The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Going to stand?’

  Danny gave Helen a wry grin. ‘Darling, if I use this list now and Labor loses the election, who do you think they’ll blame?’

  ‘So, what are you saying – you’ll use it to get elected? As blackmail?’ Helen, deeply shocked, was as plain spoken as ever.

  ‘No, of course not! Jesus, Helen!’

  ‘Well, thank God for that!’

  ‘If you were a Catholic, I’d make the priest order you to say three hundred Hail Marys and ask God to forgive you! The only way to fix something like this, as well as get Balmain out of the doldrums, is from the inside. I want your permission to stand for preselection, to put my name up against the fat oleaginous bastard, as you put it.’

  ‘Danny, you’re dreaming. They wouldn’t stand for that for one moment! You’re already on the nose from the inquiry.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose they could stop me nominating. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’re out of your mind. They’ll find a dozen ways of rejecting your nomination. Danny, for heaven’s sake, you’re anathema to the Labor Party at the moment.’

  ‘But we’re both still members.’

  ‘Until they find a way of throwing us out on our necks.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe, but there’s no harm in trying.’

  Helen pointed at the manila envelope. ‘And what are you going to do about that?’

  ‘Nothing for the moment. Let’s just think of it as insurance and not confuse the issues.’

  ‘Danny, are you sure about nominating for preselection? Walking into the lion’s den with all those hungry resentful lions waiting?’

  ‘If you’ll be there with me, darling. At least it will bring everything to a head and we’ll know what to do next.’

  Helen smiled. ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea for both of us to be eaten. Who will take care of the twins? Sometimes, Daniel Corrib Dunn, I wish you weren’t so bloody obsessed.’

  The following Monday Danny put in his nomination to the preselection committee and waited for the reaction. It wasn’t long in coming. The phone rang on Wednesday morning and Keri put the call through to Danny. ‘It’s a Mr Jack O’Shea. The president. He didn’t say what of.’

  ‘Ah, put him through, Keri. He’s president of the Balmain branch of the Labor Party; I’ve been expecting his call.’ Danny waited until he heard the click. ‘Hello, that you, Jack?’

  ‘Danny, comrade, I’m ringing ’bout you nominatin’ for the seat.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Look, mate, fair go. The party is coppin’ a fair bit of bad publicity – but then you’d know all about that.’

  ‘Go on,’ Danny urged.

  ‘Well, we don’t want a nasty preselection fight, do we?’

  ‘Why does it have to be nasty, Jack? The branch members will decide; I’ll accept that.’

  ‘Comrade, there’s an election coming. We got to present a united front – you know what I mean, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, business as usual, let’s not rock the boat, eh? Don’t you think it might be time to represent the people of Balmain and not shonky mates and outside business interests? Isn’t that what local branches are all about? Some people may think it’s time to introduce a little fresh blood.’

  O’Shea’s tone of voice quickly changed. ‘Danny, don’t give me that shit! The only blood shed around Balmain will be yours. We was takin’ care of old people ’til you came along! We lost four hundred old people when they closed them boarding houses down your street; shops lost their profits, pubs; old people thrown onto the street because of what you gone and done – everyone losing because of it. Wait ’til we’re through with you, mate! You won’t know your fucking arse from yer elbow! You don’t have the fuckin’ numbers and you ain’t gunna turn this suburb into a place for fuckin’ poofters and lawyers!’

  The man was so far over the top that Danny found he wasn’t even angry. O’Shea was the perfect example of everything that was wrong with Balmain, everything Danny was fighting to change. ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we, Jack? I’m not withdrawing. Last time I looked we were still living in a free country.’

  The Labor apparatchiks went to work with a vengeance, and money flowed like water in the pubs as O’Hearn’s mob spread lager goodwill to one and all. The rumour mill began to grind, and the wives of two shop stewards claimed that Danny had raped them when he was in his late teens – a time in his young life when he had had to beat back the girls with a stick. But the old business of calling a man a pig was once again successful, and, as Helen had feared, Danny lost the preselection by the narrowest of margins.

