The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  Helen laughed. ‘Well, that’s enough theory for now. I’m not finding this conversation in the least erotic, so don’t think you can skip French language lessons in future. I want the lot: everything that’s natural between a man and a woman. And I don’t want that decided by the Pope or the convocation of the Church of England. What do they know about what pleases a girl? They rabbit on about what’s decent, and respectable, and nice, about making babies, but it’s all for blokes. And women put up with it. But not this one. I won’t be short-changed, Danny Dunn.’

  Danny laughed, ‘Sure thing, Miss Brown. May I enrol for ancient history lessons as well, please?’

  Danny wasn’t inexperienced with women, but it counted for very little in his new relationship. It wasn’t only that Helen didn’t go along with the prevailing social and sexual mores – the Friday or Saturday night special, the drunken grope in the dunes or the back seat of a car, the obligatory marital bout of panting, probing, mumbling and fumbling; she also constantly challenged the order of things.

  Helen simply didn’t know her place as a woman. She didn’t fit into any particular class for the simple reason that she didn’t go along with most of what passed for conventional wisdom. She certainly didn’t think a woman’s place was in the home, though she was nevertheless an inspired cook. After the war she was planning to take her doctorate and thereafter pursue an academic career. In the working-class ethos of Balmain she would be seen as an absolute disaster by the men, a bitch who didn’t know her place, while the women would refer to her as a stuck-up snob – ‘Too many brains for her own good, that one!’ Most young blokes would run a mile from a sheila like Helen.

  Danny had initially been afraid to introduce her to Brenda. Both were strong women, both held strong views, though not necessarily the same ones. His mother was a Catholic, and while not a regular churchgoer, she attended mass at Easter, Christmas and New Year’s Eve and said her rosary every day. She was a dormant but far from lapsed Catholic. Danny couldn’t imagine anything even vaguely sexual going on between her and Half Dunn. Like most children, he felt reasonably certain that apart from conceiving him, his parents had never had it off together. He tried to imagine them in the missionary position, Half Dunn on top, and although it brought a grin, inwardly he felt ashamed; you didn’t think in those terms about your mum, and poor old Half Dunn lacked the energy to raise himself off the mattress.

  Helen wasn’t in the least religious, even though she was a biblical scholar. She blamed the church for most of the crimes against humanity committed over the past millennium or so, describing the Crusades, perpetrated in the name of a just and supposedly loving God, as the greatest mass murder in history.

  By the time he’d returned for his first home leave, Danny knew he couldn’t delay the two women meeting. At Helen’s insistence he’d taken her to meet Brenda. They’d liked each other immediately. ‘Don’t you lose that girl now!’ Brenda admonished him on his next weekend leave, ‘What you’ve got there, son, is a “somebody”.’ She’d never become reconciled to his leaving university and still never mentioned the war, even though Danny was now permanently in uniform. But Helen’s appearance in her life had made a notable difference to Brenda’s general demeanour. The two women seemed to have become friends, truly good friends, spending time together when he was in camp, Helen even occasionally helping out in the pub.

  Danny had written to Helen every week from Malaya and then Singapore, right up to the day before they’d been captured, that is, if the last mail to Australia got out safely, possibly on the same boat as that cowardly bastard Bennett. Danny knew that he loved her and she him – she’d admitted as much. But Helen wasn’t keen on the ‘until death do us part’ bit, and they’d finally agreed to see what happened after the war.

  She’d completed her masters degree towards the end of his battalion’s stay in Malaya, majoring in Egyptian history, and had written to say she’d joined up as a cryptologist, her study of hieroglyphs at university an ideal preparation for code-breaking . . . and other things! She’d also started to study Japanese as part of her course. I hope to discover a few new oriental secrets that the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans didn’t know about! she wrote in the same letter. They’d given her the rank of second lieutenant and she’d ended the last letter he’d received with, ‘Next time we meet you’ll have to salute me, Danny Dunn, and high time too!’ He’d received it two days before they’d surrendered to the Japanese, and his final letter, the one that may or may not have reached her, was addressed to Lieutenant Helen Brown. On the back of the envelope he’d drawn a crude version of his face wearing a slouch hat with a hand on the right brim at the salute.

