Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  Mrs McConnell smiled. ‘In your own house, you can do whatever you wish.’

  ‘But Dogger—

  ‘Don’t you go worrying about Dogger. I’ve had no attention from Dogger these past five years. Dogger can sleep off that skinful of drink and mind his own business.’

  At last, however, she climbed out of bed, and brushed down her nightdress, and went to collect her lamp.

  ‘Your drink’s gone cold,’ she told him.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Never mind. I can always have some water if I’m thirsty in the night.’

  ‘You’ll think about staying?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t make you any promises.’

  ‘I don’t want to lose you, you know. Not like that.’

  Eyre didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could think of to say. How could you bluntly hurt the feelings of a woman who was prepared to treat you like her own son; nurse you and coddle you; and even relieve you sexually? He knew with a kind of detached amazement that if he had wanted to mount her, and fornicate with her, she probably would have let him. In fact she probably would have done anything at all. That was the measure of her emotional need.

  She leaned over the bed and kissed his forehead. ‘You sleep well now, and I’ll see you at breakfast.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mrs McConnell.’

  She brushed back his hair with the tips of her fingers. ‘When we’re alone together, you can call me Constance.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was a lengthy pause, while she stood beside him with her upraised lamp. ‘Goodnight, Constance,’ he told her; and she kissed him again, and left, closing the door behind her as quietly as if it were a nursery, where her baby was sleeping; and hesitating just for a moment on the landing outside in case he should call for anything.

  He lay awake for hours, thinking of what had happened; and when he did sleep, in the cold silent time before dawn, he dreamed of his mother laying out alphabet blocks for him, one after the other, and he dreaded what they might eventually spell out.

  Fourteen

  On Saturday morning, he received an unexpected visit from Captain Sturt and a man called Pickens, whose face was as yellow as custard, and who introduced himself as Captain Sturt’s accountant. They sat in Mrs McConnell’s front parlour, drinking Mrs McConnell’s sherry-wine, and they told Eyre expansively that they had been able to raise from the Adelaide business community subscriptions amounting to £1,103 and some shillings, which would be more than adequate to finance a six-week expedition to the north, in search of precious minerals, passable stock-routes, and God favourable, the legendary inland sea. Or forest, Captain Sturt qualified himself. Or, indeed, swamp.

  ‘Or desert,’ remarked Dogger, who was sitting in the corner, refusing to mind his own business.

  Captain Sturt turned around in his chair. ‘My dear fellow, I know that you have an extensive knowledge of the country as far north as the Flinders Range, and Broken Hill; but when you go even further north, it becomes quite evident that all the rivers and natural drainage systems are flowing not towards the sea but in the opposite direction, towards the very heart of Australia. Where does all this water go? The very simplest mind can deduce that there must be an inland ocean.’

  ‘Or forest,’ said Dogger.

  ‘Or swamp,’ agreed Captain Sturt.

  Dogger opened his small penknife-blade with his teeth, and began to cut at the hardened dottle in his pipe. ‘All I can say, sir, is this: that there may well have been an ocean there once, just as there were lakes and creeks and rivers all over the outback. But these days it’s fierce out there, sir; as hot as a furnace; and I never saw water survive for long in a furnace. That sun can make a man’s blood boil dry; and I will lay you money that it can make an ocean boil dry, too, just as easy.’

  Captain Sturt let out a peculiarly feminine laugh, and turned to Eyre and Pickens with amusement. ‘He’s quite a character, your Mr McConnell. Quite a character. Salt of the earth.’

  Eyre glanced at Dogger in embarrassment, but Dogger was studiously cleaning out his pipe and ignoring Captain Sturt’s patronising banter as if it were nothing more than the clacking of parrots.

  Captain Sturt leaned forward and said to Eyre, ‘You will take Joolonga and two more Aborigines, a carrier called Midgegooroo and a boy called Weeip. Then I suggest you take two companions of your own choosing; for although I know one or two fellows who are sturdy and helpful and ready to take part in whatever adventures might befall them, I believe from my own experience that your choice of travelling-companions must be your own. They must be men that you trust, and like, and with whom you feel easy. There will be exhausting days ahead of you; sometimes dangerous days; and to have with you men whom you dislike is to court disaster.’

