Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(11)

‘Sounds like a good bloke.’

Beryl nodded. ‘He was a bridge builder, you know. He helped put that Bailey Bridge over the Avon River in Gippsland after the 1950 floods ruined the old one. That was just before he retired, of course. Cyril said the only good thing about his cancer was he lost so much weight he could fit into his old uniform when they buried him. Damned cancer. At least he died at home, which was what he wanted.’

Berlin drank his tea and let her talk. He heard about Cyril’s war, which was very different to his own, and about her children and grandchildren and the seaside holidays down at Dromana. Her sister’s name came up more than once and he sensed trouble there but let it go. Apart from occasionally dipping another sugar-crystal-coated Nice biscuit into his tea, he simply sat and listened. He refilled their cups twice and finally, when she stopped talking and was sitting quietly with a faraway look in her eyes, he spoke.

‘Tell me about the funeral, Beryl. Rebecca said you were upset. More than could be expected, I mean.’

She looked at him and shook her head. ‘Maybe I’m just being a silly woman.’

‘Maybe you are, but tell me about it anyway and we can both decide after that. Sound fair enough?’

‘Well … ’ She put her cup down. ‘He wanted to be buried in his uniform.’

‘That’s right,’ Berlin encouraged her, ‘you told me that.’

‘On the morning of … you know, I couldn’t find his medals. They were supposed to go on top of his coffin for the service, with his army cap and his Geelong scarf. Do you have any medals, Charlie?’

He nodded. ‘A couple, just for being there, nothing special.’

‘Oh, that can’t be right, Rebecca said you were very brave.’

Berlin let the comment go. Last time he’d seen his medals they were rolled up in a piece of flannelette and stuffed under some socks in his underwear drawer. Peter had asked to wear them to the Anzac Day service at school but Berlin told the boy he couldn’t remember where they were. He didn’t like telling the lad a lie but even the sight of the medals brought on an ache he found hard to cope with.

‘But you were saying you couldn’t find Cyril’s medals, right Beryl?’

‘I looked everywhere, that’s the truth, and then my stupid cow of a sister said they were in the coffin.’

‘With Cyril?’

That’s right. She came down from the country to help straight after Cyril died. Those medals were supposed to be on the coffin, not in it. They belong to the kids and the grandkids now. I wanted everyone to see them, and then afterwards we’d take them home. Stupid cow, she never listens, you say one thing and she hears another. She took them down to the undertakers and had Mr Callahan put them in the coffin. She thought that was where they were supposed to go and I’d forgotten to do it.’

‘So you went down to get them back? To the funeral director’s, I mean.’

She was staring down into her teacup ‘I dented the car.’ It sounded almost like a confession.

‘You dented the car?’

‘Cyril loved his car. He washed it every Saturday.’

‘And you dented it?’

‘On the gatepost at Callahan’s funeral parlour. I was upset and I don’t get to drive very often. And I was crying and Mr Callahan didn’t want to open the coffin. Cyril loved that car. It’s a Holden, it’s got those Venetian blinds in the back window.’

She was silent, staring out the window again. Berlin gave her a moment before he spoke.

‘They’re a good car, the Holden.’

She looked across at him as if she’d forgotten he was there.

‘And then Mr Callahan didn’t want to open the coffin, that’s right?’

‘That’s right, not at first. Not until I said I didn’t want to see the. body, I just wanted the medals back.’

‘And then he agreed?’

She nodded. ‘He told me to wait in the foyer but I changed my mind, Charlie, I just wanted one more look, one last goodbye.’

Berlin waited. She had a handkerchief in her hands now, clutched in her fists, pulling at it.

‘When I went down to the back room he had the lid off the coffin and he tried to stop me seeing – Mr Callahan, I mean. He looked very tired, Mr Berlin, Charlie, poor Cyril.’

Berlin stayed silent.

‘Mr Callahan already had the medals out of the coffin and he tried to stop me seeing but he only had one leg.’

‘Who had one leg? Cyril?’

She was pulling hard on the handkerchief now, her eyes shut. Was she trying to remember the sight or to block it out? Berlin wondered.

‘His right leg was gone, from the knee down, I think. His trousers just lay there flat on that side and his foot was gone.’

‘That must have been pretty upsetting.’

It sounded trite, even as he said it. He remembered ground crew hauling an unconscious, ashen-faced wireless op out of a shot-to-pieces Lanc that had staggered home after a raid on Hamburg. The ambulance had just gone, bells ringing, when someone tossed the man’s left leg out of the crew hatch, still wearing its sheepskin-lined flying boot. Berlin knew he would never forget the awful thud it made on the runway.

‘I remember I screamed, Charlie, and the next thing I was outside in the reception area on the couch and Mr Callahan was putting smelling salts under my nose. He said it happened all the time, people became distressed at the sight of a loved one who had passed on and they imagined all sorts of things.’