The Grand Hotel (20 page)

‘I'll leave you gentlemen to it then,' he said officiously, before striding back across the yard towards his car.

I called after him. ‘But Sergeant. If Joan's arm is broken, someone will have to see to it. You couldn't drive him over to the Minapre Hospital to have it checked out could you?'

Despite the late hour this request was of course well within the bounds of what could be expected from a small town policeman. Knowing that Greg Beer was such a stickler for protocol, I couldn't see how he would refuse.

Amazingly, however, he did refuse, such was his fury at my reference to his mum's criminal habits of days gone by.

‘You've got a car, Noel. You can drive him,' he said bluntly.

‘But I...'

There were to be no ‘buts'. I watched helplessly as Greg Beer hit the central-locking button on his key ring. The slotting sound of his car doors opening signalled his resolve. He got in behind the steering wheel. But just as he was about to start the car, something behind Joan and I seemed suddenly to distract his attention. With his hand poised on the key in his ignition, he stared up at the second storey of the hotel. By the light in the cabin of his car we saw his mouth drop open and his face go all slack.

As Joan nursed his arm on the ground at my feet, I turned around and looked up. There was now a light glowing from The Lazy Tenor's room. It was a weird glow, with what could only be described as a wasabi-coloured tinge to it. Subsequently I discovered the glow came as a result of The Blonde Maria draping her bra over the bald bedside lamp.

She stood at the window, surrounded by the wasabi glow, a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The Blonde Maria. She was naked from the waist up, her full breasts on display to the evening. On her head was my father's favourite fishing beanie, pulled tight over her ears. She must've dug it out from the cupboard in The Lazy Tenor's room.

Looking up from the yard, the vision of her was unsettling, spectral. It could almost have been a ghost if it wasn't for the potent charge of her sexuality.

Just as quickly as she appeared, The Blonde Maria disappeared from the window back into the room, leaving myself and the sergeant with the heady after-image of her glory in the wasabi light. After a few silent moments Greg Beer collected himself and started the car. Uncharacteristically forgetting to turn on his headlights, and without so much as a glance in my direction, he backed out under cover of the pine trees and drove away into the night.

I spent the hours until dawn in the Emergency Department of the Minapre Hospital, as Joan had his fractured tap-arm set and plastered. As he finally came out of the surgery room around 5.30 am, I could hear Minapre's famously steak-indulged kookaburras laughing in the trees all around the building.

Joan walked over with his arm in its fresh sling. I pulled a pen out of my coat pocket, held it high in the air, and said, ‘May I?'

He grinned his old grin. ‘I dunno, Noel. I don't think it's dry enough yet.'

But I was determined. I'd been planning it while I was waiting. I gently pulled back the cotton sling from the plaster-cast on his arm and began my inscription.

In blue biro I drew a heart with an arrow crossing through it diagonally. At the top of the arrow I wrote the name JOAN and at the bottom below the arrow point I wrote JEN. Then I brushed the mushy wet plaster off the tip of my pen, replaced it in my coat pocket, stood back and looked at him.

He inspected what I had written. Looking up at me sheepishly, he said, ‘I do, Noel. I do love her.'

‘Well stop trying to be Spiderman scaling buildings in the middle of the night and start showing it.'

‘But, Noel, Maria ... she's so...'

‘Stop it!' I said, raising my voice. ‘Don't you see? This is a warning. You've gotta cut it out.'

Joan frowned, then nodded his head towards the laughing kookaburras beyond the automatic doors. ‘Let's get out of here,' he said.

Watching the Gannets

As always that morning there were things I had to do: cleaning, banking, ordering, etc., but all I really felt like doing was diving into the ocean. What with the initial excitement and then the various dramas in the hotel, I hadn't had a swim for what seemed like weeks. So I put on a pair of swimming shorts in my barn, selected my favourite fiddleback staff from the bundle in the corner near the big doors, and stepped out from under the pine trees to head down to the waves.

As I walked across the flat and began the climb up to the cliff above Horseshoe Cove, I was so bowed down with cares and worries I could've had a butterfly saying prayers on my nose and wouldn't have noticed. By the time I reached the top and laid eyes on the water below, my tears fell like rain that had been tangled up in my own personal bluestone-coloured cloud for weeks.

The tears fell as I walked along the clifftop track towards Squeaky Beach. Before long my shirt was drenched from the familiar salty giant-sized droplets. It was becoming clear that to laugh properly, fully, you first of all had to know how to really cry. Well, you can see that in a child. What baby is born laughing after all? No, first we cry, then we laugh. But a child doesn't feel wooden, like I had when I left for the clefts and overhangs. And it's from that wooden unfeeling source, that terrifying place where nothing matters anymore, where you could quite easily hack off your own arm for kindling, that my new kind of laughter had been born. This was the laughter from the depths of the human well, the laughter of full surrender, of tragedy ripened rather than left unripe, the laughter that comes up in the bucket along with the pitch black of the darkness below.

