The White Earth

by Andrew McGahan

  Beyond the pool, the southern flank of the hill rolled down and away, surprisingly steep. William could see brown grass and gum trees and old fence posts. And at the foot of the hill washed the plains, immediately flat. Close by the land was divided up into the familiar squares of cultivation, but as the eye leapt outwards the colours and shapes merged, fields and farms spreading all the way to the horizons. It was a far wider view than he had ever gained from his aerie atop the grain silos. He could see the plains whole. On the left marched the blue line of the mountains, and on the right, the land merely extended forever westwards.

  ‘You see?’ The old woman’s voice was flat with displeasure. ‘You see all that? Every single bit of it, every single thing you can see, all of it used to be owned by the people who built this house. Grand folk, that family. Can you imagine what a time that must have been?’

  She was looking down at him now, shaking her head.

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ she said. ‘But I remember it. Your uncle does too. He was born here. That’s something you should remember. You and your mother.’

  She turned and edged through the half-open door. William waited a moment, confused, then followed her. He blinked as his eyes adjusted from the brighter light outside, taking in the dim image of a long shadowy hall and stairs ascending. Then movement caught his eye, a door at one end of the hall swinging shut with an echoing bang.

  ‘There he goes,’ said the housekeeper,‘back into his office.’ She prodded the laundry basket that William still held to his chest. ‘You keep out of his way.’

  And she led him off into the darkness.

  Chapter Three

  JOHN MCIVOR’S EARLIEST MEMORY WAS OF SMOKE.

  Smoke, and the smell of cooking meat. He was outside somewhere. A greasy cloud drifted against a blue sky. And he was crying, tears flooding down his face. His mother’s arms were around him, tight and fearful. She was afraid, and so was he … but of what? The images were always elusive, at the very limit of consciousness, and behind them there was nothing at all.

  They weren’t important.

  What was important was Kuran House. It was where he had grown up, and most certainly where he planned to die. But it wasn’t where he had been born, not exactly. That had happened in one of the cottages at the back of the House, where the staff were quartered. The year was 1914. His father, Daniel McIvor, was away at the time, working somewhere up in the hills. Daniel was the manager of Kuran Station, with dozens of employees, thousands of sheep and cattle, and over one hundred thousand acres of pasture to administer.

  The actual owners of the land, however, were the White family — a famous pastoral dynasty whose origins lay far back in England. At the time of John’s birth the patriarch was one Edward White, but it was Edward’s grandfather who had brought the family to Australia in the 1820s. Impoverished aristocrats, the Whites had developed their wealth in the southern colonies by squatting on the fringes of civilisation, rearing thousands of sheep, and then selling out as the frontiers caught up with them. But the Kuran run was their biggest and their best, their crowning achievement, and it was meant to be the end of their wandering. When they took possession of the land in 1860 it spread out over three hundred thousand acres, from the Hoop Mountains in the east to the Condamine River in the west, from the fledgling town of Powell in the south to the campsite of Lansdowne in the north. A kingdom of their own.

  But the Whites were not the original owners. Before them was a another squatter by the name of Heatherington. His agents had first roamed the Kuran region in the 1840s, a few lone men staking out boundaries in what was then an unknown wilderness. A few lone men … and yet they were part of a land rush, for after the first claims were marked out down near Warwick, almost one hundred miles away, it was only two or three years before the entire Darling Downs were taken up by squatters. The sheep took somewhat longer to arrive, and the men to tend and shear them even longer. There were no fences or roads or sheds or yards — only the wide open plains, and shepherds scattered in their huts, ex-convicts for the most part, ticket-of-leave men, as alone as anyone could be in Australia in those days. For its first fifteen years Kuran Station could boast little more than tents and huts by way of dwellings. It wasn’t until 1859 that Heatherington himself arrived, and standing upon a hill at the station’s very centre, conceived the plan of a great residence.

