The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Come in, dear, come in,’ Brenda replied. He entered, forgetting the state of his clothes. ‘Danny, you’re soaked! Where on earth have you been?’ she cried, rising from her chair, her face showing her consternation.

  Danny grinned ruefully. ‘Trying to wash away the last three years, Mum,’ he replied, attempting to keep it light-hearted but not fooling her for a moment. Brenda took the half-dozen steps to reach him, then put her arms around his waist and, standing on tiptoe, kissed him on his damaged cheek, then let her head rest against his chest. ‘Oh, Danny, Danny,’ she cried.

  ‘Mum! I’m wet!’ Danny protested, not wanting to create a scene in her office and suddenly very glad he hadn’t entered her bedroom to comfort her earlier.

  ‘You’re home, that’s all that matters, my dearest,’ she said, drawing away slightly and looking lovingly into his face as if the old Danny with two blue eyes, a straight nose and a smooth-skinned left cheek were still there. Danny realised how much courage it had taken just to do this, but he was embarrassed by the expression on his mother’s face. He knew that Brenda had done her crying, probably for most of the night, then finally sung the lament he’d heard in the early hours, her grieving over. Now, he knew, she would bury her grief and hide her distress at his broken face forever. It was she who was truly bulletproof.

  Brenda drew away from her sodden son and said with sudden mock severity, ‘Go on, upstairs at once!’ It was as if he were still a small child caught in a sudden rainstorm while playing outside. ‘Take a hot bath or you’ll catch your death!’

  Danny looked down at his wet clobber. ‘I guess I’ll have to get some new duds; nothing fits,’ he said, not knowing how to react and quite incapable of clasping his mother to his chest and thus returning her love with a simple gesture.

  Upstairs Danny lowered himself into the hot bath, and sighed. This was the first opportunity he’d had to really study the damage to his body. He hadn’t examined the whole of himself when he’d been a prisoner of war – there were no mirrors and no reason to see the stages a body goes through in the process of starving to death. Later, in Rangoon, he’d simply been aware of the dressings that covered the still suppurating ulcers. On the boat home he’d been billeted in a small cabin with six other men and his daily ablutions took place in a communal shower room with only just enough time allotted every morning for each man to shave, shower and shit. Seeing the scarred and pocked condition of one or another of the ex-prisoners of war, he supposed he looked the same. Now he saw that his shins were a mass of purple craters, the legacy of tropical ulcers; his back and shoulders were ropey with layered scars from the beatings handed out by the Japanese and Korean guards; his neck was pitted with the remains of boils, the result of long-term vitamin deficiency. Then, to cap it all, there was his smashed-in face, sallow from recurrent bouts of malaria. His only remaining physical assets were his one deep and exceptionally blue eye and his hair, which was still black as a crow’s feather and thick as it had always been. With a grunt, Danny picked up a scrubbing brush and worked it hard over every inch of his body, scrubbing fiercely and painfully at the tropical ulcers, some freshly healed, and the scars left by the cuts, beatings and accidents sustained and then forgotten from his time as a slave of the Japanese.

  Filled with shame and loathing for what his once powerful body had become, Danny towelled himself and changed into an old cotton tracksuit from his water-polo days. It was miles too big but he used a belt to gather and fasten the excess material at the waistline and then dropped the top over the belt to neaten things up. He put his army uniform in the copper, which, he was surprised to notice, no longer required a fire to heat the water but was now connected to the electricity with heating elements beneath it. Then he headed for the kitchen and breakfast.

  Some weeks later Danny was to learn from Half Dunn that the day after he’d left Australia for Malaya, his mother had packed her bags, closed the pub and warned him not to attempt to open it again until she returned. She was off to visit her mother, Rose, she’d announced.

  ‘When will you be back?’ Half Dunn had asked, surprised.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t explain. It’s a family thing, with my mother. It’s time for me to learn the song and bring back the grieving quilt.’ She paused. ‘A week, I’ll be back in a week,’ she’d said.

  ‘What quilt? What song?’ Half Dunn had asked, confused.

  ‘It’s how my mother’s people have grieved for generations in Ireland and here, when my brothers . . .’ Brenda didn’t complete the sentence.

  ‘But I can run the pub while you’re away,’ he had protested.

