The Story of Danny Dunn (16 page)

Danny had been given a warrant for a taxi, but despite his bad back, he'd shouldered his duffle bag and begun to walk the twenty minutes or so from Circular Quay over to the Erskine Street Wharf where the ferry to Balmain berthed. Six years previously, had a young bloke arrived in the peninsula in a taxi, they'd have thought him a wanker. Danny couldn't think of a convincing reason why things might have changed. Even if he was no longer bulletproof, he knew Balmain would be just the same as ever. It would take more than a global conflict to alter the beliefs of the people with whom he'd grown up.

He still thought of himself as a young bloke, although his physique belied that description and his face told a different story. He'd left Australia standing six feet and four inches in his socks and weighing seventeen stone, but you don't strip six stone off a big bloke who isn't carrying any excess weight and expect him to look like Charles Atlas. Now, lugging his kit over from Circular Quay to Erskine, he could feel the two painkillers he'd taken coming through the heads into Sydney Harbour starting to wear off.

Ten minutes or so from the Erskine Street Wharf with perhaps a thousand yards to go, a young bloke of about eighteen approached. He seemed to Danny to be bursting out of his skin with good health and wore a wide grin. ‘Lemme help you with yer kit, mate. Yer look tuckered out,' he offered.

Danny turned to face him and noticed the look of shock when the young cove saw his face. ‘Bugger off!' he snapped, suddenly furious. He dumped his kitbag onto the pavement and began to kick it. ‘Bugger off! Bugger off!' he yelled, and kept kicking until the pain in his back became too much and he was forced to stop. Panting furiously, bent double, his hands on his knees, Danny attempted to catch his breath.

The young bloke was still there. ‘I thought I told you to bugger off?' Danny gasped.

‘Yeah, you did, but I ain't,' the young bloke said mulishly. He bent and hoisted Danny's duffle bag onto his shoulder. ‘Ready when you are, soldier. Where to?'

Danny attempted to laugh. He was, to misquote a popular song, bent, buggered and bewildered, but he was home and the first bloke he'd met ashore had shown him kindness. ‘Just until I catch my breath then. Erskine Street Wharf,' he said, extending his hand. ‘What's your name, mate?'

‘Lachlan Brannan. I missed out, turned eighteen the day they dropped the atom bomb on Japan.'

‘Count yourself fortunate, son,' Danny gasped, shaking his hand but forgetting to introduce himself. They had resumed walking towards the ferry terminal and Danny had gained his breath sufficiently to ask, ‘Brannan? I played water polo with an Adrian Brannan, three or four years older than me. Good bloke. As I remember he had four younger brothers and a sister, Doreen, who was older than him.' Danny grinned. ‘Damned good sort. Any relation?'

‘Yeah, Adrian's me oldest brother. I'm the youngest! Doreen's married now,' Lachlan said, taken aback. ‘You from Balmain then?'

‘Yeah, my folks own a pub there, the Hero of Mafeking.'

‘The Hero? Me old man drinks there! Jesus! You ain't . . . ?'

‘Sorry, mate, bloody rude,' Danny extended his hand. ‘Name's Danny . . . Danny Dunn.'

‘You're kidding!
The
Danny Dunn? Balmain Tigers, first-grade front row? You won the grand final for us just before the war. I was just a kid, but I was your number-one fan! We used to fight about which of us was gunna be you when we played touch footy in the park.' Lachlan shook his head in amazement. ‘Shit, eh? Danny Dunn, who'd a thought?'

‘Look I'm sorry about giving you a mouthful back there, mate. It's just . . . nah, forget it, just one of those days. You work around here, Lachlan?'

Lachlan laughed. ‘I wish. Mum gimme sixpence for the tram, told me to go into the city and find a job. I missed out yesterday and the day before and she's getting really cranky. I heard they was hiring casual labour down at the passenger wharves so I come down.'

‘No luck?'

‘Nah, there weren't no casual; bloke at the gate asked to see me union card.' Lachlan grinned. ‘I told him if they gimme a job I'll join for sure, nothing more certain. The fat fart told me to piss off. He reckoned I didn't have the right fucking attitude.'

‘Oh? And what might that be?'

‘Dunno, mate. But I should'a known. Wharfies union, closed shop, Joe Stalin's mob, lotsa commos.'

