White Sands of Summer

by J. H. Fletcher

  He knocked.

  ‘Come!’ A voice as rusty as an old nail.

  Gilbert opened the door and stood back to let Jess precede him. The door closed behind her; only then did she realise that Gilbert had not come in with her.

  The room was small and sparsely furnished with old-fashioned, drab-looking furniture. It had no apparent windows and was illuminated by a single ceiling light.

  ‘People are surprised when I tell them this is my favourite room in the suite. I have an identical one in every suite I own across the globe. I spend most of my life in this room, or in other rooms exactly like it. I even sleep here.’

  The voice came from a shadowed corner of the room. Only then did Jess see its source. The man, thin and as rusty-seeming as his voice, face chalk-white, was sitting in a tapestry-backed chair that might have been picked up in a junk shop.

  His voice withered in the room’s quiet air. Silence. Jess saw he was waiting for her to ask why a man with such power and wealth should choose to live in a room like this. She would not oblige him.

  Recklessly, yet confident she was right, she said: ‘To remind you of your origins?’

  ‘Bravo,’ Black said. ‘You are the first person in a long time who’s dared say such a thing to me.’

  ‘But I am right,’ Jess said.

  ‘Absolutely right. But that’s not why I sent for you. I wanted to congratulate you on the quality of the meal. I am a connoisseur of Cantonese cooking and this was one of the finest meals I’ve eaten. My guests were unanimous in their approval.’

  ‘I am glad.’

  ‘I would like to see you again,’ Dermot Black said. ‘Give Gilbert a call and we shall arrange a time.’

  ‘I would like that,’ Jess said.

  But when she phoned three days later Gilbert Weiss said Mr Black was unavailable. Over the following ten days she tried twice more with the same result so decided he must have changed his mind. She was glad she’d not given Shannon any more details about the banquet or the hopes she’d had that it might lead to more business down the track.

  SEPTEMBER 1983

  Shannon

  For weeks the ministry had been dragging its feet. Nothing unusual in that, but even by their standards this delay seemed extraordinary. Then, on Thursday 1 September, two things happened.

  The office of a department head called Lucas Horne phoned from Brisbane to say that Mr Horne would be visiting the Whitsunday region on Tuesday of the following week and would welcome the chance to inspect Charles Green island with Ms Harcourt. That had been the good news.

  The bad news was seriously bad. The caller, Horne’s personal assistant, told her that, even if the state government agreed to declare Charles Green island a nature reserve, there would be no question of its funding either the establishment costs of the reserve or its ongoing maintenance: these would remain the responsibility of the donor.

  ‘You’re telling me that, if I donate the island to the state, I still have to pay for its upkeep?’

  ‘Because there is no provision in the state budget for expenditure of this nature. Although the minister has indicated he’ll be happy to acknowledge the generosity of the donation you are proposing. Acknowledge it publicly. If it goes ahead.’

  ‘I shall speak to Mr Horne about it,’ Shannon said.

  ‘As you please.’

  His indifference made Shannon seethe but blasting the official would be counter-productive so she said nothing. It was a problem she hadn’t anticipated, though, and a serious one. The running costs would be huge; in a week she’d be sixty-five and for the first time she had to acknowledge that could be important.

  She thought about it as she made ready for bed. Did she have the right to saddle future generations with such a burden? Would she not be wiser to forget Charles Green island and the magic that had pierced her soul all those years back? If the Hennessys sold out to some developer who proceeded to desecrate the island’s pristine magnificence with a country club, golf course and housing estate, with roads, a television tower and all the paraphernalia of modern living, what difference would it really make to the family’s future?

  It would make no difference at all. She had no doubt what her daughter Lydia would choose, if asked; the rest of the family might agree with her, too, although she hoped not. She could always ask Hal what he thought – after all, it was Hal who had taken her to Charles Green in the first place – yet she didn’t want to do that. Her instinctive belief that the island had been the talisman of her good fortune, the beginning of everything she had achieved in her life, was a secret she had been unable to share with anyone, even the husband she loved. No, in this she was alone. She’d never turned her back on a decision in her life yet now she hesitated; was it selfish to want to keep on, despite the difficulties? Or was it a debt she must pay, a debt of happiness to the past?

