The Diggers Rest Hotel

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  There was a reason the Essendon football ground was called Windy Hill, and Berlin’s legs were soon shaking uncontrollably on the asphalt terrace where he and his grandfather and brother stood. At least it didn’t rain, and Berlin took some comfort from the buttered milk arrowroot biscuits his gran had wrapped in greaseproof paper and popped in his coat pocket as they left the house.

  There were no seats and little Charlie Berlin was a tiny figure lost amongst the surging, screaming, cursing crowd of men until his grandfather lifted him up on to his shoulders. Hidden among the crowd he had been sheltered from the worst of the wind, but now held up high in the icy breeze he could feel the chilblains already forming on his ears and fingers.

  But the view was spectacular, even if he couldn’t understand the on-field strategies and tactics. He understood, though, from the noise around him when a surging mass of towering giants in red and black forced the ball down the field and through the inner set of goalposts, that the Bombers were scoring. He soon learned he was for the Bombers and against the Hawks and the Demons and especially against Carlton – the Blues – and the old archenemy Collingwood, the baddest of the bad boys in the Victorian Football League.

  And Berlin understood something else from that first afternoon of football, and that was that his grandfather was a special person. The crowd knew he was a policeman and a sergeant and they gave him room and respect, and kept their swearing to a minimum if they thought his grandsons were in earshot. They joked with his grandfather and winked at the boys but even the hardest of them, and there were plenty of hard men at Windy Hill, knew their place.

  Berlin ate his biscuits at quarter-time and at half-time his grandfather let him and his brother share a hot meat pie doused in tomato sauce. He burnt his tongue on the steaming, salty gravy inside the crusty-brown pastry shell but said nothing, still marvelling at how the crowd of stamping, growling, hungry men in heavy coats and cloth caps, surrounding the pie stall, had parted for his grandfather.

  After the final siren, when the crowds surged out on to Raleigh Street to pack the trams and trains and pubs, Berlin had already made up his mind that he would follow the Bombers and perhaps one day play for them, but he also knew with certainty that one day he would be a policeman.

  THIRTY

  ‘Message from Albury Hospital, DC Berlin.’ Berlin looked up from his notes. Constable Hooper was standing in the doorway. ‘McGill, the paymaster bloke, is conscious. I thought you’d want to know right away.’

  ‘Thanks, Hooper. You have the keys to the Dodge?’

  ‘Bob probably left them in it. You reckon the paymaster will be much help?’

  ‘I’m hoping he can add a bit of detail to the picture. Maybe he’s picked up some clue that no one else has. He’s been a lot closer to these bastards than anyone else.’

  On the approach to the bridge, a flat-bed truck and several farm utes were pulled over to one side, parked next to Bellamy’s shiny blue Chevy. The driver’s door was open and Captain Bellamy was behind the wheel, watching a dozen or so men lined up in two ragged rows. They were dressed mainly in work clothes and overalls but a couple were in suits. If he had to guess an average age, Berlin decided it might be closer to fifty than thirty. One was wearing an army-issue tin hat and they were all armed. Berlin counted seven Lee Enfield .303 service rifles in varying condition, four shotguns and a hunting rifle with a telescopic sight.

  One of the men, wearing a slouch hat and a tattered battledress jacket with corporal’s chevrons, seemed to know what he was doing but his exasperation was obvious as he tried to push the men into some sort of a military formation.

  Rebecca’s Austin was parked a little further down the road. The boot was open and she was bending down, rummaging for something. Berlin parked the Dodge in behind her. She smiled when she saw him and walked over to the driver’s window.

  ‘Hello, Charlie. Lovely day for a drive.’

  ‘Or a little armed insurrection.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d give them that much credit. I reckon the nuns at my old school could give them a run for their money, guns or not. Just going to take one truck backfiring as it goes past and those blokes will drop their rifles and run for the hills.’

  ‘You know what it’s about?’

  ‘Last Saturday of the month manoeuvres, they tell me. They’re about to practise blockading the bridge. Just in case we ever go to war with New South Wales, I suppose. So where are you off to, or is that a state secret?’

