The White Earth

by Andrew McGahan

  And if it happened that his father was part of it all, so what? It didn’t make the man a murderer or a monster. The history was there to be read — lives had been saved, settlement had been assured. So what did it matter where William’s hat came from? It couldn’t do the boy any harm. There was no evil genie hiding in an old police badge.

  But his daughter wasn’t finished with him, he knew. She was rummaging through his papers downstairs in the office, searching, no doubt, for details about the station’s lease. Well, let her look. The only document that mattered was his will, and it wasn’t in the office, he had it there in the bedroom, beside him in the cupboard. He had typed it himself only yesterday, forcing his trembling fingers down on the keys. And there was no mention of Ruth, nor of the other two women. Let them guess and wonder and plot to usurp him. And let them perish with frustration in the end.

  ‘I have the boy now,’ he told the room, grinning hotly at the memories.

  True, he had doubted William at first.

  He recalled his initial sight of the lad, moping about on the day his father died. (What luck, that harvester catching fire.) There hadn’t been much promise to see in him then, but John had persevered. And on that dreadful night of the rally, William had proved that he was the right choice. For the boy had seen it too! Not for real, of course, his childish imagination must have plucked the image from a dream. But it was the same dream, John’s own dream, and surely that was the point.

  The room waited silently.

  ‘Yes,’ he explained, ‘but I had to know for sure.’

  And if the boy wanted Kuran Station, then he had to discover the answer for himself. Ownership could not be shared. Not the power of it, and not the weight of it either. It could be crushing, that weight, encompassing all the history that the land had ever witnessed, the summation of the lives and deaths of all those who had walked it before. But William barely even knew the station — he hadn’t smelled it or touched it or felt the terrible age of its bones. John didn’t remember what he had said to the boy to launch him out into the hills, he remembered only his certainty that William had to go.

  And there had never been any question of his mother picking him up. The child was afraid, and it was fear that he needed to master. He would have to find his own way there and his own way home. It didn’t matter that Veronica had been frantic, or that Ruth had interfered. The women weren’t important, they would never grasp the truth. Perhaps, John considered, ownership was fundamentally a male concern. He had always known that the boy would survive. If he was worthy. If not, then better the fact be known now, before it was too late.

  ‘It’s not my fault the water hole was dry,’ he complained.

  Anyway, the thing was done. Once William reported what he had seen and learnt, then the matter would be sealed and there would be nothing anyone could do — not Ruth, not Veronica, not even Mrs Griffith. John would have his heir.

  And it was right! The vindication came every time he closed his eyes. Awake, his mind swarmed with thoughts, but ever since he had sent William into the hills, his sleep had been blissfully calm. The past no longer stalked his dreams. There were no more visions of the House as it had been when he was a child, with all its lights and sumptuous crowds,no more phantom appearances of Elizabeth White, always aloof and mocking and out of reach. He no longer dreamt about his time in the mountains, of great dark forests and balding peaks. He no longer dreamt of Dudley, with his sad tortured face, or of the hideous sight of him, stretched naked across a crying girl. He no longer dreamt of Harriet, or of that single perfect moment they’d shared, amidst the rock and the water.

  Most crucially of all, there had been no more nightmares. Not one glimpse of that familiar figure standing patiently while it burned. Perhaps it was Oliver Fisher, perhaps it wasn’t — John had stopped pondering the question years ago. But ever since the day of Oliver’s death, John had known that there was a price he must pay to achieve his ends. Friends, family, wife and daughter — he had surrendered them all. And that, he had come to believe, was what the nightmare really signified. The burning man was his reminder of things lost, and his accuser of things done.

  But now it had vanished, and John knew why. It had moved on to William. All unknowing, the boy had assumed the burden, and John was free of it at last. He dreamt of nothing now, as if he was a man without history or memories. There was only an empty, silent place in his sleep, where his mind hung in soothing darkness.

  John blinked, stared into the corners of his room.

