Corroboree (6 page)

‘We must
make-believe
that we are married, if my father won't allow us,' she told him, in the same urgent, sleepy voice. ‘If he discovers us, he will probably kill you, and he will most certainly whip me. But we don't mind the danger, do we, my darling lover? The risk is what makes us both so excited!'

Eyre was so aroused now that his britches could hardly contain him. He knelt over Charlotte, and drew the bodice of her dress wide apart, so that both her breasts were exposed to the moonlight. They were high young breasts, very white, well-rounded, and the nipples were as wide and pink as rose-petals stuck to a rainy window.

A night-parrot shrieked startlingly above them; and Eyre lifted his head for a moment in alarm. But then he realised that everything was quiet, and that they were still alone, and he bowed over her breasts, kissing them in quick, complicated patterns, teasing at her nipples with his teeth, pressing the soft flesh against his face.

‘Eyre, I must be asleep; I must be dreaming,' sighed Charlotte, twisting and rustling beneath him, one arm raised so that he could see the pattern of blue veins on her thin white wrist, a single string of pearls around her neck. And all the time there was that needful sibilant whisper of silk, as she rubbed one thigh against the other.

‘You've been sent to me … from heaven,' he murmured, as he kissed her. ‘And I
will
make you my wife … I promise it … one day.'

He reached downwards, and raised the frilly hems of her dress. At that moment, she opened her eyes and stared at him, and said in a high voice, ‘I'm not at all sure what one does.' But Eyre leaned forward again, and brushed his lips against hers, and said, ‘I'll show you.'

‘But do you really
want
to?' she asked.

He smiled. ‘Of all the people in all the world, upside down or right way up, I want to show
you
more than anybody.'

He paused, and then added, ‘In fact, you're the
only
person I want to show.'

His hand caressed her silk-hosed knee, and then her thigh. Bloomers had not yet reached Australia as a universal fashion, and beneath her silk dress and her silk hooped underskirt, Charlotte wore nothing at all. Eyre's hand on her bare hip made her shudder, and when at last he ran his fingers around the curves of her bottom, and touched lightly the slipperiness between her legs, she cried out; a strange suppressed little cry like a shriek.

‘You're safe,' Eyre comforted her. ‘You're quite safe, and you're very beautiful.'

Wide-eyed, she lay back, and allowed him to touch her further; but she was tense now, and less sure of herself. She thought she heard a door banging over by the house, and she half-lifted her head, but Eyre gently pushed her back again, and said, ‘It's nothing. You're safe. Just close your eyes and enjoy yourself.'

She flutteringly closed her eyes for a few seconds. She felt Eyre's fingers stroking her, and the sensation was so intense that she bit her lip. Then she could feel him peeling her sticky lips apart. His fingers were so tender! And then he slid one slowly right inside her; and she felt as if she were a geyser that was beginning to come to the boil, as if heat and bubbles were rising inside her and that they would have to come bursting out. The danger and the excitement and the lewdness of having a man's finger, Eyre's finger, right up inside her, right under her skirts! And she held his wrist tight between her silk-sheathed thighs, gripping him there, wanting to keep him there for ever, wanting him deeper, wanting him so much that it almost gave her backache.

‘Eyre,' she garbled, and she could hardly understand her own voice. ‘Eyre, please, whatever it is, show me, please.'

He knelt astride her. She heard him unbuckling his belt, and his britches buttons being pulled apart with a soft sound like an opening seed-pod. Then he took her hand, her small white uncertain hand, and brought it downwards; urged it downwards; and laid in it a hot thick sceptre of flesh. So hard, so demanding, so impossibly big. And she stared up at him for reassurance, and comfort; but all she saw in his eyes then was an inexplicably glazed look, as if he were somehow suddenly possessed; as if instead of being Eyre he were
all
men, at the moment of taking a woman.

Eyre said, ‘
Now.
' His throat was constricted, and he was shaking. Charlotte clutched him tighter, and tighter still, as if by clutching him so tight she could make him burst, and bring to a finish this strange and suddenly frightening act of passion; and exorcise the devils that had arisen in both of them, tongues and forks and fire, to stoke up their lust.

