The Grand Hotel (34 page)

‘Oh yeah? Well what if I call the cops in Colac and tell them to come up here tonight to intercept the semi?'

Rennie smiled. ‘You wouldn't do that,' he said, in a voice as flat as a basalt plain.

‘Why not?'

‘Because it would be pointless, that's why not. Do you think the Colac police don't know who I am, Noel? How do you think I got the permits to have all the security lights on my fences? This is all national park round here and my track's lit up like Bourke Street every night. How do ya think that's possible? Do you think it was a clerical error or something, mate?'

‘No, I suppose not,' I said, dejected.

Basically what Rennie was trying to tell me, in his traditionally charming manner, was that the police force was on his side but not on mine. And incredibly enough, it appeared to be true. Either way he was gonna get away with feeding The Grand Hotel hot liquor, so now he was extending an olive branch and offering me protection.

I felt a telltale bead of sweat trickling down my spine. Suddenly this was getting heavy. ‘Okay, I'm listening,' I said.

Like all the great ideas in the history of Western culture what Rennie Vigata proposed to me over the next few minutes was quite beautiful in its simplicity. Greg Beer would get a call that same afternoon notifying him of his long wished-for promotion to senior sergeant. He'd be posted to Sydney to take up his new job and a ‘friendly' policeman would be appointed as his replacement. If Greg Beer refused the position, his ambitious little career in the police force would be ruined. What was he going to choose, ruining The Grand Hotel over the advancement of his career? Not likely – not Greg Beer. Then, once he was single-handedly sorting out traffic and graffiti problems in the harbour city, Rennie and I would continue our little arrangement until we'd emptied the shed we were sitting in of its contents. Rennie wouldn't take any more deliveries from up north and in the meantime I could settle on a new supplier – maybe that South Australian convent beer that The Dancing Brolga Ale had pipped at the post. Rennie'd turn his full attention to his fog-fed lambs and The Grand Hotel could continue on as if nothing had ever happened beyond an unforeseen change of beer in the tap.

‘So what do ya reckon?' Rennie asked, jawing vigorously on his chewy now that he'd laid out his master plan. ‘I don't have to do this for you, you know.'

‘No, I know that,' I said solemnly. ‘And I can't quite work out exactly why you're bothering.'

‘Well, put it this way, Noel – it's because I can. A bloke doesn't agree to take the pill and come live out here in the fog like I have without being able to ask important people for a few favours.'

‘I see.'

‘So?'

‘There's no way.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘There's no way I can do it.'

‘You're kidding!'

‘Nup.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because it's not my scene.'

Rennie blew out hard through his nose and stamped a Cuban heel on the concrete floor. ‘What do you mean it's not your scene? It is your scene, it's gotta be now, and that's what I'm tellin' ya.'

‘You can stamp your foot all you like, mate, but I'm not gonna do it,' I said defiantly.

‘Why the fuck not?' he shouted. ‘You just agreed people are stupid, the world's fucked up. So what are you? Pure as the driven snow or somethin'?'

I sat up straight on the stool. From Rennie's passionate reaction I was beginning to sense that there was one other thing, one important ingredient in all this that he wasn't telling me. And something, call it an artist's intuition if you like, was telling me exactly what it was.

Feeling quite careless and confident now, I opened my arms out wide. ‘What are you getting so upset about it for?' I asked. ‘You'll be alright. You'll get away scot-free. And I'll look after myself, thanks very much.'

Now it was Rennie's turn to groan. ‘Yeah right,' he said. ‘And I'll be out here in the fog doing exactly the same if you don't agree to what I'm askin' you.'

‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?'

‘Well put it this way, Noel – it's not much fun for a beautiful young girl like Lee to live holed up out here with no friends but a poodle, a cat, and a pack of Alsatians trained by the police dog unit.'

Aha, my little hunch had been right. Somehow or other Rennie was on his last chance with Lee and I was caught in the sandwich.

‘Yeah, that's right,' he said, seeing the realisation of the situation in my eyes. ‘She didn't want to have a bar of this XXXX shit. The deal was she'd come out here with me and live behind the gates just so long as we made it wholesome. She's a fuckin' hippy at heart, Noel. She wanted the vegie patch, the organic farming, and I agreed to do it her way. Well I wasn't gonna come out here on me own, mate. Besides, I love her, she's hot.'

