The Husband's Story

"No, it's both of them. Bruce is the same," Lue replied.

There were a couple more occasions when Bruce and Lue ran their sixty-hour trials before they declared success. Bruce invited Lue and me to their place for a Saturday barbecue lunch to celebrate. They lived in an older rather stately home in one of the more expensive suburbs, and Bruce explained that it had been left to him by his parents. They had been wealthy, which perhaps explained how Bruce and Anneke had been able to spend the time they had touring the country and settling into an alternative lifestyle on the farm.

Just how alternative that lifestyle was, Lue and I were about to discover.

We arrived and were met at the front door by Liberty, an attractive girl of twelve going on twenty who looked like a junior version of Anneke. "Come on through," she said. "Mum and dad are out the back with the barbecue."

She led us through a wide hall with pictures hanging and several more on the floor leaning against the walls. They were clearly all by the same artist and were mostly countryside scenes. "Uncle Martin paints them up on the farm," she explained. "Mum and dad bring them down here to the galleries. Aunty Bobby's pottery is out in the back room and we bring that down here as well."

Lue said she thought the paintings were very good, and she would like to look at the pottery pieces later.

We went out to the barbecue and were greeted with handshakes and kisses on the cheeks. Anneke poured Lue a glass of red wine and I said that I would join Anneke with a mineral water to begin with. "I'm driving, so I'll pace my drinking," I said.

"Good idea," said Anneke, with her hand on my shoulder as she spoke. She poured the glass and handed it to me.

After the food was ready, we took it over to the sheltered table. Anneke once again engineered the seating so that Lue and Bruce sat opposite Anneke and me, with Libby at the end. Libby didn't eat much and then announced that she was going for a swim.

She walked over to the swimming pool, peeled off her clothes and dived in. Lue looked across at me, raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Our yard is quite private, so we don't worry too much about clothes," said Anneke. "It's even warmer up at the farm, so we wander around up there pretty much as we like. But now that Libby is going to school down here, she's had to get used to doing things a bit differently. We did her schooling by correspondence when we were travelling, so she's a bit of a free spirit."

Bruce suggested that Lue might like to have a look at the pottery pieces, and they stood to go inside. I was rising to join them, when Anneke put her hand on mine and said "Are you really interested?"

I said that I was more interested in technical things rather than artistic ones, so Anneke said "Let them go and do what they want to do and we'll stay here and talk."

After they had gone inside, she said "Lue's a very bright young woman, isn't she? Bruce is quite impressed with her and he's very pleased to have her working with him. The two of them work together really well." I said that Lue enjoyed working with Bruce. She formed friendships very quickly and he was the best boss she'd ever had.

"She sees him as a really close friend as well, not just as her manager," I said.

"Have you thought about how close that friendship could be?" Anneke replied. "Have you thought about them having sex together?"

"What?" I was shocked. "I can't believe that Lue would ever do that!"

Surely there was no way anything like that could ever have occurred?

"No, no," she said . "They haven't done it yet. But Bruce would like to. He's very good, and I'm sure she would enjoy it."

Looking back later, I was surprised by how calm my reaction had been to Anneke's suggestion. After the initial shock when I thought she had said they had done it, I realised that I shouldn't be surprised by anything that Bruce and Anneke were doing. She went on to explain that they both had other partners occasionally up at the farm.

"It's good to have a bit of variety from time to time," she said. "Think about it."

I said that it might be OK for them, but it was not the lifestyle Lue and I intended to lead.

Anneke said "Well, don't just forget the idea. Like I said, think about it."

On the way home, I told Lue about the conversation with Anneke. "Bruce has never said anything about that sort of thing to me," she replied. "He's always been an absolute gentleman. Sure, we muck about a bit at work occasionally, but he's never suggested anything like that."

"Anyhow, if Bruce gets me, does Anneke have you?" she laughed. I said the conversation didn't get that far.

A couple of months later, we were invited up to the farm for a few days during the Christmas - New Year summer holiday period. As we drove in, we saw it was a beautifully lush piece of land, which had been a working farm in previous times. There was an old farmhouse, a large shed and some outhouses.

Bruce and Anneke's caravan was parked beside the house. It obviously hadn't travelled anywhere recently nor would it be going anywhere, as it was up on blocks. They came out of the van and greeted us, and set about showing us around the yard.

We were introduced to Martin the painter and Bobby the potter in their studios, which were a couple of the old outhouses that had been converted. There was also a genuine country backyard dunny. "Got a torch?" asked Bruce. "You'll need it if you have to go during the night."

Bruce helped us erect our tent and we set it up for sleeping. Then we went into the house where we met Misty in her office. "I write articles for several hobby farm magazines and a few rural newspapers," she said. Later in the afternoon, Jack came home. Of the four, he had the most 'regular' job. He was the superintendent of parks and gardens with the local shire council.

After dinner that evening, the others lit a couple of joints and we politely declined their offer to share. I had tried marijuana once and didn't like its effect. It sent me inward. Lue very firmly said she had never tried it and had no intention of ever doing anything at all like that. "Well, in that case you're probably not going to be all that interested in where the gold top are growing," laughed Misty.

