Corroboree by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

amusement.
    â€˜What’s
ngraldi?
’ she asked.
    â€˜Rage. I just like the sound of it. There’s your father, getting into a
ngraldi
again.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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 someMadeira 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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Surely he won’t stay angry for as long as that.’
    â€˜Eyre, he wants me to marry into the aristocracy.’
    â€˜Of course he does. Every father in Adelaide 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.’
    â€˜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 ofnineteen; 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.’
    â€˜Yanluga thinks the world of you. You’re the only white man who has ever treated him with any respect.