The Story of Danny Dunn (72 page)

‘You can't have one unless you've got puffy ankles and you miss a period, but the blood from your period feeds the baby, so it's a bit confusing,' Gabby explained.

Sam held up the purple book. ‘It's all in here, Mum.'

‘What nonsense have they been telling you? Let me see that,' Helen cried, reaching for the booklet. ‘Perhaps I should have followed my instincts and talked to you about the birds and bees myself, but I thought this might be a better option.'

‘And that's another thing,' Gabby said, ‘she didn't mention birds or bees even once.'

‘Who didn't?' Helen asked.

‘Mrs Pokinghorn,' Sam said, and the twins started to giggle uncontrollably.

‘She wasn't called that!' Helen exclaimed, incredulous.

‘She was, Mum, she
really
was,' the twins answered simultaneously, giggling and clutching each other, relieved at having passed the burden of the sanctity of marriage, and all that it involved, to their mother.

Helen flicked through the booklet quickly. ‘This is absolute rubbish!' she told them. ‘Come and sit next to me and we'll begin all over again.'

Two months after Helen had given the twins a comprehensive, or at least sufficient, knowledge of their pubescent bodies, Sam woke at dawn one morning to go to swimming training, and as usual made her way to the bathroom in the dark so as not to wake Gabby. Switching on the bathroom light, she pulled down her pyjama pants to have a wee, and to her horror saw blood on the inside of her thigh and was immediately aware of where it had come from. Despite Helen having told them to expect this, she was panic-stricken. She'd pleasured herself to sleep the night before, and all she could think about was that she'd gone too far and broken her body and done herself an irreparable injury. Terrified, she could see at once that she'd have to go to the doctor and have an operation . . . he'd have to sew her up, and everyone would know!

There was a knock on the bathroom door, then her father's voice. ‘Hurry up, Sam, gotta get going, sweetheart.'

‘Daddy, I can't, not today!' Sam cried.

‘Eh? What's the matter?' Danny asked.

‘I'm sick,' Sam said, unable to explain.

There was a pause. ‘Sick? You were okay last night. How sick?'

Sam burst into tears. ‘I don't know!'

‘Can I come in?'

‘No!' Sam shrilled in panic.

Helen had told Danny about Mrs Polkinghorne's lecture and they'd had a good laugh about the twins mishearing her surname. Then she'd informed him that she'd given them their first sex talk, beginning with an explanation of periods. While he knew he should have expected this inevitable occurrence, he remembered feeling somewhat shocked at the prospect of his little girls turning into women.

‘Surely not for a while yet?' he'd remarked.

‘Well, mine came two days after my thirteenth birthday,' Helen had replied. ‘Both their little bodies are beginning to change. You mean you haven't noticed Sam in her bathers?'

‘No, of course not!' he'd replied, indignant at the question.

Helen had sighed. ‘Men!'

Remembering this, Danny suddenly cottoned on to what might have happened to Sam. ‘I'll get your mother,' he called softly.

He heard Sam sniff, then her tearful reply. ‘Yes, thanks, Dad.'

Danny was aware that he was trying to keep his own voice normal, and he had an immediate sense that things had changed between himself and his daughter.

Gabby's first period followed almost six months later, although hers arrived with plenty of warning. For almost four months she experienced excruciating pain from cramps that kept her away from the Con High School, sometimes for a couple of days, and when her periods came they were often preceded by terrible headaches. The sudden cramps, often arriving without warning in the middle of a lesson, made playing the violin almost impossible. She wanted to double over and clutch her stomach. Fortunately, her tutor, Miss Rabbinowitz, immediately understood. To make matters worse, Gabby's periods were heavy and left her feeling weak for several days.

Sam soon enough adjusted to having her periods and, in fact, it made her feel rather grown up. While she continued to enjoy the pleasure her fingers brought her, her fantasies changed and she now saw herself as closer to Marilyn Monroe than Dawn Fraser, her previous idol.

