The Grand Hotel (32 page)

Joan Sweeney laughed. ‘You're not wrong there, Mr Arvo. Tom's an asset right then and there, make no mistake.'

The gang-gangish sound of squeaking cork was heard again and Joan Sweeney offered Mr Arvo another port, this time on the house.

‘That's very kind,' said Mr Arvo. ‘Now, Mrs Sweeney, about your flowers. I was wondering if I may be able to help you with them.'

‘With the flowers?' replied Joan Sweeney. ‘Oh never mind that, Mr Arvo. I enjoy collecting them. It's that and swimming which keeps me sane around here.'

‘No, no, Mrs Sweeney, I didn't mean you'd need help with the collecting. More with the naming.'

‘The naming?'

‘Yes. You were saying just before that you don't know half the names of the flowers you pick for your vases.'

‘That's right.'

‘Well, you see, it's there where I might be able to help.'

‘How so, Mr Arvo?'

‘It's a long story, Mrs Sweeney, but in essence, before I left Finland, I had trained for a time as a botanist. As a very young man, you understand.'

‘How interesting,' said Joan Sweeney.

‘Yes, well I never did complete my studies – my true vocation was to travel the wide world and it's that which I pursued. But, after spending four or five unsuccessful years in the dregs of the diggings, on Bendigo, Ballaarat and Blackwood, a man told me one day that the Baron von Mueller was in need of botanical fieldworkers in Melbourne – to assist with the collection at the Botanical Gardens there, you understand.'

‘I do, Mr Arvo, I do.'

‘So you see, Mrs Sweeney, I found employment with von Mueller and thankfully got off the parsimonious diggings. As it turns out, the very week that I left I received news that my father had died back in Finland. Being an only child, I had inherited the whole of his estate. I was no longer in need of an income. But my interest was now aroused by the opportunity to work alongside the baron, so I went to enquire about the post. I met von Mueller in his cottage and we got on well, for he too had an interest in travel as well as plants. In short, Mrs Sweeney, I was appointed as his assistant-in-the-field and spent the next four years neglecting the duties of my inheritance back in Finland and ranging across Victoria instead, predominantly in the mountainous areas, collecting and classifying native species on his and the governor's behalf. As such there was for a brief time even a small herb named in my honour by the baron, for I had collected this hitherto undiscovered plant in quite precipitous circumstances on the upper reaches of the Yarra near Warburton.'

‘Oh, Mr Arvo, I had no idea. We knew you were a man of music, and like my late husband you always have your nose in a book, but really, a botanist. And working with von Mueller! Tell me, what was the name of the herb in your honour?'

‘It is a native wild mint, Mrs Sweeney. Von Mueller named it
Mentha Longifolia variation Nuortila
, or in English simply the Nuortila mint, after me, Arvo Nuortila. I must say, to have such an honour even for so brief a time was the final persuasion I needed to settle permanently here. Of course I had to return to Finland to tie up my affairs, but as soon as I could I returned to Victoria, where I am destined now to stay. After all there are no fir trees back in Finland named after me. My family have all passed on. And I was never made so welcome in America. So here I am.'

‘Here you are indeed, Mr Arvo,' said Joan Sweeney, obviously impressed.

‘But the point of all this, Mrs Sweeney, is not the Nuortila mint as such, but the fact that I may be able to assist you with the naming of the flowers you love so much.'

‘Yes, yes, I see, Mr Arvo. But really, I should be calling you Mr Nuortila, shouldn't I?'

‘No, Mrs Sweeney. Mr Arvo is my name here at The Grand Hotel and I like it just fine.'

‘But now I know the Nuortila name is famous, it doesn't seem right.'

Mr Arvo began to laugh, in a satisfied kind of way. ‘Oh no, the only famous name around here is Sweeney, and you well know that. Your courage and hospitality is famous from here to the Glenelg River. And please, now let me return some of your favours and help you with the flowers. Perhaps I could accompany you when you're out collecting one day?'

‘Mr Arvo,' said Joan Sweeney, in an ironic tone, ‘are you asking me to join you on a picnic?'

