“He’s good,” said Richard. “He’s very good.” Eliza watched the show without a word, though she would have preferred to run away, play something difficult on her violin and forget about it. He was her Billy and now he was on the telly for all to see. She knew she had lost him because they never wrote to each other, but this made it all the more ridiculous that she should be pining over him, along with probably half the teenage girls in England, and now Australia. So she put him back in his Billy box, now tightly Scotch-taped, on his Billy shelf, along with the letters she had written to him but never mailed. After all, he had never written to her.
She went off to bed without comment, and Richard shook his head. That girl needs some distraction, he thought. A rather wicked plan presented itself to him, and he dismissed it hurriedly, before anybody saw it and arrested it for loitering. The thing was, she was nearly sixteen, and had not had a boyfriend since coming to Sydney. She brushed admirers away like so many flies, and was obviously in love with her violin and her books. For a fairly neglectful father, Richard was somewhat interfering where Eliza was concerned, and his idea kept nudging at him. Because he was not constrained by the inconvenience of middle-class morals, he saw no problems, only the benefits, of encouraging a liaison between Eliza and a young friend of his.
Teague Atherton was twenty-nine, an actor of course, being one of Richard’s friends, and married for the last three years to Annicke, a lively and pretty television journalist who was away quite a bit chasing the news. Teague loved his wife but he was both missing her and chafing at the fidelity clause, which Richard well knew. When he and Eliza were first introduced, in passing, she was carrying the ubiquitous violin and rushing out of the house, but she recognised an attractive male when she saw one. She gave him a dazzling smile to fix his interest until she could get back and make discreet enquiries. He stared after her in blatant admiration, his mouth falling open a little. Richard raised an eyebrow, but he obviously had to exert an effort not to smile in amusement.
“Sorry,” said Teague, snapping his mouth to attention. “Your daughter. Very bad form to drool.”
“She’s not quite sixteen,” said Richard pointedly, but enjoying having the fruit of his loins admired so wholeheartedly.
Teague looked a little crestfallen at that. “She seems older; I guess in civvies and makeup they all look older. I would have guessed about twenty, even.”
“She’s very grown up for her age, in some respects,” said Richard, carefully. What was he thinking?! But then he had never treated her as a child, so why start now?
“No shortage of suitors, I imagine,” said Teague, equally carefully.
“She had a boyfriend in London, and hasn’t been socialising much since. She needs to meet someone to make her forget about the other one.” He did not qualify his statement to exclude Teague, but let it settle as it was.
It can’t be said that Teague immediately twirled an imaginary moustache or raised his eyebrows repeatedly while smiling lecherously to himself, but an idea did start to germinate at that point. Young girls were not his preferred fare: they were cute, with their hardly-used faces, but usually boring and often irritating. This one, based on a few words of conversation and the humorous look of understanding in her eyes, seemed different.
Who was Richard pimping anyway, his daughter or his friend?
It can’t be said that Richard offered his daughter to Teague. It can’t be said that he actively encouraged a relationship between them. He simply invited Teague for dinner with him, his own girlfriend, and Eliza. Then he sat back and waited.
The dining room lighting was subdued, and the food and wine excellent. Richard knew how to cook when he chose to. Eliza, because she knew Teague was coming to dinner, decided to wear something feminine, and almost completely failed to look like a schoolgirl of not yet sixteen. The short, lacy vintage top made it appear that an occasional glimpse of cleavage was entirely accidental, while the flowing skirt emphasised her slim waistline. Her jeans, tee-shirts and boots were abandoned in her wardrobe, there no doubt to sulk and plot revenge.
Eliza was well trained in dinner talk, and had a wide range of topics with which she was comfortable, but that night she was conscious of an odd distance between herself and her own conversation, as evidently a different part of her brain had other ideas.
“So, Eliza,” said Teague, “Obviously you play the violin, but I’m wondering what sort of music you prefer to play.”
Eliza didn’t want to talk about her violin, for some reason. “Just the usual,” she said, brushing the topic aside. “Orchestral. A bunch of fiddlers, fiddling away with smoke coming out of their instruments.” Her eyes were on Teague’s chest, but not because she was shy. She pulled her gaze back to his eyes with some effort. “But don’t worry, the blood from our fingers usually puts the fire out. Do you play an instrument?” she added politely.
“Classical guitar, or at least I try,” said Teague modestly. “We could play duets, and reduce the smoke if you like.” Eliza smiled at that. Richard noticed neither of them was eating much.
As the evening and the spirituous liquor progressed, everyone relaxed. Eliza and Teague didn’t notice that Richard and his girlfriend had retired to the kitchen to make coffee, or that this exercise was taking an unusually long time. Eliza had taken her shoes off and was curled up on her end of the couch, talking with Teague about books, music, psychology. She even made a concession and talked about theatre and acting, occasionally poking him with her foot to emphasise a point.
He appreciated her somewhat cynical philosophy, her sense of humour, and her shattering straightforwardness. And, of course, her physical attractiveness, which she took for granted. She would have hated to lose it but otherwise she did not pay it much attention. When we describe someone, we might say that they are like this person or that, but there was no-one to whom you could point and say, that’s the type Eliza is. Her face still had a little puppy fat to obscure what was excellent bone structure, and she was likely to improve with age for that reason. Her smile, when she chose to use it, was charming, but it was her eyes – the same curious dark blue as her father’s – and her colouring that caught people’s attention.
Teague was attractive, well built, medium height, which suited Eliza’s five-two nicely. She had planned to grow, but hope was fading, and high heels were looking more desirable these days, despite the adverse effects on the feet and back. Teague’s hair was a light brown; he had a lovely smile and there was something about the curve of it, or the slightly flirtatious way he looked at her, his glance flicking from her eyes to her lips and back again as he talked to her, something that reminded her of Billy, but she tried not to think about that too much.
On Eliza’s sixteenth birthday Teague turned up at the house and dropped off a small parcel for her, obviously containing jewellery. She was not in, so Richard received it on her behalf. “Are you planning to be my daughter’s married lover?” he enquired, with his usual directness. Teague was taken aback but decided to weather it with dignity.
“If you have no objection, Richard,” said Teague, holding Richard’s gaze without any defensiveness.
“If Eliza has no objection, I can’t see why I would,” he said. “Of course if you don’t treat her like a princess, I will have to kill you.”
“Understood,” said Teague, and that was all that was said. Usually, in the old days, a man would approach a girl’s father for permission to pay his addresses, and perhaps this was a modern variation.
So in due course, after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, Eliza and Teague found themselves in