  ‘Well, Don Quixote, what now?’ Helen asked as she and Danny spent the evening together on the upstairs verandah, she with a glass of white wine and he with his evening pot of tea.

  ‘Fuck ’em, darling. I’ll stand as an Independent. I’m not going to let them get away with dishing the dirt like that. We came within a hair’s breadth of winning; it’s worth another go, if only to show the bastards we’re not beaten.’

  ‘Please, darling, don’t. You won’t stand a chance, and you know the rules – stand against a Labor candidate and you forfeit your membership of the party.’

  ‘Do we really care? I mean, after what’s happened?’

  ‘Well, no, I don’t.’

  ‘Well? Don’t forget Dr Evatt did it – stood as an Independent in 1927 and won!’

  ‘Hmm, not quite the same though, is it? Please think about it carefully, Danny. I know you’re feeling hurt, but it’s a big step and you don’t want to lose twice. Wouldn’t it be far better to wait until the election after this one – let the air clear a little?’

  Danny thought for a moment. ‘No, bugger it! If I lose I’ll have had the experience, or I’ll know not to try next time.’

  ‘Not if – you will lose, darling, but I’m with you every inch of the way. This isn’t the first windmill you’ve toppled, to everyone’s surprise.’

  ‘Okay, but nothing changes. This is going to be your year, Helen. You worked hard for that doctorate and your career is not going to suffer for the sake of mine. This election is not to interfere. When you’re busy, Brenda will be at my side and Half Dunn will be my campaign manager. Agreed?’

  Helen rose from her wicker chair, sat on his lap and kissed him. ‘Yes, my impetuous leader!’

  Riley pleaded not guilty and received twelve years’ jail on the manslaughter charge. ‘Were it not for your war service,’ the judge intoned, ‘I would have considered a life sentence.’ In addition, he received a further five years for attempting to pervert the course of justice. Riley had fallen far from the heights of Bellevue Hill.

  His wife, Kathleen, pleading that she was a token director and knew nothing about the business, subsequently received a six-month sentence, which for her proved to be life, for every social aspiration she might ever have entertained was denied her forever.

  Danny was still not through with Riley. Four Corners, the new serious-minded weekly news program on ABC-TV, had prepared an exposé on slum landlords. Danny didn’t reveal to them the existence of the Riley list, nor did he give them any details of the story of Glossy Denmeade’s boots; instead, he suggested that they visit the Reverend Ayliffe’s widow and request permission to peruse his war diaries in which the Anglican parson had written a full account of the incident. After John Ayliffe’s death, Danny had kept his diary, fountain pen and wristwatch and returned them to his wife when he got back to Australia. He told Four Corners that if, having read the account in the diary, they wished to know more, he would arrange a lunch at the George Street RSL for the director and cameraman to meet several ex-prisoners of war who had been with him on the Burma Railway. He regretted that he couldn’t be present at the lunch, for reasons that would become obvious. This time Danny wasn’t taking any chances; the Reverend Ayliffe was an officer, not an enlisted man, so the l
eague of gentlemen soldiers would be unable to deny the story.

  The program about Riley and Glossy Denmeade’s boots caused a sensation and reignite the whole issue of corruption, and although the Four Corners team lacked the firm evidence needed to prove government corruption, it wasn’t hard for viewers to make up their own minds. Danny received a great deal of publicity for standing as an Independent in Balmain. People began to speculate that he might even win.

  But Labor won after scurrilous rumours were spread in the last week before the election. Danny lost, but only on a count-back, the margin just eleven votes. He had scared the living daylights out of the Labor Party, which had automatically expelled him, and had lived to fight another day. Danny, instead of being put well and truly in his place, remained, in local Labor terms, Public Enemy Number One.

  Riley made the headlines one last time before hanging himself in his cell. Glossy’s boots were put on display in the foyer of the George Street RSL, and for a week the lunchtime queue to view them stretched an entire city block.

