The Story of Danny Dunn (6 page)

They began to shuffle away, two of them touching him lightly on the cuff of his sleeve, the only part of his sweat-soaked shirt not clinging opaquely to his enormous ginger-haired pink-skinned chest above his trouser line. Half Dunn wasn't sure whether this gesture was meant to be an additional threat or an encouragement. Both smelled of sheep fat.

Half Dunn stood alone for a while, trying to think. The afternoon sun was beginning to sting his scalp, burning through the wisps of pasted-down ginger hair. Partially formed thoughts misted and dissolved like passing clouds.
Where do I start?
A wave of panic swept over him.
How? When? Jesus! Fuck! How do I put it to her? Make her see the consequences. She won't like losing customers one little bit. Fucking O'Hearn's right. Customers, that's the key. Do it at tea, with the boy at the kitchen table? Nah, if Danny blubs she'll blame me. They'll both agree I'm shickered. Tell her tonight in bed? No good. It's her private time to read the new
Women's Weekly
. She's up at sparrow fart . . . tackle her then. Good idea. She won't expect me to be up. Make her a cuppa. Catch her unawares.

He glanced up to see the three magpies gliding in to land on the backyard fence on their late afternoon Sao-biscuit run.
Shit, she'll be out the back any moment emptying her pinafore pocket. Shoe's fucking ruined!

Even at fifteen, Danny Dunn was becoming a ‘somebody', moreover a very fortunate somebody. Not only was he a brilliant young sportsman, he was also one of the select few who'd made it to Fort Street from primary school. His exam marks were good and there wasn't any doubt that he'd pass. But, of course Brenda wanted to make sure he obtained university entrance level once he matriculated. Going to the Olympic trials and then maybe the Olympics would undoubtedly distract him from his studies, and Half Dunn knew Brenda wouldn't have a bar of that. Over my dead body, mate! She was fanatical about her precious son going to university. It was the major reason they'd left Wagga. Just about the major reason for everything she did. Unlike the rest of Balmain, the football crowd included, even if the water-polo team won gold in Germany and gave Danny a hero's welcome and a street parade, he knew she couldn't have given a fuck, if, in the process, he hadn't made it into Sydney University. And that was the basic problem. Her way of thinking wasn't the way the peninsula saw things. Her values were not the same as theirs. He could clearly understand their resentment.

As it transpired, Danny had gone down to the pool to face his mates that night, take the flak, cop it sweet, accept their agro. Half Dunn and Brenda had tea alone in the pub kitchen, where he seized the opportunity to tackle her on the subject. He told her about the visit of the water-polo delegation and the very real threat they'd made. As usual she listened politely. That was the thing. She was a feisty woman with the staff or anyone else who gave her strife, but never with him. It was as though she thought him so far beneath her contempt that he wasn't worth getting all hot under the collar about.

But, then again, she was unfailingly polite, often even sympathetic. It was just that, in the end, she never took any notice of his opinions.

When he brought up the prospect of half the patrons deserting the pub, her expression barely changed. When he'd finished talking and she'd brought him his pudding – IXL canned peaches and custard – he asked, ‘Well, what do you think we should do?'

‘Nothing, dear,' she replied evenly, starting to clear the dishes.

‘Nothing? Jesus! You mean, you ain't gunna change your mind?'

‘That's right, dear. No need to take God's name in vain,' she chided gently.

Sometimes he got this terrible urge to punch her, smash in her bog-Irish teeth. Blood everywhere. Serve her fucking right.

But then, smiling, she placed her hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Never mind about the shoe, dear. We'll get you a brand-new pair.'

Fuck me dead! He hadn't even mentioned his scuffed two-tone brogue.

Now here's the funny thing. Three days later, the Australian Water Polo Association decided in their annual committee meeting that eighteen was the minimum age for a player to represent his country at water polo and, at the same time, issued a statement saying they lacked the funds to bring the top players from the various states for team trials, let alone to meet the cost of sending a team to Germany, but they were considering the following Olympics as an opportunity to qualify.

