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  He thought of the morning he had first seen Charlotte, seven months ago, when her father had brought her down to the wharf to watch the unloading of pumping machinery from England. It had been a bright, busy day, with a fresh wind blowing across the mouth of the harbour; and Eyre had been supervising the loading of a ripe-smelling cargo of raw wool, bound for Yorkshire, with the stub of a pencil stuck behind one ear, and his scruffiest britches on.

  His fellow clerk Christopher Willis had nudged him, and said, ‘What do you think of that, then, Eyre, for a prize ornament?’

  Eyre had raised one hand to shield his eyes from the sun; and had stared at Charlotte in complete fascination. She was small, white-skinned, and angelically pretty, with blonde curls straying out from the brim of her high straw bonnet. At first she had appeared almost too doll-like to be true, especially the way in which she was standing so demurely beside her father in her pink fringed shawl; but when she turned and looked towards Eyre he saw that she had a mouth that was pouty and self-willed and a little petulant; the mouth of a spoiled little rich girl who needed taming as well as courting. The sort of girl who could benefit from being put over a chap’s knee, and spanked.

  ‘Well, well,’ Eyre had remarked, and grinned across the wharf at her and winked.

  ‘That’s not for you, Master Walker,’ Christopher had chided him. ‘That’s Lathrop Lindsay’s only and unsullied daughter; and he’s keeping her in virginal isolation until royalty comes to Adelaide, or at the very least a duke; or an eligible governor, not like poor old George Gawler.’

  ‘She scarcely looks real, does she?’ Eyre had murmured. ‘And by all the stars, look, she’s smiling at me.’

  ‘Scowling, more like, if she takes after papa,’ Christopher had told him. ‘Lathrop Lindsay’s temper is one of the hazards that they warn settlers about, before they embark from Portsmouth; that, and the heat, and the death-adders, and the tubercular fever.’

  ‘No, no, she’s definitely smiling at me,’ Eyre had insisted, and had ostentatiously doffed his hat, and bowed.

  ‘Who’s that impudent ruffian?’ he had heard Lathrop demanding, in a voice like a blaring trumpet. ‘You! Yes, you, you scoundrel! Be off with you before I have you thrashed!’

  Eyre hadn’t seen Charlotte for several weeks after that; although he had bicycled out several times to Waikerie Lodge, where the Lindsays lived, and sat on the wroughtiron seat across the road in the hope of catching a glimpse of her, occasionally smoking one of his brandy-flavoured cheroots, or eating an apple.

  That was why it had been such a stroke of good fortune when Lathrop’s senior manager, a morose man called Snipps, had visited the offices of the South Australian Company where Eyre was working, and had asked if Mr Lindsay could be expeditiously assisted with a cargo of wheat, which was lying at the dockside without a merchantman to take it. Eyre had immediately arranged for a Bristol ship which was already half-loaded with wool to be unloaded again, and for Mr Lindsay’s cargo to be taken in preference; and at a preferential rate. The irate sheep-owner whose wool it was hadn’t discovered that his cargo was still in the warehouse at Port Adelaide until the ship was already halfway across the Great Australian Bight; but Eyre had been able to mollify him with the promise of the very next ship, and a case of good whisky.

  Most important for Eyre, however, had been an invitation two weeks later to a garden-party at Waikerie Lodge, in gratitude for his assistance. There, on the green sunlit lawns, where peacocks clustered, he had been introduced formally to Lathrop; and to Mrs Lindsay, and at last to Charlotte. He and Charlotte had said nothing very much as Lathrop had brought them together; but there had been an exchange of looks between them, his challenging, hers provocative; and Eyre had known at once that they could be lovers.

  Later, munching one of Mrs McMurtry’s teacakes, Eyre had spoken for a while to Lathrop of shipping costs; and how those who knew friendly clerks in the South Australian Company could save themselves considerable amounts of money, especially if the bills of lading showed that cargoes weren’t quite as weighty as one might have imagined them to be. And Lathrop (who hadn’t once recognised Eyre as the ‘impudent ruffian’ from the wharf) gave him a sober and watery-eyed look that meant business.