  Eyre said, ‘I have one or two ideas for travelling-companions. It may depend on whether I can persuade them to come with me.’

  ‘Well, don’t take them if they require too much persuading, or you will find that, when times become difficult, which they assuredly will, they will blame you for every hardship and privation they have to endure. I truly believe that the qualities you have to look for are loyalty, and stamina, and a degree of personal courage. No man is experienced in exploring this territory, for no man has ever been there before. So what you need to look for are friends, rather than veterans.’

  With that, he gave an odd jerk of his neck.

  Eyre said, ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Captain Sturt smiled at him, and then jerked his neck again. Eyre suddenly realised that he was jerking his neck towards Dogger.

  ‘You mean I shouldn’t take Mr McConnell with me?’ he asked Sturt, in a loud voice.

  Captain Sturt frowned, and flushed. ‘Nothing of the kind. I didn’t mean that at all. I simply meant that you should consider your travelling companions with unusual care.’

  ‘Is there any quality which Mr McConnell particularly lacks, which renders him unsuitable?’ Eyre asked him.

  Pickens said, in a nasal tone, ‘I’m not sure that Captain Sturt was trying to suggest that Mr McConnell is in any way unsuitable. I believe that he was simply suggesting that one ought to consider how one’s companions are going to behave in extreme circumstances.’

  Eyre stood up, and walked around behind Pickens, so that the yellow-faced accountant was obliged to twist uncomfortably around in his chair in order to see him.

  ‘I appreciate that Captain Sturt and several other businessmen in Adelaide have been generous enough to finance me, and to give me guidance,’ he said, in almost schoolmasterly tones. ‘However, the idea of looking for Yonguldye was mine, and remains my obligation; and it is my life that will be at risk. I have already told Captain Sturt that I will do my best to locate whatever minerals may be to hand; and that I will also attempt to find a reasonable track for driving stock. But that is as far as I will go in return for money. I expect to be able to choose whoever goes with me, for whatever reasons I wish, and which route I take, and when the expedition has gone far enough.’

  Captain Sturt clapped his hands. ‘Bravo!’ he shouted.

  Eyre looked across at him in surprise.

  ‘I say “bravo!” because I know what kind of a fellow you really are,’ Sturt enthused, standing up, and looking around him as if he were well pleased with himself. ‘You are a young man of vision, and fortitude; and you will not give up until you have discovered everything which you set out to discover. I trust you, Mr Eyre Walker! By God, I trust you! You will be back here in Adelaide inside of eight weeks, with news that you have found opals, and copper, and even gold; and that you have sighted in the distance the glittering shores of the inland sea, even if you haven’t actually sailed on it!’

  He came over and clapped Eyre enthusiastically on the back, and then Pickens; but when he went towards Dogger, his hand lifted in gladsome welcome, Dogger glared at him with such a grotesque expression of contempt that he was obliged to skip and swivel and pretend that he had only stepped towards the corne
r of the room to adjust his necktie in the mirror.

  ‘Well, now!’ Sturt enthused. ‘You must come to lunch on Monday, Mr Walker; and tell me what plans you have devised. We will go over the latest maps, and discuss the very best course of action. If you can, I would like you to tell me who you have chosen to go with you; so that I may talk to them too.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Eyre. He glanced towards Dogger, who was now carefully packing the bowl of his pipe with home-grown tobacco. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘On Grenfell Street, with the Wilsons. Come at half-past eleven, sharp. Mrs Wilson is a capital cook; you’ll enjoy it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eyre. ‘Mrs McConnell is a capital cook, too.’

  ‘And more besides,’ said Dogger, obliquely.

  Captain Sturt and Pickens both left, raising their hats several times too often to Mrs McConnell. Eyre stood on the verandah watching them climb into their carriage, and then went back into the house.

  ‘Well?’ asked Dogger.

  ‘Well, what?’ Eyre replied.

  ‘Well, are you going to take me with you? You said you had one or two ideas for travelling-companions.’

