‘We’ve got five days.’
So short a time but a blessing all the same.
‘You’re working for the Yanks, your dad was telling me?’
‘At the Grand Hotel, yes. Only it’s a US military rest and recreation station now.’
‘Any chance of getting time off? I thought we might go away for a day or two, if you can manage it.’
‘I’ll speak to my boss, see what I can arrange.’
Dad was listening but said nothing until Hal had left, saying he’d be back in the morning.
‘Be careful,’ he said when Shannon came back into the house after telling Hal good night.
‘I love him, Dad.’
‘You told me that before. A blind man could see it. But love in wartime’s a dodgy business. He leaves you with a kid and goes and gets himself killed, where are you then?’
He was right but talk was useless. Hal beckoned and she would go; there was no more to it than that.
‘I’ll have a word with Hank Rankin in the morning.’
She suspected Hank would give her a hard time but he didn’t.
‘This friend of yours: back from the Middle East, is he?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Soon he’ll be off again and you want to see something of him before he goes. Of course you do. He say where he’s going?’
‘He said he didn’t know.’
‘Wouldn’t tell you if he did, I guess. Need to know, right? And you don’t need to know so they won’t tell you. You can understand why, but it makes things hard, not knowing. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve no leave entitlement: you know that? Of course you know it. I’ve no business giving you time off at all. But you’ve worked well. I reckon, if you keep it up, you got a lot of potential. I like that.’ He tap-tapped with a pencil on the surface of his desk. ‘One week. Is that enough?’
‘No. But I’ll be glad to have it. Glad and most grateful,’ she added.
Hal first thought they might go to Eungella, fifty miles west of Mackay at the end of the Pioneer Valley.
‘It’s high up in the Clarke Range. There’s something they call the cloud forest. It’s moist and cool and thickly forested. There are platypus.’
The way he described it made her ache to see it but it was no use.
‘We can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Petrol rationing.’
Nobody takes that seriously.’
‘They do now.’
When petrol rationing had been introduced in 1940 the system had been so complicated that no one understood it and it hadn’t been strictly enforced. Now it was.
‘Things are much stricter than they were. They’ve even started rationing tea.’
‘So Eungella is out,’ Hal said. ‘Pity: I’d been looking forward to catching up with a platypus again. No matter; I’ve another plan.’
They used their ration books to stock Dragon and two days later they sailed out.
‘What about Jap submarines?’
‘To hell with Jap submarines. And to hell with the war. We’re going.’
It was foolhardy, possibly illegal. That was part of its attraction. To hell with the war, indeed.
Hal would have liked to pay another visit to Charles Green island but they’d heard patrols were operating around the outer islands, which might make things tricky. Shannon wasn’t keen, in any case.
‘Why not?’
‘Because we are definitely going to survive this war, however long it takes.’
‘And so?’
She was very serious about it. ‘It’s all arranged. We are going to survive and when it’s over we’ll get married. That’s the time I want us to go back to Charles Green. Not before.’
‘To consummate our union? A bit late for that, isn’t it?’
‘You needn’t think you can shame me with your la-di-da words,’ Shannon said. ‘I mean exactly what I said.’
She wasn’t sure whether he was teasing her or not, and nor did she care. That was precisely how she wanted things to work out. When the war was over.
Her expression dared him to challenge her but he did not. Far from it; she saw that he took the idea as seriously as she did.
‘Then where do you want to go?’
They decided to explore up the coast instead.
‘Patrols?’
‘I doubt it, as long as we keep close in-shore.’
So that was what they did, poking Dragon’s bowsprit into inlets and creeks. They anchored in places of silence and sat on deck to watch the stars prick out of the darkening sky. They saw no yachts, no people. They might have been the only beings on the planet. There was not a hint, not the faintest stinking whiff, of war. The hours slipped by but they denied the passage of time. They made love every day, often more than once. They were happy. They were fulfilled. They knew they would live forever and each moment would be a gift from heaven. When the war was over.
Hal would not talk to her about the fighting in the Middle East or anything that had happened there. She wanted him to talk about it but he would not.
She hated that; she did not want the war and the fighting to steal him from her but it seemed they had. ‘Why won’t you tell me? What harm can it do to talk about things that have already happened?’
He agreed it could do no possible harm but still he would not. It was a question of honour, he said.
She despised honour that prevented his telling her what had happened to him; she thought it degraded her and served no purpose, but nothing she said made any difference. His experience of the war was locked away somewhere inside him, a place he would not revisit, even for her.
The weather was cool and comfortable, summer’s heat and humidity still weeks away. They slept in the individual bunks covered by a sheet and a light blanket. The nights were still, the only sound the calling of owls and the whisper of tiny wavelets along the shore.
Shannon slept well, lulled by the gentle movement of the hull in the water. Each morning she woke to sunlight spilling through the portholes. Hal was invariably still asleep, so she got up quietly, carried the Primus out on deck and lit it and brewed coffee while she sat and looked at the water and the thickly wooded land rising above the shoreline.