  There was no one there.

  Beside him, the radio whispered stories of rain sweeping across the country, and of fierce debate raging in the Senate. The world spun on, and now Native Title loomed, the final decision hanging in the balance. Did he care any more? No … all of that was gone with the League and white robes dancing around stones. Still, the vote was approaching, and if the new laws passed, then it was fitting that William should witness the moment, here at his side. See, he would say to his nephew, with one hand I give you the property, and with another they begin to take it away. Not with this law maybe, but with the next, and with all the others that will follow. The boy would know he had been betrayed,even before the inheritance was his, and the seed of a lifelong hatred would be planted.

  Rightly so.

  John McIvor smiled. He moved the radio dial, let his fingers fall drowsily.

  What was keeping the boy?

  Chapter Forty-three

  WILLIAM AND RUTH FOUND THE OLD MAN FAST ASLEEP.

  His arm was draped across the bedside table, fingers upon the radio dial. Static crackled, and the room was stifling, awash with an angry red light that told of faraway fires and smoke, but to William, his uncle looked at a peace, lost in a deep, sweet dream, his head thrown back in abandon.

  But dreaming of what?

  Unaccountably, William shivered.

  Then Ruth switched off the radio, and the old man’s eyes flickered open. He focused disapprovingly on his daughter.

  ‘I didn’t ask for you.’

  ‘I know.’

  The two considered each other, the daughter looking down, cold and without pity, the father looking up, frail and bedridden, and yet with rage smouldering. Was there any real resemblance between them, William wondered? No … and yet they were palpably not strangers. They were bound by a thousand unseen things, hatred not the least among them. Strangers didn’t look at each other that way, it was something much closer, something to do with family. It occurred to him that it was only within families, between parents and their children, that a hatred so profound was even possible.

  His uncle shrugged minimally. His gaze moved away from his daughter, towards William, and the anger softened into a smile.‘So. You made it back after all.’

  ‘After you almost killed him,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Rubbish.’ The old man’s eyes didn’t move from his nephew. ‘She doesn’t know half of what she thinks she knows. You’re the one that’s been out there, Will. You and me both.’

  And again, William felt the ardent touch of his uncle’s mind, the madness in it, and he knew how easy it would be for his own control to slip loose, teetering as it already was.

  ‘You saw what you needed to see?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, not knowing if it was a lie or the truth.

  His uncle’s hand fluttered from the bedside table to William’s shoulder. ‘I knew it.’ And the fingers gripped there a moment, a flush of heat. ‘It’s what I said. The blood is in you.’

  His daughter snorted. ‘Is there anything you won’t do to warp this child?’ She sat down by the coffee table. ‘I told him about the hat.’

  ‘It’s his grandfather’s,’ said the old man, serene. ‘That’s all he needs to know.’

  Ruth looked up sharply. ‘Not his grandfather’s. My grandfather’s.’

  The old man blinked.‘Go away. Will and I have to talk.’

  But she wasn’t going anywhere.‘I brought these for you,’ Ruth said, spr
eading out her sheaf of papers upon the table.

  ‘And what are they supposed to be?’

  ‘Photocopies. I got them in Brisbane. I was looking up records about property transfers. The tricky part was trying to work out exactly what deal was made between the White family and the government, when this station was transferred from leasehold to perpetual lease. The official records are vague, which is interesting in itself. So I thought, who else might know?’

  The old man’s smile was mocking.‘No one.’

  ‘No? What about the White family themselves?’

  ‘The Whites are all dead.’

  ‘Elizabeth isn’t.’

  Forgotten, William had backed up to the wall, his hand spread against it to steady the vertigo in his head. He watched a wary stillness grip his uncle.

  ‘She’s old,’ Ruth continued,‘she’s into her eighties, but she’s fit enough. She lives in Brisbane. I went to see her. I found her number, right there in the phone book.’

  A grin flared, skull-like. ‘And does she know who owns her House now?’

