White Sands of Summer

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘How did you get to know Dermot Black?’

  ‘I told you. He was the guy wanted us to do a special banquet for him. I took a chance, did a variation on a traditional dish – century-old egg – added a touch of French magic to it, and he loved it. He was so impressed that he called me in to thank me. That was the start of it.’

  All their lives were ruled by chance. Without a horse being ridden up the steps into a bar, Shannon would almost certainly never have been born. Stealing Charlie Hong’s watermelons had led to her first meeting with Hal Maitland. A chance remark made during the war had put her feet upon the road to riches. Chance; always chance. And now Jess’s friendship with Dermot Black – if friendship was what it was – brought about by a banquet, and a daring experiment with a traditional dish. Chance, as always, making the world go round.

  When they got back to Ariadne Shannon had a few words with Peter Hatch before he left.

  ‘Anything I need to know?’

  ‘Not really. We talked about the area the resort will cover. He already has a copy of the draft plan.’

  ‘I shall need one, too,’ Shannon said.

  ‘I’ll arrange to have one sent to your office.’

  ‘Was that all you discussed?’

  ‘I said we would need details of the charges the state government was proposing to levy. I told him Mr Black would not be interested in anything less than a five-year arrangement with an option to renew… The usual things. Oh, and I also said we would need a decision within four weeks. You agree with that?’

  ‘The sooner the better, for my money. But did he accept that time frame?’

  ‘They never do, but I suspect mentioning Mr Black’s name may have helped.’

  Yes, Shannon thought. Dermot Black, famous, wealthy and male… It annoyed her but there was nothing to be done; in some things the world might be changing but not in everything. And a man like Lucas Horne would always be more comfortable dealing with a man than a woman.

  Shannon stood on Ariadne’s deck and watched as the chopper passed overhead, the egg-beater clamour of its rotor ripping the air but diminishing rapidly as it set a course for the mainland. She was happy with the way things had gone; Peter Hatch might not be the boss but he was a key man in the Dermot Black operation and he and Lucas Horne seemed to have hit it off, which was a relief, and he’d agreed to give Lucas a lift to Brisbane.

  ‘All the way?’ Shannon said.

  ‘We’ve got the range,’ Hatch said. ‘We refuelled at Shute on the way up but if we get headwinds we can always drop in at Gladstone to top up.’

  Shannon took Jess to one side. ‘If they talk shop on the way down…’

  ‘They won’t. Not in front of me. Peter’s a bit gung-ho but he’s not a talker.’

  ‘But if they do…’

  ‘I’ll let you know.’

  Shannon stared at the helicopter, now no more than a distant speck.

  With only three seats there’d been no room for her aboard, but that didn’t matter because there was still something she had to do before leaving, and she could only do it alone. She could whistle up her own chopper if she wanted but had already decided she’d go back the way she had come, by water. In the meantime she would make a pilgrimage.

  Again she crossed the island, choosing the steepest route and leaving behind the wreckage of the Hennessys’ cyclone-blasted resort silhouetted like a warning against a bright and empty sea. This was not the route she had taken with Lucas Horne but a path that skirted a granite ridge before plunging through trees with water tumbling on her right hand, and so to the beach peopled by memories.

  This, to Shannon, would always be a holy place.

  She sat on the warm sand. She saw again the golden beach opening up as they sailed quietly around the last headland. Heard the crying of gulls, the soft murmur of the surf along the beach. Smelt the sharp tang of the sea as the anchor went down in a froth of bubbles. Felt the weight of the sun on her bare shoulders. She was seventeen years old and in love.

  It was here her true life had begun. Yet eighteen months earlier she had discovered another dimension to living when Grace had gone walkabout and out of the blue she’d found herself acting as mother to half-sister Jess. So was there ever a true beginning or end to life? Or did it consist of a series of independent tributaries leading one after the other into a single river that would, in the end, empty itself into the vast sea of eternity? Was it that image that compelled her and countless others to sail out again and again into the boundless oceans of the world?

  The sun was well down now yet Shannon still sat on the beach, staring at the waves, her mind once again revisiting her memories.

  There they had anchored; here she had swum clumsily ashore, her wet underclothes close to transparent and leaving her, she thought now, more naked than nudity itself.

  Everything of value in her life had its roots on this beach.

  The sun’s rim dipped. The evening star hung like a diamond in the west. Purified, she got up and walked back to the broken harbour and the lights of Ariadne, golden in the fading dusk.

  Early the next morning she told Joe Broad to make ready to return to Shute Harbour and to radio ahead to have a car waiting for her.

  She made herself a pot of coffee and carried it through into the saloon, listening to the increasing rumble of the diesels. She sat in her favourite chair, sipping coffee and watching through the saloon windows as the island slid away behind them.

  All the way back to the mainland the sea was calm, a very different beast from the one that had fought them so viciously on the outward trip. Shannon began to note down the things she planned to do with Charles Green once it was hers. Her preoccupation was absolute and it seemed no time before she went up on deck as Joe Broad manoeuvred Ariadne alongside the Shute Harbour jetty.

