The Story of Danny Dunn (42 page)

The interior, in its own way, was much worse than the exterior. Everything they touched was dirty, damp, and stank of cat and decay. But, to his surprise, Helen simply adored it.

‘The furniture is mid-Victorian and only the best of its kind. If we can restore it, it will come up wonderfully,' she exclaimed.

‘You sure, darling?' Danny asked, unable to believe his ears.

Every cupboard, sideboard and breakfront revealed more treasures: ornate chamber pots, bedroom jug-and-basin sets, five complete bone-china dinner services, beautiful copper pots, pans and kitchen utensils green with verdigris, antimacassars, doilies, embroidered tea cloths all stained with mildew. They found a canteen of Victorian silver cutlery, the bone handles on the knives loose and shrunken with age. Once-beautiful embroidered linen sheets were dappled with mildew. Hand-tinted colour portraits of ancient whiskered ancestors hung from the wall.

‘It's like a combination of walking into an old newspaper repository and a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,' Helen cried. ‘Oh, how divine!'

‘It's a shitheap! I mean the contents, not the house,' Danny added quickly.

‘It's a mess, I grant you, a terrible one.' She glanced up at Danny, eyes shining. ‘But not a hopeless one.'

‘Yeah?' Danny exclaimed, still not believing what he was hearing. ‘Really and truly?' he asked, using one of the twins' expressions.

Helen laughed. ‘Poor old dump. It's a bit like your face, darling. Once it was probably much too handsome, now it's been brutally battered, but I do believe we'll be able to improve it so much that I'll grow very fond of it.'

The house came up for auction two days before Helen was due to depart. There were only two bidders – curiously enough the other was also a lawyer, though it turned out he was acting on behalf of a client. He seemed taken aback by the presence of Danny and Helen and it was obvious he'd expected to pick up the property for a song, because he withdrew when he saw they were determined to continue, and fortunately long before the bidding had reached a level that would have required more than the deposit they had saved.

The result was that the property was knocked down in their favour for what seemed to them a bargain price, though probably most people would have disagreed. They even had a small amount over for clearing, cleaning and the first urgent repairs and renovations. Brenda guaranteed the loan, and Harry Farmer agreed to a mortgage, unable to resist pointing out that his common sense would probably have prevailed had he and Danny not both been Balmain Primary and Fort Street High boys and had Brenda not been an old and valued client who'd never required an overdraft.

A week later, Franz handed Danny a cheque for one hundred and seventy-five pounds. ‘Buy your boat. A nice piece of city property changed hands last week – money for jam,' he lied.

‘Thanks, Franz. I owe you.'

‘Oh, sure,' Franz replied. ‘Just don't drown the twins.'

The ship took Helen to Port Suez, at the southern end of the Suez Canal, where she would travel overland to the dig. Danny showed the twins on a map the route she was taking, and every night he'd invent a bedtime story that was set in Egypt and involved Helen. On her return she was often totally mystified by a great many of their questions.

By the time she got back four months later, looking tanned and fit, though a little too thin, the twins, out with Danny in the boat four days a week, were already old hands on the harbour. Helen was not pleased, so Danny took her to see Wee Georgie, who explained the almost uncapsizable qualities of the Whitehall skiff, and this, together with the obvious excitement of the twins, made her finally agree to allow Danny to continue the early-morning ritual.

By the time the Melbourne Olympics arrived in late November, the twins were so accustomed to being out on the harbour at sparrow's fart – a term Danny often used that sent them into gales of laughter, bending over, cupping their mouths and dancing in a circle – that they often woke him up before the alarm went off. Danny spoke constantly to them about swimming, preparing them for what was to come.

During the Olympics, the twins were bathed and ready for bed by 6 p.m. each evening when the day's results appeared on TV. Danny encouraged them to watch the swimming heats, yet another of his ploys, in the ridiculous hope that even at the age of five they would somehow soak up the Olympic dream. For days he'd made a huge fuss about Dawn Fraser swimming in the upcoming heats, and when she won the gold medal in the 100-metres freestyle final he'd practically gone berserk: ‘Look, look, kids!' he yelled. Then, ‘Go, Dawnie! Go, girl! You've got it, it's yours. Go, go, go! You beauty!'

