Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  Eyre said, ‘We’re taking Aborigine guides along with us.’ He felt quite hurt and embarrassed that Dogger should think so little of their chances. ‘The main guide will be a blackfellow called Joolonga, if you’ve ever heard of him.’

  ‘Joolonga? Joolonga Billy or Joolonga Jacky-Jack?’

  Eyre shrugged. ‘He’s a constable, apparently.’

  ‘That’s Joolonga Billy, then. Lucky for you, I suppose. He’s experienced enough. I met him a couple of times out at Eurinilla Creek. He used to teach some of the new chums how to track, how to tell one kind of footprint from another. He did it the same way they teach Aborigine children: making tracks for them to follow and then hiding behind a rock, to see if they could find him. He could make counterfeit tracks, could Joolonga Billy: snake-tracks with his kangaroo-hide whip, and dingo tracks with his knuckles. But he always said there was only one way to make counterfeit camel-tracks, and that was to use a bare baby’s bottom.’

  ‘Well,’ said Eyre, ‘it seems as if we’ll be properly taken care of.’

  Dogger looked down at the draughts board. Above his head, hanging from the rafters, the oil-lamp was thick with insects and moths, and their shadows flickered across the squares of the board like the shadows in Eyre’s dreams.

  ‘How far are you going?’ asked Dogger, trying hard not to sound interested.

  ‘I don’t know. I have to find an Aborigine chief called Yonguldye. As far as I understand it, he could be absolutely anywhere north of Adelaide. Depending on whether I find him or not, and depending on what he tells me, if he tells me anything, I could go no further than fifty miles away. On the other hand, I may go hundreds of miles away—as far as the northern coast.’

  Dogger moved one of his draughts. ‘You’ll die, you know,’ he told Eyre, matter-of-factly.

  He looked up at Eyre and there was such an expression of care and certainty on his face that Eyre didn’t know what to say to him.

  After a while, though, Eyre said, ‘It was Captain Sturt who suggested we might get as far as the north. In fact, he’s going to put up the money for the whole expedition.’

  ‘Captain Sturt,’ said Dogger.

  ‘That’s right, Captain Sturt. He came down to the port to talk to me this morning. He firmly believes that the centre of Australia is covered by an inland sea; as large as the Caspian, he said. All we have to do is reach its southernmost shore, and then we can sail for most of the way.’

  ‘Sail,’ said Dogger.

  ‘You don’t have to sound so sceptical,’ Eyre retorted. ‘There may not be an actual sea. There may be a forest, instead. But if there are trees there, we’ll soon be able to find water, and fruit to eat; and only God can guess what manner of creatures might inhabit it.’

  ‘Bunyips, I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Dogger, pouring himself some more beer.

  There was a long and difficult silence between them. Then Dogger wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, ‘There has to be a first time for everybody, I suppose. But you just make sure that your first time isn’t your last. When you’re out in that mallee scrub, with the wind blowing willy-willys all around you; and your horses scared to death; and you haven’t had a drink of water for four days; you just remember what Dogger McConnell told you. There isn’t any sea in the middle of Australia, and there isn’t any forest. There’s sand out there, that’s what there is, because I’ve been there; or at least as far as anyone has; and all I’ve ever seen is sand, and scrub, and more sand; and sometimes I’ve seen skeletons, of dogs, and mutton-birds, and men.’

  Eyre finished his beer. It was lukewarm, and flat. ‘I’ll remember what you said,’ he told Dogger. Then, ‘Seriously, I’ll remember.’

  Dogger grunted. ‘Who’s winning this damned game?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘I am,’ said Eyre.

  ‘Well, you damned well shouldn’t be. You can’t have everything.’

  Eyre looked at Dogger with a smile. ‘You’re jealous,’ he said.

  ‘Jealous? What in hell do you mean?’

  ‘You’re jealous about my going on this expedition. That’s what it is.’

  ‘Why should I be jealous?’ Dogger asked him, caustically. ‘I’ve had enough of sand and rats and flies and murderous blackfellows to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘I still think you’re jealous.’

  ‘Play the damned game,’ Dogger growled.

  Eyre crowned another of his draughts, and then said, ‘You’d come, wouldn’t you, if you were asked?’

