The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  They’d arrived an hour before the ceremony was due to begin, to ensure good seats. With the first rows in the centre block being reserved for the faculty, they’d settled into seats three rows back, the first row available to the public. By the time the vice-chancellor, resplendent in floppy gold-tasselled velvet cap and black gown festooned with gold braid, had led the long, colourful procession of professors onto the stage and they’d taken their seats, Brenda was already crying softly. Helen reached down and held one of her hands while Rose held the other.

  The vice-chancellor welcomed the guests, then launched into the usual dry and dusty stuff about the importance of hard work and carving a worthy career while maintaining a strong sense of duty to and respect for society, but then he went on to say, ‘At last year’s graduation ceremony, and again at this one, we take a special pride in those graduates who returned from serving their country to complete or undertake degrees. While this great institution acknowledges its debt to all these exceptional men and women, one man in particular stands out. I speak of the recipient of this year’s University Medal for outstanding scholastic achievement. He is a man who endured captivity and torture under the Japanese. While working on the Thai–Burma Railway and later in Thailand, he was solely responsible as the senior NCO for the men in two prisoner-of-war camps, enduring the onerous conditions of starvation, sickness, lack of medical facilities and harsh cruelty with which we are all too familiar. In performing his duty, this man managed to save many lives, in fact a greater proportion than in most other prisoner-of-war camps in Burma and Thailand. It is an indictment of our military system that such a man has received no formal recognition for his extraordinary achievements.’ The vice-chancellor paused before continuing. ‘I hasten to add that the University Medal is given solely for scholarship, without regard for past endeavours beyond the walls of the Academe, no matter how worthy those endeavours may have been, and, in the case of this man, undoubtedly were. This medal will be presented later in today’s ceremony when we are only permitted to highlight the academic achievements of this fine young man, but it would have been remiss of me not to make mention here of this remarkable student, as well as those others who served their country and do us all proud. I am speaking of Daniel Corrib Dunn.’

  Brenda’s quiet weeping had turned to audible sobbing and then to an uncontrollable soft wail so that Helen was finally obliged to lead her out of the Great Hall. Rose had moved to follow but Patrick placed a rough, sun-damaged hand on her arm to restrain her.

  Helen guided Brenda to a bench in the quad and held her to her breast while she continued to weep, finally crying, ‘That medal, it was won by Doc Evatt, too!’

  Helen was more than a little surprised by her mother-in-law’s emotional outburst. While Danny had told her about the incident that had occurred just before dawn on the morning after he’d returned home, he’d made a point of Brenda’s stoicism, saying that he had rarely heard or seen her cry. She was a woman firm in resolve, deeply proud, who kept her sadness to herself, or, as Half Dunn suspected she’d done when Danny had left to go to war, took it home to share only with Rose. It was not that she was phlegmatic or emotionally circumspect – she had a quick temper and a sharp tongue, as many a drunk could testify, although these were balanced by her ability to laugh at herself. For Brenda to break down in public was entirely out of character and it testified to the extraordinary depth of her feelings. The sole purpose of her life was about to be fulfilled, and although she had steeled herself for what was, after all, a long-anticipated event, it had been the vice-chancellor’s unexpected tribute to her war-ravaged son that had crashed through the carefully constructed barrier behind which she’d always contained her emotions.

  It was almost half an hour before Brenda recovered and allowed Helen to wipe away the mascara, and most of the vestiges of Nina’s cosmetics, to restore the naturally pretty Brenda, albeit with eyes puffy and red from crying. She had missed the very moment she had waited so long for, the conferring of Danny’s double degree, making him a double ‘somebody’. One of the university ushers arrived to say that the vice-chancellor had deferred the medal presentation until last and hoped she might return to the Great Hall to be present when her son was honoured by his professors, the academic staff and fellow students. She straightened her shoulders, and patted her hair. She would be present when he won the trifecta and became a triple ‘somebody’.

  As Brenda and Helen re-entered the Great Hall, the audience spontaneously rose to their feet and clapped until she’d resumed her seat. And although fresh tears coursed down her cheeks she wore a smile a stonemason couldn’t have chiselled from her face.

