued hatching while she was asleep, because it burst out of its shell when she awoke next morning and she was impressed by its elegance and simplicity.

      Chapter 3 ~ Desire Most Felonious

      Illustrating the futility of imposing the modern legal system on the teenage libido.

      It was eleven p.m. on Thursday and Billy, resplendent in boxer shorts, was lying on his bed reading through a script for an audition. He had done this a few times already and was getting better at it, so he figured his luck had to change soon. A faint thump, followed by a scuffling sound on the porch roof beneath his window, failed to distract him. It was the sound of tapping on the window glass which eventually broke through his concentration.

      “Jesus H. Christ!” he said to himself, as he opened the window and let Eliza in. “Jesus!” he said again, quietly, and damning himself a second time according to the family prohibition on blasphemy. She was wearing jeans and a short top, nothing too revealing but oddly sexy for that precise reason, and he felt immediately uneasy. “You can’t be in here! Your father’ll have me thrown in jail!”

      “Who’s going to tell him?” said Eliza, shaking her hair out to effect removal of a collection of small twigs and leaves.

      “So … what do you want?” he asked, irritably.

      So far, Eliza thought, this is not going swimmingly. “I’m going back to Australia.” May as well cut to the chase.

      Billy felt both relieved and desolate. He didn’t say anything, which was telling in itself since he had the reputation of being able to talk under water with a mouth full of marbles.

      This was going to be harder than she had thought. And she hadn’t thought it through, not really. Because she was overwrought and sexually frustrated, Eliza burst into quiet, desperate tears. He was not proof against this in her, because she was a kid who hardly ever cried, even when she broke her arm or tore her leg open on a nail. But here she was, silently shaking, with tears running down her face, all the more poignant because she tried to hide them. He was over in an instant, and put his arms around her. Mistake number one.

      Her arms went around him and she snuggled into his bare chest, feeling the fine hairs tickling her face. If this wasn’t an older man, she didn’t know what was. She stopped crying, and turned her pretty face up to look at him, her eyes huge and tear-wet, lips pink and full and inviting. And of course – what’s a gentleman to do? – he kissed her. Mistake number two. He felt her response, and his control started slipping accordingly. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. He kissed her once more and definitely with feeling.

      There was a tap on the door. “Billy,” said his mother, with that uncanny sixth sense shared by mothers since morals were invented. “Is everything okay in there, love? I thought I heard noises.”

      “It’s okay, Mum. Don’t come in, I’m changing.” He sounded remarkably normal, considering he had a nymphette in his bedroom and his boxer shorts were no longer fit for maternal eyes. By that time Eliza had slid under the bed, holding her breath. What was tolerated at eight was not okay at fourteen and she knew it. Mrs Sylvester was fairly liberal, but she wouldn’t have wanted her son to be buggered in jail.

      Lights went out, and all was silent. At this point, they were both lying on the bed and he had his hand over her mouth because she kept trying to sing some verses from “The Creel” very softly in his ear.

      But the old one, she’d been still awake,

      When something that was said.

      I’ll lay me life, said the silly old wife,

      There’s a man in my daughter’s bed.

      The old man he got out of bed

      To see if it was true,

      But she pushed me down with her lily-white arms

      And under the coverlet blue.

      They both giggled silently and hysterically, climbing under the coverlet which was actually red.

      He kissed her again, softly at first. She lay entranced, with her eyes shut, and her breathing erratic. His lips were lovely, soft and insistent. He kissed her more thoroughly and she felt like sexually charged Jell-O and like she would never be able to make another independent movement or speak another word. His hand crept up under her top to caress one of the breasts which had been intruding on his thoughts and featuring in his dreams for some time now. She inhaled sharply as a sort of electric shock caused her back to arch and passed through her all the way down to her toes. Then, quite suddenly, he sat up, hauling her with him. He was breathing hard, his eyes were heavy and his boxer shorts provided little in the way of modesty.

      “You have to go. Now,” he managed to say, as if his life depended on it, which it sort of did.

      “Okay,” she said, “but I’m going away, and we may not come back so I may not see you again. Ever. I don’t want to be an inexperienced virgin anymore. I want to have sex, and I want it to be you the first time, even if I never see you again. Especially if I never see you again,” she added.

      He just looked at her, shaking his head in a more bemused than dismissive way.

      “Don’t answer me now,” she said. She was taking charge, like she did at home. Organising. “Dad is out all day tomorrow, I’m not going to school. If you want to come around after nine, it will only be us. If you don’t come, that’s okay because I know this is really weird and statutory rape and whatnot.”

      He still didn’t answer but his hand was speaking for him, stroking her arm while he stared at her with his mouth slightly open. Any marbles would have fallen out long since but he still had nothing to say. So she crept out of the window, across the roof and down the tree. All of which wasn’t as easy as it had been five years ago. She went to bed that night, not sad, and hugging to herself the memory of kissing him and being kissed, and knowing he wanted her. Even if that was all there would ever be.

      * * *

By eight a.m. on Friday, Eliza was second-guessing her own temerity. It had all seemed pretty clear-cut yesterday morning and last night: Eliza loves Billy but they can’t be together because she has to leave the country, so why not have sex with him and get devirginated at the same time? Seemed like a plan. But in fact he had not answered her, he had not leapt at the offer. And why should he have, since the minute the deed was done, a squadron of burly policemen would come and haul him off to jail, where his cute ass1 would languish with all the sex-starved criminals in a place where, by all reports, he would never dare to bend down and pick up the soap.

1 U.S. usage. ‘Arse’ just sounds plain wrong.

      But she bathed and dressed carefully anyway, applied perfumed cream to her skin, every inch of it. She put on a pretty sundress with thin shoulder straps, and a pair of lacy panties, omitting the bra completely which she felt would only get in the way (omitting the panties too would lack subtlety, she thought). She made up the bed in the guest bedroom downstairs with fresh sheets, and put some fragrant flowers in a vase on