The storm in the teacup abated and there was no noticeable fall in patronage at the Hero. It was business as usual, both inside the pub and at the peas-and-spuds soirees. In fact, purely by coincidence, a day after the announcement that there would be no Olympic water-polo team, Doc Evatt, once the Labor, then independent member for Balmain, turned up at the Hero of Mafeking and stayed an hour, which did no harm whatsoever to Brenda's reputation as a publican. There were thirty pubs on the peninsula and he'd chosen hers three times in a row. Evatt, though not born and bred in Balmain, was nevertheless a favourite son, so much so that when he'd split from the main faction of the Labor Party after a quarrel over policy, the almost totally reliable Labor vote on the peninsula switched and he was voted in as an independent. He'd left politics to be appointed the youngest justice ever to the High Court. Occasionally, if he was passing, he'd drop by to keep in touch with his ex-constituents – once a politician, always a politician; you never know where life could take you. The stickybeaks were quick to point out that this was his third consecutive visit to the Hero and the scuttlebutt was that the Doc was sweet on Brenda. If he was, then it was a very public affair; his driver would park directly outside the pub for all to see in a big black Buick and he and Brenda were never seen together on the same side of the bar. Hardly the stuff scandals are made of.

As Danny grew towards manhood, it became clear that he really did seem to have just about everything going for him. He was genuinely popular, had an easygoing nature, was modest, self-effacing and loyal to his mates, and when it came to the birds, he had a smile that could turn a nun into a harlot. In fact, he was astoundingly good-looking. In the terminology of the day, Danny Dunn was sex on a pogo stick.

His looks were commonly referred to as black Irish. Popular history, while wildly inaccurate, goes like this. Way back in 1588 when Sir Francis Drake fought the Spanish Armada, a whole heap of Spanish galleons were wrecked in a storm and washed up on the Irish coast. Legend has it that, as fellow Catholics, the shipwrecked sailors were immediately welcomed ashore by the Irish, who even then regarded the English as the enemy. The Spaniards took an instant liking to the fair-skinned local sheilas and the feeling, it seems, was reciprocated. One thing led inevitably to another and the dark Latin blood proved to mix well with that of the titian-haired Celtic colleens to make a generally interesting combination. However, as a passing note, the Irish, regardless of their shared faith, brutally slaughtered the shipwrecked sailors almost to a man.

Occasionally an almost pure ‘Catalan' throwback occurred, known as black Irish, a look and colouring in a male or female that usually turned out to be spectacular. Danny was one such ‘throwback'. His skin was polished amber in winter, a shade darker in summer. A mop of jet-black hair extended in soft curls down his neck in defiance of the traditional short back and sides inflicted at the time by the barber's brutally efficient clippers on every kid and his dad. Despite her son's constant, often tearful, pleading as a small boy, Brenda had never allowed this fierce instrument anywhere near his dark curls. Instead, to his absolute mortification, she would cut his hair with a comb and scissors on the back verandah of the pub during the afternoon peas-and-spuds soiree, a terrible humiliation perpetrated before the entire neighbourhood, or so it had seemed to Danny, who endured countless taunts and bloody battles in the school playground as a result. But, in the process, it toughened him up and earned him the respect of his mates, until eventually his almost flowing locks became his trademark and were no longer ridiculed. Danny's dark curls marked him out on the football field and it would have seemed odd and entirely inappropriate to fans and spectators had he ever decided to shear them off in conformity with the rest of the Tigers.

At almost six foot four inches, Danny Dunn at sixteen
could easily have passed for a man of twenty-one, with his lazy assurance and apparent confidence. However, the truly spectacular element in his dark good looks was a brilliant dash of pure Irish: the addition of a pair of dark-lashed, deep-blue eyes that set the breasts of young girls heaving and their tongues flickering lasciviously and entirely unconsciously over their lips. Young, strong and innocent, he was the exact opposite of what most married women had to endure.

