Lizzie's Tale

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 3 - The Party

  The next week Julie called round to Lizzie’s place on Monday about lunch time. Lizzie was just hanging about, feeling at a loose end. So it was a relief to have a chance to chat to Julie. With the other people their chance to talk at the party had been limited. So they walked around the corner to the park where they sat under a shady tree to talk in private without disturbance.

  Lizzie was bursting to know more about Carl, she wanted to know how and when Julie met him, how serious it was, what they had done together and so many more things. She had never had a boyfriend herself and part of her was jealous. There was so little time, so much work to be done and she was not striking to look at, at least not the way Julie was. Not to mention that her clothes were often threadbare, her Mum cut her hair in a simple plain manner, and she had not practised all the ways of making herself attractive to men that most of her other friends had.

  She knew a couple other boys around her age in her street but the relationship was like brothers and sisters, they had never taken any particular notice of her and she had never taken any real notice of them. But she sensed that there were other boys out there who were different creatures, charming and sophisticated, like those she had read about in the great novels of English which she studied at school and read in her bedroom at home.

  Carl seemed like one of these sophisticated boys, resembling a figure from a novel, who dressed in striking clothes, drove a luxurious car and who knew how to laugh and make jokes in ways which charmed girls. So she had a hunger to know about him, and other men like him, who mixed with the likes of Julie.

  Julie herself seemed to bask in Lizzie’s enthusiastic excitement; yes, he was handsome; yes, he had quite a lot of other friends who were like him. She told Lizzie she had met him at a party that she had gone to with her parents, at a family friend’s house in Woollahra, a couple weeks before their exams. He was nineteen and working in an office in the city, which was part of a business owned by his father. He had invited her to come to the movies with him the day after they met. Her parents had given a guarded OK; yes, but she needed to be home an hour after the movie finished.

  Carl had complied with this direction like the perfect gentleman. He had taken her hand during the movie and had given her a kiss on the cheek when he said goodnight. And riding with him in the car was great fun. After that they arranged to meet the following weekend when he had invited her to come to the beach with him for the afternoon, saying that he was going with his parents and some other friends. Of his parents there was no sign but she had met some other boys and a couple other girls who seemed to hang out with them. They had all gone swimming together in the sea at Manly and at one stage Carl had picked her up and kissed her on the lips, and she kind of liked it, it gave her a funny feeling in that place.

  He had not tried to do any more but she could tell he was attracted to her and she knew that more would come soon if they kept going out, he had hinted at that. While she knew she had to be careful she was kind of interested herself to try some more kissing and whatever followed, not going all the way of course, but plenty was exciting to try before then.

  She and Lizzie talked wonderingly about what it would be like to go all the way. For both of them it had little more meaning than some imaginary pleasure, talked about in books and glimpsed in movies. Neither of their parents ever talked about this with them, but they had got the general idea from biology and other books, if not the exact details.

  Julie told her she had started to tell fibs to her parents about going out with Carl, she had not let on that Carl’s parents were not there on the beach that day. And now they had arranged to meet at the beach again tomorrow. Julie had told her Mum and Dad that she was going shopping in the city with a couple of other girls, when actually she was going to catch the ferry over to Manly to meet Carl and his friends for another day at the beach.

  Julie said, “I am kind of hoping you could come with me, wear your new bathing suit, the boys are sure to think you look good in that. But you must not tell anyone else about it or, you know how gossip gets around, next thing the story will get back to my parents. Then I will be grounded.”

  Lizzie felt a tingle of excitement at the thought of this adventure. Of course she would come, she would catch the bus into the city, saying she was meeting Julie there, to give Julie her opinion of some clothes and other things that Julie wanted to buy, and that they would not be back until late, as they would go to a movie while they were there.

  Next day they met in the mid-morning at Circular Quay. Julie bought them both an ice-cream and handed Lizzie a ferry ticket which she had bought for her. Lizzie felt embarrassed at taking things from Julie, but Julie said not to be silly, her parents were rich and they gave her plenty of pocket money, more than enough for them both to share. So Lizzie accepted.

  It was really exciting on the ferry, Lizzie could only remember going once before, with her Mum and Dad when she was little. Now she felt so grown up as the two of them stood by the rail with the breeze blowing in their hair and chatted. She noticed that several young men were paying attention to them as if they were suddenly beautiful, but then thought, Well, of course, it’s Julie, men and boys always notice her.

  At Manly they walked along the Corso until they came to the beach, where Julie pointed out her friends lying together in a group on the sand. Some of the boys looked very grown up and muscular, the other girls also looked grown up, wearing swimmers that really showed off their bodies.

