Half Moon Bay

by Young, Helene

  Ellie sensed an undercurrent in his voice. Had Nina got too close to one of them? Probably, because this was war and the rules were different. You didn’t know if you’d be around tomorrow so why not enjoy today? He stopped talking, his gaze resting on her face, his hand on her shoulder. She shut her eyes against reality.

  Nina. Her older sister, her protector. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Nina, who’d shepherded and guarded Ellie, who’d been the strength in their family when the foundations had crumbled. This should never have happened. Ellie should have been here, not chasing her own dream. It was her fault Nina was alone! Her fault her sister lay in this crowded hospital, her life in the balance. Accepting the blame didn’t stop the tears, but it forced her to act. This time it was up to Ellie to get Nina out, to stand up and take charge.

  ‘Can I see her?’ Ellie asked, taking tiny breaths to enable her to speak.

  ‘Come, we’ll see what the doctors say.’

  The walk through the maze of corridors, dodging stretchers, wheelchairs and people squatting on the floor, was surreal. The sounds, the odours, were background annoyances she barely registered as she followed the broad shoulders ahead of her.

  Dave stopped outside a pair of swing doors and looked through. His hand burned through the thin fabric of her shirt as he anchored her beside him. ‘We can’t go in. They’re still operating.’

  Ellie curled her fists tight against the urge to shove this man aside, burst through the doors and wrap her sister safely in her arms. Through the window she saw a stranger, bandages half covering her head. Nina’s trademark straight blond hair was gone. Her skin was pallid, as though the life had already drained away. Tubes from her mouth and her arm connected her to machines that were long past their warranty date. Ellie swayed towards the door as Dave’s fingers tightened on her arm.

  ‘No, Ellie, let them work.’

  ‘Nina . . . Nina . . .’ Ellie whispered, splaying her hand against the glass, the scene blurring as tears dripped from her chin. ‘Hang in there, Nina. I’ll get you home.’ Her voice broke on the last word. Home was so far away, the other side of the world in a place untouched by war. Home, where Ellie knew firsthand that time could heal.

  A tall man turned from the table, his hands raised and bloody. For an instant he locked gazes with Ellie. She saw the pity in his eyes and the resignation in his shoulders. Her anger was swift. He didn’t know Nina. He didn’t know Ellie. He had no idea how hard they would fight for something they loved. He had no right to believe the worst.

  The building shook as something solid found its mark. Dust and paint showered from the ceiling and Dave threw Ellie to the floor, covering her protectively.

  ‘Mortar fire. It’s been a difficult couple of days.’ She strained to hear him over the cacophony of alarms, raised voices and running feet. ‘Let’s hope it’s just a stray.’

  ‘At least the power’s still on.’ Ellie raised her head. The corridor had emptied. The doors behind them stayed resolutely closed.

  ‘Until the next strike.’

  ‘I need to make phone calls. I have to get Nina out of here.’

  ‘We’ve notified the consulate. They’ll do what they can.’

  ‘No!’ Ellie sat up now, leaning on the wall, palming her cheeks dry. ‘No way. They’ll take too long. I’ll handle it.’

  ‘We can help, Ellie. You don’t need to do this alone.’

  ‘Great. Then help. I need my satphone.’ She scrambled to her feet. It would be easy to abdicate her responsibility to the Australian Defence Force and Foreign Affairs, but she couldn’t do that. She needed to make this happen; take the lead. It was her sister’s life in the balance, not theirs.

  ‘Okay.’ Dave stood up and pushed her leather bag across to her. ‘We can go back to the meeting room. It will be quieter.’

  ‘No,’ Ellie replied, hauling her satphone free from the front pocket. ‘I’ve got reception here. I’m staying until they finish. And Dave?’

  ‘Hmm?’ He looked down at her and she mustered a glimmer of a shaky smile.

  ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done.’

  He bobbed his head, looking uncomfortable as she started scrolling through her numbers.

  She pressed send and waited for the satellite to route the call. A voice answered, but the line was still crackly.

  ‘Don? Don? Can you hear me? It’s Ellie, Ellie Wilding. I need your help.’