A typical husband, usually after a skinful at the pub or the football of a Saturday arvo, would proceed to get motherless on the half a dozen bottles of pilsener he'd brought home. Later, stumbling to the front bedroom, often on her arm, he undertook and she underwent the obligatory once-a-week leg-over, performing the dreaded deed from thrill to spill in one minute flat. Sweating like a pig and smugly assured that his manhood was intact and that he'd serviced the little woman for another week, he'd roll off her unrequited thighs onto his back, where, in a moment, his heavy panting would change into thundering snores, the occasional beery belch and the sudden ripping sound of a happily escaping fart. His wife, shutting her mind to this combined bronchial, gastric and anal chorus, would put pliant fingers to work as she fantasised over young Danny Dunn, a usually successful way to conclude the disappointing events of the evening and take her mind off the noxious fug that passed for air in the tiny bedroom.

DANNY SAT FOR HIS
final Leaving Certificate examinations in November 1937, and in January the following year his name appeared in the
Herald
with excellent marks. Matriculating, he was then eligible to enter Sydney University. Shortly afterwards he received a letter advising him of his admission to the Arts faculty.

Brenda was over the moon and quite unable to contain herself. It was the fulfilment of her dream, and after all those years of struggle, she wanted to celebrate. She decided to give Danny a surprise party. Half Dunn cautioned against it but, as usual, Brenda took this as confirmation that it was a grand idea. To put Danny off the scent she suggested a small party for his closest friends from Fort Street to celebrate the end of school, and Danny agreed. Instead she threw the biggest private bash Balmain had ever seen, secretly inviting all his childhood mates and seemingly half the peninsula, including all the pub regulars and their wives, the mayor and town councillors and a host of others including his friends from Fort Street, who felt decidedly uncomfortable and left as soon as it was polite to do so.

Danny was mortified. He accepted the handshakes and slaps on the back from most of the two hundred people with characteristic good humour, but in reality he felt humiliated and ashamed: he was by no means the first person from Balmain to go to university. After it was all over and the last of the drunks had left the beer garden, Danny confronted his mother in the upstairs kitchen.

‘Mum, how could you do such a thing?' he cried, his emotions barely under control. ‘How could you humiliate me like that? We agreed, just a few of my closest friends from school, not the whole of Balmain! What are people going to think?'

‘But you're going to university, my darling boy!' Brenda protested. Still on a high from the party, she was unable to see what the fuss was about, and underestimated his distress.

‘We agreed, no fuss! Just a few mates!'

‘Oh, that! That was only to put you off the scent. So you wouldn't become suspicious,' Brenda countered.

It was too much. ‘Mum, you lied to me!' he screamed. ‘You fucking lied to me!'

Danny had never used the ‘f' word in front of his mother. Brenda's euphoria popped like a party balloon. She'd taken enough. Her son had accused her of lying to him when all she'd done was to honour him and show her love for him. The memory of Half Dunn warning her not to do it rose like bile.

‘You ungrateful bugger!' she snapped, jabbing Danny in the chest with every word. ‘Do you have any idea what it's taken to get us to this day . . . to this moment?' She glared up at him. ‘Do you think it's been easy? This is the first party we've ever had for us, for you and me and your father! The first time we've patted ourselves on the back just a little bit! And you say you're humiliated!'

‘I tried to warn you,' Half Dunn said quietly from where he sat at the kitchen table, knowing not to interfere between mother and son but unable to avoid being involved in the fracas.

Brenda turned on him. ‘Oh shut up, you fat fart! What would you know?' she shouted, then turning back to Danny she hissed, ‘
You
are mortified! Well, now I'm the one mortified, see! Because yer such a bloody coward! Afraid of what people will think. I don't care what people think – I don't give a shit!'

Danny had never before heard Brenda swear, but he was damned if he was going to cave in.

‘Mum, can't you see – it's showing off! It's bragging!'

Brenda burst into tears. ‘Can't I show off . . . even once?' she asked.

