Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  Mr Chatto paused for a moment, and systematically clicked his knuckles. Then he said, ‘Very well, if it’s proof that you want,’ and walked around Eyre’s horse until he was standing close to Arthur. Arthur peered down at him through his tiny pebble glasses, and all he could see was a small curved figure with a looming head and a curled-up body, like a sinister sprouting bean. His horse shifted from one foot to the other, sensing Arthur’s agitation.

  Mr Chatto reached up and held the horse’s throatlatch; and crooned a few words to it which settled it down. ‘Shoosha, shoosha.’ Then he looked up at Arthur, and said, ‘You and I have no need of this pretence, do we, Mr Mortlock?’

  Arthur said nothing, but noisily cleared his throat, as if it were full of dried peas.

  ‘You are Mr Arthur Mortlock, late of Macquarie Harbour?’ asked Mr Chatto.

  ‘No, mate, I’m not,’ Arthur managed to croak.

  ‘Then forgive me, who are you? Surely you can’t really be this gentleman’s cousin. This gentleman, if you will pardon me for being so blunt, is a gentleman. He speaks like a gentleman, and bears himself like a gentleman; wheras you sir have the sound of the East End about you; a vulgar voice; and a ruffian’s demeanour. If you’ll forgive me, of course.’

  Eyre said, ‘Captain Sturt, I must protest about this.’

  Sturt glanced up at him sharply, and said, ‘I don’t think you have any real justification for protesting, do you, Mr Walker? It was your idea that Mr Ransome should be questioned, after all; and I for one am interested to see how he answers.’

  Eyre replaced his hat, and sat silent and uncomfortable on his fidgeting horse, sweating with the morning heat and with the fear that all of them were now at risk of arrest and imprisonment. Their prospects had not been helped at all by the way in which Captain Sturt had embarrassed Colonel Gawler in front of a large crowd of eminent Adelaide citizens.

  Mr Chatto said to Arthur, ‘Which ship did you come out on?’

  ‘The Beaumonde, three weeks since.’

  ‘The Beaumonde sailed from Portsmouth, did she not?’

  ‘No, friend, she didn’t. She sailed from Tilbury on the four o’clock tide on 2 March; which was a Monday.’

  ‘Her master?’

  ‘Captain Hoskins.’

  Mr Chatto hesitated, and then he asked, ‘Where did you live, in London?’

  ‘Sixty-one Sumner’s Rents.’

  ‘And explain to us how you could be a relative of Mr Walker’s.’

  For the first time, Arthur looked across at Eyre, although his face was white and set, like an unpainted plaster death-mask, and his eyes were swollen from wearing Mrs McConnell’s spare spectacles for too long. He said, without looking down at Mr Chatto, ‘It’s simple enough, friend. Mr Walker’s father had an adopted brother, who ran away from home when he was ten, and made his way in London as a link-boy, and then as a brewer’s man.’

  ‘And your trade, Mr Ransome?’

  ‘A little of several. Stevedore, porter, wherryman. Anything to do with the water, or the docks.’

  Mr Chatto didn’t seem to be able to think of any more questions; at least not questions that would catch Arthur out. He turned around, and cracked the knuckles of both hands; and then he walked back towards his colleague, Mr Rose. Eyre suddenly began to think that they had got away with it after all, and that last night’s slow and painful coaching, hours of facts about the Beaumonde, and about childhood days in Derbyshire, and about Eyre’s appeal to ‘Martin’ to come out and join him in Australia, might all have been worthwhile.

  Captain Sturt said, in a brittle tone, ‘That all seems to be satisfactory, Colonel. Do you think we might now get on?’

  Colonel Gawler looked at Sturt dubiously, and then at Mr Chatto. But Mr Chatto had been whispering in the ear of Mr Rose, and Mr Rose had been whispering in the ear of Mr Chatto; and after a minute or two Mr Chatto stood up straight and tugged at his cuffs and said to Arthur in a clear voice, ‘Would you have any objections to showing us your bare back. Mr Ransome? Just to make sure that you’re not wearing the red shirt?’

  Eyre wheeled his horse around. ‘This is quite outrageous!’ he shouted. ‘Mr Ransome is my cousin! Captain Sturt! I won’t allow him to be subjected to these indignities! He may not speak as correctly as you and I, but he is a British subject, and a loyal servant of Her Majesty, and a Christian, and he has never committed any act of any kind that could possibly justify this manner of treatment!’