  He wasn’t the only one. The sheep barons of the Darling Downs (the Pure Merinos, as they were known) were all racing to outdo each other in mansion building, and stonemasons were at work on a dozen different stations. But Heatherington, with one of the biggest runs to his name, aimed for a house befitting his stature, and in doing so fatally overreached himself. Even though the land itself had been virtually free, setting up a station on the very edge of the known world was still an expensive business. Heatherington went deep into debt to commence his grand homestead, and was bankrupt before it was much more than a shell. His creditors resumed the property and Kuran Station’s first owner disappeared into obscurity. Then the Whites stepped in. They took the framework of Heatherington’s building, redesigned it, enlarged it with two great wings, surrounded it with a formal English garden, and finally Kuran House lifted its sandstone walls above the plains.

  It was a triumph, ‘the shining light of the Downs’ as one socialite declared, an architectural marvel on the very frontier. For the next twenty years the Whites ruled supreme,one of the grandest of the Darling Downs squatter families, and their House was the political and cultural hub of the region. The village of Kuran grew up around the foot of the hill, a purely feudal community. But even in Powell, away on the southern rim of the property, the Whites were all-powerful. They owned many of the shops and hotels there and, most importantly, the votes of the townsfolk. There were barely a thousand registered voters in the whole of the northern Downs, and most of them relied on the station in some manner or other for their income. So it was with no great effort that the Whites got themselves elected to the Queensland parliament. There they joined their fellow landed gentry in a happy alliance that for several decades ruled the colony as its own private sheep run.

  It wasn’t to last. Towards the end of the century the cities and towns were growing, filling up with factory workers and shopkeepers who owed nothing to the pastoralists, and even out west, amongst the shearers and miners, the labour movement was abroad. Battles were fought and lost in parliament. Editorials cried out demanding land for the common man. The rents on pastoral leases, negligible in the early days, rose ever higher. And the Pure Merinos, land rich but cash poor, had no means to survive protracted bad times. The crippling recession of the 1890s cleaned many of them away forever. The Lands Department broke up their runs into smaller lots that were purchased by humbler graziers of uncertain political alliance, or into tiny blocks that were selected by yeoman farmers of Irish or German descent. By the declaration of Queensland’s statehood in 1901, most of the grand runs were gone, and the great homesteads stood deserted.

  But Kuran survived. Up on the northern edge of the Downs, furthest from the cities and major transport routes, it was the least attractive area for development. More importantly, the Whites fought tenaciously to hold it all together. Edward, the head of the family by then, had inherited his seat in parliament, where he ruled over a small pastoralist rump. When some resumption of the land became unavoidable, and outlying blocks of Kuran were carved up for selection, he was able to manipulate the Lands Department so that the prime land came back to him, either through direct purchase, or through friends and agents. And even those blocks that were sold to others were not necessarily lost forever. The small graziers and selectors often struggled to make their properties viable, and within a few years would sell out or simply abandon the land, after which Edward moved back in. It cost a fortune of course, which even the Whites could barely afford, but all in all, by the time John McIvor was born, Kuran Station was still almost half its original size.

  John’s father had enter
ed the Whites’ employ in 1902. Daniel, already middle-aged, had worked up and down Queensland in a variety of jobs, but he proved impressively capable on the station, and Edward promoted him rapidly. As manager, Daniel’s duties extended beyond simply running the property. He also had responsibilities during election campaigns — mustering all the station workers and transporting them to Powell on polling day, dishing out free beer and food to the townspeople, delivering harsher encouragement to wayward voters when it was needed, howling down rival candidates in the streets, or quietly buying them off altogether. He was integral too in the array of schemes which kept most of the Kuran Plains under the Whites’ control. He dummied for them at land sales, and organised others to do the same. He intimidated prospective buyers. And when people were rash enough to go ahead and select Kuran land anyway, Daniel and his men were not above burning down fences and crops and sheds to drive the newcomers away. He was regarded far and wide as a ‘hard’ man, and was known to carry a pistol with him at all times.

