Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  Eyre screwed the cap back on to the medicine bottle, and put it carefully away. ‘In my view,’ he said, in that precise voice he could use when he was being a little too pompous; ‘in my view, we ought to continue. In fact, that’s exactly what ‘we’re going to do, regardless.’

  Dogger took off his hat and squinted up at the sun. ‘You’ll kill him, you know,’ he said, pragmatically.

  ‘I’ll kill him just as certainly if I take him back to Adelaide. That’s if he doesn’t die on the way. They’ll chain him up, and they’ll flog him, and then they’ll put him in solitary confinement, and that will turn his mind for ever.’

  He looked down at Arthur lying in the dust, eyes closed, still convulsing, white and sweaty and somehow shrunken, and all he could think of to say was, ‘Poor bastard.’

  ‘Perhaps we should put it to a vote,’ said Christopher. ‘You know, draw straws.’

  Eyre shook his head. ‘We’re going on. I’m the leader of this expedition and that’s my decision. If you don’t approve of it, Adelaide is back that way, and you can take enough food and water to get you there.’

  Christopher stiffened, and looked at Eyre with an expression which Eyre had never seen on his face before; offended, in a nakedly womanly way; like a wife whose dignity has been shaken by her husband’s coarseness and lack of understanding. Eyre began to see then that Christopher was not a sodomite or an ogler of young boys, although he had several times seen him admiring Weeip’s naked body. He was instead a man who sought the companionship of other men in the way that a good and loyal woman seeks the companionship of a husband. His love of Eyre was far more emotional than sexual; and Eyre’s sudden rejection of him in favour of the expedition and everything that it meant (Charlotte, Yanluga, fame and possible riches) was to Christopher a hurtful surprise.

  Eyre realised that he would have to treat Christopher with care if he was going to retain his loyalty; and out here on the wild and empty plains with a self-willed Aborigine guide and a sick ex-convict, Eyre was going to need all the loyalty that he could muster.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Christopher. ‘I didn’t mean to be so abrupt. It’s just that we can’t turn back now, not after we’ve come so far.’

  Christopher tried to look aloof and displeased for a moment longer; but he was too sensitive and too goodhumoured not to be able to accept Eyre’s apology, and he made a considerable show of disassembling his frown, and unpuckering his mouth, and at last managing to smile. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I can’t say that I understand what has driven you out here; not completely. Not at all, really. But if you think we ought to continue—well, let’s continue.’ He added wryly, ‘At least until we’re all dead.’

  He came forward and rested his hand on Eyre’s shoulder, and shook his hand. ‘Do you have any idea what’s wrong with him?’ he asked, nodding towards Arthur.

  ‘Well, your first guess was probably correct,’ said Eyre. ‘He could have eaten a bad clam; or perhaps one of the mallee fowl was diseased. Then again the water might have been poisoned.’

  ‘What was Joolonga saying about him?’

  ‘Some ridiculous Aborigine mumbo-jumbo about someone having pointed a bone at him. That’s why I shouted at him.’

  ‘They do say that Aborigine medicine-men kill their enemies that way,’ said Christopher.

  ‘And do you believe it?’

  Christopher shrugged. ‘In this country, I think I could believe anything.’

  Arthur mumbled, ‘Not a bolter, sir, I’ll swear to that. Swear on the Holy Bible.’ Then he suddenly convulsed again, and lumpy strings of bloody white mucus slithered out of his mouth and on to his shoulder.

  Christopher looked almost as sick as Arthur. ‘My God, Eyre, the man’s dying. What on earth is the matter with him?’

  ‘I just pray that it’s nothing contagious,’ said Eyre. ‘Otherwise, this is going to be the shortest expedition into the Australian interior that ever was.’

  Midgegooroo and Weeip tugged off Arthur’s clothes; and washed him with what little water they could spare. All the time he rambled on about ‘bolting’, which Eyre presumed to mean escaping from Macquarie Harbour, and vomiting great ropes of mucus, mingled with raw membrane. It was as if his entire insides were being gradually gagged out of his mouth. His face took on a grey ghastliness that Eyre could scarcely bear to look at; and his eyes seemed blind.