In the midst of the hotel's shenanigans perhaps it was too easy to forget that the darkness was always there, slowly turning like a planet unto itself, just underneath the light, fuelling every bright joke and cackle. Well, the dramatic implications of recent events had certainly reminded me. Despite our self-assurances, our artistic platitudes and social certainties, we were all actually caught in our lives between reality on the one hand and fantasy on the other. Why else would a country boy with a beautiful wife who he loved, and two sons who he'd die for, put everything at risk for the sake of an exotic young bohemian who could take or leave him like a day at the races? And why would a beautiful young singer, with genuine artistic talent and a timeless gift for entertaining the troops, retreat into her shell, refuse to sing, and devote herself to a frankly dubious character to whom she was just another in a long line of notable conquests? Sure, Louis Daley had a miracle voice, but did he seem to care about it that much? Not from what I could tell. He sang in the mornings as habitually as he pulled on his pants, and he seemed to care much more about getting his pants off again, at the first available opportunity, than he did about a singing career that would make him a household name.

And just because I could see all this clearly, it didn't mean that I myself was immune. The irony for me, of course, was that amidst the mundane burdens, the surreal realisations and unforeseen complications of running the pub, The Lazy Tenor's singing was a deeply therapeutic way to start the day. Without fail it reassured me, despite Veronica's despair, that great beauty was still possible in this life, that we could still soar above the rucks of ugliness, even this late in the human story. That confidence alone, which I could rely upon for as long as The Lazy Tenor remained a lodger, was by itself almost worth all the anguish. So where was my own border between reality and fantasy? Frankly, I didn't know, and perhaps, after my charmed encounter with the brolga, the brolga that everyone assured me couldn't possibly exist, I didn't care to. All I knew was that The Lazy Tenor's singing was a privilege, and not only for the rich.

By the time I was approaching the track down to Squeaky Beach, my tears were satisfactorily spent and there was a spring in my step at the prospect of the swim. As I walked, I began to notice the little flowers in the undergrowth all around me: the wine-dark peas, the running postmans, the everlasting daisies and the fringe lilies. Before she died, Mum always liked to say that to notice the little flowers in the bush around Mangowak is to know your mind and heart are clear. They seemed to vanish, to disappear in the face of tension, or muddle-headedness, or madness, but of course they were always there, the little flowers, each in their own right season. It was only the looker who could go missing, Mum always told us; it was only the looker who would wander off into gloom and blindness. Not the little flowers.

I descended the Squeaky Beach steps and arrived on the sand to find no one else around. I stripped off and ran through the white breakers before plunging deep into the clear green water between the sets.

My instincts had been right. A walk and now a swim was doing me the world of good. I could feel my spirit shedding its burdens, my cells reawakening, the tawdry sexual life of the upstairs rooms of the hotel, and the worry over Veronica's dissatisfaction, being replaced by a purer saltwater sensation.

The swell was solid, with waves peeling off the reef at about three feet. I was surprised no one was out there surfing but didn't dwell on it. I took pleasure in the fact that for the moment it was all mine to enjoy.

For half an hour or so I bodysurfed, riding high with head and shoulders out above the tumbling white water. The massage of the surf relaxed my body, and afterwards I stood peacefully in the marbled slack between the waves, diving under each one as it came along.

I was sufficiently unwound now to allow everyday tasks to re-enter my mind. I dived and stroked in the underhum of the water and began to make a list of the things that needed ordering for The Grand.

A new delivery of The Dancing Brolga Ale from Rennie Vigata ... ten one-kilo pats of butter from the Pollsmere farm at Gellibrand ... two dozen seven-ounce glasses and one dozen five-ounce ponies from Stewart Cellars in Melbourne ... three tonnes of white box from Mologa for the fire ... two twenty-can boxes of Portuguese olive oil from Odysseus in Minapre ... a new set of tablecloths, which Nan had told me were on sale at Dimmeys in Colac ... a new back-up USB cable for the screen in the bar. Jim had also asked me to order bass guitar strings for Oscar on the hotel letterhead – apparently they cost the earth. What on earth the hotel was doing buying musical equipment for The Barrels was beyond me, but as I swam in the silky life-giving waters at Squeaky Beach I hardly cared.

Eventually I emerged from the ocean and sat, tingling all over, on the beach. Still no one was around; it was my lucky day. I lay back and let the warm sun dry me. Before long I had fallen fast asleep.

When I awoke groggily some time later, I sat up to see a woman I recognised at the far end of the beach. It was Jen Sutherland. She was sitting on a rock at the end of the cove, where the sand finishes and the tide begins to run in over the potholes of the reef just there.

I stood up quickly and put back on my clothes. I would have liked to leave her in peace and go my own way, but I felt paranoid about doing so. What if she suspected her husband's affair with The Blonde Maria and interpreted my departure from the beach as collusion, as if I was avoiding her? Fact was, I had colluded with Joan, even to the extent of agreeing to back him up with his bogus story of how he'd broken his arm. He'd told Jen he'd fallen off a ladder while trying to fix the hotel's outside light.