  But Captain Sturt knew why Mr Chatto had asked to see Arthur’s back. Arthur had been at Macquarie Harbour, and there was scarcely a single convict who had been imprisoned there who would have escaped the marks of the lash. Even the most docile of prisoners would have suffered floggings for talking, or shirking work, or singing, or sodomy.

  ‘I’m afraid I have to say that Mr Chatto is within his rights, Mr Walker,’ he said. To examine a man’s back is quite an accepted and acceptable way of establishing what you might call his legal credentials. Mr Ransome, do you think you would be so kind?’

  There was nothing that Eyre could say; because in approving the inspection of Arthur’s back, Captain Sturt had actually declared his belief that Eyre was telling the truth, and that Arthur really was his rough-cut cousin from Clerkenwell. The trouble was, when Arthur’s scars were revealed for everyone to see, Sturt would be fifty times more embarrassed and wrathful than Colonel Gawler had been and Eyre and his companions could expect very little in the way of leniency. To have broken the law was one thing; to have made a public mockery of Australia’s greatest explorer was quite another. Eyre backed his horse towards Christopher, and said, out of the side of his mouth, ‘Do you think we might make a run for it?’

  Christopher was pallid, and there was a coronet of sweat on his forehead. ‘With all these packs on our horses? And all those peppery young dragoons around? They’d catch us up and cut us down before you could say “penitentiary”.’ He paused, and wiped away the sweat from his face with his scarf. ‘Damn it, Eyre,’ he said, ‘I told you this business with Mortlock would get us into trouble. I damn well told you.’

  Arthur slowly climbed down from his horse, and removed his hat. An expectant, gossipy hush fell over the crowd of sightseers, and many of them shuffled nearer to get a better view. Captain Sturt folded his arms and looked handsome and stern; Colonel Gawler kept making impatient faces and planting his hands on his hips and blowing out his cheeks.

  Arthur hung his kangaroo-skin hat on to his saddle-pommel. To Eyre’s surprise, his scalp was no longer prickly but completely bald. But with an expression of complete resignation, Arthur took off his leather satchel, and his water flask, and unbuttoned his bush-jacket and took that off, too.

  Mr Chatto approached him with the gliding self-satisfaction of a white-bellied shark that can smell blood in the water. ‘That’s an interesting style of haircut you have, Mr Ransome. Now, where would a man get himself a haircut like that?’

  Arthur stared at him with pebbly little eyes. ‘Ringworm Hall, mate, that’s where.’ He said it so quietly that few people in the crowd could hear him, but those that did let out a chuckle, and somebody said, ‘Let the gentleman be!’ and ‘here’s for the expedition, lads!’

  Arthur now turned his back on Mr Chatto, and reached around behind him to tug the tail of his shirt out of his belt. Mr Chatto cracked his knuckles in anticipation, and smiled across at Mr Rose. For his part, Mr Rose had now released the bridle of Eyre’s horse, and had walked around to cover Arthur’s only way of escape, should he try to run.

  Without any hesitation, however, Arthur hiked up the back of his shirt as far as he could, and revealed a brown, slightly blotchy back; but certainly not a back that bore any scars from flogging.

  ‘Is that enough for you, friend?’ he said roughly. ‘Are you satisfied now? Or do you want to inspect me teeth, to see if there’s any junk caught between them?’

  That was a provocative, almost dangerous challenge. Few Englishmen who had never served time in a penal
settlement would have known that the principal item of diet there was salted beef, either seething with maggots, or cured to the consistency of old saddle-leather, and that the common name for this delicacy was ‘junk’.

  But now Captain Sturt stepped forward, and took Mr Chatto almost rudely by the arm.

  ‘I think this gentleman has made his point, sir, and clearly established his innocence. Now I require you to leave him be; and let this expedition be on its way.’

  Mr Chatto stared at Sturt with undisguised horror. ‘Captain!’ he protested, in a high voice.

  ‘I have seen and heard enough, thank you,’ insisted Sturt. ‘George, will you be kind enough to tell these fellows to be on their way?’

  Colonel Gawler humphed, and wuffled, and flapped his hand at Mr Chatto to clear off. There was a burst of applause in the crowd as Arthur tucked in his shirt, and buttoned up his bush-jacket; and at last gave everyone a sweeping bow.

