White Sands of Summer

by J. H. Fletcher

  Shannon didn’t know anything about any Song of Hiawatha. It was not something Mrs Girdle had ever mentioned. ‘I thought we’d come to see a platypus.’

  ‘So we have.’

  They looked as the light faded and the shadowed spaces between the trees grew ever darker and more mysterious, but the platypus remained elusive.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ Hal said.

  It was quite a scramble getting back up the steep slope to the house but they managed it eventually. Cicadas were shrilling as they went indoors and closed the door against the night. They drew the curtains. They ate ham and cheese and rolls spread with farm butter. They shared a bottle of wine. There was a gramophone and some records: performances by Louis Armstrong, by Glen Miller, Dvořák’s cello concerto and symphonies by Beethoven and Sibelius.

  They listened to music as they ate and afterwards turned off all but one of the lights and lay in each other’s arms on the big settee. Enfolded by the soft semi-darkness, they were alone together as until that moment they had never been alone before. Alone, and glorious. Alone and happy beyond belief.

  The stone house was strong and comforting in its strength. Shannon lay in bed in the first grey light of dawn and listened to it and it was easy to imagine that the house had emerged fully formed from the granite hillside at a time before reckoning, that it and the granite ledge upon which it stood had been and would remain there forever, murmuring their inaudible secrets to the wind and rain. The permanence felt so strong that within its walls time ceased to have meaning. Days and nights flowed into one another without urgency. They took no notice of clocks but ate, slept and made love as the spirit moved them.

  On the third day they saw not one platypus but two and it seemed their cup of fulfilment was overflowing indeed. Euphoria was enough to carry them through another day but then, in a rush, the awareness of passing time caught up with them.

  ‘When do we have to leave?’

  ‘Day after tomorrow. Early. I’m due back at the unit the following day.’

  Shannon felt she was facing the gallows. ‘When will I see you again?’

  ‘That,’ Hal said, ‘is in the lap of the gods. Or of the army, anyway.’

  ‘But you will be back?’

  ‘One day. I hope.’ His expression was sombre. ‘Before we go we need to talk.’

  Shannon found the notion frightening. ‘What about?’

  ‘About us. About the future. Our future.’

  ‘You sound as though they’ll be sending you overseas.’ There were tears, somewhere, that she was determined she would not shed.

  ‘I do, don’t I?’

  Oh God.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘I know nothing and couldn’t tell you if I did. But I suppose it’s a reasonable assumption. That’s where the fighting is, after all.’ He stroked her hair, smiling, and put on a pompous voice. ‘There is a war on, you know.’

  ‘I’d noticed.’ She wanted to smile, to pretend it was of no consequence, but found she couldn’t manage it. ‘You say you want to talk. What about?’

  ‘About us. As I said. I know it’s not logical, but I have a strong belief that I will survive the war. Don’t ask me why, but I am absolutely certain of it.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘So do I. I can tell you now: leaving you, after these days we have spent together, will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’

  ‘I suppose I should be encouraging you. Go and kill the Hun: that sort of thing. Be courageous. The only thing is,’ and she felt her face change, despite all her efforts to contain her feelings, ‘I don’t feel like that at all. All I can do is imagine how horrible my life will be without you and wonder how I’ll get by.’ She was crying now, despite her efforts; she dashed the stupid tears from her eyes with an impatient hand. ‘Selfish of me, isn’t it? You’ll be the one in danger, not me. But that’s how I feel, you see. I’m afraid you’ve rather taken over my life.’ At least she managed a sort-of smile as she said it, although the tears were there still.

  The next day was sunny. Their last full day. The clouds were there, too, waiting like enemies in ambush at the back of her mind, but Shannon had banished them, told herself they were not there, that the war was not there, that tomorrow did not exist, and for the most part she managed to fool herself pretty well.

