Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  And then Eyre had fiercely grasped both of her shoulders, and tugged her towards him; so that the enormous crimson truncheon was forced right up between her legs; and she shrieked and shrieked at the top of her voice, scattering parrots and jacks and galahs all through the trees in a furious explosion of wings and feathers.

  Three

  A window banged; and then a door. Then they heard somebody shouting in dialect. ‘Naodaup? What’s the matter? Unkee. A woman. Tyintin. Stay there.’ And then something about searching in the trees—‘Tuyulawarrin!’

  Eyre was already on his feet, swiftly buttoning up his britches. Charlotte banged at her upraised dress with her fists, as if it were a disobedient puppy that refused to lie down. She was panting, and whimpering, embarrassed at her own panic, and furious at Eyre for allowing her to humiliate herself. ‘You shouldn’t have done!’ she kept flustering. ‘Eyre, you shouldn’t!’

  Eyre tightened his belt, and then knelt down beside her again. He felt shaky and breathless, and so irritable at having been interrupted right at the very instant of possessing her that his teeth were on edge, as if he had been biting lemons.

  Charlotte held on to his sleeve. ‘I told you I didn’t know what was supposed to happen,’ she persisted. ‘You shouldn’t have done it, Eyre! It hurt so much!’

  ‘You were frightened, that’s all,’ said Eyre, taking her wrists and trying to coax her on to her feet. ‘It doesn’t usually hurt, not like that. Usually, it’s the most marvellous thing you can imagine. But you’re right. I shouldn’t have led you on. Not here; and not tonight.’

  ‘I just didn’t know,’ Charlotte told him; and now she started to weep.

  Eyre heard dogs barking, over by the stable-block. ‘Come on, now,’ he said. ‘Your father’s let the hounds out. We don’t want to be caught here. Is there any way you can get back to your bedroom without him seeing you?’

  Charlotte sniffed, and blew her nose on her little lace handkerchief. ‘I think so. Once I get back through the garden gate, I can go along the ha-ha until I reach the kitchen. Then I can go up the back stairs.’

  ‘Well you’d better hurry in that case,’ said Eyre. ‘It sounds as if he’s brought out the whole pack. And if they can catch a red kangaroo, they can certainly catch us.’

  ‘Eyre,’ said Charlotte, lifting her face, wet with tears, to kiss him. ‘Eyre, I’m sorry. You must think me so ridiculous.’

  He kissed her, and then held her head close to his cheek, his fingers buried in her curls. ‘It’s my fault. I love you now and I always will. Now, please, you’d better go.’

  The hounds were being led around the side of the house now, yipping and snapping. Eyre took Charlotte’s arm and guided her swiftly to the garden gate; where he kissed her one last time before letting her go. She hurried off along by the stringy-bark gums at the end of the lawns, her blue ruffled dress shining pale in the moonlight, a fleeing ghost in a garden of ghostly trees.

  Just before she could reach the ha-ha at the far side of the garden, however, and disappear from view; flashing lanterns appeared at the side of the house, and Eyre saw Lathrop’s two Aborigine dog-handlers, Utyana and Captain Henry, struggling across the south-east patio with six greyhounds each. The dogs were straining at their leads until their eyes bulged, their claws scratching and skittering at the stone pathways.

  ‘Koola! Koola!’ Captain Henry shouted to his dogs, and they snarled and gnashed and writhed against their leads in a froth of hunting-lust. ‘Koola’ was Aborigine for kangaroo, and these dogs had been trained for two years to chase after kangaroos and bring them down as quickly and as bloodily as possible. The dogs had to be strong and vicious because the kangaroos were strong and vicious; even the youngest kangaroo could run for miles before the hunt caught up with them, and a fully grown buck could fling a greyhound into the air and break its back. Kangaroos were unnervingly intelligent, too. Last season a big red had caught Lathrop’s favourite hound Rocket with its front paws and held it under water at the Nguru water-hole until it had drowned.

  Eyre shouted, ‘Charlotte! Hurry!’ and Charlotte at last reached the shelter of the ha-ha and began to run towards the house with her skirts raised. But the dog-handlers had already seen her, and must have thought she was an intruder, or even (knowing how superstitious they were) a Koobooboodgery. And now Lathrop himself appeared, in his flapping nightshirt, carrying a lantern in one hand and a musket in the other.

