The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  Scraper was a reasonable defender who played in the second-grade comp, though occasionally he’d sit on the reserves bench for the firsts and get a few minutes of pool time when a player was subbed or dragged off by the coach for performing badly and made to sit on the bench in disgrace. In the hierarchical world of young sportsmen, Danny was an aristocrat while Billy, at best, was a serf. Danny didn’t observe these unspoken distinctions and treated everyone the same, but nevertheless they seldom mixed much beyond the confines of the pool.

  ‘Make it a seven, mate, same for me dad. We got a fair few pubs to go yet and we been at it all afternoon.’ He laughed. ‘The old bloke can’t believe his luck; we haven’t paid for a single beer yet.’

  ‘Fair enough, it’s your big day,’ Danny grinned, pouring two seven-ounce beers and placing them on the counter. Billy turned to where his old man was talking to the group of older blokes. ‘Dad!’ he yelled. ‘Beer, mate.’

  Billy’s dad occasionally came into the Hero but usually did his drinking at the Dry Dock Hotel down at the wharves. He walked over and picked up the seven of beer and turned to go back to his mates.

  ‘Hey, mate, it’s on the house,’ Billy called. ‘Say thanks, will ya?’

  Sky Scraper propped, then turned slowly to face Danny, lifting his hand slightly to indicate the beer he held, then pointing at it with his free hand. ‘I’ll return the favour when I see yiz in uniform, son,’ he replied, then turned his back and went over to rejoin the group.

  Danny flushed deeply but managed somehow to keep his composure.

  ‘Take no notice – he’s shickered. We’ve been on the piss all morning,’ Billy Scraper said. ‘Mostly I’ve been drinkin’ shandies but the silly bugger prides himself he can hold his grog.’

  ‘Yeah, fair enough,’ Danny replied, attempting a smile, but he was gutted, his heart thumping. ‘So where to next, mate?’ he forced himself to ask.

  ‘Canada. Training to be air crew.’

  ‘Hey, good one! Bloody cold in the winter, though.’

  ‘Yeah, mate, have to find meself a local bird,’ Billy grinned. ‘They say them Canadian sheilas know their way around the cot. Must be all that cold weather!’

  ‘Could be. We had one lecture us in my first year at uni. She was supposed to be half Red Indian, come here on some sort of teaching exchange with Canada.’

  ‘Yeah? Good sort?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘You bang her?’ Billy asked bluntly.

  Danny laughed. ‘Christ, no! You know the rules, mate. Never piss on your own doorstep.’

  ‘Shit. Never shit on yer own doorstep,’ Billy corrected.

  Danny attempted to hide his surprise. These things were subtle, but he wouldn’t normally have expected Billy Scraper to have the courage to correct him like that. He was obviously using the newfound authority he imagined his RAAF uniform granted him. In his mind he probably thought the tables had been turned; new rules – war was greater than sport. ‘Yeah, right,’ Danny said.

  ‘How long you got to go?’ Billy asked.

  ‘What, uni?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Few months.’

  ‘Jesus! In a few months I’ll be on night bombing raids over Germany! Jerry searchlights tryin’ ta locate us. Them little puffs a’ smoke hanging in the air from ack-ack shells exploding every fuckin’ which way in the sky. Us in our Wellington shittin’ ourselves!’ Billy said excitedly.

  Normally Danny would have grinned, allowing his mate to bullshit, amused by the well-rehearsed fantasy. Plainly Billy Scraper had seen too many war movies and was revelling in his new blue uniform. But Danny wasn’t his normal self. Sky Scraper’s insult had kicked him in the emotional crutch and, anyway, he felt guilty and was already hurting.

  Billy had almost finished the seven. ‘One for the road?’ Danny offered.

  ‘Shit no! Gotta go, mate.’ He drained his glass and slapped it down on the counter, smacking his lips ostentatiously. He wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist and stretched over to shake Danny’s hand. Head slightly to one side he gave Danny a sardonic grin. At least, that’s how Danny interpreted it. ‘So long, mate. Don’t hang around too long . . . you’ll miss all the fucking fun.’

  In his mind Danny translated this to mean: Bludger! Dodging the war while your mates are doing their bit.

