Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  Eyre smiled, and inclined his head in return, to indicate that no, he certainly wouldn’t receive any help from them, whatsoever.

  Mr Chatto and Mr Rose walked off, leaving Eyre and Christopher alone together.

  ‘Well,’ said Christopher, ‘I think I could happily do with that second drink you offered me; particularly now that the air seems to have cleared itself a little. You know something, I never could abide the idea of hunting men for money. It’s just not human.’

  Eyre was silent. The truth was that he had found Mr Chatto and Mr Rose quite unsettling. If they were searching for Mortlock and Bean with the authority and the co-operation of Colonel Gawler, then it was entirely possible that they would find him: and then both Eyre and Christopher would be deeply implicated in aiding and abetting the escape of a wanted man. That could mean prison, or worse: particularly since these days Eyre was awkwardly short of good character-witnesses. Captain Sturt might speak up for him, but there was no guarantee of it. Eyre felt that Captain Sturt, despite his proven bravery and despite his urbanity, was something of an opportunist. The sort of friend, as Christopher had once put it, who could always be relied on to be absent in a crisis.

  ‘I think we’d be better advised to warn Arthur Mortlock to lie exceedingly low,’ Eyre replied. ‘Why don’t you go out to the racecourse and make sure that he’s all right? Then come back to the McConnell’s; and we’ll see if we can’t think of some way of hiding him more securely, at least until Wednesday.’

  Christopher was not altogether enthusiastic about driving his waggonette all the way to the racecourse, but in the end he agreed that it would be safer. Eyre climbed on to his bicycle and pedalled his way slowly back to Hindley Street, pursued as usual by a happy little knot of dancing Aborigine children. It was a bright, sun-flecked afternoon; and kookaburras laughed madly at him as he rode over the company’s bridge, and through the avenues of stringy-bark gums on the other side.

  It was just as he was bouncing uncomfortably over a series of dry sunhardened ruts in the road that he caught sight of the Aborigine warrior again; standing black and tall and still as a heron by the side of a tumble-down squatter’s shed. He should have been seen by everyone who passed him by, yet he was so completely motionless, and his colour was so close to the indigo colour of the afternoon shadows, that hardly anybody seemed to see him at all. The only reason that Eyre had seen him was because the Aborigine had obviously wanted him to.

  Eyre stopped his bicycle by the side of the road, only a few yards away from the silent blackfellow and well within range of his spear. The blackfellow’s hair was thickly greased and decorated with kangaroo bones, emu feathers, and dangling crab claws. His eyes were emphasised by wide circles of white painted around them, and there were ngora, or decorative scars, all over his chest. He wore a loincloth, in which were hung a bone axe, and a hardwood club, and a large steel knife. He watched Eyre carefully; neither inviting him nearer nor indicating that he should go away. There was something almost magical about him.

  ‘You’re following me,’ Eyre called at him. ‘Why?’

  The blackfellow said nothing, but made some complicated hand-signs which Eyre found it impossible to follow. He shook his head, and said, more loudly, ‘Is it because of Yanluga?’

  A passing bush-farmer turned around in surprise to see who it was that Eyre was addressing himself to, and at first saw no one. It was only when he stopped and looked again that he made out the silhouette of the Aborigine, and then he turned back to look at Eyre, and shake his head.

  ‘Thought you were talking to yourself, mate. No offence but.’

  Eyre stayed where he was for two or three minutes, until the passing of a bullock-cart obliged him to move. By the time he had cycled around to the side of the road again, the Aborigine was gone; or at least he appeared to have gone. He was in that state of invisibility which the Aborigines usually entered when they were hunting. He may or may not have still been there. Either way, Eyre found it impossible to see him.

  Eyre thoughtfully bicycled back to Hindley Street. There was no doubt in his mind now that the Aborigines expected something of him; that his seeking-out of Yonguldye was more than just an unpremeditated act of respect for a murdered boy. Eyre almost had the feeling that he was acting out a destiny which the Aborigines had already charted for him, centuries ago, as one of their dreamtime legends. ‘A boy will die at the hands of a man with white skin … and the man with white skin will seek out Yonguldye the Darkness in order that he may be forgiven … and that the boy’s soul may lie forever at rest …’

  Eyre reached Mrs McConnell’s house and wheeled his bicycle under the verandah. Humming to himself, he went up the steps and opened the front door. Mrs McConnell was waiting for him in the kitchen, and as soon as he closed the door behind him, she called, in a peremptory voice, ‘Mr Walker!’

