Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  Now Christopher loosened the tie around his waist, still smiling. He was facing Eyre directly, and Eyre flinched, certain that Christopher would notice his eyes looking in at the bathroom window. But Christopher must have had his mind on his youthful lover alone; for he smiled, and then laughed, and moved away out of Eyre’s line of sight. Weeip stood up, and followed him, and then reappeared again, tugging at Christopher’s sleeve. It was obvious that he was trying to get his master to stand in front of the window.

  But what am I supposed to see? Eyre asked himself. Two catamites bathing each other? Is that all? And what can this possibly have to do with Arthur Mortlock? But he could see Weeip glancing towards the window making sure that he was still there; and frowning; and so he decided to stay for just a minute or two longer.

  Now Weeip suddenly started to dance around, and tease Christopher, dodging out of reach whenever Christopher put out a hand. Christopher at last held his wrist, and stepped back into sight. Weeip quietened down, and approached his master submissively, and put his arms around his waist. Christopher kissed the boy’s curly head, and must have said something endearing, for Weeip nodded.

  At last, Weeip managed to draw Christopher around so that his back was towards the window. Eyre saw Weeip’s hands loosening Christopher’s robe, and the tie fall to the floor. Then Weeip slowly tugged the robe away from Christopher’s shoulders, and drew it down to his waist.

  Eyre had been unsettled enough by the sight of Weeip and Christopher kissing and embracing; but what was now revealed was a hundred times more horrifying.

  He stood in the rain on that lopsided fruit-box, his mouth open in shock. Then he stepped back, losing his footing for a moment in the overgrown garden; stumbling; but recovering himself enough to return the box to where he had found it; and to make off through the gum-grove in the same high-stepping way he had come.

  He found his bicycle and awkwardly wiped the rain off the saddle, but he was too dumbfounded to ride it. Instead he wheeled it back towards Adelaide; as the evening lightness at last broke through, and the puddly ruts in the track turned to quicksilver.

  Weeip must adore his master; both adore and respect him; and do anything to keep him safe. Otherwise he would never have arranged for Eyre to see what he had seen tonight. It had been an extraordinary act of loyalty on Weeip’s part; and more than that, a supreme act of love; although Eyre found acts of love between men to be almost as mysterious as the inland sea. It had been an act of trust in Eyre, too, a trust that had first been forged out in the desert.

  It was quite clear to Eyre now that it was Christopher who had killed Arthur Mortlock; and that poor Joolonga had been quite mistaken in thinking that he had done it with his pointing-bone. Joolonga had probably pointed his bone at every one of them, but had convinced himself when Arthur had begun to die that it was Arthur alone who was really guilty; and that it was Arthur alone who was being sacrificed to Ngurunderi.

  Eyre also knew that he would do nothing further. He would forget Arthur and as far as possible he would forget Christopher. Christopher had already been punished enough for one lifetime; and it could only have been desperation that had made him take such a risk.

  Eyre cursed himself for not having noticed what was going on during the course of the expedition. He had realised that Arthur and Christopher had never got on particularly well; but if only he had begun to understand why.

  For when he had looked in at the bathroom window, Eyre had seen that Christopher’s bare back was scarred with the criss-cross weals and twisted tissues that identified an ex-convict. Christopher must have been a ticket of-leave man, like Arthur; perhaps they had even been imprisoned together at Macquarie Harbour, and Arthur, after a while, had recognised him. Perhaps Arthur had simply guessed from one or two words in Christopher’s vocabulary. In any case, it was likely that Arthur had marked him for a yoxter, like himself. And what had he threatened? Exposure, unless Christopher paid him? Or set him up with a job, perhaps, and a place to stay, and a never-ending supply of rum money? Whatever it had been, Christopher had decided to save himself from the sweated anxiety of interminable blackmail, and the terrifying threat of having to return to prison.

  After a while, when the lights of the city came into view, Eyre mounted up on his bicycle and began to pedal. His tyres splashed through the puddles. Knowing for certain that Christopher had killed Arthur, and why, was a huge relief. He began to sing as he rode for the first time since he had got back.

