Corroboree (67 page)

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.

Eyre said, ‘There's something else.'

‘Tell me. Come on, Eyre, you promised to tell me, and so you must.'

‘My—he started. Then he closed his eyes, and blurted out quickly, ‘They also circumcised me.'

‘Yes?' asked Charlotte, although she blushed a little. ‘And is that enough to stop me from loving you? Eyre, don't you understand, I love you; dearly, and passionately; whether you are scarred or whole. I always have done, and I think I always will.'

He took a breath, and said mechanically, ‘They circumcised me with a sharp knife made out of a cockle-shell. They also… well, I believe the correct term is subincision.'

‘What does that mean? Eyre, please.'

Eyre knew now that there was nothing for it but to show her. They had attempted to make love before, on that hideous night when Yanluga had died; and there was no question that Charlotte was a full-blooded young woman
who expected sex as a vigorous part of her coming marriage. It would also be impossibly unfair of him to expect her to go to the altar without knowing what Winja and Ningina had done to him.

Pray God that her mother doesn't wake up, he thought, and opened his trousers.

Charlotte slowly sat down on the brocade-covered sofa. She stared at his penis so intently that he went red, and began to perspire. I'm embarrassed, he thought; me, who rode naked for hundreds of miles across the plain of Bunda Bunda. Embarrassed, and for some extraordinary reason, humiliated.

But Charlotte reached out with a gentle hand and grasped him, lifting him up so that she could see how deeply the Aborigines had cut into him. The urethra was open all the way from the glans to the testicles; open, and glistening with the lubrication of nervousness and passion.

‘Will this… does this make it impossible for us to have children?' asked Charlotte, in a trembling voice.

Eyre shook his head. ‘No. All the Aborigines have it done; at least, all the Aborigines that I met. It makes no difference, physically; and none of them seem to be lacking in offspring.'

Charlotte stroked him, with exquisite slowness, and he rose in her hand. ‘If it makes no difference,' she said, ‘then I shall accept it proudly.' She kept on stroking him, still slowly, until his penis reared up like a red sceptre, with a deeply cleft shaft.

‘No,' he said, unsteadily. ‘No more. We only have eleven more days to wait.' And with extreme difficulty he pushed himself back into his tight evening trousers, and buttoned himself up again. Charlotte touched the thick protrusion on his trouser-leg, and unexpectedly giggled.

‘I think it's marvellous,' she said. ‘Eyre, it's
marvellous
! I shall be the only lady in the whole of Adelaide to have a baby the Aborigine way! Isn't it exciting! Oh, it excites me! Oh, Eyre! I can't wait eleven days!'

He kissed her on the forehead. She tasted of perfume.
‘I'm afraid that we shall have to,' he said. Then he kissed her again, and she lifted her mouth to him, and kissed him in return, her hard white teeth pressing against his lips.

‘Now,' he said, ‘we come to the most difficult part of all.'

‘What?' she asked, her eyes bright, ‘Eyre, if it's only as difficult as scars, or a circumcision…'

He sat down. He looked at her, and tried to smile. She was so expectant, so alive, so gleeful. How was he going to tell her that he had solemnly promised to give his firstborn son away to Winja and Ningina, to be raised as a member of their tribe for ever more?

‘It concerns the baby,' he said, his mouth dry.

‘But we're going to have
five
babies!'

‘Yes,' he agreed. ‘Five. But it concerns the first. Well, the first son, at least.'

Why did he have to tell her? Why did he have to give the baby away at all? Who was going to force Eyre Walker, the Protector of Murray River Aborigines, a great white celebrity and a man of influence and income, to give away his first boy-child to a pack of blacks?

Only Eyre knew why; only Winja knew why. The answer lay in the desert, and the scrub and the dry limestone mountains. The answer lay in the integrity of people who have to depend on whatever they can find, and whatever help they can offer each other. Eyre's destiny had become mysteriously interlinked with that of the Aborigines from the first moment he had spoken to Yanluga as a human being deserving of equal respect; instead of thinking of him as an animal or a savage. He realised that there was a terrible primitive justice to what he was going to have to do. He had taken one boy away; and now he would have to give them a boy in return. There was no escaping it. Not if he was going to be able to think of himself as a man of honour; as he had always hoped he would be.