The twins, excited because he was, danced around crying, ‘You beauty!'

‘It's ours, the gold medal's ours! Dawnie belongs to us, to Balmain!'

‘Hooray!' Sam cried.

‘It will be your turn one day, sweethearts!' Danny said, hugging them to him.

Despite all this excitement, the twins soon became bored, yawning, quibbling or plaintively demanding their bedtime story and bedtime song instead, a ritual he observed every night without fail. That is, until one evening when the rowing was shown. The girls became very excited. ‘Look, Daddy. Rowing, rowing!' they chorused. The race was the final of the double sculls. As Mervyn Wood and Murray Riley crossed the finish line to win bronze, Danny suddenly realised,
Jesus! The girls could just as easily represent Australia in the double sculls.
Building up their strength and mental toughness for rowing would be much the same as training them to swim. Perhaps he could begin by training them as swimmers, then switch them to the double scull if it seemed they were not suited to swimming. He couldn't lose! Danny had always imagined them powering home, Sam first, Gabby second, but now he saw them crossing the line as a team in the double skulls, a length ahead of the boat in second place.

In a split second Danny clearly saw the path to fame and glory for his daughters. He'd never felt more certain about anything. It was the birth of an obsession, although to Danny it felt like an epiphany.

Settlement for the house had occurred two weeks before Helen returned. It was the beginning of two years of weekends spent restoring it, seeking professional help only when they could afford it or were out of their depth. Bullnose was a retired bricklayer, and with Sammy as his barrow boy, the two old mates worked together, teaching Danny and Helen the tricks of the trowel, tuck-pointing and how to lay new damp courses, mix concrete and mortar, and do basic brickwork. They took a small weekly salary, topped up with a schooner every night of the week at the Hero, in addition to their customary six schooners each week in return for Danny's massage. Wee Georgie gave up some of his precious time to restoring the original Baltic pine floorboards to beeswaxed perfection and also showed them how to varnish the old stair panelling and stair railings. Then he French-polished the cedar tables and helped restore the furniture. If they needed expert advice on just about anything, they told Half Dunn, who soon flushed out an artisan or somebody else who could advise them. When they discovered that the ornate ceiling moulding was soft from damp and mildew, Half Dunn produced a plasterer and moulder who had recently been employed to work on the Sydney Town Hall. He worked a veritable miracle and returned the mouldings to almost pristine condition.

Half Dunn lost two stone gardening at weekends with Lachlan Brannan, who was going from strength to strength in the media department of George Patterson Advertising. They cleared the overgrown garden of lantana to discover another garden underneath that still possessed the bones of the original design and revealed several beds of glorious camellias, azaleas and, remarkably, an old-fashioned rose garden. Lachlan's dad, now off the garbage trucks and working as a council gardener, miscalculated the number of rolls of turf required for an extension to the council gardens – by his own admission he'd never been good at sums – and miraculously the council truck dumped the makings of a large front lawn at the back gate after dark one Friday evening.

On a hot summer's day in January 1958, Helen, Danny and the twins moved into the mid-Victorian home. They gazed out at the magnificent view across the harbour from the French windows upstairs, over the tessellated verandah, which had been reproduced downstairs. From the front door and large windows they could look over Lachlan's father's sloping lawn and the original stone pathway and steps that led to the water's edge and the glistening harbour beyond.

There were only two drawbacks. The factories were still pumping crap out into the harbour and pollution into the air, and the disturbances from the slum dwellings seemed to have increased. More of the broken-down housing seemed to be used to accommodate a floating population of single men and, more recently, women and children. Friday and Saturday nights were a living hell, with the drunken brawling in the street often continuing into the early hours. The worst was the so-called boarding house closest to them, a neglected factory manager's double-storey building that seemed to contain a great many more boarders than the size of it suggested was humanly possible.

