The White Earth (39 page)
Christmas. The notion was inconceivable to William, there in the House. But it meant that the end of the year was close. And five months ago, his uncle had said that he would decide by year’s end, about whether William and his mother would go or stay. And about who would get the station. William turned his gaze to the ceiling. He pictured the old man waiting up there. And he knew why his uncle had sent him to suffer alone out in the hills. It was the last test before the decision was made.
‘What are you thinking about?’ his mother asked.
William blinked. ‘Is Ruth still here?’
She nodded, her Christmas smile fading. ‘She’s been fighting with your uncle. Something about that hat of yours, I think. I don’t understand it.’ Her haggard face set hard, and William saw the old fear. ‘I don’t know what she wants. I don’t know why she can’t just leave us alone.’
When William woke once more the room was empty. He lay motionless for a time, staring at the window. It was getting dark — and yet it was still the same day. Only this morning he had been at the water hole. It didn’t seem possible. Finally he threw back the sheet and swung his legs out of bed. Dizziness took him, but he waited until it eased. He dressed stiffly, then went out through the dim halls. No one was about, and he came to the front porch.
The sun had set, but the heat was still oppressive, the sky as cloudless as ever, and a smoky haze hung brooding upon the horizon. Nothing had changed. In fact, it was worse, for now William knew what it was like out across the station when night fell. He could remember the shifting shadows, and the moon, and silent, watching hills. Those things would always be with him. Nor was the ordeal over, because sooner or later his uncle would call him upstairs, eager to hear all that William had seen and learnt. And yet what could he say? What had he really discovered in those three days? Nothing. Only dreams and delusions.
Except … there
was
one thing he had found, of which he was certain his uncle had no knowledge. That place, that unremarkable patch of scrub he had stumbled across, where something invisible had made the air too potent to breathe. Even now, William could remember the cicadas singing and the terror that had gripped him. A presence dwelt there, some cold and ancient secret of the land itself, faceless, but imbuing the very trees and grass with dreadful meaning. And it was a power that wasn’t to be found high on a hilltop, marked with tall stones, where anyone could see it. It was hidden away, in surroundings so anonymous that those without the right eyes would simply pass it by.
His uncle had passed it by. And somehow that disturbed William more than anything else. For if his uncle did not know that such a place existed — if instead he had been fooled by an empty stone circle — then what did the old man really know about the property at all? And yet everything William had ever believed about Kuran Station was based on what his uncle had told him. All those tales about the people who had discovered the plains, about the men who had built the House, about shepherds and stockmen and explorers — those stories were what made the station so precious.
Were they all a lie? The beings William had met in the hills — they were not the figures of which his uncle had spoken. Some of them were deranged things, wrong things. They were from a different history altogether, a history Ruth might have told, harsh and ugly. He thought again of the old man up in his bedroom, brooding over the great gift that was his to bestow. But if Kuran Station was none of those things William had been taught, if the truth was thirst and heat and twisted ghosts, then Ruth was right, and the inheritance was no gift. It was a burden.
He looked up. The House waited behind him, huge and timeless. The last glow of the sky was reflected in the windows, so that no lights were visible from within, and William could imagine that the building was deserted. That his uncle was dead, and no one had followed him, and this was the House in twenty years time, neglected and forgotten. Its rooms were stripped bare. Mildew mottled the walls. Vandals had smashed the windows. The roof had collapsed and the upper floor was an open gulf where green things grew. Passers-by would shake their heads, remembering the old man who had lived there alone for so long, and before him, the great and glorious figures of the House’s past, all come to nothing. And the property that surrounded it, the remnant of a vast station, would be broken up at last and sold off in small lots to this person or that, or simply left to run wild.
It could end that way, if William so chose.
And he would have to choose soon.
He gazed out at the plains. It was almost fully dark now, a dusky, somehow expectant night. From below on the hill came the sound of a man whistling. Presently the station manager, Mr Drury, appeared, walking up from the sheds. He passed by the front gate and lifted a hand, cheerful.
