‘Next time we’re calling the year, we’ll remember this as the moonlit New Year’s Eve we spent out on the tiles!’
‘Mmm,’ she murmured, lifting herself away from him. ‘How’s your back, darling?’
‘Never better,’ Danny whispered, gripping her to him as the car horns and fireworks marked the start of a new year.
‘Happy New Year, darling,’ Helen said, gazing into his eyes.
‘Very happy,’ said Danny.
Brenda dropped the twins off half an hour later, and they tumbled out onto the verandah full of stories of the fireworks they’d seen, and the great food, and the boy who told Gabby he liked her, then kissed Sam at twelve o’clock. Danny and Helen listened, their hands linked, then, as the stories faltered, and first Sam and then Gabby began to rub their eyes, Helen sent them off to bed.
‘No training tomorrow, Sam,’ Danny called after them. ‘I’ll give you the day off.’
Helen and Danny allowed the twins few privileges, and although they were comfortably off, in many ways they lived a similar life to most of the working-class kids at their school and in the neighbourhood. The rules were simple: mind your manners, do as you’re told and don’t argue, eat what’s put in front of you, get out of the house and go and play on the street or in the park, be home by sunset, and never ever get into a car with a stranger. Saturday afternoons were spent at the movies, if you could wheedle a sixpence out of your dad or mum or your brother who did a paper run, and everyone went to Sunday school, then the lucky ones came home to a roast-lamb lunch, with mint sauce, roast potatoes and pumpkin, followed by apple pie or red jelly and ice-cream. Wise mothers never tamper with perfection. Despite the Sunday-school attendance, Balmain wasn’t, generally speaking, big on religion, and while respectful to priests, parsons, rabbis and preachers, the church figured in their lives for the most part only in christenings, confirmations, weddings and funerals. In summer most kids were to be found at the Balmain pool, and in winter at the football, if the Tigers were playing at home.
Boys got into fights, belonged to gangs and made billycarts in which they constantly risked their lives, breaking bones, grazing knees and splitting their heads open. Girls belonged to groups and imagined themselves different and special, with secret words and hand signs and the flower of the day concealed in their knickers. They swore serious oaths to eat only a certain colour ice-cream until they met a handsome prince, who would scoop them up and ride off with them on a white horse. While there was a certain amount of snootiness in their groups, and regular quarrels, the word ‘superior’ wasn’t an adjective they understood. Nobody had any money, and a new and unusual ribbon in a girl’s hair provided a serious, if temporary, elevation in her status among her classmates. As with their friends, most of what the twins did went largely unsupervised, apart from Sam’s rigorous training sessions.
Sam and Gabby had always attended the movie matinee, and had spent most of the Monday lunchbreak retelling the story to those kids who hadn’t been able to go because their parents were skint. Gabby was the master storyteller, and sometimes girls who’d seen the movie sat in just to hear her version, complete with theme music sung in her sweet true voice. Sam, if she felt like it, would do the sound effects – horses galloping, dogs barking, birds in the garden, cows, goats and donkeys in the countryside, creaking doors, frightened gasps or hysterical screams, deathly groans, ghostly moans or ghoulish laughter. If a male villain featured, she’d sometimes agree to do his part, but only if he was particularly nasty.
A Monday performance by the twins, complete with background music and sound effects, had drawn a sizeable crowd, and many who’d attended the original movie had declared the twins’ version decidedly the better of the two, particularly on those occasions when Gabby organised audience participation. But, popular as these movie re-creations were, the other girls their age still exhibited a certain wariness towards Sam and Gabby. It was to do with them being identical twins and therefore freaks of nature – mixed in the same milkshake blender, two brains that worked as one; naturally they were therefore thought to possess mysterious powers. Oddly enough, the movie re-creations were taken to be further evidence of this. How else could Sam possibly anticipate the sound effects, expressions and even actions that were required when Gabby didn’t look at her or give any signals to cue her? At first, both went to some trouble to deny this bizarre synchronicity, but it only seemed to confirm the fact of their special power in the minds of the other kids. Any doubts were immediately erased if either twin was attacked verbally or physically. The two girls suddenly became ferocious – a single being that fought back with venom and tenacity – so that on several occasions, two, three or even four assailants were no match for Sam and Gabby in a spat or a fight.