  That had been three and a half years ago and Danny had convinced himself that she’d have long since forgotten him and met someone else. He’d told himself that it was logical that a woman as good-looking and intelligent as Helen, not knowing whether he was alive or dead, wouldn’t hang around if the right guy came into her life. Nor would he expect her to, knowing that she wouldn’t accept him the way he was now, anyway, that no woman would. He’d been lucky, he’d had his fair share, women had always been generous to him, but now he’d better get used to flying solo. She’d been the best and at least he’d had that.

  He’d taken on the task of burying her in his mind and had all but succeeded in erasing her from his memory when Brenda’s letter had arrived. He’d written back to say he didn’t think a reunion was possible and he didn’t want her to renew their correspondence.

  Danny had never been concerned about his looks, simply accepting that women found him attractive, a fortunate circumstance he wasn’t going to analyse. He was grateful that he was lucky with women, and accepted, with an enigmatic smile, the joshing he received from envious mates. Now he realised how thoughtless, even arrogant, he had been. Why, when Helen Brown hadn’t fallen into his arms, he’d discovered that there was more, so much more to love than casual conquest.

  Most of his mates had gone off to war as virgins and had lost their virginity in a brothel in Lavender Street in Singapore or with a clumsy knee-trembler hastily taken in a dark, stinking, rat-infested alley in a Cairo slum or some equally seedy whorehouse – a raucous and drunken evening with their barrack-room mates, culminating in a loss of innocence they couldn’t remember much about the following morning. Now they’d be the conquering heroes returning, to get all the nooky they wanted, while he would have to endure the phoney smile on the lips of a King’s Cross whore as she counted his money.

  They arrived home on a morning with clear skies and brilliant summer sunshine to a welcome that started a fair way out to sea when the pilot boat and the first yachts appeared to accompany them through the Heads. As they drew closer, Danny could see that North Head was crowded with thousands of people while South Head, a naval base, was empty, but as they drew even closer and he could see Vaucluse lighthouse on the point of South Head, there, standing on a rock ledge on the cliff face, was a lone piper. Moments later, as the swirl of the pipes reached him, Danny began to weep.

  Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,

  From glen to glen and down the mountain side;

  The summer’s gone and all the leaves are falling;

  ’Tis ye, ’tis ye, must go and I must bide.

  But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,

  Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow;

  ’Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow;

  Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so.

  And if ye come when all the flowers are dying,

  If I am dead, as dead I well may be,

  Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying,

  And kneel and say an ‘Ave’ there for me.

  And I shall hear, though soft ye tread above me,

  And o’er my grave, shall warmer, sweeter be,

  Then if ye bend and tell me that ye love me,<
br />
  Then I shall sleep in peace until ye come to me.

  The Circular Quay welcome had been even bigger than the newsreels had promised. Every military and civilian brass band in the city seemed to be playing ‘Waltzing Matilda’, and the dockside cranes were spraying large arcs of white water into the harbour as the Circassia came in to berth. As they’d sailed up the harbour, thousands of small boats and yachts flying flags and bunting had come out to welcome them, some displaying hand-lettered signs that read, Welcome home, Tom . . . or Kevin . . . or Jack. The familiar green-and-cream ferries, brought to a standstill, blew their horns, and Danny could see people gathered on the foreshore by the tens of thousands. The noise from the cheering crowds on the wharf throwing streamers was almost deafening. Sydney had come out in force to welcome home its physically and emotionally broken sons, returning to their loved ones, who were about to discover how very different they were now from the happy, excited, strong and robust young men who had departed with a final kiss for Mum and a manly handshake for Dad maybe five years previously.

  Danny had been given a warrant for a taxi, but despite his bad back, he’d shouldered his duffle bag and begun to walk the twenty minutes or so from Circular Quay over to the Erskine Street Wharf where the ferry to Balmain berthed. Six years previously, had a young bloke arrived in the peninsula in a taxi, they’d have thought him a wanker. Danny couldn’t think of a convincing reason why things might have changed. Even if he was no longer bulletproof, he knew Balmain would be just the same as ever. It would take more than a global conflict to alter the beliefs of the people with whom he’d grown up.