I decided I couldn't risk it. I liked Jen, I respected her good sense and kindness, and so, saying a quick farewell to my solitude, I strolled over towards the rock to dishonestly declare my innocence by saying hello.

Jen wasn't surprised to see me. She turned from her reverie and smiled sweetly. ‘I saw you sleeping there, Noel. I didn't want to disturb you.'

She was naturally shy, so I knew this would have suited her. But now she moved over on the rock above the tide, to make room for me to sit down.

‘Joan's at home with the kids, of course, because of his arm,' she said. ‘I'm sure it's all a bit inconvenient for you, Noel, but it's a godsend for me. I can't remember the last time I sat by myself on the beach like this.'

‘And now I've come along and ruined it,' I said.

‘Oh no,' she laughed. ‘I was just beginning to get bored.'

I didn't believe her; the dreamy looking woman I'd observed sitting on the rock as I woke up was far from bored.

We sat in silence watching the tide poking its way into all the igneous nooks and pots and crevices of the brown and jagged reef. I felt a little nervous; Jen had such a quiet dignity about her. Any dignity I had at that moment seemed a trifle compromised.

‘I've always been superstitious about living on the coast,' she said, breaking the silence. It was an unexpected remark from one usually so private.

‘How come?'

‘I dunno. There always seemed to be dickheads coming from this direction when I was growing up.'

I laughed, but actually I was taking note of the fact that it was the first time I'd ever heard Jen Sutherland swear. ‘Dickhead' was just not one of her words. She was clearly feeling raw.

‘But when I sit on a rock like this and get some time alone, I can understand what all the fuss is about.'

‘Yeah, it's good,' I said.

‘Back home I used to love crawling on my belly out onto the blackwood boughs above our river. To just be by myself there, at dusk, in all that peace and quiet. I even wrote a very bad poem about it once. “When Time Stands Still”, it was called.'

She laughed a little at the memory. ‘But this is different,' she said. ‘This is like watching time passing.'

I nodded. We watched the water together.

Eventually I asked, ‘How are the boys?'

Jen smiled. She raised her arm and pointed while answering, at a gannet plummeting into the water about a hundred metres out. ‘Oh they're alright. Happy to have their dad home. Happy to write on his plaster.'

Again I laughed. She'd obviously seen what I had written in the hospital. The gannet bobbed on the water for a few seconds after its dive, then flew up into the air again. We both watched its path, hoping to see it dive again.

I said, ‘You know years ago a guy Veronica and I went to art school with turned his back on it all and went into advertising. A lot of people gave him shit about it, told him he was selling out and all that. Veronica was one of them. But I liked him and couldn't help feeling sorry that everyone was giving him such a rough time. So one day I rang him up to say I had an inspired idea and that he had to come down here to see me. When he arrived, I planned to bring him to the beach to watch the gannets dive. I was gonna explain that the only reason their heads didn't explode when they crashed into the water at over a hundred kilometres an hour was because they had little air sacs just under the skin of their brow to cushion the blow. I was gonna tell him that these were the world's first airbags. Then I was gonna suggest the ad. A beautiful luxury car snaking its way down the Great Ocean Road in dramatic winter weather. Out to sea behind the car the gannets are sheering down out of the sky, plummeting into the whitecaps. There's lush choral music in the background, the voice-over explains the connections. The car, complete with airbags and every other luxury feature, would be touched by the gannet's magic and included by implication in the beauty and wonder of the natural world. It was the perfect ad for a Volvo or Merc, and I knew it would get him off to a great start if he could get it to the right people.'

‘Absolutely,' Jen said. ‘It'd be a certainty.'

‘Yeah. But what happened was when he got down here, and we walked down the beach and were sitting watching them dive, I just couldn't bring myself to do it, to give him the idea. It was embarrassing. We sat on the beach and I didn't say a word. It just felt wrong, to use the gannets like that. And he kept saying, “Come on, so what is it?” until I found myself trying to convince him of what Veronica and the others had been saying all along. That he shouldn't go into advertising. He got real cranky then, and fair enough too, but I was stuck, and I couldn't think of anything else to say.'

On cue the gannet hovered high in mid-air in front of us, tucked its wings back and dived again, straight down, an arrow into the water. Jen and I were in awe, of both the elegance of the bird and of its sheer power, and watched as it bobbed on the surface before taking off and flying away west towards the Two Pointer Rocks.

‘Perhaps that's what Joan needed when he fell off the ladder the other night,' I joked. ‘An airbag.'

‘Might have saved a few hassles,' Jen laughed.

‘Don't you worry about him, though, Jen,' I said. ‘He'll be back at work soon. Do him good to have a spell at home anyway. And we're making enough to pay him while he's off.'

‘Yeah. He told me that. That's nice, Noel.'

We fell silent again until out of the blue Jen started humming, and then her lips parted and she began to sing ever so quietly in a light airy voice. I didn't recognise the song but her voice seemed as clean as the clear cold water in front of us. Then, just as quickly as she started, she stopped again.