  Dogger was silent for a very long time. His head was bowed over the board but Eyre knew that he wasn’t concentrating on the game. His face was completely concealed by the dark semi-circular shadow of his hat; but his hands were illuminated by the lamplight, hands with callouses and scars and broad, horny nails, and fine hairs that had been gilded by the sun.

  Dogger sniffed, and then said, ‘I can remember one morning I was camping up in the Flinders Range. I was lost, as a matter of fact, although I never admitted it to anybody. I woke up in the middle of the morning, round about nine or ten o’clock, and the sky was blue, deep blue; and up against it the mountains rose up like a fortress. Red they were, you’ve never seen such red. The Aborigines say that a giant emu used to live there, and that when it was slaughtered, its blood splashed all over the rocks. Actually, it’s red ochre; the stuff they call wilga. They come from hundreds of miles to collect it, just to rub all over themselves; but that’s the Aborigines for you.’

  He picked up his beer-glass; realised it was empty; and set it down again.

  ‘I woke up,’ he said, ‘and there was a blackfellow staring at me; with emu feathers in his headband, and wilga all over his face, silent he was, staring at me.’

  Dogger lifted his head, so that the lamplight delineated the triangle of his nose.

  ‘He could have killed me, you know, while I was sleeping. He could have killed me when I woke up. He was fully armed, with a spear and a boomerang and a kind of a club made out of animal bone, or a human bone, who knows. But instead he made a sign with his hand, three fingers down, one finger raised, and that means “who are you?” I knew that, so I said, “Dogger McConnell.” ‘

  ‘Well?’ asked Eyre. ‘What did he do?’

  Dogger shrugged. ‘He blinked at me, and then he made the sign again, “who are you?” as if he couldn’t believe what I’d told him. So I said, “Dogger McConnell” and, damn me, do you know what he did?’

  ‘Tell me,’ Eyre insisted.

  ‘He laughed, that’s what he did. That damned impudent blackfellow, his face all covered in mud and ochre and God knows what else, stark naked, you certainly couldn’t have taken him home to meet your mother. But he laughed and laughed; I thought he was going to be sick. And then he pointed at me, and said ‘Dogger McConnell’, clear as a bell, and laughed even more. And then, when he’d finished laughing, he rubbed his eyes, and walked off, and that was the last I ever saw of him.’

  Eyre said, ‘Dogger.’

  Dogger gave a sharp sniff, and cleared his throat. ‘Come on, now, Eyre. You know what I’m trying to tell you.’

  There was another long silence between them. All around the house, the cicadas sang; and the moon that had haunted Eyre the previous night rose again behind the gums.

  Dogger said, ‘Once you’ve been there, once you’ve seen it, the colours, the trees, the smell of eucalyptus oil; once the Aborigines have laughed at you, and taken you for just a friend, well—’

  He grasped Eyre’s hand, tightly, quite unexpectedly. ‘I’d do anything to come with you,’ he said. ‘Anything at all.’

  Eyre said, ‘I’ll have to see. It depends on how much money Captain Sturt is able to raise.’

  ‘But you’ll consider it?’

  Eyre looked down at the draughts board. Then he looked back up at Dogger. ‘Play the damned game,’ he told him.

  Thirteen

  Eyre was almost asleep that night when there was a rapping at his bedroom door. He opened his
eyes, and lay still for a moment, unsure if the rapping had been real, or a dream. But then it came again: softly, almost furtively.

  He threw back the quilt and walked across to the door. He leaned his head towards the door, and said, ‘Who is it?’

  Mrs McConnell whispered, ‘It’s me. Dogger’s asleep.’

  Eyre opened up the door. Mrs McConnell was standing on the landing in her capacious linen nightdress, with a frilly mob-cap covering her hair, a lamp in one hand, and a big white mug of steaming-hot meat stock held up in her other hand like the Holy Grail.

  ‘I thought you might want a drink before you went to bed,’ she told him.

  ‘Oh. Well, thank you.’

  He held out his hand for the mug but she kept it just out of his reach. ‘I wanted to have a little talk to you, too,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t it wait until the morning? I must say I’m rather tired.’

  ‘It won’t take long, I promise.’

  ‘Well, er—come in,’ said Eyre, and opened his bedroom door wider.

