Corroboree (66 page)

‘You will live beyond the stars
,

You will live in the land of the moons
.

Happiness and friendship will always be yours
.

And the laughter of those you left behind will always rise to you
.'

At last, he left the graveside, and walked back along the path which would lead him to Adelaide. The rain began again, suddenly: a scattering of silver droplets on the dark earth track. The coinage of sadness, the currency of repentance, and the specie of tears.

He had booked a room at Coppius' Hotel; and during the early evening he moved his belongings there from Mrs Crane's notions shop. By half-past-six he was both tired and hungry, and thinking of dinner at the Rundle Street Restaurant. But, as he undressed to take a bath, he remembered what Weeip had said, about going out to Christopher's house at seven o' clock.

He was undecided. If he were to dress again, and risk missing his dinner, he could probably get out to the racecourse and back. But the Rundle Street Restaurant closed early; as most restaurants did; and if he came back very late, he would be lucky to get even a bowlful of warmed-up broth.

He looked at himself in the cheval-glass in the corner of his hotel-room. Well, he thought, there's no point in beating about the bushes; do you want dinner or do you want to know who murdered Arthur Mortlock? The thin figure in the long white combination underwear stared back at him seriously. It looked like a figure that could do with dinner. But then he had never taken very much notice of what images in mirrors had to say for themselves.

A chilly wind had got up as he bicycled out towards the racetrack again. It was prematurely dark now; and there were random spots of rain flying in the air. He hoped very much that he wouldn't meet up with a drunken Aborigine, or one of the cosh boys who occasionally attacked evening travellers. His journey had left him nearly two stones lighter than when he had set out, and he was still decidedly weak. Captain Sturt had called him ‘all horns and hide', which was how local farmers described a starved yearling.

At last he reached the racecourse, and left his bicycle on the ground, its front wheel still spinning. He could see the lamplight shining through the orange calico blinds of Christopher's house from quite a long way away, silhouetting the branches of the grove of gums in which it was set. The rain clattered harder against the bushes, and something rustled and jumped; a bird or a joey or a dingo
pup. Behind the mountains, the sky was oddly light, where the rainclouds had begun to clear, but here it was still dark and still furious, and the rain was sweeping down even more noisily. Wet and hungry, his collar turned up, Eyre made his way around to the back of Christopher's cottage, and trod as stealthily as he could through the unkempt garden, lifting his feet up like a performing pony so that he wouldn't trip up in the weeds.

He reached the side of the house, and leaned against it, breathing hard. More rain poured down, and the guttering at the back began to splatter into the rain-barrel. Eyre took out his watch and peered at it by a thin crack of light which penetrated the cottage's blinds. Two minutes to seven o' clock. He had only just got here in time; although so far he was at a loss to see how he was going to be able to look inside the house, with every single blind drawn. His stomach gurgled, and he was beginning dearly to wish that he had never come. Let Arthur's death remain a mystery, he thought. So much of what had happened in the outback had been without reason or explanation; as if it were a mysterious land with physical laws of its own. How many times had explorers returned baffled from Australia's interior? It was a continent which defied normal interpretation, a land of superstition and inverted logic. Perhaps Arthur had done no more than fall victim to that logic, and a destiny which this upside-down country had been keeping in store for him ever since he was born.

It was seven o' clock. Eyre could hear talking inside the house, and the shuffling of feet on the boarded floors. But another five minutes passed, and still the blinds remained tightly closed. He decided to give Weeip only two or three minutes more, and then leave. The rain had become steady now, steady and cold, and he was shivering.

He was just about to move, however, when the blind closest to him was lifted by an inch, and a pair of dark eyes peeped out into the night. It was Weeip. Eyre waved his hand quickly, and Weeip blinked to show that he had seen him. Then he disappeared from the window and
went back into the middle of the room; but left the blind slightly raised.

Eyre was tall, but not quite tall enough to reach the window. He felt around in the long wet grass, and at last found a wooden fruit-crate which had been left beside the rain-barrel. He upended it, and cautiously stepped up, gripping the window-sill so that he didn't overbalance backwards.