  They walked across the high country of the tableland. They took a rucksack with them with bread and more of the ham and half a pork pie, and Shannon was back on Charles Green island, her wet underclothes clinging to her, as they tucked into the hamper provided by Mrs Dexter for their outing, closer to naked than she’d ever thought to be in front of a man whom at that stage she had not even kissed, for heaven’s sake. Well, he’d seen a lot more of her now – all there was to see. She hoped she pleased him; certainly, he behaved as though she did, as he pleased her with an unbelieving delight and the certainty that they would be together as long as life lasted.

  ‘Which will be for one hundred years,’ she said aloud, and refused to explain when he asked what she was talking about.

  She was determined, nonetheless. They would be the oldest true lovers the world had ever known. War or no war. Because, no matter what might happen to the rest of the world, their feelings for each other would last forever, unchallenged by death.

  They climbed to the top of a hill. From its summit they could see the smoke from the chimneys of the little town far below them. They did not go down there. There were larks up here on the hilltop. The little creatures flung themselves skywards in an ecstasy of birdsong and Shannon knew that sound would leave its imprint upon the day and upon her life. Oh, the singing of the birds against the clean blue sky!

  They walked on. They saw an eagle circling high up, mobbed by little birds. They found a sheltered spot to enjoy their picnic and afterwards lay side by side on the sun-warmed turf and were close together, one together, as united as it was possible for two humans to be, and Hal asked Shannon to marry him.

  So he’d asked her, after all. It filled her with a fierce pride that he’d done so but she still had the notion they’d be tempting providence if they did. Of course they were tempting providence whatever they did – marry him and there would be a pension, if anything happened to him, yet it still didn’t seem right. And if there was a baby? Marriage made a lot of sense, looked at like that, but sometimes feeling was more powerful than logic.

  ‘Do not mock the gods,’ Mrs Girdle had said. ‘You’ll be asking for trouble if you do.’

  ‘I think we should wait,’ she told Hal now.

  ‘I don’t intend to die,’ he told her. ‘I am not going to die.’ Which was hubris, indeed.

  ‘I love you with all my heart,’ she told him. ‘I don’t know what your dad would have to say about it but I’d marry you tomorrow if I could. I’d marry you today. But with you off to the war, it would be tempting fate. I’m not going anywhere, you can be sure of that, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable getting engaged, the way things are.’

  ‘But when the war is over…?’

  ‘I’ll marry you then, all right,’ Shannon said. ‘You just try to give me the slip – I’ll be after you.’

  ‘Scary,’ Hal said.

  They walked back to the house, taking their time about it, but knowing the world was beginning to close in on them once again. They made love that night but for Shannon there was a feeling of desperation about it since she could not guess when they would be able to do it again.

  Something else that war did: it killed not just people but joy.

  ‘So this is the end of it,’ she said the following morning as she lifted her case into the Alfa’s boot. ‘I hate to think that but it doesn’t help to fool ourselves, does it?’

  ‘Then don’t think it,’ he told her. ‘This isn’t the end of anything. It’s barely even the beginning.’

  Back down the winding road. Back to the grim reality of war and danger and parting, while Shannon held her feelings on a tight leash a
nd told herself over and over that she would not cry.

  He dropped her outside the cottage and did not look at her but kept his eyes fixed on the road in front of him. This was the way they’d planned it. She did not look at him either, taking the case out of the boot and shutting it, turning her back on him without a word and walking away towards the cottage door. That, too, was the way they’d planned it; to kiss each other or even to say goodbye would have been too painful to be borne. She heard the car drive away and staggered but kept moving. He would be safe. He would be safe and one day, when it was all over…

  She opened the door and went into the house.

  ‘You’re back, then.’ Dad was reading the paper; he looked up at her over the top of his spectacles. ‘Off, is he?’

  ‘He has to report back in the morning.’

  ‘I thought he might have looked in. Just to say hooroo.’

  ‘We agreed we’d do it this way. We thought it might make it easier.’

  A measuring look. ‘Care for him, do you?’

  ‘I love him, Dad.’

