Corroboree Read online

  Graham Masterton

  Corroboree

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  More than anything else, said Netty, her mother would like a musical box for Christmas: one of those musical boxes with six or seven different and interchangeable cylinders, so that she could play ‘Silent Nigh’ and ‘The Wonderful Polka’ and ‘Sweet Heart’s Deligh’; and think of all the days gone by, happy and sad, and how God had blessed her so, and punished her, too.

  Eyre listened with amusement, smoking his cigar, his eyes bright; and at last he said. ‘Very well, if that’s what you want to give her, I’ll ask Mr Granger,’ and he reached out to lay his hand on the parting of his daughter’s shining hair, as gently as a blessing. His only daughter, and although he didn’t yet know it, his only child.

  Outside, in the garden, the sun shone in brilliant skeins, like the straw in Rumpelstiltskin which had been spun into gold; and the birds whooped and laughed, and one of the grooms called ‘Wayandah! Wayandah!’ as he tried to lead Eyre’s favourite stallion back into the stables. And across the lawns, watered and fed so that they looked unnaturally green in this dusty December landscape, Charlotte moved this way and that in her clotted-cream-coloured dress, bobbing now and again to pick a flower, stopping occasionally to scold the gardening-boy; Charlotte with her perfect bonnet and her perfect ribbons and her perfect parasol; a picture of perfection wherever she went, and whatever she did.

  Only Eyre understood what pain and loss her perfection so perfectly concealed. Only Eyre heard her sobbing at night, a thin, inconsolable whining; or knew what she was thinking about on those evenings when the sun was gradually burning itself out behind the branches of the stringy-bark trees, and she stared out across the river valley; silent, her face severe.

  He said to Netty, ‘She’d like some perfume, too, if I can get Mr McLaren to send some up.’

  ‘Oh, do,’ enthused Netty. ‘And some lace, too, if there’s any to be had. I could make a collar for that green velvet dress—the one she wore at Governor McConnell’s birthday party.’

  ‘Netty,’ smiled Eyre, ‘I sometimes think you were sent by the angels.’ Netty took his hand, and pressed it against her cheek. ‘Dear father,’ she said. ‘I hope I can be everything to you: friend, and son, and daughter, all three.’

  Eyre drew her towards him, and kissed her twice, once on each cheek. ‘You always look so much like your mother,’ he smiled. ‘There was one night, long ago … well, you look just like her, the way she did on that night.’

  Netty said nothing. She knew that he was flattering her, for her mother was still a remarkably beautiful woman. But she also understood that he was thinking back to the time before her mother was sad, those few brief months before the loss of her son, Netty’s brother, whom Netty had never known. His absence from their family, even after twenty years, was like an empty bedroom, or a photograph-frame with no picture in it. Every year, on his birthday, her mother would light candles for him. Every year, she would buy him a small Christmas gift, and lay it beside the others, in case he came back. A necktie, or a diary. Once, she had bought him a harmonica.

  Eyre smoked for a while, and then said, There always used to be snow at Christmas, when I was a boy.’

  Netty smiled, and shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine it. I’ve tried. I’ve looked at pictures. But I just can’t imagine it.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it isn’t easy to describe. It isn’t so much the whiteness, or the coldness, it’s the sound of it. The whole world suddenly becomes muffled. Everything somehow seems to be more private. They say Eskimos are great natural philosophers, you know. Perhaps that’s because the snow makes you turn in on yourself. Think more.’

  The desert must do that, too,’ said Netty.

  Eyre looked at her and his eyes were peculiarly remote. The desert?’ he asked her. He was still smiling, but his smile had nothing at all to do with his eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, uncertainly. ‘It must be very silent out there.’

  ‘No,’ he told her. Then, after another long pause: ‘No. The desert isn’t silent at all. The desert is … Babel, a whole Babel of voices. All speaking at the same time. Never quiet. Thousands of them: the voices of the past and the voices of the future.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean. What voices?’

  Eyre was about to say something more, but suddenly he stopped himself, and smiled instead, and stroked Netty’s hair. ‘A figure of speech,’ he explained; but Netty wouldn’t be put off.

  ‘What do they say?’ she asked him, intently.

  ‘What does who say?’

  The voices. The ones in the desert.’

  They don’t say anthing,’ Eyre told her. ‘Now, come on, let’s forget all about it, and call your mother in for tea.’

  ‘But they must say something,’ Netty insisted. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have called them voices.’

  Eyre twisted his side-whiskers thoughtfully. They were greying now, and made him look less saturnine than when he was young; although his eyebrows were still dark and swept-up; and his cheeks were still hollow. Charlotte had once teased him that he looked like the night-devil; but that was before they had lost their son. She would never tease him like that now.

  Eyre said, ‘The voices tell stories. Everything that happened in the past, how the mountains were made, why the lakes are all dry, how the blue heron brought in the tide, how the no-drink bear lost his tail. And they tell what will happen in the future, too. Which years are going to be dry, which years are going to be happy. Who will die, who will lose his way. Who will honour his promises, and who will not.’

