Shannon did not give Hal time to answer. ‘Today. Tomorrow. Whenever you want me.’
‘We have not discussed your wages.’
‘Nothing. I will work for nothing.’
‘Let me give you some advice,’ Arthur said. ‘Never work for nothing.’ He mentioned a figure. ‘That is the going rate for a beginner. It is not much but is what I am willing to pay.’
‘It’s a lot more than nothing,’ Shannon said.
‘You will have to work for it,’ Arthur Nimrod said.
‘I’m not afraid of work,’ Shannon said.
That was the start of it. She really did start at the bottom: scrubbing, cleaning, polishing. She did the washing and hung it on the line to dry in the hot sunlight. When it was dry she took it in again. She ironed it and put it away. No sooner was it out of the way than there was another load. She vacuumed the corridors and bedrooms. She dusted everything in sight. If any of the other staff had stood still for a minute she would probably have dusted them.
There was no end to it but she didn’t care.
There were six others to share the duties. Like them, she slept in. Hal had left for Brisbane and it saved her the cost of the bus fare from Proserpine. She went home once a week. She was earning more than she’d made at the pub but she didn’t let on and paid her father what she’d been giving him before.
What she had left over she used to buy smarter clothes; she sensed she would have to look the part if she wanted to get ahead. It took a while but when she had the gear she put the rest in the bank. It was the first time she’d had anything to do with banks and to begin with the idea of them made her uneasy, but she soon got used to it. For the first time she felt she was on her way, although where that way would take her she had no idea.
There were days when she had to understudy the receptionist, who was the dour girl they had met on their first visit. The receptionist’s name was Hedley. She was happy to let Shannon take over most of the work but was less enthusiastic when Shannon asked her to teach her book-keeping, which was an essential part of the receptionist’s duties. Shannon, though, kept at her until she gave in.
It wasn’t difficult and she found she had a flair for it. She picked it up quickly.
Winter was the best time. The suffocating heat and humidity of summer were gone and the days were golden with endless sunlight. It was rightly said that if the Whitsunday coast was hell in December it was heaven in July and the tourists and their money came flocking in.
The Regency was full to bursting. It was a time for celebration and for building up the resources they would need to carry them through the hot weather to come, yet one day in the middle of the month Shannon took a ledger into Arthur Nimrod’s office and found him with a deeply troubled face, staring at the newspaper spread on his desk.
‘Something wrong?’
‘Read it.’
He pointed at an item on the front page. Shannon read that the railway workshops in Victoria and New South Wales were being converted to manufacture munitions. Shannon couldn’t see what it had to do with them.
‘What do they mean by munitions?’
‘Bombs and shells. Things like that.’
‘What does it mean?’
Arthur stood up heavily. ‘It means war.’
‘Against whom?’
‘The Jerries. Who else? They’ve been spoiling for a fight ever since the last one.’
‘Will we get into it? I mean, what’s it got to do with us?’
‘If Britain gets involved, and it will, you can bet your life we’ll be in it too.’
And Arthur with two sons of army age: William working the boats out of Shute Harbour, Thomas a mechanic in Mackay.
‘Not just the Jerries, either. The papers are saying the Japs aren’t too happy about our refusing to supply them with any more iron ore.’
Shannon couldn’t take the Jap threat seriously. ‘Surely they wouldn’t dare attack us?’
‘They say they’re knocking seven bells out of the Chinese.’
Maybe so. But Australia? The Jerries were another matter, of course.
‘If there is a war, would your boys be in it, Mr Nimrod?’
‘I fear they would be among the first to volunteer. I did the same in the last one so I suppose I can’t complain.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Wars are hell,’ Arthur said. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you different.’
‘I s’pose we’ll have to wait and see what happens,’ Shannon said.
The news stayed bad and got worse by the minute. In the Regency Hotel, the town, the whole country, tension was high and growing ever higher. In Arthur Nimrod’s office it had reached the point where Shannon could almost hear the air singing, like a taut wire in the final seconds before it broke.
The air was warm but not unbearably so in the first September days, with the humidity only just beginning to hint at what was to come. It was three in the afternoon on Sunday 3 September, when Shannon, with an hour to herself, walked down the drive into the town. A good number of visitors in their bright holiday clothes were strolling down the main street, poking their noses into shops, eating ice cream or sitting in deckchairs on the beach. The ebbing tide was glossy with reflected sunlight and she stood in a patch of shade and watched a group of small boys racing along the sand, a tiny black dog yapping at their heels. Their shrill voices and laughter hung in the warm air while overhead the fronds of the coconut palms rattled in the faint breeze. The peaceful, happy scene made the idea of war unthinkable, a violation of all that was right and good in the world. It must not, surely could not, happen. Yet reality said otherwise. The Germans were already rampaging through Poland and her instinct said that war was inevitable and that Australia would be up to its neck in it. Father was too old to serve, as was Arthur Nimrod, but Arthur’s two sons were not. Neither was Hal, still beavering away in Brisbane, and that thought was a cold shadow across her mind.
