The White Earth (42 page)

Darkness rushed into William’s head. He was standing in a moonlit landscape, where cicadas sang madly and shadows played across grass and trees, and where an unreasoning fear had possessed him. A site of secret power. And standing guard there, a blunt figure, leaning against the sky.

The black men dreamt me, long ago.

‘Lies,’ William heard his uncle whisper.

It was only then that William turned to the bedside and clutched the old man’s hand, to tell him that it wasn’t lies, that he knew why the Aborigines kept returning, and why they were so close to the creek on the day of the picnic. It was because of that place.
Their
place.

‘Uncle John,’ he said. But his uncle gripped so hard it hurt William’s fingers. Then the old man was propping himself up, drawing the vitality from somewhere, and William tugged his hand away.

‘Let the damn law pass,’ the old man was saying now.‘We’ve been through this before.’

His daughter shook her head.‘Have you actually read the draft legislation?’

‘I’ve read it. It can’t touch me.’

‘Don’t be so sure. The perpetual lease on this station was arranged in very dubious circumstances. It was a hushed-up deal between the Whites and the government. No one will know exactly how that stands until it’s tested in court. But believe me, this place might still qualify as Crown land. In which case, it’d be open to a Native Title claim.’

‘A Native Title claim,’William’s uncle mimicked.‘Lodged by who? You can’t do it. There’s no one left who can.’

‘Really?’ Ruth’s smile was tight. ‘I’ve been to Cherbourg. There are people in that town who came from this property. Six people at least who I spoke with.’

‘They were
born
here?’

‘No — but their parents and grandparents were.’

‘Ha! Exactly!’

‘Exactly what?’

‘I don’t know who you talked to, but they’ve never set foot on Kuran Station. Not in the twenty-three years I’ve lived here. And not when I lived here before, either. So what could they claim? They have to prove a continuing presence on the land.’

‘How could they? The Kuran people were taken away by force.’

‘The legislation is perfectly clear. If they left, for whatever reason, then they lose all rights of appeal.’

‘Oh yes, it’s a nice legal trick. But in this case they kept coming back, didn’t they? Year after year. Until your father killed them.’

‘Even if that were true, how does it give them a case now? Where’s the continuing presence since then?’

‘Continuing presence might not mean what you think it means.’

‘It damn well means something!’

William was leaning up against the wall once more. He looked from father to daughter as they argued, and he realised that they didn’t really care about what had happened at the creek. This was about something else. The ownership of Kuran Station, yes, but mostly it was about the unending war between these two. And now they were coming to the heart of the matter.

‘They continued their presence as best they could,’ Ruth insisted. ‘It was so important to them that they broke the law repeatedly to return. They made every effort humanly possible to stay in contact, and got slaughtered for their trouble.
Then
they stopped coming.’

‘It doesn’t matter why they stopped. They stopped. It’s over.’

‘It isn’t. This law is brand new, it has to be interpreted by judges. Maybe the Kuran people haven’t kept up a continuing presence, but if they argue that eighty years ago their entire male population was killed off while
trying
to — then what? What humane person isn’t going to consider that a reasonable excuse, no matter what the letter of the law might say?’

‘And how do they know anyone was killed?’ the old man sneered.‘Those people at Cherbourg didn’t see it. What proof do they have that it ever happened?’

‘There’s Malcolm’s journal.’

‘No court would accept that. Malcolm didn’t see it either. It’s hearsay.’

‘No criminal court maybe. But a Native Title tribunal? That’s a different thing altogether. Old letters, old journals, old stories — that’s exactly the sort of evidence they’re going to have to accept. If we’re talking about Aboriginal history, what else is there? And those old women haven’t forgotten. They know that those men and boys never came back. They know what must have happened.’

‘They can’t know for certain!’

‘They will when I tell them. I’ve already told them about your lease, and the loopholes in it. So sooner or later, they’ll lodge a claim. And when what your father did comes out, I think they actually might win.’

The old man’s jaw worked in rage, unable to find words.

Ruth leaned forward.‘I’ll make
sure
they win. One day, you’re going to have to share this place with those people, whether you like it or not.’