  They decided not to leave the camp until noon, to see if Arthur showed any signs of recovery. Weeip made a shelter for him out of twigs and scrub; and the rest of them sat around the fire and listened with increasing despondency to his ramblings and chokings.

  ‘I don’t know what on earth to give him,’ said Eyre. ‘I tried a carminative, but he must have vomited that back up by now.’

  Dogger said, ‘What else have you got in that medicinebox of yours?’

  Eyre opened the polished mahogany lid, displaying the neat bottles of antimonial wine, blister compound, extract of colocynth, Epsom salts, powdered jalap, myrrh-andaloes pills, powdered opium, opodeldoc, and Turner’s cerate. Dogger picked out one or two bottles, and then said, ‘I don’t know. Constance would know what to dose him with, if she were here, Heaven forbid it. Perhaps we ought to mix them all together, and see what happens. He wouldn’t be any the worse off.’

  At noon, the temperature rose to 92 degrees Fahrenheit, according to their thermometer. Heat rose up off the plain in extraordinary transparent French-curves, and high above their heads, they saw flocks of seagulls flying northwards.

  ‘There,’ said Eyre. ‘That’s evidence for you. If seagulls are flying to the north, that must mean that water lies there; Captain Sturt’s inland sea.’

  ‘Or swamp,’ put in Dogger. His face was sparkling with sweat.

  Joolonga came over, and took off his midshipman’s hat.

  ‘Yes?’ Eyre asked him, trying to sound as testy as he could.

  ‘Mr Walker-sir, it is no use staying here. We must go on. Mr Mortlock will not get better for days and days; maybe weeks; that is if he ever gets better at all. If we stay here, we are only suffering for no reason, and exploring no further.’

  Eyre stood up, and shaded his eyes so that he could look northwards. The scrubby bushlands wavered and danced as if he were seeing them through water, a world drowned in heat. He felt that everything was being relentlessly baked, punished by the sun to see what it was made of. Every breath he took was hot and suffocating and dusty; every move he made produced chafing and sweat. Now, at midday, even the red-capped robins had stopped shrilling and chattering in the bush, and there was an overwhelming hot silence. In the distance, the Flinders Ranges rose like the ramparts of some strange red city.

  ‘All right,’ said Eyre. ‘You and Midgegooroo tie Mr Mortlock on to his horse. Make sure he’s tied fast. Then we’ll go.’

  Arthur was muttering and shaking as Midgegooroo hefted him over his shoulder, and then lifted him up on to his horse. Joolonga tied him to the saddle, and then ran a leather strap under the horse’s chest which he fastened tightly to each of Arthur’s dangling wrists, Even if Arthur did slip off the horse, he wouldn’t fall to the ground. He would be dragged along, instead, like a sack of meal.

  And the trouble is, thought Eyre, that is exactly what Arthur has become. A sack of meal. A dead weight, to be dragged through the bush whether he likes it or not; and whether we like it or not. And if I catch this sickness, then I’ll be the same. This is land in which only those who can keep moving can ever survive; a land in which a nomadic existence is not just possible, but essential. A land in which, when anybody is stricken by sickness, they are sick unto death.

  In the same way that God had been practising creation when he had devised Australia, perhaps he had also been practising His punishments. Death by isolation; death by hunger; death by evaporation of the body and spirit.

  It took nearly a quarter of an hour, but at last they were ready to leave. Midgegooroo had rigged up over Arthur’s horse a kind of makeshift parasol, an
unsteady contraption of tent-poles and calico, which would at least protect him from the worst of the sun. Arthur was slumped over the horse’s back as if he were already dead, a string of spittle swinging from his parted lips, his eyes closed.

  Christopher said, ‘You don’t think it would be kinder to leave him here? I mean, simply to let him—’

  Eyre stared at him; thin-faced; his dark hair already streaked with blond from the sun; the untanned crowsfeet around his eyes making him look even older and more anxious than he actually was. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘If I did, I don’t think I would ever be able to forgive myself.’

  ‘What do you think the poor fellow is going to suffer now, on the back of a horse?’

