Corroboree (15 page)

Daisy Frockford, who now sat beside Christopher fanning herself furiously and uttering little yelps of impatience and disapproval, was dressed in a gown of vivid emerald-green, with white leaf patterns of pearls and diamante all around the hem. She wore a head-dress that looked to Eyre like an overgrown garden-gate, with creepers hanging from it; and it had the effect of making her fat little face seem even fatter, and even littler, like a vexatious baby.

May Cameron, Eyre's companion, was quieter, almost melancholy. She was wearing pale pink moiré silk, with seed-pearls sewn on to it in the pattern of butterflies. She was dark-haired, with a profile that reminded Eyre of engravings he had seen of the young Queen Victoria: just a little too plump to be beautiful. Her breasts were quite enormous, and lay side by side in her lace-trimmed décolletage with the gelatinous contentment of two vanilla puddings. Now and then she sighed, and attempted the smallest of small sad smiles, and Eyre supposed she was thinking of the wastrel Peter Harris.

Wedged in close to Daisy Frockford was an aunt of Daisy's who had been introduced to Eyre and Christopher as Mrs Palgrave; a talkative woman with a perfectly oval face and false teeth that clattered whenever she spoke, which was often.

At last, by jamming his dilapidated phaeton in between
two highly varnished landaus occupied by some of the wealthier local aristocracy; a manoeuvre which caused one of their coachmen to glare hotly at all of them, and scowl, ‘Bustard,'; Arthur Mortlock brought them up to the entrance, and the two footmen opened their door for them and assisted them down. Mrs Palgrave caught her foot in her hem, and performed the most extraordinary little dance, but the dwarf footman managed to catch her around the waist, and hold her upright while she disentangled herself.

‘I declare the silliest thing that ever happened,' Mrs Palgrave flapped. ‘I shall have that seamstress in court see if I don't. Could have tumbled head-over-heels and broken my neck and then what.'

Eyre walked around to the front of the phaeton and spoke to Arthur Mortlock. Arthur Mortlock took off his high hat and looked down at him with unreadable eyes.

‘I'd like you to be here when the Ball finishes, to take us home,' said Eyre. ‘That's unless you want to make a run for it.'

‘I'm done with running, sir,' said Mortlock.

‘You realise that when the militia find your two companions, they may start making enquiries after you; and if they discover that you're a ticket-of-leave man, they'll take you directly back to Norfolk Island.'

‘I repeat, sir, I'm done with running. All I ask is that you vouch for me, sir, if it comes to trouble. I suppose that's an impertinence to ask, after this evening's bit of business; but I've made you a promise, sir, that I'll stay on the straight and narrow, and that's all I can say.'

Mrs Palgrave said, ‘Pushing and shoving, no wonder I tripped. Look at them all, like monkeys in the menagerie see if they aren't, supposed to be high-and-mighty and pushing away rude as you like.'

Eyre looked up at Arthur Mortlock and gave him a small nod of encouragement. ‘Very well,' he said. ‘Let's see if you really have been converted on the road to Damascus.'

Mortlock drove the phaeton away to the rear of the
stables, where the horses would be fed, and the coachmen would share a pipe or two of tobacco and play cards until it was time for carriages. Eyre and Christopher guided May and Daisy into the wide parquet-floored hallway, with its crystal chandelier and its idealistic paintings of Mount Lofty and the valley of the Torrens River; and there they were met by Colonel Gawler's head footman, all wig and catarrh, who took their invitations and hoarsely announced their arrival to the disinterested throng in the reception room.

There was music from a small orchestra which had been formed the previous year by Captain Wintergreen, a retired bandmaster from the New South Wales Corps: quadrilles played like cavalry charges, and waltzes so emphatic that it was obviously going to be easier to march to them than dance to them. At the far end of the room, with a distracted smile, Colonel Gawler himself was standing in his full regalia as Governor and Commissioner, his chest shining like a cutlery canteen with tiers of decorations, trying to make intelligent responses to a tall woman with an exceptionally meaty nose, whom Eyre recognised as Mrs Hillier, one of Adelaide's few schoolmarms. Captain Bromley was there, too, with his corn-coloured hair and his stutter; and the Farmer sisters, in a bright shade of blue; and the Reverend T.Q. Stow, with his hands clasped adamantly behind his back and his face squeezed up like a closed umbrella. Mrs Maria Gawler, the Governor's wife, was wearing an unbecoming brown dress, and fluttering her hands about like little birds.