  He was silent for a moment, and then he added, in a dead-sounding voice, ‘Who will regret what he has done.’

  Netty sat on the floor looking up at him. ‘Do they really say things like that? Can you really hear them?’

  ‘You hear whatever is inside your own head,’ said Eyre. ‘That is why the desert is never quiet.’

  A whole hour seemed to pass between them in what could only have been a few seconds. Charlotte came in from the garden, and kissed them both, Eyre and Netty, and Eyre said, ‘How’s Yalagonga? Do you think he’s going to make a good gardener?’

  Charlotte put down her basket of flowers, and unlaced the ribbons of her bonnet. ‘He’s confident, I’ll give him that! He wanted to clear all the wattle from the back fence and cut down my favourite apple tree. But, I think he’s going to do. I’d rather have a boy who’s going to be strict with the garden, than one who lets it grow wild. Do you remember Jackie? He wouldn’t cut a single weed, in case it offended the spirits.’

  ‘Shall we have some tea?’ asked Eyre, in the manner of someone who has been asking the same question day after day for nea
rly twenty years.

  ‘I think I deserve it,’ replied Charlotte. ‘In fact, I think I may have some of the coconut biscuits, too.’

  Eyre nodded to Netty, who got up from the floor and went over to the large carved limestone fireplace, and rang the bell-cord.

  ‘I suppose you two have been discussing politics again,’ said Charlotte.

  Eyre smiled. ‘Actually, we’ve been trying to decide what to buy you for Christmas.’

  ‘Well, that’s easy enough. It doesn’t need a discussion. I want a new hut for treating the children, more linseed oil, and as much tincture of catechu as you can get.’

  ‘Don’t be so practical,’ said Eyre. ‘I’m talking about perfume, and lace.’

  ‘What on earth is the use of perfume and lace, out here at Moorundie? I’d rather have medicines.’

  ‘Charlotte …’ Eyre began, but then he sat back, and tried to keep on smiling as if he had only been teasing her about the perfume, and the lace. He knew that the children were her main preoccupation, with their sores and their runny noses and their shivering-fits. He knew why, too. And he knew that whatever he gave her for Christmas, it would never do anything to make up for the loss of their boy-child.

  He could see it now, as clearly as if it had happened last night, instead of twenty years ago. The open window, the curtain blowing in the warm night wind. The empty crib, still warm and indented from the baby’s sleeping body; still smelling of mother’s milk and freshly-washed hair. And he could remember the pain, too: the pain that was so much greater than he had expected. More than a sense of loss; more than a sense of sacrifice, and duty. It had been like having his arm twisted and torn out of its socket by the roots. An actual physical tearing-away.

  The black trackers had spent hours scouring the garden. ‘Three,’ they had said. ‘Two men, one woman, all barefoot, blackfellow.’ They had tried to follow the footprints into the bush, but the kidnappers had been too wily. They had backtracked, run through streams and brushed their trail with wattle-branches. The black trackers had come back four hours later glistening with sweat, and admitted that whoever had taken the boy had been an exceptionally skilful hunter; or a ghost.

  Fly-posters offering rewards had been displayed all around Moorundie for weeks. But the boy seemed to have disappeared without a trace; melted into the setting sun. Eyre had offered £500 and a free pardon for his return. But there had been nothing, not a word; although the ironic part about it had been that Eyre had actually known where his son was; or at least who it was that had taken him. Yet he had been unable to speak, for fear of condemning himself, and for fear of destroying both his marriage and his career.

  For somebody that night had left the main gates of the house unlocked. And somebody had carelessly (or thoughtfully) propped up a ladder by the child’s bedroom window. And somebody had left the window unlatched, so that all an intruder had to do was ease up the sash, and climb straight into the room.

  The blackfellows must have been ten miles to Woocalla before anybody had noticed that the boy was gone. And Eyre had known, as he had stood at the end of the crib, breathing in the very last vestiges of baby-smell, that any attempt to take the boy away from them would be suicidal, perhaps worse. An Aborigine uprising had always been on the cards. Any attempt to arrest blackfellows en masse, or take reprisals against them, would be madness.

  Times had changed since he had first arrived in Australia. Your blackfellow nowadays was either a great deal more skilled and co-operative, or else a great deal more vicious.

  When the last of the scouts and the trackers had reported no sign of the baby, Eyre had been obliged to say, ‘That’s it. Don’t search any more. Whoever took him means to keep him.’

  But of course life had never been the same since then; and Eyre had always felt that Charlotte was accusing him of carelessness, or cold-heartedness, or both. They wanted the baby because it was yours, she had insisted, over and over again. They wanted the baby because you’re famous, and because you always show them that you understand them. Perhaps they kidnapped him as a compliment. What a compliment, to lose your own flesh and blood. They probably worship him, as if he were the son of God.

  ‘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.