  Danny watched as father (somewhat unsteadily) and son departed to a chorus of good wishes from the patrons, then somewhat grim-faced he moved down towards Half Dunn’s end of the bar, collecting the empty glasses.

  ‘You okay, son?’ Half Dunn asked as he drew near.

  ‘Yeah,’ Danny responded, not looking at his father.

  ‘Never mind, not long to go at uni and then it’s officers’ school. Pass before you know it,’ Half Dunn comforted him.

  Danny looked up angrily. ‘Jesus, Dad! It’s months! Then there’s another four months doing the friggin’ course . . . that’s the best part of a year! Then I’ll probably have to hang around for a posting to a unit overseas. Could be a year or more before I see any action!’ He jerked his head towards the door. ‘And in the meantime Billy’s dropping bombs on night raids over Germany!’

  At that moment Brenda entered the bar. ‘Talk about it tonight, eh?’ Half Dunn said sotto voce.

  He and Danny had grown a lot closer in the months since the declaration of war and the porridge pot incident. Half Dunn had announced that he was going to cut down on his drinking as his personal contribution to the war effort.

  ‘Be able to buy a couple of Churchill tanks with the money you save,’ some wag had noted.

  ‘Does that mean he halves his bullshit quotient as well?’ another joked.

  To everyone’s surprise he stuck to his guns and in three months he’d lost four stone. While fifty-six pounds missing from a three-hundred-pound bulk isn’t all that noticeable, he felt a lot better. It also meant he was sufficiently sober to listen nightly to the ABC news with Danny at nine o’clock, both of them seated at the kitchen table upstairs. It had become a ritual; they all missed the seven o’clock broadcast because they were required to help clean up after six o’clock closing. Brenda, on the other hand, evinced no interest whatsoever in the war, both as a matter of Irish principle and as a consequence of her stand on Danny joining up. She usually retired to bed to read the Women’s Weekly or to listen to a play on her bedside radio.

  Danny found that he enjoyed the company of his father and was constantly surprised at Half Dunn’s grasp of the war and the significance of news from the front. He persuaded his old man to take some exercise, and while this amounted to no more than a morning walk to the newsagent a third of a mile up Darling Street to fetch the Sydney Morning Herald, it represented a major effort on his part. Moreover, the swap from the Daily Mirror to the more serious broadsheet was yet another manifestation of Half Dunn’s more earnest demeanour. Danny, who’d always taken his cue from his mother, was discovering that there was more to his father than he’d previously imagined. Perhaps, he concluded, his father’s ability to construct constant, amusing and inventive bullshit had had the effect of actually sharpening his mind.

  The late news on the evening following Billy’s visit was particularly woeful, the ABC newsreader impassively reciting a litany of disasters in France and elsewhere. Danny, who had grown increasingly sombre as the day progressed, finally said, ‘Dad, how can I possibly sit on my arse with this going on? I feel like I’m cheating.’

  ‘Yeah, mate, that’s perfectly understandable, but you’re not cheating. Like I said this afternoon, it’s not so long to go.’

  ‘That’s bullshit, Dad. It could be almost a year! It’s a Five Letters call and I’m not there for my mates. I’m going to join up now . . . tomorrow!’

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ Half Dunn reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, right, Monday then. I’ve had a gutful.’

&nbs
p; ‘Danny, I heard what Sky Scraper said to you downstairs. He was pissed – don’t take no notice.’

  Danny suddenly turned on his father and shouted, ‘Pissed or not, he was fucking right!’

  ‘Danny! Danny, calm down, mate. You’ll bring your mother running,’ Half Dunn said in an urgent undertone.

  ‘Well, why not? Sort it out right here and now.’

  ‘Yeah? Like the last time?’

  Danny sighed. ‘I’m sick of the way people look at me in the street. Last Wednesday I bought a pie and a cup of tea in a cafe on Parramatta Road opposite the uni and this old woman brings it and there’s a white chook feather sticking out the top of the pie. “Ma’am, I ordered a meat pie, not a chicken,” I joke.

  ‘“That’s a meat pie, son,” she says.

  ‘“What’s the feather for then?” I ask.

  ‘“Ask your father,” she says, mouth like a duck’s bum. I should have laughed, but I didn’t. I lost it . . . I completely lost it! I picked up the pie and hurled it against the wall and then I poured the cup of tea on the floor and walked out. “Don’t ever come back, yer bloody coward!” she shouted after me.’