Once again the Balt laughed with relish, as he fervently denied any connotations that might be construed from his request. But Joan Sweeney was quite obviously in charge of the situation, and now she set his mind to rest. ‘Mr Arvo, don't perturb yourself. Of course I'd be honoured if you'd come collecting in the bush with me sometime soon. And I'd be more than curious to know the flowers' official names. It's a very kind offer.'

In full swing Mr Arvo began naming the flowers right away. ‘Well, for a start, Mrs Sweeney,' he said, ‘the “tassel flowers”, as you call them, in the vase there by the quart of boiled eggs on the bar, they are known botanically as
Thysanotus tuberosus
. In common speech, the fringe lily.'

‘The fringe lily,' Joan Sweeney repeated to herself. ‘My old tassel flowers, eh? They're lilies. Who would've thought? It makes me wonder what constitutes a lily. Thank you for that, Mr Arvo. I look forward to learning more.'

Tom String could be heard muttering to himself behind the bar now and demonstratively clattering among the dishes. Joan Sweeney called across to him from where she was sitting with Mr Arvo. ‘Tom, you'd never believe it but Mr Arvo here had a plant named after him by the Baron von Mueller!'

‘The Baron von who?' replied Tom String, gruffly.

‘Von Mueller, Tom. The German. The famous botanist.'

‘You don't say, missus. So, Mr Arvo, you're a big knob are ya?'

‘No, no, Tom, don't be like that,' said Joan Sweeney. ‘He's offered to come collecting with me and tell me what the names of these flowers we fill the pub with are. You see, Mr Arvo's a botanist himself.'

‘No, no, Mrs Sweeney,' interrupted Mr Arvo. ‘As I said, I didn't take my degree in botany, I took it in–'

‘Oh don't fret yourself,' said Joan Sweeney, cutting him off. ‘You worked for von Mueller and you've had a mint bush named in your honour. That's good enough for us. Isn't it, Tom?'

‘Whatever you say, missus.'

‘Yes. See, Mr Arvo, we're an understanding lot here. And as I was saying earlier tonight, we value experience of life in The Grand Hotel over university educations any day of the week. Tom, this is exciting. What was it called again, Mr Arvo? The mint, that is?'

‘The Nuortila mint. But it's no–'

Joan Sweeney interrupted him again. ‘I think this calls for a toast, Tom, don't you? It's not every day The Grand has a lodger like this. Talk about hiding your light under a bushel! Let's rustle up that leftover champagne from the anniversary dinner and have a Black Velvet to celebrate. Make enough for the girls too. And the lads over there. I know Ding Dong's partial to a nobbler. Well don't just stand there making a racket, Tom String. Set to, old chap. We're going to toast the Nuortila mint. With the man himself, our very own Mr Arvo Nuortila.'

Joan Sweeney's obvious excitement with Mr Arvo's tale of the Nuortila mint was surprising in one seemingly so levelheaded – at least it was to myself and Maria as we sat glued to the transistor in The Sewing Room. Tom String grunted unceremoniously as she hurried him along to fix the Black Velvets for the toast. He was nothing if not dutiful and soon the sound of wooden latches could be heard clicking and unclicking behind the bar followed by the sibilant double-cascading sound of stout and champagne being poured into a jug.

I was enthralled by absolutely everything we'd heard since Kooka had fallen asleep, but now I was especially happy to listen as the gang in the old Grand Hotel toasted Mr Arvo's Nuortila mint with the very Black Velvets we had enjoyed so recently ourselves down below in our own bar.

As Bait Belcher, Jimmy and Ding Dong raised the free celebratory drinks to their lips, along with the three whores from Ballarat, it seemed the ice had been broken and that everyone was getting along famously. Everyone except Tom String that is. As his annoyed clattering recommenced behind the bar, Arvo Nuortila began to sing in a rich and formal baritone.

Mr Arvo's song was accomplished and strong but at the sound of it Tom's racket seemed to increase even further. In a short voice Joan Sweeney quickly told him to shoosh.