Eyre shifted his weight forwards, kneeling on the back of her dress, trapping her, and forcing her thighs apart, indecently wide. She released her hold on him, and desperately clutched at the blanket, and at the fragments of loose bark on the ground; and she thrashed her head from side to side in perplexity and fear and mounting desire. What was happening to her? She felt as if she were actually alight. She was going mad! Was this what it was like to go mad? She was burning! But she was chilled, too, sharply: she could feel the chill between her wide-apart thighs, exciting and terrifying at the same time. And Eyre was pushing against her, pushing and pushing, and urging himself into her. Not that! It was far too big! It would kill her, it would split her apart! It was like a huge crimson truncheon!

And then Eyre had fiercely grasped both of her shoulders, and tugged her towards him; so that the enormous crimson truncheon was forced right up between her legs; and she shrieked and shrieked at the top of her voice,
scattering parrots and jacks and galahs all through the trees in a furious explosion of wings and feathers.

A window banged; and then a door. Then they heard somebody shouting in dialect. ‘
Naodaup?
What's the matter?
Unkee
. A woman.
Tyintin
. Stay there.' And then something about searching in the trees—‘
Tuyulawarrin!
'

Eyre was already on his feet, swiftly buttoning up his britches. Charlotte banged at her upraised dress with her fists, as if it were a disobedient puppy that refused to lie down. She was panting, and whimpering, embarrassed at her own panic, and furious at Eyre for allowing her to humiliate herself. ‘You shouldn't have done!' she kept flustering. ‘Eyre, you
shouldn't!
'

Eyre tightened his belt, and then knelt down beside her again. He felt shaky and breathless, and so irritable at having been interrupted right at the very instant of possessing her that his teeth were on edge, as if he had been biting lemons.

Charlotte held on to his sleeve. ‘I told you I didn't know what was supposed to happen,' she persisted. ‘You shouldn't have done it, Eyre! It hurt so much!'

‘You were frightened, that's all,' said Eyre, taking her wrists and trying to coax her on to her feet. ‘It doesn't usually hurt, not like that. Usually, it's the most marvellous thing you can imagine. But you're right. I shouldn't have led you on. Not here; and not tonight.'

‘I just didn't
know,
' Charlotte told him; and now she started to weep.

Eyre heard dogs barking, over by the stable-block. ‘Come on, now,' he said. ‘Your father's let the hounds out. We don't want to be caught here. Is there any way you can get back to your bedroom without him seeing you?'

Charlotte sniffed, and blew her nose on her little lace handkerchief. ‘I think so. Once I get back through the garden gate, I can go along the ha-ha until I reach the kitchen. Then I can go up the back stairs.'

‘Well you'd better hurry in that case,' said Eyre. ‘It sounds as if he's brought out the whole pack. And if they can catch a red kangaroo, they can certainly catch us.'

‘Eyre,' said Charlotte, lifting her face, wet with tears, to kiss him. ‘Eyre, I'm sorry. You must think me so ridiculous.'

He kissed her, and then held her head close to his cheek, his fingers buried in her curls. ‘It's my fault. I love you now and I always will. Now, please, you'd better go.'

The hounds were being led around the side of the house now, yipping and snapping. Eyre took Charlotte's arm and guided her swiftly to the garden gate; where he kissed her one last time before letting her go. She hurried off along by the stringy-bark gums at the end of the lawns, her blue ruffled dress shining pale in the moonlight, a fleeing ghost in a garden of ghostly trees.

Just before she could reach the ha-ha at the far side of the garden, however, and disappear from view; flashing lanterns appeared at the side of the house, and Eyre saw Lathrop's two Aborigine dog-handlers, Utyana and Captain Henry, struggling across the south-east patio with six greyhounds each. The dogs were straining at their leads until their eyes bulged, their claws scratching and skittering at the stone pathways.

‘
Koola! Koola!
' Captain Henry shouted to his dogs, and they snarled and gnashed and writhed against their leads in a froth of hunting-lust. ‘
Koola
' was Aborigine for kangaroo, and these dogs had been trained for two years to chase after kangaroos and bring them down as quickly
and as bloodily as possible. The dogs had to be strong and vicious because the kangaroos were strong and vicious; even the youngest kangaroo could run for miles before the hunt caught up with them, and a fully grown buck could fling a greyhound into the air and break its back. Kangaroos were unnervingly intelligent, too. Last season a big red had caught Lathrop's favourite hound Rocket with its front paws and held it under water at the Nguru water-hole until it had drowned.

