The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  However, after returning to a second hero’s welcome, instead of showing his gratitude to those who’d put their hard-earned pennies into paying for his fare, he’d become a hopeless, difficult and often violent drunk. His father, Sky’s, dreams of seeing Billy settle down, get his crane-driver’s ticket like his old man, then eventually marry one of the many spare sheilas left spinsters after the war and perhaps even start a family were dashed, and Sky became more silent and morose with each passing year.

  People had taken to referring to Billy privately as an ungrateful bastard and a bludger, and after a while very little community sympathy was left for the miscreant. Over the years since his return from England the people of Balmain had written him off as a drunken derelict to be avoided or left on the footpath to shout gibberish. Danny knew they couldn’t possibly be expected to understand that the destruction of Billy’s face, which they’d willingly paid to repair, was nothing compared to the wreckage inside. Like many of the men who’d been permanently broken by the war, to Billy grog seemed the only reliable anaesthetic – a cheap way to temporarily block out the pain, alienation and isolation he felt.

  Only a handful of people attended Billy’s funeral: some of his old ex-servicemen pals; a few water-polo teammates; his father, now a widower; and Billy’s two older sisters. Balmain had a long tradition of looking after its own, but if they felt they’d been let down they found it hard to forgive. Danny remembered the young lad who, almost twenty years earlier, had shouted back at him as he left the bar, ‘So long, mate. Don’t hang around too long . . . you’ll miss all the fucking fun’, then headed off to Canada for his training. He knew it was futile trying to explain to people that Billy had suffered from hidden demons which they would hopefully never have to confront themselves.

  After the funeral Danny attended the wake Brenda held for Billy in the saloon bar of the Hero. Sky Scraper waited until Danny was alone before approaching him. ‘Mate, I owe you a beer and an apology,’ he said. ‘What I said back then when Billy was off to Canada was fucking out of order.’ He gave Danny a straight look, and Danny noticed that he was as dry-eyed as he’d been at the funeral service (as good Balmain boys were expected to be). He recognised all the signs of a man only just hanging on, and without a thought he pulled the unresisting old bloke to his chest. ‘Mate, how could we possibly have known how . . . how it would be,’ Danny said softly. He then held Sky while he sobbed and sobbed, at last, for his beloved, brutally damaged, lost son.

  Each morning Danny would stand in stockinged feet in front of the bathroom mirror adjusting his tie knot carefully until it was perfect, with the required dimple centre top and just below the knot of one of the very fine Macclesfield silk ties he’d select to wear each day. His obsession with clothes had begun after he’d returned from the Japanese prison camp, and by the mid 1950s had settled into a fortifying routine. For three and a half years he’d had no choice but to wear a torn pair of khaki shorts, his battered slouch hat, and dilapidated boots without socks or sandals made from old truck tyres. That was about it, except for church parades and burials, when the prisoners wore their tattered shirts to respectfully acknowledge a far from merciful God. That was until His servant, the Reverend John Ayliffe, who’d refused to leave the men and go to a separate prison camp for officers, died of starvation and assorted tropical afflictions, whereupon God’s special days lost their meaning. Danny held the Reverend John Ayliffe to be one of those rare people who, like Paul Jones, the little Welsh medic, felt only compassion for their fellow man.

  Each weekday as soon as he was dressed Danny would wake the twins and get them dressed, give them breakfast and then drop them off at preschool. It was his way of spending time with the kids, although he longed for the day when they’d be old enough, and he had a skiff safe enough, for Helen to agree to their accompanying him on the harbour. Helen’s job as a lecturer and the work for her dissertation often kept her up late, and Danny knew how much she enjoyed those extra hours of sleep each morning.

  In 1956, the year of the Melbourne Olympic Games, several things of importance happened in Danny and Helen’s life. They began to talk about joining the Labor Party; they finally had enough for the deposit on a modest house; and Landsman, Dunn & Partners showed their first decent profit. Danny was getting regular work from clients who were prepared to pay top fees for his services; the only problem was that he was also doing a lot of pro bono work for battered wives and kids. Franz would sometimes chide him for this, but he’d simply answer, ‘Being a lawyer isn’t only about money, mate.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ Franz would counter in a voice of mock surprise. He, too, was doing well on the commercial side.