  ‘All round my hat, I will wear the green willow

  All round my hat, for a twelvemonth and a day …’

  He was back on Rundle Street in time for a bowl of green-pea soup and a large pork chop, topsidey as they used to say, with an egg on top. He drank a quart of stout, and then went back to Coppius’ Hotel for a hot bath and a long sleep.

  He was accosted on his way back by several prostitutes; some of them smartly bonneted and pretty. The girls of Hindley Street had become a public embarrassment in Adelaide lately; and several respectable citizens had written to Governor Grey and complained that there were more women of disrepute than the municipality’s population could possibly warrant, especially if it had any pretensions to morality at all.

  One dark-haired girl linked arms with Eyre and skipped along beside him, nudging him with her breast and smiling and winking most invitingly.

  ‘Give you the best time you’ve ever had, darling,’ she coaxed him. ‘Get your gooseberries in such a lather you won’t know whether you’re here or Sunday.’

  On the steps of Coppius’ Hotel, Eyre at last managed to disengage himself, and shake his head. ‘Not tonight,’ he told her, and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘Give us a deaner, then, for tea,’ asked the girl.

  Eyre gave her a shilling, and she cocked her bonnet at him and twirled off. He watched her go, and then climbed the steps to the hotel foyer with a smile of memory, rather than amusement.

  Thirty-Nine

  It was to be the wedding of the year; the most spectacular social event in Adelaide’s calendar for 1842. Even Lathrop, who could still be tetchy with Eyre whenever his heart was playing him up, and who had been known to refer to his future son-in-law after two or three brandies at the Commerce Club as a ‘penny gentleman’, insisted on marquees, and orchestras, and a special white carriage shipped from Van Diemen’s Land, where it had once been the property of Lady Jane Franklin.

  Eyre had spent most of the six or seven months after his return from Western Australia writing up his memoirs for the Observer, who paid him £350 in regular instalments for the privilege. He said nothing of Arthur Mortlock in his story; save that he was ‘a trusted family friend from London’; and that he had died ‘of a stomach-complaint, brought about by eating bad shellfish’. He did however dramatise their escape from the great corroboree at Yarrakinna, adding a few more skirmishes with the Aborigines for good measure, and including a long and genuinely heartfelt obituary for Dogger McConnell.

  ‘Was there a man more natural and brave, a man whose loyalty to his friends and associates was of such a degree that he saw in danger only delight, that he might serve them more truly, and in death only accomplishment, that he had demonstrated the great nobility of his spirit? The last name upon his lips was that of his beloved wife; and though he has no memorial in the desert, that name will be forever engraved upon the air, even as he spoke it, just as the legends and myths of the first Australians are still spoken by the winds, and by the dust-storms, and by the creatures of the wild.’

  When he had written those words, and sat back to sprinkle sand across his manuscript, he thought of Dogger sitting upright in his saddle, transfixed by that terrible death-spear, even as his last words echoed across the plain. ‘Brayvo, Hicks!’

  Eyre was given a house on Grenfell Street, overlooking Hindmarsh Square. It was a smart, flat-fronted house of native bluestone, with white-painted shutters, and a small enclosed front garden. His office to begin with was a stuffy little room in the old
part of Government House, so positioned that whenever Governor Grey’s luncheon was being cooked, most of the smells wafted in through the window, but stubbornly refused to waft out again. There was also a cockatoo which habitually perched on the top of the open sash, and chattered to him irritatingly when he was working, and occasionally flew into the room to speckle his papers with guano.

  Eventually, however, Eyre was promised a new house out at Moorundie, near Blanchetown, on the River Murray, where Governor Grey believed he could do the most useful work in helping the Aborigines to cope with the white invasion of their territory.

  ‘We cannot hold back the eventual settlement of all of South Australia,’ Grey would say to Eyre, at least once a week, whenever they met for sherry. ‘So, rather than preside over the indiscriminate destruction of the Aborigines, we must arrange for their survival—which, in line with the policy of the Colonial Office, means that we must assimilate the blackfellows hook, line, and sinker into the British community. They already have rights as British citizens, rights granted to them generously and without stint. In their turn, they must behave like British citizens.’