  ‘Paymaster has woken up so I’m going to see if he remembers anything.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll see you at dinner. You can fill me in then.’

  Behind them Bellamy’s corporal began screaming at one of his troops. ‘Right turn means you turn to your right, you idiot! That’s the side your right hand is on. That’s the hand you wank with. How hard is that to remember?’

  ‘You manage to get that quote printed in The Argus and I’ll buy you dinner and take you dancing.’

  Berlin’s arm was resting on top of the open window frame and Rebecca briefly touched his hand. ‘Don’t tempt me, Charlie, I’m a girl who likes a challenge.’

  As he approached the Albury Base Hospital, Berlin felt his shoulders tighten, and after he parked it took all of his strength to get out of the car and walk up the steps to the main entrance. Hospitals held too many bad memories for him and he even tried to avoid driving past them if he could.

  A male orderly was sitting on the steps smoking and Berlin asked for directions to reception. Inside the hospital the long corridors had that familiar sickly smell of disinfectant and ether and floor wax, making him swallow hard.

  The matron on duty was wearing white stockings, white shoes and a white uniform starched so stiff Berlin figured if you hit it with a hammer the hammer would break. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun under her veil and the hairstyle matched her mood. Berlin followed the matron into a four-bed ward. There was a steel cupboard beside McGill’s bed with a bunch of limp yellow jonquils in a jam jar and a half-eaten bunch of grapes spilling out of a torn brown paper bag. Berlin pulled a grape from the bunch and ate it, earning him a disapproving stare from the matron.

  The paymaster’s head was swathed in white crepe bandages. His right eye was blackened and the cheek swollen.

  ‘He’s conscious and aware, Mr Berlin, but he has a fractured jaw and there also seems to be some hearing loss, hopefully only temporary. So unless you both know some kind of sign language, I can’t see that you can get any information out of him.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have a pen and some paper, by any chance?’

  ‘Nurse! Pen and paper.’ The matron snapped the order without even looking round to see if there was a nurse nearby.

  A wooden clipboard with several sheets of white quarto paper was thrust into Berlin’s hand, along with a fountain pen. The nurse who gave it to him, a young, round-faced girl, moved to stand behind the matron, eyes down and hands folded in front of her. The matron didn’t acknowledge the girl’s presence.

  Berlin unscrewed the cap of the pen and wrote DID YOU RECOGNISE ANYONE? on the paper. He handed the clipboard and pen to the paymaster, who stared at the writing. The paymaster squinted then looked up at the matron.

  ‘Do – you – wear – glasses – for – reading, Mr McGill?’ the matron asked, enunciating the question slowly and clearly as if speaking to a foreigner or someone who was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

  The man in the bed nodded.

  Berlin remembered the glasses he had crushed underfoot in the pay office. This really was the icing on the cake. ‘Fuck it!’

  The junior nurse glanced at him wide-eyed, her cheeks flaring red, and the matron sucked in her breath.

  ‘Young man, policeman or not we do not allow that kind of filthy language in my hospital.’

  Berlin was debating whether to apologise or punch the matron in the throat when he heard the sounds of shouting and car engines, and moments later, someone running down the corridor. The
orderly he’d passed at the main entrance slid in through the open doorway holding a thick, brown envelope.

  ‘Bloke wearing a balaclava and riding a motorcycle just chucked this to me and told me to deliver it to this bloke quick smart. He took off and half a minute later a mob of blokes in utes, waving rifles, come driving in after him. I pointed them in the direction of the river and off they went. It was all a bit bloody exciting. What’s in the envelope, you reckon?’

  The envelope was hand addressed VICTORIAN RAILWAYS PAYMASTER, C/O ALBURY BASE HOSPITAL. Berlin tore it open. Inside was what he quickly estimated to be close to a thousand pounds in banknotes and a typed letter reading, SORRY ABOUT THE JAW. HOPE YOU GET WELL SOON. ALL OUR BEST. P.S. THE MONEY DIDN’T COME FROM YOUR PAYROLL SO YOU CAN KEEP IT. WHY DON’T YOU TAKE A LONG HOLIDAY WHEN YOU’RE FEELING BETTER.

