White Sands of Summer

by J. H. Fletcher

  Curious Shannon watched once as Dad slaughtered a lamb that had somehow found its way into their yard. Most men had a gun and Dad was no exception. A bullet in the head, a quick slash across the throat with a sharp-bladed knife and five minutes later the lamb was bled out and hanging in a sack inside a shady corner of the yard.

  Somehow, by one means or another, they survived, although Grace, resentful that the cane farmer she’d married had turned into a labourer overnight, never stopped beefing about no-hopers and her lousy luck in being hooked up with one.

  Time heals: that was what people said, but in Shannon’s case it didn’t; things got worse. There were few treats to be had and when there were it was Jess who got them and not Shannon, who became more resentful and rebellious by the day.

  She resented the fact that girls were expected to do lots of things, because they were girls, and not to do lots of things, for the same reason. Who set the rules? Men. Because women – and girls – were supposed to know their place. In the street, to walk three steps behind the man. To defer to his authority. To obey; that above all.

  People said that things were changing in the cities. There were rumours of women smoking cheroots, wearing pants, of drunken orgies, of freedoms (whisper it) in matters of sex, but that wasn’t how life was lived in sugar cane country, which still held to the old ways. Women were expected to do womanly things and not interfere in men’s business. They worked, if money were needed, but the wages were handed over, for the good of the family. A woman’s role, put simply, was to serve.

  Shannon hated that with all her heart. She needed to be free but nothing in her experience gave her reason to believe that freedom, for a woman, was possible. She could not understand why the girls she knew – at school or out of it – accepted that situation as their proper role in life and seemed to want nothing more. A husband, a home, a baby or babies. Shannon did want more. The problem was she didn’t know what.

  For the moment that didn’t trouble her too much. She would find out, in time, because by the time she was thirteen she knew that at heart she was a rebel.

  1928–33

  Jess

  Jess’s first memories were of light shining through the window, moving from one side of her bed to the other, then to the floor, then to the wall opposite the window. If she half-closed her eyes she could see the colours: red, yellow, green. Even before she knew their names she saw them, a dazzle of different colours playing together.

  She would have played with them, too, if she could, would have liked to hold them in her hands, but when she tried to close her fingers on the light it vanished. Bad light. Bad. She opened her hands and it was there again. Nice light. Pretty light.

  When Mama looked down at her she stretched up her hands to take hold of the light, to take hold of Mama. The light slipped away but Mama was there. Warm Mama always there. Pretty coloured lights, sometimes there, sometimes not.

  Jess’s first memories.

  When she was a big girl, nearly six, she wanted to draw a picture of the light but could not. She had a pencil but it wouldn’t do what she wanted. The light danced, but her picture was a mess of lines.

  ‘Look at you scribbling,’ Mama said.

  On her sixth birthday Dadda gave her a pink doll, Mama a pink cake. Shannon didn’t give her anything.

  She liked to watch Mama in the scullery. Mama didn’t get Jess’s cake from the shop; she made it in the stove. Jess sat on a stool and watched her. It was magic, all the things mixed together in a basin, then in a tin. Mama let her put some on her finger to taste. It was sweet. Mama opened the stove door and put the tin inside.

  ‘There!’ Mama said. ‘Now we must wait for it to cook.’

  Jess thought that was something she’d like to do when she was older. She didn’t know why a cake cooking in the oven should remind her of the light she’d seen when she was little, but it did. If she could learn how to make a cake like Mama, she thought it would make her feel as she had when she’d watched the changing colours of the light.

  ‘Will you show me?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe one of these days,’ Mama said.

  Jess accepted that because to her the scullery smelt not so much of food as of love.

  Shannon

  Things came to a head on Shannon’s thirteenth birthday.

  Grace had a cousin a few years older than she who lived at a place called Maggs Corner somewhere west of Proserpine. Her name was Flos Turrip and she had a son, Josh Turrip, who was a week older than Shannon. Flos was having a baby.

