Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(5)
The’ 56 games were the first time the Olympics had been held outside the Northern Hemisphere and Berlin, like a lot of people, felt the event had the makings of a first-class fiasco. With political infighting, construction delays and cost overruns, the organising committee had even considered moving the games elsewhere. In the end they went ahead, and to everyone’s surprise Melbourne had actually put on a great show. In an atmosphere of continuing international political tension, the highlight to many was the closing ceremony. A local schoolboy had anonymously suggested having all the athletes enter the stadium for the last time mingling as friends, instead of marching in behind flags in national groups. The idea was a huge success, capping off what everyone was calling the friendly games.
Berlin saw none of the friendliness or even any of the events firsthand. Police leave was cancelled, shifts were extended, and he spent all his time hunting down missing, lost, or not-wanting-to-be-found athletes, officials and overseas spectators. All his formal requests for overtime pay or time off in lieu had been rebuffed, but he hadn’t let it go and today it had finally paid off for him.
Fifty yards on from the corner he made a careful left turn into the driveway. The bare bulb of the porch light glowed yellow, welcoming him home. He was smiling, happy, right up till the moment he switched the Studebaker’s motor off. The engine ran on for thirty seconds, coughing and spluttering until it rattled and finally stopped. He shook his head in the silence. Bugger. He decided to leave the bill in the car till tomorrow and tell Rebecca they hadn’t left him one. She’d see through that immediately but probably ignore it, especially when he told her his news. Rebecca knew him better than anyone, probably better than he knew himself. This was both a pain in the backside and, rather perversely, a comfort.
FOUR
The house was a beige and dark brown, three-bedroom, single-storey weatherboard structure with a small front porch and a red concrete-tile roof. After the war a spec builder had littered the street with variations on the same basic design and the residents had used fencing and garden plantings and different coloured paint to give their homes some degree of individuality. Berlin liked to think he was on the way to having the nicest house on the street. Rebecca had a good eye for colour when it came to paint and a magical ability to pick just the right shrub or flower and to plant it in just the right spot for it to thrive. Berlin liked coming home to this little house and to the people it contained.
He let himself in through the gate in the paling fence at the end of the driveway. He’d built that fence himself, and the gate too. It was one of his first attempts at carpentry after they moved in, and not a bad effort. At least it was still standing. In the backyard Pip came running from his kennel down the other side of the house. The kennel was another early woodworking project and so far there had been no complaints from the little brown terrier. Berlin knelt down and patted the dog, rubbing him under the chin and scratching his belly when he rolled over on the grass.
Berlin opened the back door and Pip raced inside, running between his legs. He reached down quickly to grab for the dog but was instantly entangled with seven-year-old Sarah, arms outstretched for a hug as she chanted, ‘Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home.’ He picked her up and she wrapped one arm around his neck, almost choking him as she searched for the overcoat pocket that held her lollies.
‘Kiss first, then lollies.’
She put both arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips with a loud smacking noise. ‘You are my favourite daddy of all time.’
Berlin hugged her tightly. The girl smelled of talcum powder and freshly washed hair. Had he ever been happier in his life? he wondered.
He put her down on the ground and handed over the two white paper bags and the box of chocolates.
‘Those chocolates are for your mum, so don’t you go opening them. And no lollies for you and Peter till you’ve finished your tea, you hear me?’
The pyjama-clad girl scampered off with her loot. Berlin unbuttoned his overcoat by the row of hooks mounted on the wall near the door to the laundry, above a neat row of gumboots and school shoes in assorted sizes. Berlin made sure his children always had properly fitted shoes and he took great care of them, using the polishes and brushes and cloths he kept in the wooden box his brother had made for him before the war.
He hung his coat up next to Rebecca’s. She was good with clothes, getting the most out of them, and the children always looked well dressed. Her red overcoat was almost as old as his but didn’t look it. The coat had been expensive when she bought it, her last indulgence as a single woman. She had worn it to their registry office wedding.
Berlin thought back to the day she had come to his boarding-house in Carlton, ten years ago now. It was seven or eight weeks after they first met, a cop and ex-RAAF pilot, and a journalist and ex-WRAAF photographer thrown together in a country town, both looking for a gang of armed robbers. Berlin for the life of him couldn’t understand why she had come to his bed at the Diggers Rest Hotel, or taken him into hers, and now she was telling him he was going to be a dad.
She had framed the news in terms of her father finding himself suddenly in need of buying a shotgun. Being Jewish and a simple country-town wedding photographer, he had very little experience of firearms. Perhaps, she had wondered, Berlin could suggest whether he should go for a single-or double-barrelled model.
She sat on the bed and told him she’d thought she was unable to have children, after an experience she refused to go into. She also said she didn’t actually expect him to marry her if he didn’t want to, and hoped he would believe her on that. Berlin pointed out that she wasn’t getting any prize in him. He drank too much, had had a run-in with a drug or two, and was a lowly paid copper with a career in a death spiral and a lot of baggage left over from the war. He knew she’d watched him sleeping, writhing and moaning in terror at the things he’d seen and done.