  ‘Mrs McConnell?’ asked Eyre.

  Mrs McConnell came into the hallway, wiping flour from her hands on to her apron. She looked hot and disapproving.

  ‘Mr Walker, there’s a visitor for you in the parlour. He’s been there for an hour or more.’

  ‘Not Captain Sturt?’ asked Eyre, in surprise.

  Mrs McConnell opened the parlour door. ‘See for yourself,’ she said; and there he was. Arthur Mortlock, in his best britches and a bright red pair of suspenders. He stood up, and bowed his head.

  ‘Mr Mortlock?’ Eyre demanded. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘My humble apologies, sir. Wouldn’t have come for the world, excepting as I didn’t have a choice. They came out to the racecourse looking for me, sir, with dogs. Well, I used a ripe-dead bandicoot to lay something of a false trail for them, sir; but they found the hut where I was hiding, and I think that they was fair certain that it was me who was billeted there, sir. So I didn’t have no choice, sir, but to run for the only place where I knew I could find me some reasonable sanctuary, sir. Being this good lady’s residence, as it were.’

  Mrs McConnell flounced, ‘Pff! I’ll have you know that I’m not at all accustomed to giving shelter to runaway legitimates. Nor to any manner of legitimates for that matter.’

  With an unexpected display of early-Victorian theatre, Arthur Mortlock threw himself heavily on to his knees on the Persian-patterned carpet, and grasped the hem of Mrs McConnell’s apron in his hands, and noisily kissed it. Mrs McConnell looked almost apoplectic, and cuffed him on both sides of his prickly head; but that didn’t prevent him from bowing alarmingly low, his forehead touching the carpet, his broad bottom rising so high that it revealed a patch on the back of his black britches in green cotton, with red cobbled thread.

  ‘Mum, I abases meself,’ he pleaded. ‘I hurls meself willy-nilly on your tenderest mercy, knowing as how you’re sure to get what you deserve in the life hereafter.’

  ‘Incinerated, I shouldn’t wonder, you rogue, if I let you stay here,’ protested Mrs McConnell. ‘No, the only course that I can take with you, Mr Arthur Mortlock, is to call for the authorities, and have you locked up for life.’

  Sixteen

  Wednesday was hot and clear, and Eyre and Christopher arrived outside Government House early, nervously accompanied by Arthur Mortlock, whose distinctive Macquarie Harbour haircut was hidden under a wide-brimmed kangaroo-skin hat, and whose eyes were distorted by a small pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. If anything, Arthur looked even more disreputable than he had before, and Christopher said that he had all the appearance of a recently released lunatic; but he couldn’t easily be recognised as Arthur Mortlock, and that was all that Eyre cared about.

  After half an hour of argument, Mrs McConnell had reluctantly agreed to let Arthur stay until Wednesday morning, on the strict understanding that he kept himself locked up in his room, that he didn’t show his face at any of the windows, and that once he had left he never breathed a word about staying with Mrs McConnell to anybody; nor admitted that he even knew the name McConnell.

  Dogger hadn’t appeared to say goodbye to
Eyre; and Eyre had supposed that he was brooding about the outback. He had certainly been very uncommunicative over the past few days, and had taken to leaving the house for hours at a time, and not saying where he had been. The British Tavern, probably, for a few disgruntled drinks.

  Mrs McConnell at the very last moment had melted. She had kissed Eyre again and again, and held him close to her, and at last said tearfully, ‘Don’t forget that you promised to come back to me.’

  ‘I won’t forget.’

  ‘And if I’ve ever done you any kind of harm; or injustice; then I hope you find it within yourself to forgive me.’

  He had kissed her tear-wet cheek. ‘You’ve never been anything but good to me. There’s nothing to forgive.’

  She had stood on the verandah and waved her handkerchief until he had ridden out of sight. His bicycle stayed under the steps. Dogger had promised to grease it from time to time, although he had said that he would be ‘utterly danged’ if he would try to ride it. ‘I only have to look at the bloody thing and I lose my balance.’