  He still thought of himself as a young bloke, although his physique belied that description and his face told a different story. He’d left Australia standing six feet and four inches in his socks and weighing seventeen stone, but you don’t strip six stone off a big bloke who isn’t carrying any excess weight and expect him to look like Charles Atlas. Now, lugging his kit over from Circular Quay to Erskine, he could feel the two painkillers he’d taken coming through the heads into Sydney Harbour starting to wear off.

  Ten minutes or so from the Erskine Street Wharf with perhaps a thousand yards to go, a young bloke of about eighteen approached. He seemed to Danny to be bursting out of his skin with good health and wore a wide grin. ‘Lemme help you with yer kit, mate. Yer look tuckered out,’ he offered.

  Danny turned to face him and noticed the look of shock when the young cove saw his face. ‘Bugger off!’ he snapped, suddenly furious. He dumped his kitbag onto the pavement and began to kick it. ‘Bugger off! Bugger off!’ he yelled, and kept kicking until the pain in his back became too much and he was forced to stop. Panting furiously, bent double, his hands on his knees, Danny attempted to catch his breath.

  The young bloke was still there. ‘I thought I told you to bugger off?’ Danny gasped.

  ‘Yeah, you did, but I ain’t,’ the young bloke said mulishly. He bent and hoisted Danny’s duffle bag onto his shoulder. ‘Ready when you are, soldier. Where to?’

  Danny attempted to laugh. He was, to misquote a popular song, bent, buggered and bewildered, but he was home and the first bloke he’d met ashore had shown him kindness. ‘Just until I catch my breath then. Erskine Street Wharf,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘What’s your name, mate?’

  ‘Lachlan Brannan. I missed out, turned eighteen the day they dropped the atom bomb on Japan.’

  ‘Count yourself fortunate, son,’ Danny gasped, shaking his hand but forgetting to introduce himself. They had resumed walking towards the ferry terminal and Danny had gained his breath sufficiently to ask, ‘Brannan? I played water polo with an Adrian Brannan, three or four years older than me. Good bloke. As I remember he had four younger brothers and a sister, Doreen, who was older than him.’ Danny grinned. ‘Damned good sort. Any relation?’

  ‘Yeah, Adrian’s me oldest brother. I’m the youngest! Doreen’s married now,’ Lachlan said, taken aback. ‘You from Balmain then?’

  ‘Yeah, my folks own a pub there, the Hero of Mafeking.’

  ‘The Hero? Me old man drinks there! Jesus! You ain’t . . . ?’

  ‘Sorry, mate, bloody rude,’ Danny extended his hand. ‘Name’s Danny . . . Danny Dunn.’

  ‘You’re kidding! The Danny Dunn? Balmain Tigers, first-grade front row? You won the grand final for us just before the war. I was just a kid, but I was your number-one fan! We used to fight about which of us was gunna be you when we played touch footy in the park.’ Lachlan shook his head in amazement. ‘Shit, eh? Danny Dunn, who’d a thought?’

  ‘Look I’m sorry about giving you a mouthful back there, mate. It’s just . . . nah, forget it, just one of those days. You work around here, Lachlan?’

  Lachlan laughed. ‘I wish. Mum gimme sixpence for the tram, told me to go into the city and find a job. I missed out yesterday and the day before and she’s getting really cranky. I heard they was hiring casual labour down at the passenger wharves so I come down.’

  ‘No luck?’

  ‘Nah, there weren’t no casual; bloke at the gate asked to see me union card.’ Lachlan grinned. ‘I told him if they gimme a job I’ll join for sure, nothing more certain. The fat fart told me to piss off. He reckoned I didn’t have the right fucking attitude.’

  ‘Oh? And what might that be?’

  ‘Dunno, mate. But I should’a known. Wharfies union, closed shop, Joe Stalin’s mob, lotsa commos.’

  They walked on silently for a while, until Lachlan asked, ‘You gunna play again, Danny? F’ the Tigers?’

  ‘Why? They looking for an ugly one-eyed ten-stone prop with a crook back?’ Danny laughed.

