The White Earth (26 page)

More voices were yelling.

‘…Kevin’s right, they just ignore us now…’

‘…but once we’re armed they’ll listen. Any fucking blacks come to take my farm, I’ll…’

‘…they’ll only ruin it anyway, they don’t know how to run a property, they never did anything with this country…’

‘…the old settlers knew it, they didn’t get all weepy about it, they just did what had to be done, and if it took a gun…’

‘…pity of it is, they didn’t finish them off when they had the chance…’

‘…you know they were cannibals, they were barely even…’

‘No.’ It was William’s uncle once more, standing sternly at the microphone. The crowd grew quiet sullenly.‘This is not what we’re about. We are not now, and have never been, a racist organisation. This is not about Aborigines. I’ve got no problem with them, not as a race. But there’s no turning back the clock. That’s why I’m angry about this legislation. Not because of the Aborigines. But because the legislation is stupid. It ignores reality. It tries to make criminals out of honest people who have worked hard for their land, it tries to say that we stole this country, when in fact we earned it. The new laws will tie us up in a sentimental mishmash of impossible rules that pretend history never happened, that somehow we’re back where we were two hundred years ago. We’re not, and the laws are wrong. But I will not have racist talk here!’

The crowd wasn’t convinced. More disagreements broke out. People demanded that Kevin Goodwin be given the microphone. Through the veil of his nausea, William saw his uncle and Kevin arguing fiercely, but he couldn’t hear the words. Nearby, a child on its mother’s lap was crying. Everywhere William looked he saw red, angry faces, or others that were bewildered. He couldn’t stand it any longer. It was as if the sickness in his head had spread out across the gathering. He lurched away from the stone and out of the circle. His eyes turned skywards for a moment and he saw the flagpole spearing into the night, but the light from the bonfire didn’t reach the top, and the flag that hung there was black.

William reeled on, gravity propelling his legs down the hill. He passed right through the empty campsite and across the car park. And onwards still, into a welcoming darkness. The ground levelled out and trees rose thickly about him. It seemed that he had descended into a fold between the hills. Finally he came to a rutted channel in the dark, a gully along which water would flow when it rained, though now it was dusty and dry. And here he cast himself down, grateful, his face to the heavens. Yet even with solid earth beneath him he still felt he was spinning. The stars wheeled above, his skin was sweaty, and his head ached and throbbed. But eventually the vertigo began to fade. He lay very still, listening. From far off he could hear the whine of the generator, and the sound of voices from the hilltop, but it was very quiet there amongst the trees, and for a time he simply let himself drift, his mind empty of thought.

Gradually, however, an awareness came over him. The quiet had been a relief at first, but the longer William lay there, the more it seemed to weigh him down. There was still the distant clamour of his uncle’s rally, but he could sense the silence as a greater thing, hanging above. It enfolded the entire hillside. It spread far into the sky and out across the night. It
was
the night. It reached back along the spur and up into the mountains, to where dark and empty chasms plunged. It spread westwards too, to where the House loomed above its ruined garden. And further, all the way across the plains, across endless miles of paddocks and crops, where nothing moved or made a sound, and where the darkness clustered around lone farm houses, and people hid away from it, huddled in front of their televisions.

The air had turned cold.

William sat up, hugging his arms around himself.
It was coming
. A moment, a thing — he was suddenly alert to its approach. His limbs ached, and the pain in his ear was piercing, but he found that he could see everything around him with chill clarity. Every tree, each individual leaf, was a crystal-edged shadow. The black bulk of the hills rose against the paler darkness of the sky. A thousand stars blazed noiselessly high above. And yet everything might have been frozen, the trees, the hills, the stars, paused in an instant of expectation. Even the insects that crawled in the grass had fallen still. The small animals that burrowed in the earth or hunted each other across the ground had ceased their activities. The night birds that stood sentinel in the trees, black eyes shining, had become stone. Every creature was motionless. Up on the hill people argued and fires burned, but all around them the land stood deathly still in anticipation.

And in answer, something came to William out of the night.