She had planned to buy herself an ice cream cornet as a treat but her sad thoughts had taken away her taste for sweets. She turned away from the beach and walked back up the drive to the hotel.
That night, sitting with Arthur over the wireless in his hot office and listening to the prime minister’s voice, she knew. It was war and Australia, as she had told herself on the beach, would be in it. Up to its neck.
Later she lay in bed and could not sleep. War. Such a small, simple word. But what did it mean? It meant disruption of lives, destruction of property and people, of the wealth of nations. It meant suffering; it meant death. Everyone who could read a book knew that. But was there anything else? Was there any point to it? Or was war like the plague, striking at random times and in random places, killing many of those it touched?
She did not know and there was no point thinking about it. But it was a long time before she slept.
The first effects of the prime minister’s broadcast were immediate and obvious. The holidaymakers packed and left. Within days the hotel was empty, the sign advertising vacancies ignored.
‘I fear we shall see a lot more of it before we are through,’ Arthur said. ‘Although why they are in such a hurry to go I cannot imagine. It will make no difference to the war.’
‘I suppose when people are troubled they want to get home,’ Shannon said. ‘It’s where they feel safest.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ Arthur said. ‘But how does the Regency stay open without customers?’
Hal, back from Brisbane, called at the hotel and took Shannon out for a meal. They went to a place overlooking the sea where they ate by lantern light on the terrace.
‘Why are you home?’ Shannon asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Officer cadet school.’
‘When?’
‘When they call me.’
‘What does your father say?’
‘Tells me to be a hero. Thinks it’ll look good on my CV.’
‘He never said that.’
‘It’s what he thinks.’
‘I suppose all fathers say that sort of things to their sons.’
‘Maybe. Aren’t you going to say the same?’
Shannon had a dismal feeling. She dreaded Hal going off to war. Of losing him all over again when she’d only just got him back after his three years at Oxford. The horrible business of war would probably mean he’d be away for years, all over again. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. People died in wars, didn’t they? Even to think of such a thing made her blood run cold.
‘I wish you weren’t going at all,’ she said.
‘So do I, believe me.’ He put his arms around her and drew her tight against him, crushing her against his chest. ‘Every day I’m away, I’ll be looking forward to the moment when I can hold you in my arms again. They’re saying it won’t last long, anyway.’
‘That’s what they said the last time,’ Shannon said. ‘They were wrong then; I daresay they could be wrong again.’
They ate baked salmon, with a mixed salad to start with and crème brûlée to round things off, and to Shannon the whole meal might have been sawdust.
He drove her back to the hotel afterwards and kissed her until the tears stood in her eyes and she thought her heart would burst with fear and love and wanting him not to go.
NOVEMBER 1939
Shannon
The letter said, I’ve got a week’s leave coming. I’d like to spend it with you. Are you free?
Shannon found Jess playing with a friend.
She stood watching them a minute. Strange how Grace running away had changed Shannon’s feelings towards Grace’s daughter. She’d discovered that showing her affection benefited not only Jess but herself, too, knocking a big hole in the wall she’d built around herself in the days when she’d hated the world. Now she felt only guilt about having been so unkind to the child who was hardly to blame for being Grace’s daughter.
She walked over to the two children.
‘I’m going away for a few days,’ she told Jess. ‘I want you to take good care of Dad while I’m away.’
Jess wide-eyed with pleasure. ‘Of course I will,’ she said.
Shannon discovered there were more advantages to being rich than simply being well off. People looked at you in a different way when they thought you had money in your pocket.
Shannon remembered how she’d felt when she’d taken Dragon’s helm for the first time, the sense of power that had filled her when she discovered how the touch of her hand on the tiller could change the direction of the yacht through the water. She had that feeling of power now. It was all nonsense, of course; she had no money at all, and no certainty she would ever have any. She’d been a barmaid and after that a chambermaid. Her breasts had been mauled by a drunk in the Clover Leaf bar. Her father was a labourer at the Proserpine sugar mill. Yet now people treated her with respect she had never thought to receive because she was with Hal and his wealth brushed off on her.
Confidence came with knowing you were worth more than the clothes you stood up in. It was a lovely feeling, because in her heart Shannon knew she was rich, too. Rich because she was in love with Hal Maitland, head over heels in love, and thought he was with her, too.
There was another big advantage to having money: rich people knew other rich people and that opened doors that would otherwise have been closed to the barmaid daughter of a labourer.
It was November and the hot weather had the north Queensland coast in its stifling grip, so they went to the cool high country of the Atherton Tableland, where Hal knew a wealthy woman called Agnes Withinshaw, a widow who owned a house overlooking a tree-lined creek.
‘Why would she put us up?’
‘Because she’s a family friend and in any case will be visiting her grandchildren in Melbourne. We’ll be doing her a favour, looking after the place while she’s away.’
