Epilogue

INTRODUCTION TO READERS

WET ENCOUNTERS

is a novel-length story of love, lust and betrayal that takes place on a tropical Pacific island during the second half of the twentieth century.

It's seventeen chapters pivot around a single event that takes place when two people are forced to take refuge in an abandoned cabin when they are cut off by rising floodwaters.

During the three nights they spend together, they discover things about themselves and the regular occupants of the cottage that will destroy their previously stable lives.

The big question is, can anything be saved from the wreckage that remains after the floodwaters recede?

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - EPILOGUE

"Have you forgiven me yet, Matthew?" the voice broke into my reverie as I sat on my spacious front verandah overlooking Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Only two people called me Matthew: my mother and my wife. Oh, and my ex-wife, had done, too; but only when she wanted something.

It was my ex-wife who was sitting beside me and who was using my full name. It had to be her because the other two were gone. My mother had died way back before what I had locked in my mind as 'The Mill Manager's Hut Affair'.

My wife, Juanita, had passed away three years ago. We'd lived together for eighteen months, waiting for our respective divorces to come through before we could marry. And our marriage had lasted for forty-three wonderful years. We weren't only in love, we remained lovers until the day before she died, suddenly, from a massive stroke.

Our philosophy had been, 'If you don't use it, you'll lose it'; and we'd had no intention of losing it. We were also true soul mates.

From the first night we spent together, we could read each other's mind. We were so closely attuned to each other that we would both say the same thing at the same time. Our thoughts were synchronised. Even when making love, we could remain locked together meditating - mind-melding, we called it - for long periods before suddenly climaxing together. My God, how I miss her.

Speaking of my wife and ex-wife brought to mind one other person who had called me Matthew. But in all the years I had known James - my wife's ex-husband - he only ever used my full name twice. The first time was just after I'd caught him in bed with my wife - my now ex-wife - and the second time was only a month before he died. That was about ten years ago. On that occasion, he asked me exactly the same question my ex-wife - his widow - was now asking.

"I forgave you many years ago, Liz," I said, looking over at her. "It's the forgetting I've always had trouble with."

Except for her name, I gave her the same answer I had given James.

It's funny how things work out. On the day I had delivered my adulterous wife to James' doorstep, he and I had been transformed from being close friends to almost complete strangers.

While the agreements we had negotiated surrounding the exchanging of our wives and children and about the divorce settlements had been amicable enough, I found it impossible to shake his outstretched hand.

"I shook your hand when we introduced ourselves when Liz and I first moved on to Arovo, James," I said. "Since that day, a handshake has never been necessary; either when we've met up or when agreeing to anything. Up until last Wednesday evening, I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that your word was your bond; that you would never go back on it under any circumstances. Since the discovery of your disloyalty to me and to your wife, however, I wouldn't put any credence whatsoever on either your word or your handshake.

"Everything we have agreed concerning this matter - and anything we might agree to in the future - will be on paper and our signatures will be witnessed by an independent third party."

"I hope that, one day, we'll be able to get over this and that we'll be the friends we once were," he said.

"Friends?" I exploded. "I thought we were more than friends. I thought we were mates. I thought that, no matter what, we'd each have the other's back. The only part of that that I got right was the part about the back. Which, as it turned out, was the place you found to be an excellent location to plunge your knife.

"No," I said, "I don't think we'll ever be friends again, James. We might be thrown together because of our children and we might have to be civil to each other when we find ourselves in the same room. But I doubt that we'll ever be friends again. And, as for being mates, that train has well and truly left the station and the track has been torn up behind it."

There was a time during the early part of our relationship breakdowns that I would have gladly packed up what little I owned and moved on. New Guinea was that sort of place in those days. There would always be a job somewhere for even a half-competent plantation manager. It was the need to stay near my girls that made me stay. That, and the fact that I didn't have it in me to wrench John away from his father. Being a year older than my Sarah, he would probably have felt the separation more than she and Tracey would have done.

So, it was our children who kept us from drifting too far apart; in terms of distance, at least.

I'd learned from my lawyer that we had a couple of options available to us when it came to our respective divorces. The first, was quicker but it involved one party suing the other for divorce on the grounds of one of several faults; in this case, adultery. Should we have decided to go down that path, we could have been divorced in under twelve months. The downside to that would have been that every sordid detail of the cases would have become public knowledge. The fact that we were planning on exchanging our partners would have added just enough scandal to the proceedings to make them newsworthy.

The second option was to take advantage of the recently introduced, 'no-fault', divorce legislation under which we could sue for divorce after a separation of twelve months.

During a short meeting over at James' and Liz' place, all four of us agreed to pick box number two. The wait was agonising but it guaranteed us a small measure of anonymity.

Due to the scheduling of the Circuit Court system that operated in the Territory at that time, both divorces became final on the same day: May 28, 1973.

We all flew to Rabaul - the major centre for the New Guinea Islands Region - for the hearings, a process that could have been difficult had not the twelve-month wait allowed a scab to begin forming over our wounds.

