The Story of Danny Dunn (79 page)

But now love came striding into Sam's life and into the Village Medical Centre ward, wearing a pair of striped pyjamas, in the form of a six-foot-two, blond, crew-cut, hazel-eyed American pentathlon athlete with a confident grin by the name of Gregory Beauregard Montgomery from the state of Louisiana. He'd collapsed in the 3000-metres under similar circumstances to Sam's.

‘Hi there. Call me Greg, or Monty – take your pick,' he said, extending a bearlike paw. Before Sam could answer, he continued, still holding her hand, ‘I know this is perhaps a little presumptuous, but we have no mutual friend to introduce us, so I am obliged to act in an unmannerly fashion, or I might never have the privilege and opportunity of meeting the prettiest mademoiselle I declare I have evah seen,' the American athlete said, smiling boyishly.

‘Hello,' Sam replied, releasing her hand. ‘That sounds to me like a well-rehearsed introduction, Monty.'

‘Hell no, ma'am, cross mah heart, I don't meet too many pretty girls like you when I'm in mah pyjamas.'

‘If I'm not mistaken, that's right out of Mickey Spillane's novel
Kiss Me Deadly.
' Sam giggled. ‘You're a phony, Monty!'

Monty grinned. ‘Now ain't that mah bad luck? She ain't jes purty, she's got brains. That makes her more deadly than a rattlesnake with a broken rattle.'

‘Zane Grey,
Riders of the Purple Sage
,' Sam replied. ‘You're a double phony, Monty. I think I'll call you “D.P.”.'

‘Call me anything you like but please tell me your name, mademoiselle,' the American boy pleaded, persisting with the French title commonly used in Louisiana.

‘Hmm, let me see, sounds familiar,' Sam teased, pretending to be thinking. ‘No, could be genuine,' she finally concluded. Smiling her most brilliant smile, she stretched out her hand. ‘Gidday, D.P. My name is Sam, from Oz.' She deliberately used the Australian greeting common at the Games.

D.P. left Sam's bedside two hours later. He expected to stay one more night in the Medical Centre but couldn't be sure. ‘They may let me out today. If they do, hey, I'll see you at the closing ceremony, okay?' He'd left only moments before Danny and Gabby arrived, by which time Sam was already well on the way to falling in love.

Whoever had designed the Village Medical Centre had not considered the consequences of having two wards in close proximity, each accommodating six testosterone-charged, extremely fit, young male and female athletes. Either that or they had mistakenly assumed that the reason the athletes found themselves in the Medical Centre would be sufficient to render them sexually sedated.

The Medical Centre wasn't designed for serious ailments. While there hadn't been any large outbreaks of Montezuma's Revenge or any other bug, there had inevitably been several serious injuries and some illness, but those affected had been transferred to a city hospital ward. Apart from the daily patch-ups of sprains, muscle tears, breaks and falls, with analgesics, salves and bandages, Sam and Greg were the sole two nocturnal inhabitants, separated by a single wall and not more than half a dozen paces between the entrance to either ward. It was a romantic accident waiting to happen.

Well after midnight, with the night orderly snoring in his tiny room at the end of the corridor, Sam and D.P. made love – Sam, for the first time, but the thousandth or more in her imagination. The boy from Louisiana was sufficiently unselfish to make it a lovely and loving experience.

To Danny's total mystification, Gabby had been right, and he met Gregory Beauregard Montgomery the Third at the Olympic stadium two days later. Sam had marched, or rather joined the American team in the casual parade that marked the closing ceremony, and Gabby, wearing one of Sam's two identical tracksuits, had slipped in with the Australians to enjoy the occasion. Both were having an absolute ball, and not a single person noticed that one swimmer had become two. Don Talbot came up to Gabby and pressed her shoulder. ‘That was a great race, kid.
I won't forget your courage in a hurry,' he shouted amidst the musical din of cheering athletes and applauding crowd.

‘Thank you, Mr Talbot,' Gabby shouted, straight-faced.

‘I think it's time you called me Don,' Talbot suggested, adding, ‘Will you try for the next Olympics, Sam?'