  Eyre sat down opposite him, and laced his fingers together. Dogger watched him expectantly; but when Eyre didn’t speak, and when the clock on the chimney-shelf at last struck half past ten, Dogger put down his pipe and his penknife and sat well back in his armchair, and looked at Eyre with an expression both of forgiveness and of desperate disappointment.

  ‘I didn’t think you would,’ he told him. ‘Too old, I suppose. Drink too much. Don’t want a sodden old dingo-hunter on a smart expedition like this; not with Captain Charles Sturt putting up the money for it, no sir. Well, I can’t say that I blame you; not completely. But I would be more of an asset than a liability, and I’d never drink a drop, not me. And it could be that I would save your life.’

  Eyre said, ‘Don’t think that I haven’t considered taking you, Dogger. I have; and very deeply. There’s only one thing that prevents me.’

  ‘The beer? Come on, now, Eyre, I can easily give up the beer.’

  ‘It’s not the beer, Dogger, it’s Constance.’

  Dogger was outraged for a moment, and bulged out his bristly cheeks, and planted his hands on his hips, and couldn’t think of a single word to express how furious he felt.

  ‘Constance?’ he burst out, at last.

  Eyre nodded. ‘You and I both have a responsibility to Constance. You know that, because your responsibility is far greater than mine. But if both of us were to die on this adventure, then she would have nobody to take care of her at all, and that would be more than she could bear. You left her for years and years, while you went out hunting for wild dogs; but she’s used to you now, used to having you around the house. Used to your grumbling, and your drinking, and your bad temper. And, believe me, Dogger, she loves you.’

  ‘I don’t need a raw carrot like you to tell me my wife loves me.’

  Eyre shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps you do.’

  Dogger said, ‘You’re a damned preacher, do you know that? Too damned religious by half.’

  ‘Well,’ said Eyre, amused, ‘perhaps I am.’ He raised his hand as if he were bestowing a blessing on Dogger, and intoned, ‘“You husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel. You have pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousals, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.” The first letter of Peter.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ said Dogger.

  He went to the window and lifted back the flower-patterned nets so that he could look out over the dusty street. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blaspheme. It’s just that I feel so useless here; shut in, do you see, like a dog in a kennel.’

  Eyre watched him sympathetically but said nothing.

  Dogger said, ‘I just wanted to see the outback one more time. All those twisted trees, like demons and devils. All those cracked rocks, and dry creeks. And smell that smell, when the sun gets really hot, and the eucalyptus oil comes up from the trees in a vapour. And most of all, the sky. You don’t know what a really blue sky is, until you’ve been out beyond the black stump.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Eyre.

  ‘Well,’ sighed Dogger, ‘I suppose I can understand your reasons.’

  Constance came in, and asked them, ‘Do you want some luncheon? It’s mutton cutlets, and soubise sauce.’

  ‘Want a beer before you eat?’ Dogger asked Eyre.

  Eyre said, ‘I’d love one.’ Dogger went off to pour a jug out of his latest barrel; but Constance McConnell stayed where she was, wiping her hands on her apron, looking at Eyre with that expression of warning and concern.

  ‘Did you and Captain Sturt come to any conclusions?’ she asked.

  ‘Conclusions?’

  ‘Have you decided to go?’

  Eyre nodded. ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I suppose there’s no further use in appealing to you.’

  ‘No.’

  She sat down, and stared at him for a very long time. Outside in the street they could hear dogs barking and the cries of a man who would sharpen knives, and shears, and worm your cat.

  ‘You’re not taking Dogger with you, though?’ asked Mrs McConnell.

  ‘No. I’m afraid he’s a little too old. We want to find water and cattle-trails and opals out there; not graves.’

  ‘Well I suppose I can thank you for that.’

  Eyre knelt down beside her chair, and held her arm. ‘Constance,’ he said, ‘I’m going to make you one solemn promise. Whatever happens, I’ll come back to you. Do you understand me? You’ve taken care of me. I promise in return that I’ll take care of you.’

  Constance McConnell lowered her head. Eyre stayed beside her for a little while, and then stood up. ‘Shall we have some lunch?’ he asked her.