  Eyre and Christopher were surprised to see twenty or thirty people already gathered in the roadway outside government house, including a party of finely dressed marines, and several notable Adelaide businessmen and merchants, in tall riding-hats and white britches. There were several carriages and waggonettes there, too, in which brightly dressed local ladies sat and twirled their parasols; and an untidy collection of children and Aborigines; shouting and kicking the dust.

  Ship’s bunting had been hung from the picket-fence, and from the tall flagpole the Union Jack smacked laconically in the warm morning wind.

  There was a spattering of applause as Eyre and Christopher and Arthur Mortlock walked up to the front of the governor’s house; and somebody even shouted, ‘Huzza! huzza!’

  The train of pack-horses was drawn up by the steps, and there, in a self-consciously magnificent tableau, stood Captain Sturt and Colonel Gawler and Captain Sturt’s accountant Mr Pickens, as well as Mr David McLaren from the South Australian Company, Mr Ragless, and Mr Peter Percy from the Mineral Rights Board, and even the Reverend T.Q. Stow, looking flushed, and sneezing spasmodically, and wiping his nose. Colonel Gawler’s five children ran around and around them all, shrieking and laughing.

  ‘Mr Walker! Mr Willis!’ called Captain Sturt. He came striding forward and shook both of them firmly by the hand. ‘This is a great day! An historic occasion!’

  ‘You seem to have drummed up plenty of enthusiasm for it,’ Eyre remarked. He bowed his head to Colonel Gawler, and said, ‘A very good morning to you, colonel.’

  Colonel Gawler gave him a testy smile in response. It was clear that he hadn’t yet forgiven Eyre for the fracas at the Spring Ball last week, however much economic hope he had invested in this expedition; however much he personally disliked Lathrop Lindsay; and however much Captain Sturt had impressed on him that he should at least be cordial to Eyre and his companions.

  ‘In a moment I will introduce you to Joolonga, and your other black servants,’ bustled Captain Sturt. Then he turned to Arthur Mortlock. ‘Is this your cousin, Mr Walker? How do you do, sir, Mr Ransome, isn’t it, as I remember? A fine adventure for you, Mr Ransome.’

  Arthur muttered something unintelligible, and cleared his throat.

  ‘I’m afraid my cousin has been suffering from a slight cold,’ put in Eyre. ‘However the dry air in the desert should do him some good.’

  ‘I’ve been suffering from quite the same malady,’ complained the Reverend Stow. ‘It always attacks me, at this time of year. Yesterday afternoon I was obliged to lie on the ottoman and sleep for an hour. All I could manage for breakfast this morning was a little clyster. It’s quite exhausting.’

  ‘You could try me old mum’s fever draft,’ suggested Arthur.

  The Reverend Stow frowned at Arthur in surprise. Eyre nudged Arthur with his elbow to warn him to say no more; but it was too late. The Reverend Stow and one or two people around them had already heard Arthur’s fruity East End accent.

  ‘What, pray, is your “old mum’s” fever draft?’ asked the reverend.

  Arthur shrugged, and shuffled his feet, and stared unhappily towards Eyre, his eyes unfocused and beady behind his borrowed spectacles.

  ‘Please,’ insisted the Reverend Stow. ‘I’d love to know.’

  ‘Well, your reverence,’ said Arthur. ‘It’s powdered niter, and potash and two teaspoons of antimony wine, all mixed up with sweet spirits of nitre, and a pint of warm water. Very efficacious. Well, specially when you clap a bread poultice on to your bonce at the same time.’

  He hesitated, and licked his lips, and then said quickly, ‘I mean head. Not—’ he hesitated again, and the last word came out as scarcely a whisper ‘—bonce.’

  Captain Sturt looked across at Eyre and there was an emotionless, questioning expression on his face. He suspected Eyre of something, although he wasn’t quite sure what it was. Eyre looked back at him and tried to convey by telepathy that ‘Mr Ransome’s’ presence here was a private matter, and that it wouldn’t jeopardise the expedition. But there was no flicker of an answer on Sturt’s face; no indication that he had either received Eyre’s silent message or understood it. But he made no attempt to question Eyre about Arthur; instead, he turned away and started talking to Mr Rutgers, of the Adelaide Dispatch, and telling him how Australia’s great inland sea was going to be discovered at last; and that, no, if the people of South Australia insisted, he wouldn’t object to them calling it Lake Sturt; or even Sturt Ocean.