It wasn't long before the shuffle of dancing could be heard on the old hotel floor. Even young Jadey was giggling, with the rag removed from her nose, and amidst all the fun the occasional bleating of the goats, who were still ensconced by the fire, could almost have been mistaken for bestial laughter. Whatever the case the spree in the pub was now well underway, so much so that all the activity ruffled Kooka's feathers somewhat. His face started to twitch and he let out a jovial ‘Hoy!' before turning over to face the blaring tranny, which at that precise moment lost its contact with the dream.

Pure static returned to The Sewing Room and we let out a disappointed sigh. For a few moments we waited in hope, but we knew the rub. And when soon after the tranny glitched again and the prime minister's voice could be heard discussing his government's new policy on carbon emissions, we knew the fun was over.

People Are Stupid

When I awoke in the loft of my barn the next morning, after another measly two hours of sleep, it was to my phone ringing at the bottom of the ladder. Checking the clock radio, I found it was barely 7am. I hadn't had a call that early since my father used to ring me from the main house to make sure I got up for work on my holidays from art school. He absolutely hated the thought of having a layabout for a son.

My head was pounding from the lack of sleep, and my stomach was queasy too as I stumbled down the old ironbark ladder. I was in such a state of fatigue I had no choice other than to take my time – I'd gone arse over tit down the ladder once before and had nearly skewered myself on a drying fox skeleton in the process. Rushing my descent has never been worth the risk.

Whoever was on the other end of the line was persistent, so much so that by the time I picked up the receiver I was convinced my old dad had come back to life. I wasn't prepared to rule anything out after what had been going on in The Sewing Room. Such was my surprise, then, when I heard not my dad's voice but a very gruff and muffled, ‘Is that you, Noel?' coming down the line.

‘It is,' I replied. ‘And who have I the pleasure of talking to at this, shall we say, unprofessional hour?'

‘Don't shit me, Noel,' the gruff voice now said, and the penny dropped. It was the aggressive tone with the bonafide hint of violence that did the trick. It was Rennie Vigata from out in the Poorool hills.

‘Rennie. Sorry, mate, I didn't recognise you. You don't normally call. How can I help?'

There was a silence on the other end of the phone, a silence so long I thought the line had been gnawed at by a possum, but finally, just as I was about to hang up, Rennie said, ‘Noel, I was wondering if you'd come out here for a visit.'

‘What's up, Rennie? You normally leave the hospitality stuff to me.'

Once again there was silence, but this time I knew to wait. ‘Don't shit me, Noel,' he said again, and this time with even more of an edge to his already scary voice. ‘I'll see you out here in a couple of hours, okay.'

He hung up, without even giving me a chance to answer. I could've been giving the eulogy at a close friend's funeral that day for all he knew. ‘Shit,' I said aloud, standing bed-haired at the bottom of the ladder in my T-shirt. ‘That's all I need.'

By nine o'clock, however, I was dutifully backing out under the pine trees in Kooka's Brumby, with a can of Choke wedged between the handbrake and the seat. The sun was out and after the night I'd had sunglasses were just not enough protection against the glare. I felt each bump as the Brumby rumbled along, eventually swinging inland from the sealed onto the unsealed Dray Road. All the while I was wondering what the hell it was that'd got up Rennie's nose so much that it required a visit.

Rennie Vigata's place is deeply hidden in the hills, in a depression between the two Poorool saddles that back onto the old Victree Pine plantation. You wouldn't know it's there until you actually arrive on the spot and begin to notice the elaborate security set-up, which was installed by his friends in the Melbourne underground when he was sent into exile. No one around our parts knows exactly why Rennie had to go live out there, and you can bet your bottom dollar no one's been game to ask. But when you do finally arrive on the fenceline of his property, you can be mistaken for thinking he's running a kangaroo farm. And that's not because there's mobs of kangaroos hanging around – it's pretty much all wallaby country out there anyway – it's because his fences are so high that not even a Big Red from out Broken Hill way could jump over them. Added to that there are cameras and spotlights posted every fifty metres or so and at least three teeth-baring Alsatians just hankering to eat both you and your tyres as you drive up to the gate.