  Lizzie realised that she was lucky to have a new swim suit as the old one was much too small and raggy; it did not fit her body properly anymore, looked sort of babyish, and the material was faded and fraying. But she felt self-conscious showing so much of herself to these almost total strangers in her new bathing suit. Carl was the only one she had met before and she had barely said hello to him. So, for a while, she left her shirt top on as well, to keep hiding her body which was very obvious in the swimmers. But then, feeling like a party pooper, she removed her top and lay out on the sand, sunning herself in her swimmers, just like the others were doing.

  All the friends seemed nice. There were six men aged from eighteen to twenty and two other girls as well as her and Julie. One said she was sixteen though, when Lizzie looked closely at her, she seemed no older than Lizzie was, and the other was seventeen. Julie went and sat with Carl and the two of them were holding hands. The other girls each seemed to each be with one of the boys. So that left three of the boys who seemed to all want to talk to Lizzie and entertain her. This made Lizzie feel very flattered, particularly when they all told her things like how good she looked in her swimsuit and what beautiful hair she had.

  Their leader was a big strong looking boy named Martin. He said he had come down from Newcastle last year, along with his other two friends, Dan and Will. Dan and Will seemed like his followers, rather than other men out for their own good time, laughing at Martin’s jokes and nodding when he talked.

  Martin’s Dad had a shipping business in Newcastle with an office in Sydney. Now Martin had come to Sydney to learn the way things worked here. He said he was just starting to get to know people and things in Sydney, but he went back to Newcastle to visit because his family and his regular girlfriend still lived there. He said it was good to meet some other pretty girls in Sydney, perhaps he would find a new girlfriend here. Lizzie felt he was hinting it might be her. She was flattered, though she did not know if she liked him enough for this.

  Lizzie found Martin interesting and easy to talk to, he seemed so confident. But there was something a little pushy about him and his friends seemed too much in awe of him. However he was well mannered and charming so she found herself enjoying his company.

  Soon they went into the water swimming. The rest were all really good swimmers including Julie. Lizzie was glad her Dad had taught her to swim when he was alive; she had been a good swimmer when she was little. But she had not had much chance to practice since then. So, while
she could swim well enough, she did not have the smooth and polished stroke to cut through the water that the others did.

  However it did not stop her having fun, she joined in all the games. She went with the fun of it when the boys tossed her in the air and caught her, even if it seemed that they tried to touch her in private places when they caught her. But she was starting to realise that this was how grown up boys and girls played and, if Julie did not object, why should she.

  In the mid-afternoon two of the boys went off and came back with a huge bag of fish and chips, along with big bottles of soft drink that they all shared. Then they turned to talking about their next outing together. The next Saturday night there was a party in Vaucluse that most of them were going to. It was at another friend’s house. “His Dad is seriously rich and he throws the best parties,” Carl said.

  Before she knew what was happening Lizzie was being pressed into coming along. She said, “I don’t think Mum will let me and I don’t have the nice clothes that the rest of you do.”

  Carl said, “Surely Julie can lend you a dress, you are both about the same size, and you can say you’re going to stay at her place and she can say she is stopping over with you, that way neither lot of parents needs to know. Then, the next day you can both go home to your own places and no-one will be any the wiser.”

  Lizzie felt a bit doubtful but now Julie joined in enthusiastically, “Yes let’s, why not, no one needs to know and what harm can it do. It sounds like such fun.”

  So Lizzie found herself agreeing and feeling secretly excited at the prospect, as well as at the clever trickery it involved.

  They arranged to meet at the City Town Hall steps next Saturday, at seven in the evening. It was agreed that Lizzie would first go over to Julie’s in the mid-afternoon, for a planned sleep-over. They would both get ready there. They would say to Julie’s parents that they were going to the pictures in the State Theatre in Market St and would catch the bus home to Lizzie’s place where they would stay for the night.

  Instead Martin and Carl would pick them up in a car at Town Hall and they would go out to Vaucluse from there. Carl had a cousin in a house in Paddington, with spare beds. So they would come back there, after the party, to sleep before they went home the next morning.

  Soon it was Saturday, and Lizzie was packing to go to Julie’s place. She felt a pang of guilt, she tried not to lie to her Mum, and this sneakiness did not feel right. There were often things she did not tell her, but she tried not to tell outright lies. And yet now she was doing just that. But she pushed it away, she was just going out for a good time, she was doing no harm. It was what everyone did at her age, easier than trying to explain to parents their need to go out and have fun with others