The Grand Hotel (7 page)

No Sheep No Shenanigans No Service

Like a good omen the flowering gum next to my barn was miraculously ablaze with red flowers when I woke up on the day of The Grand Hotel's reopening. I went straight outside and hoisted Dad's telescopic aluminium ladder up against the tree to pick top-branch flowers for the vases. They were iridescent, fibrous, supreme. Then I took my time over breakfast – a boiled pullet egg, abalone splashed with lemon juice and champagne – and pottered around the old place with Pippy on my last day of relative privacy.

From the outside on that first morning nothing much looked different. We hadn't painted the house, nor cleaned up the yard. Joe the old palomino still hovered near the disused aviary where I kept his chaff, the wire clothes line and bean trellis still ran along the apple and blackwood trees on the eastern boundary, and around the front near the hedge all we'd done was put in a few striped gymkhana wheels as beer-garden tables, and sturdy old couta boxes as seats. The only noticeable changes from the outside were the new coolroom on the Dray Road side of the house, and the blue and yellow floral curtains Nan insisted on putting in the windows of the upstairs bedrooms; oh, yes, and also the little wooden sign Darren had carved in beechwood and tacked above the door:

The first interesting thing that happened on the opening night was when Kooka unwittingly changed Gene Sutherland's name to Joan. We'd been open since three and, what with the word around town and the instant success of Duchamp the Talking Urinal, the place was nearly full only half an hour after the tradesman's knock-off of 4.30. I soon realised that the sunroom was gonna become a favourite hangout, running between the bar and Duchamp as it did. Men and women kept emerging from the dunny doing up their overalls or rearranging their hair with either astounded or amused looks on their faces at what they'd just experienced. The stock country phrase was ‘Well, it's different'.

Of course they couldn't quite get their heads around us boarding up the ocean-facing windows in the bar either and when Happy Hour began at 5.30 with Pope Benedict's angelus live-streaming on Vatican Radio from St Peter's Square in Rome, the heads were shaking thick and fast. But the drinks were going down fast too. Rennie Vigata's Dancing Brolga Ale was much approved of, and everyone seemed genuinely happy to have somewhere local to drink again.

As the early hours of that first afternoon passed and people stopped to look at some of the stuff we'd put up around the walls, and as they talked to Darren or Nan or me about what was going on, the goodwill was beginning to turn into good cheer. By 6.30, when the Vatican Radio was exchanged for Jacques Delors videos on YouTube and the first plates of our opening-night entrée, whiting rollmops, were being handed around, the good cheer was really taking off. At 7.30, as new locals kept turning up to check it all out, we paused the proceedings to read out The Grand Hotel Charter. It was brief and to the point.

Kooka stood in front of the bar, his bronzed shoulders shining under the bleached hoops of his white singlet, and as he flicked the ‘record' switch on the old Grundig we called for a bit of shoosh.

‘The Grand Hotel Charter has four main components, each of which commence from tomorrow,' Kooka began. ‘NUMBER ONE: in keeping with the original Grand Hotel that stood right here on this site, and that caught fire over one hundred years ago, no light beer will be served. The Dancing Brolga it is, ladies and gents. And stubbies of your choice, within reason of course. NUMBER TWO: as there is no car park provided on the grounds, drinks will be twenty per cent cheaper to those customers who have walked or ridden their bikes. This has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with lack of space. NUMBER THREE: The Grand Hotel, at the discretion of the owner and his committee, will close during long weekends and holiday periods. Make of this what you will but consider that the architecture of Noel's old house is hardly equipped to cope with the summertime hordes of the Showcase Coast. And lastly NUMBER FOUR: in The Grand Hotel mirth is the object and liquor the licence. Gentlemanly conduct is considered preferable and the more good natured the conversation the more nuts will appear in your bowl. The licensee, Noely here, has asked me to pass on that any objections, enquiries or even commendations on the way the hotel is run should be directed to Frankie the Canary or his spaniel, Pippy. Each evening after stumps Noel has promised he will sit down with Frankie and Pippy, share a few cuttle and chop bones, and discuss the issues. Thanks, ladies and gents. Enjoy yourselves and please let's raise a toast to the reopening of The Grand Hotel, Mangowak!'

As the throng crowding the bar and spilling out into the sunroom raised their glasses and began to discuss the charter, seriously debating its points and laughing at what seemed a preposterous situation, Kooka turned with a beaming face to Gene behind the bar and called, ‘A claret please, Joan.'

It was a numinous moment, also an unwitting augury of events to come. The natural historian had forgotten where he was, or rather, in the excitement of his unlikely but bright idea being realised, of history being made and him being part of it, he'd forgotten what year we were in. For a split second time had vanished in his midst and Kooka had been back in the original Grand. Perhaps it was 1893, perhaps it was 1897; either way he was ordering his drink not from big Gene Sutherland but from Joan Sweeney.

Veronica pounced. ‘Of course!' she cried, turning her back from the stove full of sizzling pappadums. ‘Joan Sutherland. What could be a more fitting name for the barman of The Grand?'

In the hubbub and noise only a few thirsty drinkers near the bar heard this exchange but it was enough to make the nickname stick. Much to his own amusement, and to the embarrassment of his two young boys, Dylan and Doug, from that day on Gene Sutherland became Joan Sutherland and The Grand Hotel had a dairy-farmer diva as its head barman. And as for Kooka, well, he couldn't believe his luck.