Eyre shouted, ‘Charlotte! Hurry!' and Charlotte at last reached the shelter of the ha-ha and began to run towards the house with her skirts raised. But the dog-handlers had already seen her, and must have thought she was an intruder, or even (knowing how superstitious they were) a Koobooboodgery. And now Lathrop himself appeared, in his flapping nightshirt, carrying a lantern in one hand and a musket in the other.

Captain Henry must have asked for permission to let the dogs loose; for Lathrop nodded, and in the next instant six of the greyhounds were streaking across the moonlit grass in sudden silence; pale shadows so quick that Eyre found it difficult to follow them.

He wrenched open the garden gate, and shouted at Lathrop, ‘It's Charlotte! Call them off, Mr Lindsay! It's Charlotte!'

Lathrop stared at him from twenty yards away in complete amazement. ‘Walker?' he demanded, lifting up his lantern. ‘What the blue devil are you doing here?'

‘It's
Charlotte!
' Eyre screamed at him.

‘What?' Lathrop turned, frowned towards the ha-ha, frowned back at Eyre; and then said, ‘Charlotte? What's Charlotte?'

There! For the love of God, call those dogs off!'

It was then that they heard Charlotte scream, and the growling and snapping of the dogs.

Lathrop suddenly understood what was happening, and roared at Captain Henry, ‘Call them off, man! Call them off! They'll kill her!'

Captain Henry held his hands on top of his head in complete misery. ‘Can't do it, sir. Won't come now, sir. Not until they bring the
pipi
, sir.'

Eyre felt cold. He knew what
pipi
meant—entrails. Without thinking of anything at all, he began to run across the lawn towards the ha-ha, his vision a jumble of grass, gum-trees, flashes of moonlight. He could hear himself panting as he ran as if somebody else were running close beside him.

He reached the brink of the ha-ha, his shoes skidding on the dry grass. Charlotte had stopped screaming now; and was desperately trying to scramble up the side of the slope, one hand pressed to her face to keep the greyhounds from tearing at her nose and eyes. All six dogs were leaping and snapping and hurling themselves at her like suicidal acrobats. Two of them clung on to her petticoats to drag her down, while the others bit at her arms and her ankles and her bare shoulders.

Eyre roared at the top of his voice, and bounded down the ha-ha and right into the tussle of dogs, shouting, ‘Off! You damned creatures! Get off! Damn you!'

He kicked one dog hard in the ribs, and it screamed like a child. Another went for his trousers, but he seized its hind leg and threw it end-over-end, howling, into a patch of bottlebrushes. But two more dogs launched themselves at his calves, and one of them bit right through into the muscle with an audible crunch of flesh, and the other scrabbled with sharpened claws at his ankles, ripping off skin in ribbons. Eyre shouted out loud, and yet another dog threw itself at his elbow, gripping the bone with relentless jaws and refusing to let go, even when he twisted its ear right around.

He dropped to the grass; first to his knees, then as the dogs went for him again, on to his back. He was too frightened even to cry out; and angry, too, in an extraordinary way.

Captain Henry reached the ha-ha, and managed to beat off two of the hounds with a stick; at least for long enough
for Charlotte to be pulled, crying and bloody, to the safety of the dog-handler's side. But now the rest of the dogs hurled themselves at Eyre with redoubled fury, and one of them bit him right in the cheek, only an inch below his right eye, while two more of them ripped at his arms and his legs.

He thought, Jesus Christ, I'm dead. I'm already dead. These dogs are going to kill me. And his whole world was crowded with snapping and biting and flying saliva and flailing claws.

Quite suddenly, however, he felt the dogs stiffen, and lift their heads. One of them stepped back from him, and then the others followed, and in a moment all six of them changed from snarling beasts into elegant canine statues, standing in the light of the moon quite motionless, noses slightly lifted, as if they had inhaled some rare and indefinable essence that was undetectable by humans but which could instantly turn greyhounds into figures of limestone.