The Story of Danny Dunn (15 page)

Helen sighed. ‘Bloody men! Danny, when you caressed me with your mouth I came four times. When we made love I came once.'

‘Yes, but . . .'

‘Danny, don't say it!'

‘Don't say what?'

‘That it's quality not quantity.'

‘Well, isn't it?'

‘No, that's rubbish. Why does a man judge everything on the performance of his penis, as if it's the gold standard for sex?'

‘Well, it's natural isn't it? The penis is made to fit into the vagina, that's its primary purpose,' Danny declared pompously.

‘What are you saying? The penis is king, it's the warrior, his sword and the conquest all in one, while the vagina, and therefore the woman, is the quiescent vessel?'

‘C'mon, Helen, I didn't say that.'

‘Danny darling, you didn't have to. Think about us tonight. I take you into my mouth and that's entirely appropriate. I ask you to do the same to me and you're shocked. That's a different matter, that's kinky, that's dirty, perverted, yuk!'

‘But it's not as good as the real thing, me and you —'

‘You know, Danny Dunn, you
are
an arrogant prick.'

‘But —'

‘Heaven forbid you men might do something that pleases a girl. We can't have that, goodness no. It's not decent, not respectable, not at all
nice
, and it doesn't make babies. Worst of all, there's nothing in it for the bloke.' Helen was warming to her subject now. ‘And if I'm wrong, then why is the “c” word the worst expletive you can call a man?'

Danny was deeply shocked. He'd never heard a woman refer to the word before. ‘Jesus, Helen! That wasn't necessary!' he said, blushing to the roots of his hair.

‘Oh, but, darling, it was. It illustrates how men instinctively think about the female, about the opposite sex. You might boast to your mates about what I did to you, but you'd rather die than admit you did the same to me.'

Danny was suddenly angry. ‘I'm not in the habit of discussing my private life with my mates.'

‘What? Not in theory? C'mon, be honest now.'

‘Well, yes, it's true,' Danny admitted. ‘Blokes talk like that, but it's just stuff in the showers. Most of them are still virgins. Most have never even seen a woman's vagina.' Danny hesitated, a half-grin on his face, ‘In fact, to be strictly honest, I hadn't until tonight. You don't look down there, even if you're not in the dark. It's a feeling thing.'

‘Prod and then hope to be guided home. That's how my married girlfriends describe their husbands' approaches. They know it's down there somewhere . . .' Helen chuckled.

‘Yeah, something like that,' Danny admitted, grinning. ‘I didn't know girls talked about things like that.'

‘Of course we do, or some of us, anyway. Up until now, most of my talk has been theoretical. Part of my masters degree takes in some anthropology, which has been very helpful, an excellent primer,' she said, in her best schoolmarm's voice. ‘For instance, did you know that throughout the ages and across cultures, not very many women achieve an orgasm through penile penetration alone?'

Danny looked bemused. ‘But you just said you did.'

‘Yes, and it was a very nice surprise; the whole experience has been a very nice surprise.'

‘You mean you didn't know if you would? Hey, wait on, what say you hadn't . . . would you have told me?'

Helen gave a little laugh. ‘I don't know. My married friends don't usually tell their husbands.'

‘You mean they fake it? No one's ever done that with me.'

‘Oh? How would you know?'

‘I reckon I'd know . . .'

Helen smiled. ‘Darling, you've got a lot to learn about women.'

Danny hesitated. He was getting in too deep. But he couldn't stop now. ‘You mean women go through their whole married lives, have kids and all that, but never achieve an —'

‘Orgasm?'

‘Yeah.' Danny frowned, concerned. ‘All their lives . . .' It was clearly a new thought.

‘Only the very silly ones do,' Helen said crisply. ‘Sex is a hands-on business, as I'm sure you know.' She raised one eyebrow.

‘Oh? Oh, I see what you mean,' Danny said quickly. Wanking was something he'd taken for granted since puberty, but it never occurred to him that girls, women, had the same basic urges or got up to the same tricks.

Helen laughed. ‘Well, that's enough theory for now. I'm not finding this conversation in the least erotic, so don't think you can skip French language lessons in future. I want the lot: everything that's natural between a man and a woman. And I don't want that decided by the Pope or the convocation of the Church of England. What do they know about what pleases a girl? They rabbit on about what's decent, and respectable, and
nice
, about making babies, but it's all for blokes. And women put up with it. But not this one. I won't be short-changed, Danny Dunn.'

Danny laughed, ‘Sure thing, Miss Brown. May I enrol for ancient history lessons as well, please?'

Danny wasn't inexperienced with women, but it counted for very little in his new relationship. It wasn't only that Helen didn't go along with the prevailing social and sexual mores – the Friday or Saturday night special, the drunken grope in the dunes or the back seat of a car, the obligatory marital bout of panting, probing, mumbling and fumbling; she also constantly challenged the order of things.

Helen simply didn't know her place as a woman. She didn't fit into any particular class for the simple reason that she didn't go along with most of what passed for conventional wisdom. She certainly didn't think a woman's place was in the home, though she was nevertheless an inspired cook. After the war she was planning to take her doctorate and thereafter pursue an academic career. In the working-class ethos of Balmain she would be seen as an absolute disaster by the men, a bitch who didn't know her place, while the women would refer to her as a stuck-up snob – ‘Too many brains for her own good, that one!' Most young blokes would run a mile from a sheila like Helen.

Danny had initially been afraid to introduce her to Brenda. Both were strong women, both held strong views, though not necessarily the same ones. His mother was a Catholic, and while not a regular churchgoer, she attended mass at Easter, Christmas and New Year's Eve and said her rosary every day. She was a dormant but far from lapsed Catholic. Danny couldn't imagine anything even vaguely sexual going on between her and Half Dunn. Like most children, he felt reasonably certain that apart from conceiving him, his parents had never had it off together. He tried to imagine them in the missionary position, Half Dunn on top, and although it brought a grin, inwardly he felt ashamed; you didn't think in those terms about your mum, and poor old Half Dunn lacked the energy to raise himself off the mattress.