We had a pleasant three days with them. I was really impressed with the things they were doing to become as self-sufficient as possible and we spent most of our time there with Bruce and Anneke, and occasionally one or two of the others, working with them in their vegetable garden.

If any actual bed-hopping occurred while we were there, they didn't flaunt it and I assumed that it was just an occasional thing. However, they made no secret of their relationships and they all seemed to be very content with their life there as a group. It was so different from anything I had experienced and I wondered how long this communal setup would last.

But we were invited back to visit whenever we wished, and the six of them stayed together as a group over the years we kept in contact. After a few years, Bruce retired and he moved back up to the farm with Anneke to join Jack, Bobby, Martin and Misty.

It takes all types.

**********

Work and family - life is good

Shortly after our first trip to the farm, we decided that I could quit my job and hang out my shingle as a consultant. Lue and I had been talking it over for some time and I had been networking furiously so that I had a couple of clients lined up. I was also able to do some contract work back with my old employer, so the future looked reasonably secure.

As it happened, the consulting practice became successful much more quickly than I had anticipated, so we decided that we should start planning for our family. Within the year, our first baby had arrived and Lue had handed in her resignation to become a full-time stay-at-home mother.

She took to motherhood like it was the calling she had been waiting for all her life. Our second and third babies followed on within a couple of years and then we decided that was enough.

I had read stories of couples where the arrival of babies caused husbands to become jealous of the bond between mother and baby and I couldn't understand how that could be. With us, our children drew us closer together. Even sex between us improved. It may not have had the excitement and wild abandon of the young love we had in our earliest days, but we had grown together and learnt together. "Care for a cuddle?", an invitation made by one or other of us, could almost always take us to bed for a most satisfying session of lovemaking.

And now, as new parents, we had new things to learn that brought us even closer together. Plus, as the kids made their way through pre-school and school, our social circle expanded as Lue met other mothers and we made friends with many of the parents who had similar interests to our own.

To cap it all off, Lue being home had given me more time for paid hours with clients. Lue was able to do all the administrative work and she was superb at answering clients' queries on the phone. Things couldn't have been better.

Life was good.

**********

Trouble in paradise

The consulting practice had been going well for about seven or so years when the contract I had with my biggest client company at the time came to an end and I didn't have a new client lined up to replace them. Our income dropped alarmingly and we both became worried. I was working the networks and cold calling without success. This went on for month after month and I was spending more time at home. I wasn't even doing anything useful while I was there, I was so dispirited and lacking in motivation.

When I was home, I started doing the admin stuff that Lue had been doing, which led to friction. When I did have paid days of work, I used it as an excuse to stay away from home for as long as possible. Lue became snappy as she started doubting that there was any way out of our difficulties. I could see her losing confidence and becoming much less outgoing than she used to be, but I was so wrapped up in my own worries that I didn't feel that there was anything I could do about it.

We both withdrew into ourselves as our worries increased. Instead of drawing together and sharing the problem as we had always done before when we had worries, we drifted apart. I had heard the saying 'staying together for the sake of the kids' and I thought that could never happen to us. But that had become our situation. No matter what our problems were, we would both do everything possible to protect our three young children and there was no way we could separate.

Couples who stay together only for the sake of the kids aren't going to make love. What we now had was unsatisfying sex, and even that only on rare occasions. And it was just going through the motions - nothing like the love-making of only a year before. Within a matter of months we destroyed something that we had built up between us over the years.

One day Lue said "I've got a job." Without telling me, she had applied for a position as Quality Controller in a factory. I made a token protest, of course, but I knew she had made the right decision. Either I had to give up on the consulting practice and get out and find employment in a regular company, or Lue could do what she did to give some more time for me to find some new clients.

"It's afternoon shift work," she said. "So I can get the kids off to school in the mornings and you can be home for them in the afternoons. It will work out well."

**********

Lue goes to work

Lue and I had almost no chance to talk with each other for the first week she was working. I was out early in the mornings and she was out in the afternoons and evenings. I was the combination parent, making dinner for the children and myself, reading books at bedtime, and doing all the things myself that mothers and fathers usually share. It was a week of new challenges.

On the weekend she made up for our lack of communication during the week. She was bubbling forth and I had to keep telling her to slow down as the words tumbled out. Her week had been unlike any working week she had previously experienced. The work itself was no great challenge compared with what she had been used to in her previous employment, but she found the people she was working with to be really interesting. There was Ben the foreman, Trevor the maintenance fitter, the men working in processing and the two Croatian women in the packing room who had migrated to give their children a better start in life at the expense of their own careers.

Lue had never before worked with people like these and she had really enjoyed talking with them as she made her regular rounds of the factory. Typical Lue. By the end of that first week she had brightened up noticeably, and within the first few weeks she was becoming a little more like the happy self that she had been before. Having one of the two parents happier raised the general spirits at home and there was a considerable improvement in how well the two of us related to each other.

People at work were telling her how much they appreciated how helpful she was. Ben told her "The previous QC bloke was a right bastard. You try to help us get it right, you don't just tell us that we've got it wrong like he did." The more they said that sort of thing to her, the more her old self-confidence returned.

