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 the dressing table. Candles could be a bit of overkill. After all, it wasn’t a seduction, it was a favour, almost a business transaction. That was a lowering thought, and once more she was struck by her failure to think things through. Whether she knew it or not, what she really hoped was that Billy would want to make love to her, to be unable to resist making love to her, in spite of the risks. “Silly cow,” she told herself, crossly.
* * *
For Billy, on Thursday night, sleep had not come easily even though Billy had, using his damp towel to protect the bed linen. Bloody thing refused to go down for what seemed like ages after she left. He was aware that the new improved Eliza stirred his loins, but until she was in his arms he’d had no idea how much. How close he had come to taking her in his bed, with his parents and sister sleeping nearby, freaked him out completely. And that was before she even mentioned that she had chosen him to deflower her.
Now he was being asked to decide whether he wanted to make love to a glorious little creature with a figure and face like a voluptuous faerie queen and, from what he could discern, a highly responsive libido. If he wanted to? Bloody hell. He wanted to so much he thought he was going to die of a stroke, or a heart attack. Or just spontaneously combust because something was on fire in his loins and he couldn’t put it out.
There was no force on earth or in heaven – with the exception of a visit from Eliza’s father or the local constabulary – that was going to stop him from ignoring his certain doom and turning up at Eliza’s door next morning.
By eight a.m. on Friday the household had emptied magically and was making its reluctant way to work on the tube or in a tradesman’s van.
* * *
I’ve always found a certain frustration in books which, just when things are starting to get interesting, scoop up the reader and trundle him off to parts unknown, which the author feels it incumbent upon her to share, or perhaps merely because she is a sadist. It leaves one with the choice of ploughing through the tangent, or leafing frantically past it until the promised sex scene or denouement is reached, then having to decide whether to go back and read the tangential information in case it is germane to the whatzername. The dilemma, relative to the above, is that the household of Billy Sylvester, aspiring actor and potential despoiler of a maiden of tender years, has been mentioned, but the reader has not yet been properly introduced. One feels that the introductions should be performed tout de suite, in view of the rather more intimate matters to be disclosed very shortly.
Billy’s dad, David, married Billy’s mum, Lauren, a pretty brunette, in the early 1970s when they were both twenty-something. Lauren’s own mum, Lily, was the person to whom Billy related most strongly. Lily was a lot of fun with a wicked sense of humour. She had been an actress for a while on the stage in Edinburgh, and was devoted to