Danny, shocked to see his mum cry, tried to make her understand. ‘It's making them eat crow! Mum, most of my best mates haven't even got permanent jobs and neither have their fathers. They're still lining up at Pyrmont every morning hoping for the privilege of a day's work. Their brothers and sisters go hungry as often as they eat, and here am I boasting because I was lucky enough to go to Fort Street then get into uni! Throwing a party for a bunch of freeloaders . . . Jesus, Mum, it's just not on!' Danny yelled, now close to tears himself, but unable to stop. ‘Your speech today about me going to uni to get a BA, how proud you were I'd be a somebody, it's rubbing their noses in it! Don't think it doesn't all add up! Stopping me going to the Olympics, when they'd have killed to have one of their sons selected, this bloody stupid piss-up, and then going on and on about me having diphtheria when I was six and missing out on a year of schooling and now, hooray, I'm off to uni. Ferchrissake! It's only a fucking BA!'

Brenda burst into fresh tears. Danny's university career was her emotional blind spot. Scrubbing the pub floor at midnight in the bad old days, wiping up the vomit in the toilets, or the piss on the tiles, or the crappy toilet lid where somebody had been too drunk to know it was down, all of this and more she'd happily endured in the knowledge that Danny Corrib Dunn, her precious son, who'd very nearly killed her in childbirth, who'd come close to dying as a small boy, would one day go to university.

The vision of her father in his Irish tweed marriage suit, woollen shirt and polished side-buttoned boots in the scorching heat of her wedding day in Wagga had never left her. She could still see the great beads of sweat trickling down his scrawny cheeks and neck as he led her to the altar at St Michael's, blinking the perspiration out of his eyes. She recalled his blistered, sun-scabbed face, his hopeless, pale-blue eyes reflecting all that he'd silently endured, the bitter lines etched around his mouth by a pitiless and unforgiving land; a man who had left the sweet grass and green fields of Ireland, never again to feel the evening breeze blow in from Galway Bay, who'd lived his young life in a crofter's stone cottage looking out onto the sparkling waters of Lough Corrib as he woke each dew-glittering morning. He'd left to make his fortune in a new land that had rewarded him with nothing more than a baking corrugated-iron roof over his head, a handful of dust and a weekly charity handout from his daughter. It was never going to happen again.

Her son would be a ‘somebody', an educated man who could hold his head up in any company, a man who didn't have to remove his hat and hold it by the brim in both hands and look down at his feet when he was addressed by a smug, patronising bank manager leaning back in his captain's chair behind his big desk with his thumbs hooked into his braces.

Brenda didn't see the beautiful boy who caused a young woman's knees to tremble when his deep-blue eyes picked her out in a crowd or the lopsided grin that every girl knew she would be unable to resist. She didn't care about the brilliant young sportsman who was being spoken of as almost certainly a Kangaroo rugby league international player and who could have played centre back in the water-polo team had they gone to the Olympics. She didn't see the six foot four, strong-limbed, seventeen-stone lad who, just by being who he was, made Balmain folk feel better about themselves. Half Dunn understood this lionisation of the young sportsman. He overheard more than he let on as he sat in the pub each day.

‘Yeah, Danny's our boy! Mark my words, mate, that lad's gunna be a league international – shit it in. Got a bloody good head on his shoulders too. And the sheilas flock around him like bees round a honey pot.
I reckon he could shag any sheila he wanted on the peninsula.'

‘Yeah? How about your daughter?' some smart aleck quipped to roars of laughter.

‘Yeah, well, providin' I knew about it, I'd wait a month or two then go round to Brenda and tell her me daughter's up the duff and —' he grinned and cupped his right ear, ‘I can hear
weddin'
bells ringing!'

More laughter, then someone asked, ‘You reckon she'd buy it? Castin' no
nasturtiums
at yer daughter, mind, but you know what she's like . . . stubborn Irish. Remember the water polo and the Olympics? She wouldn't have a bar of it. Even if your daughter had a bun in the oven I reckon she'd hand you the money for an abortion and tell ya to piss off.'

‘Abortion? Bullshit! Brenda's a tyke! If she paid for an abortion it would screw up her immortal soul forever. The bloody tykes take that sort of stuff real serious. They've got this thing called . . . something or other, I forget, you cross a river and the other side is a sort of halfway house to heaven where you hang around until all the sins you committed in yer past are forgiven and all your relatives have paid the priest heaps fer yer ticket to heaven. But if you done an abortion, yer history! No more questions asked, over and fucking out, down you go, straight to fucking hell!'

