The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘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.

  ‘Hmm, you’ve taken a big hit,’ Danny said, shaking his head in mock consternation, then turning to the kitchen cupboard to retrieve the bottle of antiseptic and a wad of cotton wool from the first-aid kit Brenda always had at hand.

  ‘Bad, is it?’ Half Dunn ventured bravely.

  Danny saw a way for Half Dunn to regain some ground, and added a large crepe bandage to the pile. He’d been shaken by his mother’s outburst against Half Dunn, rarely having witnessed the scorn she felt for him. He knew it was largely a result of her anger with Danny himself, but the poor bastard seemed to cop all the shit. The least he could do was show some sympathy for his old man who had, after all, only been trying to help him.

  Danny was frustrated and angry at his mother’s reaction but he tried to stay calm by telling himself it was pretty well what he expected. Brenda had never liked the Brits. She’d blamed them for the loss of her brothers in the First World War, and he now saw that she wasn’t going to let him join up without a fight and certainly not before he’d completed his degree. Besides, she’d withdrawn from the argument, and throwing a shitty in front of his pathetic father wasn’t going to help.

  ‘It’ll need a dressing. You’re probably going to have a pretty sore noggin for a few days; the bump on the back of your head is the size of a golf ball,’ Danny exaggerated.

  ‘Yeah? Jesus, what do you think? Concussion?’ Half Dunn asked somewhat hopefully.

  Danny held three fingers up in front of Half Dunn’s face, one of the tests if you got a bad knock on the football field. ‘How many fingers?’

  ‘Three . . . I think,’ Half Dunn replied, clearly disappointed. Danny reduced the finger count to one. ‘One,’ his father called.

  ‘Three and one are both correct. No concussion. Now hold still while I fix this dressing.’ Danny attended to the superficial wound with several unnecessary dabs of iodine, each one accompanied by a sharp indrawn breath or an ouch from his father. He then covered it in a wad of cotton wool the size of the back of his hand, and secured this with wide strips of Elastoplast to the bald patch at the back of Half Dunn’s head and to his neck. It was time for some revenge. Danny wound the bandage several times over the top of Half Dunn’s head and under his father’s several chins until he looked as if he’d been the victim of a major accident. Brenda would be truly alarmed when she saw it. ‘If I were you I’d play this one for all it’s worth, Dad,’ he advised, grinning, knowing that his father didn’t need to be told twice.

  Danny helped him down the stairs, Half Dunn sure he was too dizzy to navigate them alone. Looking suitably pathetic, Half Dunn, practising a few quiet but manly groans, levered his great carcass onto the reinforced stool at the main bar.

  Danny then attended to all the jobs Brenda would normally be doing to get the pub ready to receive the first customers of the day. At a quarter to ten he realised he ought to be gone. Half Dunn’s moment in the sun was about to arrive as Brenda appeared to open the pub, and much as he would have liked to be present, if he was, Brenda might just play it straight and not react. She was tough enough. Half Dunn must have shared his thoughts, because he said, ‘She’ll be down soon, son – never misses opening. I’ll tell yer mother you’ve gone to uni, eh?’

  Danny, perhaps out of childish pique, didn’t attend university that day, but instead spent the morning walking around the peninsula, then went down to the pool and trained for two hours. Hungry after the swim, he bought a sandwich and spent the rest of the afternoon playing touch football and then a game of pool at the club with some of his unemployed mates. The talk was all about the war and joining up with the Sixth Division. He arrived back at the Hero of Mafeking just after six o’clock closing, knowing he must confront his mother once more.

  Brenda was in the beer garden feeding six magpies, now several generations removed from the original Sao triplets. ‘Mum, can I talk to you, please?’ Danny said.

  Brenda turned from feeding the birds. ‘Oh, hello; there you are, dear,’ she called back calmly, as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Mum, about this morning . . .’ Danny began.

  Brenda threw a final handful of Sao cracker crumbs for the greedy birds, then, turning back to Danny, she brushed the remaining crumbs from her hands and the front of her apron. ‘It all came as a bit of a shock this morning. Will you give me two or three days to think about it?’ She paused, smiling, her head to one side. ‘Please?’

  What could he say? He could hardly refuse. ‘Yeah, sure,’ Danny mumbled. ‘Promise you’ll think about it?’

  Brenda laughed suddenly. ‘Your father’s head, you well and truly got me there.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I nearly died when I saw the bandage.’

  Despite himself, Danny grinned. ‘I hope you apologised?’

  ‘Worse, I called a taxi and took him straight to Dr Keeble.’

  ‘He didn’t object?’

  ‘Object? He milked it for all it was worth. We got to the surgery and there were half a dozen people in the waiting room. An old lady came out just as we arrived. “Sorry, everyone, this is an emergency!”

