The Story of Danny Dunn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Yeah, well, you know what I mean,’ Half Dunn growled. ‘It would be nice to see the place prosper, but why do we have to tip out all the current inhabitants?’

  ‘Because we need a new attitude, and this place is totally reactionary. We cop all the shit and think it’s Shinola.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shinola.’

  ‘It’s an American expression – “He can’t tell shit from Shinola” – shit from boot polish. Dad, the point I’m making is that the status quo has existed for so long and we’re so accustomed to copping it sweet that we don’t know the difference. You don’t need to be told it’s very cosy for Macquarie Street and Sussex Street. Where else can you dump an unwanted industry with all the industrial facilities for a generous kickback? We need something big to happen that will shake the monkeys out of the trees, new people who start asking questions, who are not going to let Labor, or any other state government, get away with things.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t consider standing for the next state election?’

  ‘What? As a Liberal and expect to win in Balmain? That’ll be the frosty Friday!’

  ‘No, mate, as an independent. Stand against Tommy O’Hearn.’

  ‘What? Against the Labor political machine? C’mon, get real, Dad! Besides, with all the pro bono wife- and kid-battering cases I’ve taken on over the years, I’ve alienated half the men in Balmain and put the other half in the clink for a spell.’ Danny grinned. ‘I walked into the Tradesman’s Arms the other day and the whole pub suddenly went quiet.’

  ‘Mate, that’s your whole strategy!’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Women! All the women at Brenda’s shandy soirees are always asking her if you’ll stand – go into politics. You should know better than most – women are beginning to demand their rights.’

  ‘Nah, not here in Balmain. When it comes to the crunch they’ll still do as their old man tells them. Half the bastards I want to prosecute are let off because their wives beg me not to pursue it.’

  ‘I don’t agree. It’s not like a trade union vote where you’re publically shamed if you vote against a union motion. It’s a secret ballot. Danny, the women love you! You’ve fought for them and their kids and you’ve won. You’ve got half the men in Balmain on the run.’ Half Dunn laughed, suddenly recalling something. ‘Black-eyed Susan, remember you took Ron, her old man, to court and he got six months in Long Bay? Well, according to Brenda, she jokingly complained at the soiree last Thursday that she had nothing to say because she hasn’t had a bashing, or even her trademark black eye, for two months and she’s missing the whingeing. Ron is permanently off the piss, shit-scared he might find himself back in the clink.’

  Danny grinned, then said, ‘Mate, no way! An independent in Balmain would be about as effective as a fart in a thunderstorm!’

  Danny, like most of us, judged the progress of his life by the stuff he took seriously at the time. But often, when you look back, the serious stuff turns out to be unimportant, and a minor event you hardly noticed becomes a turning point that greatly affects the path you subsequently take in your life.

  Sammy and Bullnose were over at Danny’s place working in the garden, which, under Helen’s direction, had been restored to its former splendour and was now one of the truly great gardens in Balmain or, for that matter, any of the surrounding suburbs. Helen tried to get the twins interested in gardening but had to admit they only helped because they loved the stories the two old men would tell them, although Sam begged to be allowed to operate the new Victa lawnmower. Helen suspected that when she wasn’t around, Bullnose would let her. Both he and Sammy doted on the girls and the feeling appeared to be reciprocated. Gabrielle spent quite a lot of time in the rose garden, making an awful squawking sound on her new violin and claiming the roses loved it. ‘Mummy, there’s heaps more since I played for them. Ask Sammy and Bullnose if you don’t believe me.’

  Helen always responded modestly when people admired the garden. ‘It always had great bones – lovely mature trees, azaleas, camellias – and the old-fashioned rose garden just needed pruning back and a bit of food. Roses take some killing off – tough as old witches – and the perfume is divine.’ She would laugh as she summed up. ‘Sammy and Bullnose do all the hard work three days a week, the twins ride in the wheelbarrow and I take all the credit for the result.’