Presently Hal would join her. They would drink their coffee and she would go below, carrying the little stove. She would make breakfast and carry the plates up on deck.
Sometimes, when they’d finished eating, they sculled ashore in the dinghy and explored along the beach, the white sand harsh beneath their bare feet, or climbed up through the trees until they reached a point where they could look down at Dragon lying in the cove below them, the green water as dark and polished as obsidian.
Later they would sail northwards up the coast until they reached another cove where they could spend the night. The pattern repeated itself: tea in the lantern light of the cosy cabin; and after eating they would wash their plates and sit and talk, getting to know each other more and more with every hour that passed.
The sea air made them tired so they went to bed early. Every time they made love, it was so much more than sex; it was the expression of the truth and depth of their feelings for each other, and in Shannon’s mind the act somehow communicated itself to the cabin and the wooden timbers of the softly swaying hull, so that for their brief time together it was truly their refuge and their home.
All these experiences added to the memories she believed would help them through the months and maybe years that lay ahead.
Two days before Hal was due to report back to his unit they headed south once again. They reached Shute the evening before he had to go and in the morning she stood at the house door and waved as he left. She smiled and waved vigorously with both her arms and only the thought of their lives after the war prevented her from wishing she was dead.
When she could see him no more she went back into the house and lay down on her bed.
Later she walked through
the streets until she reached the Grand Hotel. She went inside. She’d had her holiday. It had been truly wonderful but now it was over. She had thought the memories of all that had happened would console her but they did not. They made her want to cry. She did not cry where anyone could see but inside her chest ached with unshed tears. She reported to Hank Rankin and spoke to the other staff. She smiled happily and said she’d had a wonderful time. She went back to work.
That evening she wrote to Hal and later still prayed that he would be safe.
1944–45
Jess
In March 1944, Jess went away with two of her friends to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. Karen and Linda were the same age as Jess and all of them had boyfriends, but this time it was a girls-only adventure.
They caught the ferry from Shute Harbour to Saturn Island, where they stayed three days. They had a great time with plenty of laughs and tomfoolery and when they caught the ferry back to the mainland Jess was happy, with springs in her heels so she wanted to dance and did so, with the others, all over the deck, with the other passengers for the most part smiling indulgently. Youth…
They were still laughing when they came ashore. And Jess’s gaiety died in her throat.
There were passengers waiting to board. Among them…
Breath and heart stopped together. Jess looked and looked again but there was no doubt.
‘You go ahead,’ she said to Karen. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
Karen was a great friend. She looked at Jess strangely but knew when not to ask questions.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘We’ll wait for you in the shop.’
Jess nodded, barely hearing the words, all her attention focused on the woman she had seen among the people waiting to board. Whose face had stood out amid all the other faces. And who, she now saw, was with a man Jess did not know.
Uncertainly, trembling, she approached her. ‘Mama?’
No, there was no doubt. Older, of course. Jess remembered her as having a naturally pale skin with a lustre to it that, when she was happy, seemed to glow in the sunlight. She was still pale but there was no lustre now, her complexion pasty with lines only partially hidden by make-up, and her pouched eyes had the look of someone who had seen too much of the world and its ways.
The woman looked at her. She knew her – Jess saw that in her eyes – but her expression was entirely blank. She looked but would not see. She had shut her mind on the past, unwilling even to acknowledge the young woman who now stood in front of her. The daughter who now stood in front of her.
Instead she turned to the man. ‘Let’s get aboard,’ she said.
Grace’s voice, huskier than Jess remembered, but unmistakable. She moved away between the waiting people. Jess watched her shoulder as she turned, then her back as she walked away. The woman who was her mother.
No, Jess thought as she, too, turned away, with tears. The woman who had been her mother.
‘I have no mother,’ she told the world. While the tears ran down.
‘You OK?’ Karen said.
‘Never better,’ Jess said. ‘Why?’
‘Because you don’t look OK.’
‘Well, thanks, eh.’ But looking for a laugh was never going to work.
‘Who was that woman you spoke to?’
‘A stranger. I thought it was someone I knew but I was wrong.’
That night she lay, sweating and grieving, asking herself over and over whether she could have been mistaken, but it was no use. It had been Grace. The woman who had been her mother, who had once been the world to her. The images of this second rejection crowded a darkness peopled only by cicadas and the calling of night birds.
The feelings stayed with her for weeks, making for uneasy thoughts and restless nights. They also had another effect; she had lost self-respect and that in turn filled her with a recklessness beyond anything she had known before.
Her first affair occurred two months later, with a boy she did not particularly like but who had been there at the moment. Afterwards she wondered how she could possibly have imagined that doing such a thing might make her feel better about herself or the world. It had the opposite effect; she would never breathe a word about the darkness in which she now lived, but neither would she place her trust in a living soul.
Shannon
On the first Monday in March 1945 Shannon was working in her office when the phone rang.
