Around her the noise was indescribable, the guns leaping in their emplacements, cordite fumes replacing air, lacerating Shannon’s throat, and now the noise of the aero engines had become a roar, a counterpoint to the violent guns, drowning thought. Stitched into that sound came the scream of falling bombs.
The blast from the explosions ripped the doorknobs from the buildings, which seemed to stagger as the shock wave hit them. Shannon sensed that the truck, hit by the blast, was going, and managed somehow to hurl herself clear as it fell on its side in a crash of metal and broken glass. Through the shattered windscreen she saw the innocent steering wheel naked and unprotected. The truck was finished but Shannon herself was unharmed, victim of only dust and fumes, the heat of a dozen fires burning in her throat. She was able to get up and did so but then did not move. There was nowhere to go, nowhere safe amid the cataclysm now engulfing her world.
Flames poured from the roof of the stores building. Clouds of smoke, clouds of dust, the angry voices of flames, the deadly shrapnel rattled on the ground around her, yet Shannon was unafraid. The noise and violence, the shock waves of the bombs, had swept her into a world devoid of fear.
It was as though human beings had ceased to exist, that blood and flesh had been replaced by the mechanical insanity of machines, the bellow of guns, the crash of bricks and stone, the howl of engines, the shattering concussion of bombs. Out in the harbour the water leapt in towering geysers. Vessels were burning, some run aground, others listing.
High overhead the movement of the bombers was almost stately as they flew on, far above the range of the furious but ineffectual guns.
The air was host to shrapnel, falling invisibly in a lethal hail. In the midst of which Shannon stood unafraid, the shocked spirit and shadow of Shannon, whose body had resigned itself to death. Slowly, on uncertain feet, she approached the cliff edge and stared down at the carnage unfolding in the harbour.
The stately galleons of the Japanese air fleet had gone but now came a new and more personal terror as dive bombers and fighters joined the assault. The air above the waters of the harbour was a madness of swooping planes pressing home the attack of the departed heavy bombers. There were so many of them Shannon was amazed they did not collide with one another but they did not, maintaining unscathed the intricacies of their deadly minuet.
The red crosses displayed on the hospital ship Manunda had not protected her; she was on fire and listing. She wondered whether Laurie was safe. The US destroyer Peary was under heavy attack, moving slowly. Her guns were firing but as far as Shannon could tell she was doing little to evade the bombs raining down on her. As she watched there was a vast explosion somewhere inside her hull. She sank almost at once, guns still firing until quenched by oil-covered waters which were themselves on fire.
Was John Gardner dead, like his ship? Or was he choking, lungs rotted by the oil?
Still the fighters came on. One passed so close that she had a glimpse of the helmeted pilot hunched over the controls. Then came another, seeming to aim straight at her. She saw the flashes along its wings as it opened fire. She heard the scream of its engine, the rattle of its guns.
She stood still, accepting the inevitability of death, yet the bullets did not touch her. She was dead yet was not. The ground on either side of her was chewed into a million fragments yet Shannon Harcourt remained. Amazed, stunned yet unafraid, she walked untouched through the fire. A creature of miracles, she came to safe haven at last, crouched on hands and knees at the side of her violated truck.
Time passed.
It could have been minutes or hours. All Shannon knew with any certainty was that the bombers were gone and bombs were no longer falling. Silence filled the emptiness that had housed her now-missing essence. The cacophony of the raid had peeled her like a wand, revealing the creamy pulp of the new being who, in the smoke-smeared silence, the diminishing crackle of flame, was waiting to be born.
She remembered a tin-hatted figure emerging from the chaos of still-burning buildings to pause momentarily at her side.
‘You orright, love?’
Reassured by the absence of blood, it vanished as quickly as it had come. It was true that Shannon’s body was unscathed but, out of sight and therefore of no consequence, the blood continued to seep from her ruptured soul. Only when the last drops had ceased did she stand and take the first tentative steps of the quest to find herself in the emptiness.