  Eyre thought to himself: Yonguldye had been right. The magical age of the Aborigines, which had lasted for thousands and thousands of years, was finally over. The great ark of Australia had been boarded, and captured, and towed into the harbour of European commerce.

  Almost every weekend, and two or three evenings a week, he would make a call at Waikerie Lodge to pay court to Charlotte. They would have supper; some of Mrs McMurt’s leek-and-potato soup; and perhaps mutton cutlets, with carrots and turnips; or sheep’s trotters; or mutton collops with cabbage; or boiled sheep’s cheek; and everybody knew very well that if they complained about the persistence of lamb on the menu that they would be immediately chastened by Lathrop Lindsay’s famous recitation of Thomson’s poem about ‘the harmless race’ whose ‘incessant bleatings run around the hills’.

  Afterwards, in the parlour, there might be singing; or Lathrop would read from the newspapers any selected titbits which he thought might be amusing and instructive to his wife and family; always concluding with the market prices for sheep. Then Eyre and Charlotte would be allowed a half-an-hour by themselves, although the doorway to the hall would always be left wide open; and quite often Mrs Lindsay would sit sewing in the livingroom opposite and smile at them indulgently from time to time.

  Charlotte had matured in a year; she was not only prettier but wiser, too, and more independent. She had grown her hair longer, so that it curled into masses and masses of shiny blonde ringlets, which she tied with velvet ribbons. And there was a slight hint of voluptuousness about her which Eyre found pleasantly disturbing, although he did occasionally wonder whether it had anything to do with any experiences she might have had while he was away on his heroic journey.

  They went to church together regularly at the Trinity Church at the western end of North Terrace; Eyre in the fashionably tight black morning-suit he had bought with his first payment from the Observer; Charlotte in grey watered silk. They were always applauded as they emerged, Eyre for his newly won fame, and Charlotte for her beauty, and both of them for giving Adelaide the gleeful anticipation of the most lavish wedding that the colony had ever seen. It was generally rumoured that Lathrop was spending more than £2,500 on the catering, and that a special order of French champagne was already on its way from Epernay, in France.

  Eyre and Charlotte were sitting out on the verandah of Waikerie Lodge in early March, drinking lemon tea and eating Maids of Honour, when the subject of children came up. It was only eleven days now to the wedding, and two men in faded blue overalls were pacing the lawns with one of Lathrop’s gardeners to determine where they were going to pitch the largest of the three marquees. The Lindsay’s pet kangaroos hopped along beside the wattles; and there was an aromatic smell of eucalyptus in the afternoon air.

  Charlotte was dressed prettily in cream lace, with yellow ribbons. The sun shone through the brim of her straw bonnet and illuminated it like a halo. The angel of Adelaide, thought Eyre, and felt most content. He had been putting on weight since his return last year, and he decided that his white waistcoat must have shrunk a little.

  ‘I think five is a good number,’ said Charlotte, sipping tea.

  ‘Five what, my darling?’ asked Eyre. Then he said, ‘That marquee is going to be absolutely enormous; look how far away they’ve placed that marker.’

  ‘Children, of course,’ Charlotte replied.

  ‘Children?’ blinked Eyre.

  ‘Yes, five children. Three boys, and two girls. A family of seven.’

  ‘Well,’ said Eyre. Then, ‘Well, I must say I hadn’t really thought about it.’

  ‘But we must. And we can, now that you’re so successful; and such a hero. And when we’re out at Moorundie, or wherever else you’re posted, we’re going to be glad of the company. Oh Eyre, I can almost see them now! Five, happy shining faces!’

  Eyre was silent for a very long time. The day was still bright; the birds still chittered and cackled in the stringybark gums around the house; Charlotte still talked about how she would teach the children to ride, and to play the piano, and what fun it was going to be at Christmas. But a sudden dark feeling had risen up inside him, like a strong cold undercurrent, lifting him up and then dragging him back to the past.

