Corroboree (11 page)

That night, Eyre dreamed of Yanluga, sobbing, crying for help. He dreamed of Charlotte, too, gliding across the lawns of Waikerie Lodge as if she were on oiled wheels, instead of feet. He dreamed that Mrs McConnell came into his room naked, but with the black body of an Aborigine woman, and that she knelt astride his face and buried him between her thighs.

He woke up at dawn; when the sky was a thin, cold colour; and he was shivering. He climbed stiff-legged out of bed in his ankle-length nightshirt and went shuffling to the window, and leaned against the frame. Hindley Street was deserted. The only signs of life were the lighted window of Keith's Fancy Bakery across the street, and a single Aborigine boy sitting close to the bakery steps wrapped up in his
buka
, a puppy crouching between his bare feet.

Eyre began to feel that something momentous was about to happen, and that his life had already changed beyond recall. He sat down on the side of the bed, frowning, still shivering, not understanding why he felt this way. And the morning breeze which lifted the dust in the street also rattled the casement like a secret message from one prisoner to another/it's time to be free.'

Mrs McConnell brought him a breakfast of oat cakes, ham, and soft-boiled eggs, with honey from old Mr Jellop's apiary. She parked her big bottom on the bed and watched him eat; smiling and nodding in encouragement each time he forked a piece of ham into his mouth, or bit into an oat cake.

‘You're going to have to rest for a few days, get your strength back,' she said.

‘Mrs McConnell, I'm a little bruised, but that's all. I really want to go and get my bicycle back, before some blackfellow steals it, or Lathrop Lindsay finds it and smashes it to bits.'

‘You're not thinking of going out there today?'

‘As soon as I've finished my breakfast, as a matter of fact. And then I'm going to cycle over and see Christopher.'

‘But you're still invalid! I can't allow it! Supposing you came over queer?'

‘Mrs McConnell, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your nursing. You've been more than kind. But I'm really quite well.'

‘
Well?
Do you call that
well?
Your eye looks like a—like a squashed cycad fruit.'

At that moment, Dogger appeared in the doorway, his hair sticking wildly up in the air, his face in a condition of chronic disassembly, his striped nightshirt as crumpled as if he had been tossed into a wool-baler.

‘Constance,' he said. ‘Don't mollycoddle the boy. He's not your boy. And besides, my brains won't stand arguing.'

‘Just because you've drunk yourself silly, don't go picking at me.' Mrs McConnell retorted. ‘I've had boys, I know what's best for them. And what's best for this boy is a day or two in bed.'

Eyre took hold of her hand. ‘Mrs McConnell, I'll come to a compromise. If you let me go out this morning, I'll make a point of coming back to bed this evening early; and you can dress the bites for me, too, if you please.'

Dogger sniffed, and ran his hand through his hair, making it look even wilder. ‘There you are, you see,' he remarked, to an invisible referee who was standing next to the wardrobe. ‘The voice of sanity prevails. Thank God for that. Now, where's my breakfast?'

Mrs McConnell patted Eyre's mouth with his napkin, kissed him on the forehead, and stood up. ‘I'll make it for you now,' she told Dogger, still smiling at Eyre. ‘The fish, I'll be bound.'

Dogger gave a twisted, exaggerated grimace. After an evening of heavy drinking, the only breakfast which he could physically stomach was salted sea-perch, with red pepper; and a large glass of buttermilk. About an hour after that, he would be ready for another jug of homemade beer.

Eyre walked up to Waikerie Lodge. The morning was bright and dusty. The twin plagues of Adelaide were dust in the summer and mud in the winter; apart from the flies, and the fog, and the occasional outbreak of typhus, or ‘mesenteric fever'. The dust rose up with the wind and whistled softly through the sugar-gums like hurrying ghosts, and everything it touched it turned to white; so that after it had died away the countryside looked as if it had been blanched, and aged, as if by some terrible experience.

His bicycle was exactly where he had left it, propped up against a bush, untouched except for a splash of parrot guano on the saddle. He walked cautiously up to the back gate of Lindsay's house, and looked across the lawns, but apart from a few scuff-marks on the grass, there was no trace of last night's horror. There was no trace of Charlotte, either, although he skirted through the bushes so that he could see up to her bedroom window. The family had probably gone to church. If so, Eyre hoped without
cynicism that they would pray for Yanluga. They had certainly done nothing else to assure that their servant's spirit would rejoin his dreamtime ancestors.

