Corroboree (60 page)

Winja had said, ‘Your body will hurt, but inside your head you will feel nothing but peace.' And that was true.

They brought him back to the encampment on the clifftop twenty days after he had left to look for the
toora
; and he was greeted by the women and children with shouting and clapping and singing. And there, at the far end of the camp, standing in front of her shelter naked, in
spite of the wind, was Minil, her hands raised, her face shining with welcome.

They roasted kangaroo that night, and mutton-birds, and cockles, and Government House for all its pomp could never have laid out such a feast; nor excited such happiness. And any whaler passing close to the shore would have seen six or seven fires on the clifftop, and heard tapping, and music, and the voices of those to whom Australia had always belonged, and always would.

In the morning, standing amidst the smoke of the burnedout fires, Winja said, ‘This is where we have to part.'

Eyre said, ‘You're not going west any further?'

Winja shook his head. ‘The wet season is coming. We will go back towards Yalata.'

Eyre looked at Ningina. It was a grey, overcast morning. The sea shushed dolefully against the rocks. ‘You understand that I have to go on?'

‘Yes,' said Ningina. ‘We always knew that. We always knew that we would have to say farewell to you, sooner or later. You were not born one of us. You have become our kinsman. But you have other duties, in another world.'

Eyre looked out over the ocean. Today, it was relentlessly dull. A few gulls circled and swooped, but they were silent. The wind nagged at the clifftops, and rustled through the scrub, like a cold hand rubbing up a dog's coat the wrong way.

‘I shall miss you for ever,' he said.

‘No,' said Winja, taking his hand. ‘It is we who shall
miss you for ever. You came from the desert; you return to the desert. We knew always that you were not a spirit, but a man. You were also one of us, even before you met us. It was prophesied when you were born that you would become one of us, and you will stay in our minds for ever, as one of our stories. Our ancestors will speak of you long after all of us have joined Ngurunderi. Eyre-Walker, who came from the east, and vanished in the west; and who defeated with one blow the great Mabarn Man Yonguldye.'

He paused, and then he said, ‘There is one thing more. You are one of my people now; and therefore your son is one of my people; and your son's son.'

‘I have no son,' said Eyre.

‘You will,' replied Winja, looking towards Minil, ‘and when you do, your son must be ours. You must return him to the tribe so that he may grow up amongst his kinsmen, and learn our ways, and undergo his
engwura
.'

Eyre held Winja close. ‘My son is yours,' he pledged him. ‘You gave me my life, you looked after me and protected me, you accepted me as one of your people. The least I can do is observe your laws.'

‘Do not forget, then,' nodded Winja. ‘On the first hour of the first day of the boy's second year, we shall be waiting for him. Our arms will be open to welcome him, and make him ours.'

‘I promise it,' said Eyre.

Less than an hour later, Winja and his people were ready to leave. They stood watching as Eyre and Minil mounted their horses, and turned westwards; but it was only when they were almost out of sight, a line of black silhouettes on the clifftops, that they set up a hair-raising ululation, a warbling primaeval cry that swelled and faded on the wind, and raised their spears in salute.

Minil said, ‘I am sad to leave them.'

But Eyre could say nothing except, ‘Let's go,' because his feelings of pain and separation were even sharper than Winja's initiation knife.

They rode west for week after week; and gradually the
weather began to break, and the winter rains came. For days they were riding through a bright yellow landscape of mud and puddles; and then there were torrential storms, with the rain hurtling out of the sky at them like watery spears, leaving them drenched and bedraggled and silent. There was almost a whole week of sunny humidity and steam; when it was hot, but impossible to see the horizon, but then the clouds rolled back again, and the rains cascaded down, cold and unforgiving, until their
bukas
were soaked all the way through, dark and heavy, and they felt as if they had never seen a desert in their lives.