He went on, relaxing his grip on the chewy, ‘Anyway, when the first truck of beer arrived one night she went properly ballistic. She'd tricked up the logo for the slab we entered in your competition but as far as she was concerned that was just a bit of a lark. I hadn't told her what was behind it of course, what was happening up north. I couldn't. I thought I'd just deal with the problem when it arose, as usual. That's my way. And I couldn't refuse the grog, mate. Not once you blokes down at The Grand had decided to put it on tap as The Dancing Brolga. It was too neat. You were a perfect front. And to tell you the truth, it was pretty amusing as well. We'd go down there to listen to the band some nights and everyone'd be carrying on about the beer. I'd be pissing myself on the way home in the beast, but Lee was dark. Real dark. She kept threatening to leave. She said I'd broken the deal we had and, “If that sweet bloke Noel gets in trouble for this, you won't see me for dust, Rennie Vigata.” So now you can see what I'm on about. I don't give a fuck about you, Noel, but I give a fuck about Lee. If she left me, I'd top myself, I reckon. Couldn't live out here on me own. So anyway, that's what I'm so fuckin' upset about, mate. And that's why she's made me fill you in on what's goin' on. She won't hear of my solution to the problem without you goin' along with it. That's why you've got to agree to my plan.'

I wasn't sure whether Rennie was threatening me with that last comment or not, but I knew one thing for certain – I was decidedly uncomfortable about suddenly being the third person in the bed with him and Lee. It felt very cramped. My body temperature was rising rapidly. My skin was beginning to crawl. I wanted out, and
pronto
.

‘Look, let me think about it for a while would you, Rennie?' I said, almost gasping for air. ‘All this has come right out of the blue.'

‘Nah, mate. There's no time. I told ya, the mail's come through only last night. I rang you first thing. The fuckin' sergeant's likely to roll up and bust you tonight unless we do something about it.'

I sighed, running my hand through my hair. The pressure was too much. It was beginning to hit home that if I got busted and Lee left Rennie, then I could be in far deeper shit than losing my hotel. This Vigata character standing there glaring at me in the shed was a murderer; I was sure of it.

‘Look, mate,' I said, ‘I just can't decide right here on the spot, in this fuckin' shed. I need to breathe. What's say I think about it on the way home in the Brumby and I call you as soon as I get there? It only takes thirty minutes or so. Sound fair?'

Rennie stroked his unshaven chin with his fingers and started hammering his chewy again. He was dubious. ‘Alright then,' he said eventually. ‘But you make sure you ring me as soon as you get there. Do you hear?'

‘Yep. It's a deal. Now for pity's sake can we get out of this bloody shed. I need some air.'

The Valley of Vision

The drive home, once I'd nervously said goodbye and accepted Lee's kind gift of a jar of blackberry jam, was like no other I've experienced. I've driven the tracks and roads out in those hills countless times but never in such a state of terror and bewilderment.

I drove flat out from Rennie's gun-metal gates until I got off the Poorool saddles and back onto the Dray Road. What kind of cruel twist of destiny was it that had landed me in this situation? I had to wonder. If I said no to Rennie, there was no telling what he might do, but if I said yes then the whole concept of my hotel would be rendered a fraud. I'd be standing there poker-faced behind the bar while the rest of my friends were innocently drinking XXXX and thinking it was The Dancing Brolga Ale. And by the look of how many full pallets there were in Rennie's storage shed, that situation would last for quite a while. What's more, although Greg Beer was a prude and a terrible wowser, I had no interest in becoming the puppet-master at the crossroads of his life. Frankly I didn't want that much influence over anyone's life. Live and let live: that was my motto. All I really wanted was to sit on the old lichened ironstones out the back of the Bootleg Creek and paint some blue air, have a bit of ham and tabouli for lunch and see if I could get the atmos just right.