And looking on, William could sense the chaos that raged inside his uncle — the frustration and bitterness, the hatred of so many things and so many people, lawyers and politicians and governments, all of them interfering endlessly in his affairs. And now he was trapped, hounded into this corner by his own treacherous daughter.

‘You’d do it, too,’ the old man shouted, his last restraint giving way, a bony finger pointed. ‘You’d help them, just to get to me. Anything, to steal what’s mine. But where’s the proof? You show me the bodies. You show me the bones of those people. You can’t, can you? I know this land better than anyone. And there’s nothing out there.’

Ruth was remorseless. ‘You don’t need bodies to make a claim.’

‘It’s insane!’

‘It’s the law. Or it might be, by tomorrow.’

Huddled against the wall, William trembled. It was not the yelling that shook him, or the unveiled loathing between father and daughter. It was a sudden memory from his time in the hills. Not a vision or a hallucination, but something real. Something he’d seen and touched.

His uncle had said he wanted
proof
.

‘Uncle John,’ he started to say.

But just then there came a cry from below. It was Dr Moffat’s voice. ‘Hello? Hello up there?’

The old man’s eyes lit with manic decision.‘Moffat!’ he roared, ‘Get up here!’ He was possessed, scrabbling through the drawers of his bedside table.‘It’s time you saw,’ he said, spitting the words at his daughter,‘You won’t get one more scrap from me.’

Then Dr Moffat was at the door. He glanced at them all in surprise.‘What’s everyone doing up here?’

William’s uncle had a sheet of paper in his hand, jabbed it towards the doctor.‘Moffat, you’re a Justice of the Peace, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then notarise this for me.’

The doctor looked at the paper, bewildered.‘What?’

‘Sign the damn thing! Make it legal!’

Dr Moffat took the document. ‘But what is it?’

‘My will, you fool. What else?’

The will, William thought, gazing at the paper. Finally, there it was. A single page. The reason behind all these long months that he had lived at the House, striving to please his uncle, his mother, his cousin. And now that the moment had arrived, he found he didn’t care. All he could think of was the proof, the thing he had seen, out there in the hills.

Show me their bones
, his uncle had said.

Across the room,Ruth rose to her feet.‘The will doesn’t change anything,’ she said. But her father didn’t even glance her way.

Dr Moffat was studying the document. ‘So it all goes to the boy…’

‘Yes,’ the old man echoed, ‘the boy.’

And all eyes in the room were upon William. He could only blink back. They didn’t understand. He was seeing a gleam of white, deep at the bottom of a cave.

‘Sign it,’ his uncle told the doctor. ‘Sign it and it’s done.’

‘You’re sure of this?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘It doesn’t change a thing,’ Ruth repeated.

But Dr Moffat had placed the will on the coffee table and was scribbling with his pen.

The old man rocked with pleasure.‘Take the station from me now,’ he gloated to his daughter. ‘I dare you. Only you won’t be taking it from
me
. It’s all Will’s now. It’s all on his shoulders. So go ahead and help your friends with their claim. It won’t be me you’re hurting.’

She looked at William, then back to her father.‘He’s only a boy!’

‘I know,’ the old man grinned. ‘But he’s mine, not yours.’

Ruth shook her head, so repelled she couldn’t speak. Then with one sweep of her hand she gathered up her documents.‘You can’t put it all on him,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who has to pay for this, and in the end, you’re the one who will.’

And with that she was gone, her father’s laughter pursuing her down the hall.

Dr Moffat was finished.‘There.’ He held up the will.‘What do you want me to do with this?’

William’s uncle stretched out a hand.‘Give it here. Then get out.’

‘I still need to examine you, John, you shouldn’t be getting so excited.’

‘Get out!’

The doctor glanced at William. ‘C’mon, son, let’s leave him to it.’

‘William stays.’

Dr Moffat considered his patient for one last, doubtful moment.‘Ruth’s right, you know. He’s just a child. And he should be in bed.’ Then he was gone too.

The old man was hunched over the sheet of paper, glorying in it. He beckoned to William. ‘Come over here, boy. Look at this.’

William came, the secret swollen inside him.

His uncle held out the will. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

William took it, glanced at the typed words and the signatures below, his uncle’s and the doctor’s. It should have been heavy, such a thing. It should have weighed as much as the stone of the House and rocks of the hills combined. Instead it might have been made of air.

