Corroboree (2 page)

‘
Charlotte!
' Eyre had snapped at her, but the hurt had already been inflicted; and even through years of friendliness and sweetness and shared kisses, it was never undone. When they had lost their son, they had lost their first fresh love, and whatever came afterwards was a compromise, an attempt at living together with as little pain as possible.

Charlotte said, ‘Can you call Molly, and ask her to arrange these flowers for me? I think I'm going to take a bath.'

‘You're not tired, are you?' Eyre asked her. ‘I mean, not too tired?'

‘For tonight's dinner? Hmh! I think I'll be able to manage it.'

‘Wear the white,' Eyre told her.

The white?'

‘I just want you to.'

‘I don't know,' said Charlotte. Her eyes were so wide, her hair was so blonde; but somehow behind all that beauty there was nothing at all. Looking into Charlotte was like looking behind a magic-lantern screen; all you could see was the same picture you had seen on the front of the screen, in reverse.

Eyre touched Netty's shoulder. ‘I think I'll take a bath, too. It's been so damned hot today.'

Charlotte stood up, with a rustle of skirts. But at that moment, there was shouting from outside, in the garden. Whoops, and cries, and someone saying, ‘Biranga! They brought Biranga!'

Eyre was out of his chair immediately. He pulled aside the lace curtains and hurried out into the hot sunshine, followed by Netty. Charlotte called, ‘Netty! Your bonnet!' but Netty took no notice.

Eyre strode across the lawns. His shadow followed him like the scissor-man in
Struwwelpeter
. A party of seven or
eight blackfellows had come to the front gate of his house, and were standing there, calling and clapping. He saw one of his principal helpers, Wawayran, and shouted out, ‘Wawayran! What's going on?'

They brought him in, sir! They brought in Biranga!'

Eyre pushed the Aborigines aside, and looked down at the ground. Lying in the dust, on a crumpled blanket that had obviously been used to carry him for several miles, was the blood-caked body of a young man. He was naked, except for a twisted string around his waist, and his chest and shoulders were patterned with decorative scars. His face was white with pipe-clay, although part of it had flaked off, and some of it was crusted with blood. It looked as if the man had been savagely beaten around the head and shoulders, and then speared in the stomach.

‘Who killed this man?' asked Eyre.

‘I did, sir,' said one of the Aborigines, quietly. He was a tall, stooped fellow, dressed in European clothes, a well-patched white shirt and drooping khaki trousers. ‘I was looking after the sheep for Mr Mullett, sir, and I saw him by the fence. I knew he was Biranga, sir, because he was so white, sir, just like you said, just like a ghost.'

Eyre knelt down beside the body and lifted its limp, disjointed wrist.

‘What was he doing by the fence?'

The Aborigine shook his head. ‘Just standing, sir; just staring.'

‘Was he alone?'

There were five, six more, sir; but they ran off. I think towards Nunjikompita.'

Eyre was silent for a long time. Then he said to Wawayran, ‘Fetch me a rag, soaked in water.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Eyre stood up, and turned, and frowned against the sunlight. Charlotte was waiting on the verandah, one hand slightly raised as if she were about to call out to him. Netty was a step or two behind her. They could have been posing
for a daguerreotype of
Two Ladies At Moorundie, 1861
. One more faded colonial record.

Charlotte called, in a high-pitched voice, ‘Is it Biranga?'

‘I think so,' Eyre replied.

There was a short pause, and then Charlotte said, ‘Is he quite dead?'

‘Yes,' Eyre told her.

Ten pounds bounty, sir,' said the Aborigine who had killed him.

‘You speared him,' Eyre remarked. It was almost an accusation.

‘Only to make sure, sir. First of all I hit him with my club.'

‘Well, so I see.'

‘He said nothing, sir. But I couldn't trust him. He didn't even put up his hand to save himself.'

Eyre thoughtfully put his hand over his mouth, and looked down at Biranga's battered body. Biranga had been a fugitive from the South Australian police for nearly six years now, ever since the trouble over at Broughton, when two Aborigines had been shot by white farmers as a vigilante punishment for rape and murder. Four days later the farmers had been speared to death themselves by Biranga and several other tribesmen, including Jacky Monday and a boy called Dencil.