  From then on, Eyre had been a regular visitor at Waikerie Lodge, either on business or on social calls; and he and Charlotte had been drawn together like two dark solar bodies, feeling the tug of each other’s sexual gravity and being unable and unwilling to resist it.

  Eyre looked at his watch again. On the inside of the lid was engraved a crucifix, and the words ‘Time flies, death urges, knells call, heaven invites, hell threatens,’ and then ‘Henry L. Walker, 1811’. The watch was the only gift that his father had given him when he had decided to emigrate to Australia; and he both treasured it and resented it; but it told the time with perfect accuracy, and now it was eleven minutes past ten.

  He heard a low call. Yanluga, skirting around the garden. Then he heard the back gate creak open, and the swishing of skirts on the grass. Before he knew it, Charlotte was there, in her shawl and her blue ruffled dress, pale-faced and smelling of lily-of-the-valley. Her blonde curls shone in the moonlight, and her eyes glistened with emotion. Eyre held out his arms to her, and she came to him, in a last quick rustle of silk; and then they were holding each other close, closer than ever before.

  ‘Oh, Eyre,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened. If only I had known that father was coming back so soon.’

  He kissed her forehead, and then her eyes, and then her lips. ‘Shush now; it wasn’t your fault. If anybody’s to blame, it’s me, for upsetting your family so.’

  ‘Hold me tight,’ she begged him. ‘I’m so frightened that father won’t allow us to see each other again.’

  ‘He can’t do that.’

  Charlotte shook her head. ‘He can; and if he’s really angry, he will.’

  ‘Yanluga says he suffers from ngraldi.’

  ‘Ngraldi?’ asked Charlotte. She rested her face against his lapels, and held him tight around the waist, as if she were afraid that he might suddenly become lighter than air, and bob up into the night sky like a gas balloon. Eyre stroked the parting of her hair, and grunted with amusement.

  ‘What’s ngraldi?’ she asked.

  ‘Rage. I just like the sound of it. There’s your father, getting into a ngraldi again.’

  ‘But you’ve upset him terribly. He couldn’t talk about anything else at dinner, except how you’d besmirched my reputation.’

  Eyre kissed her again; right on her pouting mouth. ‘Don’t you worry about your father. He’ll calm down, I’m sure of it; especially when he remembers how much money I’m saving him every month on shipping costs.’

  ‘I don’t know. He had a partner once, Thomas Weir, and even though he lost thousands of pounds, he refused to take Thomas Weir back, once they’d argued. He’s so set in his ways; and he always believes he’s so right.’

  Eyre said, ‘Sit down. I’ve brought a blanket. And some Madeira wine, too, if you can manage to drink it out of the bottle. I couldn’t work out a way of carrying glasses on my bicycle.’

  Charlotte spread her skirt and sat down on the rug under the stringy-bark gums. She looked like a fantasy, in the unreal light of that cold and uncompromising moon; and the gums around her shone an unearthly blue-white, as if they were frightened spirits of the night, the slaves of Koobooboodgery.

  Eyre flipped up his coat-tails and sat down close to her, taking her hands between his.

  ‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said. ‘This afternoon, I began to be worried that I might never set eyes on you again.’

  Charlotte said, ‘Dear Eyre. But it isn’t going to be easy. Father doesn’t go away again until just before Christmas, when he usually travels to Melbourne.’

  ‘Surely he won’t stay angry for as long as that.’

  ‘Eyre, he wants me to marry into the aristocracy.’

  ‘Of course he does. Every father in Adel
aide wants to see his daughter married to a man who’s wealthy, or famous, or well-bred; or all three. But the truth is that there aren’t very many of those to be had. Some of those fathers will have to accept the fact that if their daughters are going to be married at all, they will have to put up with clerks for husbands, or farmers, or dingo-hunters, if they’re not too quick off the mark.’

