Message-ID: <45791asstr$1071069008@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: X-Original-Path: extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!drn From: DrSpin X-Original-Message-ID: X-ASSTR-Original-Date: 10 Dec 2003 02:27:29 -0800 Subject: {ASSM} Housewife 1946 (NSW) - 4 of 8 Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 10:10:08 -0500 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: dennyw, RuiJorge, hoisingr Her husband is a prisoner-of-war, and she has to learn to run the sprawling sheep station on her own. It's a lonely life, and into it comes a young, good-looking shearer who will soon be going off to war himself. Housewife 1946 (New South Wales) by Neil Anthony/DrSpin --------------------------------------------------------- * These stories are published here by kind permission of Ruthie's Club, where they appeared stunningly illustrated by Sergio Hugo Castro under an exclusivity period for six months. Ruthie's Club (http://www.ruthiesclub.com) carries about 90 more of my new stories. * The author welcomes comments and opinions from readers and is invariably motivated to respond. Write to: neilanthony@austarnet.com.au * DrSpin's Standard Disclaimer: I write and you read, if you care to. That's all there is to it. Any reader who is offended should not have been here in the first place. --------------------------------------------------------- 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 Edited by Nat and Ruthie. Neil Anthony/DrSpin can be contacted at neilanthony@austarnet.com.au -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ------ send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderators: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |ASSM Archive at Hosted by | |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d; look for subject {ASSD}| +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+