‘Heard the news?’ he called.
He didn’t wait for an answer, disappearing around to the back of the House. The whistling faded away, and the silence of the evening bore down on William.
What news?
He went back inside. His mother was not in their apartment, but the television was on, the flickering screen bright in the dimness. William saw a satellite map of Australia. It was a weather report. Then suddenly he knelt before the TV, staring. For the northwestern edge of the continent was hidden under a swathe of cloud, a giant white swirl feeding in off the depths of the ocean. As William watched the map changed, and the clouds were replaced by a pattern of deep blue, shot through with intense pulses of green and orange. In time lapse animation the sheet of colour was moving slowly southeast across the continent. The weatherman chattered on excitedly, but William didn’t need to listen. He knew what the tide of blue, and the blazes of green and orange, signified.
The rains have failed
, the visions had told him.
The rivers have
run dry
.
But rain was coming now.
I
N BED THAT NIGHT, WILLIAM ROLLED MISERABLY FOR HOURS, unable to sleep. His whole body was aching, and every time he closed his eyes he saw the lurid colours of clouds on a weather map. Why did that picture disturb him so much? Rain was a good thing — he knew how desperately the station needed it. And yet, after sleep finally came, those same colours pulsed ominously in his dreams. When he woke next morning he was almost afraid that rain would already be whispering on the roof. But when he climbed painfully out of bed and looked at the sky from the porch, the day was still hot and fine and crackling with sterility. Nor was there any hint of a change on the horizon.
But William’s unease remained, as did his illness. He had no appetite for breakfast, and spent the morning lying in front of the television, drifting in a low fever. Waves of nausea came and went. His mother was getting ready to go to Powell, to do the Christmas shopping.
‘I’ll get decorations,’ she said,mustering a wan smile, belied by her eyes. ‘And a little tree. We can’t do up the whole House, but we can make it nice in here.’
William nodded, barely listening.
‘Will…’ she began helplessly, then gave up and departed, purse in hand.
At midday, the weather report came on. The satellite image showed the great sheet of cloud crawling across the map. It was still a vibrant mass of blue and green and orange, and the foremost fringes of it had already touched the western border of Queensland … but that was still hundreds of miles away. The whole system was moving slower than expected.‘Late tonight,’ said the weatherman, ‘for those watching in southeast Queensland. Or perhaps early tomorrow.’
William closed his eyes and tried to imagine puddles in the yard, the rattle of water in the drainpipes. He couldn’t do it. Instead he was haunted by the visions he had seen in the hills. They had not spoken of rain falling, but of the drought, and of the rivers drying up. It had sounded like a warning, as if there was something urgent they wanted him to find, something that the drought had laid bare.
Caves have opened to the sun
. And yet William had found nothing. Unless it was something he had missed. Or something he had seen, but failed to recognise…
‘Your uncle wants you.’
William opened his eyes. Mrs Griffith stood in the living room doorway. He sat up, disorientated. The housekeeper never came into their apartment.
‘Upstairs,’ she said.‘Now.’
The summons was upon him.
William stared hopelessly. He still had no idea what he could say to satisfy the old man, or if he even wanted to try. He was confused about so many things. But the call could not be refused. He rose and followed Mrs Griffith through the hallways, watching the bitter hunch of her shoulders. At least he understood
her
a little now. It was the House and the station that had made her the way she was. The lure of them, eating at her mind. William had felt the same thing happening to himself — and he had suffered it for only a few months, not an entire lifetime.
They came to the stairs, but William paused, for at the end of the hallway the door to the office opened, and Ruth emerged. She had a pen in her mouth and a sheaf of papers in her hand, and her grey head was bent, reading. She looked up and saw them there.
‘Will,’ she said, sounding surprised.
He had forgotten all about her.
She came down the hall, her eyes serious.‘Should you be out of bed?’
‘I’m okay,’ he said. But her presence threw him off balance. He realised that he had not even had the chance to thank Ruth for saving him.