‘I think I'd like to learn to play the violin,' Gabby replied, but Talbot seemed not to register what she'd said.

‘You'd only be twenty-one, and you've got the guts and the talent to succeed,' Talbot shouted, moving on.

‘What, with the violin?' Gabby shouted back, grinning.

Talbot laughed. ‘No, Samantha, but maybe the 400-metres?' he called back as he joined another bunch of Australian athletes in the happy crowd.

While D.P. didn't come from New Orleans, he'd graduated from Louisiana State University. He came from an old family and while he could well have qualified for track-and-field scholarships, it hadn't been necessary. He often stayed with an aunt in New Orleans, in a nice house not far from Billy and Dallas, who now lived in the beautiful old home in the French Quarter that Billy's parents and grandparents had occupied. Danny had instantly liked the young man and so had Gabby, so they had no qualms about him spending time with Sam. D.P. and Sam often took Gabby with them when they explored New Orleans.

Danny had previously called Helen and told her about Sam's disastrous Olympics, emphasising her courage, and then telling Helen about D.P., which was how they all referred to Sam's new boyfriend. ‘Put Gabby on, darling. I must talk to her,' she'd said.

‘Mum, Sam was incredibly brave!' Gabby shouted down the phone.

‘Gabby, listen, make sure she's taking the pill,' Helen said urgently.

‘Mum! You know Sam. She's not going to suddenly stop taking it.' Gabby laughed.

‘Do you think it's been necessary?' Helen asked.

‘Not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised,' Gabby replied.

‘Oh my goodness!' Helen cried. ‘You've both grown up so fast. Put Dad on again, darling.'

Sitting in a cocktail bar in New Orleans, Sam tasted her first martini, while D.P. told her he'd completed officer training just before going to the Olympics and would soon be heading for Vietnam.

‘Vietnam!' Sam said, suddenly horror-struck.

‘Honey, there ain't no other war Uncle Sam's losing,' D.P. replied, lifting his beer to his mouth and leaving a white foam moustache behind.

Sam grabbed a paper napkin and dabbed tenderly at his top lip. ‘D.P., you can't go!' she cried. ‘Why don't you become a draft dodger? You could go to Canada!'

‘Mademoiselle Sam, mah family on mah mama's side has been in every war since the American Revolution. If I did that, mah family would see it as a betrayal of everything they stand for. Mah papa's family feel the same, even though they originally hail from France. We bin saluting the star-spangled banner for a hundred years.'

‘But you might get killed,' Sam protested.

D.P. laughed. ‘Now don't you worry none, Mademoiselle Sam. No gook is gonna get the ass of Second Lootenant Gregory Beauregard Montgomery the Third. Things are winding down, anyway. Even President Johnson's had enough. I'll do mah twelve months cowering behind a tank. It's speculated there won't be any more big battles.'

The twins left New Orleans with Sam in tears and promising to write to D.P. every week he was in Vietnam. Dallas had presented the twins with brand new Stetsons, which they'd graciously accepted, both thinking they'd never wear them. After the ugly sprawl, poverty and chaos of Mexico City and the hustle and thump of New Orleans, Sydney seemed like a calm, even backward, oasis. Sam enrolled at Sydney University to study law and Gabby entered her second year at the Con. That year, 1969, three years after the introduction of decimal currency, Helen told Danny that HBH had made a million dollars' profit, which they would use to buy two small hotels in the CBD.

Danny and Franz were also prospering, and Danny was flooded with work from the Liberal government. It was slowly becoming apparent to him that the Askin government was developing all the bad habits of the former Labor government, and that he'd have to choose carefully and take on only those cases he felt good about. Danny's pro bono
work continued. Despite the changes in Balmain and elsewhere, and the new prosperity, it seemed that Australia was still turning out approximately the same number of bastards, drunks, deadshits and wife beaters.

Once she was back home, Sam had conscientiously written to D.P. in New Orleans, and then, five months later, when he'd left for Vietnam, she wrote every week for the next three months. But, apart from a letter he'd sent several days after his arrival, she hadn't received a reply and became disappointed, then concerned and finally resentful. Danny had contacted the United States embassy and they'd eventually told him that D.P. was still in Vietnam, but they couldn't reveal his unit or his whereabouts.