They walked on silently for a while, until Lachlan asked, ‘You gunna play again, Danny? F' the Tigers?'

‘Why? They looking for an ugly one-eyed ten-stone prop with a crook back?' Danny laughed.

‘You could bulk up – looks don't matter none. You're a front-row forward,' Lachlan offered naively.

Danny grinned and pointed to the duffle bag Lachlan was carrying. ‘Back, mate – it's buggered. Can't even carry that bastard. Lawn bowls, if I'm lucky.'

They'd reached the ferry terminal and Lachlan dumped Danny's duffle bag on the jetty where the ferry pulled in. ‘I'd come home with you, Danny, carry your clobber, but if I get home before five I'll cop a tongue-lashing and a clip behind the ear from me mum.'

Danny had a sudden idea. ‘What if I paid you? You know, treat it like a legit job?'

Lachlan shook his head. ‘No way! You come from Balmain. Yiz coming back from the war, yer got a crook back. I take your money, me dad would take his belt to me. Anyway, I wouldn't do it, I mean, take your money. Maybe I'll still find a job. Sometimes there's late-afternoon loading at a packing house I know about in Darling Harbour.'

Danny felt fairly certain Lachlan was fibbing. ‘Nah, she's right, mate. My back's rested now. It's that tough, eh? I mean, finding a job?'

‘Yeah, all the blokes comin' home from the war, they get first go. Me dad reckons it's only fair, but me mum don't take no notice. If you're willing to work there's always something, she says.'

Danny put his hand into his trouser pocket and felt for a two-shilling piece. ‘Well, thanks, Lachlan. Come and see me at the Hero – I'll buy you a beer.' He extended his hand as if to shake the kid's and in the process slipped the coin into his palm.

Lachlan Brannan drew back, pulling his hand free. He looked down at the silver coin, not quite believing what he held. Then he shook his head. ‘No way!' he cried, genuinely upset. ‘No way . . . no effing way! Like I said, I ain't taking your money, Danny.'

‘It'll be lunchtime soon enough. Buy yourself a pie,' Danny offered.

Lachlan took a step forward and held the coin out for Danny to take. ‘A pie costs sixpence.' He patted his back trouser pocket. ‘But I already got a sanwitch.'

‘A milkshake then,' Danny said, conscious that he'd upset the kid.

‘No way!' Lachlan insisted, then reached out and dropped the coin into the shirt pocket of Danny's army fatigues.

‘Sorry, kid. I didn't mean to insult you. I guess it's been a while. I'm not accustomed to spontaneous kindness. Where I've been there wasn't much of it going around. It's just, well, when you came up and offered to help me carry my kit I reacted badly, but I appreciate it. I really do. I'll never forget that I'd been back in Australia half an hour and a young bloke, a stranger, offered to help me. You didn't have to do that.'

Lachlan grinned and shrugged. ‘I wasn't doing nothing else.'

‘Okay, no hard feelings then. Come and see me at the pub. Be a pleasure to buy you a beer, mate.'

‘Yeah, okay, Danny, after I've found meself a job.'

‘No, come anytime, tomorrow if you like.'

‘Nah, I ain't no bludger. I'll wait till I can buy a shout.'

Danny could see the little ferry approaching, a wash of white water as the prow turned coming under the bridge. Nothing had changed. He was right about not taking a taxi. He was back in the Balmain mindset. ‘See you soon, Lachlan.' Danny set off, then suddenly turned back. ‘Here's an idea, mate. When I was at uni during the holidays, just so I didn't have to work at the pub, I'd work as a messenger, usually for a law firm, but once I applied to an advertising agency. I didn't get the job because they wanted someone permanent to start as a dispatch boy; it's a sort of messenger boy, but you eventually move up into the other departments, and if you're bright it can lead to a whole career. That's not the sort of job they're going to give to a returned soldier.' Danny paused, thinking. ‘Wait on, let me remember the name, they were in Commonwealth Street . . . George something? Yeah that's right . . . George Patterson Advertising.' Danny looked at Lachlan, who was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and shirt with the sleeves cut out and a pair of well-worn worker's steel-tipped boots, with an inch or so of odd-coloured socks showing above the top of each. ‘Got any good clobber at home?'

‘You mean Sunday best?'

