The Story of Danny Dunn (31 page)

Billy drove a very large, new black Buick with whitewall tyres. ‘Uh, y'all say if it ain't convenient, but I thought maybe you'd like to stay in the town house tonight and tomorrow, then on the weekend we'll go visit La Fonteine. What say y'all?'

‘That sounds lovely,' Helen said from the back seat. ‘But where and what is La Fonteine? Danny has to take things pretty quietly for
a while.'

‘Ain't nowhere quieter in the State of Louisiana, Helen. It's further south. Been in the du Bois family now two hundred years.'

‘Two hundred years!' Helen exclaimed. ‘That includes the time of slavery?'

‘Sure does, ma'am. We've been right lucky with our coloured folk; many of the original families have stayed to this day. There was no good part of slavery but I guess my forebears were a might more tolerant than most. La Fonteine is a lucky place for us; the original old house was requisitioned for officers' quarters during the war, which saved it from being burned to the ground.'

‘Oh, I hadn't realised that you were directly affected by the war. What was it, fifth column sabotage? American Nazi movement?' Helen asked, curious.

Billy du Bois threw back his head and roared. ‘Only one war round these parts, ma'am, and it ain't the one you and I and Danny just fought in. The war I was referring to was the Civil War. It's a habit I acquired from my daddy – everything in this part of the south is dated either before or after the Civil War.'

They had entered what appeared to be an older part of New Orleans and so it turned out to be. ‘Uh, this is Vieux Carré, the old French Quarter. I guess we've had a home here almost as long as we've had the plantation.' The big Buick drew up in a quiet street and Billy sounded the horn. The street was not unlike one of a row of large terrace houses in Sydney, with wrought-iron balconies fronting directly onto the street, and which, apart from elegant front doors and a carriageway on the side, would have looked at home on a leafy street in Woollahra. It was only when the whole of the house was seen that the difference became obvious. It was built entirely around a magnificent courtyard garden, with a continuous balcony upstairs and a verandah downstairs that ran all the way around it. It was a perfectly preserved example of a wealthy antebellum home in New Orleans and was at least three times the size of a large terrace in Sydney. The house was called La Trianon and there was little doubt that it represented serious money.

Their luggage was taken inside by a manservant named Jackson, whom Billy informed them also acted as chauffeur and would be taking them around when Billy wasn't available to do so himself. Inside they met Aunt Mary-Louise, the coloured housekeeper and cook, who looked after Billy but came from La Fonteine, as had Jackson. Both lived in the servant's wing of the large house.

Aunt Mary-Louise had set out afternoon tea in an elegant drawing room that Helen would later describe to Brenda as positively reeking of old money. The tea service was antique Limoges, and the cutlery antique silver. Several varieties of home-baked French pastries were displayed on an elegant platter.

For Helen, who had developed an eye for the authentic and well preserved, the house was like a page from history, though on second glance she realised that the antebellum ambience and sense of grandeur disguised the latest in kitchen and bathroom appliances, and that the house, although sporting a grand fireplace in the main drawing room and smaller versions in every other room, was centrally heated.

Billy du Bois may have been a knockabout master sergeant in the Special Forces of the United States army, but he was every inch an old-fashioned aristocrat in his native Louisiana. He explained that he was the youngest of the three sons of Marcel and Heloise du Bois. His father, now retired, was still fussing and taking unnecessary trips to the plantation to make a nuisance of himself with Billy's brothers, Frank and Andre, who ran the plantation and the mill respectively.

‘What, cotton?' Danny asked.

Billy laughed. ‘No, sir! That's the standard notion of the old south. Mark Twain probably didn't think sugarcane was as romantic as tote'n' cotton along the Mississippi; “The old sugarcane fields of home” doesn't have quite the same ring to it. But, in fact, my family have been growin' sugarcane at La Fonteine nigh on one hundred and eighty years. The spring sowing is just over so there's a bit of time to welcome y'all to the plantation.'

Billy went on to explain that his parents now spent most of their time at La Trianon but that his father made a point of being on the plantation for sowing and harvesting, where he drove everyone mad, and his mother went along in a mostly vain attempt to stop him doing so.

‘And you, where do you fit in?' Helen asked.

‘Uh, I run a distribution company that my uncle, William “Billy” du Bois, left to me after I graduated from Louisiana State University. He was a youngest son, and had no heirs. Youngest son to youngest son, both with the same name – I guess it was meant to be. The business was left in the care of a manager when I enlisted and now I'm in the process of building it up again.'

‘Distribution?'

Billy grinned. ‘You're right, it could mean anything. In fact we're in entertainment machinery and equipment as well as cash registers. Before the war, William “Billy” du Bois Entertainment was the biggest distributor in the south of pinball and slot machines, gaming machinery, roulette wheels and the like, as well as cash registers. I guess you couldn't go into a Bourbon Street jazz or illicit gaming joint, cathouse or speakeasy during prohibition without seeing at least one machine supplied by William “Billy” du Bois. That's where it all started. Now the boys in Chicago and New York are beginning to talk about Las Vegas in Nevada. Gambling's always been legal in Nevada and William “Billy” du Bois has always been there, but it's been penny-anti, wayside casinos and clip joints. If the mafia – the New York and Chicago mobs – get interested, I guess I'll need to go speak to them. We can bring in all the I-talian machines they want, of course, but we'd prefer to source them here. Nobody has better knowhow, or rather, used to have better knowhow, than William “Billy” du Bois. It's a business that goes beyond supply and demand – after-care protection is an important element.'

It was a long explanation and Helen hadn't wanted to interrupt, but now she asked, ‘William “Billy” du Bois – is that the actual name of your distribution company?'