  Captain Henry must have asked for permission to let the dogs loose; for Lathrop nodded, and in the next instant six of the greyhounds were streaking across the moonlit grass in sudden silence; pale shadows so quick that Eyre found it difficult to follow them.

  He wrenched open the garden gate, and shouted at Lathrop, ‘It’s Charlotte! Call them off, Mr Lindsay! It’s Charlotte!’

  Lathrop stared at him from twenty yards away in complete amazement. ‘Walker?’ he demanded, lifting up his lantern. ‘What the blue devil are you doing here?’

  ‘It’s Charlotte!’ Eyre screamed at him.

  ‘What?’ Lathrop turned, frowned towards the ha-ha, frowned back at Eyre; and then said, ‘Charlotte? What’s Charlotte?’

  There! For the love of God, call those dogs off!’

  It was then that they heard Charlotte scream, and the growling and snapping of the dogs.

  Lathrop suddenly understood what was happening, and roared at Captain Henry, ‘Call them off, man! Call them off! They’ll kill her!’

  Captain Henry held his hands on top of his head in complete misery. ‘Can’t do it, sir. Won’t come now, sir. Not until they bring the pipi, sir.’

  Eyre felt cold. He knew what pipi meant—entrails. Without thinking of anything at all, he began to run across the lawn towards the ha-ha, his vision a jumble of grass, gum-trees, flashes of moonlight. He could hear himself panting as he ran as if somebody else were running close beside him.

  He reached the brink of the ha-ha, his shoes skidding on the dry grass. Charlotte had stopped screaming now; and was desperately trying to scramble up the side of the slope, one hand pressed to her face to keep the greyhounds from tearing at her nose and eyes. All six dogs were leaping and snapping and hurling themselves at her like suicidal acrobats. Two of them clung on to her petticoats to drag her down, while the others bit at her arms and her ankles and her bare shoulders.

  Eyre roared at the top of his voice, and bounded down the ha-ha and right into the tussle of dogs, shouting, ‘Off! You damned creatures! Get off! Damn you!’

  He kicked one dog hard in the ribs, and it screamed like a child. Another went for his trousers, but he seized its hind leg and threw it end-over-end, howling, into a patch of bottlebrushes. But two more dogs launched themselves at his calves, and one of them bit right through into the muscle with an audible crunch of flesh, and the other scrabbled with sharpened claws at his ankles, ripping off skin in ribbons. Eyre shouted out loud, and yet another dog threw itself at his elbow, gripping the bone with relentless jaws and refusing to let go, even when he twisted its ear right around.

  He dropped to the grass; first to his knees, then as the dogs went for him again, on to his back. He was too frightened even to cry out; and angry, too, in an extraordinary way.

  Captain Henry reached the ha-ha, and managed to beat off two of the hounds with a stick; at least for long enough for Charlotte to be pulled, crying and bloody, to the safety of the dog-handler’s side. But now the rest of the dogs hurled themselves at Eyre with redoubled fury, and one of them bit him right in the cheek, only an inch below his right eye, while two more of them ripped at his arms and his legs.

  He thought, Jesus Christ, I’m dead. I’m already dead. These dogs are going to kill me. And his whole world was crowded with snapping and biting and flying saliva and flailing claws.

  Quite suddenly, however, he felt the dogs stiffen, and lift their heads. One of them stepped back from him, and then the others followed, and in a moment all six of them changed from snarling beasts into elegant canine statues,
standing in the light of the moon quite motionless, noses slightly lifted, as if they had inhaled some rare and indefinable essence that was undetectable by humans but which could instantly turn greyhounds into figures of limestone.

  Lathrop said abruptly, ‘Utyana. Tie the rest of those dogs up and bring Mr Walker up here. Captain Henry, do you hold your ground.’

  ‘Yes, sir, Mr Lindsay.’

  Digging his heels into the grass, Eyre managed to push himself a little way up the side of the ha-ha on his back. He was shocked and trembling and he felt as if his skin had been curried all over with a wire brush. Utyana hurried over and lifted him the rest of the way out of the ditch; and then he lay back on the grass, sniffing and shaking, and up above him the sky was impossibly rich with stars.

