The Story of Danny Dunn (71 page)

When Sam started swimming seriously, a fissure opened between the twins as Gabby's interest in music grew and Sam's determination to win three gold for Sammy fuelled her punishing training regime. But there was another wedge driven between them, by a Latvian girl named Katerina, who arrived at Balmain High School one term. She was the most exotic creature Sam had ever seen, and before long she'd developed a full-blown crush on the new girl. A passing glance from this tall, dark-eyed, raven-haired, sombre creature would cause Sam's knees to tremble. Katerina seemed to have nothing in common with the rest of the girls and stood aloof: mature, condescending and superior. What's more, she was bloody tough, and when Sam had asked if they could be friends, Katerina had thought about it for ages before declaring, ‘Okay, but we take no shit from nobody, right? That's the rule!' This single statement had brought Sam almost to the point of collapse and she immediately promised total obedience. She couldn't wait to tell Gabby about her new friend, and that night she acted out the whole thing, hands on hips, eyes downcast in the condescending manner of the Latvian girl, as she delivered the immortal line, ‘Okay, but we take no shit from nobody, right?'

Gabby, once she'd met the fabled Katerina, dismissed the whole thing with a toss of her head and an impatient sigh, declaring, ‘She has a cruel smile and she's got a haircut like a boy. I can't stand her.' In one slash of the tongue, the ties were severed, and the Dunn twins began, unknowingly, to separate, albeit very slowly and not in all things. Being a twin had always been like having an animated and sentient shadow, with whom you could share a mischievous look, a secret smirk or burst of giggles at something incomprehensible to others. Gabby and Sam had spoken the private unspoken language of twins and inhabited a secret world that others could never penetrate, but as their different personalities began to emerge, their close affinity began to dissipate. Gabby bonded with Helen, sensing that Danny disapproved of her decision to choose music and had neither sympathy for nor understanding of it, whereas Sam, always Daddy's favourite girl, became even more so, but while she loved Danny deeply, she was ever fearful of her father's mood swings and sudden outbursts of blazing temper.

Danny was, for the most part, a loving and caring father, but when the demons struck he could be cruel and unforgiving with his twin daughters, who far too often bore the brunt of his anger. A length of the pool not completed within a second of the required time would send him into a towering rage; an item of swimming gear forgotten and the twin involved would find herself trembling at the thought of yet another angry outburst. While he never laid a hand on them, his tongue was his razor, honed on the strop of his court appearances, and often it cut deeply. Sam coped much better than Gabby, taking Danny's rebukes in silence and still adoring her father in spite of his rages, while Gabby increasingly sought refuge in the comparative calm and comfort of her mother's presence.

It wasn't surprising that Sam bonded with the tough, uncompromising Katerina and that Gabby avoided her. Katerina's family spoke little English. Her father was a peasant in every sense of the word, and a vicious and cruel drunk. She'd frequently appear at school with a black eye or covered in nasty bruises and welts. When Sam sympathised, Katerina would look her in the eye and say, with what Gabby described as her cruel smile, ‘It's okay, kid. When I'm seventeen, I'm gonna kill the fucking bastard!' She seemed so powerful, so resolute, that Sam had not the slightest doubt she would carry out her threat, and the thought of it would send shivers down her back. The closest Sam ever got to having a similar sentiment was when Danny was directing a spurt of unwarranted fury at her. A sentence would form in her head and she would silently pronounce her own version of Katerina's coarse pledge:
It's okay. When I'm seventeen, I'm gonna win three Olympic gold medals and I'm gonna stick them up your arse, Daddy!
This served greatly to ameliorate the effect of Danny's sudden and violent rages. The difference between Sam and Katerina was that Sam knew without a shred of doubt that her father adored her and would have happily given his life if it meant hers could be saved.