  Berlin tossed the money onto the paymaster’s bed and stuffed the envelope and note into his overcoat pocket.

  ‘Excuse me, Matron, but I have to go after these bast— reprobates.’

  Outside, a truck had parked the Dodge in. Berlin screamed at the driver to move, which only seemed to confuse him. By the time Berlin cleared the hospital car park and crossed the river there was no sign of the motorcycle or the militia.

  He was trying to work out his next move when a figure on the roadway outside the police station flagged him down. Berlin slowed the car just enough for Roberts to jump on the running board and let himself into the passenger seat. The constable was still wearing his football jumper and black shorts under a khaki army greatcoat.

  ‘Go straight on, Mr Berlin. They passed by me going like bats out of hell. Miss Green was bringing up the rear but she wouldn’t stop. Can’t have been more than five minutes ago.’

  And five minutes was all it took. When Berlin caught up to Bellamy’s men in the narrow cutting on the Tallangatta road, it was all over. Rebecca was laughing, but she was the only one.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Bellamy’s men walked slowly towards them, surrounded by a mob of bleating sheep. The expressions on the men’s faces ranged from anger to disbelief to embarrassment. The anger was probably because they were now unarmed and the disbelief and embarrassment almost certainly because apart from Rebecca and Captain Bellamy, none of the group was wearing trousers or boots.

  Rebecca stopped beside the Dodge and turned around to take a photograph. Bellamy broke away from the line of men and limped slowly over to join them.

  ‘Miss Green, I would really prefer if you didn’t.’ The Captain’s jaw was set tight. He was obviously not a happy man.

  She pressed the shutter button. ‘It’s a free country, Mr Bellamy. If you’ve got some pull with my editor or the Victorian premier you might be able to block publication but I can’t see what grounds you’d have.’

  Bellamy looked towards Berlin for help.

  Berlin lit a cigarette. ‘Public hygiene maybe, because people are going to piss themselves laughing if they ever get to see this.’

  ‘Perhaps we should see what Sergeant Corrigan thinks,’ Bellamy said and he moved back to join the line.

  Rebecca knelt down to get a lower angle on the men, who were now moving away from them back in the direction of town. The militia were a sea of pasty white legs, saggy greyish-white underpants and drooping socks.

  ‘Jesus wept, Rebecca. What the hell happened here?’

  She got back to her feet, slowly winding the film on. ‘A few minutes after you left for the hospital, a bloke wearing a balaclava zoomed past on a motorcycle in the same direction. He gave the troops the two-finger salute so they piled into a couple of utes and Bellamy’s car and went after him. I followed them. Looks like the motorcycle looped through the hospital car park and went past us, heading back to the bridge.’

  ‘He was dropping off a get well card for the paymaster.’

  ‘How very thoughtful. Anyway, we turned round and went back over the bridge and through Wodonga and started to catch up to him a few miles out of town.’

  Berlin knew those utes would only ever catch up to a bloke on a motorcycle if he wanted them to.

  ‘My Austin was still at the back of the posse and when we came to the cutting the bike went up over the top on the gravel and we went through the middle, ploughing straight into this mob of sheep. Everyone gets out of the utes to clear a pathway and then we realise there’s a bloke up on top of the cutting on each side of us and the main bloke on the roadway out in front of us, and they’re all holding Tommy guns.’

  ‘Sounds like a very well thought-out ambush,’ Berlin said. ‘You get any photos of them?’

  Rebecca shook her head. ‘Didn’t seem smart to point a camera at someone who’s pointing a gun at you. Makes no difference anyway. Same bikes as the loco sheds, same overalls and balaclavas. Next thing they order Bellamy’s troops to drop their trousers and dump them into one of the utes, along with their boots and rifles. But they made an exception for the Captain and me. Then they told us all to start walking back to town.’

  When the roadway was clear of sheep and half-naked militiamen, Roberts drove Berlin and Rebecca into the cutting. They found one ute, the Captain’s blue Chevy and Rebecca’s Austin. The ute and the Chevy had their bonnets up. The second ute, the one with the guns and clothing, was missing. Roberts got out and checked the vehicles.

