The Story of Danny Dunn (41 page)

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.

He knew that showing the house to Brenda was pointless. She would simply dismiss the idea with a sniff. Besides, she wanted them to build on the vacant block beside the Hero, which she'd recently acquired. Brenda had been in the business of running a pub for thirty-six years, and she'd started to talk about retiring in five or six years but taking it a little easier in the meantime. She wanted more leisure to enjoy her two granddaughters, especially as she'd worked so hard throughout Danny's childhood. While she didn't expect Danny to become a publican or take over the day-to-day running of the pub, she wanted him to supervise the business, which she and Half Dunn intended leaving to the twins. In order to keep an eye on the manager and staff, Danny and Helen would need to be close by; next door would be ideal. So, without consulting them, she'd purchased the vacant lot.

Curiously, over the years Helen had shown an unexpected interest in how the place was run. She'd help behind the bar if there was a crisis and would laughingly explain that she saw it as an exercise in social anthropology. ‘For the adult males, it's the tribal meeting hut where many of the discussions and decisions that involve the community take place, and where kava, or its equivalent, is consumed in a ritual essential to the men of the tribe.' Danny knew that Brenda hoped Helen's interest would overcome her reluctance for the twins to grow up close to an alehouse.

Danny knew that there was every possibility Helen would hate the broken-down old dump on the water and that his mother would win her over to the idea of building next door to the Hero. One thing was certain: Brenda wasn't going to lend him any money to buy his harbour-side dream.

So Danny decided to show the house to Franz before he took Helen to see it, hoping he would be able to tell her that Franz thought it a good buy, a good investment. Franz, in theory, believed deeply in real estate investment, and in waterfront properties. His parents already owned two in Coogee, a supposedly up-and-coming suburb, and Franz claimed they were both good long-term investments. Helen trusted his judgment, and if he agreed the house was a good buy, Danny knew she'd consider it. Danny no longer saw it as the wreck it indeed was; in his mind it had become a beautifully restored harbour-side mansion where the twins would grow up happy and healthy. Now all he had to do was make Helen see the same vision. A little enthusiasm from Franz, the would-be property investor, might be very useful.

However, Franz was appalled at the sight of the crumbling sandstone edifice. ‘Danny, you've got to be out of your cotton-picking mind!' he expostulated.

‘It's absolute waterfront,' Danny protested. ‘Mate, where are you going to get that without paying through the nose in Sydney?'

‘There's waterfront – that's the Eastern Suburbs – and there's cesspit-front – that's here,' Franz shot back. ‘I can see three fucking factories belching out smoke from here and a street with houses that look like Armageddon has already arrived. You'd have to look hard to find a place as bad as this in the Old Testament, even during the plagues of Egypt!'

‘It's going to go for a song, and over the years the neighbourhood will improve,' Danny persisted.

‘Take a look, Danny. I grant you, this was once a nice house, a very nice house . . . maybe a hundred years ago.' He paused. ‘That was the last time this neighbourhood was a good location. It's cheap because nobody wants to live in an industrial slum. Take my advice: rule one in life is, if you make any dough, you move
out of
a shit hole like this one to the east or, at a pinch, to the north, across the Harbour Bridge!'

‘Hey, steady on, mate. I grew up in Balmain. You're talking about the salt of the earth.'

‘Yeah, well, what can I say if you want to toil in a salt mine? Danny, you can't be serious!'

‘I can have a boatshed at my front door. Where can you have that in the Eastern Suburbs?' Danny persisted.

‘Boat!' Franz looked genuinely shocked. ‘You didn't say
boat
, did you? Please tell me you're not going to buy a boat.' His consternation was real. ‘Fuck! Why don't you just tear up five-pound notes, throw them in the harbour and watch them float through the heads and out to sea?'

‘No, mate, not a yacht. A new skiff – Whitehall, seventeen-footer. Get me around the harbour faster.'

‘What's wrong with the ferry? Only a dumb Mick would row somewhere when he can catch the ferry for a couple of bob.'

‘Don't start, or I'll tell you about people who won't use their car after sunset on Friday!' Danny threatened.

Despite himself Franz grinned. ‘Yeah, I know – your back, exercise. But you've already got a perfectly good rowboat, haven't you?'

‘It's too small. I want to take the twins out of a morning.'

Franz looked at him warily. ‘Does Helen know about this?'

‘What – the house or the twins coming out with me?'

‘Both.'

‘No. Not yet. Nor the new skiff. We don't have a hundred and seventy-five quid available in the kitty, by any chance, do we?' Danny asked hopefully.

Franz sighed. ‘Mate, I can't help it if you've had a sudden massive aberration and your brain has turned to mush, but count me out on both items. If you've made up your mind to live in a shithouse,' he shrugged, throwing his arms wide, ‘what can I say? About the money for the boat, skiff, whatever, no, we don't have that much in the kitty.'

‘Okay, but promise me one thing.'

‘What's that?'

‘You won't tell Helen you've seen it.' Danny hesitated. ‘Also, not a word about the new boat.'

Franz sighed. ‘Mate, it's Friday and it's after five and I'm going to get into my car and drive home to my rented flat overlooking Bondi Beach, while I wait for a suitable house in my neighbourhood to come up for sale so that I can live in it while it matures into a decent investment. To tell Helen anything about this proposition of yours would be to revisit the humiliation I feel at having picked not only a goy but a schmuck to be my partner in chambers.'

‘It's so good of you to give me your blessing . . . mate.'

Franz bowed mockingly and turned to go back to his Morris Minor.

‘Why do you persist with that Pommy shitheap?' Danny called, unable to resist a final shot. ‘Get rid of it. Buy a Holden – a fair dinkum Aussie car!'

‘Excuse me?' Franz turned. ‘What was that about General Motors Holden?' he called back.

With time running out before Helen left, Danny finally summoned up the courage to broach the subject, expounding the virtues of a harbour-side dwelling, while going fairly light on the disadvantages of the one he was proposing. She agreed, though somewhat reluctantly, to view it. ‘Why don't we invite Franz along? He's always on about waterfront property, and he's in commercial law and knows a bit about real estate.'

Danny cleared this throat. ‘
Hrrrmph!
Later perhaps. I'll arrange a private inspection. What say we see what you think first up, eh?'

Danny's heart sank when they entered the cold, damp building. It smelt overpoweringly of cats' piss, with a distinct tincture of mould to emphasise the general atmosphere of despair and neglect. They discovered later that the Simpson women had kept fifteen cats, not counting the stray moggies that customarily dropped in for a feed, that turned the house into a cats' toilet. Everywhere they looked there were stacks of newspapers, all, it seemed, the
Sydney Morning Herald
. The Simpson twins were obviously well brought up.