As the weeks and months rolled on, I was still having no success with prospecting for clients. I remained dismal. Lue was much less concerned with our situation than I was. She was now bringing in as much as I was and, although we weren't going to be wealthy with our joint incomes, we were no longer headed for financial trouble.

Little by little as the months rolled on I noticed that Lue's conversations were less about the work and most of the people she was working with, and more about one of the men in processing. Ray was much the same age as Lue and he had worked on farms, prawn trawlers, fishing boats, trucks and in all sorts of labouring jobs before marrying a girl from the city, having a child and settling down in his present job. I commented that she seemed to be talking about him a lot more than about the other people, and she said "Ray's a rough diamond. It's just that his life has been so different to mine. I can't help but be interested in the things he talks about." I said I would like to meet him one day.

The opportunity came after Lue had been working there almost nine months. The factory was scheduled for maintenance and upgrading, which was to be done over a long weekend. All the production people were to take the Friday and Monday off so that the maintenance crew could work unhindered for four days.

Ben and Ray told Lue one evening that they planned to go out west to a property for the four days. They were going to camp out there and shoot rabbits on a farm belonging to a friend of Ben's. Lue suggested to them that they should borrow her car.

The 'car' was actually a kombi van. It was the model with windows and seats in the back and carpet on the floor and a sun roof. We had bought it because it was an ideal vehicle for a mum to transport her kids and their friends to sporting and social events. I had also built beds to go in the back, which we used when our family went holiday camping.

I suggested that Ben and Ray come to our place on the Friday morning, leave their car here and take the kombi. They arrived early on Friday and we worked together taking the seats out of the back of the van and putting the beds in. Lue was right: Ray was a really likeable bloke with an interesting background. "Actually, the place we're going to is near where I was when I was a kid," he said.

He explained that he had been in juvenile detention out there, and he'd had a rough time while he was locked up. I thought that it was a credit to him that he had got his life back on track and settled down.

Just as he had been the main topic of Lue's conversations lately, so too was she the main topic of Ray's conversation. For the whole time they were there, Ben hardly got a word in.

On Monday afternoon they brought the kombi back and we put the seats in. Ray again talked about Lue for the whole time. This man was infatuated with my wife. He even had his own pet name for her.

After they had gone, I told Lue that I thought he was really shook on her. "Why do you say that?" she asked.

"He talked and talked about you all the time he was here," I said. "He hasn't had anybody like you pay any interest in him before. He thinks you're incredibly smart and you don't treat him like he is a lesser human being. And he calls you Lucy. Where did he get that from?"

She said she didn't know, it was something that just seemed to have happened.

On Saturday after we had taken the kids to their various sporting activities, Lue told me that Ben and Ray were really grateful for the loan of the kombi and they had asked her to thank me too. "Ray and I stayed back after work last night to talk," she said. "We talked about those things he told you about with his time in detention and how horrible his childhood must have been. It really has left its effects on him."

This was typical Lue. She has empathy by the bucketful. I said "I told you he was shook on you. I think he's a bit of a lost soul in a way. He's really just a country boy down here in the city."

She was late home again the following Friday. The shift finished at 11pm and by the time she usually got away from work and made the half-hour trip home it would be 11:45. On Friday it was something like 12:30. I was pretty much asleep when she climbed into bed, and it didn't concern me particularly so I didn't comment. This was just Lue forming another close friendship at work just as she had always done, and as she had done with Bruce all those years before.

The next Friday Lue was home on time. On Saturday morning she asked me if I could please take the kids to their sporting activities so that she could borrow my car and go to visit Ray's wife Julie, who was in hospital. "Julie's got a problem with her pregnancy and I'll see if there's anything I can do to help," she said.

She came home about mid-afternoon. "Julie's OK,' she said. "They discharged her so I went home with them and made them lunch and looked after their little boy while Ray was looking after Julie."

"She's a really nice girl." Lue said. "We should have them over for dinner sometime."

I was awake when she arrived home on the following Friday. "You're late tonight," I said. She explained that she had been talking with Ray about Julie.

I had no doubt that what was happening between my wife and Ray was now becoming beyond just a normal friendship between workmates. It was clear from my conversations with them both that there was a powerful attraction between them and I was fairly sure there was a strong sexual element to that attraction. I didn't believe that actual sex could have occurred - Lue hadn't been staying out long enough for that. Proper sex to her is something to be savoured and taken slowly.

But I was also starting to believe that the way things were developing between them, it would happen some time soon unless I put a stop to it. We were almost two years into our 'staying together for the sake of the kids' phase and it shouldn't be a surprise under the circumstances if one or other of us found our interests wandering elsewhere. Lue had the opportunity and it was starting to look as though she could be taking it.

However, I had been distracted over the past month or more and now was not the time to confront their relationship. I had been focused on developing a proposal and working up presentations to a prospective client, and it was looking very hopeful. It was the first really big and encouraging thing that had happened in almost two years. I had been talking with Lue about my hopes to land this big one, and she was supportive and encouraging. We actually cuddled up in bed on the Saturday night and made love - not brilliant, but the best we'd had in a long long time.