  Half Dunn looked down at his hands, then sighed deeply and looked up at Danny. ‘Mate, what can I say? I’ve always felt like a weak bastard because I didn’t join up in the last stoush against the Jerries. They said I was too fat to fight.’

  ‘Dad, that’s a medical reason. I’m not too fat.’ He nodded in the direction of Brenda’s bedroom down the hallway. ‘She’s the only reason I’m not in uniform.’

  Half Dunn sighed again. ‘Son, your mother’s never going to give her permission. You’ll just have to wait until your birthday next year, then you can do what you bloody well want!’

  ‘No, Dad. I don’t want to join up because I hate Mum! Because I don’t – I love her. I want to join up now right now, because it’s the right thing to do. Last time, when I agreed to finish university, everyone said the war would be over in a matter of months and that we were bound to win. But that hasn’t happened, and Britain, we, the allies, we’re taking a hiding. There’s talk of the Japs joining the war. If they do, we’re in deep shit. You know that, you said so yourself. This time it’s different. This time Doc Evatt could talk until he was blue in the face and it wouldn’t make any difference.’

  Half Dunn didn’t speak for some time, but when he did it was prefaced by a growl, or perhaps it was a groan. ‘Go down to the post office Monday morning – not the one in Darling Street, or Balmain East, they might tell your mum – go over to Birchgrove, get the parents’ permission form and I’ll sign it.’

  ‘Jesus, Dad, she’ll kill you!’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe. I’m still your father. I might not have been much of a one, but it’s time your mother realised it too.’

  On Monday morning Danny woke early, though not early enough to beat his mother, who he could hear talking to the early cleaning lady from her office downstairs where she did the accounts first thing, wrote the orders for the day and completed her other office duties. He dressed quickly then walked quietly along the polished wooden corridor towards her bedroom. It was next to Half Dunn’s, and he paused to look in through his father’s half-open door. Half Dunn lay on his side like a great beached whale in grey striped winter pyjamas. As Danny watched, a small bubble formed at the left corner of his mouth then immediately popped with his next breath. Danny noted that the pillow directly below his cheek was wet with spittle that shone against the side of his cherubic chin.

  Danny smiled; his fat slob of a father, now fifty-odd pounds lighter, had come good in the end. He didn’t envy him the day that lay ahead, in fact it was going to be pretty trying for them both, but he’d soon be gone and Half Dunn would have to continue to live with Brenda.

  Danny moved to his mother’s bedroom next door. The bedhead was positioned against the wall between two standard windows, so when she lay in bed Brenda looked directly out of the bedroom door into the hallway, giving her a sense of supervising the affairs of the pub, of being in charge, even while she slept. Set into the wall above the pink silk-shantung padded headboard was a small wall safe. It was where she kept the previous day’s takings, and she was probably downstairs stuffing them into a canvas bank bag at that very moment. Brenda trusted no one but herself with the banking.

  The safe contained a long thin black box that held his parents’ marriage certificate, the contracts for the sale of the pub in Wagga and also for the purchase of the Hero of Mafeking. He picked up a single folded sheet of paper, browning with age, and casually unfolded it to see it was Brenda’s final school report card. It showed she’d received a distinction in every subject. At the bottom of the page in fading copperplate script was a handwritten notation: The best student I’ve ever had the privilege to teach. It would be a great shame if Brenda were not allowed to continue her schooling. Linley Horrocks, Teacher. The final document in the tin proved to be what he was looking for – his birth certificate.

  Danny pocketed the certificate and returned the box to the safe, closing it and thumbing the combination to a random set of numbers. As he passed Half Dunn’s door his father sighed in his sleep, then with a great creaking of bedsprings, turned onto his back, gave a snort and began to snore.

  Shortly afterwards Danny emerged via the back stairs and the beer garden into Darling Street just in time to see the rattler approaching, coming back up from the ferry terminal. He sprinted to the tram stop and hopped aboard, leaving it again at the closest stop to the post office. He walked the remainder of the way, arriving moments after it opened.

  He was back at the pub just before opening time and was fortunate enough to catch Half Dunn alone, polishing the wooden surface of the main bar. Brenda was out the back supervising the unloading of a beer delivery.

  ‘You’ll need your birth certificate,’ he said to Danny.