  Just a few days after Danny had had his heart-to-heart with Half Dunn over the state of Balmain, a terrace wall in the garden collapsed and needed to be reconstructed. Danny, while undergoing his weekly massage, asked Bullnose if he would rebuild it. Frankly, he hoped the old retired bricklayer would excuse himself on the grounds that what he used to call his ‘arty-ritis’ was too bad for him to take on the job. But he also knew they regarded the garden as their own and that bringing in a bricklayer from outside might upset them. ‘Mate, you’re not as young as you used to be. If the bricklaying is a bit much, I’ll get someone in,’ he said, then added hurriedly, ‘You’d still be in charge. You know, supervise the job.’

  As he suspected, both men wouldn’t have a bar of it. ‘Nah, Danny, Sammy’ll do the barra, you hire a cement mixer and we’ll mix the cement and I’ll handle them bricks, no risk. Need a week, I reckon. Not as fast as I used t’ be.’

  Danny already paid them the going daily rate for gardeners, plus the mandatory six schooners in return for his weekly massage. He would have liked to pay them more but they wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Okay, bricklayer’s rates then. I insist.’

  Bullnose looked questioningly at Sammy, who said, ‘Righto, thanks, Danny. The mongrels have put up the rent; be very useful.’

  ‘Look, why don’t I pick you up from your digs after we get back from rowing? Say eight o’clock?’

  ‘Whaffor?’ Bullnose protested. Sammy shot him a meaningful glance, but it was too late. ‘We only live down the road,’ Bullnose added.

  Danny, ignoring Sammy’s hands on his back, sat up on the new massage table he’d bought for the old masseur. ‘Hang on. You told me you lived in Mrs Bursell’s boarding house, bottom of Darling Street?’

  ‘Yeah, she carked it a year ago and her daughter and the family got the house.’ Sammy shrugged. ‘Had to move, mate.’

  ‘Into Brokendown Street – ferchrissake, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Bullnose replied, glancing at Sammy for help.

  ‘Except for this house, it’s not an address a man would want to brag about,’ Sammy said quietly.

  ‘Yeah, before was different. Mrs Bursell’s was good – she give us our tucker and all. This is a real shithouse place!’ Bullnose said in his clumsy manner.

  ‘Why don’t you apply for public housing? You’re both pensioners, always paid your taxes,’ Danny said.

  ‘Yeah, we done that,’ Sammy said.

  ‘We was told it was a ten-year waiting list,’ Bullnose added.

  ‘It’s a scam, mate. It’s who you know – we can’t afford a bribe to jump the list. They’re giving preference to the Poms, the migrants that come over here because they were bloody useless where they come from in the first place,’ Sammy said bitterly.

  Bullnose was quick to add, ‘Mate, them whingin’ Pommy bastards, bloody ten-pound tourists, they get all the government housing. Good Aussies like Sammy and me, we’re history – not a flaming chance, mate. Snowball’s hope in hell. If the Poms don’t get them Housing Commission flats the fuckin’ Reffos do, and if there’s anythin’ left over, the bloody Dagos with ten stealin’, stinkin’ snotty-nosed kids are packed in tighter than a can of IXL peaches.’

  It was Sammy’s turn again. ‘It’s no better if you try to get, y’know, like a private one-bedroom flat. They take one look at yiz, see yer no spring chicken, ask where y’ work, and when you tell them you’re a pensioner they slam the front door so hard it frightens the animals in the zoo ac
ross the bloody harbour.’

  Danny knew that marginal people like Sammy and Bullnose would never get a private lease; rented properties were rare enough, but no landlord would consider them acceptable tenants. The same applied to single mothers, ageing widows or the mentally ill. The slum landlords of properties in places like Brokendown Street or of sub-standard boarding houses who took their pensions in return for a bed and one badly cooked meal a day were the only ones who would have them.

  Danny suddenly made up his mind. ‘Look, we’ve been mates a long time, in fact, since I was a nipper.’ He turned to Sammy. ‘Without you working on my back, Sammy, I’d probably be in a wheelchair, or at least I’d be using a stick.’ He looked at both men in turn. ‘Now listen, I’ve got an idea I’ve been thinking about but I was waiting for the right time, thinking you were cosy enough at Mrs Bursell’s. Helen says the garden could use you another couple of days a week – well, that’s Monday to Friday, full time. As you know, the basement isn’t being used. It’s got a separate entrance off the garden, it’s dry, the water pipes go down there and they’re in good nick, and so does the electricity. It wouldn’t take a lot to turn it into a great little flat.’ Danny grinned. ‘That way I’d be able to keep an eye on you two old reprobates.’