  ‘I know this man to be Arthur Mortlock!’ Mr Chatto kept on. ‘I can produce witnesses who will identify him quite positively!’

  ‘Be off, for goodness’ sake,’ said the disgruntled Colonel Gawler.

  ‘You cannot let him go!’ shrilled Mr Chatto.

  There was more laughter, and cheering, and the brass quintet began to play King William’s March in double-time, and Mr Chatto and Mr Rose both had to retreat from the dust and the jostling spectators and the rearing pack horses. Arthur climbed back into his saddle, and lifted his hat as if he were King William himself. More firecrackers went off; more hats flew into the air; and then Captain Sturt cried out to Eyre, ‘God speed, Mr Walker! God speed!’ and there was a general cheer, and shouts of ‘God be with you!’

  With a sudden rush, the expedition was off, and trotting down the wide, rutted street. Everybody followed: dragoons, children, carriages, and dogs. Eyre and Joolonga rode side by side at the front, Christopher and Arthur a few steps behind, with Midgegooroo and Weeip keeping the horses and the mule in order. The noise and the dust were tremendous; and for a moment Eyre felt as if he were lost in a blinding golden fog, with the drumming of mysterious war-parties all around him. It was that strange sense of destiny again: that uniquely Australian feeling that he was living in two different ages simultaneously, both prehistoric and modern. A gig rattled up beside him, its young driver lifting his hat and calling ‘The very best to you, sir!’ and then there were more cheers, and more laughter, and the dogs yipped and barked and ran between the horses’ trotting hooves.

  They had crossed the river, and almost reached the northern outskirts of Adelaide, and most of their enthusiastic followers had already dropped back, when Eyre saw somebody waving with a handkerchief from a sugar-gum grove off to the left of the track. A girl, dressed in saffron-yellow chiffon, with a yellow-and-white bonnet.

  Joolonga!’ he called. ‘I’ll catch you up!’

  He veered his horse away from the main party, and trotted as quickly as he could towards the grove. Christopher shouted after him, ‘Where are you going?’ but he ignored him. Christopher could see very well where he was going; and while he was prepared to accept Christopher’s affection, he wasn’t prepared to accept his jealousy.

  Under the bluey-green shadow of the gums, Charlotte was waiting for him, accompanied by Captain Henry. He brushed the dust from his clothes with his hat, and dismounted, and Captain Henry came to hold the reins.

  Neither of them said a word. They held each other tightly; and then kissed, deeply and warmly, with all the urgency of a kiss which would have to be remembered for months to come. Eyre breathed in the scent of her skin, the smell of her perfume, and felt her fine tickly hairs against his cheek.

  ‘I couldn’t let you leave without seeing you,’ Charlotte told him. ‘I’ve tried so hard to be stern with you, and yet I can’t be.’

  ‘How’s your father?’ asked Eyre. ‘Is he any better?’

  ‘The doctor still insists that he must rest. He’s taking syrup of squills every day, and mustard poultices, and he’s not permitted fatty foods or fermented liquor, and of course that doesn’t improve his temper. But I pray for him, Eyre. I pray for him most earnestly.’

  Eyre kissed her forehead. ‘In that case, so shall I, if my prayers will do any good at all. And I shall also pray that I shall soon discover everything which I am going out to find, and that I shall be back with you before the New Year.’

  ‘Eyre,’ she pleaded. ‘Love me for ever. I shall always love you.’

  He kissed her one last time, and then he returned to his horse and mounted up. They remained there motionless for a second or two; under the rustling trees; trying to imprint on their minds an impression which would last for all the months of separation which were to come. Then Eyre turned his horse, and trotted off through the crackly bark, and Charlotte turned back to her carriage.

  Captain Henry removed his hat while Charlotte climbed up and seated herself; and when Eyre twisted around in his saddle to look back at them, he thought how much she looked like a girl who had recently been bereaved.

  He caught up with Christopher and the others just as the dragoons were wheeling their horses around and turning back.

  ‘Bring us back a bunyip!’ one of them laughed; and then they spurred their mounts and cantered back towards Adelaide with shouts and cries and more laughter.