  ‘You are one of my people now,’ Winja had said, on that grey windy day when they had parted. ‘Therefore your son is one of my people; and your son’s son.’

  And Eyre had held Winja close to him, and said, ‘My son is yours.’

  A pledge, a holy and magical pledge. A promise that could never be broken. My son is yours.

  He was quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the day. At last, after supper, when Mrs Lindsay was snoozing in her chair in the living-room and the servants were clearing up the dishes, Charlotte asked him what was wrong.

  ‘You’re not sickening, are you?’

  Eyre shook his head.

  ‘But you’re so pale; and you haven’t said a word all evening. It wasn’t my talk of children, was it? That hasn’t put you off? Oh, Eyre, if there’s anything worrying you my darling, you must tell me! We must never keep secrets from each other.’

  Eyre hesitated for a moment. Then he stood up, and went over to the parlour door, and gently closed it. Charlotte looked at him anxiously in the light from the engraved-glass lamp. A diamond pendant sparkled on the soft curve of her cleavage, and he thought that he had never seen her look so enticing.

  ‘Listen, Charlotte,’ he said. He could hear his own voice in his ear, flat and expressionless, as if he were standing on the opposite side of the room. ‘When I was travelling across the desert… well, certain things happened to me. I haven’t written about them in the newspaper, because I wanted to keep them to myself.’

  ‘What things, my darling? What do you mean? Was it something terrible?’

  He lowered his eyes. ‘Not by the standards by which I was living at the time. In fact, what happened was quite uplifting. Quite spiritual. It gave me the hope and the faith to be able to finish my journey, and to survive. But… well, how can I explain it? Now that I’m back here in white society, certain commitments I made might seem rather surprising. Rather difficult for other people to understand.’

  Charlotte said, in a barely audible voice, ‘Tell me. Eyre, you must tell me.’

  He hesitated, and then he said, ‘Well, you remember I told you that I was initiated into an Aboriginal tribe.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was quite a painful initiation. I mean physically painful. They—scarred me. Scarred my body. It’s all part of the ceremony. All part of showing that you’re a man, and that you’re able to stand suffering without crying out. Also—well, they consider the scars decorative, and beautiful.

  Charlotte whispered, ‘You have scars?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me before? I would have understood.
’

  Eyre turned away. ‘I was going to tell you. In fact, I was going to show you. But somehow I could always think of some excuse why I should wait until later. I thought you wouldn’t exactly take to them. I don’t know. I just felt that they were something secret, something which I didn’t truly understand myself.’

  This time, the silence between them was even longer. The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece ticked tiredly, and outside they could hear the clopping of horses as the groom returned them to their stable. Somewhere in the servants’ quarters, an Aborigine woman was singing some sweet, monotonous song. At last, though, Charlotte stood up, with a rustle of petticoats, and went to the parlour door, and opened it, and looked out. Then she came back and took Eyre’s hand.

  ‘Show me,’ she said. ‘Mother’s still asleep. Show me now. I want to see.’

  ‘Charlotte—’ Eyre began, but she pressed the fingers of her right hand against his lips, to silence him.

  ‘Show me,’ she insisted.

  Quickly, with several sharp tugs, Eyre loosened his collar, stripped off his necktie, and unbuttoned his shirt. Then he opened his underwear, and bared to Charlotte his chest, with its whorls and lines and zigzags of bumpy purplish scars; each one of which had been drawn by his Aborigine kinsmen, and rubbed with ash.

  Charlotte stared at them, and then gradually traced them, every one of them, with her fingers. She looked up at Eyre, and her eyes were glistening with tears.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ she said. ‘They’re simply beautiful.’

  ‘You don’t mind them?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should I mind them? They show that the Aborigines think you’re a hero; as well as the British. What other man in Adelaide has scars like these, to prove what he’s done? I’m proud of them, Eyre; I shall cherish them. And I shall cherish you.’

  She kissed his chest four or five times, and then stood up on tiptoe and kissed his lips. ‘You should have shown me before, my darling,’ she murmured.