  Danny had managed to persuade Helen that they should buy a television set to watch the games with the bonus he and Franz had paid themselves. The twins had turned five and were old enough for Danny to put his secret plan for them into action. His ambition was to turn them into competitive swimmers, which for Danny meant champion swimmers. He was aware that champions were built not just from talent, but also through habit and repetition; anything extra, such as natural talent of the kind he was once supposed to have possessed, was a bonus. The work nevertheless had to be done. He had already decided that he would pattern their training on that of the young Balmain swimmer Dawn Fraser, who was winning races in every national swimming carnival she entered and was being spoken of as a potential gold medallist at the Olympic Games. He’d already spoken to Harry Gallagher, her coach, who’d agreed to brief Danny on a training schedule once the girls turned eight.

  Danny wanted the twins to think of early-morning wake-up calls as natural, almost instinctive. At five they were still too young to begin early-morning swimming training, so he decided he needed a bigger and safer skiff to take them with him onto the harbour every morning.

  He’d gone to see Wee Georgie to ask him to make a skiff that could accommodate the twins, and possibly even Helen occasionally, but one that was still light enough for him to row on his own.

  ‘Yeah, I could do that, son,’ Wee Georgie agreed.

  ‘How much would it cost then?’ Danny asked.

  ‘Mate, if I make it, it’s gunna cost yer two hundred quid, maybe more. Can’t do it no cheaper.’

  ‘So, okay, what sort of skiff are you suggesting?’

  Wee Georgie appeared to be thinking, but Danny knew he was extremely knowledgeable and wouldn’t need to think for long. He also knew he was building a state-of-the-art eighteen-footer, which he was calling, rather grandly, Britannica. Wee Georgie was simply searching for the single most persuasive argument for the boat he had in mind. He was no bullshitter; he’d deliver a verbal coup de grâce that settled any possible argument, or he’d keep quiet. ‘The provedores used to use them to row out to the sailing ships in the olden days,’ he said finally.

  Danny didn’t quite get the connection. ‘You’ll need to explain, Wee Georgie.’

  ‘Skiff, seventeen-footer, light, for one or two rowers; one sits on the front thwart, t’other in the middle; go out in any weather; real sturdy, and yer gotta be pretty bloody stupid to capsize her in a hurry; high stem back, narrow raked transom, lapstrake construction,’ he paused, finishing with a smile, ‘and beautiful.’

  ‘But you just said in the olden days.’

  ‘Whitehall skiff – nah, modern as termorra. Been around since Noah was a baby but yer can’t improve on perfect.’

  ‘So, can you build me one?’ Danny asked again.

  ‘Better’n that, Danny, mate . . . I got one out the back.’

  ‘Yeah? In good nick?’

  ‘Never been on the water. I built it for a bloke in the city who had this accident, fell off his roof and broke his shoulder – bloody lucky that was all he broke. Now he doesn’t want it no more but he’s asked for his deposit back – fifty bloody quid! I told him no way, I done the work, I’m entitled.’

  ‘You said two hundred quid, but
you’ve already got fifty,’ Danny protested, as any self-respecting Balmain boy might.

  Wee Georgie grinned, having anticipated the comeback. ‘Split you the difference. It’s yours for one seventy-five.’

  ‘Let me see it first,’ Danny said.

  Wee Georgie padded in his slippers over to a dark corner of his boatshed and switched on a naked globe hanging from the ceiling.

  It was love at first sight. The beautiful little Whitehall skiff was exactly what Danny wanted.

  ‘Nice! Pretty,’ he said.

  ‘If a boat looks good it will probably go well. This one’s got good directional stability – glide – between strokes.’

  ‘They always come varnished like that?’ Danny said, deliberately stalling.

  ‘Nah, mate, that’s a Wee Georgie special. I should charge ya extra. Most boat builders just paint ’em; varnish, that’s class, that is. I guarantee ya won’t see nothing like it on the harbour.’

