The White Earth (3 page)

They drove on slowly, the removal truck clearing their way. Some miles beyond the crossroads the road began to wind and angle away to the northeast. Ahead of them the long spur of hills marched closer, reaching out from the Hoops.

‘See,’ his mother said, pointing. She was an awkward driver, hunched small behind the wheel. Before the fire she had rarely driven at all. ‘Up there in the trees. You can see Kuran House. It’s not so far. We’ve hardly moved really.’

William caught a glimpse of stone walls and a dark roof; then it was gone. He didn’t agree with his mother. They’d been in the car only fifteen minutes, but already it felt like another country. The farms were poorer here, as if the black soil was growing shallow as the hills grew near, like the ocean nearing a coastline. The road curved gently around invisible undulations, and before them the broad tip of the spur swelled out of the fields, cresting in a low hill. They crossed a bridge over a creek. Glancing down, William saw chunks of rock and a trickle of dark water. A sign announced ‘Kuran’, and then they were in a little village. Along the single street was a schoolhouse set in its playground, deserted for the holidays, then a worn weatherboard hall, and a string of small shop fronts, most of them empty. At the far end was a petrol station, a tin shed with pumps outside. No one was visible, and the half-dozen houses were closed tight against the cold, some of them looking as abandoned as the stores.

‘We’ll still have to do our shopping in Powell or Lansdowne,’ his mother said, staring about. ‘But the school looks nice, don’t you think?’

William didn’t answer. The schoolhouse looked tiny — a single classroom on tall stilts. It was over a week before the next term started anyway. Ahead of them the truck was turning off onto a side road, just beyond the petrol station. The new track climbed and wound about the hill, potholes catching at the wheels of the car. Scattered gum trees waited amidst dead grass, and a few cattle grazed behind fences. Then a stone gateway appeared, with iron gates swung wide, tangled in the bushes. They passed through, rattling over a cattle grid,beyond which were the remains of a stone building, its roof fallen in and only the hollow walls standing.

‘That must have been the gatehouse,’ his mother said.

The ruins slid away. The road curved further around the hill, and now they were crossing its southern face, looking out over the plains and back along the road by which they’d just come. William caught a glimpse of the chequerboard of farms laid out under the clouds, then the view was lost behind more scrub. They kept climbing. Finally they came to a long straight avenue lined with dark pines, their heads ragged and torn, almost black. At the end of the avenue was a high stone wall, pierced by an arched gate. It was open, but the removal truck pulled up, unable to fit through. William’s mother hesitated, then passed on, under the archway. A fringe of low branches scraped against the windscreen. When the car cleared them, there was Kuran House at last.

A homestead, his mother had told him, and William had not really known what that might mean. Gazing at it now, his first amazed thought was of palaces and manors in somewhere like England, the stately homes of princes and dukes. Even in that initial moment he understood that the House wasn’t quite on that scale, but still, it was easily the biggest home William had ever seen, built all of sandstone, two tall storeys high, with a roof of grey slate. Wide terraces wrapped around both upper and lower levels. A circular driveway with a fountain in the centre led up to the front steps, a cascade of them, climbing in turn to the porch and the double front doors that looked ten feet high. From there the House stretched out until it met two perpendicular wings that projected forward from either side, framing the driveway and the fountain. William stared up at carved stone. Was his uncle rich?

But then he was really
looking
, and the truth sank in. It was the roof he noticed first — the line of it sagged towards the middle, and dozens of tiles were cracked or sliding out of place. The gutters hung loose from the eaves, and below them, the high walls were draped in sullen vines and ivy. The upper verandah was ruinous, and within the shadow of the awning William could glimpse second-storey windows that were shuttered or smashed. The lower terrace was littered with junk — boxes, drums, a roll of wire, a dismantled bicycle — and the front steps were cracked and sunken. Splashes of white paint stained the sandstone walls, and some of the ground-floor windows had plywood partitions instead of glass. In another window an air-conditioner had been jammed, its grille streaked with rust. One of the front doors hung off its hinges, half open, and nearby sat a single metal chair, with some dirty plates and a coffee cup beside it, items that looked as if they might have been there for years.

William’s mother was gazing through the windscreen, her hands tight on the wheel, a glint of dismay in her eyes. William looked at the House again, noting yet more signs of neglect. The fountain was full of grass, the driveway was deeply rutted with tyre tracks, and the garden was a wilderness of weeds.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, voice quavering. ‘It’s all right.’ She had papered on a smile. They climbed out of the car. No one emerged from the House to greet them, so they simply stood, staring up. ‘It … it might look a little run down. But it’ll be nicer inside. I’m sure.’

One of the removalists called out, asking William’s mother what to do with the truck.

She glanced back and forth nervously, looked at William.‘Your uncle said that they’re supposed to park around the back. I’d better go and show them. You stay here.’

She headed back to the gate. William heard the truck start up and rumble around to the rear of the building. Then silence settled again, and he was alone.

His new home frowned at him.

