The White Earth

by Andrew McGahan

  This was wrong, he knew. He had no business in his uncle’s desk, stealing keys. He certainly had no business going upstairs. The housekeeper had told him that on his very first day. His uncle had repeated the order. William held the keys before him, dreadfully fascinated. He almost put them back. But an anger was stirring in him now, at what the old man had put him through. And if he was supposed to grow up, if he was supposed to be strong and make his own decisions, then why should he always do what he was told?

  Directly overhead, he could hear noises. The sound of something heavy being dragged, and footsteps, pacing back and forth on an echoing floor.

  William put the keys into his pocket. He slid the drawer closed and, already afraid, slipped away into the halls.

  Chapter Eighteen

  BY 1941, JOHN WAS BACK AT WORK IN THE HOOP MOUNTAINS. With the war stimulating demand for timber, Oliver Fisher had expanded his sawmill operations and needed a supervisor up on the hills. Manpower was short, so John, even with his bad leg, got the job. Dudley, meanwhile, had been assigned as a gunner in the Eighth Division AIF. His formation had shipped out for the battlefields of Libya,but along the way they had been diverted to garrison duty north of Singapore. Dudley, in his letters, sounded fit and healthy, and somewhat bored.

  It seemed to John that maybe hostilities would pass his friend by. But then the Japanese armies rolled down the Malay peninsula, the Allied forces retreated in disorder, and Singapore fell. Suddenly Japanese bombs were dropping on Darwin and Townsville. Panic gripped the country, and there was no question of standing aside now — John volunteered immediately. He was rejected and sent back to his duties in the mountains. All he could do was join the militia, and with other timber-cutters he formed a troop that was designated as a guerrilla force. In case of invasion, their job was to hide out in the hills and, using their local knowledge, disrupt any enemy activity in the area. But even with the war raging all about, the Powell region seemed a sleepy and unlikely battleground.

  What made it all the more galling for John was that even Harriet had donned a uniform, enlisting in the Australian Women’s Army Service. She was posted locally, however, so at least the two of them were still able to meet from time to time. Their chief concern in those days was the fate of Dudley. The Eighth Division had been routed, and the survivors had passed into Japanese captivity — but was he one of those survivors? There was no mention of him in the casualty lists, but nor did his name appear on the Red Cross lists of those in the prison camps. He was simply missing in action. John and Harriet vowed to each other that they would not give up hope, but as the months went by without word, their talk of Dudley took on the tone of mourning. And in mourning him, they were steadily drawn closer together, and closer to betraying him.

  Still, it was a shadowed courtship, for without Dudley around there was less laughter, less joy, and there were days when Australia itself seemed destined to fall. But in those grim months, at least John felt that there need be no more doubts about himself and Harriet. It was only the two of them now, and things like financial security or her father’s approval no longer seemed to matter. It was just a question of waiting until a decent time had passed in honour of Dudley, and until perhaps the war situation improved. And indeed, as 1942 progressed, things looked brighter. In the Pacific, the Japanese fleets were in retreat, and in New Guinea their troops had been brought to a halt at last. The threat of invasion receded. It was time, John decided, to speak.

  But then came word from the Red Cross — Dudley was alive after all! He had finally turned up in a prison camp. There was no report on his condition, and frightening stories were already circulating about Japanese treatment of the POWs, but it was still the best possible news. Harriet was overjoyed — and yet John found himself confused by his own reaction. Relief, yes, but he was also aware of a sudden fear. Had Dudley been the one Harriet was waiting for all along? Had she turned to John only out of grief? They had spoken no direct words of marriage, after all. So what would happen when Dudley returned home, aglow with the glamour of war? What would her choice be then? John strove against these suspicions, but they refused to go away. More bitterly than ever he was convinced that, after the war, the world would belong to the men who had fought it. The world, and with it the one woman he wanted.