Eyre lost count of how far they had travelled. Every evening, he went to catch game; and now that the wet season had arrived, he was usually lucky. They sat close to damp, smoky fires, trying to roast bandicoots and lizards; and then they huddled up close together under whatever shelter they could improvise, while the rain clattered down, and the clouds fled past, and the whole world seemed to be flooded. Minil prayed every night to Birra-Nulu, the flood-sender, the wife of Baiame, that they should not be overwhelmed and drowned, but Birra-Nulu seemed to take very little notice of Minil's prayers; because by the time June arrived, they were riding through gullies that were waist-deep in muddy water, under skies that were as black as blankets.

Eyre's initiation wounds healed, although they were still quite tender; and by the beginning of July they were able to make love again. Some intensity, however, had gone out of their coupling, some feeling of closeness. Perhaps it was the nearness of civilisation, the anticipation that within a few days now, their extraordinary journey would be over. After their third unsatisfying bout, Minil twisted herself up in her wet
buka
and tried to sleep, while Eyre sat by the fire and chewed
pitjuri
.

‘What will happen when we reach Albany?' Minil asked.

‘What do you mean, what will happen?' The rain dripped off the leaves of their makeshift shelter.

‘Do you want me to stay with you?'

‘I don't understand. Haven't I said so?'

‘You said that you loved me.'

He looked at her; and then held out his hand to her. ‘I do. You know I do. Nothing's changed.'

‘Something has changed.'

Eyre took the wad of wet
pitjuri
out of his mouth, and threw it aside. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘My feelings for you haven't changed, if that's what you're trying to suggest.'

‘Still, something has changed. I feel it.'

‘It's just the weather,' said Eyre, trying to sound light-hearted.

Minil sat up, and leaned close to him. For a long time she said nothing at all, but then she stroked his arm, and asked, ‘Do you really want me to stay with you, once this journey is over?'

‘I'll have quite a few things to do,' said Eyre. ‘I'll have to look for a new job, to begin with; and perhaps a new place to live.'

‘Will you let me live with you?'

‘I can't. Not to begin with. I only have one room, at Mrs McConnell's. But I expect that I can arrange something for you.'

Minil said, ‘You are trying to tell me that you do not want me any more.'

‘Of course not. That's ridiculous.'

‘No. You are trying to tell me that when you are back among white people, you cannot have an Aboriginal girl with you. It would not be right. Other white people would not like it.'

‘Minil—' he said, but she quickly shook her head.

‘I have felt your love drawing away from me, mile by mile. I have already started to accept it. When you did not think that you would ever see your Charlotte again, you loved me. I was glad of your love; and I still am. But now you are thinking of returning to your friends, to your own people, and I will have to let you go.'

Eyre said, softly, ‘Nothing will ever change the fact that I love you.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘But many people who love each other cannot live with each other.'

After that, Eyre could think of nothing more to say to her. He was still trying to work out inside his own mind what he was going to do; and he knew that to make her any more promises now would be futile and hurtful.

He had not yet allowed himself fully to face up to the truth that even this long and torturous part of his expedition had degenerated into failure. He had been trying to discover a stock-route from Adelaide to Albany; and all he had found was a wild and inhospitable coastline and a desert without water or trees or grazing. He had dreamed as they journeyed through the land of Bunda Bunda that he would be welcomed as a hero when he returned, but the closer he came to Albany, the more threadbare the dream became. He had found only that it was impossible to reach the inland sea, if there really was one; and that the Western desert was impassable to cattle. He had found no opals, no silver, and no lakes that could be used for irrigation. He hadn't even discovered any new plants or insects.

In the process of failing so completely, he had lost the lives of two black trackers and one of his dearest friends, as well as a dozen Aborigine tribesmen. Worse than that, he had squandered all of Captain Sturt's finances, and thrown away all his valuable equipment: guns, books, compasses, tents, saddlebags, shovels and picks.

Up until recently, he had fondly pictured his return to Waikerie Lodge, to claim Charlotte; but on this chilly rain-soaked night on the coast of Western Australia, crouched under a shelter of sticks and leaves with an Aborigine girl, the prospect of that, when he thought about it seriously, was dismally remote.

