Read Corroboree for Free Online Page B

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; butEyre 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, Charlottewas 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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Hold me tight,’ she begged him. ‘I’m so frightened that father won’t allow us to see each other again.’
    â€˜He can’t do that.’
    Charlotte shook her head. ‘He can; and if he’s really angry, he will.’
    â€˜Yanluga says he suffers from
ngraldi.
’
    â€˜
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