Corroboree (24 page)

Mrs Wilson squeaked and sniggered, and Captain Sturt pulled a twisted kind of a face.

‘Do you think it will be possible for us to leave on Wednesday?' asked Eyre.

Sturt forked up the last of his pie, and washed it down with a liberal mouthful of red wine. ‘I don't doubt it,' he said. ‘Mrs Wilson, that was a capital pie. A pie by which all other pies should have to be judged.'

Squeak, and giggle, from Mrs Wilson's end of the table.

Eyre said, ‘I'm sorry my cousin couldn't be here today. He likes his pie; and, of course, he was very anxious to make your acquaintance, Captain Sturt.'

‘I've never met him, I suppose?' asked Sturt. ‘Did you tell me his name?'

‘His name? Well, yes, I believe I did. Mr Martin Ransome, that's it. One of the Clerkenwell Ransomes.'

Sturt buttered himself a large piece of soda-bread, and nodded, although it was plain that he wasn't really interested. That was just what Eyre had been counting on: a
general lack of curiosity about his soon-to-be-bespectacled cousin that would allow them to set off from Adelaide unharassed by bounty-hunters or militia.

Today, Arthur was hiding in the hut out at Adelaide racecourse, with plenty of cold mutton sandwiches and a bottle of tea, and the day after tomorrow they would be riding northwards, well away from Aborigine constables and sea-captains who would tell anything for a bottle of rum; and all the other grasses with whom Adelaide was rife. Mrs Wilson rang the bell for the pie-plates to be removed, and her freckly Irish servant-girl brought in jaunemange and baked carrot pudding.

Christopher looked at Eyre with an expression which clearly illustrated the hope that the luncheon-table would be cleaved in half by a bolt of divine lightning, and that Mrs Wilson would be burned to a manageably small cinder.

‘A very agreeable meal, Mrs Wilson,' said Captain Sturt, and Eyre began to understand that it took more than twelve weeks' rowing along wild and uncharted rivers to become, and remain, a hero.

That afternoon, excused from the office, Eyre and Christopher went for a long walk in the Botanic Gardens, neglected and abandoned now; and strolled among the tangled acacia bushes and discussed the expedition. Then they went to Coppius's Hotel and sat in the high-ceilinged lounge, and ordered rum punches. A new Axminster carpet was being carried into the hotel, freshly arrived from England, and the patrons in the lounge were continually being asked to move their chairs as the carpet-fitters manhandled it in.

Eyre and Christopher were standing next to the window, waiting for the carpet to be shouldered over their table, when they saw two men by the hotel's reception desk; two dark and unfamiliar men in frock coats and stovepipe hats and side-whiskers; and there was something about them which immediately led Eyre to suspect that they were the men who were looking for Arthur Mortlock.
One of them was smoking a small cigar and reading the messages which had been left for him at the desk; the other was leaning against the wall talking to the porter.

‘You see those two fellows?' Eyre asked Christopher. ‘Ten to one they're our bounty-hunters.'

Christopher glanced at Eyre, and nodded. ‘That's what I was thinking. They don't look at all like salesmen, or government men. Too surly for salesmen; too smartly dressed for government men. And hard, too. Look at their faces. They'd just as soon hit you in the face as say good afternoon.'

Eyre finished his drink. ‘Do you want another one?' he asked Christopher, ‘or shall we call it a day?'

‘Too late, I think,' said Christopher.

Eyre turned around. The two dark men had begun to walk towards them, stepping over the rolled-up carpet, and circling around the table. At last they came right up to Eyre and Christopher, and stood with their hands clasped in front of them, their faces bored and arrogant, their collars clean and sharp but unfashionably low, their black silk neckties sparkling with diamond stickpins.

‘You'll excuse us, gentlemen,' said one of them, in a marked ‘flash' accent. ‘But do we have the privilege of addressing ourselves to Mr Eyre Walker and Mr Christopher Willis?'

Eyre looked at them. The one who had spoken was thin, with a high domed forehead and a drooping moustache. He was very pale and veiny; and he gave Eyre the impression that if he were to take off his shirt, you would be able to see his heart pulsing underneath his ribcage, and his blood coursing through every vein. His companion on the other hand was thick and ruddy, with a gingery moustache and a body like beef.

Eyre said, ‘What can we do for you?'

The thin man inclined his head in a bow that was patently not meant to be subservient. ‘My name is Mr Chatto; this is Mr Rose. We are here on the direction of the government of New South Wales, to look for two
ticket-of-leave men, one named Bean and the other named Mortlock.'