All in all it's pretty welcoming, which made me even more curious as to why on earth he'd invited me out there. Back when we'd decided upon his Dancing Brolga Ale as our Recommended Loosener, I'd suggested a visit to discuss the fine detail, but Rennie wasn't keen. He said at the time that he had to come into town anyway, but I got the distinct impression that his place was off limits to your average punter like myself. God knows what went on out there behind the high-wires, with just him, his girlfriend, Lee, and the dogs. One thing was for sure though: Rennie Vigata wasn't using the seclusion out at Poorool to run an ashram.

I pulled up at the gate, got out of the car and stretched my limbs. Only a few months ago I'd decided to live with a new lightness in my step and to let my imagination run free, and now I was spending my nights listening to an old man's dreams being broadcast over a tranny and my mornings visiting my one and only bulk beer supplier, who just happened to live in what resembled the local concentration camp. It was one of those situations where if you stepped outside yourself and looked in, you might go absolutely bonkers. Whatever happened, I wondered, to my quiet simple life drawing the world I knew and loved?

Through a black speaker hidden among gumleaves to the left of the gun-metal high gates I heard Rennie's voice talking to me from somewhere inside the property. ‘G'day, Noel,' he growled. ‘When the gates open, take your car up the driveway and park it in the red shed that says “Wood”. You'll see my beast in the shed next to it. I'll meet ya there.'

Rennie hung up and sure enough the heavy gates slowly opened inwards onto the property, revealing an innocuous driveway, at the end of which was a two-storey hippy-ish looking timber house with a red Colorbond roof, the kind that was all the rage during the government compensation schemes after the 1983 bushfires. Somehow I'd expected Rennie to have built his own place out there, or to have had it built for him by his gangland philanthropists, but it appeared that once you'd got past the grizzly perimeter of his property, Rennie Vigata and Lee lived on a small Poorool farm just like any other.

I followed his instructions and drove the Brumby up the drive, wondering where the snarling Alsatians had disappeared to. I spotted the red shed, which had a large and very productive looking vegetable patch to one side of it. On the other side of it was Rennie's black vehicle.

Coming down a short path running through a kitchen garden from the house to the vegie patch were Rennie and Lee, dressed in symmetrical blue and black, followed by a white toy poodle and a tortoiseshell cat. They were smiling and waving hello as if I'd just arrived for Christmas. It was all very odd.

I parked the Brumby in the shed. As I got out, the cat was the first to greet me, with a nuzzle against my ankles and a coquettish
meeow
. Rennie and Lee and the poodle followed, and their mood was uncharacteristically bright.

‘Welcome to our little patch of paradise, Noel,' Lee said, extending her long arm and smiling.

‘Yeah,' said Rennie in his gravelly voice, shaking my hand after Lee. ‘Sorry about the short notice, Noel, but I'm glad you could make it.'

Bemused by all the good cheer, I went straight into my usual polite mode, with plenty of ‘no worries' and a couple of ‘it was good to get out for a drive' type lines. We made our way with the cat and the poodle back up the path through the kitchen garden and entered the house through a screen door under a bull nose awning.

‘I'm cooking us all some breakfast,' Lee said, rounding an island kitchen bench in the far left-hand corner of a big living room. Despite the fact I'd cooked myself some greasy bacon on toast before I'd left the hotel, I didn't refuse. I wasn't at all sure my sleep-deprived tummy could handle anything more to eat, but I just couldn't disappoint Lee, whose enthusiasm was that of a woman who rarely, if ever, had visitors to cook for. ‘Great,' I said. ‘I could do with a bit of a pep-up.'

As the sausages, eggs and bacon fried, and the Poorool field mushrooms were tossed with herbs in a separate pot by Lee, Rennie poured me a strong espresso from a retro Gaggia coffee machine on the bench and bade me sit down on one of two immaculate red leather chesterfield couches that were the centrepiece of the room. He started to chitchat in a way I'd never heard him do before. He talked about a recent burn-off the DSE had done a few miles south of where we sat, and I told him I'd seen the smoke from way back down in the valley. He talked about the bits and pieces of carpentry he was doing around the house and about his ‘fog-fed sheep', which he had managed to get an organic classification for and was butchering himself in an old limestone signal-house that stood on the cleared spur of his pasture below the house. He had a vacuum-packing machine, he said, and he'd give me some of the lamb before I left, to trial in the hotel. That got him on to talking about self-sufficiency, and by the time Lee called ‘Ready or not', in a sweet angelic voice from the kitchen, he was properly bashing my ear about peak oil.

