The White Earth (20 page)
‘I’m sorry.’
The old man stared levelly at him.‘I’m not too impressed with this stealing of keys, either. I don’t lock doors for the fun of it. Especially where guns are concerned. Guns aren’t toys. That’s why I keep those rifles well out of the way, and behind a padlock.’ He paused, started to say something, but then gave a rueful half-smile.
‘That pistol though, I’d forgotten all about that.’
William waited in surprise.
But his uncle was stern once more. ‘You shouldn’t have touched it. That thing is over a century old. It wasn’t loaded, but you didn’t know that. Mrs Griffith was right to be angry. You had no business there at all.’ Then the smile hovered again. ‘But Mrs Griffith doesn’t think anyone has any business in this House, except her. Not even me.’ He clapped William lightly on the shoulder. ‘No harm done this time. But don’t go up there again, not unless I’m with you.’
William hardly dared believe it.‘You’re not mad?’
‘You helped me with the newsletter, so let’s call it square.’ The old man glanced at him awry. ‘I suppose you’re wondering about the things you saw in that cabinet.’
‘Mrs Griffith said they belong to a dead man.’
‘Did she? Well, it’s true enough.’
‘She said he was buried under the House.’
His uncle laughed. ‘She’s trying to scare you.’
‘It’s not true?’
‘Oh, it might be.’ He twisted around and studied the fountain, its broken stump rising bluntly amidst the weeds. ‘Actually, his statue used to be the centrepiece here. He was an explorer. His name was Alfred Kirchmeyer.’
William looked blank.
‘No,’ his uncle agreed, ‘He’s not one of the famous ones. But if anyone can be said to have discovered Kuran Station, it was him. He was certainly the first white man to set foot here.’
‘I thought…’
‘Yes, yes, Cunningham found the Darling Downs, but I told you, he never came this far north. That was left to Kirchmeyer, and the three men with him, ten years later. Not that you’ll find them in any history books. Alfred was no great bushman, he was just a smalltime Sydney surveyor. God knows why he wanted to go exploring. Maybe he dreamt of finding the infamous inland sea. But he and his party were so slow about getting up here that they barely beat the first settlers.’
The old man gazed pointedly out at the southern horizon, where the sinking sun had cast great shadows across the fields.
‘It was pathetic. The blacks stole half their food and drove off all their horses, so the four of them were blundering about out there on foot. Then Kirchmeyer headed off on his own one morning — no one knows why — and was never seen again. The others looked for him for a while, but then gave up and headed back to Sydney. Kirchmeyer’s maps and his journal had vanished with him, so there wasn’t even anything to report. Settlers had reached the southern Downs by then anyway, and the whole expedition was forgotten in the land rush. And that might have been that. But a year or so later, a squatter named Heatherington sent an agent up here, to stake a claim. The agent crisscrossed the plains until one day he came to a hill. He climbed it, looked all around and thought, yes, this is the place.’
William caught a look in his uncle’s eye.
‘Here?’ he asked.
‘Exactly. But that isn’t all. That night, while the agent was setting up camp, he came across a skeleton lying in the grass. He knew it was a white man from the clothes. And in the pockets of the clothes were other things. Glasses, a compass, a watch, a journal…’
And one boot, William thought, understanding.
His uncle was nodding. ‘The journal was enough to make an identification. The initials A.K. are carved into the cover. One other thing — the skull was smashed in. Kirchmeyer hadn’t just wandered off and died, he’d been killed. It was the blacks, of course. They weren’t stupid, they knew the white man was bad news. I suppose he came up here for the view, all alone, and they cut him down.’
The old man pondered this a while.
‘Anyway, the agent buried the body, but kept the things he’d found and took them back to Heatherington. Years later, when Heatherington decided to build a House on his station, he chose this hill. Maybe he thought even a failed explorer deserved at least that much in his memory.’
‘So it’s true? His grave is under the House?’
‘Supposedly. No one really knows. The funny thing is, Heatherington didn’t name the station after Kirchmeyer, but after the Aboriginal tribe who killed him. Still, it’s hard to say who really won in the end. The Kuran people are long gone — shot, or killed by disease, or carted away. And Alfred — no one around here even remembers his name. Heatherington put up this statue, before the Whites took over, but it fell down years ago. Now there isn’t a single memorial to Kirchmeyer anywhere on the Downs. Not even a street named after him.’