He would be lucky to be noticed when he finally trudged back into the municipality of Adelaide. He would be even luckier to find any employment. And there was a considerable
risk that Captain Sturt would have him locked up for fraud and incompetence and God knows what other charges he could devise. Then there was the matter of Arthur Mortlock to be considered, and the deaths of Messrs Chatto and Rose. He hadn't thought about that for weeks now; but it had returned to worry at him like a bad tooth.

There was a choice, he supposed. He could stay in Western Australia, or even take a ship back to England, if he could somehow raise the money. But he knew that he would have to return to Adelaide to settle matters; whatever the outcome might be. And he did want to see Charlotte again, if only through the palings around her house, from a distance, as an elegant young fantasy that might have been his.

He slept, and snored, and had nightmares. He saw a man with a beard, smiling, and a baby who cried. Towards morning, the rain began to trickle in underneath him. He opened his eyes and saw Minil looking down at him, her face concerned.

‘What is it?' he asked her.

‘You were shouting out in your sleep,' she told him. ‘You kept calling for the man called Dogger.'

Eyre stiffly sat up. He rubbed his eyes. Outside their shelter, the rain was still falling in heavy, rustling veils.

‘Dogger,' he said; and for some reason the name sounded curiously unfamiliar, like a name in another language, from another age.

Then he looked at Minil, and frowned, and said, ‘Do you think you might be having a baby?'

‘Why do you ask me that?'

‘I don't know. Something I dreamed.'

‘Minil said, ‘Since we nearly died in the desert, I have had no bleeding. I do not think that I can have babies, not now. Perhaps when this journey is over my bleeding will start again.'

Eyre crawled out from under his
buka
, and began to scrape together a few twigs and branches so that they
could start a fire. The rain fell on his bare back, and made him shiver. Minil watched him with infinite sadness and care, as if she were trying to remember every movement he made, so that they would be imprinted on her mind, for ever.

They reached the crest of a hill and there below them among the gums and blackboy trees was the township of Albany. It was the first white settlement that Eyre had seen since he had left Adelaide the previous year, and he stood and stared down at it with an indescribable feeling of relief and thankfulness; but also with a surge of something that could almost have been fear. For just a moment, he saw the white people as an Aborigine might have seen them; their neat houses with thatched roofs and white-painted walls; their fences and their streets; their gardens lined with flourishing vegetables. Everything so tidily arranged, and so constricted. He saw carriages and oxcarts moving to and fro through the rutted streets, and beyond, in the curve of water that the Aborigines called Monkbeeluen and which the English called King George's Sound, there were sailing-ships at anchor, and warehouses, and smoke was rising from office chimneys.

‘Minil,' said Eyre, and reached across and took her hand.

‘Yes,' nodded Minil. ‘I know what you are saying to me. You are saying goodbye.'

They began to ride slowly down the muddy track that took them towards the outskirts of town. They said nothing. Their pack-horse walked obediently behind them,
as he had walked for nearly a thousand miles. It had stopped raining now, and a watery sun had emerged from the clouds, making the rooftops and puddles glitter brightly.

They passed a garden where a curly-headed Aborigine boy in a white shirt and britches was hoeing vegetables. He stared at them as they passed; and Eyre raised his shapeless kangaroo-skin hat, and said, ‘Good morning.' He realised that he and Minil must look two dishevelled scarecrows; he with his bushy black beard and lumpy
buka
; Minil with her tattered scarf wound around her head. The boy dropped his hoe and came to the fence and watched them as they rode further down the street; and then suddenly shrieked out, ‘
Minil! Minil!
'

Minil reined back her horse. The boy came running after them, his bare feet splattering in the puddles. ‘Minil!' he cried. His eyes were bright, and he jumped and danced all around her.

Minil said, ‘It's Chucky! It's Chucky! I didn't recognise you! How you've grown up!'

‘Minil!' sang Chucky. ‘How everybody tells stories of where you went! They say you went with some Wirangu; and then the Wirangu told stories that you left them and went with Mr Walker, the great explorer-man!'