  The two old men stood silently looking down at their feet for so long that Danny thought they were trying – or at least Sammy was – to find a nice way to refuse his offer. Then Sammy, squinting up at him, said, ‘Only if we work for no pay, Danny, just the schooners.’

  Danny laughed. ‘Sorry, mate. Helen would kick my arse all the way to Cairo. No way.’

  ‘Okay. Well, if we get paid for doin’ the garden, we’ll give you our old-age pensions for rent. That’s seven quid a week,’ Bullnose said.

  ‘So you want to turn me into a slum landlord, is that it?’ Danny asked, shaking his head. ‘Look at it this way. You do some of the hard yakka to convert it, to build the flat. It’s obviously going to need a bit of brickwork, plumbing . . . we’ll get an electrician in to do the wiring, and we’ll have to put in a kitchen and a bathroom. What you can’t do Half Dunn will take care of; he can find us a plumber or someone else who can do the job.’

  ‘Mate, me old man was an electrician at Morts. I used to work with him during the school holidays. I can do all that shit with me eyes closed,’ Sammy volunteered.

  ‘Done a fair bit o’ plumbin’ meself in me time,’ Bullnose added, not to be outdone.

  Danny hesitated. ‘This would have been a while back, Sammy. We’ll see when the time comes, eh, Bullnose?’ Changing the subject quickly away from the two do-it-yourself experts, he went on to say, ‘There’s the furniture left over from our flat that we had before we bought the house. We’ll get a couple of single beds and mattresses. When it’s all done you two will have a home and I’ll have an asset, a nice little flat in the basement. Thanks anyway, Bullnose. It’s a generous offer, but I don’t need your pension. The asset I’ll gain is sufficient payment. Do you reckon you can get by where you are for the next three or four months while we get the basement converted?’

  It was obvious Danny wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Both men, again staring at their boots, nodded. The two tough, proud old blokes were too overcome to reply. And so it was decided with a nod and handshake.

  Danny now had a firsthand source of information about the houses and tenants in Brokendown Street and soon gained an insight into what was going on. Twenty-eight houses, all of them directly across the road from the factories lining the waterfront, and all once the substantial homes of factory managers, had been abandoned in the 1930s and allowed to fall into disrepair because of the effluvial stink and smoke from the factories. While now, thirty years on, the conditions were marginally better, the once respectable houses were virtually slum dwellings. It transpired that all of them had been purchased by the same syndicate for a song and converted into low-cost accommodation for the poor, all of whom were, generally speaking, on the bones of their arse, the people nobody wanted.

  While this was blatant exploitation of the poor by the rich, Danny, who had studied the Landlord and Tenant Act carefully on the numerous occasions he’d taken his complaints to the council, saw that a paradox existed in the Act. In its amended form it was intended to grant the state control of rents, presumably to protect tenants and landlords. However, rents had generally been set too low and had not kept pace with the cost of living. Honest landlords, unable to make a fair return on their investment, left the rental market. This left only government housing and the rogue landlords and syndicates who simply ignored the legislation, bribed council health inspectors, bought up sub-standard properties cheaply and charged whatever rent the market would bear, aware that the poor and defenceless could never afford to seek redress in the courts. The Sammys and Bullnoses of this world were lambs to the slaughter, with nowhere to go except into the clutches of unscrupulous landlords.

  Now, with the two old blokes on the inside, Danny was better able to understand the prevailing conditions in Brokendown Street. In fact, apart from repairing badly leaking roofs, totally defunct plumbing and electrical wiring where it no longer worked, the slum landlords did precious little, at the same time packing in a great many more tenants than these properties were meant to house. They partitioned even a modest bedroom into four cells with cheap plywood partitions, splitting the wiring at the ceiling rose and running taped flex to light bulbs hanging above each cubicle.