  But the Glossy Denmeade story had one more twist: Gwen Ayliffe gave her husband’s war diaries to the Canberra War Memorial. As soon as they were read, it was discovered that the Reverend Ayliffe had dealt in some detail with Sergeant Major Dunn’s leadership during the time he was responsible for the prisoners in the camp. There were descriptions of the numerous occasions when Danny had stood up to Colonel Mori on behalf of his men, at real peril to himself. On a number of occasions, Captain Ayliffe had recommended a citation for Sergeant Major Dunn. Belated proceedings were instigated by the director, and on Anzac Day 1962, in a ceremony at Government House in Sydney, the Governor-General awarded Daniel Corrib Dunn the Military Medal. Moments after it had been pinned to his chest, Helen whispered, ‘Take back what you said about all officers, Sergeant Major Dunn.’

  But 1962 was really Helen’s year, when she was awarded her doctorate from University College London. She was certainly not the first Australian woman to earn a doctorate, but she was only the second to have earned it in Egyptology, a discipline dominated by men. Women were not generally willing or able to spend long periods away from their families at digs in Egypt, so Egyptology research was restricted to very committed single women, who had to fight for recognition and often faced extraordinary challenges in what was regarded as a ‘man’s world’.

  Helen had already achieved the status of senior lecturer at Sydney University, and if you had asked a member of the faculty (almost all male) what she might expect in the years to come, even the most charitable would not have been encouraging: senior lecturer for ten to twenty years and then perhaps an associate professorship if she were too remarkable to overlook, but elevation beyond that would be, frankly, impossible. Australian academia provided safe jobs with reasonable retirement plans, and although there were a few stars, some of whom resided in the Ancient History department, none of them were women.

  At first, Helen had pinned her hopes on one of the new universities that were being mooted by the federal government. One such was Macquarie University, due to begin its first undergraduate year in 1967 and two years later to establish a Department of Ancient History. With a doctorate under her belt and seven years to impress (lobby might be a better word), she’d hoped to secure the position of senior lecturer at Macquarie and take it from there. One thing was certain: she would never be given a more senior position at Sydney.

  But Helen soon learned that all positions at the new Macquarie University, from senior lecturer up, would be advertised internationally, and that the minimum experience required would be ten years post-doctoral practice. Further inquiry revealed that any university in the world with a vacancy in ancient history was always swamped with highly qualified applicants. The dean of the still-to-be-opened Macquarie University advised Helen that her lack of post-doctoral teaching experience would almost certainly eliminate her in the first round.

  A tiny terror was beginning to make itself felt within her; she was essentially a woman who needed stimuli – what Danny would call action – and with her doctorate behind her and the predictable years of teaching stretching ahead, she was beginning to question her choice of vocation. In just a few years the twins would be teenagers and increasingly independent, Gabrielle occupied with music and Sam with swimming.

  Helen had found that she couldn’t ignore Danny’s political campaign and discovered, to her surprise, that she was a very good strategist. Coming so close to winning against all the odds had made her realise how very much she missed the thrust and parry of life outside the university. Danny was almost certainly committed to fighting the next election. Far from being discouraged, he’d had a glimpse of victory and what it might mean. ‘Darling, the only way things will change is if we are in a position to influence them, to call at least some of the shots.’ Helen was beginning to realise that she might never be able to call any of the shots in her academic life.

  Brenda was still enjoying being a grandmother and doted on the twins. She’d pick them up in the morning, and then take them from school to swimming training and then, as often as not, back to the Hero for a spoil afternoon tea before bringing them home. Helen and Brenda had always got on like a house on fire and Helen admired her enormously. The Hero was by now the biggest pub in Balmain, and Brenda, always careful with money, was, by local standards, now a wealthy woman. But more and more Brenda spoke of retiring. She’d been in pub life for forty-two of her sixty years, and with six o’clock closing no longer the law and pubs open until ten at night, she was feeling the strain. While Half Dunn had come good, so to speak, and ran the pub after six, he too wasn’t getting any younger.