At first he saw only a glimmer of light. It was a flame, somewhere off to the east of him. It was hidden by the trees … No, it was moving amongst the trees, passing from shadow to shadow between the trunks, a flame that flickered and flared. It appeared to be some distance off, and it wasn’t moving quickly. It was as if someone was carrying a fire as they walked, unhurried, picking their way alongside the dry bed of the water channel. But the flame was unearthly too. It wasn’t focused around a single point, but seemed to change in shape, to swell and shrink and remould itself endlessly, and yet hint at something familiar. And he could hear no crackle of wood. The fire was utterly without sound.

An unreasoning fear shook William. He’d seen this thing before. It was the light he’d glimpsed moving in the hills, all those months ago, from down on the plains. And it wasn’t anything to do with the rally on the hilltop, or with the bonfire in the circle of stones. It was something else entirely. Something, William was certain, that trod the night even when there was no one else there. He was shivering now. He stood up, ready to flee, but in the same moment, off through the trees, the flame paused in its progress. William hesitated, holding his breath. It was aware of him. Whoever or whatever carried the flame, it had seen him now. William hung motionless in the darkness, staring. And then the flame shifted slightly, and resolved into a shape, and finally, irrevocably, he saw. It wasn’t a man carrying a fire, as he’d first thought — it was a man
on
fire. And yet the figure didn’t scream or struggle,but stood perfectly still. William could discern arms and legs wrapped in flame, a torso that streamed silent fire. And a head, tilted calmly to one side, as if to ask a question while it burned.

He was running then. Blindly, away from the water channel and back up the hill, through the campsite and onwards, to where people and safety lay. The thing didn’t pursue him,but he knew that if he glanced back it would be waiting. It had looked as if it would wait forever. What question it might have asked he did not know, nor want to. He kept running. And as he approached the hilltop, he felt the air stir at his back. A wind was gathering, from out of the west. It gusted, ebbed, then blustered again, so that if there had been a cloud in the sky, William would have thought a storm was on its way. But there were no clouds. Up over the hilltop the wind tumbled, blowing William with it. And then he was amongst the circle of trees and stone, and in the light of the bonfire.

But the bonfire was guttering, and the crowd had broken into milling, arguing groups. Men were shouting, and women and children were drifting away, and dust, whipped up by the wind, streamed between the stones. Dogs snarled and snapped at each other. William couldn’t see anyone he knew. Not Terry or Henry, or even the accountant. Where had they all gone? And then he caught sight of his uncle amidst a knot of people, saw the anger on his face, the wild gestures of his arms. It was as if he had been set upon by his followers. Had a madness come with the wind? William ran to the old man, tugged on his hand.

‘Uncle John,’ he begged. ‘Uncle John…’

His uncle tore his hand away.‘Not now, damn it.’

‘But I saw … down there … I saw…’

‘I don’t care what you saw!’

‘There was a man on fire!’ William wailed.

John McIvor stared down at his nephew then, and for an instant William saw a stunned recognition in the old man’s eyes. But it was only for an instant, for suddenly, to William’s horror, there really was fire. It came rushing up over the brow of the hill. He shrank back, transfixed by the sight of a great burning cross towering into the night. It flared hungrily in the wind, and the men who held it aloft were all robed in white, their heads covered with hoods,black holes of emptiness cut out for eyes. They cried and yelled with alien voices, and the crowd drew apart from them, aghast.

‘No,’ pleaded a voice, freakishly loud. William’s uncle was at the microphone one last time, his face livid in the light from the flames. ‘Not this. This isn’t the way. This isn’t the Australian way. This is from somewhere else…’

But the men in robes howled him down, pushed him aside. Some people in the crowd were cheering now, while others were fleeing down the hill. Gunfire was ringing out again, shots fired wildly into the darkness, and white sheets seemed to dance everywhere, in and out of the stones. Amidst the chaos William caught a glimpse of his uncle, sprawled on the ground, his face contorted in pain. William tried to reach him, but was shoved this way and that, and fell to the ground himself. He rose to his knees and gazed up. The burning cross loomed directly above him, bright and crackling with angry noise. Even as he watched, the timber blistered and bubbled and turned to ash, and clouds of grey smoke billowed off into the wind, obliterating the night sky.

Then the cross toppled to the ground, showering sparks, and everything was over.

Chapter Twenty-seven

J
OHN MCIVOR WOKE, SWEATING FROM THE NIGHTMARE.