  ‘No keys in the ute or the Chevy and the distributor caps are off. Rotors are gone so they won’t be moving any time soon. The Austin is okay though, they’ve left your keys and everything, Miss Green.’

  ‘That was nice of them, eh Charlie?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re real gentlemen. Roberts, drive the Dodge back into town and pick up Bellamy on the way. Drop him out at his farm. I’ll get a lift with Miss Green.’

  ‘Righto, Mr Berlin.’

  ‘And you were right about Bellamy’s militia, Roberts, they’re a right bunch of drongos.’

  They found the missing ute a couple of miles further down the road. It had been backed through a wire fence into a farm dam with only the front end still clear of the water. Rebecca parked the Austin and they walked across to the edge of the dam.

  A couple of pairs of trousers were floating on the surface. Rebecca took photographs of the scene while Berlin tossed clods of dirt into the dam and watched the ripples.

  ‘You sure you didn’t recognise any voices?’

  Rebecca lowered the camera. ‘Nope. Only one of them spoke anyway, one of the men up on top of the cutting. He did sound like he was dropping his voice, trying to disguise it. But he didn’t have much to say really, just, “Drop your guns, boys, and your tweeds.” ’

  ‘And no one gave him an argument?’

  ‘Hell, no. Those Tommy guns are pretty persuasive. Everyone had their pants down in ten seconds flat.’

  ‘Except you.’

  ‘Takes more than a Tommy gun to get my pants down. At least a box of chocolates and maybe dinner and some dancing.’

  ‘So are we talking Winning Post chocolates?’

  Rebecca smiled, delighted that Berlin was going with the joke. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Charlie boy. Cadbury’s Milk Tray, if you don’t mind.’

  Berlin laughed and tossed another clod of earth into the dam. The ripples lapped up against the opposite bank, where the rotting carcass of a sheep lay half out of the water. A shiny black crow swooped down over Berlin’s shoulder, startling him. The bird glided across the surface of the dam and landed on the remains, where it began to peck the matted wool and putrid flesh.

  Berlin glanced up at the sky. It was starting to snow again so they were safe from the low-flying Russian ground-attack fighters for a while. The drifting snow reached his knees and Berlin had never known that a man could feel so cold. He pulled the dirty khaki greatcoat tight around his shoulders and turned back towards the Polish roadway and the girl, willing her, begging her, silently pleading with her to move before the SS officer pulled the trigger.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Germans had built mo
st of their POW camps as far east as possible, into Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Prussia, maximising the distances escapees would have to travel to safety. In early 1945 with the Red Army advancing, tens of thousands of Allied POWs were forced out of the camps, joining millions of refugees on the cluttered roadways, marching slowly westward back to Germany through the worst winter blizzards in a hundred years. Berlin’s camp had been evacuated over two days, with the seven thousand prisoners split into more manageable groups of several hundred each.

  On the seventh day of the march, the guards forced the column of shivering POWs out of the sleet and into the meagre shelter of a wooden barn left shattered by repeated Russian air strikes. It might have been around four or five in the afternoon but if the winter sun was still out there beyond the leaden clouds the POWs couldn’t tell, and they cared even less. The horse-drawn army field kitchen was nowhere to be seen so the starving men knew it would be another night without food.

  Berlin had found the potato a little over an hour after he and the other exhausted, freezing men had slumped gratefully down into the shelter of the barn. As he tried to sleep, something jammed into his back and he dug for it under the straw, expecting a stone, bewildered at finding a potato. It was hidden deep under the filthy straw and had somehow escaped detection by the hordes of refugees who must have used the barn every night.

  His fist closed around the black lump and he slipped it into the pocket of his khaki army-issue greatcoat. Berlin was starving, like all the others, but he held onto the potato. Perhaps there would be worse to come, though he felt that if things became even just a little worse he would not survive.

  The next morning the snorting of a horse woke them and there was a watery soup waiting in the big boiler of the field kitchen. Berlin joined the line of hungry men, his hand still closed around the potato in his pocket. Those with dysentery stayed a little longer in the barn, some sobbing in misery as they squatted and added another layer to the squalor that would greet whoever used the place for shelter that evening.