  Several hours later the medical staff finally left Nina cocooned in white sheets and bandages. They had no comfort to offer Ellie. They’d done their best, but that might not be enough. Ellie sat on the chair by the bed, holding her sister’s hand, as the machines beside her hissed and pumped, keeping Nina alive but buried in a coma. Her injuries were hidden. Nina could have been stretched out waiting for the luxury of a facial, so serene was her expression. It helped to steady Ellie’s hammering heart.

  ‘Talk to her,’ the doctor had said as he left. ‘She may hear you.’

  Ellie licked her lips and swallowed. Her voice croaked on the first few words. ‘You’re going home, Neens. Dad will be waiting for us. He’ll cook that lousy stroganoff he’s been dishing up since we were kids and we’ll be eating leftovers for days. I can just imagine Shadow going crazy having us both home to go for walks. And once you’re back on your feet you’ll be able to swim in the ocean. It’s autumn in the Bay, remember? The winter swells will be rolling in soon. Remember the last time we were home together – Christmas two years ago? It must have been thirty degrees in the shade and someone put a couple of prawn heads in the pot plant. Dad spent all week trying to find the source of the stink. I know who put them there, Neens. You always did like making trouble!’

  She tried to smile, but her lips only trembled. Nina’s pale cold hand lay still, unresponsive. ‘What were you doing out there, Neens? No one’s telling me exactly what happened and that makes me nervous. There’s a whisper that someone else was killed.’ Her fingers were intertwined with Nina’s now. ‘You can’t leave unfinished business. I only take the photos. This story will die without you. I promise to get you home and you have to promise to finish the story, whatever it takes.’

  There was no response but Ellie carried on talking, remembering, reliving their lives. Her tears ran out some time before dawn.

  By morning her voice was hoarse and Nina’s condition was unchanged. Dave Miller arrived back with his commanding officer at the same time as the private medical team. Ellie couldn’t remember the major’s name five minutes after they were introduced. The man looked like he needed to sleep for a week. The physical presence of the two army officers gave her an odd comfort, as though someone had her back covered, but she only had eyes for Nina. The mountain of paperwork was enough to break her, let alone the expressions on the faces of the medical staff.

  Late that afternoon, she was bundled into the back of an ambulance, holding tight to her sister’s hand. No one had actually said it, but Ellie knew the casevac team didn’t believe Nina would survive the journey. Yet it made no difference. There was no way Ellie was going to leave Nina to die in this harsh and battle-weary city that they’d come to know so intimately. Nina was going home.

  She paused just inside the cabin of the small jet, the air- conditioning cool on her chest, the harsh Afghani sun searing her back. She looked back across the tarmac to the Australian Defence Force team. Dave Miller and his commanding officer were still there. As the nurse reached to close the door of the jet, the CO saluted her. The man’s face was in the shadow of his helmet but the glass of his watch face caught the late afternoon rays like the bright flash of a dying star. Then the door-seal hissed and Ellie’s world became a miniature emergency room. Nina had to survive.

  The silver jet roared into the sky, heat shimmering from its twin exhausts. Barely airborne, it commenced a series of abrupt, seemingly random manoeuvres, as it tried desperately to present the lowest possible profile to the hidden insurgents.

  The watching men let out a combined sigh
as the bright jet became a glittering speck in the sky.

  ‘One hell of a lady,’ Nicholas Lawson said grudgingly. ‘One hell of a mess.’

  Dave Miller nodded. ‘Do you think she realises Nina isn’t going to survive?’

  ‘Probably, but I doubt she’ll admit that until she has no option.’ Nick felt his short black hair ruffled by a hot gust of wind. He flinched at the blowtorch blast of heat, his voice bleak. ‘We deal in death every day and I’m having trouble accepting it’s happened. It’s a complete shambles.’

  The shorter man nodded. ‘When I met her at the hospital, I pegged her as just another interfering journalist like her sister. Your ears should have been burning.’ He ran a hard hand over his sandy stubble. ‘I held you responsible for lumbering me with the clean-up detail. But . . .’

  The roar of a landing fighter jet obliterated his words and they both turned away from the airstrip, the noise receding behind them.