  He arrived at Harriet’s house one hot summer day to find her restless, full of a cheerful energy that nagged at his heart, because he knew its source. She chatted about Dudley and her war work, optimistic that it might all end well. John was unresponsive, for there was nothing to say about his own work, and he didn’t want to talk about Dudley. It was a torpid afternoon, and they were slumped in chairs on the back verandah. Eventually, Harriet gave up. A vagrant boredom seemed to creep over her, and she stared out silently, fanning herself as heat shimmered across the paddocks. John could sense her disappointment with him, and with his brooding quiet.

  Finally, her patience at an end, Harriet suggested they go swimming. With an effort, John roused himself and agreed. Perhaps cold water would dispel his resentment. The question was where to go? There was a public pool in town, but it would be crowded with children, the water tepid and reeking of chlorine. And then, for the first time since his childhood, John remembered the water hole on the borders of Kuran Station. Of course! It was deep and cool and never ran dry. A vision of it sparkled darkly in his memory. Suddenly the afternoon was too close and too oppressive to bear. He could already feel the water on his skin, and taste it on his tongue, icy, with the faintest hint of decaying leaves and earth. Inspired, he instructed Harriet to don her swimming costume. They would take Oliver’s car. Petrol was rationed, but Oliver had stored away a secret supply of his own. They could be at the water hole within the hour.

  However, it would mean passing through the station itself, and there was a part of John that knew he might find this a disturbing experience, after so much time. But in the sweltering heat, and with Harriet in a fey mood beside him, that didn’t seem to matter. It was an instant to be seized, a single afternoon away from the war. Anyway, what was there to fear? The Whites were gone. Elizabeth was gone. So under the glaring sky, and with the car seats burning the backs of their legs, they cut across the plains to the Lansdowne road, and then drove northwards to Kuran Village. The hill loomed behind it, and John steered up through the first gates and along the avenue lined with pines. He should have turned off there, taking the track that led to the water hole. But on an impulse he continued straight ahead, and so arrived at the second gate. And there, waiting for him, was the House.

  It was one of the worst moments of John’s life.

  He had known, of course, that things would not be exactly the same as he remembered. Twelve years had passed, and a succession of failed owners had come and gone. He’d heard that the workers’ cottages were no longer fit for use, and that the current landlord had converted the lower storey of the House into flats. But even so, he had not expected this. The great homestead had become a shabby hulk. Paint was peeling away from the verandahs, creepers were growing raggedly up the walls, and tiles were askew on the roof. Some of the upper-storey windows had been smashed, others were shuttered. The lawns were long dead and the flowerbeds were dust bowls. Chickens wandered freely in the yard. There was no water in the fountain, or in the pool. Heat radiated from the bare earth, and there was not a living soul in sight.

  But the ghosts — the ghosts were everywhere. Visions of men and women dressed in white, strolling over green grass and reclining in shady recesses or by sparkling water, visions of a stern old man in a panelled office aglow with firelight, and, irresistibly, of a girl in white with curtains floating behind her. But with the visions came a terrible sense of dislocation — for how could any of it have happened in this barren place? It was all so dirty and shrunken and drab. John was hardly aware of Harriet at his side, peering through the windscreen. What a pity, she said, it must have been a nice house once. And an enormous throb of outrage swelled in him. A pity! It was far more t
han that. The dust, the blank windows, the front doors yawning emptily.

  He put the car in reverse and pulled away. Even that felt like desertion, as if the building was crying out to him for help. But what could he do? He steered back down the driveway, turned off towards the water hole. But his despair only deepened as he drove. Everywhere he saw the same forlorn signs of neglect. Fences that leant or had fallen, piles of rubbish that had once been sheds and stables. When they came over the first hill, he saw that the little church too was sinking into ruin, the graveyard overgrown with grass. He didn’t give a damn about the cemetery — let the Whites rot and their headstones tumble — but everything else cut with a pain that was almost physical. Bad enough that he had lost everything when it should have been his, worse still to find that no one else even wanted it! He drove the rest of the way in a furious silence, while Harriet gazed all unknowing out the windows.