  Danny had to have the skiff but he knew the game; some restraint was needed. ‘Hmm, tell you what. If you paint – not stencil, I mean hand paint like I know you can – the name on the back, you’ve got a deal, Wee Georgie.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, Danny, special script, copperplate Gothic, like I’m gunna use on Britannica.’ He tapped the side of the skiff. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Calabash.’

  ‘Eh?’ Wee Georgie’s eyes screwed up and his small button nose practically disappeared into the centre of his head. ‘What’s a calabash?’

  Danny thought for a moment. ‘It’s sort of a pumpkin with a long snout, you know, a kind of marrow.’

  Wee Georgie looked distinctly put out. ‘Yer gunna name my beautiful skiff after a fuckin’ pumpkin?’ he snorted.

  ‘It comes from a song my twin daughters sing,’ Danny explained, while not explaining.

  ‘Calabash?’ Wee Georgie growled, tasting the word then spitting it out. ‘Jesus! I put a lot of work into that there skiff.’ He looked directly at Danny. ‘Where you gunna berth her?’

  ‘Well, I thought like before . . . ?’

  ‘Ten bob!’ Wee Georgie shot back. ‘It’s bigger’n the last one.’

  ‘Seven and six?’

  ‘Righto then.’

  ‘When do you want the money?’ Danny asked, not sure where he was going to get the one hundred and seventy-five pounds from. He’d expected the skiff would take several months to build, as Wee Georgie worked alone and was a master boat builder and didn’t do things in a hurry; it would take possibly six months, even a year. That would have given him the time to find the money. According to Franz, the six hundred quid they’d each paid for an Admiral TV had pretty well cleaned them out for the month, and Helen wouldn’t let him borrow from the deposit put aside for a house.

  They’d moved to a two-bedroom flat soon after the twins were born, but it was rapidly proving too small. The girls needed a garden to play in, and Danny thought he might have found just the house, but they still had to find the last of the money to send Helen to Egypt for three months on a dig. She’d been invited to excavate at Saqqara with a British team under the direction of redoubtable archaeologist Walter B. Emery, a Liverpudlian, and Danny wasn’t going to deny her such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She was doing her dissertation for her doctorate through University College London, and an Emery dig would be a huge plus for her submission. She was due to leave in three weeks, and while Franz had said there should be no problem with funds, they had yet to find the final payment. It was a bad time to be buying a boat.

  Danny knew Helen too well to mention the skiff; while she would argue that he already had a boat, once she knew he really wanted it, she’d offer to forego her trip so that he could have it. Helen had needed a lot of persuading to agree to the television set. She didn’t see the Olympics as a big enough incentive to spend money that could supplement the meagre deposit they’d saved for a house. Danny, on the other hand, had seen the TV as an important part of his secret plans for the twins: they could watch the swimming at the Games and be inspired. She’d assumed that it was for his own pleasure (perhaps correctly, he admitted to himself), and so she’d finally given in. Now, as recompense for her generosity, there was no way on earth he was going to stop her going to Egypt.

  Besides, he’d never broached with her the subject of taking the twins out on the harbour. His own skiff was much too small and dangerous. Helen knew that a cargo freighter had once capsized him when it came too close, and he was pretty sure she’d veto his plan, despite the safety features of the new Whitehall. To Helen, the idea of taking the twins out on the harbour at dawn when they were only five would, he knew, seem completely insane. Now he realised that her absence was his one opportunity. If he could institute it while she was away and make it a regular routine that the twins enjoyed, she wouldn’t be in a position to object by the time she returned.

  He thought about taking the money from the house deposit they’d saved, but rejected the idea. He’d seen a house while rowing on the harbour, and there was just the possibility that the deposit they had might be enough. He daren’t cut into it for the skiff. Besides, he’d be going behind Helen’s back if he did and that wasn’t on; they’d saved the money together. It was little enough, whatever domicile they finally settled for. They weren’t going to cause the local real-estate agents to lose any sleep with their meagre deposit. Danny increasingly regretted the impetuosity of their trip to America, when they had seemed to have plenty of money, some of which they could have saved for hard times. But there you go – they didn’t and now they were skint.