  ‘She cried when I told her and then . . .’ Dave shook his head, his words drying up as they matched long-legged strides back to the armoured personnel carrier.

  Nick looked down at his colleague, anger and adrenalin simmering in his blood. He finished the other man’s sentence. ‘Then she turned into some sort of superwoman. What she’s achieved is nothing short of a miracle.’

  ‘To single-handedly organise a casevac in less than twenty-four hours?’ Dave snorted. ‘Hell, we can’t get a phone call home guaranteed in that time, let alone a private jet with a medical team. She never even raised her voice.’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘And that’s a feat when you’re dealing with the locals. Even managed a smile. Hell of a woman.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nick said. ‘Hope she’s strong enough to get through this fuck-up.’ He gripped Dave’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, mate, you did well.’ He couldn’t stop the muscle in his jaw from tightening. ‘What the hell were they doing out there anyway?’

  They reached the camouflage-brown vehicle with Dave still shaking his head. ‘Who knows. You okay, Nick? You can’t take this too hard. It’s war.’

  ‘It’s my responsibility when anyone in my division, or anyone attached to it, is injured or killed. I’m tired of killing, tired of war, fed up with all this.’ Nick flung his arm out towards the bomb-damaged buildings, the parched brown of the land. ‘Fed up with propping up a system that allows all those acres of poppies to end up as heroin in the veins of addicts on Bondi Beach.’

  ‘We’re not here for the drugs.’ Dave frowned. ‘It’s about the people.’

  ‘Yeah, and democracy they’ve never had, maybe never wanted, with their only cash crop an addictive drug that makes the Taliban richer. Warlords, drug lords, feudal leaders and we legitimise the lot of them, then build them schools and hospitals that get caught in the crossfire.’

  ‘Doing our job, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. And having journalists the world over taking pot shots at us as well for our troubles. Even Nina, for all her pretty words, was trying to find the dirt on our troops. No way was I playing her game so she went and hit on an easy target. I should have seen it coming. I should have realised she was even bigger trouble than we first thought.’ He looked down at his liaison officer. ‘I’m out of line. Forget it. Nina doesn’t deserve to die this way and her younger sister doesn’t deserve to have to deal with it. Ellie Wilding should be told the truth, but that’s never going to happen, not officially. The inquiry will offer a sanitised version of events and the case will be closed.’

  ‘Glad you don’t run with that in front of the men.’

  Nick snorted, the anger draining from him as quickly as it had risen. ‘No danger of that. You can rely on Nick Lawson to run the government line in public. Maybe . . .’ He couldn’t keep his feelings of defeat entirely hidden. Life in a war zone exacted a toll that couldn’t be measured. He felt much smaller than his usual six foot four. Was the price too high? he wondered for the thousandth time. One of his soldiers dead, Nina fighting for her life, both their families ripped apart, and all for what?

  ‘Nick, mate, it’s almost the end of our tour of duty. We all end up like this.’ Dave hesitated. ‘Worrying over your old man’s health as well?’ He shrugged again. ‘We’ll be out of here next week. Afghanistan will be just another deployment to forget. It’ll all be over.’

  Nick looked to the sky again, searching for a last glimpse of the shiny jet. ‘For us, maybe, but courtesy of Nina and her reckless ambition Ellie Wilding will remember this day for the rest of her life.’

  2

  Ellie reached the top of the sand track, the air in her lungs raw, her thighs burning with exertion. The pain always brought relief from the sadness that could still overwhelm her.

  She stopped, looking down along the almost deserted stretch of white sand, the dog a small black dot chasing seagulls. She felt her heartbeat steady, her breathing ease and her mood lighten. Dropping onto the grass bank, with her back to the weatherboard cottage perched on the edge of the beach, she turned her face to the rising sun. The early morning sea breeze lifted the heavy fall of hair from her damp neck.

  Home. And part of being home was this view; a view that travelled the world inside her head. Two years and nothing seemed to have changed. The rhythm of the seasons brought the flooding summer rains and the towering storm seas, followed by winter’s gentle sun and the timeless northern migration of the dolphins.