Billy grinned. ‘Sure is, ma'am. My uncle was very well known around these parts, and for a period he was even mayor of N'awlins, but with his name on so much “entertainment” machinery found in places that never should've been there in the first place, he was eventually obliged to step down from his civic responsibilities. There's lots of folk said it was a pity – William “Billy” du Bois had a good vision for this city and he was a great friend of Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana, and between the two of them they got a lot done for poor folk.'

Billy paused. ‘Enough about me. We'll visit all the N'awlins sites in the next day or two, if y'all are up to it, but then I have to go to the East Coast on business. You're welcome to stay here at La Trianon, but, I warn you, my daddy will want to show you everything, and if you need a rest to recover from your operation the plantation would be ideal. Either way y'all stay as long as you like, you hear?'

And so Helen and Danny stayed at La Fonteine for nearly two months, coming up to New Orleans from time to time, where Helen and Heloise du Bois got on like a house on fire. The plantation was run much as it always had been, the workers regarded almost as family, most of them having adopted the du Bois surname as their own. Many of the coloured folks' forebears had been on the plantation well before the Louisiana Purchase.

Marcel was inordinately proud of the fact that the plantation had its own school and clinic, and ten coloured families had children who attended the all-coloured college in St Louis, paid for by the du Bois family. ‘Many folk round these parts don't hold with the notion that people of colour have the brains to be educated to book learning, but I intend, most assuredly, to prove them wrong,' he chuckled. ‘They say to me, “Marcel, they'll take your good name and drag it through the mud,” but I tell them, “I think y'all misconceived what happened, sir. It was people of colour who dragged a horse and plough through the spring mud in the name of du Bois, and planted and harvested the sugarcane that gave my family its good standing in the great state of Louisiana. It is these folk who earned the good life for us white folk, and I am most grateful and rightly proud that they would want to use du Bois as their family name.' He sucked on his pipe, discovered it had gone out, struck a match and reignited it, then, blowing blue smoke towards the ceiling, said quietly, ‘White folk, they don't like that much, but I cain't see how we got much reason for pride. The du Bois family is one of the very few old southern families round these parts that can truthfully say there never was a Negro lynched that they had the personal responsibility for.'

‘Lynched?' Helen said, shocked. ‘You mean the Ku Klux Klan?'

‘Hell no, ma'am. The Klan is white trash and reason enough today for all southerners to be rightfully shamed. But in the old days before the war, a troublesome slave was a possession a plantation owner could dispose of any way he damn well liked.'

‘It wasn't any better with our Aborigines and the white squatters in the early days in Australia. They referred to murdering blacks as “duck hunting” and notched the butts of their rifles after a kill,' Danny said.

When Danny started to feel better, he and Helen borrowed Billy's 1939 Chevy two-seater with the dicky seat. It had been on blocks in one of the garages at La Fonteine, and with the help of Jimmy Sugar, the mechanic on the plantation, they got it going sweetly again. It was the car Billy had used while at university and with it they toured the south, calling this their proper honeymoon.

The three months' recuperation soon passed and they returned to St Louis and Barnes Hospital, where the great Vilray Blair and a delighted John Glicks removed Danny's plaster cast and pronounced his nose job excellent, beyond expectations. While Danny was still somewhat discoloured and blotchy, Helen was delighted with the result. ‘Darling, it's a face that looks well used and not, as before, abused. You were far too handsome as a young lad. Now most men would like to have your face; it has a life that, like a well-told tale, is full of interest. I simply can't wait for Brenda to see you.'

Danny, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror at the hotel, could see that if you compared his new face to the old, there was a definite improvement: this one could have belonged to a prize fighter who'd fought half a dozen fights against heavier opponents he should never have taken on. If it wasn't pretty, at least it could pass in public with perhaps only a second glance.

It was time to go home.

Danny began his Law degree, and Helen went looking for a flat that was small enough and cheap enough for them to afford, finding one at the top end of Darling Street almost next door to the Callan Park Mental Hospital. It wasn't at all bad and the real estate agent confided in her that the rent was low because ‘people don't want to live close to a loony bin'.

Helen laughed. ‘I think we're going to be right at home here. We'll take it. Is there any key money?' She had landed a job at the university tutoring in ancient history, and was able to supplement her small salary by taking private students, while Danny worked two afternoons and Saturdays at the pub, where she also occasionally helped out. To Danny's surprise Helen enjoyed working on the bar at the Hero. ‘It's social anthropology,' she'd once explained.

‘What? Watching men getting pissed?' Danny snorted.

‘Well, yes, in a way that's true, but there hasn't been a period in the evolution of mankind where humans haven't performed rituals using a mind-altering substance of some sort. For us, going to the pub is a social ritual and alcohol is the substance. I'm sure it wasn't very different in ancient Egypt,' she replied.

Danny's time at Law School seemed to pass very quickly – he struck up a friendship with another Law student who, though considerably younger and fresh out of Scots College, one of Sydney's elite private schools, was in his own way also something of a loner. Franz was Jewish, and had left Austria with his parents in 1932 when he was two years old. Once they had arrived in Australia, they almost immediately started one of Sydney's first genuine delicatessens in Bondi Road – Landsman's Delicatessen and Continental Smallgoods. They were smart enough not to make it kosher and almost from the day it opened it had prospered, being frequented by the wealthy, sophisticated and more widely travelled customers from nearby Bellevue Hill, Double Bay, Rose Bay and Vaucluse.

With the advent of the Second World War, they were no longer able to import smallgoods from Europe. This was followed by the blow of Josef, an Austrian Jew, being sent to Hay Internment Camp. Hester, his wife, a capable and enterprising woman, had immediately set to work establishing a smallgoods factory, initially in a rented double garage, as well as sourcing private outlets. Using the knowhow and skills of other migrants from the Continent, she developed the techniques to make or source from these various families the sausages, cheeses and smallgoods she'd formerly imported.