‘Your name, Will,’ his uncle sang softly. ‘See your name there? You know what that means?’

William nodded. He knew. He was the only one who did.

‘Forget my daughter. Forget what she said. That was all between me and her. But it’s yours now, Will. The House and the station, all of it. And that robs her of everything. There’ll be no claim. She won’t bother with any of that, not if she can’t get to me. We fooled her.’

William handed the paper back. ‘Uncle John,’ he said, ‘the water hole. It was empty.’

The old man was studying his testament again. ‘I know.’

‘There was a cave. I thought there might be water in it.’

‘I know, I know. Under the cliff, where the spring rises.’

‘There wasn’t any water. But I saw…’He hesitated, abandoned to the memory again. He understood now how it must have happened. They had burned the bodies, Ruth said, but they hadn’t burned them completely. Then they had thrown the remains in the creek … but that part of the story was wrong. The water was too shallow in the creek, or maybe there was no water at all. And this was a crime, it had to be kept secret. So instead they’d hidden the remains where they would never be seen again, where there was always deep, deep water. ‘I thought they were sticks,’ he said. ‘I thought they were dead branches from trees.’

His tone made the old man glance up. ‘Sticks?’

William nodded. ‘But they were white.’

His uncle’s eyes were intent on him now, a suspicion blooming deep within them, down where his sanity and reason still survived.

A desperate sadness engulfed William. ‘You said there had to be proof. Proof that it was all true. The thing that happened out there. You said there had to be bones…’

‘The water hole,’ the old man breathed.

And for an instant John McIvor was suspended in cold, clear water, diving deep, his lungs aching. The sky was a shrunken blue bowl above, on the rocky bank a woman was waiting, and he was young, swimming for the sheer pleasure of it, before it all went wrong, before he emerged from the water and took her and conceived a daughter and destroyed everything. None of that had happened yet, he was still innocent, and he was diving down, down into the darkness, and there, in the furthest recess, where the icy water oozed out of the rock, he had glimpsed a whiteness.

The will slipped from his hands. He gripped William by the shoulders.‘Bones? You saw them, right down there at the bottom?’

‘I thought they were sticks,’ William moaned. ‘Sticks and rocks. They weren’t. They were bones. The bones of those people. They were thrown in the water hole.’

‘You don’t know that. You can’t…’

‘They told me,’ William wailed. ‘The things out in the hills. They said I’d find it!’

John let go of him, staring.

A shiver flowed through the House, and a mutter and creak came from the roof. John looked up. The windows of his room were closed, but he knew that after so many days of heat and stillness, the air had finally stirred out there.

‘Rain’s coming,’ he said to the boy.‘Coming tonight.’

John thought of storm clouds over the hills, of cold water tumbling down rocks and along creek beds, and of pools filling slowly, hiding what lay in their depths. But not hiding it forever, and worse, not destroying it, as his father should have destroyed it, so long before, when John had been only a child and cried in his mother’s arms as the fires burned.

‘Listen,’ he said.‘Tonight, after all the others have gone to sleep.’

William looked up at him.‘Yes?’

‘I want you to find a shovel, Will. And some sacks. Look in the shed out back. And get some torches. We’ll need light.’

The boy only stared in perplexity.

‘Load them all in the utility,’ John told him. ‘And when everyone’s asleep, I’ll come for you.’

Chapter Forty-five

I
T WAS THE LAST HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT, ON DECEMBER 21ST, 1993. William rode with his uncle, driving out to the water hole.

They’d had to wait until William’s mother went to bed. All evening she had floated around her little flat in a bright bath of joy, putting up Christmas decorations. She’d been transformed by the news of the will, hugging William so tightly that she lifted him from the floor. Then she threw herself into the decorating, stringing tinsel about the dark walls, convinced that the House was beautiful, that it was a palace, now that it had been conferred upon her son. William took no part. A piece of paper had been signed, but for him the inheritance had been darkened by the shadow of a malevolent history. A history with one chapter left to write. And his sickness only made it worse. His ear pounded, and the smell of rotting flesh came and went, dizzying.