Helen wasn't in the least religious, even though she was a biblical scholar. She blamed the church for most of the crimes against humanity committed over the past millennium or so, describing the Crusades, perpetrated in the name of a just and supposedly loving God, as the greatest mass murder in history.

By the time he'd returned for his first home leave, Danny knew he couldn't delay the two women meeting. At Helen's insistence he'd taken her to meet Brenda. They'd liked each other immediately. ‘Don't you lose that girl now!' Brenda admonished him on his next weekend leave, ‘What you've got there, son, is a “somebody”.' She'd never become reconciled to his leaving university and still never mentioned the war, even though Danny was now permanently in uniform. But Helen's appearance in her life had made a notable difference to Brenda's general demeanour. The two women seemed to have become friends, truly good friends, spending time together when he was in camp, Helen even occasionally helping out in the pub.

Danny had written to Helen every week from Malaya and then Singapore, right up to the day before they'd been captured, that is, if the last mail to Australia got out safely, possibly on the same boat as that cowardly bastard Bennett. Danny knew that he loved her and she him – she'd admitted as much. But Helen wasn't keen on the ‘until death do us part' bit, and they'd finally agreed to see what happened after the war.

She'd completed her masters degree towards the end of his battalion's stay in Malaya, majoring in Egyptian history, and had written to say she'd joined up as a cryptologist, her study of hieroglyphs at university an ideal preparation for code-breaking . . . 
and other things!
She'd also started to study Japanese as part of her course.
I hope to discover a few new oriental secrets that the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans didn't know about!
she wrote in the same letter
.
They'd given her the rank of second lieutenant and she'd ended the last letter he'd received with, ‘
Next time we meet you'll have to salute me, Danny Dunn, and high time too!
'
He'd received it two days before they'd surrendered to the Japanese, and his final letter, the one that may or may not have reached her, was addressed to
Lieutenant Helen Brown
. On the back of the envelope he'd drawn a crude version of his face wearing a slouch hat with a hand on the right brim at the salute.

That had been three and a half years ago and Danny had convinced himself that she'd have long since forgotten him and met someone else. He'd told himself that it was logical that a woman as good-looking and intelligent as Helen, not knowing whether he was alive or dead, wouldn't hang around if the right guy came into her life. Nor would he expect her to, knowing that she wouldn't accept him the way he was now, anyway, that no woman would. He'd been lucky, he'd had his fair share, women had always been generous to him, but now he'd better get used to flying solo. She'd been the best and at least he'd had that.

He'd taken on the task of burying her in his mind and had all but succeeded in erasing her from his memory when Brenda's letter had arrived. He'd written back to say he didn't think a reunion was possible and he didn't want her to renew their correspondence.

Danny had never been concerned about his looks, simply accepting that women found him attractive, a fortunate circumstance he wasn't going to analyse. He was grateful that he was lucky with women, and accepted, with an enigmatic smile, the joshing he received from envious mates. Now he realised how thoughtless, even arrogant, he had been. Why, when Helen Brown hadn't fallen into his arms, he'd discovered that there was more, so much more to love than casual conquest.

Most of his mates had gone off to war as virgins and had lost their virginity in a brothel in Lavender Street in Singapore or with a clumsy knee-trembler hastily taken in a dark, stinking, rat-infested alley in a Cairo slum or some equally seedy whorehouse – a raucous and drunken evening with their barrack-room mates, culminating in a loss of innocence they couldn't remember much about the following morning. Now they'd be the conquering heroes returning, to get all the nooky
they wanted, while he would have to endure the phoney smile on the lips of a King's Cross whore as she counted his money.

They arrived home on a morning with clear skies and brilliant summer sunshine to a welcome that started a fair way out to sea when the pilot boat and the first yachts appeared to accompany them through the Heads. As they drew closer, Danny could see that North Head was crowded with thousands of people while South Head, a naval base, was empty, but as they drew even closer and he could see Vaucluse lighthouse on the point of South Head, there, standing on a rock ledge on the cliff face, was a lone piper. Moments later, as the swirl of the pipes reached him, Danny began to weep.

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,

From glen to glen and down the mountain side;

The summer's gone and all the leaves are falling;

'Tis ye, 'tis ye, must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,

Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow;

'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow;

Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so.

And if ye come when all the flowers are dying,

If I am dead, as dead I well may be,

Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,

And kneel and say an ‘Ave' there for me.

And I shall hear, though soft ye tread above me,

And o'er my grave, shall warmer, sweeter be,

Then if ye bend and tell me that ye love me,

Then I shall sleep in peace until ye come to me.

The Circular Quay welcome had been even bigger than the newsreels had promised. Every military and civilian brass band in the city seemed to be playing ‘Waltzing Matilda', and the dockside cranes were spraying large arcs of white water into the harbour as the
Circassia
came in to berth. As they'd sailed up the harbour, thousands of small boats and yachts flying flags and bunting had come out to welcome them, some displaying hand-lettered signs that read,
Welcome home, Tom . . . or Kevin . . . or Jack.
The familiar green-and-cream ferries, brought to a standstill, blew their horns, and Danny could see people gathered on the foreshore by the tens of thousands. The noise from the cheering crowds on the wharf throwing streamers was almost deafening. Sydney had come out in force to welcome home its physically and emotionally broken sons, returning to their loved ones, who were about to discover how very different they were now from the happy, excited, strong and robust young men who had departed with a final kiss for Mum and a manly handshake for Dad maybe five years previously.