Also, for the first time in her life, she realised that she was actually very pretty. Gabby, although identical to her twin, never felt the same pleasure about her looks. By the time they'd reached the age of sixteen, Sam had begun to dress prettily, and Erin Walsh began to use her as a model in her Saturday morning fashion parades, where she was starting to attract the attention of the young photographers who came along. Sam's tanned body and long legs revealed by a mini-skirt were being seen in the magazines, where editorials would often mention that she was a gold-medal hope in the coming Mexico Olympics. Sam loved the attention and the way young blokes looked at her.

Gabby, on the other hand, had a quite different take on how she wanted to appear. She wore no make-up and dressed in the dowdy styles of the hippy movement, thinking this a more appropriate image for a talented young musician. While the violin was her serious classical instrument, she took happily and easily to the guitar and the music of the time, never forgetting her early introduction to Dylan and his harmonica with Dallas. She did make a single concession to her physical appearance – she loved beads and bangles, often wearing as many as a dozen bright strands around her neck and lots of cheap brightly coloured plastic bangles on each wrist, unless she was playing her violin, of course. Despite her attempts to dress down and look plain, her brilliant titian hair, always worn with a freshly picked bloom from the garden, and the gift of her father's violet-blue eyes outshone her attempts at self-effacement and she remained extraordinarily and effortlessly pretty.

The 1965 state elections were to be held in May, and Danny and his Tiger 13 team campaigned almost ceaselessly in the months leading up to it. The questionnaire Hugh Mackay had prepared showed that Danny could expect around forty per cent of the women's vote but no more than ten per cent of the men's. Calculations revealed that this wasn't quite enough to win the seat, especially with Labor throwing everything but the kitchen sink behind Tommy O'Hearn. It was said that he was doing so much back-slapping in the thirty-odd pubs – not including the Hero – on the peninsula that his right hand had grown calluses. The slap on the back usually included a free middy followed by the words, ‘Hope we can count on you, mate!' And Danny knew that for the most part Tommy could. If there was any ambivalence under the slapped back, a beer usually sealed the issue for Labor. Those were the unspoken local rules, and while Tommy was fat, he wasn't a fool.

Danny listed thirteen changes as his campaign pledge, using a train analogy that had first come from Helen, one night when they were sitting on the verandah after dinner and she had referred to Danny as an engine of change.

‘So I'm a train driver now, am I?'

‘Perhaps,' Helen had said, suddenly serious. ‘If you think of change as a train, then each manifestation of change is like a separate wagon. The renovation of Brokendown Street is just one of the wagons. The new fashion industry started by Erin Walsh and her friends is another; darling Pineapple Joe with his T-shirt factory yet another. Two real-estate companies who usually stick to the posh suburbs have hung up their shingle in Darling Street – that's another wagon. Even Harry Farmer lending money for a house that isn't tied to a thirty-five-year mortgage is a wagon.' Helen hesitated. ‘Now, if you can just get into parliament as an Independent and pressure them to change the zoning laws, that's when we'll get the train out of the goods yard and onto the track, heading somewhere that matters.'

‘I like the analogy of the train,' Danny had said. ‘I'll use that.' And he had. Most of the wagons appealed to women: clean air over Balmain was one such wagon, another was a park for kids to play where the soap factories currently stood. It became known as the Tiger Train, and in the last months of the campaign, many of Pineapple Joe's donated T-shirts featured a train with thirteen trucks forming a band around the midriff, each truck announcing a separate change. Labor voters named it ‘The Dunny Train' because they thought it disappeared up its own arsehole, and his campaign workers were referred to as the ‘Truckers and Shunts', the play on two similar-sounding words never failing to produce a grin among male Labor voters.