  ‘She didn’t. But I told her.’

  ‘Good!’

  ‘She doesn’t care. She never did.’

  The grin grew vicious.‘You two got on famously, I suppose.’

  ‘She didn’t even want to talk to me at first — she’s got no liking for the name McIvor. But when I told her what I was after, she was more cooperative.’

  ‘I bet she was.’

  ‘So I found out what I needed to know about the property transfer. And trust me, this perpetual lease is open to interpretation. But that wasn’t the really interesting thing. We talked for quite a while. About the station and the old days. Even about you.’

  The old man only stared.

  ‘Yes, she remembers you. But mainly we talked about your father. This was the day after I’d found out about him being in the Native Police. So I mentioned it to her, and she went very quiet. Then she said she had something to show me.’

  William’s uncle hunched himself against the pillow, his eyes lidded with suspicion. ‘She hated my father. I wouldn’t believe a thing she says about him.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything. All she did was bring out some old notebooks.’ Ruth held up the photocopied pages. ‘They were journals. They belonged to her father.’

  The old man’s eyes narrowed.‘Malcolm?’

  ‘He was the useless one, right? The drunk and the womaniser, the one who threw all those scandalous parties here.’

  ‘He was a fat fool.’

  ‘So I’m told.’ Ruth was the serene one now. ‘But he was religious about writing in his journals, and Elizabeth still has them all. It was the mention of Native Police that got her attention. It chimed with something of her father’s that she’d read.’ She held out the papers. They were covered with dark, cramped handwriting. ‘Do you want to the see it?’

  ‘Nothing that man wrote is of any interest to me.’

  ‘Then maybe Will wants to hear it?’

  And she glanced William’s way, questioning, but he saw that she was barely aware of him. This was for her father, and only her father.

  ‘Do you remember going on any picnics as a boy?’ she asked the old man.

  ‘Picnics?’

  Ruth consulted the documents. ‘Around Christmas? Say late December, 1917? You would have been three years old.’

  ‘Is that all that idiot wrote about? Picnics?’

  ‘Malcolm wasn’t there. He only heard about it later.’

  ‘Heard what? What picnic?’

  Ruth explained it calmly. ‘Your father took your mother and you, and a few of his men and their families, on a day out. At that water hole. You’re sure you don’t remember it?’

  ‘No!’

  She shifted the papers.‘Of course, you wouldn’t remember the station Aborigines either.’

  The old man was caught off-guard.‘What?’

  ‘In fact, they were taken away before you were born.’

  ‘I know that,’ he snapped. ‘My father told me all about them. They used to get free blankets and flour. The Whites treated them damn well. Too well, if anything.’

  ‘Your father didn’t approve?’

  ‘He knew they’d be better off somewhere else. They were just a nuisance around the station. There were only a few old men and women and some kids.’

  William could see that Ruth’s hands were trembling now, whether with excitement or anger he didn’t know. But her voice was steady. ‘And so in 1911 they were shipped off to Cherbourg, and that was the end of the problem. Except it wasn’t. Not according to Malcolm’s journal. Two years later, they left the mission and came back. Not the women, just the men and the boys. Only six or seven of them, but that was the tribe’s whole male population by then. Your father caught them wandering about the station and reported them to the police.’

  The old man was watching his daughter very closely now.‘So? Those were the rules back then. Blacks had to stay where they were sent.’

  Ruth wasn’t listening.‘Two years later, in 1915, they did it again. No one knows why. But your father caught them again, and handed them over to the police again. Only this time, apparently, he beat some of them first, quite badly. To teach them a lesson. Or so Malcolm says. He was no friend of the blacks, but he was uneasy about it, all the same. I think to him it was like a man beating a horse or a dog. It was in bad taste.’

  ‘If my father did anything like that,’ said William’s uncle, his expression venomous,‘then he did it because they had no right to be here.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It was nothing new for him, was it? We know that. It used to be his job. Chasing blacks about, roughing them up. Dispersing them.’

