The Diggers Rest Hotel

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  ‘I do trust you, Roberts, but I’m not here to upset the smooth running of Sergeant Corrigan’s station, so if it’s your job to take Jesse home you should hop to it.’

  Roberts was right about the horse wanting to get home, and with the Dodge following behind they got to the dairy without incident. The milko was singing happily to himself as Roberts helped him onto a battered couch on the dairy’s porch to sleep it off. Berlin slid over to the passenger side as Roberts walked back to the car.

  ‘One more chorus of “Old MacDonald Had A Farm” and I was about ready to throttle the bugger.’ He put the car into gear and backed the Dodge carefully out onto the roadway. ‘She handles well, eh? You can take her any time you want, you know.’

  Berlin wasn’t likely to take Roberts up on the offer. He didn’t own a car and he hardly ever drove these days. And he never, ever drove with passengers. Berlin had sworn he wouldn’t take responsibility for another person’s life again for as long as he lived.

  THIRTEEN

  The two-storey Diggers Rest Hotel was out on the causeway connecting Albury and Wodonga. Built in the 1860s and set well back from the roadway, it was a solid-looking stone structure, flanked by stands of eucalypts and fronted by a gravel car park. Since it was past six, the front door of the hotel was shut and the windows of the public bar were dark, but for a closed hotel the car park was remarkably busy. Half a dozen utes and farm trucks were lined up, nose in to the hotel’s verandah. Two stock horses, still saddled, were tied up to a verandah post and a couple of wiry red cattle dogs snoozed under a wooden seat.

  Roberts drove the Dodge cautiously across the gravel and turned right at the end of the row of parked cars. He stopped next to a white open-topped jeep with MILITARY POLICE painted under the windshield. A couple of khaki slouch hats lay on the front seats.

  ‘Trouble inside, you reckon?’

  Roberts shook his head. ‘Sergeant Whitmore and one of his offsiders from out at the Bandiana Army Camp. He cruises through town around closing most nights to keep an eye on things and then hangs out here for a bit. It’s one of his regular watering holes. Let’s get inside, you must be hungry. After we get you sorted I’m off home for tea.’

  ‘Let me shout you a beer first.’

  Roberts shook his head. ‘No thanks, I’m teetotal. I took the pledge when I turned eighteen. My mum wanted me to, and with the old man, you know …’

  ‘Fair enough. How about a lemon squash then?’

  Roberts opened the driver’s side door. ‘Sorry, but my landlady doesn’t make allowances for latecomers. If I’m not there right on time then the dog gets my dinner.’

  A single bulb lit up a sign above the side door, HOTEL GUESTS ONLY. Roberts knocked and for a minute Berlin thought Sergeant Corrigan had opened the door.

  ‘Berlin, right? You met my brother, Barry, this morning I think. The local sergeant. We’re twins. I’m Vern, Vernon Corrigan.’

  Berlin put out his hand then realised that Vernon Corrigan’s right arm stopped at the elbow.

  ‘Hand grenade. Happened back in militia training. Held onto the bastard of a thing a wee bit too long.’ He winked and smiled. ‘Used to be a bit of a larrikin in my youth, DC Berlin, but now, as Barry likes to say, I’m “armless”.’

  Berlin could smell whisky on Corrigan’s breath and the smile on his face didn’t match the look in his eyes, which was hard, calculating and bitter.

  ‘Come on along down to the dining room and we’ll fix you up with a drink and some tucker. She’s steak tonight, and boiled spuds and caulie with white sauce … Lil!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘One more for tea. It’s the Melbourne copper.’

  ‘That mean I get the good beef?’

  ‘It’s all good here, sport. The wife’s a cracker cook and your tea’s the arse end of a steer that was grazing down by the Murray not too long back. Can’t get fresher than that. Good beef’s my speciality and I get it at the right price.’

  Berlin hung his coat and hat on a hook in the hallway, alongside some jackets, caps and scarves. He wondered about leaving the little automatic in his overcoat pocket, but decided in a country town it would be safe.

