White Sands of Summer

by J. H. Fletcher

  Celibacy isn’t for me. Shannon remembered Hilda saying it. She’d scorned the idea at the time but now wondered whether she might not have been right. It was true, as Hilda had said, that Hal wouldn’t know. Yet even as she thought it she knew she would never do it. Fidelity was only partly the reason; superstition had something to do with it, too. Deep inside her she was convinced that if she betrayed Hal he would die. Of course that was rubbish, but the feeling remained. John J Gardner could try all the tricks in the book and she would still say no.

  The stand-to finished. It was 0800 hours. The gun crews, stripped to the waist as usual, were doing whatever it was they did with their guns. It was hot and getting hotter; humid and getting more so: situation normal. Yet not quite.

  Shannon had learnt that a driver’s job entailed a lot of hanging about, waiting for loads to be delivered wherever they had to go. She was hanging about now, squatting in what shade she could find by the side of the stores hut and looking at the harbour crammed with shipping.

  She could see the big hospital ship Manunda, the large red crosses clear on its sides and deck. The USS Peary was lying a little further out, its distinctive shape lean and dangerous-looking among the commercial shipping that surrounded it.

  She remembered the previous night and hoped John Gardner hadn’t been too disappointed. She wondered whether Hilda’s companion Laurie had scored; she thought he probably had. She thought of Hilda, and Hilda’s pilot friend Darren who had failed to return from his last sortie.

  Out at sea Shannon could see the sun glinting on the wings of some Kittyhawk fighters. Some had come in, but others remained on patrol. Perhaps they were on the lookout for a possible Japanese air attack. She looked at her watch. It was ten minutes to ten.

  Shannon stood and stretched. She unhooked her water bottle from her webbing belt and took two or three swallows. Luke-warm and slightly brackish, like all the water in the top end, but it would do. Anything to ease her sore head. She stared listlessly at the harbour. Out at sea, the American planes were still prowling back and forth. The fact should have bothered her but didn’t. Nothing much did, outside her pounding head. If the Japs came, they came. She didn’t think they would. The heat and humidity, the slow pace of everyday life, made the idea of danger ridiculous.

  No doubt the good people of Singapore had thought the same and had had a rude awakening, but Australia… It was impossible to believe the Japanese would dare attack Australia.

  Wasn’t it?

  Yet there the Kittyhawk fighters were, still quartering the outer reaches of the harbour, and they presumably weren’t doing it for fun.

  Where the hell were those supplies for Berrimah? The sooner she could be out of there the better; if the truck had to stand in the sun much longer it would boil her alive when she eventually got into the driver’s seat.

  Again she looked at her watch. Just coming up to ten. A man was running from the post office which also served as the telephone exchange. Running hard, a look of alarm on his face.

  Apprehension stirred.

  Jess

  When Shannon told her she was leaving, Jess’s first reaction was terror. Terror at being abandoned, of having to manage the house, her father and herself with no one to help her. She was afraid she’d make a mess of things and, if she did, that Dad might walk out on her, too. That would mean she’d be finally and completely alone. That thought scared her so much that once again there were nights when she wept into her pillow.

  She hadn’t done that since a few months after Mama walked out. There was still an emptiness inside her because of what had happened. She’d grown used to it but, when Shannon had told her she was off, too, it had come back. It was a scary business to know she was someone people walked away from, and loneliness was no longer a monster lurking in the shadows but sat on her chest in the dark, making it hard to breathe.

  She’d taken care not to let Shannon see how she felt: pretending she didn’t care was the only way she knew to protect herself. Inside she was terrified, yet within a day or two terror had given way to indignation. She was fifteen years old: how was she supposed to look after both Dad and herself? It was all very well for Shannon to say Mrs Hargreaves had promised to organise their meals for them, but what if she didn’t?

  Every day she was scared Mrs Hargreaves wouldn’t show up but she always did, for an hour every evening, when she brought their meals for the next day.

  ‘I’d stay longer if I could but I got to look after my hubby, too,’ she told Jess. ‘If I don’t he might beat me.’