  At that moment, however, there was a sharp banging at the door-knocker. Dogger went to answer it with his jugful of beer in his hand, and it was Christopher Willis, in a baggy linen suit, and Arthur Mortlock, rather incongruously dressed as a waiter, with a red waistcoat and rows of shiny brass buttons.

  ‘Sorry to barge in,’ said Christopher, ‘but do you think we could have a private word? Good morning, Mrs McConnell; fine day. Fine smell from the kitchen, too. Mutton stew?’

  ‘Cutlets,’ Mrs McConnell told him, snappily.

  Arthur Mortlock took off his derby hat to reveal his prickly scalp, and grinned at Mrs McConnell with a clash of artificial teeth. ‘Nothing to which I’m more partial than mutton cutlets,’ he remarked. ‘Especially when they’ve been cooked by a fair gentlewoman; near to raw; and then sprinkled with a little mustard-seed.’

  Mrs McConnell blinked; unsure of what she ought to say. But Arthur bowed, and sniffed, and said, ‘Please don’t think that I was after inviting meself to lunch, mum. As it turns out, I don’t have the time. I’m helping out a friend at the Adelaide Hotel just at the moment, waiting on table, seeing as how he’s short of fellows what knows the difference between a fish-fork and a kick in the nostril.’

  Eyre reassuringly took Mrs McConnell’s arm. ‘Mr Mortlock is an acquaintance of mine, Mrs McConnell. He’s quite respectable.’

  ‘Well, then, a fine good morning to him’, said Mrs McConnell, and bustled off back to her kitchen.

  Dogger poured out beer for everybody, frowning at the jug when it was empty, and then ambled distractedly off to stoke up the kitchen range and lay the table. Christopher peered down the hallway to make sure that he was gone, and then closed the parlour door. He also went to the window, to see if there was anybody watching the house from the street outside.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Eyre.

  ‘Arthur came to see me this morning and said that two men took rooms at the Adelaide Hotel late last night, presumably off the packet from Sydney. They told the porter they were on the lookout for ticket-of-leave men who had absconded from Botany Bay; and they gave the names Crouch
er, Philips, Bean, and Mortlock. Then this morning, over breakfast, they told another waiter that they had discovered already that Philips and Croucher were dead, killed and robbed by Aborigines; but that Bean and Mortlock were still at large, and that they were quite determined to run them to earth.’

  Eyre said to Arthur, ‘I presume Bean was the other man with you; the man who ran off.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Arthur. ‘I never knew his other name, sir, only Bean; and as far as I know that was the way his mother had him baptised, Bean and nothing more.’

  ‘Have you heard from Bean since the night of the Ball?’

  ‘No, sir. But he won’t have gone far. He was never the adventurous kind. Nerves of seaweed, sir, had Bean.’

  ‘If these men were to track Bean down, and question him, do you think you could rely on him not to tell them where you might be found?’

  Arthur said, ‘Hard to say, sir. But I doubt it. Bean was never a hard case, sir, not in that sense of it. And if they threaten him with flogging, well, you can’t blame a fellow for wanting to keep the flesh on his back, can you?’

  ‘You must leave, then,’ said Eyre.

  Christopher fanned himself with his hat. ‘It’s a little more difficult than that, Eyre old chap. Apparently these fellows have got the roads watched, and they’ve been talking to all the Aborigine constables to make sure that nobody slips out of Adelaide through the bush. I was down at the port this morning, too—in fact, that’s where Arthur came to find me—and all sea-captains and fishermen and boat owners have been told to keep a weather-eye open for men who want to leave Adelaide by sea in anything of a hurry. They’ve been offering rewards, too: bottles of rum for information; gold sovereigns for capture.’

  ‘Well,’ said Eyre, looking at Arthur warily. ‘It seems as if they’ve made up their minds that they’re going to run you down.’

  ‘So it would seem, sir,’ Arthur agreed.

  ‘Of course, we have another little problem,’ said Christopher. ‘It’s an offence to harbour a wanted criminal, and that means that both you and I are equally liable to be arrested and charged. And if this Bean decides to describe what happened on the night when Philips and Croucher were killed, why, we might very well find ourselves charged with aiding and abetting murder, too, and conspiracy, and obstructing justice.’