  This had all come to a head when Rose, Brenda’s ageing mother, visited the chickens early one afternoon and didn’t return. Patrick went looking for her that evening, and found her sitting with her back against the laying boxes, dead from a heart attack or, as Brenda silently believed, a broken heart.

  Brenda had driven down to Wagga for the funeral and afterwards stayed for a week to try to persuade Patrick to return with her to Sydney. He’d stubbornly refused. ‘This is my bed of thorns and this is where I shall lay, girlie.’ She’d secretly been grateful that he’d wanted to stay put – a cantankerous 83-year-old man was not what she needed in her life – but she was aware of her responsibilities as his oldest living child. Before she returned to Sydney, she’d elicited a promise, in return for a weekly stipend, that her twin sisters would take turns visiting the farm once a week to check on his welfare. The arrangement wasn’t to last long; a month after Rose’s death, Patrick left a short note on the kitchen table, held down with a jar of Rose’s homemade marmalade. Brusque to the last it simply read:

  Gone to join Rose.

  He’d put the barrel of his single-gauge shotgun to his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Brenda returned from Wagga after she had given Patrick a funeral with all the trimmings, which was attended by the twins and their fifteen children, all of whom were dry-eyed throughout the ceremony. At the wake, held at her old pub, Brenda watched as her sisters, brothers-in-law and several nieces and nephews got motherless drunk, then summoned a taxi to take them all home in two separate trips.

  She was devastated that her father, in comparatively good health for his age, would think to take his life, and she wept quietly at the realisation that he had loved her mother but had been too bitter with life to show her affection of any kind. And her mother, the soft enduring Rose, had finally given up and died of a broken heart. While Brenda and Half Dunn had grown closer over the years, she returned from Wagga determined to mend any matters between them and to give him the love he deserved in return for the loyalty he had shown her.

  She’d been back only a few days when she drew Helen aside after delivering the twins home one afternoon and asked if she would come to dinner the next night.

  ‘We’d love to. It’s a Friday, so the twins can stay up later, and I’m sure Danny wil
l be free.’

  ‘No, me darlin’ girl, this is just you and me. Mick has been told to make himself scarce and I was hoping Danny would be home to look after the twins.’

  Helen often spent time alone with Brenda, and they regularly had lunch together at Charity’s, where they knew the chef – Pamela, a pretty Queensland girl – and her husband Graham, who was chief bottle-washer and roustabout, as well as a gifted clarinet player. Italian pasta dishes dominated, and although the food was plain, it was excellent. The whole family ate their evening meal at the Hero once or twice a month, usually on a Saturday evening, so it was an unusual request but one to which Helen was quick to agree. She knew Brenda must have something on her mind.

  Brenda had prepared a macaroni cheese and she served it with a salad almost immediately after Helen arrived. Then, over a cup of tea, she said, ‘Helen, it’s now sixteen years into your marriage and I feel I know a great deal about you, darlin’, and all of it’s good.’

  Helen grinned, waiting. ‘But?’

  ‘I’ve never seen you sew.’

  Helen breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t known what to expect after being summoned, albeit nicely, by her mother-in-law to dinner at the Hero. Certainly, she could never have guessed it was to discuss sewing. ‘I suppose that’s because I don’t. Until Mrs O’Shea left to stay with her son in Queensland, she did the mending and, I confess, while we did a little embroidery at school, it wasn’t called the Presbyterian Ladies’ College for nothing. Sewing was thought to be only slightly ahead of scrubbing floors in the skills required to prepare us for marriage. In fact, anything you couldn’t do out of bed while wearing white gloves and a hat – apart from a little genteel cooking, perhaps – was deeply frowned upon.’

  ‘Embroidery? Well, I suppose that’s something,’ Brenda said.

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking, it does seem a curious question. Is it important?’ Helen asked, intrigued.

  ‘Yes and no. I daresay you can learn, and embroidery isn’t a bad place to start.’