Corroboree (63 page)

He knew that he was beaten. The crowd was so enthusiastic about Eyre; Eyre was Adelaide's darling of the day; and if he were to slam the door in Eyre's face and refuse to forgive him, the consequences for his business and social life would be disastrous, at least for the next few months, if not for very much longer. Adelaide took warmly to its heroes; but treated its villains with unrelenting disfavour and scorn.

Captain Sturt was not even a friend of Lathrop's. In fact, he despised him. But Sturt was anxious not to see an important municipal businessman sent to Coventry; and he was also anxious to seek Eyre's favour too. There was much unfinished business between them, Eyre and Captain Sturt; and Captain Sturt was not particularly relishing
the idea of settling it especially if Eyre was in an uncompromising mood.

Eyre held out his hand, and Lathrop took it. His grip was like cold moulded suet. ‘I accept your apologies,' he said loudly, looking around at the crowd, and attempting a smile. ‘Though God alone knows why,' he muttered, under his breath.

And then, loudly again, ‘I will also consider giving you permission to marry my daughter Charlotte, if she is so disposed. Obviously, we shall need a little time to consider the matter more seriously, away from this… circus.'

The roar that rose from the crowd made the sash-windows rattle in their casements; and two horses threw their riders, leaped over the picket-fence surrounding Lathrop's garden, and bolted down the road. The band played ‘Here Comes the Bride' in double-time, and Charlotte ran down the last few steps of the staircase, and came running out on silk slippers with her arms wide, her blonde curls bouncing and be-ribboned, as deliciously pretty and as small and as soft as ever before, and threw herself with a squeal into Eyre's arms, and hugged him tight, and kissed him, and wept and wept.

‘I thought you were dead!' she cried, ‘Oh, Eyre! My darling! I thought all this time you were dead!'

He held her close to him, feeling her warmth, breathing in her perfume. Then, very slowly, very strongly, he kissed her; until her eyelids trembled and closed, and her little upraised hand started to clench itself involuntarily into a fist.

Behind her, Lathrop snorted in disgust, and loudly blew snuff and phlegm out of his nose with an extra-large handkerchief. Captain Sturt watched with his arms folded and his face quite flinty.

‘Thirty-three cheers for Eyre Walker and for Charlotte Lindsay!' cried one of the narangies. ‘And thirty-three cheers for Captain Sturt and Mr Lathrop Lindsay!'

The crowd cheered and cheered and cheered again; until, defeated and despondent, and very close to angry
tears, Lathrop Lindsay had to turn away and go back inside his house. Eyre stood with Charlotte on the steps, raising his hands again and again, and kissing Charlotte to show the whole of Adelaide how much he loved her.

At last, as the crowd began to disperse, and make their way back towards the river, and to Government House, where George Grey had promised band music and free drinks for everybody, Eyre took Charlotte into the hallway, and held both of her hands.

‘I've asked your father,' he said. ‘Now I want to ask you.'

There were tears in her eyes, but he wouldn't release her hands so that she could wipe them away.

‘Yes,' she whispered. ‘I will.'

They lunched very late, and neither of them were particularly hungry. They ate a little cold mutton and beetroot salad; and shared a bottle of ‘37 claret, which had either travelled badly, or been bad to begin with. The afternoon light filtered through the lace curtains as weakly as the light from half-remembered days gone by; and somehow it made Captain Sturt look even older, and tireder.

‘George said that he's planning a proper municipal reception for next Thursday,' said Captain Sturt. ‘Dancing, tables out on the lawns, even races. I won a three-legged race you know once, when I was in France, with the Army of Occupation. They gave me a goose. Well, that was the prize.'

‘You were telling me about Christopher Willis,' Eyre
reminded him. Captain Sturt seemed to be ready to discuss almost anything at all, except Eyre's expedition.

Sturt sniffed, and helped himself to more wine. ‘Your friend Christopher Willis, yes. From what I gather he acted with considerable fortitude. That's the word. He arrived back here in Adelaide only six days after he had left you out on the salt lake; and he was in very good spirits, though anxious, of course, that you and Mr McConnell should not come to any harm. He set off the very next morning with the boy Weeip and five other blackfellows to leave you those provisions. I gather that he even waited out there for a day, to see if you would appear. But, well, you didn't, and so he came back.'