  ‘Stoddart Maitland’s son and Travis Harcourt’s daughter… I hope it works out for you, girl. I really do. But it won’t be easy.’

  ‘We know that, Dad. But with love –’

  ‘Love,’ he said. ‘I loved your mum and she died. Loved Jess’s mum, too, and look what happened there. Love don’t bring no guarantees, girl. An’ now, with this wretched war…’ He stabbed at the newspaper with a finger as tough as oak. ‘Not sayin’ much, of course, but it don’t sound too good, the way things are going over there. Did he say where he’s going?’

  ‘He said he doesn’t know.’

  ‘Wouldn’t tell you if he did, I s’pose. Well,’ he picked up the paper again, ‘we jest got to hope for the best, I reckon. Nothing much else we can do, eh?’

  1940–42

  Shannon

  Overnight, it seemed, the Regency Hotel, emptied of customers, had ceased to function. The younger male members of the staff vanished. Hedley the receptionist left to stay with her mother in Gladstone. Airlie Beach had become a ghost town, the main street that only a few weeks earlier had been bustling with holidaymakers now populated only by the echoes of past days. Many of the shops were deserted; others had closed their doors altogether and Shannon thought it would be a long time before they opened again.

  The emptiness was accentuated by everyone’s helplessness. Nobody knew what was going on. There was a war; there was a sense that things, as Shannon’s dad had said, were not going well, but what that meant in practical terms no one knew. There was talk that petrol might be rationed, even that car engines might be adapted to run on gas, but for the moment talk was all it was.

  ‘People will start hoarding if the price goes up,’ Arthur Nimrod said. ‘That is inevitable.’

  Arthur was right; already prices – of petrol and everything else – were rising. His life was as empty as Shannon’s; both his sons had volunteered and were somewhere with the army, no one knew where.

  ‘Do you hear from them?’

  ‘From time to time,’ Arthur said.

  Shannon had a letter from Hal. ‘Thank God!’

  It might have been the Holy Grail, the way she held it in her hands. She had written to him every second day since he left, sending the letters to the army post office address he had given her. She had told him what news there was to tell, which wasn’t much; how Doreen Marshall’s cow had had her calf, how the Regency did not have a single guest. She told him how she missed him, how she loved him, how she looked forward to the time when they could be together again. With every word she wrote in every letter, she sent him her heart, naked and unashamed.

  Now, at last, she had his reply.

  My own dear love

  Thank you for your wonderful letters, which as far as I can tell have all arrived safely. Because of other duties it has not been possible to reply before this. Thank you for giving me the local news; it makes everything come so alive to me, as though I really were there, and that brings you so close that I think sometimes I can feel your breath, see your lovely eyes.

  I am not allowed to say where I am or what I am doing; suffice to say that apart from missing you I am well and in good spirits. Since I am not allowed to talk about the present and none of us can be certain of the future, I think mainly of the past, not with sorrow but with an incredulous joy that fate brought you into my life. I think especially of the week we spent up in the Tableland. It was an experience that made me realise that to be with you is to be in heaven, for nothing can be more precious and wonderful than the heaven you and I shared during those enchanted days. My intention is that I will survive the war and that we shall marry and be together for the rest of our lives. I hope my father will be happy for us but if he is not my mind is firm and nothing he can say will make any difference to my intention that we shall be united.

  In the meantime, darling Shannon, I place my life in your safekeeping, because without you I would have no life.

  My darling, love me now and love me ever. I hold you in my heart until my return.

  News came in dribs and drabs, most of it bad.

  ‘Don’t seem no way of stopping those dratted Jerries,’ said Mrs Harris at the newsagent’s.

  It certainly looked like that. The Germans had taken over Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway. These was a ray of hope when the Poms threw out that namby-pamby Chamberlain and replaced him with Churchill, but almost immediately the German army invaded France and within a matter of weeks the whole show was over, with the Froggies licked and what was left of the British army lucky to escape from a place called Dunkirk.

