The White Earth (44 page)
It was the last William saw of his inheritance. Ruth turned him away from the sight, set his face to the south. He felt cold droplets upon his face. Shrugging free of his cousin’s hands, he walked into the rain. He made it as far as the empty pool. Beyond it, he could see that the whole hillside was lit by the blaze behind him, the trees lurid against the greater darkness of night, sentinels of the station bearing mute witness to the fall. He was incapable of any tears of his own, but the scene before him was misty, blurred by mournful sheets of rain. Far out upon the plains there were lights moving, a file of them with revolving points of blue and red, distant rescuers racing along the Powell road. The pool waited like a grave to receive him, and his ear pulsated as if the fire was inside his head. Blood trickled down his cheeks and the night began to spin. William laid himself carefully down on the ground. It was already muddy from the rain. He stretched out, turned his head, and sank his ear into the cool earth. For a moment he knew relief.
Then the ground opened beneath him, and he fell into blackness.
R
AIN DRUMMED DOWN FROM THE BRISBANE SKY.
Ruth McIvor sat motionless in the hospital chair and gazed at the newspaper on her lap. She had found it discarded in the hallway. It was a copy of
The Australian
, dated December 22nd, 1993. One story dominated the front page.
MABO WIN FOR PM AT LAST
By Lenore Taylor
The Prime Minister, Mr Keating, declared yesterday the beginning of a ‘new deal’ for Aborigines after the West Australian Greens finally agreed to support the Government’s Native Title Bill, ensuring it passed the Senate early today.
After months of uncertainty, torturous negotiations over amendments and 41 hours of debate in the Senate, the Greens announced yesterday they would support the Bill, which was put to the vote right on midnight.
Moments after their announcement, Mr Keating held a press conference to say the Bill’s passage marked ‘the end of the great lie of terra nullius and the beginning of a new deal … a turning point for all Australians’.
‘At the start of the debate I was told by a great many people that this could not be done, that the interests were too conflicting, that there was not sufficient good will,’ he said. ‘The passage of this legislation will demonstrate that this generation of Australians would not buy that sort of bigotry…’
The Leader of the Opposition, Dr Hewson, said that it was ‘a day of shame for the Australian people’ and vowed the Opposition would ‘make the Government’s unjust, divisive and damaging Mabo legislation a major issue right up until the next election…’
Dr Hewson said the Bill was ‘an unprincipled piece of legislation which has lost sight of what Australia is all about — a united, democratic country in which all our people are equal before the law’.
Ruth let the paper slide from her knees. With her hands the way they were, she couldn’t open it beyond the front page anyway. For a time she stared through the speckled windows, watching grey sheets of cloud drift low above the city skyline. It was getting dark out there. Lights gleamed in high-rise apartments. She could hear the swish of peak-hour traffic on the wet streets below, the clatter of horns, and the hissing air brakes of buses and trucks. But the sounds were faint, dulled by thick panes of glass and the whisper of air-conditioning. She shifted her body carefully, still in considerable pain. Both her hands were heavily bandaged, and her face, bright red and peeling, was slathered in ointment. But worse than the pain was the smell of smoke. She couldn’t rid herself of it — it was in her hair, embedded in her skin, and her throat was layered with soot and grime, making her cough periodically.
Still, she knew she was better off than the boy.
William lay sleeping in front of her, the bed curtained off from the other end of the room. It was only an hour since he had been moved there from the post-operative ward, and he was not expected to wake for the rest of the night. The upper half of his head was swathed in bandages, and a great lump of padding was situated over his right ear. His face, thin and pallid, looked absurdly small underneath it all.
Ruth sighed, and it became a slow, hacking convulsion. Spots swam before her eyes. She had not slept since the fire, and the day stretched out behind her in a blur of hospital rooms and doctors. The paramedics attending the blaze were the first to realise that something serious was wrong with William. He was unconscious and blood was oozing from his ear, thick and smelling of rot. Ruth rode with him in the ambulance to the district hospital in Powell. But specialists were needed, so at dawn William was in another ambulance bound for Brisbane. Again, Ruth went along, for who else was there to go with him? By nine o’clock they had arrived, and more doctors were examining the ear. They declared an emergency, a theatre was cleared, and by eleven, William was undergoing surgery.
The disease was called a cholesteatoma.
According to the specialists, it was a tumour that grew in the lining of the middle ear. It usually began when some minor injury created a perforation in the ear drum. Foreign tissue from the outer ear was then able to invade the middle ear cavity, where it could latch on and develop into an abnormal growth. This tumour itself was not malign, said the doctors, but as it grew it distorted the cavity, shed dead skin, harboured bacteria and, worst of all, released an enzyme that ate away at the bone. The cavity would thus fill with necrotic tissue, some of which would leak back through the perforation in the drum, resulting in a foul-smelling discharge. The odour was what usually alerted the patient to seek treatment. In William’s case, though, the tumour had been left to rage unchecked, eating its way from the ear right through the bone of his skull. Abscesses had then formed on his brain.