I really couldn't see how any of it was any fault of my own, except that my seeing the play-acting brolga in the bush had made me susceptible. So, was it just my imagination that had got me into all this trouble? Was it pure sentiment? Well, hardly. I'd also been bloody stupid enough to take on a bloke who needed to live behind high security out at Poorool as my beer supplier. Sure he was local, no matter how recent, and so was the grog – or so we thought – but in the end it was just dumb. And the fact that his relationship with Lee had come to have anything to do with me was debilitating. I felt like a bream who's just been swimming along minding his own business in the river until suddenly
whack
, he's got a shiny steel hook in his mouth, and someone's pulling him towards the surface of the water. If he tries to swim the other way, he's gonna rip his own face apart, but if he just lets it all happen pretty soon he's gonna be drowning in oxygen. Yeah, that's how I felt as I bumped along in the Brumby on my way back to town.

I cursed Rennie, Greg Beer, even Lee. And in the end I cursed my own hopeful visions. I could've cried. Right there on the Dray Road, I could've cried a whole pondful of tears, but I didn't. Instead I laughed. I laughed as hard as any kookaburra but maniacally, tearing along the tree-lined road in Kooka's bespoke Brumby, with the windows down and the wind whistling wildly.

The animals hiding in the roadside trees must have watched stunned as I sped by. By the shallow dam at Termite Junction a man and his young son sitting with yabby-strings in the water nearly got cleaned up as I tore around the bend. They scattered like dotterels at a skiffle-board, only narrowly escaping disaster. By the time I passed the Birdsong Quarry and got up onto Mexico Bend, my laughter was finally stalling into a pathetic series of chuckles.

I came round the fox-coloured bend and saw my home valley laid out in front of me – the green flats, the ridges on either side, the golden headland, the dune hummock, the eel of a river winding seaward to the mouth. It looked so lovely in the gentle December sunshine that immediately I was touched and my laughter disappeared. For the umpteenth time I realised that the perfect scale and beauty of this little valley was my deepest luck, my brightest joy, my most profound inspiration. Its gentle figurative truth had always been the measure by which I compared myself and my actions.

And so it came to me, clean as a fish, what I should do. I pulled over to the side of the road and switched off the engine.

The madness was over. The day went still. I began to cry. I wept long and silent. My tears were the size of dewdrops and they tasted like the sea.

The Mangowak Ode

As soon as I got home, I went straight to the barn and made two phone calls. Firstly I called Rennie but found that the call was diverted and that Lee answered instead. That flummoxed me. I asked her if I could speak to Rennie but she said he was down in the signal-hut doing a spot of butchering. She said he'd taken his mobile with him, but occasionally he lost reception out there on the spur – that must've been why the call was diverted back to the house. I said okay and then rummaged madly around in my mind for what message to leave. I didn't want to give anything away to Lee but I was buggered if I was gonna ring that bastard's farm ever again. I mean, how cocky was he? Telling me to call as soon as I got home and then pissing off to that signal-hut knowing there was a chance his phone would lose reception! He obviously thought there was no way a little wimp like me was gonna say no to his threats. Either that or he was already so enraged by my obstinacy that he had to let off a bit of steam by cleavering a few more innocent lambs.

Eventually I told Lee to tell Rennie that the Beer, with a capital B, was staying put in Mangowak. Not knowing if she knew the exact details of Rennie's plan, I asked her if she wouldn't mind writing the message down word for word, complete with the ‘capital B' part. I said it was a little joke of mine and that Rennie would find it funny. I told her he'd probably piss himself laughing, in fact.

Lee was cheery, and her voice over the phone sounded not so much sexy as just plain young. Without the tight jeans and the mascara, you could've mistaken her for some Facebook-addicted gopi girl. Now I understood what Rennie was up against: it wasn't me who was ‘pure as the driven snow', as he had put it; it was Lee. And something in him, in some deep, almost forgotten, uncriminalised part of himself, needed that. Desperately. Otherwise his own life was irredeemable and, as he had said, he might just take to himself with his own cleaver down in the fog-shrouded, blood-spattered signal-hut. Having delivered the message, my only chance was that he'd do that to himself before he'd bother doing it to yours truly.

Lee wrote down the message and thanked me; she said Rennie could do with a laugh. I said bye and accepted her offer to come out and visit them again soon. She was keen, she was befriending me – what could I say? She'd find out the real picture soon enough.