  ‘Another one,’ Shannon overheard Grace saying to her friend Mrs Loop.

  ‘’E’s coming to stay with youse?’

  ‘Only while Flos gets on with what’s coming to her. He’ll go back after the baby’s born, I s’pose.’

  ‘’E’ll have your cousin’s name, too, I expect,’ Mrs Loop said.

  ‘Four on ’em,’ said Grace. ‘All boys and never a ring in sight.’

  ‘Same father?’

  ‘All different.’

  ‘Fancy!’ said Mrs Loop, shocked and delighted at the same time.

  Travis had never heard of Maggs Corner. ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Flies, mostly,’ said Grace. ‘God knows what she does there.’

  ‘We know what she does there,’ Travis said.

  ‘The blokes certainly know where to find her,’ Grace said. ‘Can’t seem to get away from them.’

  ‘I doubt she tries very hard.’

  People had said the same about Grace once, so she kept quiet.

  ‘We’re going to take this kid of hers in, or what?’

  ‘Only till she’s had the baby,’ Grace said.

  ‘Lucky we’re rich,’ Travis said.

  And went off to the pub, to prove how rich they were.

  ‘You got to feel sorry for her,’ Grace told Mrs Loop. ‘Stuck out there in the middle of nowhere.’

  Mrs Loop said nothing but her sceptical look said a lot.

  Josh turned up on Shannon’s birthday. He was a weedy boy, tall for his age, with knobbly knees and black hair that stuck up like a bristle brush.

  Shannon was already in a bad mood because no one had remembered it was her birthday. No cards, no pressies, no nothing.

  On Jess’s birthday, six months before, there’d been a cake with pink icing and six candles, and Dad had found from somewhere a celluloid doll in a pink dress. All Shannon got was a sort-of cousin she’d never met before and didn’t want now. His bare feet were hard and she watched as he mooched around the yard, kicking at stones.

  ‘What a dump,’ said Josh Turrip.

  ‘Better’n Maggs Corner,’ Shannon said.

  Josh scowled but said nothing. Watching him closely, Shannon decided to probe to see if there was anything behind the scowl. ‘Turnip?’ she said. ‘What kind of name is that?’

  Again he scowled; again he said nothing.

  ‘Turnip, turnip,’ Shannon crooned softly. Then again, a little louder: ‘Turnip, turnip…’

  ‘For God sake get out from under my feet, the pair of you,’ said Grace, as sharp as a dozen spikes as she appeared from nowhere in the yard. ‘You, Shannon, take him down to the river, if you please. And don’t come back till tea time.’

  Shannon found a stick on the path to the river. She picked it up and slashed at the heads of the weeds as they passed. They reached the stretch of sand along the water’s edge. The water was cool and pale brown close in but dark further out, with the occasional swirl showing where the current flowed.

  Josh turned so the river was on his left. ‘We’ll go this way,’ he said.

  It was Shannon’s river. She knew it and Josh didn’t.

  ‘The other way’s better,’ she said. ‘There are ducks up there. They can be fun to watch. Ducklings, too, maybe.’

  Josh continued to walk in the direction he had chosen. It made Shannon mad. She went after him and grabbed his arm. ‘I said the other way is better.’

  He turned, clenched fists raised
. ‘I’m a boy so I’m in charge. I said we’ll do it my way. Girls do what they’re told. Didn’t they ever teach you that?’

  ‘Not this girl,’ Shannon said.

  He slapped at her, barely making contact as Shannon leapt back. It made her madder than ever. She was still holding her stick. She slashed him with it and it raised a nasty welt across the side of his face.

  She was shocked; she hadn’t meant that to happen. All the same, she was ready to defend herself when he attacked her, as he was bound to, but he didn’t. Instead he did something so surprising that for a moment she could not believe it. Instead of trying to beat the living daylights out of her he turned away, blundered a few steps to the river bank and sat down with his head in his hands.