The unlikely friendship between Katerina and Sam continued, and Sam soon learned that she had more than one protector prepared to look out for her, no matter what the cost. One day a group of boys cornered Sam in the playground, teasing her, laughing at the time she spent swimming, holding their noses and saying she stank like a fish. The leader and main tormentor was a boy of thirteen named Denis Haze, nicknamed, appropriately, Dense Haze. Sam was giving almost as good as she got, and quite enjoying the boys' attention, despite their childish insults, when Katerina stormed onto the scene like a virago and let fly with a vicious punch, socking Dense Haze in the eye. He collapsed, clutching at his wounded face, and the others backed off, eyeing the two girls warily. ‘Fuck off, shithead!' Katerina yelled, then, glaring at his mates, said challengingly, ‘Come on, who's next?' To Sam's surprise they slunk away with their tails between their legs, Katerina muttering, ‘Fucking dogs,' as she checked that Sam was unhurt, before giving the hapless mob a send-off with a flourishing two-finger salute.

If Katerina taught Sam the art of the surprise attack, she also taught her a new use for the two fingers she'd used in her contemptuous salute, introducing Sam to the surprising and secret pleasure of masturbation. The timing was good; the twins had only just stopped sharing a double bed and moved into beds of their own, and while they could easily have had rooms of their own, it had never occurred to them. Sam's new knowledge of another use for a body part she'd never really thought about was immediately conveyed to her twin one night as they were preparing for bed.

‘You're not supposed to touch down there!' Gabby admonished Sam.

‘Why not?' Sam replied.

‘Because it's dirty and you'll get wee on your fingers, silly,' Gabby replied, lost for another explanation.

‘No you don't. You just get a nice feeling, like you're blissing out,' Sam replied.

‘If we were allowed, Mum would have told us,' Gabby said.

‘They didn't tell us about weeing and we discovered that,' Sam countered.

‘You don't
discover
weeing! It just happens – you can't help it. Why don't you ask Mum?'

‘No!' Sam cried, instinctively uneasy.

‘And why not?' Gabby said in her annoyingly self-righteous voice.

‘Because Katerina said it's a special kids' secret and that parents don't have to know about it,' Sam fabricated wildly.

‘See! I told you it wouldn't be allowed,' Gabby said triumphantly. ‘That Katerina is evil.'

‘She's not! She just knows things you don't need to share with parents like a big baby. Grow up, kid!' Sam said, using a Katerina expression.

‘Yes, like swearing and saying the “f” word and the “s” word.'

‘Those boys
were
fucking shitheads,' Sam said, savouring both words almost as much as Gabby's disapproval.

‘You're just showing off, Sam! You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' Gabby replied, hopping into bed.

‘Well, I'm going to do it, anyway,' Sam concluded defiantly. ‘You don't know what you're missing out on.'

‘Go ahead, be disgusting!' Gabby said, turning over huffily to present her back to her twin.

They never discussed the subject again, but Sam knew Gabby too well, and was positive that she wouldn't be able to resist the temptation. However, neither twin had any idea that this secret pleasure had a name or that it was connected with the big no-no word – sex. Not long after Katerina introduced Sam to ‘the joy that lies below', her family moved to Adelaide, where Katerina's father had taken a job as a painter with Kelvinator, spraying fridges. Katerina's last words to Sam were, ‘In four years you'll see me on the TV because I'm still gonna kill the bastard! Promise you'll come and see me in prison and bring me cigarettes.' Sam unhesitatingly agreed.

That Katerina's gift of self-knowledge had a sexual connection only became apparent as Sam matured and discovered that the need to pleasure herself was somehow heightened when she read certain passages in her father's books. Danny, like his father, was addicted to cheap paperbacks – Zane Grey, Nevil Shute, Mickey Spillane, Damon Runyon, Harold Robbins, Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean. They were by no means pornographic, but they contained enough prurient passages not only to satisfy their mostly male readership, but Sam's innocent erotic life under the blankets, too.