‘Yes?' asked Christopher, with complete deadpan innocence.

Mr Chatto gave a thin smile, as transparent as a finger drawn through water. ‘It came to our attention, Mr Walker, that you and Mr Willis were the last customers to hire Mr Mortlock's carriage; on the night of the Spring Ball at Government House; on Thursday last week.'

‘Were we?' asked Eyre ‘What of it?'

‘We were hoping that you might have engaged Mr Mortlock in conversation,' said Mr Rose. ‘Perhaps he might have told you where he lived, or where he was going.'

‘Is he missing?' asked Eyre.

‘He is not in immediate evidence, if we can put it that way,' said Mr Chatto. He cracked his knuckles one by one, ten distinct cracks, and looked around the hotel lounge as if he were expecting somebody; not Arthur, but somebody equally fateful. Then he turned back to Eyre and Christopher, and looked at them wanly, as if he didn't believe anything that either of them had told him, not for a moment.

‘Would you recognise Mr Mortlock if you saw him again?' he asked, expressionlessly.

‘Who?' Eyre frowned.

‘Mr Mortlock,' Mr Chatto repeated, patiently. ‘The coachman who took you to the Spring Ball.'

Eyre turned to Christopher in exaggerated bafflement.

‘Mr Mortlock?' he said. ‘Was that his name?'

‘This gentleman seems to think so,' said Christopher.

‘Come now, Mr Willis, you must recognise the name,' said Mr Chatto. ‘It was you who went to Meredith's for the phaeton; and you who Meredith's sent around to Mr Mortlock, because all of their own fleet of carriages were out on hire.'

‘Well, well, was that his name?' asked Christopher. ‘Mortlock, hey? I could have sworn it was Keys, or Morton,
or Locket, or something to do with padlocks. But Mortlock. Well, well.'

‘He took you to the Ball, didn't he?' asked Mr Rose. ‘Of course.'

‘And then he took you home?'

‘Well, naturally.'

‘And in all that time, he didn't say anything at all that struck you as untoward?'

Eyre clamped his hand over his mouth as if he were thinking very deeply. Then suddenly he snapped his fingers, and said, ‘There was one thing.'

Mr Chatto took out a notepad, and an indelible pencil, and licked the pencil with a tongue that was already a bright shade of laundry-purple.

‘He said he was thinking of taking up the pianoaccordion.'

Mr Chatto's pencil remained poised over the notepad; trembling very slightly, like the motion of a crane-fly on a late-summer porch.

He said, flatly, ‘I don't think, Mr Walker, that you fully realise the gravity of our investigations; nor the weight of the authority we carry. We have been given special approval to hunt down these men by the Governor and Commissioner of South Australia himself.'

Eyre peered over the edge of his notepad. ‘You haven't written down “piano-accordion”,' he said, in a helpful tone.

Mr Rose put in, ‘Our authority, sir, also extends to bringing to book those who may have given the fugitives succour and shelter.'

Eyre turned to Christopher, and said, ‘The quality of the clientele here seems to have sunk rather low lately, wouldn't you say? I think a quiet drink at home is called for; among more civilised company.'

Mr Chatto put away his notepad and his pencil, and fastened up the buttons of his coat. ‘I want you to know, Mr Walker,' he said, in a particularly drear voice, ‘that your answers to my questions were not at all satisfactory,
and that I regard you as under suspicion of knowing the whereabouts of Mortlock and Bean.'

‘You may regard me however you like, that is your privilege,' said Eyre. ‘But I had better remind you that I have influential friends; Captain Charles Sturt among them; and that if you attempt to harass me in any way at all, then he shall get to hear about it, and take whatever action he considers fit.'

Mr Chatto said, ‘Even Captain Sturt is not above the law, Mr Walker. Look—this is my address—at the Torrens Hotel. Leave a message for me there if it should occur to you to change your mind about Mortlock.'

Eyre took the scrap of paper on which Mr Chatto had written the address, 75 King William Street. He crumpled it up between the palms of his hands, and tossed it on to the floor. Mr Chatto stared at him with eyes of a curiously neutral amber, in which his tiny black pupils were suspended like insects. He made no attempt to pick the paper up. Instead, he tugged at each of his cuffs; cracked at all of his knuckles; and then inclined his head to Eyre and Christopher, and said, ‘Very well. I think you have made yourselves perfectly clear. Whatever it is that you know, I am to receive no help from you, whatsoever.'

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 …
'