Sam and Gabby had almost unconsciously learned to exploit their status as twins. It was irresistible – even the teachers were somewhat in awe of them. They invariably came first and second in every subject, swapping positions regularly, one never consistently brighter than the other. Even after the girls had been separated and were attending different schools, they were both put up a grade partway through their first year of secondary school, despite Sam’s obsession with training and apparent indifference to her schoolwork. It was as if there were an invisible cord connecting the two of them, no matter how great the distance between them.
Curiously, they hadn’t fraternised or belonged to the same groups at primary school. These all-girl tribes had secrets, rules and sworn oaths to protect their customs, and Sam and Gabby ably demonstrated that they could each be trusted to keep the dark secrets of their separate groups. These were matters involving such deeply important things as ice-cream colours and flavours, code words, future husbands, copying homework, sandwich swaps and initiation rites, the most daring of which was going an entire school day without wearing underpants.
While they were fiercely loyal to their friends, this wasn’t always reciprocated. Suspicion about the power of identical twins persisted, and Sam and Gabby never felt entirely accepted. Then there was the added burden of having a father who was responsible for sending several of their classmates’ fathers to Long Bay jail. While this was often perceived as just and fair, with mother and kids grateful for the respite from regular beatings, there was also great hardship as the family struggled to make do without a dad’s salary. This seemed yet another manifestation of the latent power the twins exerted. The fact that they were also thought to be beautiful only compounded things.
There was yet another factor that divided Sam and Gabby from their schoolmates. By virtue of their parents’ economic circumstances and education, the girls were permitted to dream larger and more exotic dreams, to have bigger plans, to live in anticipation of grander futures. While there was the example of Balmain’s own Dawnie, the daughter of a working-class family, who had brought fame and glory to the suburb as well as to her country, very few girls sought to follow her example; it just seemed too far out of reach. Dawn Fraser was yet another kind of freak. For the most part the other girls lacked any sense of choice over their future. This torpor, this lack of excitement, the almost total absence of ambition or goals was already evident in primary school, so that when girls eventually reached high school, they were effectively conditioned to the prospect of leading the compliant life of a Balmain housewife. At best they’d leave school after the Intermediate Certificate, and have a go at nursing or hairdressing, but more often than not, this spark of ambition was extinguished when they found themselves with a bun in the oven from a back-seat dalliance in a hoon’s souped-up Holden. Of course there were exceptions, but very few, and those girls who showed unusual ability invariably obtained a scholarship to Sydney Girls High.
When Sam started swimming seriously, a fissure opened between the twins as Gabby’s interest in music grew and Sam’s determination to win three gold for Sammy fuelled her punishing training regime. But there was another wedge driven between them, by a Lat
vian girl named Katerina, who arrived at Balmain High School one term. She was the most exotic creature Sam had ever seen, and before long she’d developed a full-blown crush on the new girl. A passing glance from this tall, dark-eyed, raven-haired, sombre creature would cause Sam’s knees to tremble. Katerina seemed to have nothing in common with the rest of the girls and stood aloof: mature, condescending and superior. What’s more, she was bloody tough, and when Sam had asked if they could be friends, Katerina had thought about it for ages before declaring, ‘Okay, but we take no shit from nobody, right? That’s the rule!’ This single statement had brought Sam almost to the point of collapse and she immediately promised total obedience. She couldn’t wait to tell Gabby about her new friend, and that night she acted out the whole thing, hands on hips, eyes downcast in the condescending manner of the Latvian girl, as she delivered the immortal line, ‘Okay, but we take no shit from nobody, right?’
Gabby, once she’d met the fabled Katerina, dismissed the whole thing with a toss of her head and an impatient sigh, declaring, ‘She has a cruel smile and she’s got a haircut like a boy. I can’t stand her.’ In one slash of the tongue, the ties were severed, and the Dunn twins began, unknowingly, to separate, albeit very slowly and not in all things. Being a twin had always been like having an animated and sentient shadow, with whom you could share a mischievous look, a secret smirk or burst of giggles at something incomprehensible to others. Gabby and Sam had spoken the private unspoken language of twins and inhabited a secret world that others could never penetrate, but as their different personalities began to emerge, their close affinity began to dissipate. Gabby bonded with Helen, sensing that Danny disapproved of her decision to choose music and had neither sympathy for nor understanding of it, whereas Sam, always Daddy’s favourite girl, became even more so, but while she loved Danny deeply, she was ever fearful of her father’s mood swings and sudden outbursts of blazing temper.