  Utyana knelt beside him, taking off his wide felt hat so that he was wearing only a red headscarf over his scalp. He was big-nosed and ugly, and his breath smelled of sour fruit, but he smiled at Eyre and touched his forehead very gently.

  ‘How’s … Miss Charlotte?’ asked Eyre.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ nodded Utyana.

  ‘Going to be all right, no thanks to you,’ remarked the vinegar voice of Lathrop Lindsay, from somewhere out of sight.

  ‘And me?’ Eyre whispered. ‘I’m not going to die, am I?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ nodded Utyana.

  ‘Only English the blighter ever learned,’ said Lathrop. ‘Understands it, doesn’t speak it’.

  Eyre reached down and felt his chest. His waistcoat was badly torn, and his lapels were hanging in shreds. Then suddenly he felt his stomach, and to his utmost horror he could feel something wet and stringy. He lifted it up in his hand, and raised his head a little way, and there between his fingers was a bloody mess of tatters, with something pulpy right in the middle of it all.

  He let his head drop back on the grass. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, out loud. A feeling of nausea surged up in him, and his mouth flooded with blood and bile.

  Lathrop came into view, on the right-hand side, and peered down at him. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Lathrop asked him, shortly.

  Eyre took three or four quick breaths. ‘I’m going to die, aren’t I? Those dogs have ripped my guts out.’

  Lathrop stared at him, and then down at his stomach. That, you mean?’ he asked, poking at the stringy mess with his finger.

  Eyre said nothing, but nodded rapidly. He was sure that he could already feel the coldness of death seeping into his legs; soon it would overtake him altogether.

  ‘That’s the lining of your jacket,’ Lathrop told him. ‘Got torn, that’s all; and that bit there’s your pocket, with your pocket-handkerchey. Ripped your guts out my Aunt Fanny. Wish they damn well had, the damage you’ve done.’

  Eyre took another, longer breath, and then looked at Lathrop and attempted a friendly chuckle. It came out like a ghastly, irrational honk; and he was glad that Lathrop didn’t hear it, and turned away.

  It was then that Eyre realised how hushed the garden was; even the night-parrots were silent; and the insects had hesitated as if rain were expected, or an unfelt earth tremor had shaken the deeper levels of the surrounding hills.

  Eyre said to Utyana, ‘What’s going on? Help me sit up.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Utyana smiled, and continued to stroke his forehead.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Eyre demanded. ‘I want to sit up!’

  Utyana at last realised what he wanted, and gripped him under the armpits with his thin black muscly hands, and helped him to sit. Eyre looked around, and the tableau that he saw in front of him was so strange that at first he couldn’t believe that it was real.

  The greyhounds were still poised in the ha-ha; with Captain Henry standing a little way back; and Lathrop commanding the scene with one hand firmly planted on his hip, his musket angled over his shoulder, and the evening breeze billowing his nightshirt around his thick white ankles. But it was Yanluga who caught Eyre’s attention. He was sitting cross-legged on the far edge of the ha-ha, his back very straight, and he was whispering, a peculiar hollow whisper that gave Eyre a prickly feeling all the way down his back, the way some particularly plaintive music can.

  Yanluga was charming the greyhounds as if they were children. They stood hypnotised, their ears and their tails depressed, their white eyes wide, watching him as if they couldn’t bear to let him out of their sight for a single instant. Eyre didn’t recognise the words that Yanluga was using; they didn’t even sound like Wirangu. But the effect they had on the greyhounds was undeniable; they stood pale and still like dogs from the Bayeux Tapestry; and the moon which had now moved out from behind the stringy-bark gums gave the garden a look of enchantment. Yanluga would have called it a mirang, a place where magic is practised.

  Lathrop took two or three steps back, so that he was standing next to Eyre.

  ‘Remarkable, isn’t it?’ he said, without taking his eyes off Yanluga. ‘You’d be quite amazed at what some of these blackfellows can do. Sensitive to nature, that’s what it is; only a step away from being animals themselves, and there’s the proof of it. What civilised man could speak to a pack of greyhounds, so that they’d listen?’

  Eyre said thickly, ‘It seems that he saved my life.’