The surgeons were confident, however. They had relieved the pressure in his skull cavity, and excised the tumour. Unfortunately, it had been necessary to also remove most of the inner canal and the remains of the bone structure, so he would lose all hearing in his right ear. The doctors also noted that the boy was malnourished, dehydrated, extensively bruised and badly sunburnt. They would have referred the case to a social worker,on the suspicion of parental neglect, if not for the regrettable fact that the child’s mother was recently deceased.
Ruth had listened to all this in a daze. She was in shock, and her own burns were serious. She had mumbled something about glandular fever, but the doctors only shook their heads, studied her curiously, and then left her alone.
Rain sheeted down outside the window.
Ruth was coughing again. She should go home and rest. The boy would sleep through, and there was so much for her to arrange in the coming days. Her father’s funeral. And maybe even the funeral of William’s mother, for Ruth was aware of no other family to take on the task. Then there would be the investigations into the fire, by the police, the fire brigade, insurance companies. And after all that, weeks from now, there would be the question of the inheritance to be settled.
Suddenly Ruth could have laughed, if the skin of her face had not been so tight and sore. Because, after everything, her father had died intestate. The only copy of his will had burned along with the House. Kuran Station belonged to no one.
There would be trouble about that, of course. Her father had made his last wishes clear enough, but with nothing in writing, the property lay open to any number of claims. Mrs Griffith, for instance. Ruth had seen the old woman in the Powell hospital, where she was being treated for smoke inhalation. Despite her condition, the housekeeper had lost none of her grim tenacity. She was already telling anyone who would listen that John McIvor had exploited her for decades, that she had cooked and cleaned for him for over twenty years without being paid a cent, and now was owed compensation. And Ruth did not doubt that she was serious.
Then there was William. The station belonged to him now, if her father’s last acts meant anything at all. But he was only a boy, and not her father’s direct descendant. Ruth could dispute William’s claim, if she wanted, and inherit the property herself. And perhaps she should really do it. But the thought roused no feelings in her, sitting there in the hospital room. When her father was alive it had seemed important that she … that she what? Take the station from him? But now he was gone, and all her arguments felt empty. She remembered, shamefully somehow, the old women she had met in Cherbourg, and the way they had watched her, as she talked eagerly of leases and land and rights. The look in their pale eyes. Measuring. And, despite all her promises, unconvinced.
But couldn’t she prove them wrong? If the property was rightfully hers, then why couldn’t she give it away? She could go back to Cherbourg and hand over the deeds. But she was lawyer enough to know, perfectly well, that it would never happen that way. Mrs Griffith would fight it. Or maybe the boy. Or if not them, someone else. A long forgotten relation would appear; maybe even the state government would intervene, disputing the validity of private deals made decades ago, and leases that were supposedly perpetual … No, if anyone from Cherbourg really wanted the place, they would have to lodge their claim, along with everybody else. It was fifteen thousand acres of prime grazing country. In this world, something like that wasn’t just given back. It had to be fought for.
Her thoughts tumbled to a halt.
It was something her father might have said.
She gazed down at William. Such a sad and silent child. She didn’t think she had ever seen him smile. Pity bit at her, and a weight settled against her heart. Was he her responsibility now? Oh … but she was too old. The burden couldn’t fall on her.
It was time to go. Her hands and face hurt, and every bone ached. She would leave the boy to his sleep, and then maybe later they would talk and see what needed to be done. She turned towards the door. Just then William stirred, moaning incoherent words. She hesitated. But he was sedated, she knew, and too exhausted, surely, for bad dreams.
She glanced once more at the rain against the windows. A memory came. The smell of earth, and of wheat, and the feeling of a familiar hand upon her head, rough with calluses, and so strong. All of it wasted, all of it ruined.
Ruth fought the tears, for her bandaged hands could not brush them away.
Then she returned to the chair, and the long vigil of the night.
Many thanks to Annette, Christa and Colette, and everyone else at Allen & Unwin, for all their hard work and patience with this book. The same goes for Fiona and everyone at Curtis Brown.
Special thanks to Michelle de Kretser for her demanding editing.
Thanks also to Professor Maurice French for his advice, and for the resource of his comprehensive histories. And to Jonathan Richards for some obscurer details.
And finally, thanks to my brother Martin for his medical information, and to my brother Peter, for a timely comment about water catchments.
Any factual mistakes and flaws are due to me, none of the above.