‘Yeah? Well, I hope fer yer daughter's sake it don't happen. But I reckon she's got a right to be proud of Danny. I reckon we all have.'

Half Dunn knew how the locals regarded Danny, but he kept his counsel. All Brenda saw was her boy standing in cap and gown in the Great Hall of Sydney University holding a parchment scroll, proving her mum and dad hadn't left Ireland for nothing and that she and her twin sisters could hold their heads up high. Danny would reach down and pull them all up out of the gutter. She knew she shouldn't have made the speech, but she couldn't help herself. Danny had started the last climb to the Everest of her aspirations.

Danny copped it on the chin, never complaining about the party again, but he believed he would never live down the shame. As a small indication of his remorse, he refused to join the University Rugby Union Club, the oldest in the nation, and stuck with rugby league; in the summer he played water polo for his old team. In the 1938 league season he appeared as a front-row forward in the firsts for the mighty Tigers. He also passed his first year at university the same year.

By the end of the following season, when the club won the league premiership,
if there had been any lingering resentment about the party, the good folk of Balmain had well and truly forgiven him. Danny had fulfilled all their hopes and met their every expectation.

Then, having almost completed his second year, Danny turned on the wireless in early spring to hear that Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, had declared that Great Britain was at war with Germany; then Bob Menzies went on air and said that if Britain was at war, so was Australia. Two weeks later at breakfast, Danny announced that he wanted to join up.

Brenda went very still. ‘I don't think that's wise, do you?' she said coolly.

‘All my mates, the whole team at the Tigers and the polo boys, they're all joining up this week. Mum, I can't just sit on my arse and let them go and fight for England while I get a lousy degree! I'll be qualified to teach high school. What's more, I don't want to be a bloody teacher! Mum, I'm going! I'm not sixteen and this isn't water polo and the make-believe Olympic squad. If you try to stop me I'll quit uni anyway! And I'll leave home.'

‘We'll soon see about that! You're not twenty-one yet, my boy!' Brenda warned, an ugly flush staining her neck. ‘England! That Protestant whore has taken my two brothers and now she wants my son!' She turned her back on Danny and busied herself at the sink, banging pots and splashing noisily.

Danny still remembered how she'd lost her temper after the party, and how challenging her had achieved nothing. She must have sensed the general disdain that had been the lasting result of the party, but she'd never apologised or indicated that she'd been even slightly in the wrong. Now, in this thing, he knew he had to confront her. He couldn't simply stand by and let his friends fight for him. He'd been awake half the night trying to prepare for the row he knew must come. He'd hoped she wouldn't refuse her permission because he wasn't twenty-one, that it wouldn't come to the ultimatum he'd now been forced to give.

Half Dunn gave Danny the wink, levered himself out of his chair and approached Brenda, placing a conciliatory hand on her shoulder, but when she felt his touch, something in her snapped and she spun around fiercely to fend him off, still holding the heavy porridge pot half full of dishwater. It caught him on the point of the jaw and he staggered backwards, slipped on the water that had spilled from the pot and went crashing down like some great behemoth, the back of his head smashing against the oven door. His eyes rolled in their sockets and he lay senseless on the kitchen linoleum.

‘Jesus, Mum!' Danny shouted, and wrenched the pot away from her.

‘You ungrateful bastard! After all I've done for you!' Brenda hissed, then stormed out of the kitchen.

Danny dropped to his knees beside his father. For all he knew, Half Dunn could be dead. But then he saw his huge gut rising and falling with each breath. ‘Dad, you okay?'

Half Dunn opened his eyes and let out a loud groan as Danny extended a hand, and winced as he was pulled into a sitting position with his back against the oven door. ‘Okay, mate?' Danny asked again.

Half Dunn nodded gingerly and touched the back of his head with care, drawing his hand back in alarm, first sensing then observing that the tips of his fingers were covered in blood. He gave a small moan and collapsed into a dead faint. It look Danny another five minutes to bring him round, get him to his feet and back into a chair. He examined the back of his father's head and saw that the wound wasn't too serious – with luck, all Half Dunn would need was a dab of iodine to prevent an infection.