‘Some guy called Nimrod on the line.’ Glenys, the telephonist at the recreation centre, was from Brooklyn and not into formal; Shannon had always believed her manner as well as her accent could crack walnuts, but she was good at her job and that was what mattered. ‘You want I should get rid of him for you?’
‘Nimrod? No, Glenys, I’ll speak to him. Put him through.’
‘OK.’
A click, a buzz, a well-remembered voice. Shannon hadn’t spoken to Arthur for more than two years and felt bad about it, but the fact was that, under the nominal command of a Colonel Wechsler, she and Hank Rankin had been managing the centre for over a year since Zac Petrovsky had been posted stateside. For all that time the workload had steadily increased and she’d been flat out, with the centre jam-packed every day as the Pacific war tightened its grip on her world. So many boys had passed through the doors, and so many would have been mown down in the killing fields of the islands, bright boys and stupid boys, brave boys and scaredy-cat boys; it didn’t bear thinking about, but that was how it was.
‘Arthur, how are you?’
‘Getting along.’
His voice was a drift of fallen leaves and Shannon’s heart stopped for an instant. She dared not ask.
‘You knew about William,’ Arthur said.
His voice told her. She shut her eyes for a moment, summoning courage. ‘Thomas?’
‘Last December,’ Arthur said. ‘A place called Aitape, in New Guinea. Strange to be killed in a place no one’s ever heard of.’
Oh God. There was nothing to be said but silence would not serve.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said, eyes wet.
To lose both… Now he had nothing. Only the hotel.
‘He was in love with you, you know,’ Arthur said. ‘But you, I suspect, were not in love with him.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I’m sorry.’
‘We cannot love to order. In any case that is not why I phoned. I have the feeling that this terrible war is at last entering its final stages.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Shannon, as always wary of overoptimism. ‘But those Japs are tough little buggers and we haven’t won yet.’
‘That is true, but I believe the end is in sight. Maybe this year, maybe next, but I am confident we will win in the end. I therefore believe the time has come to start thinking of re-opening the Regency. If you are still interested after the shameful way I treated you in 1941.’
‘You didn’t treat me shamefully. You had no choice. It wouldn’t have helped either of us to bankrupt the business.’
‘It is generous of you to see it like that,’ he said. ‘With both my boys dead, some might consider me unfeeling to be thinking such things. But, you see, the hotel is all I have left, so I thought I would ask whether you would be interested in returning to the Regency if I decided to re-open it?’
‘Not as a chambermaid,’ Shannon said.
‘I was not thinking as a chambermaid but as general manager. Would that perhaps be of interest to you?’
General manager?
Her first reaction: he had to be joking. But Arthur Nimrod would never joke about the Regency Hotel.
‘What makes you think I would be capable of doing such a job?’
‘I’ll explain when I see you. I am coming to Mackay,’ he said. ‘I shall buy you lunch at a restaurant I know and we will talk.’
The challenge was so vast and unexpected that it made her brain whirl. There was excitement, too, as she remembered the times she had trudged around the Regency with her dustpan and brush and her mind on fire with all the things
she had imagined doing to restore the place to its former glory. If only she had the chance… If only she had the money… The Regency Hotel… Even the name had magic.
‘When?’
‘I have to go to Brisbane for a few days. Shall we say tomorrow week, at twelve o’clock? There is much to be done and no time to lose.’
‘You think we’re that close to winning the war?’
‘I know we still have to invade Japan but there is no harm hoping. Maybe they’ll see sense and surrender. Also I have been hearing things about you. In the trade, you understand. Your reputation is good. I would like us to come to an agreement before some American company offers you the earth to take up a position in New York.’
‘But general manager… That’s your job.’
‘I am old,’ Arthur said. ‘The past. You are young. The future.’
‘I wouldn’t be interested in New York,’ Shannon said.
She put down the phone. It was hard to catch her breath. General manager of what at one time had been the top hotel on the Whitsunday coast? Arthur had told her it had even hosted royalty in the years before the first war, when an archduke from a Central European country had stayed there with his entourage for no less than three months.
There were snags, of course. The war might be coming to an end, as Arthur believed, but she still had commitments in Mackay. The Americans had been good to her. They had entrusted her with great responsibilities. They had taught her everything she knew about hotel management. She would not leave them in the lurch just because it suited her to do so.
Another problem, and a big one: the Regency would need a huge amount spent on it to bring it up to speed. She had never thought of Arthur as a rich man. He had the hotel, certainly, but would the banks be willing to lend on the security of a business that had been closed for years and with the future so uncertain? If not, where would the money be coming from?
She thought of Thomas: another victim of the atrocity that was war. She felt so sad for him and for his father. All the might-have-beens of a life snuffed out in the New Guinea jungles. And for what?
She thought how lucky she was that so far at least Hal had survived without a scratch. It made her feel guilty to think such a thing, when Arthur had lost both his sons. It also made her uncomfortable. Mrs Girdle’s dead voice whispered: hubris… The war wasn’t over yet.
White Sands of Summer Page 19