  He needed time to pay Wee Georgie, but not too much time, because it all had to happen while Helen was away.

  ‘When will you take delivery?’ Wee Georgie asked.

  ‘Do I get to try her out first?’ Danny asked, stalling.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose, but yer insulting me intelligence.’

  Danny ignored the protest. ‘Next week’s not convenient. I could do it early morning, Friday fortnight.’ It would give him another two weeks to find the money.

  ‘Righto, Friday fortnight mornin’, half-past seven sharp.’

  ‘When will the name be painted on?’ Danny asked. If he stalled for a couple more weeks, the firm might just have the money and Helen would be off to Egypt. He had a coroner’s inquiry coming and a compensation case against a shipping firm’s insurance company, representing a dockworker who’d slipped a disc – bread-and-butter cases he was pretty certain he would win.

  Wee Georgie, in his usual manner, thought for more than a moment. ‘Gotta find a nice piece of cedar for the nameplate, varnish it, paint the name white wid a black drop shadow, clear varnish that when she’s dry – varnish don’t dry in a hurry – drill and countersink two holes, fit two-inch solid brass screws flush, varnish ’em . . . I reckon ten days in between working on the Britannica.’

  ‘Price?’

  ‘Two quid; it’s lotsa work.’

  ‘Make that two weeks,’ Danny said nonchalantly, knowing Wee Georgie was a great craftsman but a poor timekeeper; he’d take another couple of weeks at least. Danny extended his hand. ‘Thanks, Wee Georgie. Nice doing business with you.’

  ‘Hey, wait on. How d’yer spell that pumpkin widda snout, Cala . . . Cal?’

  ‘Calabash. Got a piece of paper?’

  Danny wrote it down in block capitals and handed it to Wee Georgie.

  ‘Bloody stupid name, if you ask me,’ the shipbuilder growled, fixing the piece of paper to a six-inch nail hammered into a stud.

  Danny left Wee Georgie’s place, thinking hard. He now had two things on his mind apart from finding the money: taking the twins out in the new Whitehall skiff behind Helen’s back while she was away; and the house he’d seen from the water which she would need to look at before she left.

  He had decided even before the opportunity to buy the skiff came up that he
had to have a house near the water. While this had seemed pretty near impossible to achieve at this stage in his career, the house he’d seen was within reach. It sat among the factories in a narrow street lined with what had once been the homes of managers and workers but was now virtually a slum. This particular old house stood at the very end of the street and had an overgrown driveway to the front door. It was what, in an earlier age, would have been referred to as a mansion, a rambling old two-storey sandstone, fronting the harbour, and it stood on a large half-acre block, a good fifty yards from the nearest houses. It had the added attraction of its own boatshed and slip, crumbling and broken and clearly unused for a very long time. The sandstone was pitted and stained, and the ramp and the base of the boatshed were covered with green harbour slime.

  However, Danny judged that the house was well constructed and fundamentally sound, unlike all the others in the same industrial locale, which had fallen into disrepair. Judging from its appearance, with verandahs on both the top and bottom storeys, it was probably close to a century old. At one time it would have stood on its own and had the wide harbour view to itself.

  Without saying anything to anyone, Danny had made enquiries and discovered that it was to be auctioned by the public trustee the week before Helen was to leave for Egypt. Its previous occupants had been elderly spinsters, the Simpson twins, born in the house, and the last of a direct line who had occupied it from when it was built. One of the Simpson twins had died and the lone twin had been moved into a nursing home, where she too passed away a matter of weeks later.

  Danny knew the next step was to get Helen involved before she left, and every morning for the following two weeks he would row up to the house and rehearse his arguments to persuade her they should attempt to buy it. He would be trying to persuade her to move the twins into a broken-down old house on a hopelessly overgrown block in a slum area, where if there were any kids, and he hadn’t seen any, they’d probably have rickets and chronic nasal drip. If, by some miracle, Helen agreed to buying the house, neither of them had the time or money to do the renovating. Yet, despite these irrefutable facts, he convinced himself they’d manage somehow.