Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(44)
‘One last question, Glad. What did Len do in the army, can you tell me? Was he in a medical unit at any stage? Did he ever have anything to do with X-rays, for instance?’
‘Goodness no, not as far as I know. Like I said, Mr Berlin, he didn’t talk about the war. He was actually in the infantry, up in some place called Tarakan right at the finish. It’s near Borneo.’
Berlin had heard of Tarakan. The fighting there at the end of the war had been vicious and ultimately pointless, since they could have simply bypassed the enemy and left them to starve.
‘Len said the Japs were fanatics,’ she went on, ‘and would never surrender, no matter what. The only way to get them out of their bunkers in the end was to use flamethrowers and he volunteered for that.’
A thought came into Berlin’s mind and he tried to push it away.
‘Len said it was an awful job, Mr Berlin, but someone had to do it. He just reckoned the sooner the whole business was over and finished, the sooner he could get home to me.’
TWENTY-NINE
Somewhere flames flicker. Berlin smells smoke and stirs. Should they bale out? Berlin, like most Lancaster pilots, flies sitting on his parachute. The canvas-wrapped silk chute makes a cushion for the hard steel seat. The seat is meant to provide some protection from the flak bursts and their whizzing shards of red-hot, razor-edged shrapnel. He has never actually used a parachute but has been drilled in what to do. Jump out into the nothingness of a freezing black night at twenty thousand feet, count to ten and pull the ripcord handle – simple. He jumps.
He’s trapped, legs caught in billowing fabric. A dog is barking. At twenty thousand feet? That can’t be right. The flames flicker on the bedroom wall.
The fire was outside the house, in the backyard. Berlin grabbed Rebecca by her bare shoulder, shaking her as he untangled his legs from the sheets.
‘There’s a fire! Get the children out, now.’
Berlin was wearing flannelette pyjamas. He had begun wearing pyjamas to bed when the children were old enough to walk, but Rebecca still slept naked. They fumbled awkwardly for the dressing gowns thrown on the bed for extra warmth. Berlin found his slippers, tossed them aside and stuffed his bare feet into his shoes. Shoes would be better. He didn’t stop to tie up the laces.
Outside he saw the wooden floor of the darkroom burning. There was the smell of petrol on the cold air. The fire was fresh; the pine timber uprights and frame, stark in the moonlight, were still unscorched. But they would catch soon enough, Berlin knew – the flames from the accelerant were raising the temperature so quickly that even green wood couldn’t resist for long.
Berlin grabbed for the garden hose, wrapped around the tap over the gully trap. The brass spray fitting was cold to his touch. The dog was barking at something behind the chook shed. Stupid animal, this was no time to be out ratting.
‘You little bastard.’
The voice came from the same place as the barking. Pip yelped in pain and Berlin dropped the hose and sprinted for the shed. Before he got there a big bloke, broad-shouldered, wearing a knitted woollen cap and ex-military coveralls dyed black, came out into the light. A handkerchief was tied over the lower part of his face. He looked like he could be playing cowboys and Indians. He was holding Pip by the throat at arm’s length and the dog was squirming, growling, teeth bared. Berlin could see blood on the man’s right wrist.
The fire was brighter now and above the handkerchief Berlin could see a soot-blackened face with no eyebrows. Too close – the bastard had probably been bending over the petrol-doused floorboards when he lit the match. Berlin twisted his hands into fists and lunged forward. For one brief second he regretted not tying his shoelaces.
Seeing him coming the man yelled, ‘Fetch,’ and tossed the squirming terrier into the flames. Pip made a noise Berlin hadn’t thought it possible for a dog to make, and then another squeal of terror, followed immediately by Sarah’s voice from behind him.
‘Daddy, save Pip! Save Pip!’
He turned to see his daughter at the backdoor, barefoot in her pyjamas. When he turned back the man had disappeared. He heard the sound of someone scrambling over the paling fence behind the chook shed but ignored it to jump into the burning darkroom. His grasping hands found the dog and yanked him up by a back leg, the first thing he put his hand on in the smoke and flames. Surprisingly the fire was not as hot as he’d imagined. Things would have been a lot worse if the side wall panelling had been nailed into place, concentrating the heat.
It started to rain as he jumped across the boards to the open doorway. Typically, the weather bureau hadn’t forecast rain, but there it was. Thank God. It was soaking his dressing gown and pyjamas. And the dog. It was freezing-cold and spraying him horizontally, which he found odd.
‘Maria has called the fire people, Charlie, they come soon.’
Joe was leaning over the side fence, his garden hose playing on Berlin. Pip was shaking and whimpering but appeared otherwise okay. Berlin tucked him inside his wet dressing gown. He could hear the bells on an approaching fire engine.
‘Wet down the side of the house, Joe,’ he yelled, ‘and the dunny too. The chook shed should be okay.’ The flames had already scorched and shrivelled his passionfruit vine but losing the dunny would make things really ugly.
The yard was suddenly full of firemen in brass helmets, heavy blue woollen tunics and trousers, and knee-high black leather boots. Behind them a long canvas hose was unravelling but the fire was mostly out now. A jet of water under pressure rattled the blackened timber frame of the darkroom and passed on through, knocking tiny green apples from the nearest of Berlin’s trees. The last of the fire was out in seconds, the ground around the slightly charred structure now a muddy morass.