The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  The silence continued well after Thomas’s deliberately prolonged smile had faded. He was not accustomed to being ignored and it was becoming clear that the O’Shanes were not receiving the good news in a manner he might have expected, nor showing him the respect he merited as a man of some standing in the south-west, a fellow papist and their obvious social superior.

  ‘If your daughter is allowed to complete her high-school education in Wagga, who knows, after that she may well qualify for a scholarship to the university,’ he ventured. Still getting no reaction he added quickly, with what was intended to be a disarming chuckle, ‘When the time comes I dare say I can use what little influence I have with the Education Department in Sydney.’ His tone clearly implied that a nod from him to the scholarship board was all it would take. ‘We don’t make a request very often, so when we do . . .’ he left the sentence uncompleted, covering his arse just in case, not quite committing to the full promise.

  Patrick O’Shane quite suddenly came to life, leaning forward, looking up from his hands sharply at Thomas. ‘And for sure, who would it be paying for this fancy education now, Mr Thomas? I’ll be tellin’ you straight, it’ll not be us.’ As suddenly as if he’d spent his allotment of words, he fell silent, his eyes returned to his lap and his work-roughened hands, skinned knuckles and dirty fingernails; the thumbnail on his left hand was a solid purple, not yet turned entirely black, the result of what must have been a fairly recent and painful blow.

  ‘Well . . . er . . . urrph,’ Thomas said, clearing his throat, ‘I’m sure we could come to some arrangement, some accommodation . . . with the school hostel, and the various textbooks she’ll need . . . If you could possibly add . . .’

  Patrick O’Shane looked up sharply, this time jabbing his forefinger at the school inspector, his expression now angry. ‘Arrangement! Accommodation! Hostel! Books!’ he repeated as if each word were intended as an expletive. ‘And what would you be meaning by “add”? We’ve done all the adding we can, Mr Thomas. We’ve added two sons fighting for this country in a war no self-respectin’ Irishman could justify, fighting on behalf of that unholy Protestant whore, Mother England! One of them will never come home. We’ve added the sweat from our brows and the strength of our backs to work the unforgiving and endless dust plain. The saltbush and pasture are all but gone and the few starvin’ ewes still left to us can’t feed their lambs; the dams are empty and so are our pockets. There’s nothing left for man nor beast and we haven’t had any decent rain for three years. And you ask . . . you have the temerity to ask, “If you could add”!’ He slapped his right hand down hard onto his knee. ‘Mary, Mother of God! Have we not done all the adding and has it not all come to nought, to bugger-all?’

  Thomas, taken aback by the sudden tirade, could nevertheless see where Brenda’s intelligence originated. He had the nous to know that offering his sympathy would only exacerbate the situation. ‘Perhaps the convent?’ he stuttered. ‘I . . . er, could talk to Father Crosby . . . I’m sure —’

  ‘That old fool and his building fund!’ Patrick O’Shane exclaimed in disgust. ‘You don’t get my drift, do you now, Mr Thomas?’ He paused momentarily. ‘Never you mind the good head on her shoulders, our daughter also has two good hands and a strong back. She can scrub and clean and do domestic work for people of your kind in town. Her mother and I can no longer go it alone. We have two other daughters, twins, to feed as well. She’s the eldest now. Don’t blame us, sir. This godforsaken country stole my boys! Drowning them in mud, murderous shrapnel and sickness and robbing us of their strong hands and broad backs for years, one of them gone forever. She’ll not be going back to school! You may be certain of that now, Mr School Inspector!’

  Brenda accepted her father’s decision calmly. After all, they were poor and she was a girl, with no reason to expect anything more than her mother had been granted in a thankless life of childbearing and hard work.

  However, Danny’s education had been her overriding ambition from the moment he was born, and she waited eagerly for the day when it could begin. A tall, sturdy, curious and confident little boy, Danny was more than ready for school at the age of five and a half. But in January 1926, disaster struck, at least in Brenda’s terms of reference. Danny was due to start school in February, but a few days after Christmas he had asked if he could have ice-cream for dinner. As ice-cream was a special treat, Brenda asked him why. Danny had a voracious appetite and rarely refused to eat what was placed in front of him.