  ‘Yes, you could, but I want it closed. That way I can do what I have to do without worrying about you or it.’

  ‘But what about our regulars?’

  Brenda had suddenly lost patience. ‘For God’s sake, Michael Dunn, I ask you! There are thirty pubs in Balmain. They’re not going to go thirsty now, are they?’ Whereupon, Half Dunn explained, she’d phoned for a taxi to take her to the train leaving from Central that evening, which would stop at Wagga Wagga around three o’clock the following morning.

  She’d returned a week later very pale, looking as if she’d aged five years. He waited patiently for her to settle then explain her absence, but she failed to say anything, although she’d come back with a large, badly scuffed, brown leather trunk. Pointing to it, Half Dunn asked, ‘That the . . . er . . . grieving quilt?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brenda replied.

  ‘May I see it?’

  ‘No!’ she said quickly, adding, ‘It’s bad luck until I know what the addition will be, and that won’t be until Danny returns.’

  ‘Did you . . . did you learn the song?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s also for when Danny returns, if he returns,’ she replied darkly. Then, seeing Half Dunn’s dismay at being fobbed off so brusquely, she softened. ‘Michael, I can’t tell you any more. Please, will you trust me?’

  ‘But nothing’s happened! Danny’s on board ship, they’re going to Malaya, there isn’t even any fighting yet!’ Half Dunn had protested one last time. Then, to his enormous surprise, Brenda had burst into tears.

  ‘That’s not what Rose sees,’ she’d wailed.

  Half Dunn had known better than to question Brenda further. Trying to comfort his distraught wife, he had felt his usual clumsy, useless self.

  ‘Well, I’ve returned now. Have you heard the song at least?’ Danny asked, hoping like hell Half Dunn hadn’t. He recalled the morning he’d heard it, unsure if he’d ever quite recover from the sadness of the lament, and realising in that moment that all his headstrong stupidity had culminated in his mother’s grief, grief for the boy who’d left her, only to return broken and beaten. It could all have been so different had he not been so insanely anxious to throw his life away.

  Half Dunn shook his head. ‘Nah, it’s driving me nuts, not a tweet.’

  ‘What about, you know, what’s she call it . . . the grieving quilt?’

  Half Dunn shook his head again. ‘She keeps that big ol’ trunk locked in her bedroom. Maybe she’s doing, yer know, something, with the bits of yer clothes she’s kept since you were a baby. She said they were to remind her of how you were – school clothes, yer favourite blue shirt when you were at university, football jumpers, cozzie – they’re all there. I went into her bedroom the other day looking for Aspro and there were scraps on the floor where she’d been cutting them up. I reckon she’s back in her bedroom sewing something to do with that bloody quilt. Once when Helen visited I overheard them. I wasn’t stickybeaking or anything, it was at the main bar and your mother mustn’t have realised I was in my usual spot. She was asking if Helen had anything, a dress or blouse that you liked when you were going out with her. She wanted to buy it. Helen said she had this blue crepe dress that was cut quite low at the front, teal blue, that you always said you liked, and that she could have it with pleasure. I
remember her saying, “It carries too many memories now, all too painful to recall. I can’t bring myself to wear it.”

  ‘“Maybe the hem is deep enough,” your mother replied. “I only need a small piece.”’

  Danny had a sudden lump in his throat. ‘I remember that dress, she looked terrific in it,’ he said quietly, recalling that it buttoned right down the front and that Helen would let him unbutton it. When he reached the last button she’d throw the front open and yell, ‘Surprise!’ because she’d be in the nuddy, whereupon he’d toss her onto the bed and they’d make love laughing. It was bloody stupid. He could feel the tears welling in his good eye and in the socket of the other and turned away from Half Dunn so they couldn’t be seen. ‘Sounds like she’s doing something all right,’ he observed, attempting to sound matter-of-fact.

  Danny knew Half Dunn would be loyal to Brenda to his last breath, but he was also aware that his father was a teller of tales, famous for his ability to retell a story that was a vast improvement on the original. Now here was something on which he could really build – the song and the quilt and, best of all, a prophesy by Brenda’s mother, Rose. ‘There’s got to be a grand story to be told here,’ Half Dunn muttered. ‘It’s bloody frustrating, I can tell yer!’