The house took a bit of finding. They followed a steep and winding road up into the forested hills. The Alfa’s engine roared as they rounded a succession of tight bends, the gravel flying from under the wheels. The forest was dense and wet, the trees overhanging the road dripping with moisture from an earlier shower, and the air was fecund with the smell of damp vegetation. Here and there tiny rivulets threaded the surface of the gravel road and on either side the ditches were full. Higher up, cliffs of grey stone showed through the trees.
They met no other traffic and Shannon felt they were entering a lost, uninhabited world of trees and flowing streams and magic. And still the road climbed.
Had it not been for the name, fashioned in bronze and mounted on a pole, they might have missed the turning altogether.
‘Bungendore.’ Shannon spelt out the word as the Alfa turned on to the steep track. ‘What does it mean?’
‘I asked Agnes that. She said it’s an Aboriginal word. Means Home of the Gum Blossom, apparently.’
‘Are there many gum trees, where we’re going?’
‘I guess we’ll soon find out.’
It took another ten minutes to reach their destination. The stone-built house stood on the summit of a low hill and overlooked a steep-sided valley dark with shadow. Around the house there were indeed many gum trees, their bare trunks like the pillars of a cathedral, rising vertically in the sunlight. The air was cool and clean.
Shannon got out of the car, stretching her legs and staring around her in wonder. ‘It really is a magical place,’ she said.
‘They got the name right, too,’ Hal said.
Hal fetched the key from the shed where Agnes had told him it would be. He unlocked the door and they carried their bags into the house.
There was a stone-flagged hallway with a kitchen to one side and on the other a large living room, furnished with a leather settee and sprawly armchairs, had a vast window looking out on a world of trees. To the side of the window a door opened on to a veranda. The bedrooms were at the top of a flight of wooden stairs.
‘We’ll unpack later,’ Hal said.
They went out on to the veranda. There was a waterfall below the house – the water shone silver as it fell, its sound filling the air – and sunlight filtered through the leaves. Shannon thought she had never seen anywhere so beautiful in her life.
Hal stood at her side, pointing at the water falling vertically into the darkness of the forest. ‘There’s a pool down there. Agnes says there are platypus. If we go down after dark we might see one. If we’re lucky.’
Platypus or no platypus, Shannon already knew she was the luckiest woman alive. ‘How do we get down there?’
‘Agnes says there’s a path. We’ll explore later.’
Later…
Hand in hand, they walked back into the house, shutting the door behind them, shutting out the world. They were alone, woman and man, staring into each other’s eyes.
At that moment Shannon needed him to lead, so she waited, her hand inert in his. For a moment longer they remained unmoving, silently watching each other. Then, softly yet with authority:
‘Come,’ he said.
They walked as one up the stairs. Side by side, up the stairs. They went into the main bedroom. Light from the windows fell on the wide bed.
Shannon was trembling. She had always told herself that Charles Green island would be the place but the war and their uncertain future had changed that. She had thought Hal might ask her to marry him. She’d have taken him in a flash but all the same was glad he hadn’t, afraid they would have been tempting providence if they’d done it. No, marriage could wait but other things could not. Now was the moment; here was the place. She stood waiting, eyes closed. His fingers were moving on the buttons of her shirt. He was easing the shirt off her shoulders.
Afterwards she could not distinguish the progression of movements, the warm contact of hands on flesh, of flesh on flesh, the mounting waves of desire and longing, every movement invoking its own response, each part of it separate and distinct yet the whole fluid, joined together in the one, no longer man, no longer woman, but one.
It was a se
cret house in a secret place. It was a miracle of stone surrounded by a miracle of wood and water, the trees bending and dancing in a light summer breeze, the sound of the waterfall, the liquid calling of magpies; it was the magic of true fulfilment.
In the cool of the evening, while there was still light, they explored the land outside the house, the stripped bark of the gum trees crunching beneath their feet. At the back of the building they discovered a rambutan tree, its branches heavy with fruit.
Agnes Withinshaw had left a note, inviting them to help themselves. They took her at her word, peeling and eating the fruit as they walked. The nutty centres of the white-fleshed rambutans crunched between Shannon’s teeth. They found an overgrown path winding steeply down through the trees. They followed it, slipping, skidding and clinging to branches and protruding roots as they negotiated their way into the steep-sided valley. At the bottom of the path they found the platypus pool.
It was dark there, the shadows heavy, the trees, sheltered from the breeze by the slope, still. It was a place where Shannon wanted to hold her breath, to listen, to be one with the silence which the plash of the cascade, falling vertically from a rocky ledge far overhead, seemed only to accentuate.
‘Dark behind it rose the forest,’ Hal said. ‘Rose the black and gloomy pine trees.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s from a poem,’ he said.
‘About this place?’
‘About Red Indians in America.’
Shannon couldn’t see the connection, but never mind. ‘These trees aren’t black and gloomy. They’re not pine trees, either.’
‘True.’
‘So what are you talking about?’
She was prepared to laugh at him: something she would not have dreamt of doing only a few days ago. But now the world had changed, confirming what had been the real moment of change on the day they had visited Charles Green island together.
‘The Song of Hiawatha,’ Hal said. ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’
White Sands of Summer Page 10