  ‘Because my throat is very sore, Mummy,’ he’d replied.

  The following morning his face was deeply flushed, he had a temperature and could barely talk. She’d taken him off to see Dr Light who, after an examination, announced that Danny had diphtheria.

  Brenda, not usually given to panic, burst into tears, whereupon Dr Light attempted to reassure her. ‘Mrs Dunn, Danny’s a strong, healthy little boy – there’s no reason he shouldn’t recover.’

  But Brenda wasn’t new to diphtheria. She’d seen it in her own childhood when all three children on a neighbouring farm had died from the disease. She knew it as a scourge that killed hundreds of children every year. She was also aware that, even if a child lived, there was a danger of a weakened heart or damage to the kidneys or nervous system, in some instances even incurable brain damage.

  Danny spent the following week in hospital drifting in and out of delirium. Brenda stayed at his bedside and watched in despair as his fever worsened and the disease spread its toxins through his small body. She would sponge him for hours in an attempt to reduce the fever and try by sheer willpower to draw the disease out of him.

  She’d left the running of the pub to Half Dunn with no instructions –

  a recipe for certain disaster but of no possible consequence now. She frequently sank to her knees beside the bed and prayed, saying her Hail Marys promptly every hour, then begging God, if necessary at the cost of her own life, to save her son. If she slept it was for no more than an hour or two and she’d wake exhausted and guilt-ridden.

  Half Dunn visited every evening and brought her a change of clothes and two cold bacon-and-egg sandwiches, the only thing he knew how to cook. Brenda would thank him, ‘I’ll have them later, dear,’ and put them aside. She would feed them to an ageing golden Labrador named Happy, who was permanently ensconced on the front verandah of the children’s ward when she went outside early for the first of four cigarettes she smoked each day. The old mutt thought all his Christmases had come at once. Happy had accompanied his master, who’d been admitted three months previously and had subsequently died. Afterwards the dog had refused to leave. On two occasions someone had agreed to adopt him, but he’d made his way back to the hospital at the first opportunity. On one such occasion he’d been taken bush to an outlying homestead and came limping back to the hospital a week later with his paws bleeding and one of his ears badly tattered and almost torn off. How he’d survived the trip through the bush at his age was close to a miracle. His wounds were dressed and he was allowed to stay.

  Over the second week Danny’s fever lessened and he began the slow road to recovery. Throughout this period Brenda lived with the fear that her son might suffer permanent damage to his heart or brain. Despite Dr Light’s assurance that he was coming along nicely and that there appeared to be no abnormal signs in his recovery, the die was cast, and for the remainder of his childhood she would fuss over his health. The slightest sniffle brought her running with the cod-liver oil; a cut or abrasion, and the iodine bottle appeared at the trot. But Danny recovered completely and seemed no worse for the experience. Despite his mother’s over-enthusiastic ministrations he was to become a rough-and-tumble kid, eager to play any kind of game and quite happy to take the school playground knocks and bumps without complaint.

  Incidentally, Happy decided he couldn’t live without Half Dunn’s bacon sandwiches, and agreed to be adopted by Brenda as the pub verandah dog. She’d hoped the old dog
would be a mate for Danny, but, as they say, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and Happy only had eyes for her. Half Dunn would make Happy’s favourite tucker every morning, but the dog would only accept the offering from his mistress. On one occasion she’d been away at her parents’ farm for the weekend and had returned to find an unhappy Happy with his nose beside four uneaten bacon-and-egg sandwiches, which he proceeded to wolf down the moment she granted him permission to do so.

  Brenda, grateful for her son’s full recovery, had only one abiding regret: the diphtheria and Danny’s lengthy recuperation meant he had missed a precious year of school. In fact, when he started school she discovered half the class was aged either six or seven, but she ever afterwards felt that she’d let a precious year of her son’s education slip by.

  In April that year, after a long battle with cancer, Dulcie died at the comparatively young age of fifty-three, followed three months later by Fred, after a sudden and massive heart attack on his way to the corner newsagent to get the morning paper. His friends, travelling up together on the train from Wagga Wagga for the second time in three months to attend the funeral, agreed that he’d almost certainly died of a broken heart over his beloved Dulcie.