In spite of the fact that we had agreed that our wives would walk away from their respective husbands without the need for a division of assets, I set up an account in Liz' name into which I transferred the five thousand dollars I had received as my share of the initial disbursement of funds from my late mother's estate. I had been going to use part of it to buy her a new car to replace the old Volkswagen she'd been driving around for the past year or so but figured that the money would give her a measure of security in case things didn't work out with James. She'd at least have enough for her and the girls to fly to Australia and get herself settled somewhere. I assumed that the somewhere in which she'd end up would be the coastal township in which she had grown up.

At almost the same time, James arranged for an account to be set up in Juanita's name into which he deposited fifty thousand dollars.

He explained to Juanita, in a hand-written letter, that the money represented her share of the profits their plantation had generated during their seven-year-long marriage. It was only fair, he wrote, that she should receive something for all her hard work and for the sacrifices she had made during that time.

He also apologised to her for the hurt he had caused her by his actions and expressed the hope that, one day, she would be able to find it in her heart to forgive him.

Both gifts were made within a day or two of each other and had been decided upon without consultation or discussion. While James' gesture was generous, it still left him with his plantation and his share of the profits. Mine, on the other hand, left me skint. On the day I arranged for the money to be transferred over to Liz, I also arranged for an overdraft to carry me through until my next salary cheque hit the bank. The only thing I kept back was the Volkswagen. I'd bought that for my wife. And Liz was no longer in that role. The little Beatle now belonged to Juanita.

I knew there was still a bit of money to come through from Mum's estate but had no idea how much it would be or how long the process would take. It could be months. Or it could be years. The executor had told me that it was messy.

The fact that Liz had been correct in her assumption that she was pregnant at the time of our split helped with the healing process. I looked after their plantation and Juanita and I looked after the girls when James took her to Rabaul for the delivery of their son, Robert Matthew, who arrived on April 30, 1972. During the whole of his life, he was never known as anything but Bobby. There was never any doubt that he was James' son. He was the spitting image of his father.

Robert, it turned out, was a traditional family name. I assumed that the Matthew part was the same. It wasn't until James and I were sitting on the deck of my Queensland home, many years later, that he told me that I was only partly correct. It turned out that tradition dictated that the second name given to a second son was always that of his father's closest friend. My eyes watered a bit upon hearing that. But I think it was more from the dust stirred up by a gust of wind than from anything else.

It turned out that Juanita's premonition that she was pregnant when we crossed back over the creek on that fateful Saturday morning was also accurate.

Amanda Francisca Elizabeth came into the world on August 10, 1972.

I understood why Juanita had chosen the name, Amanda. It was a popular name of the time. I could also understand Francisca. It was her mother's name. But I really had no idea why she would insist on also giving our beautiful blonde daughter the name of the woman who had been responsible for the breakup of both our marriages.

"In spite of everything that had happened," Liz said when I asked her about it while we were sitting together on the deck that afternoon, "we loved each other. We were as close as sisters - perhaps even closer - and we came to understand that the events of the past were the best thing that could have happened to both of us. As time passed, the gap that had opened between us narrowed and we eventually became closer than we had been before my affair with Jim."

Juanita and I were married in Rabaul on May 30, 1973, just two days after our divorces became final. The ceremony was witnessed by James and Liz. Immediately afterwards, we witnessed their wedding ceremony. There was no big fanfare or hullabaloo. We had a quiet dinner afterwards. Our only guests were our five children.

There was no time for honeymoons as we were in the middle of our major harvest period so we boarded the plane early the next morning and headed back to Bougainville and our regular routine of early morning starts and late afternoon finishes, broken by weekend socialising and infrequent trips to town for shopping and balls and such.

It was only a few weeks after we returned from Rabaul that I received a visit from Reg McKenzie, the owner of Takuan Plantation. I'd heard a rumour back before my mother had died that he was thinking about selling up and retiring to Australia. So, while I had been down in Sydney attending her funeral, I'd managed to arrange for a couple of people to put up the money I needed to buy the place, should it prove suitable.

I knew how much he was asking - eighty thousand, walk-in-walk-out - and how much extra money I would need to run it for a year or two. I also knew that both Reg and his wife Betty were barely functioning alcoholics and that the property wasn't producing anywhere near its potential. In real estate terms, that made it the worst house in the street; and the street upon which it was located was among the best in the area.

On my way back from Mum's funeral, I had stopped over in Port Moresby to talk with the bank that held Reg's loan. As a World War Two veteran, he had managed to get a soldier settler's loan at very low interest and generous terms. It turned out that the bank wasn't happy with his less than regular repayment patterns and they were very close to calling in its loan. Needless to say, I let them know that I was interested in the property and would consider buying out the mortgage should they decide to pull the plug.

When I returned to Bougainville, I drove around to Takuan to see Reg. Both he and Betty were well into their first bottle of vodka. With his permission, I conducted an inspection of their plantation. Based on my assessment of the poor condition of the estate itself, the buildings - including the house - and the machinery, I made an initial offer of seventy thousand dollars.

Reg didn't seem to think that my offer was a serious one.