  The memories crowded in on her: people, faces, Saturday-afternoon barbecues, memories of her family, complete and whole, her world in balance. Memories of a warm pair of hands that scooped her up and held her tight, stuck bandaids on knees shredded from sliding down sand dunes. Familiar hands that turned the pages to admire photographs which, even on the old Polaroid camera, showed promise of the talent to come.

  Now she was here alone and the old house gave its own comfort, the sweet fragrance from the frangipanis as they shed their last flowers before the chill of autumn. The creaking of the iron roof as the day warmed and the sun sprang the nails in the capping. The feel of polished boards, old before she was born, now worn to the pattern of footsteps that had echoed over them for three generations.

  The dog loped up the dune towards her.

  ‘Hey, big fella.’ She scratched his ears as his tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. Shadow had come tumbling into the house with tan paws ten sizes too big for his shiny black body. He’d grown into a Doberman who’d almost flattened her when she collected him from the Whitakers just a day ago.

  ‘Just you and me. I’m home. Sometimes there is only one place on earth a person needs to be. Right now, it’s here in Half Moon Bay.’

  The dog flopped down next to her, presenting his tummy for scratching.

  ‘We’ve got work to do before Dad gets home in a few weeks.’ Her father, Tom, was somewhere on his own voyage of personal discovery on the other side of Australia. Ellie understood. After all, two years ago she’d fled back overseas to hide her grief and only now was she able to return and face the reminders of a life well lived.

  If her mother had still been alive, then it might all have been so different. She brushed the thought aside.

  Her mother was a calming memory, gilded by time into a soft, warming blanket that she drew around her when sorrow seemed too heavy to bear. Hers was a golden memory made of equal parts love and laughter, with soft blond hair, crystal blue eyes and room in her heart for the world, a gentle memory shaped by a child’s eyes.

  ‘Cuppa time, mate.’

  Ellie pushed to her feet, feeling the damp of dew still on the tough buffalo grass, the green line holding back the fine white sand.

  The wooden steps up to the front verandah leant gently to the left. They always had. Tom had tried to fix them, but they seemed to prefer that angle, as though the house decided how it sat on the land, not its occupants.

  She stopped and felt around in the sagging canvas folds of the squatters chair for the house key, though she wasn’t sure why she bothered locking the place. The curtains billow
ed in the draft as she opened the door. She skirted around the white couch, past the shelves crammed with books and photographs and headed to the kitchen. Shadow’s claws clicked on the amber floorboards as he followed.

  She flicked on the kettle and ran her hand over the bench top. The aging laminate had softened to a creamy shade of yellow. It didn’t look so dated any more. The cupboard door stuck a little as she hunted for a mug. Her dad had been painting again. No new flat-pack kitchens for him. Another fresh coat of antique white paint fixed everything. He was pretty good at knocking down walls as well, hence the open-plan living–dining area that led to the front verandah. With all those support beams missing it was amazing the place hadn’t fallen down around their ears.

  Ellie smiled as she poured hot water into the little white porcelain teapot. The sharp aroma of peppermint rose to meet her. A week ago, she’d been sitting in a vibrant café in downtown Johannesburg sipping tea, wondering where to head next, where to hide her pain. The email from Ron and Mavis Whitaker had come as a relief.

  She flipped open her laptop and re-read the message.

  My dearest Ellie,

  Greetings from Half Moon Bay. Mavis and I have been following your travels and hope this missive finds you well.

  I hope you won’t mind, but with Tom away we’re turning to you for help. You will remember the last council election saw a changing of the guard and O’Sullivan is now running the shire. You may also remember my dear friend, Eileen Bell, the retired headmistress, passed away early last year.

  What you may not know is that Eileen left her estate in trust with the council for the people of Half Moon Bay. When I was mayor we made plans for the building of a community centre with space for the SES, Red Cross, Meals on Wheels and, in accordance with Eileen’s wishes, a drop-in centre for teenagers.

  It’s now been brought to our attention that O’Sullivan has sold that land to a developer. We can’t prove it yet, but there’s strong evidence of corruption, kickbacks and shady dealings. No one’s listening to us, Ellie. We’ve got a protest committee together and the community’s behind us, but we need someone with a profile to take our battle higher, to make a difference.