  I called out and barged straight in to Doc Keeble’s surgery, dragging your father by the hand. Well, you know what a curmudgeon old Keeble is. He unwound the bandage, removed the enormous wad of cotton wool, then sniffed. “Mrs Dunn, is this a joke? If it is, I’d be obliged if in future you didn’t waste my time!” He was as cranky as all get out.’

  ‘And D
ad?’

  ‘“What about the golf ball? Could be concussion!” he said.’ Brenda chuckled, ‘“Or more brain damage,” Doc Keeble replied.’

  Danny laughed. ‘Yeah, I told him about the golf ball; a bit of an exaggeration, I guess. The concussion was his own idea.’ Danny caught his breath, suddenly serious. ‘Mum, please don’t think this is all over, me enlisting.’

  Brenda turned to go back into the pub. ‘You agreed to give me two or three days, Danny,’ she said crisply, her mood changing as suddenly as her son’s.

  The following morning Brenda called Doc Evatt’s court clerk, asking that the judge phone her as soon as possible, but to her surprise he put her through, cautioning her to be quick – the judge was very busy. Brenda was flustered, and said abruptly, ‘I’m sorry, Doc, but I need your advice . . . urgently.’

  ‘Happy to oblige,’ Evatt replied. He’d always had a soft spot for her.

  Brenda was profuse in her apologies, but he cut her short. ‘Tell me what I can do for you,’ he said.

  So she did, concluding with an invitation for him and Alice to join her for dinner at Primo’s on Wednesday.

  There was a pause while Evatt consulted his diary, then he said, ‘You’re in luck with me, but not with Alice. She has a prior engagement, I’m afraid, and we’ll have to be quick because I have a complex matter in court the following morning and have to brush up on my notes. Make it six o’clock at Primo’s, out by eight-thirty?’

  Brenda, breathing a sigh of relief, thanked him.

  Brenda wore a spiffy new ensemble purchased from David Jones and chosen with advice from the fashion department manageress. Normally she would have found something at Freda’s Frocks in Darling Street, relying on Freda Morgan or Gwendy, her sister, to advise her. But both were notorious stickybeaks and understood that nobody bought a complete outfit, including hat and gloves and matching shoes, unless there was something going on that the two of them felt they, and therefore the rest of Balmain, should immediately know about.

  Brenda wasn’t the browsing type and felt completely lost in the big city department store. She’d picked a green dress, a colour Freda and Gwendy always said was ‘quintessentially her’, and was in the process of looking at a blue felt hat when the manageress approached. Smiling, she proffered her business card. ‘Madam, blue and green should never be seen,’ she said in a light but assured voice. Normally Brenda would have told her to go to buggery and gone ahead and chosen the blue hat with gloves and shoes to match, but the authority represented by the personal card had undone her, and besides, she couldn’t recall having ever seen blue and green together in an ensemble in the Women’s Weekly. The manageress reached out and removed a smart-looking, deep maroon hat from the display rack. ‘Ah, lovely. Shall we try this, madam? Green and wine are simply divine.’ Brenda tried on the hat and was forced to admit that it suited her. Besides, she was going to a posh restaurant with a High Court judge, where there would be smart, fashionable people; she felt out of her depth. The manageress was confident and sophisticated and so she ended up with the deep wine-coloured hat, gloves and shoes, assured that, ‘The gorgeous green sets off your lovely little figure and titian hair, madam,’ and that the accessories were ‘understated and simply splendid’.

  Brenda was never what you might call beautiful, but at thirty-seven she still had her petite figure, and despite the years of hard toil, was pretty enough in her new glad rags to turn a few heads at the cocktail bar as she entered the restaurant at precisely six o’clock. When the maître d’ indicated the bar and suggested a pre-dinner cocktail she refused and asked to be escorted directly to her table.

  ‘Of course, madam.’ He seated her, unfolded the large cone-shaped damask napkin and with a flourish placed it on her lap, then proffered the wine list in a heavy leather folder embossed with a gold coat of arms and the name of the restaurant. ‘I am expecting Dr Evatt,’ Brenda said, pausing before adding, ‘the High Court judge.’

  ‘Ah, always a welcome guest, madam.’

  ‘He’s in a bit of a hurry,’ Brenda added a little breathlessly, for a moment forgetting her poise.

  ‘Always,’ the maître d’ said smugly, scoring a second time. ‘I shall advise the chef to prepare a rump steak and pommes mousseline.’

  Brenda had felt both of the previous putdowns and she’d had enough. ‘Whatever you wish to call them they’re still mashed potatoes,’ she said dismissively.