  Danny, wearing the cap and gown of a Law graduate over a brand-new suit (‘For knowink already a genius, no charge and compliments of Pineapple Joe’), received the University Medal to a standing ovation, a rare or perhaps singular occurrence for a student with a bachelor degree.

  The eight of them – Brenda and Half Dunn, Rose and Patrick, Reg and Barbara and, of course, Danny and Helen – had gone back to the Hero for lunch, a low-key family affair at Danny’s insistence. While Barbara smiled quickly when spoken to, Helen couldn’t help noticing that in moments of repose, when she was unaware of anyone looking at her, she’d largely remain po-faced, though when Danny received his medal there had been a flicker of gratification. Perhaps she was surprised to discover that Catholics could also be brilliant, Helen thought to herself.

  Helen had made a boeuf bourguignon, to be followed by fresh strawberries and ice-cream topped with a chocolate cognac sauce. She had taken a course in French cooking when they’d visited Billy du Bois in Louisiana. The French cooking was to complement the jeroboam of champagne that had been waiting patiently on the top shelf of the main bar for a decade or so. By anyone’s reckoning it now qualified as vintage. Danny had brought it down from the shelf that morning and Half Dunn had immersed it in a tub of ice cubes.

  While the celebration lunch was low key, Brenda insisted that it take place in the dining room. The only other time anyone could remember using the dining room for an actual meal was when Doc Evatt had visited just after the war. But even then they’d ended up eating pudding and sharing the best part of a good bottle of brandy in the kitchen. The dining-room table was really only used for an occasional game of cards or Monopoly and Danny had studied on it in the evenings before the war.

  However, Brenda didn’t care how much it cost or what Danny wanted – she was going to celebrate his graduation in style. She’d shopped with Helen at Anthony Hordern’s, where they’d bought a complete set of Wedgwood crockery, a posh silver-plated canteen of cutlery, and an Irish linen tablecloth and napkins with a ‘D’ hand-embroidered in a corner of each. Brenda wanted the ‘D’ to be in scarlet, as she’d once seen the ‘T’ embroidered at a special Tooheys banquet for their most valued customers, but Helen had persuaded her to have it in white. Finally, champagne glasses had been a must – Waterford crystal from Ireland. Brenda justified all this extravagance to Helen by saying, ‘When you married in such a hurry before going off to America for Danny’s operations we never set you up properly. Now that Danny’s a lawyer you’ll be entertaining a fair bit, I suppose, so after Sunday it will all be yours, my darling.’

  Now, on the big day, the table was perfectly set following instructions Brenda had cut out from the Women’s Weekly and saved on an impulse years ago. ‘If the Queen was coming to lunch I wouldn’t be ashamed of this table,’ she said to Helen, happily surveying it, head on one side.

  With everyone seated, the moment to open the famous jeroboam had finally arrived. Crystal glasses were lined up in front of Half Dunn, who had rightly assumed the role of master of ceremonies. He began the opening ceremony with the story of the champagne. ‘This jeroboam has stood on the top shelf of the main bar through much of Danny’s school days, through a war, a first degree at the university and then a second. During that time it has had to resist the efforts of co
untless drunks who’ve thrown their week’s wages on the bar and demanded we open it. But Brenda has dealt with them, as only my darling wife knows how. Now, at last, its time has finally come.’

  In truth, Half Dunn hadn’t opened many bottles of champagne in his career as a publican. The Hero and its patrons didn’t call for a lot of champagne, in fact, almost none. But he knew the general principle, or had seen it in the movies. It was simple enough: you removed the foil, untwisted the wire loop and then worked the bulbous crown of the cork with the pad of your thumb up and away from the neck, pointing it at the ceiling, while everyone waited excitedly for the pop. The cork then exploded from the neck at a thousand miles an hour to hit the ceiling with a resounding bang, leaving a mark to be happily recalled ever after.