  She winked, laughing as she said it. It was a fat and jolly laugh, like Mrs Hargreaves herself. Jess found it hard to imagine Mr Hargreaves getting after her with a strap, like Mrs Hargreaves sometimes said he did. ‘Chased me round the chook pen, he did,’ she said. ‘So I got to get back to him, haven’t I, or he’ll give me what-for.’

  Dad gave her a hand, too, or sort of, but as Mrs Hargreaves said, men weren’t much good around the house, although what little he did – sweeping the floor, changing light bulbs, bringing in logs for the fire – was a help.

  Little by little Jess got used to the idea that they were going to manage after all, and her cooking – with Mrs Hargreaves to show her – was coming on in leaps and bounds.

  The day she produced her first real meal – liver, kidneys and potatoes – was a day to remember, and Mrs Hargreaves was full of praise for Jess’s efforts.

  ‘Such a shame we can’t get proper cuts of meat instead of this offal rubbish. Never mind, the dratted war won’t last forever and you’ll make someone a lovely wife one of these days.’

  What with school work and homework and looking after things in the house, Jess had no time to think about making anyone a wife, lovely or not. After the way Mama had disappeared she wasn’t sure she fancied the idea, anyway, yet at school it was about the only thing the other girls talked about. As far as she could tell getting married meant looking after some bloke for the rest of your life – kids, too – and that didn’t seem a good idea.

  Now and then she had a letter from Shannon. The letters never said much and occasionally had holes cut in them, but at least she wrote, which meant a lot.

  ‘Why are there holes in Shannon’s letters?’ she asked Dad.

  ‘Because of the censors.’

  ‘What are censors?’

  ‘Blokes who make sure we don’t give away war secrets.’

  It made no sense. She had no war secrets to give away and was willing to bet Shannon hadn’t any, either, but she’d already discovered the world was full of stupid things and she guessed this was just one more of them.

  One of Shannon’s comments seemed very strange.

  I’ve been to see Uncle Charles. You remember him? The one who was keen on all the animals?

  Jess could make no sense of that at all. It was the first she’d heard about any Uncle Charles. She took the letter to Dad, who scratched his head for a while, too. Then he laughed.

  ‘She’s telling us she’s in Darwin.’

  ‘Where’s Darwin?’

  ‘Top end. About as far north as you can get. I think there’s a harbour there of some sort.’

  ‘But why Uncle Charles?’

  ‘Charles Darwin was a famous man. He wrote a book about animals.’

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘When would I have time to read a book like that? But it’s quite famous.’ Again he laughed. ‘Got to be, hasn’t it? Even I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘What’s Shannon doing in Darwin?’

  ‘Search me.’

  It was nice to see Dad laugh for a change; he hadn’t been doing much recently. He’d been complaining about headaches and once or twice Jess had caught him staring at himself in the mirror with a sad look on his face. She’s always thought of him as being old but also strong; now he looked older than ever and not that strong, either; some evenings, when he got back from the mill, he collapsed in his chair without even taking off his boots.

  ‘A
real old crock,’ he said, ‘that’s what I am.’

  His pale voice matched his pale face and it scared her to hear him talk like that. There was nothing she could do about it so she didn’t say anything but hoped he would soon feel all right again.

  Jess checked the atlas at school and found Darwin where Dad had said it was, far up in the north of the continent. She was excited to have found it and couldn’t wait to get home to tell Dad about her discovery, but when she saw him she found he was wearing his sad face once again.

  She didn’t like to ask what was wrong so waited, and the silence was as full of hooks as the barbed wire around Chinky Hong’s watermelon paddock. Eventually, from the refuge of his armchair, Dad sighed and told her things weren’t looking too good.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Them Japs are getting too close,’ Dad said. ‘They’re saying on the wireless that Singapore’s fallen.’

  Jess knew Singapore was an island somewhere up in the tropics. There’d been talk about it at school. People said it was an important place but how an island could fall and how far Jess did not understand.