‘I've teed up with this fella over near Beech Forest. He's got a tourist cafe he runs just near that treetop walk. He reckons I can have all the vegie oil he normally chucks, for nix. Shit, he reckons there's so many people goin' through there these days that I'll have more than enough to run the van. You just boil it up – you don't even have to mix it with ethanol if you don't want – and I've got the old digger-arm on the bobcat here to make a pit to store the drums. So pretty soon fuel won't be cheap for me, Noel, it'll be free! I'll be able to drive flatchat right through the fuckin' apocalypse.'

We sat at the dining table talking as Lee brought the plates over, piled high with pork sausages, crispy bacon, toast, mushrooms, and even a little steamed spinach. There was HP Sauce, tomato sauce, apple sauce, French mustard, English mustard, kelp chutney, Woody's Junction tomato relish, Worcestershire sauce and a selection of home-made jams, marmalades and jellies arranged on the table, all unopened, as if they'd been waiting for my visit.

I said nothing but graciously accepted Rennie's offer of another espresso from the shining chrome coffee machine. And then we all tucked in.

When they'd last been to the hotel for anything other than a delivery of Dancing Brolga kegs, Rennie and Lee had danced all night in a tight clinch to The Blonde Maria and The Connotations. They'd seemed about as dangerous and hot as a couple could get. No one dared to bump into them on the dance floor and at the time I imagined them out there at Poorool, deep in the fog, locked in that very same clinch for months on end. But now, sitting down with them over breakfast, in their sunny down-home living room, they could almost have been mistaken for a couple running a B&B. That's of course if it wasn't for Rennie's unshaven jaw and the scary glint of his coal-black eyes.

Eventually the pleasant chat died off and we ate in silence for a time, with Rennie grinding his jaw noisily to my left and occasionally spitting out bacon rind onto his plate. Lee didn't seem to notice this; she was obviously used to it. There was not a word from either of them about the hotel, not even a ‘how's it all going?'.

I broke the uncomfortable silence by venturing, ‘Nice snags. And beautifully cooked, Lee. You don't need a job do ya?'

Rennie looked up urgently from his plate and for a brief moment Lee watched him closely. Then she laughed it off. ‘Oh, Noel, can you imagine having to drive over those potholes down to Mangowak every day of the week? Nah. Last time we ate at your pub the food was spectacular.'

‘Thanks, Lee. But seriously, I wasn't sure if I was hungry until you put this down in front of me.'

‘We have a cooked breakfast every morning up here in winter and right through into spring,' Rennie said. ‘Warms you up. It's brass-monkey weather up here most of the year.'

‘Yeah. So I gather.'

Breakfast was finished off with a third straight espresso from the Gaggia, an Amaretti biscuit each but no further clue as to the reason for my visit. Instead, the little tortoiseshell cat was re-acquainting herself with me under the table and finally got up the gumption to jump onto my lap. ‘Marilyn, you naughty little starlet,' Lee said, as she began clearing away the plates.

‘She's no starlet, baby, she's a slut,' Rennie said, smiling and sucking breakfast dregs from his teeth. And then, ‘C'mon, Noel, I'll show you the brewery.'

We walked out a door at the opposite end of the room to which we came in and now I was struck by the secluded beauty of the property. With no security fences, cameras or dogs on this side of the house all you could see for miles beyond Rennie and Lee's sloping paddocks were the tree-clad hills. Even in the clear sunshine the hills retained their fuzzy lines as they rolled away into the west, one after another, going higher and higher off into the Otways where finally they took on a Himalayan, almost mystic cast.

Off to our right and below were the impressive spur and signal-hut where Rennie told me he slaughtered his sheep. And a couple of hundred metres or so to our left was the eastern fenceline of the property, beyond which it was all national park to the sea. Lower down the slope of this fenceline I could see another shed, not an old bush-pole and tin job like where the cars were parked but a recently assembled olive-green kit-shed, quite large in area, nestled with its back edge up against the national park trees. Rennie pointed to it and nodded. I gathered that's where we were headed.