  Corrigan led him down the corridor and into a parlour. The room contained a couple of sagging sofas, a radiogram, an upright piano and a coffee table strewn with copies of Picture Post magazine and tattered Beano and Magnet comics. Linen-covered copies of Khaki and Green, H.M.A.S., These Eagles and other army, navy and air-force wartime annuals lined a bookshelf. The books, published by the Australian War Memorial, were full of paintings, sketches and photographs of servicemen and women on active duty, accompanied by stories, poems and uplifting essays. They were meant to reassure the anxious families left behind that beauty and creativity flourished amongst the slaughter.

  Two small boys, aged around five and six, were sitting on the floor in front of the radiogram, listening intently to a radio serial. They were wearing pyjamas, dressing gowns and slippers, and their wet, neatly combed hair and shining faces, along with the smell of Sunlight soap, suggested they were fresh out of the bath.

  ‘Them’s me lads,’ Corrigan said, ‘plus we’ve got a new bub – a wee girl. Now you little buggers, soon as Biggles is over get off to bed. And make sure your mum gives you your Hypol first.’

  The boys groaned and inwardly Berlin groaned with them. He remembered the disgusting ritual of the tablespoon of greasy, grey cod-liver oil his grandmother had forced on him and his brother every evening in autumn and winter.

  Through a set of glass doors there was a private dining room with a fireplace, a dozen or so tables and a bar along one wall. Men drinking alone occupied half the tables, while a couple of blokes in faded plaid shirts, dusty moleskin trousers and worn-down, elastic-sided riding boots were sitting together eating dinner. Drovers just back from delivering a mob of cattle to the saleyards, Berlin guessed – the owners of the horses and dogs outside, and possibly the source of the hotel’s freshly slaughtered steer at a good price.

  Two men in army uniforms were leaning on the bar. The older of the pair stood well over six feet and was wearing standard-issue khaki trousers and a military tunic with sergeant’s chevrons on the sleeves. His belt, webbing and pistol holster were white, indicating he was with the Provost Corps – the military police. The younger man next to him, a private, was wearing the standard-issue khaki belt.

  ‘Get you a drink there, DC Berlin?’ Corrigan shouted as he slid behind a buxom barmaid with platinum blonde hair, who giggled and loudly whispered, ‘Behave yourself!’ when he patted her rear.

  The sergeant turned and looked in Berlin’s direction when the landlord called out his name. Berlin noted the triple row of ribbons over the left chest pocket of the sergeant’s tunic. He felt he was being sized up as competition by a man who thought he owned the bar. It was a look he’d seen before in pubs and more often than not it finished in a fight. The sergeant had the casual grace of a man relaxed and comfortable in his own skin. His face had the appearance of having run into a fist or two in the past and Berlin was surprised when it was split by a friendly but slightly cocky grin and a wink, before he turned back to his drink.

  ‘Maisie here pulls a good beer if you fancy one,’ Corrigan continued, ‘and there’s whisky and some bourbon I got in for visiting Yank officers back in the good old days.’

  ‘A whisky’ll be fine,’ Berlin said.

  Corrigan glanced under the bar. ‘We’ve got gin too, I think, if bloody Sergeant Whitmore there hasn’t drunk it all, and there’s sherry for the ladies and poofters, not that we get many of those.’

  ‘Probably more than you imagine, Vern.’ As the sergeant spoke he turned and smiled at the stockmen, raised his glass in a toast and then emptied it. He turned back to the bar and held up the empty glass. ‘Can you gimme another, Maisie? There’s a good girl.’

  ‘You bloody calling us poofters, mate?’ One of the stockmen pushed his chair back and was getting to his feet.

  Whitmore turned t
o face him and shrugged. ‘Long, lonely nights on the track with just a mob of cattle, your faithful dogs and only each other for company. Flickering firelight, star-filled skies. Young love is bound to blossom.’

  The second drover was on his feet now. ‘Fuck you, arsehole.’

  Whitmore smiled. ‘I think you’ve made my case. But I fancy someone a wee bit younger, and a tad better looking.’

  The younger drover was sizing up the sergeant. ‘You’re pretty tough with that gun on your hip.’

  As Whitmore began undoing his webbing belt, Corrigan placed a short iron bar on the counter top.

  ‘Take it outside, gentlemen. I don’t need any trouble in here.’

  ‘Look after this lot for five minutes, will ya Private Champion?’