‘Yeah, you know, jacket, daks, white shirt, tie, shoes?'

‘Nah, but I can borrow me brother Charlie's. He's at sea – he's first mate on a coastal freighter, he won't mind. Mum can take up the trousers a bit.'

‘Okay, come round to the pub tomorrow and we'll buy the
Sydney Morning
Herald
, and we'll also get stuck into the telephone book, see if we can find something between us, eh?'

‘Yeah?' Lachlan said, surprised. ‘Fair dinkum?'

Danny grinned, spreading his hands. ‘We can only try, mate.'

‘Shit, eh,' Lachlan said, pleased. ‘Wait till I tell Mum.'

‘You'll have to learn a bit of telephone patter. You know – what to say, how to answer their questions, but I'll teach you all that interview stuff. I guess I can still remember it. It's all about showing lots of enthusiasm and energy, then when they give you a month's trial, you run everywhere, smile a lot . . . volunteer, kiss arse.'

‘Gee, thanks, Danny.' Lachlan stepped forward and once again shook Danny's hand. ‘Do yer think it'll work? I didn't do too good in me higher school certificate.'

‘Like I said, we can only try. Did you pass?'

Lachlan grinned sheepishly. ‘Yeah, but only by the skin o' me teeth. I can't go to uni or nothin' like that. Not that I could, even if I could, if you know what I mean. We ain't never gunna have that kind of money, anyway.'

‘Well, you got through and you passed, that's all people – prospective employers – will want to know,' Danny said, remembering how he'd simply walked out of university in his third year. What might have happened had he not been so bloody pigheaded didn't bear thinking about.

‘I should probably have left at the intermediate certificate,' Lachlan admitted, ‘done an apprenticeship like me brothers, but Mum said some of us had to have a proper education, get through high school, not like her and me dad during the Depression. If you got an education, you can get a job.'

Danny couldn't help liking this kid who didn't mind a chat. Most working-class eighteen-year-olds, as he remembered, were all acne, shuffling feet, mumble and grunt. ‘I seem to remember your sister Doreen went to Fort Street Girls? She was pretty bright, as I recall. Didn't she get offered a scholarship to teachers' college?'

‘Yeah, but me dad was in the queues, two days casual a week if he got real lucky, Adrian was a boilermaker's apprentice and earning bugger all and Mike the same for fitter and turner. Charlie and me were still at school, so Mum said Doreen had to learn shorthand typing and go out and work – too many mouths to feed. Now she works as a senior clerk at Trades Hall in Goulburn Street, but her and Tommy, they're going to have a baby soon.'

Danny thought for a moment. ‘You don't strike me as stupid, kid.' He pointed in the direction of the city. ‘You can bet your sweet arse, somewhere in that heap of bricks there's a job for Lachlan Brannan. They didn't drop that bomb on your eighteenth birthday for no reason. Japan surrendered, the world is at peace again and soon there'll be jobs for everyone.'

To Danny's surprise Lachlan disagreed. ‘Nah, that's the whole problem. There were lots of jobs when the war was on; now with everyone coming back it's different.'

The boy can think and has an opinion, Danny acknowledged, then said, ‘Yeah, you may be right, but we're going to find a position for an eighteen-year-old that they don't want a returned soldier like me to fill.'

The passengers had disembarked from the ferry and it was time to board. Danny hoisted the duffle bag onto his shoulder. ‘See you tomorrow, Lachlan. Come around about ten-thirty, after we've opened. Unless things have changed, it's not a busy time of the day.'

Danny made his way to the front of the ferry so that the six other passengers could only see the back of his head. He was suddenly aware that he'd made his first peacetime commitment, and on the quarter of an hour ferry ride to Balmain he wondered whether he should have offered to help the kid. It was a small gesture, yet now he wasn't sure if he was ready to take on even this much responsibility for someone else's life. He told himself he could barely scratch his own arse and hadn't any idea how he was going to cope in the real world. He no longer had three stripes on his sleeve and a mob of tattered and broken blokes who accepted his authority without question. In fact, he had no authority and what's more didn't want any. He just wanted to be left alone so that he could work things out, learn how to conduct life with a face like a truck smash and a back that needed a handful of painkillers every day. He knew he was becoming depressed and understood that this was a luxury he couldn't afford.