Eyre had himself put up the offer of £10 for Biranga's capture, dead or alive. Eyre was fair and considerate when it came to dealing with the tribesmen of the Murray River district; but also firm. Some of the blackfellows called him ‘Take-No-Nonsense' after one of his own favourite phrases.

Biranga, however, had successfully eluded Eyre and his constables, until today. He had been seen scores of times, although the majority of sightings had been very questionable, since a shilling was paid for each report, and most of the Aborigines around Moorundie would have sworn blind that they had seen a real live Bunyip for a penny, and a herd of Bunyips for twopence. Biranga had also been blamed for almost every unexplained theft or act of
vandalism for over four years. Eyre's black trackers would make a desultory search in the bush whenever something went missing, and then come back to say, ‘Biranga took it. That's what we heard.' If Biranga had really been as industrious a larcenist as the Moorundie blackfellows tried to suggest, then he would have been walking around the bush with beehives, rifles, sheets of corrugated iron, and scores of blankets.

Some of the blackfellows had said that Biranga was a ghost, because of his unusually pale skin. Captain Billington had suggested that he might be an albino. Wawayran had declared that he was a real phantom. But everybody agreed that he had to be caught. It was unsettling for all of the civilised Aborigines who lived on the missions, or as servants in European homes, if a wild black tribesman was running free, doing whatever he pleased, and cocking a snook at the white authorities.

Governor McConnell had written to Eyre and added dryly, ‘I expect you to be able to report within a few weeks that you have been able to apprehend the native they call the Ghost of Emu Downs, the fellow Biranga.'

The Ghost of Emu Downs, thought Eyre, as he looked down at Biranga's broken body. Some ghost. Wawayran came up with a wet rag, and Eyre took it, and knelt down again, and began carefully to wipe away the pipe-clay that encrusted the dead Biranga's forehead and cheeks.

The face that appeared through the smeary clay was startlingly calm, as if the man had died peacefully and without fear, in spite of his terrible injuries.

It was also an unusually cultured-looking face, almost European, although the forehead and the cheeks were decorated with welts and scars, marks which Eyre recognised as those of a warrior of the Wirangu. Eyre hesitated for a moment, and then peeled back one of the man's eyelids with his thumb. The irises were brown; although not that reddish-brown which distinguished the eyes of so many Aborigines. Carefully, Eyre pushed the eyelid back.
He was not squeamish about touching dead men: he had touched so many, and some he had embraced.

He suddenly became aware that Charlotte was standing close behind him, looking down at the body.

‘Charlotte,' he said, ‘this is not a place for you.' But there was very little hint of admonition in his voice. He knew that she had to look; that she would not be satisfied until she did.

Charlotte said quietly, ‘He could almost be a white man.'

‘Just pale, my dear. Some of them are. Sometimes it's caused by disease. Poor food, that kind of thing. I've seen some Aborigines who looked like snowmen.'

‘Snowmen,' Charlotte whispered.

Eyre stood up. ‘Come away now,' he said. There's nothing to be done. I'll have to make a report to the governor; and perhaps a note to Captain Billington, too.'

Charlotte stayed where she was, the warm wind blowing the hem of her cream-coloured dress into curls. ‘Do you think—?' she began. But then she stopped herself, because she had asked the same question already in her mind, and so many times before, and the answer had always been the same: that she would never know. The desert does something to a child. It makes a child its own; as do the strange people who walk the desert asking neither for food nor for water; except what they themselves can discover from the ground.

Eyre had explained that to Charlotte time and time again, in different ways, perhaps to prepare her for this very moment.

She turned and looked at him, and there were so many anguished questions in her eyes that he had to look away—at the lawns, the kangaroos in the distance—at anything that would relieve him from the pain which she was using like a goad—forcing him to face up again and again to the most terrible secret of his whole life.

‘It's not possible,' he said. Then he reached out his hand, and said, ‘Come on. Come away. There's no profit to be had from staying here.'

‘I always thought—' she blurted; and then she took a breath, and controlled herself, saying in a wavery voice, ‘I always thought that he might have survived somehow, and been taken care of. I mean—why else would they have taken him? Except for money perhaps, and they never asked for that. I always imagined that he might have grown up amongst them; and lived a happy life, for all that had happened. Even Aborigines can be happy, can't they, Eyre? You know them better than I do. The men, I mean. They
can
be happy, can't they?'