  Eyre, Christopher, and Arthur were called over to the train of pack-horses by the young artist George French Angas, who had come down from Angaston late the previous day in order to see them off, and to make sketches for Captain Sturt and for the press. He was a humorous, lively fellow, with a small dark moustache and irrepressible hair, and he drew them quickly and accurately.

  The finished drawings that he would produce, long after the expedition had left Adelaide, would show in water-colour three serious-faced men, dressed in khaki twill shirts and wide hats and riding-britches, with high leather boots. Their faces would be shadowed by their hats, but one of them would appear to be dark, and angular, and handsome in a slightly untidy way; whereas the young man standing next to him would be fair, and lanky, and standing with one hand perched on his hip in an incongruously balletic pose, as if he were waiting impatiently to leap on to the stage during the second act of Mozart’s Les petits riens; and the third man would appear oddly blurred, as if he were doing everything he could to avoid making a clear impression on the artist, so that all one would really be able to remember about him distinctly would be the sharp reflection on his spectacles, and the pugilistic flatness of his nose. Behind these three men would be a dappled frieze of pack-horses, heavily saddled and laden; and beyond the curves of the horses’ backs would be stringy-bark gums, and the sky as clear-washed as only young George Angas could paint it.

  There would be other drawings and paintings, too; some of which would be used as reference for woodcuts and steel engravings which would be sent all over the world for reproduction, to the Illustrated London News in England, to the Spirit of the Times in Philadelphia, and to L’Histoire in France. One of the most frequently reproduced would be that of the expedition’s three Aborigines. The tall, broad-faced Joolonga, dressed in a cockeyed midshipman’s hat, a striped cotton shirt, and knee-britches, but with bare feet. The powerful, squat Midgegooroo, his head tied around with kangaroo-fur sweatbands, dressed in the customary buka and less-than-traditional loincloth. And beside them, in nothing but a small leather apron, a slender boy with wild long hair, and those hypnotically prehistoric features that had first aroused Eyre’s sense of destiny and timelessness when he had arrived in Australia; and this was the boy Weeip.

  Joolonga came up and saluted Eyre with a raised hand. He had small, glittery eyes, and a permanent grin. His cheeks were marked with V-shaped scars, and a white band of chalky paint was smeared across his forehea
d. He smelled strongly of lavender cologne.

  ‘Mr Walker, sir, I am pleased to make your acquaintanceship.’

  ‘And I yours,’ said Eyre. ‘It seems that we are going to be travelling companions for quite some time.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Well, you will find that I speak all variety of English, sir, as well as many of the various languages, Wirangu, Nyungar, Ramindjeri. Captain Sturt tells me we are to seek the one they call Yonguldye.’

  ‘That is part of the purpose of this expedition, yes. For me personally, it’s the principal part. Finding Yonguldye is of the very greatest importance to me.’

  Joolonga nodded, still grinning. ‘I have heard word of this importance, sir. It is concerned with the burial of the boy Yanluga. Believe me, sir, you are not the only person who believes that it is necessary for the boy Yanluga to be buried in the accepted fashion.’

  There was an inflection in the Aborigine’s voice that somehow gave Eyre the impression that Joolonga was more than a little sceptical of the need for Yanluga to be given the traditional tribal burial rites. Eyre said nothing about it, not then, but it led him decide to treat Joolonga with more than the usual caution. Eyre had come across one or two of these ‘civilised’ Aborigines before, mostly when they had come down to the harbour on errands for their masters; and he had generally found them to be arrogant, especially to their own kind; and imbalanced; and very rarely trustworthy.

  Once an Aborigine had been taken into a white man’s home as a servant or a flunkey or even as nothing more than a fashionable curiosity; once he had eaten like a white man, dressed like a white man, and learned something of the scope of the world outside Australia; he was imprisoned for ever betwixt-and-between, like a wasp caught in a jar of jam. He would see his own tribespeople through white eyes: as filthy and ignorant and poverty-stricken—and yet he would find it impossible to be fully accepted into white society. Eventually, the effect on his character would be catastrophic. He would suffer from tempers, grinding bouts of bottomless depression, rum-drinking, and wild displays of infantile mischief. Quite often, he would try suicide.