The truck, her truck, was ruined. It made her sad: it had carried her so many miles.
Firefighters were working; there was an ambulance and bodies lying on the stricken ground where bombs had left craters glinting with metal and broken earth. She knew she should help, but do what she did not know, nor did there seem anyone to ask.
There was a crater, large and deep. Looking into it she saw a hand protruding from the rubble. She stared at it, making up her mind whether she dare, before resolution flowered. She scrambled into the hole and began to scrabble in the loose earth, which continued to fall back down the crater’s steep slope as she did so. Defiantly she continued to do what she could to free the body that still lay buried, ripping her fingers and breaking her nails in a frantic determination to uncover whoever was buried there and so find herself also.
A voice came from a man standing at the lip of the crater. ‘Leave it, love. Nothing you can do for the poor bastard now.’
Shannon looked up at the man whose features she could not see against the light of what she was amazed to find was still morning. She needed to retrieve the body of the man who had died, whose broken fingers she had touched with her own broken fingers; she needed to do it not so much for him as for herself, but could not find the words to explain.
‘Come,’ the man said, extending a kindly hand. To which Shannon clung as she let him help her out of the crater.
‘They will get him out? They won’t just cover him up and leave him?’ It was so important. She clung to the man’s hairy hand, tightening her grip and shaking it in her determination to uncover the truth. ‘They won’t just forget about him?’
‘They’ll get him out. And all the rest of them.’
If that were true there was hope left in the world. But she was shaking, while uncontrollable tears cut runnels through the thick dust on her face.
The man looked at her with concerned eyes. ‘What you need is a cuppa. Come with me. They’ve set up a canteen.’
She went with him because she was still docile but beneath her dusty exterior something was at work as the new Shannon, fashioned from the bomb-defying miracle that had left her unscathed amid the carnage, began to force her way into the light.
She had tea thick with sugar, which strengthened her. The man who had helped her out of the crater had gone but Shannon spoke instead to the woman who had given her the tea and was now helping others.
‘I’m a driver,’ she said. ‘My truck’s wrecked but if there’s a spare vehicle anywhere I’d like to muck in.’
‘Can you drive an ambulance?’ The woman was little and perky and puffed out, like a winter sparrow. ‘The driver of the one over there got a bullet in the leg and can’t manage it. They’ve been taking some of the injured out to the Manunda although she took a pounding, too. Darwin General and 119 are taking patients although they were hit as well, how badly I don’t know. If you can ferry some of the wounded to those hospitals it would be a great help.’
No hesitation; no time for second thoughts. ‘Can someone give me a hand loading the stretchers?’
Luckily the ambulance was fuelled up. The Berrimah road was a real pothole alley, but Shannon was used to it and once she’d got the hang of driving the ambulance she rattled along without too many dramas. She had no idea how many had been killed or injured; for all she knew the Japs might be coming back; at that minute they might be putting troops ashore; she might be destined to be raped or murdered or slung into a prison camp the next time she returned to the Oval, but she had no time to think about any of these things. The J
aps might come back or not; in the meantime she had a job to do. And she did it, for the rest of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon as well. She had no time to feel tired or hungry or anything else. As for her headache… What headache?
She knew once she stopped she would fall in a heap so she kept going: loading, driving, unloading, driving, loading… On and on, while with every trip she felt herself growing stronger and more determined.
The old Shannon had been blasted off the map by the Zero fighter’s guns yet had survived. Now it was up to her to justify the reprieve.
‘I am going to survive this war and make something of my life,’ she said.
The new Shannon, unflinching and newly minted, was in command.
Jess
Having delivered her message to the foreman Jess couldn’t wait to get home. She thought Dad would have spent most of the morning listening to the wireless and she was afraid how the news from Darwin might have affected him.
She could hear the commentator’s voice when she opened the door and went into the cottage. Dad was sitting upright in his chair, eyes starting in his head, and he did not move as she came in.
‘Dad?’