  But, alas, no such thing happened; the cork wouldn’t budge. Half Dunn then tried to twist the cork out of the bottle. It still didn’t move, even after several attempts, so that he had grown somewhat red in the face and was breathing heavily from the effort by the time Danny volunteered to take over. But the result was the same. The cork may as well have been welded to the neck. Danny then gripped the large bottle between his knees and twisted with all his might, unwittingly agitating the champagne, but again to no avail. The cork remained firmly in place. Finally, in desperation, Danny retrieved a shifting spanner from the toolbox downstairs, fitted it to the cork and began to twist. The cork creaked and moved a fraction.

  ‘Got the bugger!’ Danny cried, just as the cork shot from the bottle and hit the ceiling with a report that must have been heard at the ferry terminal. Almost simultaneously an angry geyser of champagne gushed out in an umbrella-shaped shower, thoroughly drenching Brenda’s beautiful table setting and all who sat around it.

  Helen, the first to recover, let out a delighted yell. ‘Hooray! I always wanted to bathe in vintage French champagne!’ Then she calmly reached for her sodden monogrammed napkin to wipe her face.

  This set off a gale of laughter as everyone dabbed furiously at their clothes, all except Brenda, who sat at the end of the table looking utterly stricken. The champagne had flattened her carefully coiffed hair so that it fell over her eyes in a tangle of dark-red strands. ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to get the knack of being a “somebody”,’ she said in a forlorn little voice. Then she sniffed and shrugged, surveying the ruined table setting. ‘Oh, well, back to the kitchen, everyone.’ A corner of her mouth quirked and she was soon laughing too.

  Suddenly Patrick got to his feet. Throughout the day, he’d been more taciturn than usual, and even the congratulatory handshake he’d given Danny after the ceremony had been accompanied by only a gruff, ‘Well done, son.’ Now he peered at the bottle Danny was still holding and said, ‘If me old eyes don’t deceive me, there’s a wee drop left in that Frenchy bottle. If it’s only a mouthful, then it’s still enough for a toast to me darlin’ daughter.’

  Brenda was deeply shocked, not only by his suggestion but by the endearment. She couldn’t remember, even as a small child, the slightest sign of sentiment from her father, although Rose had once told her that he was ‘quite the loving lad’ in Ireland. Australia, that godforsaken country, had taken his two sons in England’s brutal war and had instead granted him the burden of daughters. He was left a bitter and silent man.

  Brenda had always been aware of the shame he felt at having to accept her help over the years, and she felt no rancour that a mixture of pride and resentment had prevented him from showing her the slightest gratitude. She was certain that this was the reason why he had constantly refused her entreaties to visit Sydney with her mother. While the notion that she might expect some repayment, if only emotionally, had never entered her head, Brenda knew it to be Irish logic that the giver must be punished for giving in order to preserve the pride of the beneficiary.

  Brenda had also discovered that poor relatives were an emotional as well as a financial burden. The twins, with their fifteen children, both expected and resented her help, sending begging letters about their parlous situation so that Brenda was always compelled to help, but never a thank-you letter or even the smallest gesture of love. She’d arranged with a local grocer to deliver the basics to both families each week so the children didn’t go without when the fathers were out of work or had spent their wages on drink. Similarly, a local department store supplied their school uniforms and other necessities. The accounts would be sent to Brenda each month, but whatever she did for them would never be enough and she understood that they saw no reason to be grateful. As with her tears, Brenda kept her disappointment and grief to herself.

  Danny held the bottle up to the light, and discovered that about three inches of champagne were left, enough to fill each glass with a decent mouthful. He poured the now precious liquid as Half Dunn handed the glasses around.

  ‘It would please me if we all stood while Brenda remained seated,’ Patrick O’Shane said in a stern voice to hide his anxiety. Chairs scraped backwards and everyone stood silent, holding their glasses. That is, all except Barbara Brown, who, lips pursed, still dabbed at the champagne-spattered oyster satin blouse that concealed her ample breasts. Their rapid pumping, together with her sour expression, signified her extreme annoyance at the ruin of her best blouse. While Helen’s father was a nice chap in a regular Rotarian sort of way, her mother was a snob who quite obviously thought that her woefully wilful daughter had married well beneath herself. Danny’s winning of the University Medal was all very well, but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and the fact that the boy had a modicum of brains didn’t make up for his Irish Catholic background and barely passable face, and the lamentable behaviour in the Great Hall of the particular Irish sow in question. Later, when she unburdened herself to her friends about Brenda’s weeping, the debacle with the champagne and much else besides, she would use words such as atrocious, cheap, gauche, vulgar, common, unconscionable and shameful, but at this moment the epithet that sprang into her mind was bog Irish. Really, what had Helen been thinking!

