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 her daughter and her ex-husband had surrounded themselves, and she feared rejection as much as most people.
So 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,