‘Did he tell you anything about Arthur Mortlock?'

‘Only that he had become grievously sick, and died.'

‘What about Mr Chatto and Mr Rose?'

‘Hm?'

‘Those two bounty-hunters who came looking for Arthur the day we left.'

Captain Sturt shook his head. ‘What about them? They left Adelaide, didn't they? That's the very last that I've heard.'

‘Then nobody's been looking for them?' asked Eyre.

‘Should they have been?'

‘No. But I wondered, that's all. They seemed like very persistent fellows.'

‘Persistence is not always a virtue,' said Captain Sturt.

Eyre looked at him over the rim of his wine-glass, and then said, ‘I hope you're not trying to suggest that I have been unduly persistent.'

‘You were persistent enough to travel all the way from the salt lakes to Albany.'

‘Yes,' Eyre said, warily.

‘An expedition of great heroism. A journey of remarkable courage. An achievement which will no doubt be recognised for generations yet to come.'

Eyre said nothing, but watched Captain Sturt get out of his chair, and walk across to the window with his hands
thrust into his trouser pockets, and the tails of his coat cocked back. Sturt frowned out through the curtains at the muddy prospect of North Terrace, and the gum trees which bordered the Torrens River.

‘Unfortunately,' he said, ‘nothing of what you did was of any practical or commercial use whatsoever. Of course, I dare not say so. Isn't that ironic? I financed an expedition, and sent it off to discover a way through the continent and whatever riches might be there for the taking; and when it failed, with considerable loss of life, and abandonment of irreplaceable equipment, I have to appear to be cheerful about it, and shout ‘huzza' along with the rest of the
hoi polloi
.'

Eyre said, ‘It was scarcely my fault that the terrain was impassable.'

‘You
tell
us that it was impassable.' Captain Sturt retorted. ‘That's what you
say
. But terrain that is impassable for one man may well be quite easily negotiable for another.'

‘Are you trying to suggest that I didn't do my very utmost to find a way through to the inland sea?' Eyre asked him, sharply. Even as he spoke, he could picture in his mind the horses wallowing and struggling up to their chests in grey, glistening mud.

Sturt pouted, and rocked on his heels. ‘I'm only suggesting that my expedition might have been better served by a leader who was less
dogged
, and more astute.'

Eyre leaned forward in his chair, his spine as tense as a whalebone. ‘Captain Sturt, just because a discovery is not to your personal liking; just because it doesn't help to line your purse; that doesn't make it any less of a discovery. My companions and I found out that the land due north of here is nothing but miles and miles of treacherous salt lakes; and that the land to the west of here is treeless desert; both completely unsuitable for the driving of cattle. Now at least we know that there is nothing we can do but cling to the coast of this continent, and raise our livestock
as best we can, and leave the interior to the lizards and the Aborigines.'

‘You didn't even find opals.'

‘We were given the name of a site where opals can be found.'

‘You were given the name of a site where opals can be found!' parroted Captain Sturt. ‘My dear chap, how naive you are! It's astonishing that you weren't killed on the spot, by the first Aborigine you met with a sense of fun. Of course you were given the name of a site where opals can be found! What was it? Bugga Mugga, or Mudgegeerabah? That's eastern Aboriginal for the place of lies.'

He leaned forward and stared right into Eyre's face, his eyes bulging and bloodshot. ‘Could you ever
find
this place, if you were to set out to look for it; or if anyone were to be foolish enough to finance you? Of course not! It's a mirage. An illusion, partly caused by the desert heat; partly by exhaustion. But most of all, it is caused by vanity, irrationality, and an immature impulse to make a hero out of yourself and a fool out of me.'

Eyre stared back at Captain Sturt for a moment or two, and then leaned back in his chair again and folded his arms.