  Patrick waited patiently until Helen’s mother had ceased her angry dabbing and finally rose from her chair to join them. ‘I’m a plain-speaking man without the words to express my feelings, but I will try to say what I feel in my heart.’ He paused and looked directly at Brenda. ‘When Rose and I lost our sons in that terrible, terrible war, we lost our hope. The land they could have worked when the drought finally broke was barren, the stock dead, and we had three girls to feed.’

  Brenda listened, stunned, as he told the story of the school inspector’s visit and his mortified refusal. ‘It wasn’t her brains we needed but her strong back and a good pair of arms that could scrub floors and be useful to others more fortunate than us. So we sent our clever daughter into town to work as a room maid in the hotel. And thanks to her efforts since that time we have all survived. Time out of mind when we had nowhere else to turn, our daughter has been our only support.’ He paused and looked around. ‘It was me who robbed her of an education, but I couldn’t rob her of her character, determination and love. It was me again who was too proud to thank her, to tell her how much we loved her. She has been the embodiment of my two sons as well as a remarkable daughter. She is the sum total of all the good in us. If ever there was a “somebody” in our family, then it is our darlin’ daughter. I would now like to propose a toast to the most remarkable woman Rose and I have ever known.’ He held his glass aloft. ‘To Brenda, our beloved daughter.’

  ‘To Brenda!’ they all cried and drained their glasses.

  Danny took one look at his mother, hurried to her and held her in his arms.

  ‘Oh, dear, Danny, this is supposed to be your day,’ she said tearfully. ‘I’ve had much too much attention.’

  ‘No, Mum, it’s yours. I’ve kept you waiting long enough.’ Danny helped his mother to her feet and led her to the kitchen. ‘I guess I’ve never told you, but I could not have wanted for a better mother,’ he said quietly.
It was the closest he’d ever come to telling her he loved her.

  ‘To the kitchen, everyone, for beer and Irish stew!’ Helen laughed, instantly converting her boeuf bourguignon to a dish more suitable in the circumstances.

  By late afternoon Helen had cleared away the plates from the strawberries and ice-cream doused in chocolate cognac sauce, which she’d renamed Irish Mudslide to much applause. Half Dunn then produced Scotch glasses and brandy balloons, together with a bottle of French cognac and another of aged Irish whiskey and poured each of them their preferred after-dinner tipple. With everyone’s glasses charged, Danny stood up to say, as Half Dunn would later put it, his two bobs’ worth. Patrick, the happiest Rose had seen him since they’d left Ireland, tapped the rim of his glass with his dessert spoon and demanded silence for his grandson.

  Danny thanked both his parents for their love, patience, understanding and loyalty, then finished by saying, ‘If I can show my darling Helen the same loyalty and understanding as my father has shown my mother while allowing her the freedom to be herself, then I feel sure that I will have served her well. While my mother has received the attention she so justly deserves, my father has always been a loyal husband, unquestioning, patient and cheerful. Please, everyone, I would like to propose another toast to Mum and Dad. How fortunate I am to have them as my parents. To Mum and Dad!’

  ‘To Mum and Dad!’

  ‘To Brenda and Michael!’

  And so the day had ended, on a suitably sentimental note, with Patrick and Half Dunn falling asleep at the kitchen table, Helen’s parents having taken their leave as soon as it was polite for them to do so. Rose and Brenda, happily aproned, were clearing up and doing the dishes, adamant that Helen should not help (‘You’re the cook and we’re the bottle-washers, darling!’), so she and Danny were able to finally take their leave and return to their little bedsitter in Glebe Point Road.