The old man was staring up at the House, the southern face of which was all in shadow.
‘The worst of it is, he was still one of the first people to cross this part of the country. He might have named a creek after himself, or a peak in the Hoop Mountains. If he’d got back alive, the names might have stuck and he’d be remembered. But when his journal was found, it’d been out in the weather so long that nothing in it was legible. So no one knows what he saw or discovered. An awful thing, that book upstairs.’
William looked up to the dark windows of the red chamber. ‘Have those things always been in that room?’ he asked.
‘No. That was my idea. It seemed the decent thing to do. The Whites just kept them in a bag in a cupboard somewhere. I don’t know how they came to my father, but he left them to me in that chest. I’m probably the last man alive who knows the whole story.’
‘Is it a secret?’
‘It’s a lesson.’ The old man regarded William seriously. ‘Discovery isn’t enough. Doing something great isn’t enough. Someone has to know about it, for it to mean anything. Whatever you do in this world, you have to leave someone behind who remembers.’
And contemplating this, William thought that he understood why his uncle had forgiven him so easily, and why their argument in the office had been forgotten.
The old man was hunched low now, rolling the army cap between his fingers.
‘Was that his too?’ William asked.
‘No. This was my father’s.’
‘Was he in a war?’
‘It’s not from the army — it’s a police hat.’
William studied the cap, and remembered the jacket he had pulled from the chest, reeking of mothballs.‘The police…’ he said, doubtfully.
His uncle rubbed at the badge. ‘It’s from late last century. My father was in the police then, when he was young, long before he came to the station. It was only for a few years. But the police had different uniforms back then, that’s why it looks strange.’ The old man caught William eyeing the cap, and abruptly he reached out and placed it on his nephew’s head.‘You like it, do you?’
William repositioned the hat, lifting the brim from his nose, and nodded.
‘Isn’t it too big for you?’
‘No.’ William discovered that he wanted to keep the cap. He felt that he’d earned it for having braved the locked doors and the empty hallway and the red room.‘No, it fits okay.’
His uncle was smiling. ‘Well, it’s only rotting away up there. Keep it if you want. So long as it stays in the family.’ Then his face grew sober.‘But the guns …You stay away from them. If you want to play soldier, use a stick or something.’
William nodded again, amenable to anything now.
The old man lifted himself from the edge of the fountain, rubbing his back as if it was sore.‘Thanks again for the newsletters, Will. I mailed them all today.’ He glanced out at the afternoon one last time.‘Now we just have to wait a month, and see who turns up at the rally.’
‘Do we really get to go camping?’
‘That we do. Amongst other things.’
The old man headed inside, but William hung back, sitting on the fountain. He took off the cap and examined it once more, frowning. A police hat. Studying the badge, he could make out the letters QMP embossed around a coat of arms. Did the P stand for Police? But there was nothing very interesting about the police. He decided he would wear it as an army cap, no matter what his uncle said. A captain’s hat. William settled it back firmly on his scalp. He liked the way it felt. The badge seemed to cast a glow of authority before it, the way the torch on a miner’s helmet casts light. He gazed out over the plains as if he commanded an army gathered there. Not that there had ever been anything like an army on the Kuran Plains, or any great battles, but he could always imagine.
And his uncle liked him again.
When William went to bed that night, he hung the cap on the bedpost. He would wear it all the time now, wherever he went. It was a sign of his uncle’s favour, it was good luck. He tossed and rolled for hours, reflecting on the day.
He was hardly aware that his ear had started to ache again.
I
N THE HOOP MOUNTAINS THE SUMMER OF EARLY 1943 WAS HOT and dry. Creeks dwindled to dust, and even the rain forest took on a brittle tinge. It was bushfire season. John McIvor organised the mountain militia into a fire-fighting brigade, and for weeks on end they were kept busy, patrolling up and down the range, extinguishing small outbreaks. The whole time, John’s thoughts were filled exultantly with memories of the events at the water hole. He had claimed Harriet now, irrevocably. But far more, he had regained purpose to his life. To think, he had almost abandoned his dreams for Kuran Station. His childhood disappointments had blinded him. The Whites. His father. All along he should have realised that none of them mattered — only his profound link with the property itself.
