Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)
Geoffrey McGeachin
For Wilma,
who makes everything possible
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to the great people at Penguin for their support. including publisher Ben Ball and Meredith Rose. my editor. for making the editing process a pleasure. Also my agent Seiwa Anthony. who supported me one hundred percent when I wanted to bring the Charlie Berlin character to life.
I’d also like to thank all the people who contacted me after the publication of the first Berlin story to say they recognised parts of Charlie and his struggles in people they knew and loved.
ONE
If you have to die, Melbourne is a fair enough place to do it and September is one of the better months for a funeral. Still early spring, no hint yet of the desiccating ugliness of summer, still chilly and almost always bleak enough for a suitably sombre air to blanket the proceedings. The downside to a September funeral is if you time your dying wrong you’ll never know who won the Aussie Rules grand final. And in football-mad Melbourne, that can be a fate worse than death.
The sun broke through the overcast for a brief moment, a narrow shaft of bright, winter-cool morning light beaming down through a high window in the Moonee Ponds church. The splash of light illuminated a row of medals that had been placed on top of the coffin along with an army officer’s cap. It also lit up a hand-knitted, navy-blue-and-white-striped woollen scarf, which informed the few in the congregation who didn’t already know that the man inside the coffin had been a fervent Geelong supporter. The grand final was just two days away and the Cats were at the very bottom of the 1957 League table. With your team the Wooden Spooners a man might as well be dead.
There were more medals on show throughout the church. A dozen or so men wore them on the left breast of their nearly identical black suits or dark overcoats, with others displaying more subtle rows of coloured ribbons. The medals clanked together as the congregation rose and sat, and rose and sat again for hymns and homilies and the eulogy. The women in the congregation were in a uniform of sorts too, hats and gloves, scarfs and handbags, heavy overcoats and heavy shoes. It was a good turnout, the minister had noted, his little red-brick church nearly full to capacity.
Pulled from the backs of wardrobes for the occasion, the funeral outfits had been dusted off, mothballs dumped out of the pockets, camphor bags set aside. A musty, vaguely chemical odour hung over the mourners, giving the Rowers at the altar and the 4711 Eau de Cologne with which the women had dabbed their handkerchiefs a run for their money. Apart from the medal ribbons, the only competition the Rowers had in the colour stakes was from a woman in a red overcoat sitting in the front row.
She was a looker, that was for sure. Thirtyish, but only just, and tall. Slim too, with dark, lustrous hair washing over the collar of her coat. Outside the church, before the service, that red overcoat had drawn pursed lips and tut-tutting from a number of the women. The coat was cut well and showed she had hips under it as well as a respectable chest. Several of the men managed to pull their eyes away from her chest and check out her left hand. Under the tight, elegant black-leather glove a bulge on the third finger indicated a wedding ring. The unmarried men were disappointed, as were a number who were attending the funeral with their wives.
Inside the church the woman took off her gloves. She was seated next to the widow, holding her hand. Skin to skin, warmth, a touch that says you are still alive and that somebody cares. The widow stared straight ahead, head tilted to one side. She seemed numb, distant, and had to be gently coaxed into rising for the prayers and hymns. Once up on her feet she stared blankly at the hymnal her companion held open for her.
At the end of the service the undertaker quietly marshalled the six men, all medal wearers, who would carry the coffin out to the hearse. He took the officer’s cap from the top of the coffin, turned it over and placed the medals inside, with the football scarf folded neatly on top. Crossing the church to the front row of pews he bowed slightly and handed the cap to the widow. She stared up at him, confused, and then recognition slowly showed in her face. And anger. She stood up.
‘It’s not right, you bastard, it’s not right.’
The organist had momentarily stopped playing, flipping pages to find the recessional, and in that brief period of respectful silence the widow’s words echoed round the church walls, followed by shocked gasps from the congregation. The startled undertaker flinched, stepped back, hands out as if to protect himself from physical attack. He turned around, jaw clenched, and walked stiffly back to the coffin and the waiting pallbearers.
The widow slumped down onto the pew, dropping her head on the shoulder of the woman in the red overcoat. She started to cry and the woman stroked her hair. The widow leaned closer, whispering in the woman’s ear, telling her the awful secret.
TWO
The constant click-clack click-clack of steel wheels on iron rails had settled back into Charlie Berlin’s consciousness. By now they must be out of the Reich and deep into Poland, putting the train well beyond reach of the RAF’s night bombing and the Americans’ daylight air raids. The windows in the cramped compartment were painted black, as were those lining the corridor of the carriage, so it was hard to tell if it was day or night.
The elderly German sergeant sleeping opposite Berlin was slumped against the window to the train corridor. The man’s head was back, mouth open, and as he snored and snorted, saliva bubbled in the corner of his mouth. A machine pistol lay on the seat next to him and the American B17 waist gunner was looking at it. He glanced nervously across at Berlin, who shook his head gently from side to side. He could hear the other two soldiers who made up their guard detail chatting in the corridor outside, both still wide awake and armed.