  ‘Father said he would gladly see you hung,’ Charlotte told him. She kissed him again, and he felt the softness of her cheek, and the disturbing lasciviousness of her lips. She was a girl of such contrasts: of such pretty mannerisms but such provoking sensuality; of bright and brittle intelligence but stunning directness; polite but candid; teasing but thoughtful; flirtatious but brimming with deeply felt emotions. Sometimes she was a woman who had not yet outgrown the coquettishness of girlhood; at other times she was an innocent girl whose life was slowly nudging out into the heady stream of sexual maturity, like a boat on the Torrens River. She was trembling on the cusp of nineteen; and tonight she was probably more desirable than she would ever be again; sugar-candy and butterflies and claws. She knew how captivating she was; and yet she had not yet learned to use her attraction cruelly, or cynically, simply for the pleasure of seeing some poor beau dance on a string.

  Eyre kissed her in return; much more forcefully, much more urgently. Their tongues wriggled together, until Eyre’s tongue-tip penetrated Charlotte’s slightly opened teeth, and probed inside her mouth, tasting the sweetness of it.

  They parted for a few moments. Charlotte lay back on the blanket and stared up at him, without saying anything. Her mouth was still moist with their shared saliva, and she made no attempt to wipe it away.

  Eyre said, ‘Yanluga told me something today. I don’t know how true it was; whether he was just trying to be nice to me.’

  ‘Yanluga thinks the world of you. You’re the only white man who has ever treated him with any respect. Men like my father don’t think anything of the blackfellows; they don’t even believe that they’re human. Father’s always striking Yanluga with his riding-crop. Once he made him pick up a coin that he had dropped, and then stepped on his fingers, just to hear him howl. He says they’re like babies, the blackfellows, it’s good for them to howl.’

  Eyre was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Yanluga told me you’d quite care to marry me, if you could.’

  Charlotte slowly smiled.

  ‘Is it true?’ Eyre asked her.

  She nodded. ‘But he wasn’t supposed to tell you. I shall whip him myself when I get back to the house.’

  Eyre said, ‘I want to marry you, too. And if that sounds like a proposal, well, I suppose it is. I very much like the sound of “Mrs Charlotte Walker.” ’

  Charlotte said, ‘Father won’t allow it, you know. He won’t even let you come near the house.’

  ‘Can’t your mother intervene?’

  ‘She’s tried. Poor dear mother. She was trying all evening to persuade father what a wonderful upright person you were; but he wasn’t listening. He doesn’t want to listen. He never thinks of my happiness, that’s why. All he can think about is being the father-in-law to some English baron; or some famous explorer; or something that will give him glory.’

  Eyre looked down at her, and stroked her cheek, and then her neck. ‘What can we do, then?’ he whispered.

  ‘We could wait until I’m twenty-one; although he can make it difficult for me even then, because of my inheritance. Or you could go off and do some magnificent deed, and be knighted for it.’

  ‘What magnificent deed could a clerk do?’ asked Eyre. ‘Fill in three thousand bills of lading in a week? Write up a record number of ledgers? And even if I could think of something magnificent to do, how are we to manage in the meantime, with a love that can’t even be admitted in daylight?’

  Charlotte reached up and held the hand that was stroking her cheek. She kissed his fingers, and then she said, ‘We can manage. We must manage. But you mustn’t be shocked.’

  ‘Shocked?’ he asked her.

  She put her fingertip up to her pursed lips. ‘Sssh,’ she said; and then she reached down and unlaced the ribbon that held the bodice of her pale blue dress.

  Eyre said, ‘Charlotte?’ but she shushed him again, and slowly drew out the criss-cross ribbon until her bodice was open to the waist. Then, eyes dreamily half-closed, she took his hand and slid it underneath the white silk lining until it was cupping her warm bare breast.

  She whispered, ‘You mustn’t be shocked, or then I will shock myself. I love you, Eyre; I want you to touch me. I want you to love me just as much in return. Sometimes I tease you but I want you. I have dreams about you, dreams about kissing you; dreams that make me wake up feeling hot, and confused.’

  Slowly, fascinated, he caressed her nipple between finger and thumb until he could feel it crinkle tight. Charlotte let her head drop back on to the blanket, her eyes completely closed now, her breath coming quick and harsh from between her parted lips.

  ‘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!