For a time he lay frozen, his eyes wide to a full moon shining through the bedroom window. What had woken him? Was it the dream? The moon? Or was there, from some other part of the house, the stealthiest sound of movement? He listened. But Harriet lay fast asleep at his side, and the night was silent. Sweat cooled on his limbs. The dream … it had come to him before, several times, but never as bad as this. In the past it had just been dancing images of flames, and a creeping sense of dread. But tonight he had actually seen it — a hand reaching out, wreathed in fire, and then a human shape, all ablaze, and yet standing motionless as it burned.

What did it mean? Who was on fire, and why? A memory skittered through John’s mind, a vision of Harriet’s father, and the way he had died. Was that it? But it was thirteen years since the bushfire, and in all that time John had slept undisturbed. Why was he dreaming about Oliver now? He stared at the baleful moon, the bedroom awash with silvery light, wondering. Was it even Oliver at all? Surely, if Harriet’s father had returned to plague him, the fiery shape would be vengeful, or agonised, crying out for help. But the dream wasn’t like that. He sensed no emotion in the burning figure. It was just there, wrapped in smoke and flames, but patient also, waiting.

The hammer of his heartbeat had faded away. He felt clammy and cold. Harriet stirred in sleep, then rolled towards him. She was frowning in her own dreams, and John studied her face in the moonlight, noting the dark lines of age on her brow. She was thirty-seven years old. He was forty-two himself. Neither of them was young any more. Was that why the nightmare felt like an obscure intimation of mortality? Was he burning his time away? Would death come before he’d achieved any of the things he wanted? But no … the situation was looking better than it ever had. The season past had seen bountiful crops on both his farm and Dudley’s, and grain prices were excellent. Kuran Station beckoned ever closer.

But still the ephemeral fears awoken by the dream chased through him. He watched Harriet as she slept. And he realised,with a certain amount of shock, that he had never really explained his plans for the future to his wife. True, Harriet knew about his childhood on Kuran, but amazing as it seemed now, he couldn’t remember ever telling her that regaining the station was the central purpose of his life. He was a private man, used to harbouring his own thoughts, but still, in thirteen years of marriage, to have never spoken of it — what did that say about the two of them? And with another shock he realised that, for all Harriet knew, this little farmhouse was all they would ever possess.

Could she actually be content with that? John’s own days were spent away from home, and Harriet’s private time was largely an unregarded mystery to him, but she didn’t appear to be bored or dissatisfied. She ran the house, and cared for Ruth and Dudley. She served on several committees for Ruth’s school, and was a member of the Country Women’s Association, and had made friends with their neighbours. Indeed, she had put down roots, there on the plains. John had never bothered, knowing he would be moving on to better things,but suddenly, as Harriet slumbered, her hair tousled about her face, he saw a humble farmer’s wife. A woman at peace in her little cottage, a woman, in fact, who might be lost in the vastness of a sandstone mansion.

The nightmare chill went through him again. And then John really did hear it, the sound of movement somewhere in the house. All his other thoughts and preoccupations fled. He threw back the covers, swung his feet out of bed, and crossed to the bedroom door. The hall was filled with the dusty blue glow of the moon and there was nothing to be seen, only shadows. He crept along to the next doorway, which was Dudley’s bedroom. The narrow camp bed was empty. Was that all it was — just Dudley up and wandering about? And yet doubt nagged him. Dudley was prone to sleeplessness, but normally he switched on the lights if he was up, and clattered around the kitchen, coughing and muttering to himself. There was none of that now. Only the furtive whisper of
something
.

John moved on, peering into the living room, which was as empty and cold as the rest of the house. Then he heard a definite thump, and a stifled voice. It came from Ruth’s bedroom at the far end of the hall. John stared for a moment, then moved quickly down to her door. It was closed. That was normal — Ruth had been keeping it closed for years now. She was twelve, she wanted her privacy. But beyond the door something seemed to shuffle and groan, and then, unmistakably, there came a choked, frightened cry. Galvanised, John threw the door open and saw, on Ruth’s bed, a confused, moonlit tangle of limbs. For an instant he had no comprehension of what he was seeing, then he flicked on the light and the room was starkly illuminated.