The noise was tremendous. Not only the whomp-tibomping of the orchestra, but the screeching and laughing of the ladies, and the overblown boasting of the gentlemen: a strange relentless roar of competitive sound, as Adelaide's socialites did their absolute utmost to outcry, outpose, outshout, and out-amuse each other. Already the reception room was suffocatingly hot, and the ladies' fans were whirring everywhere, giving the impression that the
house was crowded with birds which couldn't quite manage to raise themselves into the air.

‘What a din I declare, never heard the like,' complained Mrs Palgrave. ‘Toss them nuts and apples I would, see if they scramble for them. Monkeys in the menagerie.'

‘Is Sturt here yet?' Eyre asked Christopher, as they piloted their lady companions into the middle of the room. May nodded her head at one or two friends whom she hadn't seen since her engagement had been broken off. Daisy, who couldn't see anyone she knew, fanned herself even more violently.

Christopher lifted his head and looked around. ‘Can't see him. But he'll be here, all right. Loves the admiration. We might have to wait until the end of the evening before we can talk to him, though.'

Daisy said, ‘I'd adore a glass of punch.'

‘Then you shall certainly have one,' said Christopher.

‘And you, May, would you care for a glass?' Eyre asked her.

She nodded. ‘But I'd prefer to drink it outside, if we may. The noise and the heat in here is making me feel dizzy already.'

They beckoned over a perspiring waiter, who handed them glasses of scarlet punch, rum and grenadine and pineapple-juice, and while Mrs Palgrave perched herself on a small gold-painted chair, and talked to Mrs Warburton about tattooing, and how there wasn't an ounce of civilized behaviour from Para Scarp to Port Adelaide, Christopher and Daisy went off to find somebody who might give Daisy a compliment, and Eyre took May out of the open French windows and on to the verandah.

May sat on a garden-chair, while Eyre leaned against the wooden balustrade. Beyond them, in the lantern-lit gardens, the kangaroos slowly hopped, like large animated £-signs; and the night parrots did their best to compete with the screeching ladies indoors.

The governor's new house was white-painted, and comparatively elegant, although only the east wing had
been fully completed. The original house had been built for Colonel Gawler's predecessor, Captain John Hindmarsh, out of mud and laths; but because he had employed sailors and ship's carpenters to put it up, they had forgotten to give him a fireplace, or a chimney. This house was more in keeping with the status of governor and commissioner of South Australia, and Eyre quite coveted it. Sitting on the balustrade with his drink, he felt successful and confident already; and he thought that May wasn't too bad a companion, either, even if she was a little solemn.

‘You must learn to smile again,' he told her, lifting his glass.

‘I do try,' she said.

‘Were you so very upset about your engagement?'

She nodded. ‘I loved Peter enough to want him for my husband. But after he lost all that money, father forbade it. Most of the money had been lent to him by my uncle; some by my mother. He said he was going to invest in a mining company, and that we should all be paid back a hundred times over.'

‘And instead, he put it on horses?'

‘I don't know why,' she said. There was a sparkle of tears in her eyes. ‘I suppose he wanted to impress me, and win my father over.'

‘Fathers can be a problem,' said Eyre. ‘Especially fathers who worship their daughters, and want only the very best for them.'

May sipped her punch, and glanced up at Eyre, and tried to smile. Eyre didn't know if it was the effect of the heat, or the noise, or the music, but he suddenly began to think that he might have taken quite a fancy to May. There was something about her cupid's-bow lips, something tempting because they looked so sweet, and naive. And he found himself admiring her breasts, and imagining what they must look like when they were uncupped from her gown. And he thought of her body, too, white-skinned and chubby, with fleshy hips and thighs between which
a man could happily suffocate. A virgin, too. Well brought up and well protected; and sentimental to a fault.

