Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(31)
Peter, leather schoolbag strung around his neck and hands deep in the pockets of his short trousers, shuffled on ahead, kicking morosely at the cinders covering the mud on the pathway. This explained why his shoes were so badly scuffed every time Berlin came to clean them.
‘Peter, stop that. I’ve told you a thousand times, a man takes care of his shoes.’
Sarah squeezed his hand and smiled up at him. ‘Take care of your shoes and your shoes will take care of you. Isn’t that right, Daddy?’
He winked at her. ‘You should listen to your sister here, Peter. And if you don’t start taking better care of them, you just might have to go to school barefoot.’
Berlin looked at Peter’s spindly legs under his wrinkled shorts. His socks were already down around his ankles, despite the elastic garters Rebecca had made for him, and his shoelaces were coming undone. The boy had been neatly dressed when Rebecca kissed him goodbye on the front porch just three minutes ago, and now, after travelling barely a hundred yards, he was a complete shambles.
Peter stared back at his father, his eyes defiant and calculating.
‘You can’t go to school barefoot, you have to wear proper shoes. Or you can wear sands hoes but only on sports days. It’s the rules.’
Looking for a fight are you, Sonny Jim? Berlin said to himself.
‘You know, Peter, I can tell you that at the end of the war a lot of people who didn’t look after their shoes … ‘ He stopped himself for a moment. ’ … had problems.’
It was a pathetically weak statement, he knew, but what else could he say to the lad, especially in front of his younger sister. The European winter of’ 45 had been horrendous, with blizzards and record low temperatures. Mountains of snow and ice hampered the passage of the millions of civilian refugees, soldiers, Allied prisoners of war and concentration-camp inmates struggling back into Germany ahead of the relentlessly advancing Red Army.
How can you tell children who had never seen snow, and whose worst winter experiences were goose bumps and itchy chilblains, about something like frostbite? About the insidious creeping numbness, the blackened toes and rotting feet, about crude amputations and gangrene and slow death because there was no proper medical help available. Berlin had only survived the long march because a fellow POW from the Canadian frozen north had shown him how to massage his feet at night to maintain the circulation, and because he had taken care of his one pair of boots.
‘The Russians beat the Germans in the end, Peter, because their soldiers knew how important it was to look after their boots.’
The boy nodded. ‘And now they’re going to come and try to kill us. Bloody communists, I hate them. I hope they all die. I’m going to join the army and fight them, just you watch.’
Jesus, not this again. Berlin felt Sarah squeezing his hand and he glanced down, saddened by the look of concern on her face. Peter had recently started to read the morning and evening newspapers, and while both his parents thought this was a good thing in principle, there were an increasing number of anti-communist, Red Menace stories being run. A real fear was being bred in people’s bones that atomic warfare between the Americans and the Russians was inevitable, and it would happen sooner rather than later. Great clouds of poisonous radiation and nuclear fallout would blanket the earth, including Australia, and millions would die. Add the growing power of Red China to the revelations of the Petrov spy affair a few years earlier, and the result was a paranoia that was even affecting children.
Berlin smiled at his daughter. ‘Peter’s just being silly, Sarah, you don’t have to worry. Anyway, he’s not big enough to join the army yet.’ He glanced at the boy. ‘And he’s not too big to get a smack on the bare bottom if he uses language like that again. Or talks about killing people, communists or not.’
Peter dropped his gaze to the footpath and twisted the toe of his left shoe into the cinders. ‘Sorry. But the communists are our enemy, everyone knows that.’
‘Why don’t you let me and the other grownups worry about things like that, eh mate? Though the funny thing is, I notice you don’t have a problem with firecrackers made in China.’
The boy stared up at his father apprehensively.
‘The Chinese are communists too, aren’t they, Peter? Maybe after school we should dig out that box of bungers from under your bed and take everything back to the milk bar for a refund. We can’t go around supporting the enemy, can we? Sarah and I will have banana splits while you sort it all out. That sound fair enough?’
The boy pouted. It was a low blow on Berlin’s part; banana splits were Peter’s all-time favourite dessert.
Sarah scampered ahead to draw level with her big brother. ‘Don’t worry, Peter, I’ll save you some of mine, I promise.’
He left the children under a peppercorn tree near the school gate. He got a kiss and a hug from Sarah and a grudging nod from the boy. Sarah took Peter’s hand as they entered the schoolyard. She started to skip along, the leather schoolbag on her back jumping from side to side in time with the swing of the tail on her cap.
Sarah got excellent marks for her schoolwork and class participation, did her homework without any urging, and was proud of her recent promotion to milk monitor. Peter’s reports, however, had him as average or below average in every subject, even with Rebecca’s constant attention and encouragement with his homework. The boy would be off to high school soon, and after that what? Berlin would like to see him apprenticed to a trade, like plumbing or bricklaying or even carpentry, though he showed little interest in his father’s woodwork projects.