  ‘You could bulk up – looks don’t matter none. You’re a front-row forward,’ Lachlan offered naively.

  Danny grinned and pointed to the duffle bag Lachlan was carrying. ‘Back, mate – it’s buggered. Can’t even carry that bastard. Lawn bowls, if I’m lucky.’

  They’d reached the ferry terminal and Lachlan dumped Danny’s duffle bag on the jetty where the ferry pulled in. ‘I’d come home with you, Danny, carry your clobber, but if I get home before five I’ll cop a tongue-lashing and a clip behind the ear from me mum.’

  Danny had a sudden idea. ‘What if I paid you? You know, treat it like a legit job?’

  Lachlan shook his head. ‘No way! You come from Balmain. Yiz coming back from the war, yer got a crook back. I take your money, me dad would take his belt to me. Anyway, I wouldn’t do it, I mean, take your money. Maybe I’ll still find a job. Sometimes there’s late-afternoon loading at a packing house I know about in Darling Harbour.’

  Danny felt fairly certain Lachlan was fibbing. ‘Nah, she’s right, mate. My back’s rested now. It’s that tough, eh? I mean, finding a job?’

  ‘Yeah, all the blokes comin’ home from the war, they get first go. Me dad reckons it’s only fair, but me mum don’t take no notice. If you’re willing to work there’s always something, she says.’

  Danny put his hand into his trouser pocket and felt for a two-shilling piece. ‘Well, thanks, Lachlan. Come and see me at the Hero – I’ll buy you a beer.’ He extended his hand as if to shake the kid’s and in the process slipped the coin into his palm.

  Lachlan Brannan drew back, pulling his hand free. He looked down at the silver coin, not quite believing what he held. Then he shook his head. ‘No way!’ he cried, genuinely upset. ‘No way . . . no effing way! Like I said, I ain’t taking your money, Danny.’

  ‘It’ll be lunchtime soon enough. Buy yourself a pie,’ Danny offered.

  Lachlan took a step forward and held the coin out for Danny to take. ‘A pie costs sixpence.’ He patted his back trouser pocket. ‘But I already got a sanwitch.’

  ‘A milkshake then,’ Danny said, conscious that he’d upset the kid.

  ‘No way!’ Lachlan insisted, then reached out and dropped the coin into the shirt pocket of Danny’s army fat
igues.

  ‘Sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to insult you. I guess it’s been a while. I’m not accustomed to spontaneous kindness. Where I’ve been there wasn’t much of it going around. It’s just, well, when you came up and offered to help me carry my kit I reacted badly, but I appreciate it. I really do. I’ll never forget that I’d been back in Australia half an hour and a young bloke, a stranger, offered to help me. You didn’t have to do that.’

  Lachlan grinned and shrugged. ‘I wasn’t doing nothing else.’

  ‘Okay, no hard feelings then. Come and see me at the pub. Be a pleasure to buy you a beer, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, Danny, after I’ve found meself a job.’

  ‘No, come anytime, tomorrow if you like.’

  ‘Nah, I ain’t no bludger. I’ll wait till I can buy a shout.’

  Danny could see the little ferry approaching, a wash of white water as the prow turned coming under the bridge. Nothing had changed. He was right about not taking a taxi. He was back in the Balmain mindset. ‘See you soon, Lachlan.’ Danny set off, then suddenly turned back. ‘Here’s an idea, mate. When I was at uni during the holidays, just so I didn’t have to work at the pub, I’d work as a messenger, usually for a law firm, but once I applied to an advertising agency. I didn’t get the job because they wanted someone permanent to start as a dispatch boy; it’s a sort of messenger boy, but you eventually move up into the other departments, and if you’re bright it can lead to a whole career. That’s not the sort of job they’re going to give to a returned soldier.’ Danny paused, thinking. ‘Wait on, let me remember the name, they were in Commonwealth Street . . . George something? Yeah that’s right . . . George Patterson Advertising.’ Danny looked at Lachlan, who was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and shirt with the sleeves cut out and a pair of well-worn worker’s steel-tipped boots, with an inch or so of odd-coloured socks showing above the top of each. ‘Got any good clobber at home?’

  ‘You mean Sunday best?’