In the meantime the fire danger left him no moment of leisure to seek out Harriet again. Instead, late one searingly hot afternoon, as a blustery west wind was scorching across the hills, he received a visit from her father. John had set up camp that day on the western slopes of the range, not far, as it happened, from the borders of Kuran Station. He was resting his leg at the tents, his men fanned out through the scrub below, when he looked up to see Oliver approaching. John was surprised, for the sawmill owner rarely came up into the hills any more. But there were no greetings. Oliver was red-faced, breathless and furious. Harriet had broken down and told him the news just that morning.
She was pregnant.
In the first instant, John was actually thrilled. For what could be better than Harriet carrying his child? What could bind her closer to him? (And when he had climaxed into her, his skin still cold from the water, had he hoped for this?) But he understood a father’s feelings, and hastened to explain that, of course, he and Harriet fully intended to marry. And yet Oliver’s rage only grew. Marriage? To a timber-getter without prospects, without home or property? To a cripple? He would never allow it. Or was that why John had stolen Harriet away to a secret spot in the first place? To entrap her? And what was really happening here anyway? Was it her money he was after? Was he that sort of a man?
John was stunned.
I don’t need her money
, he managed to get out.
Fine, Oliver retorted, because he wouldn’t be getting any of it. From this moment on, he was banned from the Fisher household. And what was more, he could consider his employment terminated. Harriet would not be blackmailed. Pregnancies could be terminated too.
It might have come to blows at that point, with the hot wind gusting through the trees around them. But they were interrupted. Night was falling and the other men were returning to the camp. John and Oliver retreated from each other. Darkness arrived with its sudden mountain swiftness, and a carefully watched campfire was lit to prepare dinner. Silent and hostile, John and Oliver haunted opposite ends of the clearing while the rest of the men watched them warily. Then there was nothing to be done except go to sleep. But the tension remained, and the west wind blew on, spattering the ground with dead leaves from the trees, and filling the dark with dust and noise.
John lay awake, brooding far into the night. Shocked as he was by Oliver’s reaction, he had no intention of heeding the instructions. The sawmill owner could dismiss him, sure enough, but that was nothing to do with Harriet. John would spirit her away and marry her before anyone could stop it. He’d find other work too. There was no shortage of work now, not with the war. Maybe he’d take Harriet as far as Brisbane. John had heard promising things about Brisbane. It had turned into a wild, overpopulated garrison town, stuffed with troops and transient workers and money. He and Harriet could disappear from her father’s eyes completely there, until the baby was born.
But the indictments still burned. A cripple! And worse, the accusation that he was after Harriet for her money. That was beyond belief. Harriet’s wealth had never even entered his thoughts. And yet, perversely, now John did find himself thinking about money. He had so little, and if Oliver cut them off, then he and Harriet would be alone in the world. A vision came to him of the two of them in a few years time — living in a rented room in Brisbane, trying to raise their child on a labourer’s wages. He had no schooling, no qualifications. Even as a labourer, his leg would tell against him. Could Harriet live like that? Or would she begin to yearn for her luxurious house back in Powell? Would she look at her husband then with new, disappointed eyes?
John’s imagination ran on horribly. It wasn’t just that he would have a family to support. How was he ever going to raise the sort of funds he would need to regain Kuran Station? He had decided that it must happen, but
how
was it to happen? He rolled back and forth, tortured. Could it actually be true? Had he been assuming, all along, that the wealth from the sawmills would be his to collect one day, through Harriet? That Oliver would welcome him as a son, and inevitably raise him into a partnership? Was that the reason he had fixed upon Harriet in the very beginning?
He slept finally, but the doubts plagued his dreams, and so he was the first to wake in the camp. He realised at once that something wasn’t right. His watch told him it was nearly dawn, and yet there was a thick rolling blackness in the sky. The wind had risen to violent gusts that set the forest dancing. Was a storm coming? He climbed to his feet, sniffed the air for the heralding scent of rain. Instead he smelled burning. In an awful instant, he understood. There was no storm. The blackness above was smoke, underscored with red, and he heard now a deeper roar above the wind. He cried out and the other men started up from their beds in alarm, but it was already too late.