"Fuck off and don't come back until you've got a hundred and twenty thousand in your fucking claw!" he said

I told him to get back in touch with me when he was both sober and willing to talk turkey.

Now, two and a half years later, here he was. His being sober part was too much to expect but he was in a selling mood. And the fact that he had come to me told me he was desperate. I invited him in for a cup of tea.

"I've been thinking about your offer," he said as if it was only made a few days ago, "and I might have been a bit hasty in rejecting it so quickly. If you're still interested, I might be prepared to come down to a hundred thousand."

Apart from thanking him for keeping me in mind and arranging to go over and do another walk around, I didn't respond. We talked about the weather and the quality of the cocoa and the weather and the political climate in the county as they worked towards independence and the weather. But I steered well clear of talking about either his plantation or the money he was asking for it. I shuddered to think about what condition the property would be in thirty-odd months after my initial inspection.

"The game is afoot, my dear," I said to Juanita as she entered the room after hearing Reg's old Toyota Stout leave. She knew I'd had my eye on Takuan for some time. "Would you and Mandy like to come into town with me? I've got to get to a telephone so can talk to someone at the bank that holding Reg's loan. I've got a sneaking suspicion that they're about to pull the pin on his loan and he's trying to put some money together before everything turns to shit."

"No," she said, "You go. I need to be here when Liz drops John off. This being a mother of a school-aged child certainly cramps one's style."

Half an hour later, I was sitting in the office of the Government Labour Officer - a fishing mate - talking to my contact at the Commonwealth Development Bank. By the time we'd ended our conversation, I knew my suspicions had been correct. The upshot was that, while Reg could offer to sell his property, the bank would have to approve the deal.

I told him that, while I had no idea how much was outstanding on Reg's loan, I put the value of the property, in its present condition, at somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand dollars. I also told him that my estimate was based on an inspection I had conducted two-and-a-half years earlier and the knowledge that it would have deteriorated since then. I told him that, should I decide to make an offer, it wouldn't be any higher than sixty thousand.

In the end, that's what I paid for the place.

As it turned out, however, I didn't need to pull in any outside money. My late mother's estate was finally settled and each of the three beneficiaries - my brother, Rick, my sister, Anne, and me - came out with three hundred and twenty thousand dollars each.

I pulled one hundred and twenty thousand out of my share as my budget to buy and operate the plantation for the first two years. I expected that, at the end of that time, it would be self-supporting and turning a reasonable profit.

The remaining two-hundred thousand, I turned back over into the hands of the broker who had been providing wise investment advice to my mother. I gave him instructions to generate the highest return for the least risk.

The first job that had to be done after the contracts had been exchanged was to demolish the shack that Reg and Betty had been living in and build a proper, comfortable homestead. It wasn't anything flash - in fact, it was built in a similar style to that which we'd been living in on Arovo; only with a few design improvements, such as an ensuite bathroom off the master bedroom, the addition of a fourth bedroom and a more secure entry.

I gave my notice to my employer as soon as my offer had been accepted. I stayed on at Arovo, though - managing both properties - until our new home was finished. This also gave them time to recruit a new manager.

With James' permission, I upgraded the track between the main access road and his homestead. I also strengthened the section of track between his home and the new house we were building on Takuan. Those roadworks allowed me to avoid having to make the circuitous journey from Arovo, through Araka - the company's central station - and back up to Takuan,

While the new track proved to be an asset during the time I was managing both Arovo and Takuan, it proved invaluable in the years that followed. That right of way gave our children free movement between our two properties. They became members of one big family with two sets of parents.

As predicted, it took me two years to bring Takuan up to its full production potential. It seemed, however, that the gods had started smiling down on me from the time I had left home to go and rescue Juanita. Everything seemed to fall into place at the right time. Juanita and I had fallen in love 'at the right time' to combat the infidelity of our spouses. Mum's estate had been finalised 'at the right time', giving me access to the funds needed to buy Takuan when it came onto the market; once again, 'at the right time'. Then, the prices we were receiving for cocoa started to climb from the relatively stable figure of eight hundred dollars per ton to up over one thousand dollars per ton. By the time Takuan was in full production, the price had risen to more than fourteen hundred dollars per ton. With a few minor fluctuations, it continued its upward trend for the next ten years.

At the end of the first two years, production had doubled and, with the increased price we were receiving, our revenue topped out at two-hundred-and-ten-thousand dollars. As much of our after-tax profit as we could manage was transferred to our bank in Australia. We knew from what we had seen happening in other newly-independent nations that our assets could be frozen at any time.

James and I sat down with Harry Nettles sometime in 1984 to discuss the political unrest that was growing on Bougainville.

The country that had previously been known as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea had received its independence back in 1975. Sadly, the rot started to set in very quickly. As had been the case in many decolonised nations, the rule of corruption replaced the rule of law. The rot permeated through the whole of the new nation's political and government ranks.

On Bougainville, the nations' political instability had spawned a revolutionary movement, the aim of which was to separate the mineral-rich island from the remainder of the country now calling itself Papua New Guinea.