  And now the bloody Luftwaffe was knocking seven bells of hell out of the Poms, with pictures in the papers of burning buildings in London, Coventry and Plymouth, among a dozen others.

  ‘No-bloody-hopers the lot of them,’ Stan Smith said. ‘We should never have let ourselves get dragged into it.’

  But everyone knew Stan was a commie and Russia and Germany were allies, weren’t they?

  One thing was sure: the people who’d said the fighting would soon be over had been dead wrong.

  Shannon still wrote faithfully to Hal, passing on what little news there was. Mavis Gibbs had had a baby, which was awkward seeing that her hubby had been away for more than a year now. Chum Wilkins had died, not surprising at eighty-four and him one of the oldest blokes in the town.

  She continued to hear from Hal, too, from time to time. He was still cheerful, although maybe not as carefree as he’d been once, still confident they would win in the end – which to Shannon’s way of thinking suggested they might not be doing much winning now.

  It was horrible to have so little idea of what was going on.

  It was the week after Easter 1941 and the Regency had had no guests for nearly three months.

  Arthur said: ‘I’d hoped we might have picked up some trade on Australia Day. Or maybe a bit over Easter. But you saw how things were.’

  ‘You’re saying you want to get rid of me,’ Shannon said.

  ‘Not want to. Never that. I’m very happy with how you’ve carried out your duties. In more normal times…’

  But that was the point: these were not normal times. There were days when Shannon found herself wondering whether times would ever be normal again.

  ‘I’m going to have to close the hotel,’ Arthur Nimrod said. ‘What choice do I have?’

  There was news, or what the authorities decided was news. There was fighting in the Middle East. Names Shannon had never heard before: Libya, Benghazi, Tobruk. There was mention of Greece, of Heraklion and Crete and Maleme airfield. As Shannon’s father said, jovial after beer (well-watered nowadays), it was all Greek to him. The wireless talked soberly of Syria and Damascus, of tactical withdrawals, of regrouping. Then there was silence with no letters from Hal.

  Shannon, frantic over the stove in the tiny cottage, felt choked by the small rooms, the enclosing walls, the overwhelming helplessness.
>
  What the hell was going on?

  With the Regency closed and with cash again in short supply, Shannon had to find a job somewhere. Luckily, with so many men off at the war, work was available that a woman would never have got in peacetime. Dad organised her some shifts at the sugar mill: only a labouring job and hard going, because the work was heavy, but at least it meant they had a little more coming in.

  Days went by, weeks. At last she heard from him, three letters arriving on the same day. They said everything and nothing. They said he was well and missing her. They said he loved her and thought of her every day. They said nothing of what he was doing, or the war’s progress, or what he’d been up to since he last wrote. Had he been in any battles or been in danger? It was a war; he must have been. Or maybe not. What did she know about war? Nothing; there was no way to know these things.

  She had expected to be afraid: for him, for herself. The pain of not knowing: that she had not expected, yet in many ways it was the hardest thing to bear. The letter she held in her hand assured her he’d been well when he wrote it, but by now he could be dead. Would she even know? She would not. She was neither his wife nor his family; as far as the army was concerned she did not exist.

  There were days when she thought the uncertainty would drive her mad.

  In October the government announced the formation of the Australian Women’s Army Service.

  Shannon made enquiries. The pay would be more than she was getting at the mill, so there was no problem there. She told Dad what she was planning to do.

  ‘Jess is fifteen now. She’ll be able to manage without me.’

  ‘You want to do it?’

  ‘I need to do something. Millions of blokes are putting their lives on the line. It doesn’t seem right to sit here and do nothing while others do the work.’

  ‘Hardly nothing. It’s tough yakka, what you do at the mill.’

  ‘I need to do more.’

  ‘So what’s stopping you?’

  ‘It’s my job to look after you and Jess. If I join up, I’ve got to be sure you’ll be OK.’

  Dad had never been much for smiles but he smiled now. ‘Do what you gotta do. We’ll manage just fine.’