  Shannon had been shocked before; now she was frightened. She’d never known a boy behave like this. She approached him cautiously. Josh’s shoulders were shaking.

  Crying? Boys didn’t cry. Not the ones she knew. She reached out a tentative hand.

  ‘You orright?’

  He said nothing, his hands still covering his face.

  She was still holding the stick. She went to throw it away but at the last moment did not. If this strange boy suddenly went berko on her she might need it.

  ‘You orright?’

  She didn’t know what else to say.

  He muttered something.

  ‘Wotcher say?’

  He dropped his hands and turned fiercely to her. ‘I said you dunno what it’s like.’

  She was in lonely territory here but saw that his face was indeed wet with tears. Now instinct guided her. No longer scared what he might do, she sat down at his side.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  It took a bit of prodding but eventually it all came pouring out. About the blokes who stopped over. Mum’s friends. Mostly they stayed for a night, tops, some for an hour or even less.

  He made it sound like there was an endless stream of blokes wanting to be his mum’s friend.

  ‘She thinks I’m just a kid, that I don’t know what’s going on, but I know. Sometimes, when she’s pissed, she don’t even shut the door.’

  He, too, was opening the door on a world Shannon did not know or understand.

  ‘They gives her money,’ he said. ‘I seen them.’

  Now she knew; Josh was not crying because she’d belted him with the stick but because he was ashamed. Ashamed and alone.

  ‘Don’t you have no brothers?’

  He had three, he told her, but they were older than he was. ‘They cleared out. That’s what I’m gunna do, soon as I’m old enough,’ he said with something of his earlier fierceness.

  Shannon felt helpless but no longer angry. Instead she felt sorry for him though she knew that was something she must never let him see. The way to deal with him, she decided, was to ignore his despair and the tears – that, above all – and take charge. Somehow that seemed the right thing to do: simple and right.

  She stood up. ‘I’m gunna see those ducks,’ she said. ‘You coming or what?’

  She waited. He looked up at her, still with a trace of defiance in his face, but it was dying, dying.

  ‘Make up your mind,’ she said.

  He said nothing but got up. They started back the way they’d come, Shannon’s mind seething with a complication of triumph, sympathy and tenderness.

  By the time they got back for tea they were friends.

  It was more than could be said of Grace when she saw the welt on Josh’s face.

  ‘What happened here?’ Glaring.

  ‘Accident,’ Josh said.

  ‘Accident?’ Grace’s voice notched up an octave. ‘Don’t give me that nonsense.’ She turned on Shannon. ‘You hit him, by any chance?’

  ‘I told you, it was an accident,’ Josh said. ‘I slipped. She had nothing to do with it.’

  Shannon had been about to take the easy way and agree with him but something stiffened her spine. She stood tall and glared at her stepmother. ‘I did hit him, yeah. With a stick.’

  Grace slapped her face so hard her ears rang. ‘See how you like it, eh?’

  There was only an inch or two between them in height; Grace was a little thing whereas Shannon was tall for her age. Rebellion had been bubbling away for years; now it boiled over. She tried to hit Grace back but Grace had been brought up in a hard school. She caught Shannon’s fist in mid-air, dragged her off-balance and slapped her a second time, harder than before.

  ‘Don’t… you… dare try to hit me. You hear? Don’t you dare!’

  Her fury was enormous, terrifying. It was enough to paralyse any thirteen-year-old who breathed. As was her strength. She did not say another word but grabbed Shannon’s arm and half-marched, half-dragged her through the open doorway and across the yard to the shed. She pulled open the door, shoved Shannon in and slammed and locked the door.

  Shannon listened as Grace’s feet marched purposefully away across the stone flags of the yard. A moment’s silence before the cottage door slammed. Grace was so mean she might leave her there all night without any supper. Her head was sore where Grace had hit her but her brain was clear.

  She was determined not to stay in the shed a moment longer than she had to but there was no way she could force open the locked door and the skylight was out of reach, so there was nothing she could do. She was stuck there until Grace let her out, and knowing it made her madder than ever.