  At most, two of these plywood cubicles might have a window; the other two would not, a single overhead light bulb being the only source of light. Windows were barred to prevent a moonlight flit, as was the back door. The only entrance and exit was the front door, kept under almost constant surveillance and locked at 9 p.m., except on Friday and Saturday nights.

  Fifteen people would share the original bathroom and kitchen, with their unreliable power and water supply. Electrical circuits were overloaded and the wiring usually done by amateurs, because qualified electricians risked losing their licences if they followed the owner’s instructions. This, in turn, created huge fire hazards. Fire extinguishers and hoses simply weren’t supplied.

  Premises converted in this way provided rental income that was usually ten times greater than that allowed under the Act. Brokendown Street, reduced to near-Dickensian conditions, was proving a veritable goldmine for its owners. Sammy and Bullnose explained the rules for living in one of these converted shit holes to Danny. Well, there was only one rule, really – the landlord’s word was law. Any complaint resulted in the threat of eviction or a beating if a tenant couldn’t fight back. It was known as CNO: ‘Clout ’n’ Out’. But in fact it was far worse: standover tactics were common, tenants who complained were often beaten severely and women were sexually assaulted. The ‘managers’ were thugs, and often enough drunken thugs. No receipts were issued for rent or bonds. Any work tenants did on a place to ensure their own safety or comfort was not credited. Councils, except for collecting the garbage, stayed well away, their councillors happy to receive a regular brown envelope.

  Bullnose, with Sammy acting as cement-machine mixer and barrow boy, rebuilt the terrace wall and then enthusiastically set about constructing their new home in the cellar. They weren’t fast but they were thorough and Danny was surprised at the skills they brought to the task. In fact Sammy did do the wiring and Bullnose the plumbing, and in their absence Half Dunn, at Danny’s request, sent down a certified electrician and plumber who were regulars at the Hero to inspect the result. The electrician claimed the work was first rate and laughed when he saw the switchboard. ‘Perfectly good, but I haven’t seen it done like that since my dad’s time,’ he said. The plumber suggested one or two small changes to the configuration of the pipes to prevent the possibility of the kitchen sink clogging and an air block forming in the shower recess, and that was about the extent of it.

  Danny visited J. B. Sharp, Fine Traditional and Modern Fur
nishings, and ordered two beds and mattresses. He was duly confronted by Mr Sid Sharp, the son of the founder, who wore a bowler hat all day and quite possibly all night, inside and outside. He’d never been seen without it and there were frequent but pointless bets laid over whether he was bald as a bandicoot, but nobody ever found out.

  He was also famous for his driving and owned a big maroon 1939 Buick, all chrome and show-off, which he drove with an abandon that sent everyone running for cover. He’d get into the car, put it into low gear and slam his foot down hard on the accelerator so that the big V8 engine screamed for mercy. Then, releasing the handbrake, off he’d go, ignoring traffic lights and stop signs, with one hand permanently jammed on the horn to warn off anyone silly enough to approach. His driving knowledge never extended beyond what he considered to be the five essentials: handbrake, low gear, accelerator, horn and brakes. Though he’d had countless accidents miraculously he’d never killed anyone.

  In desperation Sergeant McCusky, the local police sergeant, had finally revoked his driving licence and the big automobile now stood permanently parked outside the shop, all the dings removed, maroon duco polished to a mirror shine, its whitewall tyres pumped and perfect, the leather upholstery glossy, while on the driver’s door, beautifully painted in a gold copperplate script, were the words:

  Sergeant McCusky

  Is a right mug lair!

  The bastard went and busted me.

  That’s just not fair!

  *

  J. B. Sharp Esq.

  ‘Danny, glad you came in, son,’ Sid Sharp called in welcome. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve got a bone to pick with you,’ he said, stabbing Danny lightly in the chest with a pudgy finger.

  ‘Oh? What is it, Mr Sharp?’

  ‘Dining-room suite. You know the rules. When you get married, son —’

  ‘Oh, yes, right. But I’ve . . . we’ve been married for years, Mr Sharp.’

  Sid tapped his forehead. ‘Elephants never forget, son.’