‘May,' he said, ‘you and I must dance. We must endeavour to be happy together, even though we are both feeling sad. Just for tonight, we must forget what might have happened, and try to think of what
could
happen.'

May sipped a little more of her drink, and twiddled the stem of her glass around. ‘Daisy said that you're a vicar's son.'

‘Well, Daisy's quite right.'

‘She said that you're very religious, when the mood takes you; or so Christopher told her.'

‘Religious? Well, I believe in God, and the sacrament of Holy Communion, if that's what she meant.'

‘Well, I don't know. She said that you could be rather
dogged
, at times. I hope you don't mind my saying that.'

Eyre stood up, and walked around the verandah. ‘Dogged? I suppose I
can
be rather dogged when I feel seriously about something. But I don't count that altogether wrong, do you? Doggedness in the defence of what is right, and what is just, and in the upholding of Christian principles—well, you can hardly call that a vice.'

‘Daisy said something about an Aborigine boy; how you wanted to give him an Aborigine funeral.'

Eyre nodded slowly. ‘I do. That's one of the reasons I've come here tonight.'

‘But Aborigines are
savages.
'

‘You may think so. Most people do, and I suppose that they can be forgiven for it. The government does nothing to help us understand them. But it seems to me that the Aborigines are one of the most magical and religious of peoples on the face of the earth. Just because they live in innocence and nakedness, that doesn't mean that they're savages. Adam and Eve lived in innocence and nakedness; and far from being savages,
they
were the most divine of all human beings ever; nearer to God than anybody today could imagine. It could very well be that Aborigines are the results of God's attempt to start again: to create for a
second time a perfectly innocent society. If that is so, and it
could
be so, then I believe that it is our duty to protect the Aborigines and to prevent them from losing their innocence. Perhaps the Garden of Eden now lies here, in the unexplored centre of Australia. Perhaps the significance of this strange country is divine, as well as geographical. Whatever it is, I believe that we should be cautious, and respectful, and that we should be very wary of imposing our own way of life on the blackfellows. We, after all, are the descendants of Adam and Eve: we are the sinful children of sinners. The Aborigines know no sin; and to that extent we should envy them. To that extent, they are our superiors.'

May stared at him. It was quite plain that she could hardly believe what he had said.

Eyre stopped pacing, and reached out his hand towards her. ‘Don't let's talk of such serious matters tonight; why don't you dance with me? They're playing
Le Pantalon.
'

‘I—ah—I think I'd rather not,' said May, considerably flustered. ‘Really.'

‘Because of what I said about Aborigines?'

‘Well—how can you possibly suggest that an Aborigine could be your own superior? Or mine?' She was flushed, and she didn't know what to do with her glass of punch.

‘May—what I said—it's only a theory. But Australia is such an extraordinary country that you can't close up your mind to
any
possibility. Why does it exist at all, this peculiar continent with foxes that fly but birds that won't? We know hardly anything of it, especially the interior; the very centre of it; how can we make any assumptions at all? It's a work of God; there's no doubt of that at all. But what a work!'

May said, ‘Please, don't talk like that. It upsets me.'

‘Why? Because it could be true?'

‘It makes me feel … uncomfortable, that's all.'

Eyre knelt down beside her, on one knee. ‘In that case, forgive me. I brought you here to enjoy yourself, not to feel uncomfortable. I know that I might sound rather odd,
but the truth is that I adore Australia and all of its mysteries; and I truly believe that there's a meaning behind it being here; and a reason for its existence.'

May was just about to answer him, when they were interrupted by a spattering of applause from the garden. Eyre turned around in surprise, and saw a tall man in sidewhiskers walking towards him across the lawn, clapping his hands as he came. The man had an intelligent, amused face; and eyes that were bright with self-confidence and pleasure. Nobody could have called him handsome. But his plainness was commanding in its own particular way; and as Eyre stood up to greet him, he knew at once that here was a man both to trust and to like.

‘You must accept my apologies for eavesdropping on you,' the man said, warmly. ‘But you are the first person I have heard for many a long month who has dared to question the very being of this continent; and to acknowledge what it has to offer us now as well as what it may surrender in the future.'