  And yet after a decade at Kuran, Daniel understood, perhaps better even than Edward himself, that the station was approaching a crisis. Wool prices were fluctuating wildly, there were troubles with shearers and strikes, transport charges were high, and diseases stalked the livestock. The upkeep of the House alone was ruinous. And the government was forever muttering about the abuse of pastoral leases and the need for land to be released. As Kuran was the largest remaining property on the Downs, it provided a ready target. The townsfolk of Powell in particular were agitating for land reform. Without a formidable presence in parliament, and an iron hand on the station itself, the whole thing might disintegrate. And yet Edward was getting old. If he died, who was to succeed him?

  True, there was an heir to the White fortune, an adult son called Malcolm. Both Edward and Daniel, however, saw Malcolm for what he was — weak, indulgent, not a man to assume the reins. In any case, Malcolm himself wanted nothing to do with the station. His youth had been spent in Brisbane and Sydney, dissipated and wild and an embarrassment to his father. Finally he had been brought home in disgrace, on the condition that he would be supported only as long as he remained at the House. In sullen awe of his father, Malcolm acquiesced, but there was no hope he would ever learn the family business. His only useful contribution was to marry, and provide his father with an extension to the dynasty. But his sole child was a girl, Elizabeth, born in 1912. And a daughter was not what the Whites needed.

  Yet her birth awoke an idea in Daniel McIvor. A life-long bachelor, he suddenly got married. He chose a lonely girl from the station staff — seemingly at random, certainly without any obvious affection. And a year after that, his son, John McIvor, was born. A son was all that mattered. For Daniel had devised a plan, and privately dared to hope an immense hope. A son of his own, a boy whom he could raise to be as hardy and able as himself, intimate with the workings of the property … and Edward White’s granddaughter, to whom everything must pass in the end. What could be a more sensible arrangement than to unite the two? The McIvor blood would give the White family the vigour it so lacked. And with vigour, the survival of Kuran Station could be guaranteed.

  For young John McIvor, it was the greatest of expectations. His father never spoke of it directly, but the understanding was there, in Daniel’s every look and word. Thus the seed was sown, and John grew up secretly believing that Kuran Station would one day be his. The thought filled him with pride, and as a boy he learnt every inch of the run, every corner and crest, from far out on the plains to high up in the hills. And over the years he grew into everything that his father had hoped — tall and handsome and sure of himself, quick, capable and strong. Even Edward White was impressed, and congratulated Daniel on the blessing of a son who could follow in his father’s footsteps, perhaps even assume the mantle of station manager one day.

  Meanwhile, the life of Kuran House and the White family went on before John’s eyes, familiar, yet tantalisingly out of reach. The prisoner Malcolm lived in high state. His wife was a local beauty, the daughter of the Mayor of Powell, and since they could not go themselves to the bright lights of society, they had instead created their own imitation. The weekend party was in vogue, and at Kuran House there was no paucity of bedrooms or food or drink, so dozens of people wended their way west over the mountains and across the plains. Malcolm’s parties were not exactly the scandal of the Darling Downs, perhaps, but they were certainly exotic, and the guest list, at times, was infamous. Away in Brisbane Malcolm’s father scowled and complained, and when the old man came home between parliamentary sessions, Malcolm was wise enough to banish his friends. But then when Edward was gone again…

  John watched it all from beyond the garden wall. The parties in the afternoon, women and men all in white, strolling across the lawns, or lounging about the swimming pool, while servants moved eternally amongst them bearing drinks and food. Or at night, when the House would be lit to a blaze, and music and laughter came from inside. John would sneak about the windows and peer into rooms where dancers writhed before gramophones, where men smoked and shouted over billiards, or where gargantuan meals were spread across the sixteen-seat dining table. And later, when all was dark and he tried to sleep in the bedroom of his parents’ cottage, he would hear the shrieks and cries from the upper halls of the House, and the sound of running feet and slamming doors, never knowing whether he was hearing fear or pleasure or pain.