  She still hadn’t made up her mind when she got into bed and closed her eyes. A problem for the morning.

  Within minutes she was asleep.

  She woke to the sound of a gale battering the walls of the old house.

  It was five o’clock in the morning, her usual time for getting up. It wouldn’t be light for another hour but she never woke by inches and at once remembered that today, Tuesday 6 September, was not only her sixty-fifth birthday but the day, nearly half a century after her previous visit, when she would be returning to the island.

  A pilgrimage to re-discover her youth, she thought. Among other things. Well, there were worse reasons for making the trip.

  She hopped out of bed and headed for the shower. Sixty-five or not, Shannon always slept naked and it was only seconds before needle jets of water, scalding at first and then tepid – the closest to cold you could hope for in the tropics – were sluicing away the last vestiges of sleep. As they did so she listened to the storm prowling around the outside of the house. It was strong enough to rule out using the company’s chopper to reach the island but Shannon had experienced a thousand storms in Queensland’s north and knew this one had no real weight and would certainly not prevent the sea crossing that had always been her preference.

  Given the choice she would already have been on her way to the island in Termagant, the thirty-foot sloop she had given herself four years before as a reward for the astonishing success of the company’s first venture into Asia. Shannon had been in the hotel and resort business most of her adult life yet the public’s response to the launch of Golden Phoenix, the company’s hotel complex in Hong Kong, had stunned her, to say nothing of the equally amazing success of Lotus Flower, run by half-sister Jess, which the critics agreed was the finest Cantonese restaurant in the colony.

  As she patted herself dry she found herself imagining what it would have been like had she been able to make the crossing under sail.

  What had happened on the island forty-seven years earlier had changed her life. To go back there after so many years created a sense of occasion verging on the magical and demanded – surely? – a suitable response. Sailing across a moon-bright sea would have been the perfect way to provide it – there was magic in sailing by night, the only sound the whisper of the waves along the hull, the only lights the blink of beacons warning of reefs and shoals, the wash of moonshine on the water and on the taut-bellied sails soaring overhead – but she’d known from the first that wasn’t going to happen because going with her would be Lucas Horne, the po-faced government official from Brisbane, and she’d known as soon as she’d set eyes on him that he was not the type to enjoy crossing the Whitsunday Passage in a sailing boat.

  After hearing the weather forecast the previous evening, she had even suggested postponing the trip altogether, but Lucas had said that was out of the question.

  ‘I must get back to Brisbane as soon as I can. Pressing reasons, you understand. Affairs of state. Tomorrow will be my last chance – for a month or two at least – to give this island of yours the personal inspection you no doubt believe your proposal deserves.’

  Con
cerned about possible competition, Shannon had certainly not been willing to wait a month or two, so go they must. There was another reason, too; she’d arranged a meeting on the island with Peter Hatch, the man who headed the leisure division of the International Prestige Group whose involvement Shannon both needed and feared.

  Outside investment was essential if she were to achieve her objective yet, given its predatory reputation, there was a danger that Prestige might try to take over the project altogether. That was the last thing Shannon wanted. If it came to a bidding war Prestige had the resources to beat her hands down, yet Jess had struck up an unlikely relationship with the Hong Kong-based Dermot Black, a reclusive billionaire and Prestige Group’s majority shareholder, and swore blind he had no intention of doing that.

  Jess’s private life had always been tempestuous but how she’d got on such close terms with the Prestige boss was a mystery. No surprises there; over the years Shannon had found that Jess’s life held many secrets she was unwilling to share. Witness the previous night when she’d phoned to say she was in Brisbane and would be accompanying Peter Hatch on his visit to Charles Green island. In Brisbane, when she was supposed to be running Lotus Flower in Hong Kong?