  The mourning contingent were well prepared for the journey up to Sydney for Fred’s funeral with two crates of beer for the men and four bottles of sweet sherry for the ladies. After drinking their way through Cootamundra, Harden and Yass, they were pretty well oiled by the time the train rolled into Goulburn.

  The conversation had progressed beyond the virtues of the dearly departed to discussion of his origins. His father, Enoch Dunn, was claimed to have won the pub in a game of poker on the Bathurst goldfields in the 1860s. The general consensus was that, all in all, the Dunn name had stood for something in the town and there was speculation about the present and the future.

  Sergeant Bob Barrett, clad in a brown worsted suit that must once have buttoned over his front and looking decidedly uncomfortable out of his blue serge police uniform, seemed to express all their thoughts – well, those of the males present, anyway – when he ventured darkly, ‘Ah, a truly blessed union, Fred and Dulcie, a tribute to the town.’ He paused and raised his beer in memory. ‘But, I’ll give it to you straight. The boy has turned out to be a bloody no-hoper. If it weren’t for that splendid young lass he married there’d be no pub and he’d be in the gutter, mark my words, a regular in my overnight lock-up. She keeps him out of harm’s way, though gawd knows why, the useless bastard!’

  But this tribute to Brenda didn’t go unchallenged. The chemist’s wife, Nancy Tittmoth, sailed in for her tuppence worth, her fourth glass of sweet sherry turning to pure acid as it touched her lips. ‘Don’t believe everything you see, Bob. Bog Irish, that one! Still eat with their fingers. The only way her kind can get out of the gutter is to land with their bum in the butter! That girlie has lots to answer for. Little hussy housemaid gets herself pregnant to the publican’s son, both Roman Catholics, so they have to marry. Then her keeping the boy in a state of permanent intoxication so she can rule the roost. The hotel is in his name, of course, but as long as she hangs on to him, well . . .’ she smiled primly, ‘. . . the little tart and her son with the girly hair can enjoy all the benefits of a fortunate marriage.’

  Bob Barrett held his tongue. Everyone in town knew that Nancy had earmarked Mike Dunn for her eldest daughter, Enid, a sweet enough girl, though very tall, exceedingly plain and rather dull.

  With the death of his parents, Mick and Brenda now had the total income from the pub and expectations of a further inheritance that might mean they could afford not only Mick’s enduring thirst but Danny’s education as well. To Mick’s consternation and lasting bitterness, when the will was read, the Randwick property, Fred’s half-share in two racehorses stabled at the racecourse and a not inconsiderable sum of money in the Bank of New South Wales had been left to Dulcie’s two older sisters, both nuns approaching retirement.

  It never occurred to Brenda that she could now afford to be a lady of leisure; she had always worked and she would continue to do so. But now she was no longer beholden to her parents-in-law, Brenda decided she’d had a gutful of running a country pub. Mick was all piss and wind and contributed little, either as a husband or a worker, besides his gift of the gab. She’d had her fill of commercial travellers stealing towels or jacking off in bed and leaving sperm stains on the sheets; she was sick of locals defaulting on their monthly beer tab, of drunks fighting or throwing up on the pavement outside. And Sergeant Bob Barrett, older than her father, the dirty old sod, propping up the bar most nights for an hour after closing when she was exhausted, ogling her as he downed a couple of complimentary schooners and a plate of ham sandwiches. She was sick of it all. The final straw came when one morning she’d gone out to feed Happy and found him dead. The ageing verandah dog hadn’t shown any signs of being poorly. He’d simply passed away in his sleep. Brenda shed a quiet tear, sorry that she hadn’t been present to say goodbye and to whisper into his tattered ear that she loved him. She decided she wanted a bigger world, and it was time her bright young son was educated in the city.