His eyes moved but not his head. ‘They’ve bombed Darwin,’ he said. ‘Shannon –’
‘She’ll be fine, Dad.’
Such a stupid remark, but what else could she say?
He gave no sign he’d heard her. ‘There’ll be dozens dead. Hundreds, maybe.’
She went to him and took his cold hands in hers. ‘She’ll be fine, Dad. I would know if anything had happened to her. I’d feel it.’ She wasn’t sure she would feel anything but again thought it was the right thing to say.
Dad withdrew his hands from hers. He clenched them tight, the knuckles white, but his face was florid as though the blood were pressing against the skin. His breathing was harsh, like a man who had just run a race.
‘Why doesn’t she telephone?’ he said. ‘Tell us she’s all right?’
‘We don’t have a phone, Dad. You know that.’
‘She could have rung the pub, couldn’t she? She must know we’re worried.’
‘Maybe she can’t get through. Maybe the lines are down or something.’
She saw the tension leave him. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘The lines will be down after the raid. Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘She’ll be just fine,’ she repeated.
No way to know, but she knew it was something she had to say, for his comfort and her own. Someone had to be the comforter and, fifteen years old or not, for the moment it looked like it had to be her.
‘You take it easy,’ she said. ‘I’m going to see what I can find out.’
She put on her coat and hat and went out of the house. She’d thought of going to see Mrs Hargreaves, who would help if she could, but could she? Jess didn’t think so. She needed someone with more clout. She thought about it for a moment, then headed in the opposite direction, towards the grand house owned by Sir Stoddart Maitland.
The entrance to the drive was guarded by wrought iron gates ten feet high. Elaborate patterns in the iron made Jess think of dragons. She had passed these gates hundreds of times but had never gone inside. It would never have occurred to her to do so. Everything about the entrance and the tree-lined drive beyond shouted KEEP OUT; besides, the gates were usually shut.
Today they stood open, although the drive itself, heavy with shadow, looked as forbidding as ever.
No matter. She drew a deep breath and started to walk up to the house. It was a long time before it came into sight. It was grand, so massively built that it seemed to punish the ground on which it stood.
Somewhere behind the main building a dog started barking: a heavy, dangerous sound that only a big dog could make. For an instant Jess hesitated. Suppose they set the dogs on her? The moment passed; Hal’s father was a rich man and not well liked in the town – she knew that much about him – but she was simply paying him a visit to ask if he could help her. He could say yes or no as he liked. It was no reason – surely? – to set his dogs on her.
She walked on, and if her heart was hammering louder than normal she ignored it. She went up to the massive door and rang the bell.
Somewhere deep inside the house a chime echoed and fell silent, and the silence was as heavy as the house itself.
Jess waited.
A man opened the door. He looked down at her from a great height, and not only because he was tall. Jess had seen him from time to time in the town. His name was Marshall and she knew that everything about him, from his manner to the jacket and tie he wore even in the hottest weather, declared him to be a superior being. He used his height to intimidate, as he did now, but it didn’t work, because Jess knew something about him he didn’t know she knew.
Her schoolfriend Agnes had a sister called April who was fifteen, the same age she was. She worked in the sweet shop and Mr Marshall had the hots for April and used to slip her a shilling now and then to meet with him on the edge of the paddock bordering Monash Street, on the town’s outskirts. April was vague about what they did, except to say she would have a lark with ‘that silly old man’. It was enough to excite Jess’s imagination – enough, also, for her to view him somewhat differently than he no doubt expected.
Now she smiled at him cheerfully. ‘G’day, Mr Marshall.’
In other circumstances his glare might have blistered her. ‘What on earth do you think you are doing, coming here? And coming to the front door instead of going round to the kitchen? I never heard of such a thing.’
‘I want to ask Sir Stoddart something. If he’s got time.’
‘You want to ask Sir Stoddart…’ From his expression Mr Marshall feared the banners of revolution must be coming down the drive, but he rallied. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Does Sir Stoddart Maitland have the time to listen to a child like you? He most certainly does not!’