  While she’d been to some of the nicer restaurants in town at the invitation of various breweries, Primo’s was regarded as a cut above the others and this was confirmed when Brenda examined the wine list. While she didn’t have much call to sell wine at the Hero of Mafeking – none, in fact – except for the fortified varieties, sweet sherry, port and madeira, she was familiar with the wholesaler’s liquor price list and was quick to note that the restaurant mark-up on a bottle of chablis was three hundred per cent, sufficient validation in Brenda’s mind of the establishment’s stratospheric reputation. Fortunately Doc Evatt drank scotch (one hundred per cent mark-up) and she sarsaparilla, or very occasionally a dry sherry, having read in the Women’s Weekly that it was a ladylike thing to do in polite company.

  The Doc didn’t waste time on the usual pleasantries. He greeted Brenda with a nod and a grunt, sat down, ordered a scotch from the now obsequiously smiling maître d’, then a steak, any way the house liked to cook it as long as it came with mashed potatoes. With that out of the way he squinted through his thick glasses across the damask-covered table and came directly to the point. ‘So, Brenda, tell me, what’s the problem?’ he demanded.

  Brenda laughed. ‘But I haven’t ordered, Doc,’ she protested, turning to see the maître d’ had been replaced by a waiter wearing a white apron down to his ankles.

  ‘Steak’s good,’ Evatt offered with an impatient flick of his wrist. ‘So, what can I do for you?’

  Brenda glanced up and said, ‘I’ll have the same as Judge Evatt, only half the portion.’

  ‘Madam, I’m afraid all the steaks are the same size, aged beef, hand cut an inch and a half thick by four and a half inches across,’ the waiter replied pompously.

  Evatt gave him a sharp look. ‘Hand cut, eh? Then cut the bloody thing in half!’ he demanded, turning back to Brenda, who proceeded to outline the situation as succinctly as possible.

  ‘If you can delay him from joining up, he’d have his BA in another year,’ she concluded.

  Evatt looked up. ‘What’s he want to do, teach?’

  ‘No, definitely not.’

  ‘Pretty worthless degree, unless of course he goes on and takes law,’ Evatt observed, confirming Danny’s own assertion.

  ‘Well, useless or not, he’s not going to finish if he joins up. All he wants to do is follow his mates into the Sixth Division.’

  ‘Hmm, not surprising; mates are everything at that age.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Not the Sixth, definitely not right for him,’ Evatt pronounced firmly. ‘When he’s graduated he’ll go to officers’ school. We need educated men as leaders. I’ll talk to him. When is the lad home?’

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you, Doc!’ Brenda said, unable to hide her relief. ‘He’s usually home around five o’clock. He helps at the main bar during rush hour at the pub.’

  The following day at almost precisely five o’clock, Doc Evatt’s driver drew up directly outside the pub in a big black Buick.

  It was an unseasonably warm spring day and the pub windows were open, so there was a sudden lull among the patrons as the judge opened the back door and stepped out onto the pavement. Brenda hurried to meet him, calling Danny over as he entered the pub, then ushered them both upstairs.

  Brenda, aware that the judge hated any sort of fuss, had placed a pot of tea, two mugs, a milk jug, a sugar pot and a plate of assorted biscuits on the upstairs kitchen table.

  Doc Evatt sat down and indicated to Danny to take the c
hair opposite. Brenda poured them each a mug of tea, adding the milk and sugar first. Accepting the mug absentmindedly Doc Evatt glanced up at her and said, ‘I’ll see you downstairs to say goodbye.’ Danny was impressed as he watched his mum leave without a word.

  ‘So you want to join up, son?’ Doc Evatt asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Because your friends are all doing so?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do you always do as they do?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So, you must have a special reason this time.’

  ‘Well, yes, sir. It’s the war. I want to do my bit.’

  Doc Evatt thought for a moment. ‘This bit you want to do – is it for these friends you talked about?’

  ‘No, of course not, sir! For my country.’

  ‘Ah, I see; your country! So, even if your friends stayed at home, you’d join up?’

  ‘Yes, I think so, sir.’

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘So, you believe your country comes first, ahead of your education?’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir.’

  ‘Hmm . . . very commendable.’

  ‘No, sir . . . it’s my duty,’ Danny said, beginning to feel decidedly awkward. Evatt’s simple questions, which he sensed were far from cursory, were slowly backing him into a corner.

  ‘And if your country asked you to jump headlong into a hail of machine-gun fire to meet almost certain death, would you do so unquestioningly?’

  Danny hesitated. ‘Well, yes. I don’t suppose I’d have a choice.’

  ‘Ah, Gallipoli, eh? Leave a letter for your sweetheart with your mate then scramble out of the trench when your officer blows his whistle and into a hail of Turkish fire.’ He looked up, one eyebrow raised quizzically. ‘Were you not taught at school that we lost that stoush?’