The next call I made was to Joan Sutherland. Once again the phone rang and rang before diverting to another line. Joan, Jen and the kids were on their way back from mass at St Catherine's Convent, and I'd got him on his mobile. ‘I want you back at work,' I told him. ‘I haven't slept for days and it's all too much.'

There was a pause on the other end of the line, just the sound of the Sutherland twin-cab whooshing down the road. ‘Yeah. But, Noel, I dunno if...'

‘Aw come on, Joan,' I interrupted. ‘You've been off for weeks. Just forget her would ya? You're a happily married man. And if you don't get back into the cot with Jen, I bloody well will!'

‘Sorry, Noel, what was that? I think we just lost reception there for a tick.'

In the barn I looked into the rafters and thanked the Lord. Until that very moment I'd had no idea I even felt that way about Joan's wife.

I took a deep breath. It seemed the whole grand edifice of so-called reality was unravelling right before my eyes. ‘I said you don't have to worry about Maria. She hasn't been downstairs once since the garden party. You won't even clap eyes on her. And plus, it's time you just got over it, mate. I need you.'

The voice on the other end of the line was nervous but chastened now. I was appealing to his better instincts, more precisely to his old fashioned country loyalty. ‘Okay, Noely, when do you want me?'

‘Today,' I said. ‘Before the doors open.'

Now I could hear Joan running it all by Jen in the passenger seat. Then he said, ‘Alright, mate, I'll be there.' At which point the reception dropped out for good.

I put down the phone and decided to take a shower. I stripped out of my sweat and tear stained clothes and under the hot jet of the barn shower found myself thinking of Kooka and his tranny full of magic. Now that The Grand Hotel was under siege from all sides, how could I possibly take it seriously? Surely someone was having a lend. But how? And then again, if things were going to come apart at the seams all I wanted was one more chance, at least one more night, with those dream broadcasts, with that magic. Unlike the rest of us Kooka had sloughed off his worldly skin of cares and worries. His tormented mother and his beautiful wife were now no more or less than ministering angels of the distant heavens. He had become a pure vessel for us, a giver, a mystery solver, a transmitter of the place. In a world so clogged with carnage and doubt and stupidity, this was as rare as gold. And I, being inextricably me, desperately wanted more of it.

Eventually getting out of the shower, I put my purple dress shirt on, with its embroidered chest and collar and its starched cuffs with the crimson cloth cufflinks still in them. This was the shirt I always wore for special occasions – for weddings, baptisms, special birthdays, exhibition openings, boat launchings and the like – and I could think of no more special occasion than the last hurrah of The Grand Hotel.

After dressing, I stepped out of the big double doors, steeled myself, and began to cross the yard. There was work to do, glasses to wash, soft drinks to top up, a menu to organise. In short there was a hotel to run, perhaps for the very last time. The whole thing, upstairs and down, may well have been a fraud, but I resolved that if nothing else I would make this send-off a fair-dinkum hoot.

When I got into the bar, I found Veronica already in there, swabbing the benches and cleaning the glass of the fridge-doors, but with sliced discs of cucumber stuck all over her face. It was an old trick of her Lebanese grandmother's, she said, to keep the complexion fresh, but it reminded me immediately of the surreal masks worn by our Dada heroes on stage back in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire. ‘It's right up there with Hugo Ball's Piano-Hat,' I told her, smiling.

‘Oh leave me alone would you?' she said. ‘We've gotta get this done, and if you make me laugh all the cucumber will fall off.'

‘Okay, then. I'll be back down to help as soon as I've fixed up Duchamp.'

‘Good,' she said. ‘Coz I've got a bone to pick with you, Noel.'

I left her to it and went out through the sunroom to organise the day's pissoir recording. As I went, I looked to my left out the louvre windows, half anticipating the sight of Greg Beer's police four-wheel drive rolling up to break the dream. Although the worn grass of the driveway under the pines was empty, the very thought of the sergeant took the spring out of my step. I grimaced, then caught my reflection in the glass. I looked younger than I felt. Taking courage from this, I pushed my chest out like a riverflat kangaroo and kept on going.