The window was partly steamed up, but Eyre could still see clearly into the room. It was a bathroom, very spartan, with a bare floor and a rag rug, and an old-fashioned zinc tub, the kind of bath in which Marat had been assassinated. Beside the bath was a tall enamelled jug, full of freshly steaming water. On the far wall was a crucified Christ, in bronze.

Weeip was kneeling beside the bath, naked. His penis was erect. He had filled the bath with hot water and now he was arranging the soap and the towels. Almost immediately, as Eyre watched, Christopher walked in, wrapped in a striped Indian robe, maroon and green, the kind which travellers were offered for sale whenever their ships docked at Trivandrum or Colombo. He said something to Weeip, touching the boy's shoulder, and then walked across the room and back again. At length he leaned over, testing the water in the tub, and smiled. Weeip stood up, and Christopher reached down with his wet hand and clasped his erection, rubbing it up and down two or three times and then laughing when the boy shivered.

Now Christopher loosened the tie around his waist, still smiling. He was facing Eyre directly, and Eyre flinched, certain that Christopher would notice his eyes looking in at the bathroom window. But Christopher must have had his mind on his youthful lover alone; for he smiled, and then laughed, and moved away out of Eyre's line of sight. Weeip stood up, and followed him, and then reappeared again, tugging at Christopher's sleeve. It was obvious that he was trying to get his master to stand in front of the window.

But what am I supposed to see? Eyre asked himself. Two catamites bathing each other? Is that all? And what can this possibly have to do with Arthur Mortlock? But he could see Weeip glancing towards the window making sure that he was still there; and frowning; and so he decided to stay for just a minute or two longer.

Now Weeip suddenly started to dance around, and tease Christopher, dodging out of reach whenever Christopher put out a hand. Christopher at last held his wrist, and stepped back into sight. Weeip quietened down, and approached his master submissively, and put his arms around his waist. Christopher kissed the boy's curly head, and must have said something endearing, for Weeip nodded.

At last, Weeip managed to draw Christopher around so that his back was towards the window. Eyre saw Weeip's hands loosening Christopher's robe, and the tie fall to the floor. Then Weeip slowly tugged the robe away from Christopher's shoulders, and drew it down to his waist.

Eyre had been unsettled enough by the sight of Weeip and Christopher kissing and embracing; but what was now revealed was a hundred times more horrifying.

He stood in the rain on that lopsided fruit-box, his mouth open in shock. Then he stepped back, losing his footing for a moment in the overgrown garden; stumbling; but recovering himself enough to return the box to where he had found it; and to make off through the gum-grove in the same high-stepping way he had come.

He found his bicycle and awkwardly wiped the rain off the saddle, but he was too dumbfounded to ride it. Instead he wheeled it back towards Adelaide; as the evening lightness at last broke through, and the puddly ruts in the track turned to quicksilver.

Weeip must adore his master; both adore and respect him; and do anything to keep him safe. Otherwise he would never have arranged for Eyre to see what he had seen tonight. It had been an extraordinary act of loyalty on Weeip's part; and more than that, a supreme act of
love; although Eyre found acts of love between men to be almost as mysterious as the inland sea. It had been an act of trust in Eyre, too, a trust that had first been forged out in the desert.

It was quite clear to Eyre now that it was Christopher who had killed Arthur Mortlock; and that poor Joolonga had been quite mistaken in thinking that he had done it with his pointing-bone. Joolonga had probably pointed his bone at every one of them, but had convinced himself when Arthur had begun to die that it was Arthur alone who was really guilty; and that it was Arthur alone who was being sacrificed to Ngurunderi.

Eyre also knew that he would do nothing further. He would forget Arthur and as far as possible he would forget Christopher. Christopher had already been punished enough for one lifetime; and it could only have been desperation that had made him take such a risk.

Eyre cursed himself for not having noticed what was going on during the course of the expedition. He had realised that Arthur and Christopher had never got on particularly well; but if only he had begun to understand why.

