The Story of Danny Dunn by Bryce Courtenay

Going to the Olympic trials and then maybe the Olympics would undoubtedly distract him from his studies, and Half Dunn knew Brenda wouldn’t have a bar of that. Over my dead body, mate! She was fanatical about her precious son going to university. It was the major reason they’d left Wagga. Just about the major reason for everything she did. Unlike the rest of Balmain, the football crowd included, even if the water-polo team won gold in Germany and gave Danny a hero’s welcome and a street parade, he knew she couldn’t have given a fuck, if, in the process, he hadn’t made it into Sydney University. And that was the basic problem. Her way of thinking wasn’t the way the peninsula saw things. Her values were not the same as theirs. He could clearly understand their resentment.
    As it transpired, Danny had gone down to the pool to face his mates that night, take the flak, cop it sweet, accept their agro. Half Dunn and Brenda had tea alone in the pub kitchen, where he seized the opportunity to tackle her on the subject. He told her about the visit of the water-polo delegation and the very real threat they’d made. As usual she listened politely. That was the thing. She was a feisty woman with the staff or anyone else who gave her strife, but never with him. It was as though she thought him so far beneath her contempt that he wasn’t worth getting all hot under the collar about.
    But, then again, she was unfailingly polite, often even sympathetic. It was just that, in the end, she never took any notice of his opinions.
    When he brought up the prospect of half the patrons deserting the pub, her expression barely changed. When he’d finished talking and she’d brought him his pudding – IXL canned peaches and custard – he asked, ‘Well, what do you think we should do?’
    â€˜Nothing, dear,’ she replied evenly, starting to clear the dishes.
    â€˜Nothing? Jesus! You mean, you ain’t gunna change your mind?’
    â€˜That’s right, dear. No need to take God’s name in vain,’ she chided gently.
    Sometimes he got this terrible urge to punch her, smash in her bog-Irish teeth. Blood everywhere. Serve her fucking right.
    But then, smiling, she placed her hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Never mind about the shoe, dear. We’ll get you a brand-new pair.’
    Fuck me dead! He hadn’t even mentioned his scuffed two-tone brogue.
    Now here’s the funny thing. Three days later, the Australian Water Polo Association decided in their annual committee meeting that eighteen was the minimum age for a player to represent his country at water polo and, at the same time, issued a statement saying they lacked the funds to bring the top players from the various states for team trials, let alone to meet the cost of sending a team to Germany, but they were considering the following Olympics as an opportunity to qualify.
    The storm in the teacup abated and there was no noticeable fall in patronage at the Hero. It was business as usual, both inside the pub and at the peas-and-spuds soirees. In fact, purely by coincidence, a day after the announcement that there would be no Olympic water-polo team, Doc Evatt, once the Labor, then independent member for Balmain, turned up at the Hero of Mafeking and stayed an hour, which did no harm whatsoever to Brenda’s reputation as a publican. There were thirty pubs on the peninsula and he’d chosen hers three times in a row. Evatt, though not born and bred in Balmain, was nevertheless a favourite son, so much so that when he’d split from the main faction of the Labor Party after a quarrel over policy, the almost totally reliable Labor vote on the peninsula switched and he was voted in as an independent. He’d left politics to be appointed the youngest justice ever to the High Court. Occasionally, if he was passing, he’d drop by to keep in touch with his ex-constituents – once a