  Shannon had always given Jess a free hand but to walk away from the restaurant without even telling her was unacceptable and she’d been furious.

  ‘What on earth are you doing in Brisbane?’

  ‘I’ll explain when I see you.’

  Not good enough. ‘Who’s minding the shop while you’re swanning around over here?’

  But she was talking to silence. Jess had hung up. Shannon could have flung the phone across the room. Thank you, Jess. Thank you very much.

  Exasperation didn’t help; it never did. Jess had always been a law unto herself; for whatever reason, she was here and Shannon would have to put up with it. The meeting would take place as scheduled. With Termagant out of the running, they would make the twelve-mile journey to the island aboard the company’s motor yacht. Ariadne was Hong Kong built, a fifty-footer with twin Volvo diesels, two staterooms with gold taps in the heads and a plush saloon complete with Italian leather upholstery and furniture designed by Gustav Enquist of Stockholm – Shannon had always believed that when you planned to impress you went at it full bore. She’d done that when they opened Golden Phoenix five years earlier; they’d spent the best part of a million bucks on fireworks alone and the way things turned out it had been worth every cent.

  Shannon suspected that Ariadne would be right up Lucas Horne’s street, yet she remained apprehensive. Bad weather in the Whitsunday Passage might sour his mood as well as his stomach and that she didn’t need.

  She’d arranged to pick him up from his hotel at nine-thirty in the morning. It was an hour later than she would have preferred, but now she thought that might be a blessing. The wind often eased at first light and the delay might give any rough seas in the passage time to quieten down a little. She certainly hoped so; fine weather or foul, they were committed to going that morning. When she met up with Jess she’d find out exactly what was going on. While she was about it, she might also try to discover what that business of the banquet back in July had been all about.

  Shannon stood at the bedroom window, staring out at the expanse of sugar cane extending like an emerald sea to a horizon blurred by haze, and remembering her seventh birthday when Mum had told her, for a treat, how she and Dad had first met.

  Dad had owned a hundred acres of cane he’d inherited from his father; Bridget Boyle had worked as a maid at the priest’s house in the Proserpine main street. She said Dad had been riding past on his old mare when he’d spotted Bridget standing, duster in hand, at the bay window of the priest’s house and waved to her. In those days a man was not supposed to do that to a woman he didn’t know, but Travis Harcourt had never obeyed any rules but his own.

  That night Bridget had watched from the same window as he’d ridden his horse up the pub steps and into the bar. The laughter and applause from the drinkers had rocked the building and Mum had told Shannon it was then she decided Travis Harcourt was the man for her, even though she’d never spoken to him.

  Shannon’s grandmother, whose father had come from Cork, had shaken her head. Travis had a name as a wild man, a fighter when he had the drink in him. And him not even a Catholic. Best steer clear of him, Grandma had said. Bridget had never been a disobedient child but something about the outrageous man had stirred her like soup.

  ‘I shall marry him,’ she told her mother, and three months later she did, standing in front of the priest in her best bib and tucker and Travis beside her, as awkward as a one-legged kangaroo. A blazing summer day it had been and her with the sweat trickling in places not to be mentioned, and Grandma Boyle clucking like a bad-tempered chook.

  Mum had never lived to regret it. It would not have occurred to her to say so, but Shannon knew it was true because the love light had shone out of her mother until the day the runaway horse had destroyed her.

  Fifty-seven years ago, Shannon thought, yet still alive – as though she’d only stepped out the door for a minute. She sighed. She would always miss her but life – and work – went on. Thankfully there was always plenty to keep her busy.

  She tightened the sash of her robe and went into the study adjoining her bedroom. She sat at her desk. Maybe she was supposed to be retiring today but she hadn’t done so yet, and she began to go through the reports and accounts awaiting her attention. She had always liked to keep her eye on things; as she’d grown older she’d become more of a micro-manager than ever. Some in the organisation resented that but she didn’t care; over the years she’d found that getting into the nitty gritty paid dividends.