‘You're being more than unjust, Captain Sturt,' he said, as quietly as he could, although his voice was on the very brink of trembling. ‘I personally believe that the discoveries we made were quite considerable, when you think how small our party was, how inexperienced, and how hastily prepared; not to mention the fact that our sponsors sent us off in complete ignorance of the mortal dangers that we would eventually have to face; if and when we achieved our goal.'

Sturt frowned at him. ‘Mortal dangers?
What
mortal dangers? What are you trying to imply?'

‘You knew about the legend of the
djanga
, the spirit returned from the dead.'

‘What?'

‘You know what a
djanga
is, surely; you know enough about Aboriginal mythology by now.'

‘Well, yes of course I do,' blustered Sturt, ‘but—'

‘Captain Henry told Joolonga that I was the
djanga
, and Joolonga told you.'

‘My dear Eyre—'

‘Is there any use in denying it?' Eyre snapped at him. ‘Well,
is
there? I know everything about it; why and how. Joolonga told you how long the Aborigines have been looking forward to the appearance of the
djanga
, for more centuries than anyone can count. And he also told you how desperate their prayers have become ever since the white people began to trample over the sacred places, and how they have been hoping against hope that the legend should at last come true. A saviour will come, and give us the magical knowledge, and set us free from the white man! And how callously you traded on that belief, didn't you? and on my life; and the lives of all my companions. Not for glory, though, or patriotism. Not for any greater purpose than to balance the books of South Australia to the satisfaction of the London Commissioners, and to make sure that you yourself did not become a candidate for the green bonnet of bankruptcy.'

Captain Sturt stood with his mouth ajar. His face was the colour of fresh calves'-liver.

Eyre said, in a more controlled voice, ‘I have not yet been able to discover whether you knew that Yonguldye would murder us all; or, to be fair, whether Yonguldye was really thinking of murdering us or not. There was a misunderstanding of language; whether to eat a man's brains means literally to eat his brains, or whether it simply means to acquire all the knowledge within him. But when I was out at Yarrakinna, surrounded by hundreds of Aborigine warriors with spears and knives and clubs, I didn't see much wisdom in waiting to find out. Nor did those poor souls who were with me.'

Captain Sturt was silent for a very long time, his hands resting on the cresting-rail of one of his dining-room chairs.
At last, gravely, he said, ‘I consider your accusation to be completely fantastic, Eyre, and unreservedly malicious. Why you wish to believe such things of me, I cannot think. All I can tell you is that I know nothing whatsoever of the legends of which you speak; and that certainly I never would have been foolish or irrational enough to send you off on an expedition which I myself financed, knowing that its success depended on nothing more than Aborigine superstition.'

He stared at Eyre and his eyes were chilly and displeased.

‘I knew that it was important to you to seek an Aborigine medicine-man in order that the remains of your young black friend should be properly interred. And, yes, I admit that to some extent I used you. But I sought only to harness your spiritual mission to assist my temporal explorations; so that both of us would profit in our different ways. What you have suggested now is that I deliberately offered your life to the Aborigines in return for profit. Well, the notion is beneath contempt. Contemptible! You have hurt me, Eyre, deeply.'

Eyre took a sip of wine and then set his glass back on the table. ‘Well,' he said, ‘I'm sorry you're hurt. But I have to say that Joolonga was quite specific.'

‘Joolonga? You're prepared to take the word of that rogue against mine? Joolonga was irrational; his mind wandered. Drink,
pitjuri
, drugs. He was always trying to pretend that he had magical powers; always threatening to strike people dead and nonsense like that. I'll say that he was a marvellous tracker. One of the best in the whole of South Australia. But up here,' Captain Sturt tapped his forehead, ‘Joolonga didn't know whether he was white or black, real or imaginary, coming or going.'

Eyre said, ‘Of course he's conveniently dead now, and can't support me.'

‘He wouldn't, even if he weren't. The man was a storyteller; a joker; he was probably trying to frighten you, that
was all, a novice out in the wilds. It was regrettable to say the least that you took him so seriously.'

‘I'll tell you how seriously I took him, Captain Sturt. I killed him.'

Captain Sturt smiled, and slapped Eyre on the shoulder. Then serve him right, really, wouldn't you say? Poetic justice.'