  ‘Christopher, for God’s sake, there’s always hope. There’s always prayer. Why do you think I’m here at all? I’m here because I’m trying to redeem what I did to Yanluga; I’m trying to find him peace. Now you’re asking me to leave Arthur to die, without the benefit of help or prayer.’

  ‘It seems your religious upbringing had quite an effect on you,’ said Christopher, taking care not to sound too sarcastic.

  ‘Well, perhaps it did,’ Eyre told him. ‘But I’m not ashamed of it, and I’m not ashamed of having hope. “The prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.” That’s James.’

  ‘The brother of Jesus,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Chapter five,’ Eyre retorted. Then, when Christopher was silent, ‘Verse fifteen.’

  Dogger whistled sharply from across the campsite. ‘Come on, Eyre. If we don’t go now, there won’t be any use in going at all.’

  ‘All right,’ said Eyre. ‘Come on, Christopher; we have to do our utmost for Arthur, no matter how sick he is. Just for pity’s sake, let’s stay together. I need your help; and Dogger’s help, too. If we start arguing between ourselves, we’ll be finished.’

  Christopher said nothing more, but followed Eyre back to the line of horses. Eyre mounted up, and they set off again, heading north-north-west, towards the place called Woocalla, the water-hole where the kangaroos come to drink. The sun had fallen to the west of its zenith now, so that it shone directly in their eyes. All they could see was dust and dazzle, and willy-willys twisting and hurrying through the scrub. There was no sign anywhere of the ghost-men whom Eyre had glimpsed the previous evening; but then the bush was not a difficult landscape in which to hide. As they rode, they frequently surprised mallee fowl and pipits, and once or twice they sprang euros out of their squats in the tussocks of spinifex grass.

  Dogger had often talked to Eyre about euros, and so he knew what they were when he first saw them: solidly built little hill kangaroos, with black-tipped hair and pale snouts. They hurried off in front of the slow-moving train of pack-horses like busy little clerks.

  The afternoon was enormous and cruelly hot. For a while they chatted to each other; about Adelaide; about Captain Sturt; about all the nauseating medical treatments they had been given as children. But as the temperature rose over 100, their conversation died away; and for almost two hours there was nothing but the jangling of buckles, and the squeaking of saddles, and the occasional snort from one of the horses.

  Arthur made no sound at all. He lay strapped flat to a thick grey blanket under the lurching shadow of his rectangular parasol, his eyes staring at nothing at all. Midgegooroo was solemnly leading Arthur’s horse; and occasionally during the afternoon Eyre rode up alongside and asked Midgegooroo whether Arthur had shown any signs of life; but Midgegooroo shook his head, and raised his hand in the complicated finger-language which meant ‘no hope’.

  There was a time, just before four o’clock, when Eyre felt as if God Himself were pressing down on them with all the heat and brilliance He and His angels could summon up. There didn’t even seem to be any point in breathing. The air outside his body was hotter than the air in his lungs. His shirt and his britches were clinging wet; and the salt from the sweat which dripped from his eyebrows made his eyes sting.

  Behind them, there was nothing but miles of wavering scrub. In front of them, a dusty and invisible horizon. All that reminded Eyre that there was an end to the world, after all, was the distant red line of the Flinders mountains, off to the right.

  The heat separated them; and caused them to draw in upon themselves. They began to ride further and further apart; their heads bowed; until the expedition was strung out over a quarter of a mile. Their shadows walked beside them with irritating persistence, on and on, mile after mile, seven spindly Don-Quixote figures which lengthened even more absurdly as the sun burned its way down the sky.

  Eyre found himself daydreaming, in a welter of heat and sweat. He daydreamed about Charlotte; and about returning to Adelaide with flags flying and people cheering, and riding straight up to Waikerie Lodge and claiming Charlotte, with a sweep of his arm, as his brideto-be.

  Then, unaccountably, he found himself thinking about the new wharf and the new sheds that Mr McLaren of the South Australian Company had been building at Port Adelaide. They must almost be finished by now, he thought. He remembered that Mr McLaren had promised a grand opening, with a regatta, and a band, and refreshments; and Eyre was quite sorry that he wasn’t going to be there. The quiet, scratchy afternoons of clerkdom; with ledgers and ink and bills of lading; now, in the scrub, seemed idyllic. He thought of the times when he and Christopher had sat in Dougal’s Oyster Saloon on Hindley Street, opposite Elder’s store, sometimes eating two dozen oysters at a time, with black stout to wash them down. They had talked then of being wealthy and famous, but Eyre had never imagined that fame would have to be earned as hard as this.