  Brenda felt she’d fulfilled her duty to her own family. She’d put the twins through convent and paid for courses in shorthand and typing. While she still helped financially with the farm, good rains had fallen and the saltbush was coming back. She’d even noticed a gleam of hope occasionally in her mother’s pale-blue eyes. Confident she would survive in the big smoke, they sold the pub to Toohey’s Brewery in August 1929 and moved to Sydney, where they rented a small house in Paddington while Brenda looked for a suitable pub to buy. She thought she’d received a good price for the Commercial, but she was astonished at the pub prices in Sydney. After a few months she was beginning to wonder if she’d been wrong to sell up and leave Wagga. Then the New York Stock Exchange crashed, the effect resonating around the world to panic investors and set in train the Great Depression. Suddenly, cash was king and she found two run-down pubs, the Hero of Mafeking, in the working-class suburb of Balmain, and the King’s Men, in Parramatta. While the Parramatta pub was a slightly better buy, she’d discovered that each year the brightest two kids in their final year at Balmain Primary School would be chosen to attend Fort Street Boys High, a selective school with an enviable academic reputation. For a working-class boy it was the first step to a university education and Brenda fancied her chances with Danny, who was proving to be very bright. It was for this reason that she ignored the advice of the hotel broker and chose the more run-down of the two pubs.

  The gathering hard times had bankrupted the licensee, but Brenda reasoned that men still needed a drink, no matter how hard things became. She soon discovered that the pub had been cheap for several very good reasons. The previous publican had a reputation as a surly bastard who drove away more patrons than he ever attracted. With thirty pubs to choose from on the peninsula, this was not a very intelligent way to conduct business. Furthermore, the Resch’s brewery rep had cut off his supply when he couldn’t come up with the cash for his deliveries. The place was so run-down, shabby and dirty that the brewery had decided not to follow their usual practice of buying the freehold and installing a lessee, thus tying the pub to their beer forever. The premises were infested with cockroaches and rats, although the former were a product of Sydney’s humid summers and the latter – not exclusive to the pub – emanated from the wharves and ships anchored at the docks. In fact rats on the peninsula were in plague proportions, adding to the general sense of misery since the Wall Street crash. Everything and everyone went hungry, from the packs of emaciated dogs that roamed the streets, to the families who had once owned and loved them. Only the cats had full bellies.

  Danny, now nine, was enrolled in the local primary school in time for the first term of 1930. Brenda wasn’t happy that he was growing up in a pub, but she’d managed to keep him out of the pub in Wagga and she’d do so again in Balmain.

  T
he Balmain peninsula jutting out into Port Jackson was distinguished by the beauty of the harbour and the polluting industry that festered at the water’s edge. It was an inner-harbour suburb of Sydney, with Iron Cove on the west, White Bay to the south-east, Mort Bay on the north-east and Rozelle to the south-west. But Balmain did not regard itself as a part of anything or anyone. To the people who lived in its just over half a square mile, it was a different place, a separate village, a different state of being and of mind.

  How this overweening civic pride had come about nobody quite knew. Clearly Balmain was superior to Rozelle, which was lumbered with Callan Park, a lunatic asylum. ‘Yer gunna be thrown in the loony bin if yer don’t behave!’ was the customary threat to children growing up on the peninsula. Balmain boasted an impressive Italianate town hall of brick and stucco, and several handsome winding streets leading down to the two wharves or terminating in broad stone steps that led to jetties projecting into the sparkling harbour. Along Darling Street, rickety, swaying, clattering trams bore passengers down the steep slope to the Darling Street Wharf where they could take the ten-minute ferry ride to the city terminus.

  Yet, despite its beautiful setting and impressive civic centre, Balmain exhibited all the signs of working-class poverty. Spidering out along the peninsula on either side of Darling Street were humble back streets of run-down wooden and sandstone terraces of one and two storeys fronting directly onto cracked and weed-infested pavements. The tiny backyards contained only an outdoor toilet and a washing line, a rope or wire strung from the top of the kitchen door to the dunny roof. The Daily Worker once described these workers’ hovels as not fit for dogs to live in.

  A coal loader left a residue of fine coal dust on Monday’s washing, blackened the rind of dried mucus round the nostrils of the snotty-nosed kids, and added a sharp, acrid smell to the atmosphere. The air was filled with coal smoke from a power station and sulphur from a chemical factory near the Rozelle end, causing throats to burn and eyes to water. Two soap factories contributed the fetid stink of sheep tallow, and a host of small engineering factories added to the din and stink, squatting in niches and coves around the harbour.