Captain Henry came out on to the patio, wearing a red string headband and a shabby frock-coat, and leading half-a-dozen of Mr Lindsay's greyhounds. He was probably doing nothing more than taking them out for a walk, but Eyre decided that retreat was more sensible than suicide, and crept away from the perimeter of Waikerie Lodge, and retrieved his bicycle, and pedalled off to visit Christopher Willis.

A little way off, though, he stopped, and looked back towards Waikerie Lodge. All he could see through the surrounding trees was the edge of its brown shingled roof, and the white columns that flanked its grandiose porch. It was like an impregnable castle in a Grimm's fairy tale; ruled over by a king who had set impossible standards for his daughter, the Princess Charlotte. She would probably die an old maid, imprisoned by her father's ambition, particularly since South Australia's economy, buoyant at first, had gradually begun to collapse; so that week by week, the likelihood of a visit from an eligible English baronet was becoming increasingly remote.

Down at the South Australian Company, Eyre had already seen three major merchant banks withdraw their money from Adelaide; and more letters of withdrawal were expected by the end of the year. The returns had not been high enough, or quick enough, and the general feeling in the City of London, which in the early days had been adventurous and optimistic, was that Australia, on the whole, was ‘a damned odd duck'.

These days, the only English quality that Adelaide saw were the exiled sons of shabby Sussex landowners; or botanical eccentrics whose trunks were crammed with magnifying-glasses, and tweeds. Nobody suitable for a girl like Charlotte.

Eyre cycled off towards the racecourse. It was warm now, and the wind had dropped, although high creamy
clouds had mounted in the east, and there was a chance of thunder. The mid-morning light had become curiously metallic; as though the landscape had been cured in spirits of silver, and the spokes of Eyre's bicycle wheels flashed brightly along the pathway towards the racecourse. He usually sang as he cycled. This morning he was silent. A distant church-bell clanged from the centre of the city; and he allowed himself to whisper a verse from the 62nd Psalm, one of his father's favourites.

‘How long will you assail a man, that you may murder him, all of you, like a leaning wall, like a tottering fence? Men of low degree are only vanity, and men of rank are a lie; in the balances they go up; and they are together lighter than breath.'

Eyre repeated, with relish, ‘a tottering fence', and tried to swerve so that he ran over a Holy Cross frog that was squatting on the track, but missed it.

Christopher Willis was packing his horse-panniers to go out fishing when Eyre arrived on his bicycle, and he didn't look particularly pleased to see him. Nonetheless, he put down his nets, and said, ‘Hullo, Eyre; you look as if you've been boxing with kangaroos.' Then, as Eyre parked his bicycle, he peered at him more attentively, and said, ‘And the kangaroos won, by the look of it. Are you all right?'

Eyre said, ‘I'm recovering, thank you. My dear Mrs McConnell is taking care of me better than I have any right to expect.'

‘Ah,' said Christopher. ‘Your dear Mrs McConnell. I always suspected that she wanted to adopt you. In fact, I rather believe that she thinks you're Geoffrey—Geoffrey, is it?—returned from the grave.'

He sniggered. That was the type of joke he always enjoyed. He had the appearance of a very disjointed public schoolboy, and the humour to match. He was big-nosed, with wide-apart eyes, and he always seemed to be growing out of his clothes, even though he was twenty-five. He parted his hair severely in the middle, and sometimes stuck it down with bay rum, or violet essence, especially
when he was going to meet a young lady, which he did with unexpected regularity. They were never young ladies of the very best breeding, but they were invariably willing, and giggly, and of course they always wanted him to marry them, at once, which he wouldn't.

Eyre grudgingly admired Christopher's lack of sensitivity. He didn't very often feel like courting a girl himself, and when he did, it was invariably a painful and caustically romantic experience. How could you love a girl at all without wanting to love her for ever? He still thought of Clara with regret, the girl for whom he had first bought his bicycle.

