Housewife 1946 (New South Wales)


She had braced herself for it, knew it would be hard to face, 
but when the time came she broke down and became the soft and 
sobbing thing she had forgotten was in her nature. My God, he 
was so thin -- so thin he looked as if he would snap like the 
dry and brittle branch of a tree. The image she had carried 
for four years was all wrong. He was a tall man, lean, 
weathered, strong, with corded forearms and muscles in his 
cheeks when he clamped shut his mouth and narrowed his eyes to 
look into the distance. He was all that in 1940, a man to 
reckon with. In 1946 he was. . . he was. . . he was. . . not. 
Forty-one months in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp had 
changed her husband forever.

For four years she had been the boss. At first it had been 
desperately hard, and it was still hard. But in four years she 
had grown into the job, and she loved it. Running 2,400 acres 
of sheep station was exhilarating. It made her want to get up 
in the morning, the instant her eyes opened. Mornin', boss, 
the shearers said. Beautiful day. With a bit of luck we might 
get the bastards finished today.

But now Eddie was back from the war. Eddie was the boss and 
she was the boss's wife. The missus. Mornin', missus, the 
shearers would say again. What's cooking today, missus? Any 
more of those bloody good pumpkin scones? 

The journey from Sydney had been hard for Eddie. First the 
train, then the car, and all she could do was put him to bed. 
His face was barely recognisable. So bony, so skull-like. He 
looked like an old and sick father of the man she married in 
1937. Don't worry, the doctor said. Rest, the doctor said. 
Rest, care, food, and mostly time. He looked so weak and 
vulnerable. She left him alone in the big bed and slept in the 
guest room. She worried she would accidentally hurt him during 
the night.

Next morning she ran a bath for him, had to help him out of 
his clothes. The sight of his skinny shanks was a shock. And 
his penis was a little, shrivelled thing, timid, withdrawn. 
Had it always been that small? Surely not. Had something 
happened to him in Changi? Could malnutrition do that to a 
man?

She put him back to bed and sat on the veranda with a cup of 
tea. Two young shearers, not much more than boys, passed and 
waved, lifting their sweat-stained hats from their heads. 
Mornin', missus, they said. How's the boss? Be up and about 
soon? 

She watched the light harden into a cloudless day. The sheep 
were being herded into shearing pens down by the big shed, and 
she heard the whistles summoning the dogs to work. She 
couldn't stop thinking about Eddie's penis. It didn't look at 
all like an instrument for sex. Not like. . . not like. . . 
no. She pushed the heart-quickening, blood-heating image away. 
She had to get away from that. It was all behind her now. 
Eddie had come home from the war, and certain memories had to 
be boxed up and locked away.

The horizon shimmered in the heat. She had to put all that 
behind her. Three of them in nearly four years. Was that so 
bad? Her hand rested on her thigh, and the fingers curled 
involuntarily between her legs, pushing the fabric of her 
dress between her thighs. Yes, it was bad. One of them was 
very bad. 

The first time, the first one, in 1942, that wasn't so bad. 
Her cousin Elsie persuaded her to go to the dance at 
Coonabarabran. She didn't even know that man, and it happened 
in the bushes behind the dance hall so quickly it was almost 
over before it started. Feverish, messy, but done and gone, 
and nobody ever knew.

The second one was the man at the hotel in Sydney in 1943. So 
nice, so gentle. Dinner, and then bed. A soft, accidental 
collision between two lonely people, and nobody ever knew.

Then there was Andrew. In 1944 the only shearers you could get 
for most of the war were men too young to enlist and men too 
old, and you couldn't get many of either. In 1938 there'd been 
30 shearers for the season, but in 1944 there'd been only 
seven, and one of them was Andrew. Seventeen, tall, broad-
shouldered and narrow-hipped, with deep-set brown eyes and a 
shock of hair falling across them. Andrew was devastatingly 
good-looking, and he knew it. She couldn't stop herself 
looking at him, and he knew it. She went out of her way to see 
him, and he knew it. And at night, while she tossed in her bed 
in the big house, she thought of him in the shearers' 
bunkhouse, and her hands wandered furtively to places she did 
not want them to go, and Andrew damn well knew it.

The shearers never came to the big house. They had their own 
quarters, their own cook, their independence. That was just 
the way it was. It was the code. But Andrew came to the big 
house, appearing in the doorway of the room she used for an 
office. She looked up at him and did not ask why he had come, 
because she didn't want him to go away.

"Will you join up?" she asked.

"I turn 18 in three weeks," he said. "I'm joining the navy."

She nodded. They all joined up. She pushed the chair aside and 
turned hastily to look out the window, so he didn't see the 
tears in her eyes. They all joined up. Already she was feeling 
the loss of him.

Then he was right behind her. His arms came around her and his 
hands went to her breasts. She could feel his breath against 
the back of her neck. Looking out the window at nothing, she 
stood locked to the spot as he massaged her breasts gently. 
She meant to twist away, to stop, but she kept standing there, 
and soon she had stood there too long to do anything other 
than let things unravel.