  ‘Well, you’re probably right,’ replied Lathrop. ‘After all, those are rare hounds, more than £50 apiece they cost me, and I’d have been loathe to shoot them, especially for the sake of a chap who’s already trespassed twice in one day both on my property and on my patience; and abused my hospitality to the point of theft. You realise that if I speak to Captain Tennant, I could have you locked up; hanged, even. It wouldn’t do you any harm at all, hanging. It might improve your manners.’

  Eyre said, ‘I am conscious, sir, that I owe you an apology. But I hardly think that being in love with Charlotte can be construed as a capital crime.’

  ‘Abduction is a capital crime, sir.’

  ‘There was no question of abduction, sir. Charlotte came to meet me of her own free will.’

  Lathrop slowly turned his head to look at Eyre with small and shiny eyes.

  ‘If I was the kind of father who was unaware of his daughter’s extreme wilfulness; and was not quite accustomed to tantrums and foot-stamping and deliberate disobedience, especially during discussions about which young men are suitable companions for a girl of her quality and which young men are not; then I would be quite minded to whip you. But as it is, I am aware, and I am accustomed, and consequently I shan’t.’

  Eyre climbed slowly and painfully to his feet, with Utyana staying close by in case he needed help. He wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his bloody hand.

  ‘I think I should go now,’ he said. ‘I’d like to wash out these bites before they go septic, and bandage myself up.’

  Lathrop stared at him with a tight, forced smile. ‘Of course you would, of course you would. Bandage yourself up, that’s right. But there’s one small aspect of this evening’s amusements which still concerns me.’

  Captain Henry called over, ‘Can I leash the dogs now, sir? Seems as if they’re growing restless.’

  ‘In a moment,’ Lathrop told him; then turned back to Eyre. ‘What I’d like to know is, how was tonight’s tryst arranged? That’s what I’d like to know. And why is young Yanluga here? He was the one who drove you around with my own daughter in my own carriage while I was off in Sydney, wasn’t he? Could it have been he who helped you to meet my daughter in the woods, in the dark, under the most improper of circumstances?’

  Eyre glanced across the ha-ha. Yanluga had raised his arms now, and was chanting to the dogs, a long, repetitive chant. But there was no doubt that the hounds were beginning to twitch now, and lick their lips, and paw at the grass.

  Lathrop said, ‘I haven’t punished him, you know; and until I discovered him here tonight I wasn’t intending to. I like to think that I’m a forgiving employer, on occasions, as well as a stern one. But what he did tonight was really unforgivable.’

  ‘He saved my l
ife,’ Eyre repeated.

  ‘Ah,’ said Lathrop. ‘But had you not been here; had Yanluga not arranged a sweetheart’s meeting for you; then there would have been no need for him to save your life, now would there? So, who do we have to blame for all of tonight’s distress? Why, Yanluga.’

  Eyre said, ‘Leave him be. Please, for Charlotte’s sake. For pity’s sake.’

  Lathrop peered at Eyre maliciously, as if he were trying to make out where he was in a particularly obnoxious fog. ‘Let me tell you something, sir. I am an exemplary husband, a benevolent father, and a trustworthy businessman. But, I am not a monkey. I have never been a monkey and I never will be a monkey, and you won’t make me one, I promise you.’

  With that, he lifted his musket from his shoulder; and, still smiling at Eyre, cocked it. Then he swung around, and aimed it directly at Yanluga.

  ‘Boy!’ he called.

  Yanluga didn’t look up at first; couldn’t, because he was trying to keep the hounds calm. But then he glanced up quickly once; and then again and squinted at Lathrop in uncertainty and fear.

  ‘What the devil are you doing?’ Eyre demanded. ‘You’re not going to shoot him, not in cold blood!’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Lathrop. ‘I am simply giving the chap a chance to leave my property, and my employ, as smartly as he likes. Boy!’ he called again. ‘Stop that singing and chanting now, and be off with you! That’s it! Make yourself scarce!’

  ‘Sir! called Yanluga. ‘Please ask Captain Henry to tie up the dogs first.’

  ‘You just be off,’ said Lathrop. ‘Captain Henry will take care of the hounds when he pleases.’

  ‘Sir, if I run, sir, the dogs will chase me.’