‘You don’t look okay.’ She glanced disapprovingly at Mrs Griffith.
The housekeeper returned the glare. ‘His uncle wants to see him.’
Ruth ignored her. She squatted down to William’s level. ‘You don’t have to do anything he says, you know. Not after what he’s done.’
‘He … I wasn’t supposed to get lost.’
‘It doesn’t matter what was
supposed
to happen.’ Her gaze held his, until William had to look away. ‘Okay,’ she decided. ‘But I’ll come with you.’
William looked up at the housekeeper. Her eyes darted back and forth between them, the daughter and nephew. ‘It’s none of my doing,’ she declared, and made off towards her own apartment.
Ruth watched her go, shaking her head.‘Come on.’
But she led William back down the hall, not upstairs. He felt swept away. His uncle was waiting, but his cousin had intervened and the day was veering off course.
‘Thank you for finding me,’ he mumbled.
She waved a hand. ‘I don’t blame you. I blame my father for sending you out there in the first place. And your mother for letting him.’
‘She had to,’ William broke in. ‘She has to do what he says.’
‘And how much longer would she have left you there? A week? A month?’
They had reached the office. It was even more of a shambles than usual. William could see that Ruth had ransacked the drawers and cupboards. Piles of yellowing papers and maps were spread across the room. She cleared some space on a chair for him, returned to her own behind the desk.
‘Sorry about the mess. There were some things I wanted to make sure of, and I didn’t have much time.’ She paused.‘Have you seen the news on TV?’
‘About the rain?’
‘No, not the rain — the Native Title legislation. Remember? The Senate has almost finished debating. Parliament rises for the Christmas break tomorrow, so the vote is set for tonight. The minor parties are making their last-ditch amendments right now. It’s close. It’s literally down to a vote or two.’
William was nonplussed. What did it matter? His uncle had told him that the station was safe, whether Native Title was law or not. But Ruth was watching him, aglow now with some suppressed excitement.
‘Believe me, Will, if it does pass, nothing is going to be the same around here.’
William’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.‘Why?’
‘Information has come to light, that’s why. I’ve been doing some checking in Brisbane. And then on my way back here, I stopped in at Cherbourg.’
He stared at her blankly.
She smiled. ‘It’s a small town a couple of hours from here, on the other side of the mountains. It used to be an Aboriginal mission. These days it’s an all black self-governing community. I told you about it, remember? It’s where the last people from Kuran Station were sent to in 1911.’
William felt an abrupt shifting of the ground.
‘It’s a strange place to visit — off away on a dead-end road, and you can still see the gates that would have been shut when it was a reserve, to keep whites out and blacks in. But in other ways it’s quite nice. There’s a cultural centre now. That’s where I started asking. I wanted to know if anyone in town could trace links back to Kuran Station. They got all suspicious. Who was I and why did I want to know? It seems that all sorts of people have been visiting the community lately, asking questions about who came from where originally. White people, worried about land claims.’
Her smile had gone sharp.
‘The folk at Cherbourg thought that I was trying to
stop
a land claim, you see. Once I cleared that up, they were more helpful. But getting answers still wasn’t easy. After all, families from right across Queensland ended up at that mission, and everything is mixed up now. But they asked around, and finally they brought in an old woman, and she said yes, she knew a bit about Kuran Station in the old days. What’s more, she could name other people who did too.’
William listened through his growing uncertainty. ‘She came from here?’
‘Not just her. There were six or seven old women in the end. Of course, none of them had actually grown up on the station. It was over eighty years ago,after all. But their mothers came from here, or their grandmothers, and stories had been passed down. What stories, I wanted to know. But then they went all quiet and careful again. Whywas I asking? What businesswas it of mine? They thought I was just prying where I shouldn’t be. But I wasn’t just prying, Will. It
is
my business, as much as it is theirs. And this is the proof.’
She picked up something from beside her chair, dropped it on the desk.