  But when they reached the water hole, something strange happened. For the pool, at least, was unchanged — nestled beneath the sandstone shelf as always, shaded by overhanging gums and the willow tree. Even the old stone seat was still there, by the lip of the trickling waterfall. Harriet was delighted, and set about exploring. John followed more slowly. He studied the dark water, then raised his eyes to the foothills that swelled all about, and beyond them to the high line of the mountains. As a boy, those mountains had been a different world. Now he knew them intimately, every ridge and gully and cliff, just as he knew this water hole, and the hills and plains of his youth that stretched out behind him. And standing there, John felt a sudden merging of two inner parts of himself, his childhood and his adult life, the station and the mountains. They all came together here in this spot.

  The anger in him burned away. It was as if the land was speaking to him directly, pulsing up through the stone at his feet. He belonged here. Not in the mountains or on the plains or in the towns, but here, on this one piece of country. It was the focus around which he had always circled. And look how it had suffered in his absence. As he suffered himself, incomplete, and doomed to be so, unless he returned. And in that moment, he knew. It was no pleasant fantasy or hope, it was an utter conviction, an acceptance of truth — no matter how long it took, he would get the station back. Indeed, as he turned upon the spot, drinking in every sight and sound of the landscape, he knew that this was the instant in which he took possession. Not legally, not financially, but essentially. The strength of the revelation filled him with a fierce pride, a vitality that flowed into him from the hills themselves, as if all of their age and power was his.

  He was suddenly keenly aware of Harriet’s presence. She had already stripped down to her swimming costume and slid into the water. Afire with the joy of ownership, John ripped off his shirt and joined her in the pool. It was deliciously cool, and for a time the two of them swam about, splashing each other, laughing, revelling in the secret of water and stone. Then as the heat of the afternoon drained away, a languor stole into their limbs. They drifted, talking. The sun sank, and insects buzzed and skipped across the surface. Finally they fell silent, circling each other slowly. John felt a deep serenity, more at peace than he had ever been, and he could tell that Harriet had seen the change in him. He was a man who knew exactly who he was. An intensity seemed to build between them, drowsy and hypnotic. Then Harriet abruptly shook her hair, and without a word climbed out of the pool. John remained in the water, watching her. She picked her way slowly amongst the rocks, and then settled on a smooth sheet of stone, warmed by the last beams of light that filtered through the trees. Stretching herself out, she opened her arms and closed her eyes to the sun. John hung in the water, observing her in repose for one long unguarded moment. Then he kicked his legs, and dived deep.

  The water was colder below the surface, and clear. He saw the sandy floor dipping away from him as it ran back towards the shelf. Fallen tree limbs littered the sides of the pool, but under the shelf there was darkness. He kicked towards it, sinking, his mind ablaze with the image of Harriet spread across the rock, water beading on her skin. He longed for her as if she was the crowning symbol of everything that had just been revealed to him,everything that in the future would be his — could be theirs together. And then, unbidden, there came a vision of Dudley returning triumphant from the war, and of Harriet’s body, pale and smooth, surrendered to him instead. John was in the depths of the hole now, far under the overhang of the shelf. A slow current seemed to flow from the blackness, broken only by the white glimmer of sticks and branches that had sunk there, deep beyond his reach. His lungs began to ache, the water was freezing, and still the thought of Harriet set his skin alight. But when Dudley returned, John would be dispossessed of her. Just as he had been of everything else.

  Expelling air at last, he turned and kicked upwards, spearing towards the far end of the pool. He surfaced in the shallows, and lifted himself clear of the water. Dripping, he climbed over the rocks, until he stood above her, drawing breath. Harriet was aware of him only dreamily for a moment, but then opened her eyes, shading them as she looked up. And who knew what she thought in her heart about her two men, and whether the choice would have been John or Dudley, if they had all been reunited one day. But there had always been a mystery within John, a man never fully revealed, and that man stood over her now, a figure she barely recognised, half naked, almost wild, almost frightening, but unmasked for her alone. For his part, John saw Harriet sit up with something that might have been alarm, but which in fact had no defence about it, no rejection, only a sudden willingness. At the last moment she seemed to catch herself, and drew her knees to her chest. But by then John was kneeling before her, his face was close to hers, and his hands were on the straps of her suit.