  It was getting dark when she heard a soft scratching at the shed door. She held her breath, saying nothing.

  ‘Shannon?’ Josh’s voice. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Did she send you?’

  ‘She dunno I’m here. Why’s she so mean to you? I told her –’

  ‘Long story. Never mind. Can you get me out?’

  ‘I’ll try.’ The shed door rattled. ‘It won’t open.’

  ‘There’s a ladder by the dunny. And some rope. If you can get up on the roof and open the skylight and tie the rope to something…’

  ‘You reckon you can shin up the rope?’

  ‘Course I can.’

  But you’re a girl… The words hung in the silence but he did not say them.

  ‘Just do it, OK?’

  Silence, then, for what seemed like hours but was probably no more than a few minutes.

  A scrape, a thump, as Shannon tried to work out what was going on. A scuffling sound on the roof above her.

  What if he was afraid of heights? What if he fell and broke his neck?

  A bit late to be thinking of that.

  She stared up at the skylight. It was dark now and there was nothing to see, but still she looked. Ten seconds… Twenty…

  A pale blob against the darkness. Josh’s face. She heard him tugging at the skylight, trying to force it open.

  ‘It’s stuck…’

  She could only just hear his voice but knew he had to whisper or Grace might hear him. ‘Pull harder.’

  ‘I am pulling harder.’

  He was; she could hear him distinctly. Tug, tug… A shower of dust. The skylight creaked open.

  Hooray!

  No time for congratulations. Not yet.

  ‘Got the rope?’

  His answer was to lower it. She grabbed the end. It wasn’t as thick as she’d have liked but felt strong enough.

  ‘Is the other end safe?’

  ‘I tied it to the downpipe. I tied it real tight.’

  She had to hope he was right. She had to hope the knot would hold. She had to hope the downpipe was strong enough to support her. She had to hope…

  Enough! She’d always found rope climbing no trouble but this rope was very thin. Climbing it wouldn’t be easy. Even getting a proper grip was hard. She grabbed the rope, reaching as high as she could, and began to climb.

  Hand over hand. Hand over hand. The rope was really thin. Already her fingers had begun to ache. Hand over hand. Halfway – surely? – she was swinging to and fro. Her hands…

  Don’t think of them.

  Hand over hand
.

  The skylight opening was very close now. Another problem. To grab the frame of the skylight she would have to let go of the rope. First with one hand, then the other. Then haul herself through the opening.

  She took a deep breath. Swinging. She would do it because she had no choice.

  She reached the opening, Josh staring with an anxious face. Never mind Josh. She grabbed the skylight frame, first with her left hand, the rope swaying violently, threatening to break her hold, then the other. Hanging, gasping, from both hands. She knew they would not hold her for long. She hauled, both arms trembling, eyes stinging with sweat.

  She couldn’t do it. She was going to lose her grip. She was going to fall.

  She felt Josh grab her and haul. Both of them were hauling now. Hauling… Her elbows were on the edge of the roof. Josh tugged at her sweat-slippery hands. Shannon wriggled higher. Felt the roof edge cutting into her stomach. Another haul. She was almost there. Her thighs…

  She was safe.

  Shannon lay on her back on the sloping roof, the palms of her hands on fire. She drew a series of unsteady breaths. The night was clear, the stars reeling overhead.

  Josh was kneeling at her side. ‘You OK?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘But what you gunna do? The way she went at you before, she’ll skin you when she finds you’ve got out.’

  And skin me, too.

  He never said it but Shannon thought it likely because she could never have got out by herself.

  ‘I know what we’re going to do,’ she said. ‘We’ll close the skylight and put the ladder and rope back where they were before. Then you’d best sneak back into the house. Make sure she doesn’t spot you.’

  ‘What about you? You gunna run away? I’ll come with you if you are.’

  ‘And go where? No, there’s something I got to do but I don’t plan to run away.’