  Mrs McConnell bustled past him; after all the bedroom did belong to her; and set the mug of meat stock down on top of the bureau. Then she said, ‘Close the door,’ and when Eyre hesitated, ‘It’s quite all right. I can do what I like in my own house. I don’t need anybody else in Hindley Street to tell me what morals are.’

  Eyre stood there in his nightshirt, raking his fingers through his scratchy hair. He wished that he were wearing britches; or his new nightshirt at least; but this one was old and worn-out, with a hole on one side through which two weeks ago he had accidentally pushed his great toe. It didn’t make any difference that Mrs McConnell always washed and ironed it for him: he felt shabby and ill-at-ease.

  Mrs McConnell sat herself down on the end of the bed, and patted the quilt imperiously as an instruction to Eyre that he should sit beside her.

  ‘Dogger was talking to me tonight,’ she said. ‘It seems that you’re going off on some kind of an expedition.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eyre. ‘It looks as if I am.’

  ‘Don’t you think it was your duty to tell me first, before Dogger?’

  ‘I don’t really see why. It isn’t definite yet; and when it is, you’ll be the first to know. It was just one of those things that comes out in conversation.’

  ‘Dogger says that you promised to take him along.’ Eyre shook his head. ‘That’s not true. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. He asked me to consider taking him, but I don’t even know yet how much money is going to be put up; or how many people I’ll be able to take.’

  ‘Dogger says that you’re going to go north.’

  ‘That’s right. We’ll be looking for minerals, and cattle-tracks, and whatever else we can find. Captain Sturt believes that we may be able to reach the inland sea.’

  Mrs McConnell looked at him with motherly solicitude. The lamplight behind her head gave her mob-cap the appearance of a home-made halo; and lit up the stray wisps of hair that curled out from underneath it. The Madonna of the Boarding-House. She touched Eyre’s hand and for some reason he shivered, not because she repelled him in any way, but because he suddenly remembered his mother; in fact, more than remembered her, felt her, smelled her, sensed her; all around him, like a warm and actual ghost.

  Yet he knew it was only memory. His mother lay under her grey granite gravestone in St Crispin’s churchyard; rained-on, snowed-on, lit by rainbows; gone forever. And thinking of that, he admitted to himself for the first time something that he had never been able to admit to himself before, that he would never return to England; ever.

  Mrs McConnell said, ‘Would you think me foolish if I asked you not to go?’

  He frowned at her. ‘Is there any particular reason?’

  ‘If I were to give you one, would it make any difference?’ Mrs McConnell asked him. Her hand still touching his.

  Eyre shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t really think so.’

  ‘Are you going because of her?’

  ‘You mean Charlotte? Well, partly; but not really.’

  ‘I lost my son, you know,’ said Mrs McConnell. She lowered her head, so that Eyre found himself looking at the top of her mob-cap. There was a tiny silk bow in the middle, like a butterfly.

  Eyre said, ‘Do you still miss him so badly?’

  ‘I haven’t missed him so much since you’ve been here.’

  There was a curious silence between them. No wind rattled at the window, no dogs barked, no moths tapped at the lampshade. It was so silent that they could hear each other breathing, and Eyre was suddenly embarrassed by a little gurgle in his stomach.

  Mrs McConnell looked up again. Her face was glistening with tears. ‘I’m a ridiculous woman,’ she said, ‘but I’ve grown to think of you as my second son, and that’s why I don’t want you to go. I beg you.’

  ‘I’ll come back,’ Eyre told her. ‘I promise you.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Either you’ll die, which is what I’m really afraid of; or else you’ll be acclaimed as a hero. And if you’re acclaimed as a hero, you won’t want to live here any more, not at Mrs McConnell’s boarding-house. No, it’ll be King William Street for you, or North Terrace. Eyre, think of what you’re doing. You have a home here, and you always will.’

  Eyre didn’t know what to say. He tried to smile at her, and he laid his hand on her shoulder, but she wouldn’t be comforted. The tears basted her cheeks, and her mouth was puckered miserably, and she trembled all over as if she were chilled.

