Free The Story of Danny Dunn by Bryce Courtenay

reaction but he tried to stay calm by telling himself it was pretty well what he expected. Brenda had never liked the Brits. She’d blamed them for the loss of her brothers in the First World War, and he now saw that she wasn’t going to let him join up without a fight and certainly not before he’d completed his degree. Besides, she’d withdrawn from the argument, and throwing a shitty in front of his pathetic father wasn’t going to help.
    â€˜It’ll need a dressing. You’re probably going to have a pretty sore noggin for a few days; the bump on the back of your head is the size of a golf ball,’ Danny exaggerated.
    â€˜Yeah? Jesus, what do you think? Concussion?’ Half Dunn asked somewhat hopefully.
    Danny held three fingers up in front of Half Dunn’s face, one of the tests if you got a bad knock on the football field. ‘How many fingers?’
    â€˜Three . . . I think,’ Half Dunn replied, clearly disappointed. Danny reduced the finger count to one. ‘One,’ his father called.
    â€˜Three and one are both correct. No concussion. Now hold still while I fix this dressing.’ Danny attended to the superficial wound with several unnecessary dabs of iodine, each one accompanied by a sharp indrawn breath or an ouch from his father. He then covered it in a wad of cotton wool the size of the back of his hand, and secured this with wide strips of Elastoplast to the bald patch at the back of Half Dunn’s head and to his neck. It was time for some revenge. Danny wound the bandage several times over the top of Half Dunn’s head and under his father’s several chins until he looked as if he’d been the victim of a major accident. Brenda would be truly alarmed when she saw it. ‘If I were you I’d play this one for all it’s worth, Dad,’ he advised, grinning, knowing that his father didn’t need to be told twice.
    Danny helped him down the stairs, Half Dunn sure he was too dizzy to navigate them alone. Looking suitably pathetic, Half Dunn, practising a few quiet but manly groans, levered his great carcass onto the reinforced stool at the main bar.
    Danny then attended to all the jobs Brenda would normally be doing to get the pub ready to receive the first customers of the day. At a quarter to ten he realised he ought to be gone. Half Dunn’s moment in the sun was about to arrive as Brenda appeared to open the pub, and much as he would have liked to be present, if he was, Brenda might just play it straight and not react. She was tough enough. Half Dunn must have shared his thoughts, because he said, ‘She’ll be down soon, son – never misses opening. I’ll tell yer mother you’ve gone to uni, eh?’
    Danny, perhaps out of childish pique, didn’t attend university that day, but instead spent the morning walking around the peninsula, then went down to the pool and trained for two hours. Hungry after the swim, he bought a sandwich and spent the rest of the afternoon playing touch football and then a game of pool at the club with some of his unemployed mates. The talk was all about the war and joining up with the Sixth Division. He arrived back at the Hero of Mafeking just after six o’clock closing, knowing he must confront his mother once more.
    Brenda was in the beer garden feeding six magpies, now several generations removed from the original Sao triplets. ‘Mum, can I talk to you, please?’ Danny said.
    Brenda turned from feeding the birds. ‘Oh, hello; there you are, dear,’ she called back calmly, as if nothing had happened.
    â€˜Mum, about this morning . . .’ Danny began.
    Brenda threw a final handful of Sao cracker crumbs for the greedy birds, then, turning back to Danny, she brushed the remaining crumbs from her hands and the front of her apron. ‘It all came as a bit of a shock this morning. Will you give me two or three days to think about