For the first time since Doc Evatt had stood as an Independent thirty-eight years earlier, the election became a rowdy, contentious, quarrelsome affair. Fights ensued outside the pubs and women openly defied their husbands by wearing Tiger 13 T-shirts. Wife bashings increased and the incidence of the Saturday-night drunken ‘naughty' decreased decidedly as the household vote was split down the centre. Three of Danny's young male campaign workers were beaten up when each had unwisely entered a pub just before ten-o'clock closing, while most of his female volunteers were regularly verbally abused, referred to as ‘Dunny sluts'. All of them eventually took it in their stride; it was, they realised, all part of the dirty game of politics.

Polling day finally arrived and by seven o'clock that night, an hour after the polling booths closed, the ABC-TV announcer in the tally room counted the safe seats for Labor, blithely including Balmain as a traditional Labor seat. But not long after, he announced the first big surprise of the election: the Independent, Daniel Dunn, running in the seat of Balmain, seemed to be winning, but it would be a close finish. ‘Nifty Dunn has once again caught us all napping,' he announced cheerfully.

The celebration party was held in the gardens of Helen and Danny's home, at the far end of the partially restored Brokendown Street. Pineapple Joe, wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a house made out of a pineapple above the words ‘Pineapple Real Estate', announced that he was going into the local real-estate business. ‘Houses we are soon sellink to more of za wankers!' he announced, slapping Danny on the back.

Danny thanked him for his support, and Joe had the good grace to look somewhat sheepish. He was aware that the member for Balmain knew about him winning the contract to produce Labor T-shirts for the election, not only for Balmain, but for all the seats in the state Legislative Assembly, in the process making himself a small fortune. ‘Danny, business is business, but for mein friend, anythink you are wantink – you understan'.' He then tapped the side of his head with his forefinger. ‘But also I must be using always mein intellects.' Whereupon he pulled a T-shirt from his trouser pocket and laughingly declared, ‘Maybe, God forbid, today you are losink already, Danny.' He then held up the T-shirt that read:

Wankers go home!

A month before state parliament was due to reconvene, Danny had moved into his small backbencher's office in the old parliament building in Macquarie Street. It had taken two weeks before the overall results were finally confirmed. Labor had lost the popular vote but the Liberals would need the help of the two Independents to govern, as the major parties in the Legislative Assembly were tied.

Danny had only been ensconced in Parliament House two days when Bob Askin rang to congratulate him and ask if he could drop around to see him. Danny was surprised that he didn't suggest his own office for the meeting, but he'd been expecting the call.

‘Yes, of course, Bob, drop around anytime, but you'd be best to come alone; my office can only accommodate one visitor's chair.' It was, of course, his way of saying he wanted a private talk with the tough-minded Liberal leader.

‘I'll be around in ten minutes,' Askin replied.

Danny grinned to himself – Nifty's luck had held. Nobody had expected the election to be this close. Most pundits had predicted an easy win for the Liberals, who themselves had been caught with their pants down, reasonably expecting that after Labor had been in government for twenty-four years and were known to be corrupt, the election would be a cakewalk. If it had been, then Danny was under no illusions – he'd have been about as welcome in the Liberal ranks as a loud fart in a crowded lift. But things had gone well, very well, and he knew he was in the box seat.

Askin arrived promptly and Danny moved his chair to face the guest chair without the desk separating them. It was a small gesture and probably one that would go unnoticed, but then you never knew.

‘Welcome, and congratulations. It looks like you'll be the first non-Labor Premier in twenty-four years,' Danny began after they'd seated themselves.

Bob Askin grinned. ‘Not hard to tell why I'm here, is it? The last time we met I pissed in your pocket, to no avail, and it seems your gamble to stand as an Independent has paid off. Now I'm prepared to do so again,' and he gave a distinctly braying politician's laugh.

‘I shouldn't think that's necessary, Bob. The Labor Party happily accepted my resignation and I can't say they've taken their defeat in Balmain with good grace.' He shrugged. ‘So I guess you've got the inside running.'

‘The offer to join us still stands, Danny. But, of course, it isn't immediately a useful move for you. Nevertheless, you should think about your long-term future in politics.'