  She worked with total concentration for two hours before she looked at her watch, went into her dressing room and stepped into the overalls she intended to wear for the journey. She picked up the valise Abby, her housekeeper, had packed for her the previous evening – toiletries, fresh underwear, a change of shirt – and went out to the car where her driver was waiting for her.

  ‘I want to stop at the office on the way,’ she said.

  Her confidential assistant was always early, by normal standards, but by the time Shannon arrived Amy was just sitting down at her desk. Amy was little and bright and enthusiastic and Shannon valued and trusted her. She handed her a bulging briefcase containing the paperwork she’d completed that morning.

  ‘I’ve written notes on some of the letters suggesting how we should answer them. The other stuff can wait until I’m back. Anything urgent, you can get Jonathan to radio through to Ariadne. I’m on my way to pick up Lucas Horne at the hotel.’

  Amy glanced up at the wall clock. ‘Will he be ready?’

  ‘I doubt it. I’ll grab some breakfast while I’m waiting for him.’

  It was nearly ten by the time she managed to prise Lucas out of the hotel and down to the Shute Harbour waterfront. While they waited for the tender to take them out to Ariadne, Shannon chatted with Tom Wallace, an Aboriginal fisherman who’d worked these waters for the past fifty years and knew all there was to know about the wind and weather along this coast.

  ‘It’s a bad sea out there,’ he said. ‘Woman your age, I’d have thought you’d have the smarts to stay home a day like this.’

  ‘No choice,’ Shannon said.

  It was bad news, all the same; where heavy seas were concerned Shannon had a stomach like boiler plate, but how Lucas Horne’s inner-city innards would behave she had no way to know, any more than she knew what his recommendations about her proposal were likely to be. He’d had the papers for weeks but hadn’t let on what he thought about things, or even if he’d read them. After a lifetime in business she was familiar with the ways of planners, but this latest idea was something out of the box, as her husband had put it, and in Shannon’s experience public servants tended to be wary of ideas out of the box or of anything that did not match their tidy notions of how the world should be. Rough seas and a possibly
upset stomach might make things tricky but it was something of a triumph that she’d got Lucas to visit the island at all and she wasn’t going to let him escape, rough seas or not.

  ‘Any luck, the weather should have cleared by the time we get to the island,’ she told Tom Wallace. ‘It can do that. You’ve told me so yourself.’

  ‘Once you’re there she’ll be right,’ Tom said. ‘The other islands create a kinda shadow when the wind’s from the northwest, like it is today. But it’ll be rough in the passage.’ He grinned: a scattering of teeth as big as shovels in his unshaven jaw. ‘Weather like it is, you could drown before you get there.’

  Always good for a laugh, Tom Wallace.

  Joe Broad, Ariadne’s skipper, was the man responsible for getting them to Charles Green in one piece, so as soon as she was aboard Shannon had a word with him in his cabin adjoining the wheelhouse.

  ‘Reckon she’ll be right?’

  Joe stepped on to the deck, squinted up at the clouds and rubbed his close-cropped head. ‘No sweat,’ he said. ‘It’ll be wet but there should be no dramas.’

  ‘Let’s get moving, then.’

  To begin with the wind was light, the seas relatively harmless, but once they came out from the shelter of Whitsunday Island it was a different story.

  Dolled up in her foul-weather gear, Shannon stood in the bows with her hands anchored to the pulpit rail, eyes straining for a first glimpse of the island. Every time Ariadne’s forefoot struck the sea it sent spray arching high into the air and she wondered how Lucas Horne was making out in the saloon: Italian leather and gold taps were all very well but no help when it came to hanging on to your breakfast in a rough sea, and Lucas hadn’t been looking too happy when she’d come up on deck.

  Suddenly there was a change. Between one moment and the next the wind dropped as they entered the wind shadow Tom Wallace had mentioned. The god of the storm raised his staff, the visibility improved at once, and there, miraculously, it was.