  Whitmore handed his pistol holster and webbing to the second soldier, unbuttoned his tunic, neatly folded it and laid it across the back of one of the chairs. Berlin was expecting a more muscular torso and was surprised at how slim and pale the sergeant’s body was under his singlet.

  The two stockmen were halfway to the door leading out to the parlour when Whitmore called after them.

  ‘Boys, I fear I may have done you both a disservice by calling you poofters and I apologise.’

  Both stockmen turned, the older of the two slowly shaking his head. ‘That’d be right you gutless prick, trying to weasel your way out of a blue.’

  ‘I can clearly see now that you boys aren’t poofters at all,’ Whitmore continued. ‘You two would have to be the biggest pair of cow fuckers I’ve ever seen.’

  The older drover lunged towards the soldier, pushing a table sideways. Beer splashed from a glass, there were angry murmurs and a distressed, ‘Fair go, cobber,’ from the man who had lost his drink. A couple of the drinkers leapt up and fronted the drover, holding him back.

  Corrigan smacked the iron bar down hard on the counter. ‘Take it outside boys, now!’

  Whitmore smiled at the woman behind the bar. ‘Maisie, darling, give Terry there another beer on me, will ya. And don’t forget my gin and tonic, there’s a good girl.’ He glanced across at Berlin, his eyes full of mischief, before following the two stockmen out the door.

  Behind the bar Corrigan held up a bottle of Johnnie Walker and Berlin nodded.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘I’m Lily, Vern’s wife. Here’s your tea, Mr Berlin.’

  Lily was a slight, almost bird-like creature, with thin, wispy red hair plastered to her head by the heat of the kitchen. Berlin thought that she was either forty or had lived a very hard thirty. He decided it was the latter. There was a tired, resigned look in her eyes and fading evidence of a bruise on her right cheek. She put two plates on the table in front of him.

  ‘Thanks, Lily. Looks good.’

  The smaller plate held two slabs of white bread heavily smeared with butter. On the dinner plate was an inch-thick piece of steak with blackened edges, half a dozen boiled potatoes and a soggy mass of cauliflower drowning in white sauce.

  ‘There’s salt and mustard over on the sideboard. Pudding’s puftaloons with golden syrup. I’ll bring it along in a minute. You having a drink?’

  ‘Vern’s organising me a whisky, thanks.’

  Lily glanced at the bar where Corrigan was whispering something in the ear of the barmaid, who was laughing. Berlin saw Lily’s eyes tighten at the corners.

  ‘Enjoy your tea, Mr Berlin.’

  Berlin walked over to the sideboard for a pot of hot English mustard and the saltshaker. Back at his table he smeared a yellow dollop of mustard over his steak and sprinkled the potatoes liberally with salt.

  Berlin made a habit of eating everything on his plate. He’d known starvation once and had sworn he would never be hungry again. He was freshly back from the war when a young waitress had tried to clear away a plate that still held a crust of bread and Berlin had barely stopped himself from plunging his fork into her hand.

  The dinner plate was wiped clean and a second whisky half gone when Rebecca Green came through the glass doors. Every eye in the place followed her as she crossed the room to Berlin’s table. He studied her as she walked, estimating her height to be around five feet eight, give or take an inch or two. She had an easy, languid, almost insolent gait.

  A couple of the drinkers nudged each other and whispered. Someone laughed.

  ‘In their dreams and my nightmares. Mind if I join you?’ She pulled out a chair and sat down before he could answer. Lily appeared beside her a moment later.

  ‘Will you be having something to eat, Miss Green?’

  ‘Not tonight thank you, Lily, but I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea. How about you, Berlin?’

  He drank the last of his whisky and smiled. ‘Sure, why not.’

  Lily seemed pleased. ‘That’s settled then, two teas it is. And your pudding’s on its way, Mr Berlin.’ She gathered up his empty plates. ‘I must say I like a man with a good appetite.’

  ‘Me too.’ Rebecca smiled at Berlin. There was a playful glint in her eyes, and her tone made Lily blush. Lily picked up Berlin’s plate and hurried back towards the kitchen.

  Berlin decided he’d ignore the comment.

  Rebecca took off her jacket and slipped it over the back of her chair. ‘Bit of a stoush going on in the car park when I pulled up.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sergeant Whitmore from out at Bandiana going at it with a couple of blokes. There’s a man who doesn’t mind a fight.’