Danny was, for the most part, a loving and caring father, but when the demons struck he could be cruel and unforgiving with his twin daughters, who far too often bore the brunt of his anger. A length of the pool not completed within a second of the required time would send him into a towering rage; an item of swimming gear forgotten and the twin involved would find herself trembling at the thought of yet another angry outburst. While he never laid a hand on them, his tongue was his razor, honed on the strop of his court appearances, and often it cut deeply. Sam coped much better than Gabby, taking Danny’s rebukes in silence and still adoring her father in spite of his rages, while Gabby increasingly sought refuge in the comparative calm and comfort of her mother’s presence.
It wasn’t surprising that Sam bonded with the tough, uncompromising Katerina and that Gabby avoided her. Katerina’s family spoke little English. Her father was a peasant in every sense of the word, and a vicious and cruel drunk. She’d frequently appear at school with a black eye or covered in nasty bruises and welts. When Sam sympathised, Katerina would look her in the eye and say, with what Gabby described as her cruel smile, ‘It’s okay, kid. When I’m seventeen, I’m gonna kill the fucking bastard!’ She seemed so powerful, so resolute, that Sam had not the slightest doubt she would carry out her threat, and the thought of it would send shivers down her back. The closest Sam ever got to having a similar sentiment was when Danny was directing a spurt of unwarranted fury at her. A sentence would form in her head and she would silently pronounce her own version of Katerina’s coarse pledge: It’s okay. When I’m seventeen, I’m gonna win three Olympic gold medals and I’m gonna stick them up your arse, Daddy! This served greatly to ameliorate the effect of Danny’s sudden and violent rages. The difference between Sam and Katerina was that Sam knew without a shred of doubt that her father adored her and would have happily given his life if it meant hers could be saved.
The unlikely friendship between Katerina and Sam continued, and Sam soon learned that she had more than one protector prepared to look out for her, no matter what the cost. One day a group of boys cornered Sam in the playground, teasing her, laughing at the time she spent swimming, holding their noses and saying she stank like a fish. The leader and main tormentor was a boy of thirteen named Denis Haze, nicknamed, appropriately, Dense Haze. Sam was giving almost as good as she got, and quite enjoying the boys’ attention, despite their childish insults, when Katerina stormed onto the scene like a virago and let fly with a vicious punch, socking Dense Haze in the eye. He collapsed, clutching at his wounded face, and the others backed off, eyeing the two girls warily. ‘Fuck off, shithead!’ Katerina yelled, then, glaring at his mates, said challengingly, ‘Come on, who’s next?’ To Sam’s surprise they slunk away with their tails between their legs, Katerina muttering, ‘Fucking dogs,’ as she checked that Sam was unhurt, before giving the hapless mob a send-off with a flourishing two-finger salute.
If Katerina taught Sam the art of the surprise attack, she also taught her a new use for the two fingers she’d used in her contemptuous salute, introducing Sam to the surprising and secret pleasure of masturbation. The timing was good; the twins had only just stopped sharing a double bed and moved into beds of their own, and while they could easily have had rooms of their own, it had never occurred to them. Sam’s new knowledge of another use for a body part she’d never really thought about was immediately conveyed to her twin one night as they were preparing for bed.
‘You’re not supposed to touch down there!’ Gabby admonished Sam.
‘Why not?’ Sam replied.
‘Because it’s dirty and you’ll get wee on your fingers, silly,’ Gabby replied, lost for another explanation.
‘No you don’t. You just get a nice feeling, like you’re blissing out,’ Sam replied.
‘If we were allowed, Mum would have told us,’ Gabby said.
‘They didn’t tell us about weeing and we discovered that,’ Sam countered.