  ‘Yeah, thanks, Dad. I’ve got it.’

  ‘Haven’t changed your mind?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ Danny put his hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, Dad. This isn’t going to be easy for you, mate.’

  Half Dunn smiled sadly. ‘Never has been, never will be. Your mother isn’t an easy woman, son.’ He sighed. ‘But there you go, it’s done now.’

  Danny arrived at the army recruiting centre at one o’clock, a wooden hut in Martin Place directly over the underground toilets, hence the immortal expression, ‘Mate, I’m in Shit Street.’ Inside the hut, around a dozen young blokes were waiting.

  At last it was Danny’s turn to stand in front of the recruiting sergeant’s desk. The heavy-set military man looked up as he handed Danny a form. ‘Well, well, first gollywog all day. When’d you last have a haircut, son?’

  Danny grinned. ‘Never known a barber’s clippers, sir.’

  ‘Not sir! Sergeant! Well, take my word for it, son, you won’t be fighting in this army with that haircut.’

  ‘Cutting it is fine by me, sergeant,’ Danny replied, grinning. ‘But I’m afraid you’ll have to ask my mum’s permission.’

  The recruiting sergeant didn’t react, though the slight smile indicated he bought the joke. ‘Army’s about the only place where your mum’s permission isn’t needed, except if you’re not yet twenty-one, of course.’

  ‘I’m not, but I have my dad’s permission, sergeant.’ He handed over the permission form along with his birth certificate.

  The recruiting sergeant glanced at both, noting that Danny was about a year shy of his majority. He looked up in some surprise. ‘Couldn’t wait any longer, eh? Well, your timing’s perfect. We’re raising a new division – the Eighth.. You can get in on the ground floor.’ He pointed to a row of desks. ‘Fill in the form and bring it back here.’

  Danny, having completed the form, once again stood in front of the recruiting sergeant. ‘At university, eh?’ He looked up. ‘Two further choices. You can defer or apply f
or officer training.’

  ‘Neither, sergeant, I just want to get on with it.’

  ‘Good on ya, son – it’s your call. Come back at two o’clock for your medical. Shouldn’t be a problem – you look pretty fit.’

  By late afternoon Danny had completed the paperwork and had been to Victoria Barracks for his medical examination. He was instructed to return to the Barracks the following day to be sworn in before being transported to the military training camp at Wallgrove, an hour’s journey to the west of Sydney.

  On his way home to Balmain he detoured to Birchgrove, to Helen’s house. She was at home alone when he arrived and they went into the garden. She sat on the swing hanging from the branch of a gum tree that stretched high over the back fence. The birds had begun their evensong and the winter afternoon was drawing to a close.

  Danny broke the news to Helen, not quite knowing what to expect. They’d only been together a couple of months and there was a whole heap of stuff he still didn’t know about this tall pretty blonde wasting a first-rate brain on Egyptian hieroglyphs. For instance, to his utter bemusement, she was excited about doing her doctorate on mummy bandages.

  Helen kicked the swing into motion but said nothing. ‘Well?’ Danny asked after a few moments. The swing made a creaking sound as it moved back and forth, the rope having burnt a polished groove into the branch from years of friction. Helen placed her feet on the ground, skidding to a dusty halt. She squinted up at him. ‘Just as well I know now, or I could have ended up marrying a bloody fool.’ She released a hand from the swing rope and waved it dismissively at Danny. ‘Go on, piss off, Danny Dunn!’

  ‘Hey, wait on!’ Danny protested. He’d never heard Helen swear or use such a common expression. No bird had ever treated him like this. She didn’t even seem unduly upset at losing him. ‘It’s my duty to my country,’ he added self-righteously, unaware of how pompous this must sound to her.

  Helen sighed and rose from the swing. ‘For God’s sake, spare me the scene from a bad melodrama, Danny. You’re the little boy marching down the garden path with his popgun over his shoulder. There’s the postie. Bang! Bang! Bang! The postman’s dead! Don’t expect me to play that silly game, to think of you as a hero, doing your bit for king and country! The ever-faithful sweetheart, waiting at her candlelit bedroom window for her soldier boy to return. Because I won’t be! What you’re doing is woefully stubborn and stupid!’ She walked up to him and took him by the hand. ‘Come!’ she demanded.