Читать книгу The Amours & Alarums of Eliza MacLean - Annie Warwick - Страница 6

Billy adopts an Unpleasant persona. Eliza encounters Puberty and is very cross; Richard, being impatient of such foul humour, instructs Eliza to take herself in hand.

In due course, and as planned, Richard’s dastardly character was killed off after a car chase ending in an unfortunate encounter with a B-Double, and with some relief he returned to London and the stage. He never could stand all that waiting around and spitting short bursts of lines out of context, sometimes without the person to whom he was talking having to be there. Eliza was present for this final makeup session and jumped up and down in fiendish glee at the sight of her father bleeding from the mouth and ears. Her cup was full to overflowing when the makeup artist kindly decorated her with a cut throat, which she wore home with pride.

Eliza returned from Australia after a year’s absence, with the stoic acceptance of a child who gets carted around on the whim of her adored father. In fact, she had enjoyed living in another country without the inconvenience of a different language. She got to see how a televised drama series was produced, to go on location when she was allowed, and it merely reinforced her opinion that this was not the career for her, although she remained devoted to the makeup and wardrobe departments.

Richard was no longer teaching drama to eager juveniles, having accepted a position at the tertiary level, and Eliza returned to her old prep school, according to his wishes. She tried again to talk him into sending her to a school for “normal” people, but he just stared at her uncomprehendingly and grunted dismissal. Obviously some kind of payback was imperative, and for the next couple of days she adopted a broad Australian accent and some peculiar expressions learned from a friend’s father.

“Are you busy?” Richard asked her, seeking her assistance.

“Yeah sorry, mate,” she said. “Flat out like a lizard drinking.”

“You’re still not going to join the unwashed masses,” he told her promptly, without bothering to look up from his task.

* * *

Billy was by now sixteen, and still attending the local comprehensive. Eliza was just eleven. In the beginning, she went around to his place to see him, and his mother fed her muffins and hot chocolate, in the hopes of saving her from starvation. Once, Billy’s father, Dave, fixed her bicycle, which had bent on the way over, when she rode over a tree root and did a spectacular somersault, narrowly missing two elderly ladies. She didn’t usually see Dave much, but as she watched him in his shed, she was struck by his incredibly neat array of tools and spare parts. She had seen that sort of order in Billy’s room, and tried unsuccessfully to emulate it in her own bedroom. Everything in Dave’s shed was labelled, organised, packaged and tinned.

Dave was kind to her, put a plaster on her knee, and even laughed and made a humorous comment. She wondered vaguely why Billy’s father made himself out to be so grumpy and hid himself away, when Billy was the opposite. It occurred to her that people were more complicated than she had thought, and felt a sudden shift in her brain which was strangely satisfying.

On one of her visits, Billy was actually in. He greeted her fondly, pulled her ringlets, and asked her about her year in Australia, being particularly interested in her father’s television role. But a generation gap had sprung up between them in little more than twelve months. She noticed he was irritable and snarky with his mother and sister, he smelled of cigarette smoke, his beard had gathered bristly momentum in the year she had been away and he seemed to have grown about six inches. This wasn’t her Billy; he had turned into a stranger while she wasn’t looking. Or, to be more precise, he had turned into a young man, and she was still a child. She didn’t like it at all, being left behind so absolutely.

“Billy’s changed,” Eliza commented to his mother.

“Oh, yes,” said Lauren, bitterly, “and not a change for the better.” Eliza looked up at her curiously, waiting for clarification. Lauren found herself explaining to an eleven year old. “He’s never home, he’s moody, he’s rude, he drinks and smokes, and he gets into fights,” she said, like a thesaurus under pressure. His mother also implied that his friends were of dubious parentage. “Somebody broke his nose for him, and he won’t say who. It’ll never be quite the same. I think you’d better stay away from him, love. I found a nasty knife in his school bag the other week. He’s not a nice young man at the moment. But you come and visit me whenever you want, okay?”