  She felt foolish to ask but Dad didn’t mind. ‘It means the island’s been captured by the Japs. There were lots of Aussies there, worse luck. Now they’re prisoners. Singapore isn’t that far from Darwin,’ he said.

  ‘Will Shannon be a prisoner, too?’

  ‘Heaven forbid,’ Dad said. ‘No, I reckon she should be safe enough.’ But he was weary and rubbed his face with a horny hand as he said it. ‘Although Gawd knows where’s safe enough, these days.’

  The way he spoke scared Jess, because not understanding was the most troubling thing of all.

  Mrs Hargreaves had come by earlier and left their tea on a cloth-covered plate in the scullery. When Jess looked, she found four thick slices of ham with potatoes, carrots and cabbage. Enough for one large meal, possibly for two. She had cooked it for them; all Jess had to do was heat it up. Dad paid Mrs Hargreaves something for the food; even so, she went out of her way to be helpful and Jess knew how lucky they were to have her.

  She went back into the living room where she found Dad sitting with his head in his hands. Her heart lurched. She went to him in a hurry. ‘You orright?’

  She could see the effort it took him even to lower his hands and look at her.

  ‘Tired is all,’ he said. ‘An’ my head is that bad.’

  She put on a gay smile that was the biggest lie she’d told in her life. ‘She’s given us some ham,’ she said. ‘Your favourite. And vegies to go with it. Won’t take five minutes to warm it up.’

  ‘Nice of her.’ His voice was so faint she could barely hear it. ‘Keep mine for later, girl. I’m gunna lie down a minute.’

  Jess stood and watched, not knowing what to do. She was so scared she could just about have fallen over herself. It took Dad such an effort to struggle to his feet but he managed somehow. He made it to the door, walking like someone who’d lost his way in the world; she didn’t know whether to offer him a hand but decided she’d best let him get on with it by himself. He would hate being treated like an invalid, and the stairs were so narrow there wouldn’t be room for her to be much help, anyway. She heard him climbing them – one step, pause; one step, pause – but he made it in the end and she heard the door of his bedroom shut.

  Jess was alone with her fears in the empty room.

  She put some of the ham on a separate plate and heated it up. She had no appetite but it seemed the right thing to do. She ate it bit by bit, listening all the time, for what she didn’t know.

  The wind blew under the door; the tired old building creaked; from upstairs there was no sound, yet there was a darkness in the house and Jess hated it.

  She finished eating. She washed up her plate and put it away. She put Dad’s tea in the meat safe and hoped it would be all right for later. She didn’t know what to do. Go upstairs and check he was all right? She didn’t know. Leave him be? She didn’t know. He might be sleeping and she didn’t want to disturb him. A nasty thought nudged her. He’d looked that bad she thought he might be dead but she pushed that idea away as quickly as she could. Of course he wasn’t dead. He would sleep and be fine in the morning. If he didn’t want his tea tonight he could have it then.

  The morning came and he was a little better but a long way short of fine. He wanted to listen to the wireless but there was nothing much on the news so eventually he dragged himself off to the mill. He hadn’t touched his last night’s tea and told Jess to eat it herself rather than have it go bad.

  Afraid what his answer might be, she didn’t like to ask if his head was still bothering him. Instead she chose what she thought might be a safer subject.

  ‘You got to eat something. How’ll you get through the day if you don’t eat?’

  He gave her a weak smile. ‘Don’ fuss me, girl. I’ll be fine.’

  Jess went off to school but her mind was with Dad and she got ticked off for it. Mr Morris had gone to war planning to be a hero but a bullet through his left arm in the Libyan desert had put paid to that, leaving him resentful of the world and of fifteen-year-old girls in particular. Never mind. She would put up even with Mr Morris if that was the price of making Dad all right again.

  That evening was much the same as the day before, with Dad’s tea – something with dried eggs in it, much to Mrs Hargreaves’s disgust – going a-begging and Dad dragging himself off to bed shortly after he came home from the mill.

