Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(7)
She’d smiled and said, ‘He’s like his dad, Charlie, that’s his only problem. We made him at a bad time in your life. You grew out of it and so will he.’ Berlin wasn’t sure either of those statements was true but he took comfort from them.
In the living room, Pip and Sarah were stretched out together in front of the brightly glowing but relatively ineffectual briquette space heater. Peter was sitting cross-legged in front of the television, eyes locked on the screen. He grunted hello without looking up. Berlin grabbed his daughter by the ankles, hauling her upside down into the air. She shrieked and giggled as he tossed her down onto the couch. Peter turned round and gave his sister a perplexed look. Like her he was already in pyjamas and dressing gown, ready for bed.
Berlin glanced at the dinner plates on TV trays near the couch, to make sure they had finished their vegetables and pudding. It was a rule in his house that you ate well, you ate often and you ate everything. Berlin had experienced real hunger in the POW camp, and on the long, forced winter march out of Poland, and he hated the idea of wasted food. Most of the neighbourhood’s dogs existed on scraps from their owners’ dinner table, but under that system little Pip would have starved in the Berlin household. Rebecca bought him meat scraps and bones from the local butchers.
‘Put Pip outside, please Sarah, and then wash your hands.’
Sarah slid off the couch. ‘C’mon Pip, bedtime.’ The dog looked up, wagged his tail and then scampered away, starting the usual five-minute evening chase that would leave them both breathless.
‘And Peter, you can take the dishes and cutlery out to the kitchen.’
The boy groaned. It was a sound that was becoming more common lately, and right now Berlin wasn’t in the mood.
‘Do it now and hop to it, Sonny Jim. And for the next week we’ll be having a family dinner every night, sitting up at the table together and talking to each other. No more of this eating in front of the TV like savages.’
‘I really don’t think savages have TV, do they?’
Berlin didn’t care for the cold edge of sarcasm in the comment. He felt the old anger flicker across his face, then saw that his son had judged he might have gone too far. Berlin had never belted the lad, but just lately he felt he was being pushed more and more towards it. Before Berlin could respond he felt Rebecca’s presence next to him. She put a hand on his shoulder, and the gentle pressure diffused his anger.
‘Peter, there’s a little boy in this house who might not have a TV if he ever talks back to his father like that again. Now do as you’re told and take the dishes out to the kitchen. And then clean your teeth. That TV is going off at seven-thirty sharp tonight. You have school tomorrow and I think you and your sister could both do with an early night.’
Berlin and Rebecca sat down together in the kitchen, the hallway door closed to block the sound of the television. The pie looked spectacular on the table, topped with a dome of golden-brown pastry that crumbled under the knife. Steam billowed out of the broken crust and Berlin could see thick chunks of beef in a sea of rich, dark brown gravy. Peas and boiled carrots were in pots on the stove and Rebecca had made a fresh bowl of mashed potatoes.
The pie tasted as good as it looked, the slow-cooked beef falling apart and the gravy thick and rich with bone marrow. Berlin ate as he always did, silently, head down, glancing up from time to time while methodically working his way through everything on his plate. Rebecca ate too but he sensed she was watching him and he felt there was something on her mind.
He wondered if she wanted a glass of wine with her dinner. There had always been wine with dinner when they’d visited her parents, and she had drunk there but rarely at home and never in front of him. Sometimes Joe next door would hand some of his illegal homemade red across the fence, and if Berlin was home late and she had already eaten, there might be a single glass gone from the bottle. He’d told her often enough that he didn’t mind, that it wouldn’t worry him, but she always smiled and shook her head.
Berlin wasn’t really a wine drinker in any case. He was a whisky man, but his last taste had been the night Rebecca told him she was expecting a baby. It was partially about saving money but mostly about saving himself. After the war his drinking had been mostly solitary, the quantities impressive. In trying to forget some awful moments in his life, he found himself embroiled in circumstances just as awful, and it was a combination of hitting rock-bottom, meeting Rebecca, and the news of a forthcoming child that had led him out of a tangle of alcohol, drugs and despair.
SIX
Berlin fed the dog while Rebecca put the children to bed. He knew she would call him when dessert was ready and dessert tonight was apple crumble, another favourite of his. This confirmed that Rebecca might have something on her mind. He knew she sometimes manipulated him with food and he was happy to go along for that particular ride. She knew that he knew and that amused them both.
He put the battered tin plate down next to the dog’s water bowl, near the laundry gully trap. Pip growled and snuffled and yelped as he attacked his dinner, head down, stumpy tail wagging. Berlin leaned on the wall of the laundry and lit a cigarette. Somewhere overhead a plane droned through the night sky, on its way to Essendon aerodrome. A Qantas Super Constellation, perhaps, back from London. Berlin didn’t look up. He briefly wondered what they were like to fly, with passengers instead of bombs and no one shooting at you. He’d read in the Herald that Qantas had just ordered jet airliners, new Yank jobs, Boeings. It must be strange to fly without propellers.