Glancing into The Horse Room on my way to the stairs, I spied the old Grundig on the long bench where The Lazy Tenor had left it the night before. I went in to pick it up to take it upstairs to record Kooka for the day's Duchamp, but before I did that I rewound it a little and pressed ‘play'. Amidst the clinking of glasses, burping, the sound of Frankie trilling in his cage and the clicking of pool balls on the table, there was The Lazy Tenor's sonorous voice, clear and strong: ‘So anyway, as soon as I got in the sedan beside her my mate hit the button on the hoist and up we went. In more ways than one, I might add.'

I hadn't realised The Lazy Tenor had begun to repeat the same stories. He'd been at the hotel so long he had run out of material – that one about him and the chemist girl up on the garage hoist was one of the first instalments of ‘The Tradesman's Entrance' we'd ever been treated to. It wasn't funny the first time, let alone having to hear it again. I fast-forwarded straight past it and as soon as the green and red EQ meters went still pushed ‘stop', picked up the Grundig, and continued on up the stairs.

When I got to the top, the wide hallway seemed dusty and dry, the ducks still and flat in the weave of the carpet. How depressing! Ridiculously I scuffed at the floor with the bottom of my shoe, attempting to bring the creek back to life. And then I heard voices from behind the door of The Lazy Tenor's room. He and Maria were having a blue. I froze on the spot, with the nauseous feeling I always get when overhearing an argument. Their voices were harsh, his violent and booming, hers sarcastic and shrill. Quickly I stepped out from the staircase and hurried on down the hall.

I found Kooka sitting up in bed, happy as a velvet crab in a February rockpool. The dappled light from the pines outside the window was brocading his crocheted lap and legs. Seeing the Grundig under my arm, he rubbed his hands together and said, ‘That time is it, Noel?'

I put on a brave face, no doubt assisted by the relief of being back in congenial company. ‘It certainly is, Kooka. I've got a little ripper for you today. It's a poem actually, by a woman from a long time ago.'

Before I had a chance to take the poem from my pocket, however, Kooka put one of his big square-fingered tradesman's hands up and shook his head. ‘No, young man,' he said. ‘I've been your happy parrot for long enough. Now it's my turn to have a go.'

‘What do you mean, Kooka?' I asked.

‘Well, I've spruiked all that stuff for you over the last few months and now I've taken the time up here on me Pat Malone to have a go at my own piece for the pissoir. It's a poem too, first one I ever wrote.'

Kooka squirrelled around under the bedclothes for a bit until he produced a scrappy piece of paper that looked like it had been torn out of an old invoice book. Waving it proudly in the air, he said, ‘Now hit the red button on the old Grundig, Noel, and give us a bit of shoosh, would you?'

I placed the Grundig beside the tranny on the bedside table, hit ‘record' and walked away from the bed and over to the inland window.

The old fella cleared his throat, paused, then announced, in a resonant voice chocked with gravitas, the title of the poem. ‘The Mangowak Ode,' he intoned, with his trademark warble, ‘by Young John Nugent.'

Looking out the window at the pines, I raised an eyebrow and smiled. What followed became the very last tape-loop we played through Duchamp the Talking Pissoir.

I waited by the window until I was absolutely certain Kooka had finished. It was safe to say he was no Lord Tennyson but I was very moved regardless. I turned around to find him staring in my direction, eager for a reaction.

‘Geez, Kooka,' I said. ‘I don't know what to say.'

‘You liked it, Noel?' he asked, his bird-face creasing with pleasure.

‘I did,' I told him, walking back towards his bedside to press ‘stop' on the Grundig.

The old man exhaled with pleasure. ‘Yairs, well I don't rightly know what came over me. Never written a poem before. I've always been one for hard facts. But I just woke up this morning with the sky all rosy out over the ocean and the words in my head – the lot. All I had to do was write it down, like a flippin' secretary taking dictation.'

‘What a shame,' I joked. ‘You can't take any credit for it then.'

Kooka snorted loudly. ‘You're a bloody card, son, you really are. I'm past carin' about stuff like that.'

As I picked up the Grundig to take the poem downstairs, I touched Kooka lightly on the shoulder. ‘It's a real beauty, old fella. Everyone's gonna love it. You might even have to come down yourself for a piss.'

He shook his head. ‘No, no, there'll be no need for that, son. Maria'll empty my pan before she starts out on our novel later on.'