  The expedition rode on about a mile further, none of them saying very much, up through the low hilly country-side towards Pooraka. The weather had been dry for the past few days, and the mallee bushes and mulga trees were clinging with dust. Up above them, the sky was ribbed with thin stratospheric cloud, which screened a little of the sun, and gave the morning the appearance of a dull daguerreotype. Their pack-horses snorted and flicked their tails at the teeming grey flies which crawled into their nostrils and around their haunches; and their harnesses clanked and squeaked in an endless rhythm that reminded Eyre of a funeral procession.

  Joolonga said, ‘Advisable to stop here, Mr Walker-sir, to look over all the equipment, and tighten the girths. If we have omitted to take anything important with us, we can at least turn back now to fetch it; and if any girth is loose we can remedy that matter before there are sores.’

  ‘Very well,’ Eyre ageed, and called the expedition to a halt. They dismounted, and drank a mouthful of water each, and strolled around while Joolonga and Midgegooroo inspected their packs and their horses’ bridles. A warm wind, so slight that they could scarcely feel it, flowed against their faces from the direction of the sea.

  Arthur said, ‘You’ll excuse me, gents, if I just adjust my clothing.’

  ‘Pardon?’ asked Christopher; but without any further ado, Arthur took off his satchel again, and tugged off his bush-jacket, and then shook himself out of his shirt.

  Eyre stared at him in fascination. On his back, Arthur was wearing a large square of pale pigskin, from his shoulders to his waist, and right around under his arms, tied across his chest and his stomach with bootlaces. He unfastened it, and peeled it carefully off, and rolled it up as if it were a treasure-map on a parchment.

  ‘I made that for meself not long after I got to Adelaide,’ he said, with a sniff. ‘I wore it for most of the time, for all that it made me sweat like a pig. It stopped my shirts chafing my back, for one thing; and for another thing I knew that the scars from a flogging was what bounty-men always looked for first. I saw a man caught in Sydney that way, when his scars opened and he started to bleed through his shirt.’

  Eyre said, ‘That is quite astonishing. Show it to me.’

  Arthur unrolled the pigskin again. On close inspection, it looked like nothing more than a thin sheet of bacon rind, very dried up, and not very much like human skin at all. But Mr Chatto had been looking for weals, and scars, and the notion that Arthur’s back might have once belonged to a Large White had undoubtedly never occurred to him.

  ‘A man sees what he expects to see,’ Arthur remarked, sagely, and tucked the skin into his leather satchel.

  He was about to pul
l on his shirt again, when Eyre touched his arm. ‘You’ll probably think me morbidly curious,’ said Eyre, ‘but would you show me your back as it really is?’

  Arthur took of the spectacles he had been wearing and folded them up. ‘Are you sure that you want to see it, Mr Walker? It’s not a sight that does much for the appetite.’

  ‘All the same. I want to know what they did to you; and I want to know what kind of a mark they made on you.’

  Arthur shrugged, and said, ‘If that’s what you want.’

  Silently, he turned around. Eyre and Christopher looked at his bare back and neither of them spoke. Eyre felt as if the air had become impossible to breathe, and the sweat ran down the sides of his face and chilled him. He had never known that human flesh could be reduced to such a livid ruin; not purposely, not deliberately, not at all. Arthur’s shoulders were criss-crossed all over with shiny mauve scars, scar upon scar, until the flesh was knotted into ropes and ridges and twisted shapes like umbilical cords. Further down, the flesh had been beaten away from his backbone until only a thin transparent covering of scar-tissue remained, through which his vertebrae could be seen as whitish lumps; and the fattier sides of his back had been cut up into diamond-shaped segments, red and angry and sore with sweat.

  At last, Eyre whispered, ‘Thank you, Arthur,’ and Arthur put on his shirt again, and fastened up his jacket.

  ‘I wasn’t the worst, by no means,’ said Arthur, matter-of-factly. ‘Plenty of lads were killed by flogging, and some were flogged and had salt and vinegar rubbed into their backs. Some couldn’t walk afterwards, and quite a few lost their manhood, if you understand me. They’d flog you for anything at all, at Macquarie Harbour, I can tell you.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know how you managed to bear it,’ said Eyre. He felt deeply shocked. So shocked, in fact, that he didn’t even know if he wanted to continue with this expedition. Why was he galloping off in search of a medicine-man to bury a dead blackfellow according to his tribal rites, when living white men were being so mercilessly punished in the name of Christianity?