  ‘He was enforcing the law.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t work. Two years later the blacks were back yet again. This time your father didn’t spot them, not straightaway. And one day, around Christmas 1917, you were having a picnic with your family at the water hole. At some stage, it seems, you wandered off on your own, just a little boy, exploring down along the creek bed. And then your father heard you screaming. Maybe he thought you’d come across a snake. Or a wild dog perhaps. Either way, he went running to find you. And of course he always had his gun with him. You really don’t remember any of this?’

  ‘Remember what? A snake? A dog?’

  But his daughter was far away. ‘No one knows exactly how many of them there were. But when your father arrived, you were standing there screaming at them, scared out of your wits by the black men. They were naked, someone told Malcolm, and all painted up. I guess they were the first Aborigines you’d ever seen. But your father knew them, it was those same damn trespassers again, all naked and wild, threatening his boy. And he had his gun. It’s no surprise what happened. Some of the other men even joined in. But everyone agreed Daniel McIvor started it. Habit dies hard, I suppose.’

  ‘Is that it?’ William’s uncle was laughing. ‘It’s a fairytale.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Ruth smiled, ‘it happened. Afterwards, they burned the bodies. Because times had changed a little — you couldn’t just leave black corpses lying around like in the old days. So they burned them. Or charred them at least — apparently they couldn’t get a proper fire going. And then they just dumped the remains in the creek.’

  ‘Rubbish. If there was any truth in it at all, my father would have gone to jail.’

  ‘Who would tell? His own men were terrified of him. Edward White didn’t care, and Malcolm was too weak. Your father knew he was safe. He’d disposed of the bodies, so there was no evidence. And anyway, it was only a few blacks. The authorities would have assumed that they’d just run away from their mission and disappeared. It wasn’t unheard of. So no problem.’

  ‘It’s a lie. A slur. Malcolm made it up.’

  ‘It wasn’t just Malcolm. Word got around, quietly. Elizabeth remembers the rumours herself. People suspected, and a lot of them were appalled. It was harmless old men he’d killed. Boys.’
<
br />   The old man was shaking his head stubbornly, back and forth, back and forth.

  ‘And in places like Powell … Well, Powell liked to think it was a civilised community. Elizabeth said that, from then on, they made your father an outcast.’

  William saw his uncle’s head-shaking abruptly cease.

  And for John McIvor, time stopped.

  An outcast?

  The denial died on his lips. John found he couldn’t speak. For with that one word, the great enigma of his father was suddenly laid bare. A man always so reviled, so distrusted, so dogged by whispers and frowns. And now, at last, John had a reason. Could his daughter’s story really be true? It must be true. What else explained so much? An atrocity had taken place, and as the dark rumour of it spread, the people of Powell had turned from Daniel McIvor in disgust.

  And from his son.

  John felt he was drowning, that the room had been robbed of air. Memories tumbled through his mind remorselessly, every slight and setback he had ever received, each one irrefutable. The whole tenor of his life, all the bitterness and hardship, everything had been preordained by this one action of his father. And the incident had happened when John was only a child. An innocent, wailing in fear.

  And that was like another gulf opening beneath him. For if his own cries had initiated the slaughter, then he was his own prime cause, the unwitting mover of his own downfall. How could that be borne? And then the ground was falling away yet again, he was in an abyss of memory, far, far back in the recesses of his existence, and most terribly of all he could smell smoke. The room and the bed were gone, his feeble body was gone, the recollection was complete, he was living in it. He was smelling smoke and crying and he was only a little boy, clutched tight in his mother’s arms, so tight he was almost suffocating, and she was crying as well, her breast heaving against his face, as somewhere men yelled and laughed and flames crackled.

  From far above he heard his daughter’s voice, cool and detached.‘The question is, why do you think those men and boys kept coming back here? They must have known, after the first time, that they weren’t welcome.’