Increasingly Danny realised that there was something very wrong, and on several occasions he complained to the council with little or no effect. He simply received a letter to say that they would look into the matter and nothing would change. After nearly a dozen or so complaints he realised that someone somewhere must have been on the take. He'd spoken to Half Dunn, who asked around and said, ‘Mate, you're on a sticky wicket here. Local Labor – you know him, remember he was the shop steward who humiliated me over the water-polo fiasco when you were a lad, scuffed one of me two-tones that day – Tommy O'Hearn. He's in it up to his eyebrows. He's on the council. Refused a nomination to be mayor because he's being nominated by Sussex Street to represent Labor in Balmain–Birchgrove at the next state elections, in effect a gift for past deeds well done. He's working with someone from the outside, can't find out who. But it goes right back to Labor headquarters in Sussex Street. The council is up to their eyeballs in it as well. They – whoever is behind this – are buying all the old shit boxes in the street, banging up plywood partitions and renting them as cheap accommodation for the down and outers.'

Danny realised that Franz Landsman might yet prove to be right; they had a lovely harbour-front residence set on a beautiful half-acre block, but the location might prove to be a real-estate disaster.

Danny, like Tommy O'Hearn, was a Balmain boy and knew better than to interfere with local arrangements, other than by observing the formalities and complaining to the council, like every other member of the community. O'Hearn was popular, energetic, trusted and local; as long as nobody was hurt, that was pretty well all that was required in Balmain. Furthermore, he'd paid his dues and the party was going to reward him, knowing he already had the blessing of the larger part of the local population.

However, Tommy O'Hearn was married to Lachlan's sister, and so Danny called Lachlan,
who had recently been appointed an account executive at George Patterson. Lachlan was a frequent visitor to Danny and Helen's house and was aware of the weekend mayhem, but when Danny spoke to him about the street and the ‘rumour' that his brother-in-law was involved, there was a noticeable silence. Then Lachlan said, ‘Danny, mate, I'm between a rock and a hard place. I honestly don't know a lot. Tommy knows you and I are mates, and says very little in front of me. I've asked Mum and Dad and they just shrug, and my sister told me it was none of my business.' He laughed. ‘She accused me of becoming a bloody white-collar, middle-class snob, in my fancy suit and my polished shoes. Said I was spreading bullshit, and my job was “irresponsible”. I think she's on the defensive, but she has to stay loyal to her husband. I reckon the bloke behind the buy-ups and partitioning is head of a real-estate syndicate that operates from Double Bay – posh money.'

‘What's the name of the real-estate syndicate?' Danny asked.

Lachlan sighed. ‘I don't know, mate. I'm just putting two and two together. I've overheard him referring to the Double Bay mob on the phone, and once he said, “Finance is no problem. I've got a silvertail syndicate that's awash with cash.” Sorry I can't tell you more, Danny. That's honestly all I know.'

Danny didn't want to push him any further. This was just the kind of issue that could divide a Balmain family. While he'd always regarded himself as Labor, he hadn't given it a lot of thought. Everyone in Balmain was Labor, or if you weren't you only told the ballot box. He realised that he was, in party terms, at best a loyal vote; certainly not an insider, and not a comrade. His vote was taken for granted but his opinion wasn't needed or, for that matter, desired.

He discussed the matter with Helen, who, as usual, cut to the chase. ‘Darling, we're not moving from here and this isn't going to go away. While the women may love you, your support of wives and children hasn't made you very popular among some of the male members of our illustrious community. This issue, while it stinks to high heaven, is going to take more than a few complaints to council to resolve. The first thing we should do is become paid-up members of the Labor Party. We've been talking about it for a couple of years now.' She paused. ‘Then at least we're not looking over the fence like a couple of gawking kids. This is not an issue for a lawyer but one for a good citizen, and in the end for Balmain. Labor use this community for any purpose that suits them because they know we'll remain faithful and our votes can be counted on. Look at it.' She began ticking things off on the fingers of her left hand. ‘Power station; coal depot; five chemical factories, three of which we can see from the front verandah, all of them belching out smoke and pouring pollutants into the harbour; countless dirty little foreshore factories; and two soap factories. And now this slum settlement on our doorstep!' She hesitated. ‘But, darling, I'm not going to lose my beautiful home, so we'd better get on the inside where we can see the corruption more clearly and keep an eye on the O'Hearns of this world.'