  She grabbed her overnight bag and briefcase and stepped ashore. ‘Thanks, Joe. Good trip.’

  The car was waiting. She slung her bags on the back seat and sat down next to the driver. ‘Office, please.’

  Thirty-five minutes later the car dropped her at the entrance. ‘Thank you, Leonard.’

  She took the lift to the fifth floor where Amy was busy at her desk. She looked up, smiling.

  ‘All well?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Get what you wanted?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see. What have you got for me today?’

  ‘About a million financial returns.’

  Oh God.

  Shannon went into her office. Sure enough, her desk was covered with files, with more on the side table close at hand. Every month the returns came in from the resorts, hotels and agricultural holdings, the sugar terminals, export and construction trades that made up the various divisions of Shannon’s empire, and every month Shannon went through them, line by line. The accountants hated her for it but she was convinced that meticulous attention to detail was the best early-warning system and she was not about to give it up just to keep the bean-counters happy. It was a task she’d have been happy to give up had she retired on her birthday as she’d said she would but, since she hadn’t, she would still carry on with the chores. Of which this was one of the most tedious.

  It was also a frustrating and time-consuming business and the shutters went up while she was doing it. The staff had their instructions: no interruptions or phone calls of any sort or for any reason. She was therefore exasperated when a few minutes later Amy opened the door a crack and stuck her nose in.

  ‘How many times do I have to say it?’ Shannon snarled. ‘No phone calls, no interruptions. OK?’

  ‘I thought you’d want to take this one. It’s Peter Hatch, from Mr Black’s office. He’s on line 2 and says you’ll know why he’s calling.’

  Ohmygod.

  ‘You’re right,’ Shannon said. ‘Sorry. Of course I’ll take it.’

  She waited until Amy had closed the door before lifting the receiver. ‘Mr Hatch, good morning. What can I do for you?’ She listened, then
sat bolt upright in her chair, the hair creeping on her neck. ‘What?’

  Jess

  Jess had stayed overnight in Brisbane.

  Peter Hatch had business in Australia so the following morning she flew to Hong Kong alone. It was the middle of the afternoon when she walked into the new office adjacent to the kitchens that her constantly increasing workload had necessitated.

  ‘Thank God you’re back,’ said personal assistant Janet Kwan.

  ‘Problems?’

  ‘Close to all-out mutiny is what I’d call it.’

  ‘Chef Chan up to his usual tricks?’

  ‘That new boy Boon? He said he’d roast him on a hot griddle.’

  ‘I doubt that. I don’t think Boon would taste good enough to please him, do you?’

  ‘I think you must speak to him, all same. Not good to upset the staff the way he does.’

  ‘He’s an artist; you must make allowances. Anyway, I’m back now. Any messages?’

  ‘The usual. I’ve dealt with most but there are a few I thought you’d want to handle yourself.’

  ‘OK.’

  Janet’s few messages translated into about fifty queries, orders and staff issues to be dealt with.

  At six o’clock she was discussing an update to the menu with Chef Chan when Gilbert Weiss phoned to say the car would be calling for her at ten past two the next afternoon.

  As always, it maddened her that Dermot Black took it for granted she would come running whenever he flicked a finger.

  ‘How did you know I was back?’

  Gilbert never gave a proper answer to questions like that. ‘Ways and means,’ he said. ‘Ways and means.’

  She said no more; with the possibility of being appointed consultant to the new Whitsundays project, the last thing Jess needed was to fall out with Dermot Black. And of course he would naturally want her feedback on what she’d found on Charles Green island.

  ‘I’ll be waiting,’ she said.

  Again the ritual was observed: the car, the tunnel beneath the harbour, the hotel with its private lift, Dermot Black waiting in his usual place in the nondescript room.

  She told him she thought the island would be a goer provided the ownership problem could be settled. ‘And of course there will always be a question of maintaining adequate supplies when the weather’s bad.’

  He took note of her opinion, making no comment, and once again began to talk about things that logically could not interest him but evidently did: asking how she’d felt when her mother ran away and whether she had missed her. It was something Jess had always had difficulty talking about but now, surprisingly, she found it less of a problem than before, discussing the pain of abandonment as though it were a shared experience, and the half-hour passed quickly.

  She thought about that as the car took her back to the Golden Phoenix, enduring the normal traffic mayhem at the island end of the tunnel. Perhaps we really are getting to know each other, she thought, and found the idea pleasing. He was weird but she liked him and thought it would be good to have him as a friend.

  Shannon

  Hand clamped to the phone, Shannon listened as Hatch explained.

  ‘Another offer?’ she said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the Hennessys’ lawyers and they tell me someone’s come in with a better offer.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They wouldn’t say.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘They wouldn’t tell me that, either.’

  ‘Have you told your boss?’

  ‘Soon as I heard.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he’ll make some enquiries, find out what’s going on.’

  ‘You think they could be making it up?’

  ‘The thought had occurred,’ Peter Hatch said. ‘But I can promise you, Mr Black will get to the bottom of it. And soon.’