For when he had looked in at the bathroom window, Eyre had seen that Christopher's bare back was scarred with the criss-cross weals and twisted tissues that identified an ex-convict. Christopher must have been a ticket of-leave man, like Arthur; perhaps they had even been imprisoned together at Macquarie Harbour, and Arthur, after a while, had recognised him. Perhaps Arthur had simply guessed from one or two words in Christopher's vocabulary. In any case, it was likely that Arthur had marked him for a yoxter, like himself. And what had he threatened? Exposure, unless Christopher paid him? Or set him up with a job, perhaps, and a place to stay, and a never-ending supply of rum money? Whatever it had been, Christopher had decided to save himself from the sweated anxiety of interminable blackmail, and the terrifying threat of having to return to prison.

After a while, when the lights of the city came into view, Eyre mounted up on his bicycle and began to pedal. His tyres splashed through the puddles. Knowing for certain that Christopher had killed Arthur, and why, was a huge relief. He began to sing as he rode for the first time since he had got back.

‘
All round my hat, I will wear the green willow
All round my hat, for a twelvemonth and a day
…'

He was back on Rundle Street in time for a bowl of green-pea soup and a large pork chop, topsidey as they used to say, with an egg on top. He drank a quart of stout, and then went back to Coppius' Hotel for a hot bath and a long sleep.

He was accosted on his way back by several prostitutes; some of them smartly bonneted and pretty. The girls of Hindley Street had become a public embarrassment in Adelaide lately; and several respectable citizens had written to Governor Grey and complained that there were more women of disrepute than the municipality's population could possibly warrant, especially if it had any pretensions to morality at all.

One dark-haired girl linked arms with Eyre and skipped along beside him, nudging him with her breast and smiling and winking most invitingly.

‘Give you the best time you've ever had, darling,' she coaxed him. ‘Get your gooseberries in such a lather you won't know whether you're here or Sunday.'

On the steps of Coppius' Hotel, Eyre at last managed to disengage himself, and shake his head. ‘Not tonight,' he told her, and kissed her on the forehead.

‘Give us a deaner, then, for tea,' asked the girl.

Eyre gave her a shilling, and she cocked her bonnet at him and twirled off. He watched her go, and then climbed the steps to the hotel foyer with a smile of memory, rather than amusement.

It was to be the wedding of the year; the most spectacular social event in Adelaide's calendar for 1842. Even Lathrop, who could still be tetchy with Eyre whenever his heart was playing him up, and who had been known to refer to his future son-in-law after two or three brandies at the Commerce Club as a ‘penny gentleman', insisted on marquees, and orchestras, and a special white carriage shipped from Van Diemen's Land, where it had once been the property of Lady Jane Franklin.

Eyre had spent most of the six or seven months after his return from Western Australia writing up his memoirs for the
Observer
, who paid him £350 in regular instalments for the privilege. He said nothing of Arthur Mortlock in his story; save that he was ‘a trusted family friend from London'; and that he had died ‘of a stomach-complaint, brought about by eating bad shellfish'. He did however dramatise their escape from the great corroboree at Yarrakinna, adding a few more skirmishes with the Aborigines for good measure, and including a long and genuinely heartfelt obituary for Dogger McConnell.

‘Was there a man more natural and brave, a man whose loyalty to his friends and associates was of such a degree that he saw in danger only delight, that he might serve them more truly, and in death only accomplishment, that he had demonstrated the great nobility of his spirit? The last name upon his lips was that of his beloved wife; and though he has no memorial in the desert, that name will be forever engraved upon the air, even as he spoke it, just as the legends and myths of the first Australians are still spoken by the winds, and by the dust-storms, and by the creatures of the wild.'

When he had written those words, and sat back to sprinkle sand across his manuscript, he thought of Dogger sitting upright in his saddle, transfixed by that terrible
death-spear, even as his last words echoed across the plain. ‘
Brayvo, Hicks
!'

Eyre was given a house on Grenfell Street, overlooking Hindmarsh Square. It was a smart, flat-fronted house of native bluestone, with white-painted shutters, and a small enclosed front garden. His office to begin with was a stuffy little room in the old part of Government House, so positioned that whenever Governor Grey's luncheon was being cooked, most of the smells wafted in through the window, but stubbornly refused to waft out again. There was also a cockatoo which habitually perched on the top of the open sash, and chattered to him irritatingly when he was working, and occasionally flew into the room to speckle his papers with guano.