‘Yes,' said Eyre.

He took her sleeve, but she twisted away from him, and looked down again at the body lying in the lawn.

‘He looks so contented,' she said. ‘They killed him, and yet he looks so peaceful. As if he were at home, at last.'

Eyre frowned towards the Aborigine who had brought Biranga in; and thought of what he had said. ‘
He didn't even put up his hand to save himself. He was just standing, sir; just staring.
'

He said to Wawayran, ‘Make sure this fellow gets buried; soon as you like.'

‘Yes, sir.' Then, ‘Please, sir?'

‘What is it?'

‘Well, sir, the burial, sir. Christian or Wirangu, sir?'

‘This man's a Wirangu, isn't he?'

Wawayran didn't answer at first, but stared at Eyre in a peculiar way.

‘He's a Wirangu?' Eyre repeated, sharply.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Well, then, give him a Wirangu burial.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Charlotte had already returned to the house. Eyre stood on the lawn for a moment, undecided about what he should do next. Before he could turn away, though, one of the black boys came towards him with his hand held out, and said, ‘Mr Walker, sir, this was found in Biranga's bag.'

Eyre peered at it, and then picked it up. It was a fragment of stone, carved and painted with patterns.

This is nothing unusual,' he said. ‘It is only a spiritstone.'

‘But what it says, sir.'

‘What do you mean?'

The boy pointed to the patterns and the pictures. The stone says, this is the mana stone which will be carried by the one spirit who comes back from the world beyond the setting sun; and by this stone you will know that it is truly him.'

Eyre turned the stone over and over in his hand.

‘Yes,' he said, at last. ‘I saw something like this before, once upon a time.'

‘Well, sir, if Biranga was carrying the stone, do you think that was the spirit who come back from the world beyond the setting sun?'

Eyre looked at the boy, and then laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘Do you believe in spirits coming back from the land beyond the setting sun?'

The boy hesitated, and then said/No sir.'

‘No, sir,' Eyre repeated. Then, ‘Neither do I.'

And the time will come when a dead spirit visits the earth from the place beyond the setting sun, so that he may see again how beautiful it was.

Many will be frightened by the spirit's white face; but he will be befriended by a simple boy, who will guide him through the world.

In return for this kindness, the spirit will try to teach the boy the magical ways of those who have passed into the sunset.

However, he will forget that the boy is only mortal, and in trying to teach the boy how to fly like a spirit, he will cause the boy to drop from the mountain called Wongyarra, and die.

And the spirit in his grief and remorse will seek out the cleverest of all clever-men, and will give him the magical knowledge of the dead; so that the clever-man may pass the knowledge on to every tribe; and to every tribesman.

And in this way the grief of the spirit will be assuaged; and the tribes of Australia will be invincible in their magical knowledge against men and devils and anyone who wishes them harm.

And this will be the beginning of an age that is greater and more heroic than the Dreaming.

— Nyungar myth, first recorded by J.
Morgan in Perth, 1833, from an
account by the Aboriginal Galliput

There was an extraordinary commotion at the Lindsay house when he arrived there on his bicycle. Mrs McMurtry the cook was standing on the front lawn screaming shrilly; while upstairs the sash-windows were banged open and then banged shut again; and angry voices came first from the west bedroom and then from the east; and footsteps cantered up and down stairs; and doors slammed in deafening salvoes. Yanluga the Aborigine groom scampered out of the front porch with his hair in a fright crying, ‘Not me, sir! No, sir! Not me, sir!' and rushed through the wattle bushes which bordered the garden, like a panicky kangaroo with greyhounds snapping at his tail.

Eyre propped his bicycle against a hawthorn tree and approached the house cautiously. Mrs McMurtry had stopped screaming now and had flung up her apron over her face, letting out an occasional anguished ‘
moooo
', as if she were a shorthorn which urgently needed milking. The front door of the house remained ajar, and inside Eyre could just see the bright reflection from the waxed cedar flooring, and the elegant curve of the white-painted banisters. Somewhere upstairs, a gale of a voice bellowed, ‘You'll do what I tell you, my lady! You'll do whatever I demand!'