‘You don’t discover weeing! It just happens – you can’t help it. Why don’t you ask Mum?’
‘No!’ Sam cried, instinctively uneasy.
‘And why not?’ Gabby said in her annoyingly self-righteous voice.
‘Because Katerina said it’s a special kids’ secret and that parents don’t have to know about it,’ Sam fabricated wildly.
‘See! I told you it wouldn’t be allowed,’ Gabby said triumphantly. ‘That Katerina is evil.’
‘She’s not! She just knows things you don’t need to share with parents like a big baby. Grow up, kid!’ Sam said, using a Katerina expression.
‘Yes, like swearing and saying the “f” word and the “s” word.’
‘Those boys were fucking shitheads,’ Sam said, savouring both words almost as much as Gabby’s disapproval.
‘You’re just showing off, Sam! You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ Gabby replied, hopping into bed.
‘Well, I’m going to do it, anyway,’ Sam concluded defiantly. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing out on.’
‘Go ahead, be disgusting!’ Gabby said, turning over huffily to present her back to her twin.
They never discussed the subject again, but Sam knew Gabby too well, and was positive that she wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation. However, neither twin had any idea that this secret pleasure had a name or that it was connected with the big no-no word – sex. Not long after Katerina introduced Sam to ‘the joy that lies below’, her family moved to Adelaide, where Katerina’s father had taken a job as a painter with Kelvinator, spraying fridges. Katerina’s last words to Sam were, ‘In four years you’ll see me on the TV because I’m still gonna kill the bastard! Promise you’ll come and see me in prison and bring me cigarettes.’ Sam unhesitatingly agreed.
That Katerina’s gift of self-knowledge had a sexual connection only became apparent as Sam matured and discovered that the need to pleasure herself was somehow heightened when she read certain passages in her father’s books. Danny, like his father, was addicted to cheap paperbacks
– Zane Grey, Nevil Shute, Mickey Spillane, Damon Runyon, Harold Robbins, Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean. They were by no means pornographic, but they contained enough prurient passages not only to satisfy their mostly male readership, but Sam’s innocent erotic life under the blankets, too.
She finally woke up to the fact that what she was doing was sexual while reading a Mickey Spillane novel. She came across a sentence that read: Her thighs were as smooth as whipped cream on a silk bedspread. In a thrice Sam knew she was the heart and soul of the femme fatale in Mickey’s story, and had to hurry into her bedroom in the middle of a quiet Sunday afternoon to play out the scene between the gangster and his girl under the blankets. While it didn’t strike her like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, she became conscious that the innocence of her childhood was over and that she desperately wanted to be kissed by a boy.
A year or so before, the twins had attended an evening for girls aged twelve to sixteen run by the Anglican Church that was held in the Balmain Town Hall, and billed improbably as ‘The Birds, the Bees, You and God’. Most of their school friends were in attendance, and the lecture was given by a large, stern-faced matron wearing heavy, horn-rimmed glasses, with a pouter-pigeon breast and steel-grey hair swept up and tied in a neat bun at the back of her head. She introduced herself as Mrs Polkinghorne, which her audience of giggling teenage girls instantly translated to Mrs Pokinghorn. She was said to be a leading child psychologist, a profession most of her young female audience had never heard of, with the possible exception of the two Dunn girls.
What followed was a lot of information about menstruation – how to wear ‘sanitary napkins’, and how to keep oneself clean and ‘fresh’. There was no mention of emotions or urges of any kind, although Mrs Polkinghorne ‘touched on’ masturbation, which she referred to as ‘severe self-abuse’. She cautioned that it was dangerous to the wellbeing of young girls, spoiled them for marriage, and was responsible for unspecified, but nonetheless dire, health problems. It was a nasty habit that should be avoided at all costs. Sexual relations were a gift from God and could only be sanctioned within the bonds of ‘Holy Matrimony’. An intact hymen was a gift whose value was ‘beyond rubies’. Tampering with God’s laws could lead to dire consequences. She advised that a good way to cope with any unusual feelings ‘down there’ was to take a cold bath. Neither twin had the faintest idea that she was referring to the pleasure each of them gave themselves in bed after the light was switched out.
The Story of Danny Dunn Page 57