‘It’ll only take a minute.’
‘I won’t listen to another word. Be off with you this instant, or I’ll get the gardener to throw you out.’ He went to slam the door in her face.
‘April sends her best wishes.’
From the look on his face Mr Marshall could have killed her where she stood. ‘What did you say?’
‘Her sister says April likes you a real lot, Mr Marshall.’ Jess gave him a warm smile. ‘Talks about you all the time, she says.’
He was drawing breaths in shallow gulps. ‘And you say you wish to speak to Sir Stoddart?’
‘It’s this Darwin business. My sister’s up there and my dad’s that worried. I thought Sir Stoddart might be able to tell us something to put Dad’s mind at rest. Him being such an important man.’
Mr Marshall’s battalions, once so fierce, were now in full retreat. ‘Go round to the kitchen. I’ll see what I can do.’
He closed the door more quietly than he might originally have intended.
Jess walked around the side of the house. There were greenhouses and a pomelo tree. It was interesting to see how a man like Sir Stoddart Maitland lived, the big house with kitchen doors and front doors, and fruit trees in the garden.
She found a white-painted door with glass panels. She thought this was probably the kitchen door. There was no bell so she knocked on the glass. A minute later it opened. Lucy Spindle, the mother of one of the girls at school, stood with hands on her ample hips, staring at her. Mrs Spindle had taken over as cook when Mrs Dexter retired two years before.
‘What do you want?’
‘Mr Marshall told me to wait here.’
‘He did, did he? You’d best come in, then.’ There was a doormat at which Lucy Spindle pointed. ‘Be sure you wipe your feet properly.’
‘Yes, Mrs Spindle.’
She went back to a table in the middle of the large kitchen and started working on something in an earthenware bowl. She glanced at Jess over her shoulder. ‘What you doing here, anyway?’
‘Come to see Sir Stoddart.’
; ‘See Sir Stoddart Maitland? You?’
‘Yes, Mrs Spindle.’
The cook’s shoulders asked what the world was coming to that such a thing might be possible, while Jess stood out of the way, doing her best to see what Mrs Spindle was up to at the table. She waited.
Eventually the door opened and Mr Marshall stood there.
‘Come with me.’
‘Yes, Mr Marshall.’
Jess looked about her as Mr Marshall led the way. The house was vast and echoing, with open doors leading into rooms which would have been big enough to swallow the Harcourt cottage whole. They climbed a flight of stairs to the next floor. The floor on this level was thickly carpeted. Mr Marshall went to a closed door and knocked.
‘Come.’
Mr Marshall opened the door and Jess, apprehensive for the first time, went in. It was the voice that had alarmed her, cold, hard, and totally uninterested in the girl who now entered the room to meet him.
Sir Stoddart Maitland was sitting at a large desk with a green leather inlay in the polished wood. He looked at her yet did not seem to see her. ‘You want to ask me about Darwin? I know nothing about Darwin. Only that it has been bombed.’
Jess scraped together what remained of her courage. ‘My sister’s up there. My dad wants to know if she’s all right. I thought you might be able to find out. Seeing she’s your son’s friend.’
It was a dangerous thing to say. Instinct said that this man could not possibly approve of Shannon or her friendship with his son, yet instinct also said that the only way to approach a man like this was by speaking plainly. To hide her thoughts around corners would be a fatal mistake. Of course speaking plainly might also result in her being chucked out of the building, if Sir Stoddart felt so inclined.
He did not have her chucked out. He did not rage or swear or throw things, as the fathers of some of her friends might have done. Instead he stared full at her for the first time, and his eyes were as hard as his voice. ‘What is your sister’s name?’
Jess thought he was bound to know Shannon’s name but saw he intended to make her work for the favour she had asked of him. ‘Shannon,’ she said. ‘Shannon Harcourt.’
White Sands of Summer Page 16