William turned his back on the House and took a few steps away from the car, the gravel crunching beneath his feet. The pebbles of the drive were white, or had been, before becoming mixed up with dirt and grass. The garden spread before him. There were hints that it had once been something grander. He could see pathways meandering between the weeds, some of them paved with fractured stone slabs. There was other stonework visible as well — the borders of garden beds, a bench, a bower in a far corner — all of it smothered in plants, or half buried in dirt. Lampposts were dotted along the pathways, but there were no bulbs in the sockets, and a washing line had been strung between two of the posts, pale laundry hanging there forlornly. Great shaggy trees loomed all around. And sticking up crazily at the very front of the yard, where the hill dropped away, a diving board perched on what must have been the rim of a swimming pool.

Nothing moved and no one came. Overhead the clouds hung motionless. The air in the garden was chill, cooler than down on the plain, and it smelled different too. William was used to the dry scent of grain and chaff, and the dusty breath of the black soil. This place had a dank odour to it, a complexity of plants and trees and weeds, a bitter forest smell, with an underlay of rotting wood. He noticed that there was a tall metal pole by the drive. A tattered flag hung limp at the top, patterned in blue and white, unrecognisable. A wave of loneliness swept over him.

He turned back towards the House. It might have been deserted. He walked towards the front steps, feeling very small as the weight of the walls rose up on either side, a vertigo of stone. He came to the fountain, peered in. Water hadn’t flowed in it for years, and sand had gathered in the bowl, giving root to the grass. Its central pillar looked as if it had once borne a statue, but the column was snapped clean off, and only the enigmatic stump remained, a broken water pipe protruding.

‘Ahoy there, boy.’

William glanced up. An old woman stood at the top of the steps.

‘You’d be the nephew then,’ she said.

She was a hunched figure, wrapped in what seemed to be multiple layers of dresses and cardigans. She had a dark, hawklike face, and scraggles of grey hair escaped from a woollen beanie perched upon her head.

‘Your mother sent me,’ she said.‘Come up here a minute.’

William ascended the steps silently. The old woman watched him with sharp eyes.

‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘Nine.’

A grunt. ‘Your mother is with your uncle and the moving men.’ She studied him some more.‘You know who I am?’

William shook his head.

‘I’m your uncle’s housekeeper. My name is Mrs Griffith.’ She shuffled slowly about, taking him in from all sides. Her bony feet were encased in threadbare slippers, and her hands were twisted, curled in on themselves. She pointed to a plastic basket that sat near the front door. ‘Well, go on, pick that up. You can help me get the washing in.’

William stared blankly.

‘Come on,’ she commanded, edging impatiently down the stairs, ‘They don’t want you under their feet while they get the furniture inside.’

He picked up the basket and followed the old woman as she journeyed slowly across the tangled garden to the washing line. Then he stood by, holding the basket to his chest. The housekeeper reached up painfully and unpegged the clothes, dropping them into the basket, item by item — grey shirts, faded dresses, shapeless underwear. For a long time she didn’t speak, and neither did William. He stared at the House. None of this was what he’d expected. A housekeeper? Did that mean even more people lived here with his uncle? And yet the old man had seemed such a solitary figure on that long ago afternoon of the fire. William wanted his mother to return, but from around the back of House he could hear sounds of unloading, the voices of the men, and she would be busy there.

The old woman was watching him. Suddenly she stabbed a peg towards the House. ‘You stay off those upstairs verandahs. They’re not safe. You stay away from the upstairs altogether. It’s no place for games.’

More clothes dropped into the basket.

She considered him again, sidelong. ‘You don’t think it looks like much, I suppose. I suppose you think your uncle should just throw in a few sticks of dynamite and finish it off.’ She leaned down at him sourly. ‘That’s what he was told to do, you know, when he bought this place. The agent said he should just blow the House up and be done with it, before it collapsed and hurt someone. He offered to do it himself, before your uncle even signed the papers.’

The washing was all off the line and piled in the basket. The housekeeper began her slow traverse back towards the House, William trailing behind.

‘But don’t be fooled,’ she went on. ‘It’s been here for one hundred and thirty years, and it’s not falling down any time soon. Those verandahs are a mess, but that’s just the woodwork. The stonework is fine. It’ll still be standing long after we’re all dead and buried. Even you, boy.’

William mustered a question.‘Does anyone else live here?’

‘Who else would there be?’

They were climbing up to the front porch. The old woman paused at the top, turned to face outwards.

‘Look out there,’ she instructed.

From this height, William could see most of the garden, and there was indeed a half-guessed pattern to the overgrowth, the ghost of a formal arrangement long dead. The yard was bounded left and right by the stone walls, some sections dislodged into a jumble by tree roots, others leaning precariously. Directly in front was the swimming pool. He could see the outline of it, perfectly rectangular, the dusty gleam of tiles, the diving board, some metal handrails at one end. But the pool itself was empty and must have been for some time. There were sheets of rusty tin sticking up from within it, and the tops of tall bushes.

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

J
OHN 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.