He sat down on one of the frayed basketwork chairs on Christopher's untidy verandah. ‘If you want to know the truth, I was attacked by Lathrop Lindsay's dogs. Worse than that, they set on Yanluga, too, his Aborigine groom, and killed him.'

Christopher took off his wide straw hat. ‘Well, now,' he said. ‘That
is
bad luck. Killed him, hey? My dear chap. Won't you have a glass of something? Old Thomas came past yesterday with four bottles of brandy.'

‘Thank you,' said Eyre.

Christopher looked at him closely, as if he were testing his eyesight, and then said, ‘You
are all
right? That's a frightful bite on your phizzog. If I were you, I'd sue the bugger.'

‘I can't do that. I was trespassing. In law, he had every right.'

‘Hm,' said Christopher. ‘He's a bugger, nonetheless. Didn't I tell you that Charlotte wasn't for you? You can't beat a bugger; not when it comes to a bugger's one and only daughter; and he's a bugger all right, his lordship Lathrop Lindsay. Everybody says so.'

‘Who's everybody?'

‘Well, I say so. Who else do you need?'

Eyre couldn't help smiling. ‘Go and get me that brandy,' he admonished Christopher.

They sat and drank for a while in silence, secure in their
companionship. A few hundred yards to their right, a dull chestnut yearling was being cantered and turned, in training for the winter season. The rider lifted his crop in salute to Christopher, and shouted, ‘halloo', and then galloped off towards the billowing white tents which formed the major part of the racecourse.

‘Sam Gorringe,' Christopher remarked. ‘Terrible rider. Rotten horse, too. Just in case you were ever tempted to back him.'

Eyre sipped his brandy; and let it burn its way slowly over his tongue, and down his throat.

‘My father disapproved of gambling,' he said. ‘A shortcut to hell, that's what he called it.'

‘Oh, well, yes.' said Christopher.

There was another silence, less relaxed this time. Then Eyre said, ‘I've decided to bury him.'

‘Bury him? Who? Lathrop Lindsay?'

‘No, you lummox. Yanluga.'

‘Yanluga? Isn't that Lindsay's responsibility?'

‘Lindsay is going to give him a Christian burial.'

‘Well?' asked Christopher, swilling his brandy around and around in his glass.

‘Well, he wasn't a Christian, was he?' Eyre retorted.

‘He was a heathen,' Christopher declared.

‘Heathen? How can you say that? You've lived here longer than I have. You know how religious the blackfellows are. They have all kinds of religious rites; especially when it comes to burial. Don't they break the body's bones, and then burn it? And don't they sometimes have dances, and processions on the river? The poor chap should at least be given the ceremony that his beliefs demand, don't you think? Or perhaps you don't.'

Christopher balanced his glass on the warped verandah table. ‘Well,' he said, ‘I must say that you're really getting yourself in rather deep. Especially for the son of an Anglican vicar.'

‘What my father believes is nothing to do with it. My
father hasn't met any Aborigines; he doesn't know how magical they are.'

‘They're
superstitious
, I'll give you that. Do you know that boy from Moomindie mission? The one who came up here to mend my fences? He was supposed to have been converted to Christianity,
and
cricket, but he wouldn't stay here after dark because of the Yowie. The Yowie! Can you imagine it? A completely mythical monster, and the poor lad went beetling back to the mission as soon as the sun went down, as if all the devils in hell were after him.'

Eyre looked at Christopher sharply. ‘But of course,' he said, ‘there
are
devils.'

Christopher frowned, and then pouted. ‘You can actually be rather tiresome at times, Eyre, did you know that?'

‘Is it tiresome to want to give Yanluga the burial he begged me for?'

‘Not entirely. Although it might be a bit too saintly.'

‘I'm not a saint, Christopher,' Eyre smiled at him. ‘I never will be, either. But the boy liked me, and respected me, and I liked and respected him. And I think that's reason enough.'

‘If you say so. But how will you go about it?'

‘I need to find an Aborigine chief called Yonguldye. Apparently he knows what to do.'

‘Hm,' said Christopher. He stood up, and pushed his hands into the pockets of his baggy white trousers, and walked to the end of the verandah, where he stood looking out over the windy racecourse with his lank hair flapping across his forehead.