  ‘Is he winning?’

  ‘Didn’t look like it to me. He was on his knees vomiting his guts out when I came inside, so probably not. Might need to call the cops.’ She smiled at him across the table. She had that glint in her eye again. ‘You don’t happen to know where I can put my hands on a policeman at short notice, do you, DC Berlin?’

  He stood up. ‘I think I’d better take a quick look.’

  Berlin really didn’t know whether Sergeant Whitmore needed his help or not but he wanted to get away from Rebecca Green for a moment. He wasn’t used to having to match wits with a woman and he found her banter strangely unsettling.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Lost something?’

  Whitmore was on his knees, running his fingers through the gravel. He glanced up.

  ‘Mostly my dinner. But I dropped something in the excitement. Nothing to worry about, just a bit of a lucky charm.’ He got slowly to his feet, pausing halfway to brush gravel dust from the knees of his trousers.

  ‘Fag?’

  Whitmore looked at Berlin, spat, nodded and took the offered cigarette. Berlin lit the cigarette and his own with the same match. Whitmore took a deep drag and then coughed and spat again. The two men leaned back against the jeep and smoked in silence. Berlin could hear the murmur of the river and the croaking of frogs somewhere in the distance. Whitmore raised one shoulder, twisted his body and grunted.

  In the darkness Berlin could just make out the damage to Whitmore’s face – a split lip, a quickly blackening eye and gravel rash on one cheek.

  ‘You right? Looks like those blokes gave you curry.’

  ‘Nah, I reckon it was a draw. That young ’un had a good right on him though.’

  ‘You often go looking for trouble like that?’

  Whitmore grinned and then grimaced and touched his split lip. ‘There’s nothing like a bit of a blue to round out the evening.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘You’re the copper who flew up from town, right?’ The soldier put out his hand. ‘I’m Sergeant Whitmore, Pete.’

  ‘DC Berlin, Charlie.’

  The two men shook hands. Whitmore’s grip was firm but Berlin found his hand surprisingly cold. ‘I noticed you had a hell of a lot of ribbons on your tunic, Pete.’

  ‘Yeah, my aunty Gwen runs a haberdashery, I get ’em wholesale. Scuttlebutt round town says you had a war too, Charlie – over in Europe. You get any medals?’

  ‘Just the ones we all got for showing up.’

  ‘A pilot and a POW to boot, I hear. It all s
ounds very glamorous.’

  ‘Not a lot of glamour from where I was sitting.’

  ‘So, tell me about it. What rank did you reach?’

  ‘I was just a sergeant. Promotion to warrant officer and beyond always seemed to escape me.’

  ‘Good job, too. Pissy rank, WO. Like they say – not really an officer and not quite a gentleman.’

  ‘Where’d you serve, Pete?’

  ‘Up in the Guinea, and the Solomons for a bit. Independent company, then commandos.’

  ‘What does an independent company do?’

  ‘Travels light, lives off the land, hits the enemy where they least expect it.’

  ‘Tough going?’

  ‘Bit of a bugger. A bloke had to fight the jungle as well as the Japanese. Bugs and germs and worms and strange wogs and shitty food and wet rot and tinea and weird fungal infections that made a man look like a mangy dog and smell worse.’

  ‘You in any of the big battles?’

  Whitmore shook his head. ‘Like I said, hit and run was more our style. Half a dozen blokes staking out a possie on some shitty bush supply track and blasting whoever stumbled past. Empty a mag or two from the Owens, chuck a couple of hand bombs and then piss off quick before the Sons of Heaven could work out who or what’d hit ’em. “Shoot and shoot through” was our motto.’

  ‘Get there, get it done and get the fuck out.’ Berlin didn’t realise he’d said the words out loud.

  ‘That’s the story, Charlie.’

  ‘You coming back inside for a drink, Pete?’

  ‘Nah, probably give it a miss. I know my limit.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  ‘Doesn’t stop a bugger going past it, of course, but what’s a man gunna do. Reckon you can send Kenny, the young bloke, out? Might have to let him do the driving tonight.’

  ‘Sounds like a good idea. I’ll see you later then.’

  Whitmore studied Berlin’s face for a moment before he smiled. ‘Wodonga’s a small town so I don’t doubt it, Charlie, old son.’