  Chapter Nineteen

  IT TOOK WILLIAM ANOTHER TWO DAYS TO MUSTER HIS COURAGE and use the keys. The chance came when his uncle carted the newsletters away to mail in Powell, rattling off down the driveway in the old utility. That left only his mother and Mrs Griffith to worry about. His mother was no problem, but the housekeeper could appear anywhere, silent as a ghost on her patrols. For that reason William decided not to use the central staircase. It was too exposed. It would have to be one of the stairwells in the east or west wing. The west wing would have been the best — it was the furthest from Mrs Griffith’s flat. But the landing there was blocked by dusty piles of boxes and papers.

  Which left only one choice. William retrieved the keys from under his bed and made his way to the eastern stairs. They were narrow and unadorned, a stark passage climbing upwards. He ascended the first flight, the old boards creaking faintly under his feet. Then he was on the landing, and examining the fibro partition. It was unpainted, and fitted only roughly from wall to wall, a makeshift barrier thrown up temporarily perhaps, and then forgotten. The door had obviously been salvaged from somewhere else — it was old, with streaks of garish green paint adhering to dark wooden panels. Below the knob a bolt had been installed, held shut by a padlock. William began trying the keys, one by one. The third slotted in perfectly. But then there was a long struggle, first to turn the key and open the padlock, stiff with age, and then to draw back the rusty bolt. He paused when he was done, a little breathless and with aching fingers, certain that he made far too much noise. But he heard no movement from anywhere else in the House. Gingerly, he turned the doorknob, and pushed.

  Hinges groaned, and a gulf of darkness opened. William hesitated until his eyes adjusted to the gloom and he could see the stairs, ascending away dimly. Then he stepped through and pulled the door closed behind him. Resuming the climb, he became aware of a smell. It was familiar from the ground floor — the scent of mould, of rotting wood, of inescapable age. But while downstairs it was an undertone, up here it was ripe and pungent, making William’s nose itch. It was colder too. He grimaced, rubbed his nose, and then he was at the top of the stairs.

  Cold, dark … and empty. That was his first impression. He was standing at the end of a long hallway, a gallery far higher an
d wider than anything he had seen downstairs. It ran away off into the shadows before him, dappled with pale shafts of illumination, and seemed to extend the entire length of the House, from the east wing to the west. William stared in awe. It was a vast space, bare of furniture or ornament, and he realised that the upper storey, unlike the lower, had never been subdivided. He was seeing the House in its original scale and shape. But not in anything like its original glory. The ceiling was draped with cobwebs, and whole slabs of it sagged in great, soggy bulges. The walls were streaked with mould, naked latticework showing where chunks of plaster had fallen away. And the floor was blackened and warped, the boards marred by the abstract stains of water damage.

  The hall was lined with tall, vacant doorways. Feeling as if he had strayed into some fairytale giant’s castle, William began to creep from room to room, peering in. The eastern wing was made up of four huge chambers, two on either side of the central gallery. The rooms were identical, with large windows, great stone fireplaces and double doors opening out to the upper verandah. All of them were empty. Holes gaped in floors, the fireplaces had been stripped of their mantelpieces, and the windows were boarded over. They must have been bedrooms, William decided, but bigger than any bedrooms he had ever seen. So silent and desolate. He hadn’t known what he expected to find upstairs, only that he expected to find something, not this gaunt emptiness.

  But this was no place to linger. He was standing above Mrs Griffith’s flat. He stole westwards along the hall, into the narrower central section of the House. Here were another four rooms, two on each side. They were smaller than the first four, although still very big. One was floored with black and white tiles, and pipes stuck out of the walls in several places, so perhaps it had been a bathroom once. But all these rooms too were dark and deserted. He moved beyond them, into the centre of the House. The main staircase was on the right, climbing up to meet him. On the left was an open space leading to wide double doors, opening directly onto the front verandah. William paused, studying the stairway and the partition thrown across the landing below. This was the route his uncle used … but where did he go when he came up here?