Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(4)
Light from the fish and chip shop spilled out onto the pavement on the opposite side of the road. Berlin glanced at his watch – past six, past pub closing time, and it was Thursday night, pay night. Behind the steam-blotched shop window a mob of drunken swaying men were shouting their orders in slurred and halting voices, some no doubt cursing the Greek as a bloody wog who should learn to speak bloody English when he politely asked them to repeat their garbled orders.
Berlin knew many of the newspaper-wrapped bundles would be accidentally dropped in the gutter on the way home, or their contents greedily swallowed only to be vomited up moments later. Some would be left unwrapped and uneaten on kitchen table tops, fat slowly congealing over battered fish and potato cakes, while angry, bitter men beat their wives bloody in front of frightened children. Thursday nights were hell for coppers too, and Berlin was glad he was a long time out of uniform.
The Chinese takeaway further down the road was also busy, as usual, customers lined up in front of the tiny counter. Young children stood patiently in their pyjamas, dressing gowns and slippers while their parents waited for aluminium saucepans with colourful lids to be handed back over the counter, steaming pots of fried rice and gleaming sweet and sour pork and overly sweet and sticky lemon chicken.
There wasn’t a cat or rat left in the whole suburb a week after the Chinese opened, the story went, but randy toms still pissed on Berlin’s gateposts most nights, and his daughter’s little terrier Pip still proudly brought them the sleek grey rats he caught behind the tin-and-wire backyard chook shed. The struggle was always noisy and fast and brutal, the chickens squawking and flapping, the rat’s necks snapping in the jaws of the snarling terrier as it flung its head from side to side.
The milk bar at the intersection near the bottom of the road was still open. Berlin was the only customer. He bought a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray chocolates for Rebecca and white paper bags of mixed lollies for the children. Berlin knew what they liked and he led Hildy, the glum-faced teenaged serving girl, on a hunt through the glass jars arrayed along the laminex countertop. Sarah’s bag contained milk bottles, cobbers, chewy caramels, pink musk sticks and yellow banana moons while Peter’s assortment was more manly: a sherbet bomb, chocolate bullets, red-tipped white lolly cigarettes called Fags, and the rock-hard, aptly named, jaw breakers.
Berlin didn’t care much for lollies himself but a show card for ice cream caught his eye. He was tempted by a dixie cup of vanilla with its little flat wooden scoop, but decided he’d spent too much already. The pay packet was inside his overcoat pocket and he tore the end off and handed the girl a blue five-pound note. He counted the change carefully before slipping it into a trouser pocket. The lolly packets went into his overcoat pockets.
As he turned to leave he saw them. Next to a display case housing sad-looking cream buns and cakes was a locked glass cabinet full of fireworks: sky rockets, Catherine wheels, flower pots, jumping jacks, and red-paper-wrapped bungers of varying size, noise-making capability and lethality. Even though Guy Fawkes Night was still six weeks off, local kids had started piling up old timber and other burnable rubbish for a bonfire on the vacant land opposite Berlin’s house. Bungers were already popping off at odd hours of the day and night, scaring the neighbourhood pets and destroying the occasional letterbox.
It was definitely time for him to have a word to Peter about firecrackers again. A week earlier Rebecca had shown him the shoebox from under Peter’s bed, where a half-dozen red-paper-wrapped penny bungers and several packets of Tom Thumb firecrackers were hidden away, tucked under a Phantom comic held down with tombolas and cat’s-eyes and Connie agates from the boy’s marble collection. Empire Day last May had brought the usual newspaper reports of burns and blindings and small fingers being blown off little hands that held onto those bright red penny bungers a second too long. Being the policeman living on the street, Berlin expected his son to set an example, but so far that wasn’t how things had worked out. Peter was still far from being an out-and-out larrikin but he did seem to be developing a bit of a smart mouth and a knack for finding trouble.
The garage next to the milk bar was closed but Berlin’s car was waiting for him, parked in the driveway, key in the ignition. It was perfectly safe like that; everyone knew who the dark blue 1947 Studebaker Champion belonged to. When he opened the driver’s door he noticed the interior light was still not working. Bloody hell, how hard was it to replace a bulb? He slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The knocking sound seemed to be gone, thank God. The bill for the tune-up was on the passenger seat, neatly folded over. He squinted, straining to read by the feeble street light coming through the side window. Jesus Christ, had they fitted solid-gold sparkplugs?
As he pulled out of the garage driveway the Studebaker’s headlights swept over the mobile X-ray van parked in the empty lot across the road. It had been there several weeks now, long enough for weeds to begin growing up around the wheels. It would be going soon and Rebecca kept urging him to get his chest X-rayed before it left. The government’s plan for mass screenings for tuberculosis was aimed at covering everyone in the state, and the mobile vans moved regularly. He decided to get it done while he was on holiday. At least that was bloody free.
He drove down past the primary school, past the darkened buildings and the peppercorn trees lining the low wire fence, and then left and right into his street. A couple of the widely spaced streetlights were out and he drove slowly, wary of his tyres on the still unmade road. The sewer was due to go in soon and sometime after that disruption the roads would be paved. Berlin wouldn’t be holding his breath for all that to happen. The Olympics had used up a lot of money that the state government could have put into local projects, and things seemed to be going backwards.