She finally woke up to the fact that what she was doing was sexual while reading a Mickey Spillane novel. She came across a sentence that read:
Her thighs were as smooth as whipped cream on a silk bedspread.
In a thrice Sam knew she was the heart and soul of the femme fatale in Mickey's story, and had to hurry into her bedroom in the middle of a quiet Sunday afternoon to play out the scene between the gangster and his girl under the blankets. While it didn't strike her like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, she became conscious that the innocence of her childhood was over and that she desperately wanted to be kissed by a boy.

A year or so before, the twins had attended an evening for girls aged twelve to sixteen run by the Anglican Church that was held in the Balmain Town Hall, and billed improbably as ‘The Birds, the Bees, You and God'. Most of their school friends were in attendance, and the lecture was given by a large, stern-faced matron wearing heavy, horn-rimmed glasses, with a pouter-pigeon breast and steel-grey hair swept up and tied in a neat bun at the back of her head. She introduced herself as Mrs Polkinghorne, which her audience of giggling teenage girls instantly translated to Mrs Pokinghorn. She was said to be a leading child psychologist, a profession most of her young female audience had never heard of, with the possible exception of the two Dunn girls
.

What followed was a lot of information about menstruation – how to wear ‘sanitary napkins', and how to keep oneself clean and ‘fresh'. There was no mention of emotions or urges of any kind, although Mrs Polkinghorne ‘touched on' masturbation, which she referred to as ‘severe self-abuse'. She cautioned that it was dangerous to the wellbeing of young girls, spoiled them for marriage, and was responsible for unspecified, but nonetheless dire, health problems. It was a nasty habit that should be avoided at all costs. Sexual relations were a gift from God and could only be sanctioned within the bonds of ‘Holy Matrimony'. An intact hymen was a gift whose value was ‘beyond rubies'. Tampering with God's laws could lead to dire consequences. She advised that a good way to cope with any unusual feelings ‘down there' was to take a cold bath. Neither twin had the faintest idea that she was referring to the pleasure each of them gave themselves in bed after the light was switched out.

Many complicated and incomprehensible diagrams followed, one of which included bisected testicles and a penis that seemed to be inside something they were told was a vagina – words new to the vocabulary of the majority of the girls present. This was referred to as ‘penetration', an act that was under no circumstances to be performed before marriage, according to Mrs Polkinghorne, who referred to the ceremony as ‘Holy Matrimony', no doubt because she was on the National Women's Council of the Anglican Church. She talked about the dire consequences of teenage pregnancy and of ways to spot it, which included puffy ankles and missing a period. As a great many of the girls had never even kissed a boy and had yet to experience a period, they were unsure whether to worry or not, and almost all immediately glanced down to check their ankles.

Mrs Polkinghorne relaxed a little when she spoke of the happy events that could arise
after
Holy Matrimony. The blood that had been little more than a hygiene issue in the earlier part of her talk was now ‘food for the foetus during the gestation period'. This piece of information was not well received; babies, suddenly known as foetuses, drinking their mother's blood was beyond the comprehension of the audience, many of whom afterwards confessed they felt like throwing up.

Finally, she paused and asked her stunned and puzzled audience if there were any questions. There were none. She handed out little purple books to each thoroughly bewildered girl. They contained pictures of happy families with the father as often as not holding a Bible, and groups of smiling American girls who obviously didn't touch themselves in secret places and wore two-tone shoes and white socks, which everyone knew from the movies were called bobbysocks. On almost every page the girls were told that making babies was God's glorious gift to humanity but
only
within the sanctity of marriage. Having babies before marriage was referred to as the devil's work.

The entire process left the young audience thoroughly confused, and Sam and Gabby both secretly feared they'd destroyed any chance they might have had to enjoy a happy marriage and produce healthy babies. Neither of them went to church regularly, and had not had any idea of what they were supposed to avoid.

Helen observed the twins' long faces when they got home and she asked them how the lecture had gone.

Sam hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘I can't have a baby.'

‘Oh? Why is that?'