  The next day was 19 February and a Thursday, the same as any other Thursday, except Dad’s headache was so bad that for the first time Jess could remember he cried off going to work and sent her to tell the foreman he was sick and wouldn’t be able to make it.

  With Mr Morris on the warpath Jess thought she’d better stop off at the school first so, after persuading the teacher that telephoning the mill would not do but that it was essential she went in person, it was well past ten by the time she got to the foreman’s office, which she found crowded by a mob of sombre-faced blokes. They were all bending over the wireless. They were listening to the almost hysterical voice of the broadcaster, and Jess knew that something terrible had happened.

  She tapped the shoulder of the man nearest her. ‘What is it? What’s going on?’

  ‘Shhh!’

  Jess was unwilling to be shushed. ‘What is it?’

  Another man turned to her. ‘It’s Darwin,’ he said.

  Shannon

  The bloke was running towards the guns. He came past her, breathing hard. Something had to be wrong, Shannon thought. No one in their right mind ran in this climate. And the look on his face…

  She shouted at him. ‘What’s up?’

  He barely slowed. ‘Dog fight out at sea.’

  He was ten yards past her when the peace of the steamy morning was broken by the howl of a siren.

  A voice over a loudspeaker echoed tinnily. ‘Stand to! Stand to! This is not an exercise. I repeat, this is not an exercise.’

  ‘They always say that,’ Sergeant Hopgood said as he appeared at the door of the stores building. He yawned, scratching his chest and looking up at the innocent sky. Whoever else might be getting their knickers in a knot, Sergeant Hopgood was not one of them.

  ‘Lotta fuss about nothing,’ he said. ‘It’ll be more of them Yankee planes coming in. I heard something about that last night.’

  Sure enough, Shannon could hear the faint sound of aero engines. Were they heading this way? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do; nobody had told her what to do if there was an emergency. Her responsibility was simple. It was to the truck and, she supposed, herself. She decided the sensible thing was to remove both from danger. If there was any danger, and if there was time. Because now the engine sound was much louder. Whatever the planes were, they were definitely heading this way and, by the sound of them, steady, heavy, menacing, a lot more than were stationed in Darwin.

  ‘Got to be our blokes,’ Sergeant Hopgood said. ‘This lot
’s coming from the southeast. Stands to reason if they was Jap planes they’d be coming from the north. Stands to reason.’

  But the note of casual confidence was there no longer. Now, Shannon thought, he sounded scared, as she was scared.

  There were men running in earnest now, scrambling to the ack-ack guns, installed so recently to keep them safe. The guns that the town authorities had never allowed the crews to fire in practices. The guns that last night John J Gardner had told her were obsolete, a load of crap.

  The town siren wailed.

  The sound made up her mind for her. Time to clear out, while she still could. She ran to the truck and climbed in. As she did so she looked up and saw the sky to the southeast black with aircraft. Dozens of them; hundreds of them. Flying high, in remorseless formation, heading their way. Towards the harbour.

  She started the engine with a roar, double declutched as she engaged first gear, and headed for the gate. The gate was closed, nor did it open as she approached. The armed sentry raised his hand. Shannon braked to a halt. The sentry came to the driver’s window.

  ‘Running away, are we?’

  ‘I’m trying to get this truck to safety,’ she said.

  ‘Got the crown jewels on board, have you?’

  ‘If this lot that’s coming dumps a load of bombs on us –’

  ‘We’ll be worrying about a lot more than a five-ton truck,’ the sentry said. ‘I can’t let you out. Sorry.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Orders.’

  ‘If anything happens to this truck,’ Shannon said, ‘I’ll make sure they charge you for it.’

  ‘Why don’t you do that?’

  He obviously had no intention of letting her leave the Oval. There was nothing she could do so turned the truck and headed back the way she’d come. As she did so the three-inch guns opened up. The volume of the sound overwhelmed her. Flames hurled themselves furiously skywards from the muzzles of the guns. Her hands jerked convulsively on the wheel. The truck slewed in the soft sand edging the road and might have tipped over had she not managed to correct it in time and regain the hard surface.