  Christopher rode up beside him, his face sugar-pink and sweaty. ‘I hope we’re going to be able to stand up to this heat,’ he said, in a hoarse, dry voice. ‘I’m beginning to feel as if I haven’t got any more perspiration left to perspire.’

  ‘It’s very good for you,’ Eyre replied. ‘It cleanses out the body’s impurities. Just like a Turkish bath, without any steam.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d rather remain impure.’

  Eyre gave a wry smile, and shrugged.

  ‘Did Joolonga say how far it was to Woocalla?’ Christopher asked him.

  ‘Not too long now. We should be there by evening.’

  Christopher nudged his horse a little closer. ‘He’s not—he’s all right, isn’t he, Joolonga? You can trust him?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know. He hardly speaks to me at all. I mean, I’ve tried to treat the chap decently, for all that he’s a native. But he seems to have thoughts of his own.’

  ‘Well?’ asked Eyre.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ve never thought it was too healthy for natives to have thoughts of their own.’

  ‘I don’t see that there’s any way in which you can stop them.’

  Christopher turned around in his saddle, and looked back at Joolonga, who was riding with his midshipman’s hat pulled far down over his eyes, his blue uniform so dusty that it was almost white. Joolonga gave no indication that he knew that Christopher was watching him; and his expression remained as abstracted and as arrogant as ever. Weeip, however, gave Christopher a wave of his fly-whisk; and Dogger raised his head in interest to see what Eyre and Christopher were doing.

  ‘Captain Sturt said he trusted Joolonga, didn’t he?’ said Christopher.

  ‘He didn’t say anything about him: except that he’d met him on his first expedition.’

  ‘Well,’ said Christopher, ‘the fellow seems strange to me. Not altogether friendly. I don’t know. It’s difficult to describe, exactly. But I rather get the feeling that he’s watching over us, don’t you see, instead of guiding us. He’s not what you might call co-operative.’

  ‘He’s self-opinionated, I’ll give you that,’ Eyre agreed. ‘But I must say that I find him quite interesting. He’s the first Aborigine I’ve ever met wh
o can describe ideas, as well as people, and events, and places. He seems to have a grasp of what this expedition means; not only to his own people, but to ours, too.’

  ‘Is that likely to have made him any more friendly?’ asked Christopher. He took off his hat, and dabbed the sweat away from his forehead with a scarf that was already soaked in sweat.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Eyre. ‘But he’s no fool; and he knows a lot more about this country than we do. He also seems to know where we might find Yonguldye.’

  ‘I’d rather trust Dogger’s opinion on that,’ said Christopher.

  Eyre narrowed his eyes, and looked up ahead of them, towards the horizon. The north-west wind had stirred up so much dust there that it was impossible to distinguish where the plains ended and where the sky began. There could have been mountains ahead of them, for all they knew. And now that the sun was sinking, the horizon began to glower and boil, a dark scarlet colour, and the empty sky above them began to rage with red.

  Dogger had once said to Eyre, out on the verandah in front of Mrs McConnell’s house, ‘Don’t ever ask me to tell you what the sunset’s like, out in the bush. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, and if you saw it for yourself you wouldn’t believe it. And besides, it happens every evening; and after a few weeks you begin to grow tired of reds and oranges and ochres; and you begin to dream about green.’

  Eyre was beginning to understand what Dogger had been talking about. Ever since they had struck inland from Kurdnatta they had been living in a world of brick-reds and purples and dusty yellows. And the further north they travelled, the harsher and redder the landscape became; and the fiercer the sun. If there was an ocean in the centre of Australia, there was no question in Eyre’s mind now that it could only be reached by days of hot and uncomfortable travel. Perhaps that would enhance the relief it gave them, when they eventually reached it. Eyre had already begun to have dreams about shining blue water, and nodding palm trees; and dhows sailing from the inland shores of South Australia to the tropical inland beaches of the north.