  And yet he knew that there was more to the House then just people and lights, for it was the centre of something larger — the whole great expanse that was Kuran Station. John had seen the wide plains and the dark hills and the men who worked and sweated on them, struggling to keep the property alive. Those men, their wives and their families, and the people of the villages and towns all looked to the House for authority, for judgment, for leadership — not just parties. When his day came, he vowed, he would act with more gravity. The coming of that day depended on Elizabeth, and so John watched over her carefully, contemplating their mutual future. She remained oddly distant however, a lone figure moving about the House and the garden. She had no friends, as far as he could tell, and it seemed to him that she should have been grateful for his company, for the presence of another child who was her equal. But on those occasions when she noticed John at all, she treated him almost as if he were no different from any of the other staff children.

  He was seldom allowed inside the House, apart from rare visits accompanying his father, but there came one late summer’s afternoon, when Malcolm and his wife were absent on a visit to Powell. The building lay drowsing in the warm sunlight, empty and inviting, and John, eleven years old, could not resist the chance to explore it alone. Slipping through the back gate, he stole across the lawns, the air hazy with pollens and the buzz of insects. The front doors stood open, as they always did in summer, and in a moment he was inside. There was no one about. He walked from room to room, wondering at the height of the ceilings, at the tall windows diffusing the sunlight through lace curtains, at the fireplaces big enough to stand in, at the furniture glowing with its deep red grain and at the floors polished to shining. It was all beautiful beyond anything he had ever seen, but his favourite room on the lower floor was Edward’s office. This was a huge chamber in a corner of the west wing, with leather-bound volumes lining the walls and a desk six feet wide. Velvet hangings covered the windows, and an intoxicating aroma of whisky and tobacco flowed from every corner. John’s father worked here at times and John had often imagined what it would be like to sit behind that desk, and call it his own.

  But in the central hall was the grand staircase, climbing to the second level, and that was where he had never been before. He crept upwards now, listening for any sound, but none came, and he arrived, hushed, at the upper landing. It was even more airy and spacious up there. Tall glass doors opened out onto the upper terrace, and they flooded with light a long gallery that ran away into the east and west wings. John ventured westwards, passing door after door, and catc
hing glimpses into bedrooms. One was decorated in red and black, with white paper screens that made him think of pictures he’d seen from China or Japan. Another had bright multicoloured hangings and was arranged with roughly carved wooden statues from somewhere like Africa or New Guinea. And the beds were gigantic, mysterious four posters, draped with curtains. This was where the adults roamed at night, playing in their magical rooms, and crying out in the darkness.

  And then, at the end of the hall, in the right-hand corner of the west wing, he came to one last open door. This room was all white, and shone with an ethereal glow from arched windows hung with billowing gauze. It felt almost empty, with only a small, single bed in the corner. And sitting before one of the windows, in a winged wicker chair, was a slim, dark-haired girl, her legs drawn up beneath her and her face turned away as she studied the pages of a book. John froze. It was only Elizabeth, and yet she seemed no more real than the room around her, a painting or a statue in perfect repose.

  Then she sensed him and turned, her brow creased at the interruption. You shouldn’t be up here, she said. Go away.

  John stood there, a million things to say in his head, but none of them emerging. The crease turned to a frown, and she seemed ten years older than him, not two.

  Go away, I said.

  And John went, his face burning, fleeing down the hall.

  How had she done that, frightened him so, when he was not afraid of anything? And how was it possible that they would be together one day when he couldn’t even speak in her presence? But he had recovered by the time he was back outside. She’d caught him off guard, nervous about breaking the rules, that was all. Their mutual destiny was many years off yet, there was plenty of time, and he would show her soon enough, when he was older.