His lips brushed the side of her neck and his fingers 
unbuttoned her shirt, and she knew it should not be because 
she was the boss and he was a shearer, because Eddie was a 
prisoner of war, because she was eleven years older, because 
of all sorts of things she should think about but couldn't. 
His hand slid into her shirt, inside her bra, bumped over her 
nipple, and she did nothing.

"Don't join up," she said, looking out the window. "Not you, 
too."

"I must," he murmured against the side of her neck, and for 
that reason, and for lots of reasons, she took his hand and 
led him to her big bed.

For the first time in her life she was fired with passion. 
Fucking had always been a thing done to her, not a thing she 
did to another, until she fucked Andrew. She was both appalled 
and thrilled by her greed and selfishness. The fire was fed by 
hot-blooded and dangerous fuel, and she cried out in 
exultation as a strong young man with a glorious body and a 
wild, stallion-like, nostril-flared enthusiasm pumped her 
vigorously.

Never had it been like that for her, but she didn't tell him 
so. Instead she propped her head on a hand and examined him 
for a long time as he lay quietly beside her, eyes closed. He 
was sleek, smooth, with his lean muscle and effortless power a 
rippled suggestion beneath the surface, dolphin-like. He was 
beautiful. He was delightful, he was delicious, he was divine.

This man, this boy, should be sculpted, she thought, and cast 
in bronze. His cock lolled on his thigh. She hadn't known a 
man's penis could be so pretty, a thing to admire. Carefully, 
scarcely daring to breathe, she reached out and slid her hand 
under it, knuckles sliding across groin muscles that felt as 
hard as steel. The plump cock rested across her palm. 

"That tickles," he muttered, eyes still closed.

As she watched, fascinated, it rolled in her hand of its own 
accord, swelling, thickening, growing, until it lifted clear 
and fell back on his abdomen, stiff, hard, hungry. Her mouth 
was open. She was mouth-breathing and she was filled with 
avaricious lust.

He flicked open one eye. "Again?" he asked, arrogantly amused.

"God, yes," she said thickly. "Again."

In the way of women who fall into the eyes of beautiful men, 
she lost her good sense and became foolish. Every night she 
begged him to stay, and every night he rolled out of her bed 
and went back to the bunkhouse. In the morning she'd find an 
excuse to be at the shearing shed, standing around awkwardly, 
swooning, mooning, and gazing like a lovesick, stupid girl. 
They all knew. All the shearers and the hands knew. They 
looked at her, said things to each other, laughed. It was a 
disaster, thrilling and humiliating. 

One evening, at about dusk, she could not bear to wait any 
longer for him to visit her in the big house. She went down to 
the bunkhouse. Faces looked at her. The boss was in the 
bunkhouse, and it wasn't the way things should be. A shearer, 
an older man, came wandering in from the shower room, naked, 
towelling his hairy chest. He walked up to her, his cock 
dangling. 

"Evenin', missus," he said. "He's not here. Something I can do 
for you?"

She fled, and behind her she could hear them laughing.

The season ended, and the shearers packed up to leave in two 
battered trucks. They waited, engines running, while Andrew 
came to the big house to say goodbye. He had been brought up 
properly. You always said goodbye to the women you were 
leaving behind.

"You could stay," she said, hating herself because she said it 
like she was begging, and hating that all the men in the 
trucks were waiting, knowing, while he took his leave of her.

He smiled in his arrogant way, waved his hand, and left her. 
The door banged as he swung cheerfully through it.

For a week she could not work. "Oh, missus," said Tom, the old 
hand, with heavy accusation and shaking his head sorrowfully 
as he stood at the door of the house. "God forgive you." 

She stood with her hand on the door, and her tears dried up. 
She was the boss and she was needed. The winter was coming on.

Tom died in 1945, taken by the 'flu. In 1945 there was a new 
batch of shearers. Shearers talked, and they knew, but she had 
recovered her senses and she was a tough boss that season. 
Nobody touched her. Nobody got near her.

Nobody got near her until the shearing was over and the men 
were ready to leave. One of the truck drivers approached her 
warily. "Sorry, missus," he said. "Over at Borrowdale Station, 
the boys said to tell you young Andrew was killed."

She looked at him icily, because ice was in her heart. "Yes?"

"A Jap plane hit his boat. He was killed. Lots of them were."

"Yes, well, thank you," she said, and she went inside, drew 
the curtains, and cried bitterly and painfully until morning.

She cried so much she was surprised she had tears left for 
Eddie when he came home in 1946. But when she saw Eddie she 
cried. What had been done to him deserved a lake of tears. 

She sat on the porch, looking at the heat haze on the horizon. 
It was early summer, and the shearers had come again to take 
the wool. There were plenty of shearers this season. The war 
was over. Men were back at work on the land.

She rose from the chair and went to Eddie. His eyes opened as 
she stood at the side of the bed. She took off her clothes and 
stood naked.

Eddie looked at her, eyes wide, surprised, even apprehensive 
and fearful.

"Yes," she said soothingly. "I know. I promise not to hurt 
you."

She slid into the bed with him and wrapped an arm across his 
thin body. "You're back home, Eddie," she said. "Everything 
will get better now."

ENDS