  Then there was that other story, the one that might never be told. Right from the moment he’d clapped eyes on Danny’s broken face, Half Dunn had realised it was a story in hiding, and when it came to sniffing out a good yarn – snooping and sleuthing for details – there was no room for scruples. Danny wasn’t sure whether Half Dunn’s reaction to his battered face was an illustration of his father’s sensitivity or just the opposite. His father seemed to have accepted the change in Danny, and they’d resumed their friendship as if nothing particularly untoward had happened. But Danny suspected his broken face might yet figure in a story brewing in Half Dunn’s mind, as a detail to add poignancy and drama to the overall narrative he was concocting. Even if Half Dunn never actually told the story to anyone, nothing could stop him from formulating it in his mind, and the lack of those missing pieces was obviously driving him crazy. Even so, Danny would never admit to either of his parents that he’d heard his mother’s lament.

  Danny was surprised to find Brenda in the kitchen cooking him breakfast. ‘Your father’s downstairs,’ she said, ‘and he’s organised your clothes,’ she added. ‘Pineapple Joe is coming around at nine to measure you up for a suit.’

  Danny fought back a surge of sudden and unreasonable rage. He hated surprises. He needed time to prepare himself, to plan how to react. Didn’t she realise? He wanted to scream at her, ‘What do you think you’re doing? You didn’t bloody ask me!’

  Brenda, unaware of her son’s seething anger, laughed, and went on, ‘He told your father, “For zat boy only za best. For him I am making special suit from Esquire magazine, American atom bomb double-breast six button, no less, hunnert per cent pure merino vool, best English schmutter I still got already from before za var! No expense spared wit my compliments for vinning za var for our side!”’

  ‘Pineapple Joe is going to shout me a suit? But the government gives me a free suit when I’m officially demobbed, you know.’ Danny had his temper under control again. ‘Do you think he’d delay it until I’ve put on a bit of weight?’

  ‘I doubt it, dear. He’s told half the peninsula about the American atom bomb suit he’s making for you.’ Brenda dropped back into his accent – she was a good mimic, but nothing compared to Half Dunn. ‘“Special cut, very snazzy, trust me.” I expect he wants to make it his new line and you’re the model. You’ll break his heart if you refuse. Besides,’ she smiled, ‘don’t look a gift clotheshorse in the mouth – we’ve earned it. He’s made a fortune tailoring your father’s clothes over the years and now that he’s losing weight, Pineapple Joe is busy making a second one.’

  ‘By the way, what the hell is an American atom bomb suit?’ Danny asked.

  Brenda laughed. ‘When your letter arrived from the Rangoon hospital, your father was having a fitting for a new pair of trousers. He told Pineapple Joe the good news about your liberation, and then he said something about how the Americans dropping the atom bomb had forced the Japanese to surrender, which, like you said in your letter, probably saved your life. That’s when Pineapple Joe said, “For him I am makink zat Danny boy American atom bomb suit for comink home alive!”’

  Half Dunn, sensing a story, had once asked Pineapple Joe how he’d come by his nickname, as his real name was Maurice Ruberwitz. The little tailor had replied, ‘I am comink off zat boat from imma-gra-tion nineteen turty-one and dat imma-gra-tion man, he’s stamp my peppers, then is saying, “Righto, off you go, Joe.” Now I have mine first new names for mine new contree. Next is by za dock’s fruit barrow. I am liking already very much dis place – za sun is shinink and dat man, he is shouting, “Apples, gripes, fresh fruit, juicy pineapple!” Apple, gripes, dis I know already, but what is dis pineapple? I am looking at dat pineapple. “Pliss, what I must do wid dis fruits?” I am asking, very polite. I don’t tink dat man, he like foreigner comink to Australia, because he says to me, “As long as ya buys one, ya can stick it up yer dago arse fer all I care, it’s a bloody pineapple, mate!” Pineapple Joe chuckled, shrugging his shoulders and spreading his hands. ‘So now I am gettink already mine second new names.’