  He held her close to him. He felt slightly absurd and extremely uncomfortable, but she clung on to him tightly, quivering from time to time, and there was nothing he could do to break free. He found himself looking over her shoulder at the mug of meat stock on the bureau, with its wisp of steam like an advertisement for Twining’s tea; and at his own face in the mirror where he kept his hair-brushes. A serious, thinnish young man, with well-trimmed side-whiskers, and anxious eyes. His nose was a little too narrow, he always thought; and his mouth too melancholy, especially for somebody who liked to laugh as much as he did. But he thought he looked eminently suitable for Charlotte. Handsome, particular, intelligent. Pity about the nightshirt with the toe-hole in it.

  Mrs McConnell shivered. ‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why. I feel as if the whole world is freezing.

  ‘Would you like to wrap my quilt around you?’ asked Eyre.

  She lifted her head and looked at him. Her face was full of questions. ‘Could I lie with you in your bed for a little while? Could you hold me, and warm me up?’

  Eyre smiled and then immediately stopped smiling. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well.’ Then/It’s not quite—well.’

  ‘Hold me,’ Mrs McConnell pleaded.

  With some difficulty, Eyre manoeuvered himself backwards, and lifted up the quilt, and pushed his legs beneath it. Mrs McConnell climbed in beside him, so that they were both sitting upright side by side in the rigid little brass bed. Eyre cleared his throat, and then awkwardly lifted his right arm, like a chicken-wing, and put it around Mrs McConnell’s plump back. She kissed his cheek; and then smeared away her tears with her fingers, and said, ‘You don’t know how much you mean to me; I promise you that. You don’t have the slightest idea.’

  ‘Well,’ said Eyre, ‘nobody could have wished for a better landlady. Or, indeed, for better care.’

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Mrs McConnell.

  ‘Oh, well, no—of course not. Affection as well as care. And sympathy, too. And consideration. And, well—’

  ‘Yes?’ asked Mrs McConnell, her eyes moist and bright, like newly opened cockles.

  ‘Well, love,’ he admitted.

  There was a pause. She beamed at him beatifically. Then she patted the quilt, and said, ‘Let’s lie down. Hold me. Keep me warm.’

  There was a prolonged bout of jostling and struggling, and at last they managed to position themselves face to face on the bed. Mrs McConnell, with sudden joviality, kissed Eyre on the nose.

  Eyre said,
‘What about the light?’

  ‘Do you mind the light?’ asked Mrs McConnell.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Well, then, let’s leave it.’

  ‘All right,’ said Eyre.

  They continued to lie side by side for several minutes. The meat stock on the bureau grew slowly cooler and steam no longer rose from the rim of the mug. Far away, out in the darkness, a night parrot cackled; and the wind began to rise again and lift the dust along the street, with a soft sifting noise that Eyre had sometimes mistaken for rain. Mrs McConnell said, ‘I’m feeling warmer now, thank goodness.’

  Eyre tried to reposition himself more comfortably, and found that his penis was suddenly resting against Mrs McConnell’s thigh. He gave her the thinnest of smiles, and tried his best to think of something else. He thought about Arthur Mortlock, and Lathrop Lindsay. He thought about his father, and Pilgrim’s Progress, and even the words of John Selden. ‘Pleasures are all alike simply considered in themselves. He that takes pleasure to hear sermons enjoys himself as much as he that hears plays.’

  But all the time his penis wilfully unfolded itself, and rose, and then stiffened so hard that it was pressing against Mrs McConnell’s bulging stomach through the material of her nightdress.

  Eyre was sweating. He stared at Mrs McConnell at very close quarters and Mrs McConnell stared at him. Then suddenly he felt her fingers around him; and slowly she began to caress him, up and down.

  He said nothing. To begin with, he didn’t want to; and then later, he didn’t need to. She rubbed him and rubbed him and he closed his eyes. There was a strong smell of meat stock in the room, and Mrs McConnell was panting lightly, under her breath.

  Suddenly the room seemed to tighten, like the shrinking pupil of an owl’s eye, and then Eyre anointed Mrs McConnell’s hand, in three warm spurts.

  ‘Ssh,’ she said, kissing him again. She didn’t seem to be at all embarrassed. Instead, what she had done for him was as kindly and as matter-of-fact as bathing a cut, or easing a headache with a cold compress.

  After a while, though, Eyre said, ‘We can’t really stay like this all night, can we?’