Corroboree by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780517671122
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 1984-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

By noon the following day, the temperature had already risen to 100. They rode single file through a distorted landscape of brindled scrub and twisted bushes, under a sky that was as blue as a sudden shout.

Joolonga rode ahead, with Eyre a little way behind. Somehow, their talk yesterday evening had excited a fresh awareness between them; and although Eyre remained as suspicious of Joolonga as ever, he began to sense that the Aborigine guide was just as determined to see this expedition through as he was himself; and that for their different reasons they both needed to see this extraordinary act of social and geographical drama brought to whatever conclusion history might demand.

It might end in the bush, with exhaustion, and bones. It might end in frustration and giving-up. It might end in magnificent triumph. But both of them had made up their minds with equal strength that it would succeed.

Dogger said to Eyre, as they sat under the patient shade of their horse a little after midday, swatting at the flies which crawled all over their faces and arms, ‘Do you know something, Eyre? About an hour ago, I asked myself a question.’

‘What question was that?’ Eyre wanted to know. He took a carefully measured mouthful of warm leathery water, swilled it around his mouth, and then swallowed it.

‘I asked myself: Dogger, I asked, what in blazing hell are you doing here, sitting on this horse, sweating your way through the bush like a boiled bandicoot, when you could be back on Hindley Street in the comfortable arms of Mrs McC, well-drunk on ice-cold beer, and with a belly full of pot-pie? That’s what I asked myself.’

Eyre looked at him, brushing away again and again a persistent fly that seemed determined to land on the same spot on the side of his nose, whatever happened. ‘What was the answer?’ he asked Dogger, with a smile.

‘The answer was, I don’t know. I suppose I’m like the sailor; who every time he went to sea, he was homesick; and every time he came home, he was seasick.’

From the shadow of his horse, where he was lying with his head back on his carefully rolled-up jacket, with the casual air of a reclining picnicker, Christopher said, ‘I think I’d give a year of my life to be back at the racecourse now, eating an ice, and watching Mr Stewart’s Why Not in the three o’clock. It would be a fine thing to see a decent elegant horse again, instead of these equine elephants.’

At that very moment, there was a loud clattering noise; and Christopher shrieked, and sprang up from under the horse, flapping his hands at his shirt and britches. ‘Bloody thing pissed on me! Of all the bloody nerve!’

Eyre and Dogger laughed until they were weak, rolling and kicking around in the dust. Eyre at last stood up, coughing the dust out of his lungs, and put his arms around Christopher’s shoulder. ‘My dear chap. Don’t you know that you should never malign a horse within earshot.

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