  Pineapple Joe had become as much a part of Balmain as anyone born on the peninsula. He became a Tigers fanatic early on, never missing a game. At the beginning of every season he outfitted each member of the entire first-grade team with a free grey worsted suit and two shirts, making them the best-dressed team in the premiership. ‘Goot for advertisemint; mit de goot bodies, already dey makink mein suits look vunderful.’ Moreover, he made his business terms very plain and very simple, as many Balmain kids soon learned. Any of them fortunate enough to get a city office job went to Pineapple Joe for their first suit, dubbed a Pineapple Special. So did every worker getting married. Each new gainfully employed lad was required to pay it off himself at sixpence or a shilling a week, depending on his starting wage, regardless of whether his parents could afford to pay cash for it, which was highly unlikely, anyway. ‘Zat boy, he must be learnink money is not growink on za trees like za lifs and flowers,’ Pineapple Joe would insist. While a Pineapple Special, run up in a single afternoon on his pre-war industrial Singer sewing machine (‘Mine American sew-machine’), was far from a sartorial triumph and paid absolutely no heed to current fashion, it was well made and the recipient usually outgrew it or did well enough in his job to be able to afford something more stylish. Young blokes paying off their Pineapple Specials wouldn’t have dreamed of welshing on the deal, and sufficient shillings and sixpences continued to roll into the tailor’s shop to keep the wolf from the door and allow him to put a little aside.

  In the mid-fifties, Maurice Ruberwitz opened a Pineapple Joe tailors shop in the city, producing cheap but well-made suits. A sign outside his shop read, American Cut, Double or Single Breast – Only the Best! Cash Only. Eventually he became, by Balmain standards, a wealthy man. He drove a chocolate-brown Dodge sedan on which he replaced the chrome charging-ram emblem on the top of the radiator with a small silver pineapple, made for him by young Ian Buchanan who was doing his apprenticeship as a silversmith, and welded into place by Harry Bezett, who worked in the maintenance section for buoys and beacons at the Maritime Services Board. While it was said to be solid silver and very valuable (it was in fact nickel-plated brass), nobody in Balmain would have dreamed of nicking it, even if it had been solid gold. Pineapple Joe was inordinately proud of what he referred to as ‘Mine American Dodge car’, and he would spend Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the summer driving slowly up and down Darling Street. As he knew everyone in Balmain, he would stop if he saw a housewife carrying her shopping and call gallantly, ‘You are hoppink aboard, Mrs Selkirks, and ve are takink you verever you wish, compliments Pineapple Joe. Put za begs in za beck sea
t and now you come sit in za front mine American Dodge car.’ With a hearty chortle he’d add, ‘Maybe already you are seeink somebody and are makink vaves.’ When he was duly thanked for the lift he’d say, ‘Acht! I am sharink already mine goot fortune for comink to Balmain. Cheerio. Up za Tigers!’

  Brenda’s fussing was so remote from Danny’s experience in captivity that he found himself growing nervous, almost afraid. While he knew she was demonstrating her love for him, her fussing made him feel vulnerable. It was as if he were somehow not entitled to or worthy of her caring or attention. Now she came and stood behind his chair as he ate, brushing her fingers lightly through his hair. ‘I think I’d better go downstairs and see what your father’s up to. When those two get together they talk both hind legs off a donkey,’ she said.

  After she’d gone he remembered that her great love had been to cut and shape his hair with comb and scissors and Danny decided to ask her to do so again. He’d allow it to grow long – nothing like the army’s short back and sides, or the shaved heads of the camp inmates. Despite the prevailing fashion, it had been his unique style since he’d been a child, and it would be the one thing he’d retain from the old Danny; from now on people might say what they liked – it would be his single defiance. Seen from the front he would always be a dreadful fright; seen from the back – provided he wasn’t in the nuddy, and with his mother’s help – he would look like his old self, with his hair eventually resting just above his shoulders.

  He had just buttered a couple of slices of toast, poured himself another cuppa and was reaching for the marmalade jar when he heard Brenda calling from the foot of the stairs, ‘Someone here to see you, Danny!’

  Danny froze. It must be Helen, a conspiracy, she and Brenda had worked out a sneaky arrangement to trap him. He wasn’t ready. He hadn’t worked out in his head precisely what he wanted . . . what he was going to say to her. He felt the anger rising in his chest. Bloody hell, fair go, it was almost five years ago! ‘Who is it, Mum?’ he called back, struggling to control his voice.