So Eliza visited whenever she thought Billy wouldn’t be at home, as she didn’t like him much anymore. She liked Lauren’s kitchen and the homey smells in it, and Lauren was one of the few women she felt she could rely on, but she was growing up, and in time her visits just came to a natural end. She sometimes missed her Prince, but she knew he was living on another planet, so being a practical child she didn’t grieve overmuch.

It hadn’t occurred to either family that the sudden departure of Richard and Eliza for a year would have caused any void in Billy’s life. Or that the sudden withdrawal of his mentor and role model would leave him at a junction, scratching his head and staring at a road sign with Continue as previously or Go straight to the devil being the two options.

Eliza continued to apply herself to the violin, the works of the classical composers being interspersed with jigs and reels as the mood took her. Her irreverence toward this worthy instrument enraged her teacher, but there was no doubt that Eliza had a formidable talent and practised more than even her teacher thought she should. In fact, Eliza wasn’t practising. She was as joined to her violin as she was to her arms or legs, and it was natural to carry it around with her and be continually learning new pieces, even while sitting on the loo and waiting for nature to take its course. Occasionally, the pieces she learned were the ones that her teacher had asked her to learn.

One would assume that with such a musical focus, Eliza’s destiny would be a foregone conclusion, but somewhere at about the twelve-years-old mark she decided she was going to be a clinical psychologist, so she began to read everything she could on the subject. It makes sense when you come to think about it. How many counsellors and psychologists take up the study in order to figure out why they are so screwed up? What better way to resolve one’s family of origin issues than to do your own therapy while studying the Craft?

* * *

She was twelve when puberty struck. In fact it not only struck, it knocked her off her feet and sent her rolling down an embankment into a ditch. And, from time to time, she lay there in the ditch, contemplating the two soft, rounded protuberances growing at an alarming rate on her chest. They were topped with little pink knobs which were easily irritated, often tingled annoyingly, and popped out against the fabric of her school blouse. Eliza, while in the ditch, also considered other strange phenomena with which her new body presented her. Bleeding every month was bad enough. And hair, where previously she had been as smooth as a hard-boiled egg.

“Dad, what does ‘horny’ mean, exactly?”

Children rarely advise their parents in writing when they are planning to ask an awkward question and so Richard took a moment to catch up. “I assume you’re not talking about the rhinoceros?” he said, to buy himself some time.

“No, father, and I don’t mean the timbre of the brass section,” said Eliza tersely. She was not disposed to be amused.

He consulted his own version of the Concise Oxford, the one he kept stored in his cranium. “In the U.K. it means a person whom one considers to be sexually attractive.”

She looked puzzled.

“And in the U.S. and Australia,” he continued, “it means a feeling of lust or sexual arousal.”

“Ah,” she said, at last. “Confusing,” she added, and wandered off without explaining.

Definition #2 seemed the most appropriate. She had heard it on American TV shows and from older girls when she was in Australia. By the time Eliza was thirteen, “horny” was what she apparently was, most of the time. It was far, far worse than the other changes she was going through. Being a task-oriented child, she found it extremely inconvenient, as there was still schoolwork, and music, and keeping an eye on the running of the household. It made her irritable and argumentative with anyone who made demands, or expressed themselves fatuously.

Although it is written that all teenage girls must be easily embarrassed and blush like crazy whenever a pretty boy walks by, Eliza felt relieved that she was attending a girls’ school. At that age boys had little to recommend themselves to her, being skinny, spotty, awkward, boring and usually smelly. They behaved like performing baboons whenever she passed, and her tolerance, not high at the best of times, was at an all-time low. She had an adder’s tongue, she was not afraid to use it, and the boys learned to give her a wide berth.

Richard emerged from his self-preoccupied state long enough to take note of his daughter’s developmental stage, and her bad temper. He also noted that her body appeared to have passed adolescence, collected its two hundred quid, and gone straight to Mayfair and a 32C cup. Because he did not wish her to instruct herself with the aid of a spotty adolescent boy, he took her education in hand at this point and he did not mince words.

“Victoria, do you know what an orgasm is?” Victoria being the form of address which usually preceded a serious talk. Some people would struggle with multiple appellations, but Eliza found them useful in a predictive sense.