  Shannon thought for a minute. ‘OK. I’ll wait to hear from you. In the meantime I’ll do nothing.’

  Peter Hatch got back to her the following day. ‘The offer’s genuine, all right. A man called Harley Woodcock.’

  Harley Woodcock? Again Shannon’s hair stood up. How she hated that name. ‘That bastard?’ Fury made her careless with her words. ‘I know him, all right. He tried to ruin me a few years back.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I’d beaten him in a tender but the timetable was tight, the penalties horrendous. A week later he sent a gang of thugs to sabotage my plant. If I couldn’t finish on time the penalties would kill me.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Short of shooting him there was nothing I could do. I knew he was behind it but there was no proof. So I pulled out all the stops and got the damn job finished anyway.’

  ‘Why would Harley Woodcock want Charles Green island?’

  ‘To slap buildings all over it. Anything to make a quid. That’s the only reason he does anything.’

  ‘The word is he’s offered eight,’ Hatch said.

  ‘Will you tell your boss?’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  That figured; Hatch had made it clear Dermot Black’s only interest in the island was to put up one of his luxury tented camps. There was no way she could match Woodcock’s offer yet she couldn’t bring herself to admit defeat. Her only hope was that she and Dermot were cut from the same cloth. If she was right, he would hate losing as much as she did.

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  She rang off and sat staring into space. Harley Woodcock, of all people…

  Memories as sharp as needles scoured her mind. Of her plant blazing, her two operators beaten so badly they’d ended up in hospital. Of the police making enquiries but, as so often, finding nothing. And of another occasion, twelve years before, when she’d discovered how a place of pristine beauty had been vandalised by a trashy Woodcock development of identical fibro houses, takeaway stores and fluorescent lights.

  And this was the man who’d offered eight million for Charles Green island.

  No way. God alone knew how she was going to stop him but stop him she must. Somehow.

  She thought some more. One possibility occurred to her; only one, but it might just possibly work. She picked up the phone.

  Jess

  When she got back to the office Janet Kwan told her that her sister had been on the phone fifteen minutes before.

  ‘She asked you to call her the moment you got in.’

  ‘Did she say what it was about?’

  No, she’d said nothing.

  ‘How did she sound?’

  ‘I could not say. As normal.’ It was not in Janet Kwan’s brief to discuss, even obliquely, her employer’s state of mind.

  ‘Get her for me, please.’

  ‘Prestige Holdings.’

  The company’s name might have been a praise song, the way the switchboard operator crooned it.

  ‘Mr Weiss, please,’ Jess said.

  ‘Moment…’

  Click; buzz; crackle.

  ‘Gilbert Weiss’s office.’

  Getting to speak to Gilbert was like navigating Bellingham Maze.

  ‘It’s Jess Harcourt, Hayley. Can I have a word with him?’

  Through the open door of her office Jess watched the kitchen staff running to and fro, lashed as always by Chef Chan’s furious tongue.

  Gilbert’s voice. ‘Jess?’

  ‘Hello, Gilbert. Listen, I’ve had my sister on the phone. This business of Charles Green island… I want a favour. A big favour.’

  She explained.

  ‘He’ll never agree.’ The expected response.

  ‘You don’t know that. Speak to him. Pull out all the stops, OK? Shannon would really like his help in this.’

  ‘I promise nothing,’ Gilbert said.

  ‘Do your best is all I ask.’

  Ten minutes later he was back. ‘Good news. He
’s willing to see you. The car will pick you up in half an hour.’

  Back through the tunnel; up to the penthouse in the private lift, with Gilbert waiting at the top. This time he did not leave her at the entrance to the private apartment.

  ‘He wants me to sit in.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  Dermot Black, in his usual chair, was as cold as frost. He had deviated from his iron routine by agreeing to see her and was making sure she knew how truly exceptional that was.

  ‘To talk about Charles Green island.’

  His face showed disgust. ‘Then you’re wasting both your time and mine. I have no plans to buy the island. I have no plans to get into a bidding war with Harley Woodcock. If I can’t build my resort there I shall find somewhere else. Charles Green is unimportant to me.’

  Jess said, ‘I don’t believe you.’

  If it had been frost before, now it was the Arctic. Dermot knew how to send a message without speech and the message said that people he had indulged by permitting them to visit him did not contradict his opinions.

  Jess cared nothing about that. ‘Of course it’s important to you. You’re like Shannon and me: you hate to be beaten at anything. Haven’t had much practice at it, either, have you?’

  Riches or ruin: for a moment the silence was precarious. Then a creaking, rusty sound as Dermot Black laughed. ‘I don’t know why I put up with you,’ he said.

  ‘There are times I feel the same about you,’ she told him.

  ‘Your mother should have tanned your backside for you,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that right, Gilbert?’

  A cautious laugh. ‘Absolutely right, Mr Black.’

  ‘She never did that,’ Jess said.

  ‘She did worse,’ Dermot said. ‘She walked out and left you standing.’

  ‘Never mind my mother,’ she said. ‘Charles Green is what matters. The island and Harley Woodcock. What are we going to do about them?’