Love cannot sustain itself on such a meagre diet of hopes and wishes and nothing in the mail. Eventually Sam had given up, although she still followed the fortunes of the American and Australian troops in Vietnam each night on the news. A report of a young Adelaide woman, a member of a Latvian migrant family, who'd murdered her father made Sam shriek for Gabby. Katerina was two years behind her deadline. Sam begged Danny to defend her, but he pointed out that his licence didn't allow him to practise in South Australia. Nevertheless, she persisted and he eventually organised and paid for a top Adelaide barrister to defend Katerina, with the result that the murder charge was downgraded to manslaughter. She'd finally received a five-year prison sentence, with the possibility of parole for good behaviour in three years.

That just about wrapped up the year, except that one early summer evening the phone rang and Gabby answered it. ‘Hiya there, Gabby. This is D.P. here. Is Mademoiselle Sam home, please?' he asked politely, as if nothing had happened.

‘D.P.! Where are you? Are you calling from Vietnam?' Gabby shrieked into the phone.

‘No, honey, it's a place called Kings Cross. I'm on R&R.'

Sam had been pretty cross with him over the phone when he'd called. ‘You bastard, D.P., you might have replied to my letters.'

D.P. pleaded with her, trying to explain. ‘Sam, the news was never good. All I'd have had to say they'd have censored, except that I love you.' His soft, irresistible, deep southern drawl had done the rest and Sam had agreed to see him.

They'd started with a drink in the Macleay Street cocktail bar at the Chevron-Hilton, where D.P. was staying; Sam had a Bloody Mary and D.P. ordered a neat Kentucky bourbon.

‘Not drinking beer any more?' Sam asked.

‘Yeah, sometimes, in Nam, when it's hot.' He'd grinned. ‘It's always hot, even when it's raining, and that seems to be most times. Even in hell it would be considered the number one shithole!'

‘Is it really that bad?' Sam said, knowing that it was, but needing the small talk to become reacquainted, to feel comfortable in his presence after a year of not seeing him.

‘It's worse than you can imagine. Most of the guys don't want to be there.'

‘You mean some do?' Sam asked, surprised.

‘The lifers, the regular army, they see it as the only war they've got. The rest of us, we jes want to get the hell outta there. And now this My Lai massacre has come out, we're not even sure we want to go Stateside. Folk back home are callin' us baby killers and spitting on us when we appear in uniform.'

‘I wasn't going to bring that up. We were pretty shocked ourselves,' Sam said. ‘It was sickening . . .'

D.P. was silent for a time, then abruptly changed the subject. ‘All the guys reckon Sydney is the best place to go for R&R. No gooks, and most folk make you feel welcome. Ain't no one's spat on me yet.'

Sam smiled. ‘Don't be too confident. You'd better not meet me at university.'

Sam and D.P. left the bar and found a disco not far from the Chevron, where they continued drinking and dancing until the early hours. Both of them were drunk – Sam, not for the first time, although never quite like this. She'd got pissed with uni friends on a Saturday night on three or four occasions, but had always left while she could still order a taxi without slurring her words. Now, standing in the hotel foyer, she told herself that if her mind was clear enough to be concerned that the bloke in the fancy uniform standing at the lift wouldn't allow her to go to D.P.'s room, then she was still in control. No more drinking, and a bit of a snuggle and a lie down, and she'd be right as rain. She was conscious that she'd broken Danny's curfew of one o'clock but, too pissed to care, promised herself she'd be home well before dawn.

D.P., grinning and swaying slightly, said, ‘Guy at the counter asked me, “How come you blokes get all the good sorts?” Whadda fuck that mean?' he slurred. Sam realised that she had never heard him use the ‘f' word before.

‘I'll tell you when you're sober,' she grinned, following D.P. into the lift.

Upstairs in his room, he asked, ‘You wanna . . . take a shower, Mademoi . . . selle Sam? Shit, I'm drunk.'