She considered the question. “I’ve looked it up in the dictionary, and I’ve listened to my friends giggling about it, but even so I can’t say I actually know what it is.” No doubt she would have Googled it, too, had that been an option at the time. She had a precise way of expressing herself, due to having read a lot of old books and theatre scripts. She also tended, disconcertingly at times, to answer the question and only the question, so coyness, hints and passive aggression were largely wasted on her.

“I thought not,” he said, turning to the one of the bookshelves in his study, where they were busy reorganising a huge literary collection together. Richard had amassed all kinds of books containing explicit drawings and photographs of people’s naughty bits, as though fearful that some dystopian oppressive regime led by morality crusaders would order a library-to-library search and a bonfire in Trafalgar Square. Eliza, of course, had looked at many of these over the years and, because they were not forbidden, she didn’t find them particularly titillating, although quite interesting. He drew out an old leather-bound volume and opened it.

“See this bit,” he said, pointing to the clitoris which was part of a beautifully drawn display of female genitalia, flanked on each side by a ceremonial velvet curtain. “I want you to go to your room, use a hand mirror if you need to, find it, and play with it until you know what an orgasm is. I’ll be out for the next couple of hours.” Richard was not given to self-justification, and he probably had no idea that his instructions would not have been considered by the school social worker to be purely educational. Luckily for Richard, Eliza had not crossed paths with this worthy Bolshevik of the caring professions.

Fast forward to Eliza, somewhat later, lying on her bed, the hand mirror abandoned, and her face flushed with the efforts of her research. “Sweet Jesus,” she said, her latest attempt at the sophisticated expletive, although I doubt if any traditional Christian deity had much to do with the deliciousness of her sensations. Richard could have added, and don’t overdo it, but he didn’t, so Eliza took it as carte blanche to have as many orgasms as she wanted; her temper improved enormously and spotty adolescents continued to hold no lure for her.

* * *

Eliza attended a violin master class twice a week, which made her late enough to qualify for a lift home with her father. Richard, apparently not sharing her belief that she was bullet-proof, refused to allow her to walk home through the park, especially as the days got shorter. So she took a bus in the opposite direction and waited until he had finished for the day. If it was raining, she was forced to mix in the hallways with the drama students, trying to pretend she was nothing to do with their teacher, as one does at that age. Parents, no matter how celebrated and beloved, are just parents and an inevitable source of embarrassment outside of the home.

On one such day, when it was fine and she was sitting on her favourite bench, minding her own business, one of the academy’s male students wandered over to speak to her, as happened frequently, to her irritation. She had not seen this one before, and although she gave him her haughtiest expression, he seemed impervious to the hint. She had to admit he was rather beautiful, and strangely familiar. He said hello, and he smiled. At that point she lost control of her heart rate, blood pressure, and hormones.

* * *

Meeting one’s childhood friend years later can sometimes be disappointing, or the friendship can pick up comfortably where it left off. For Eliza and Billy it was neither disappointing nor comfortable. Thereafter they met occasionally and, apparently, accidentally. Their exchanges were either overly polite or blatantly rude, but it didn’t matter because the words they spoke to each other were just amorphous sounds, background noise to the humming wires of sexual tension between them. In an effort to regain a sense of normalcy, they each tried to imagine the other as they had been previously. They each tried to feel about the other as they had before, but neither of them managed it. The children they had been were other people, who now felt as unfamiliar as an old black and white photograph.

Neither of them was easy about the other being the object of libidinous desires. Billy, particularly, was appalled at the gonadal turmoil wrought in him by a fourteen year old. As well he might be. He had heard some of the young men in the class referring to Eliza as “jailbait”, yet he found himself looking for her, and feeling bereft if she failed to show up. At other times he avoided her, and the locality in which the MacLeans lived, as though a quarantine had been declared due to an infectious disease. She was apparently immune to his charms, since he could see none of the coyness or obvious flirting of the other girls closer to his own age. She wore her age like a suit of mail where other young men were concerned. Some tried to chat her up as she waited, and she would just look at them pleasantly and say “fourteen”. The word spread and she was left alone.

Some may think she was far too sophisticated for a fourteen year old. That is, unless one considers 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 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.