Whether it was The Grand Hotel Recommended Looseners, the talking urinal, or simply the fact that the hotel still felt and looked as relaxed as a house, things went from strength to strength on that first night. The weather was calm, and by 9pm we'd opened the boarded-up double doors and spilt out into the garden behind the tea tree hedge. We had no PA so Jim and Oscar's ragtag band of local mates, The Barrels, who were well used to improvising at weddings and surf-club events, just played through amplifiers out on the grass and the dancing began.

We cooked cayenne rabbit as the main course, in three huge pots on the stove behind the bar, and you wouldn't believe how many people kept saying they hadn't tasted rabbit for years. They thoroughly approved of the recipe and thought it went down well with the Dancing Brolgas. Speaking of which, Rennie Vigata turned up in his monstrous black Chevy van on that opening night. It looked like a cross between a vehicular version of an Anselm Kiefer painting and something straight out of
Mad Max
. Rennie was equally as scary and as a joke he pinned me up against the wall in the bar and dared me to charge him full price for a Laphroaig whisky on account of the fact that he'd driven to the pub and was thus ineligible for the walker's discount.

In the raspy baritone of a man who at some point in his past had experienced a deft karate chop to the vocal cords, he said, ‘You're prejudicing the hills, Noel. Do you know how long it would take for me to walk here?'

Angling his powerful bodyguard's forearm, he held me tight in under the cuckoo clock and the catfish skeleton on the wall. One thing was for sure: he didn't know his own strength. Surely, I thought, he would realise from past experience that I was about to choke.

Eventually Rennie let me go with a sneering smile. I gulped in the air. There's nothing like the fear of a premature death to inspire you and I had an inspiration right on the spot. Feigning great forethought, I explained to him (and to myself I might add) The Grand Hotel's very own Bonafide Traveller scheme. In the old days, of course, when hotels shut with the six o'clock swill due to the wowserish early licensing laws, a bonafide traveller was allowed to drink to his heart's content in any hotel beyond closing time. Now, as I explained to Rennie, The Grand Hotel had revived the concept but with a twist. Anyone drinking at The Grand who'd come from over fifteen kilometres away was exempt from the price penalties of driving their car.

‘There you go,' I said to Rennie, feeling some normality coming back into the area of my larynx. ‘As if we'd ever not think of you hillbillies up there. You get the discount. And an extra feed as well, being our main beer supplier.'

I stood with Rennie and his tall dark girlfriend, Lee, at the bar then, as Joan Sutherland poured the Laphroaig for him and a Bundy and Coke for her. Joan and I bashed their ears about how well The Dancing Brolga Ale was going and Rennie seemed quite chuffed. He skulled his dram, stood back, and looked around the room from his great height. ‘Pretty weird bar you got here, Noel,' he rasped.

‘Yeah?' I replied. ‘What's so weird?'

‘Well for a start it just looks like a living room with extra tables and chairs. There's no TAB, there's weird shit all over the walls, you've boarded up the fuckin' windows and, for once, everyone looks like they're having a great time.'

‘It's the beer, Rennie,' said Joan, as he poured him another Laphroaig. ‘The Dancing Brolgas.'

Rennie snorted and gave Lee a smiling wink. ‘Thought as much,' he said, proudly. ‘Well, there's plenty more where that came from.'

Big Rennie'd come to regret those words.

Despite the announcement that any feedback should be addressed to Frankie and Pippy, as the night progressed into the late hours people started to come up to me to talk about what was going on. I was uncompromising in my answers, stressing the fact that without The Grand Hotel there would be no hotel anymore in Mangowak and because it was my hotel I'd run it how I liked. The only concession I made was when Joan Sutherland's wife, Jen, quietly suggested that the ‘no light beer' rule was a bit hard on the oldies. She said they drank light not only because of drink-driving concerns but also for health reasons. She said some of them were diabetics, some had dodgy tickers. I said that was fair enough and that not everyone could put it away like Kooka. We agreed right there and then to amend the charter to include light beer for people born before the Black Friday bushfires of 1939. It was as good a cut-off point as any.

Most of the discussions I had, though, were positive, and inebriated. Givva Way for one was inspired. The town earbasher had been a bit quiet of late, bewildered as he was by the Plinths, the indoor creek and Wathaurong Heights, but now he was off, full of praise for The Grand and swooning reminiscences of the old Mangowak pub in the 1970s. He raved on about all the bands that used to come through on their tours to Adelaide. He brought up the time that he and my brothers Walker and Jim had smoked bongs all night with Colin Hay from Men At Work. Their famous song ‘Down Under' had twenty-seven verses back then, Givva told me, not for the first time. Eventually, after slapping me on the back with his thick house-painter's hand, he said, ‘Better go off and have another chat to Duchamp.'

It is proof of my simple pleasures in the days of The Grand Hotel that you couldn't wipe the smile off my face after hearing Givva Way say those words.

By midnight I was dancing with Nan Burns to The Barrels' version of the theme from the cartoon
Top Cat
and couldn't care less about anything. We were already an hour over the licence, Dylan and Dougie Sutherland had taken to pouring beers behind the bar under their father's guidance, and the general mess was incredible. I could see Veronica and Darren and Jen Sutherland busily trying to tidy up. Plates and glasses were strewn everywhere, beer and wine were spilt and ashtrays were overflowing in the sunroom and beyond. It was obvious we had a bit to learn but for now I was content to dance with Nan, to watch the new grey strands in her red hair fall across her face, to smoke her rollies, and to think about it all tomorrow.

The Blonde Maria

The morning after that first night I was awoken in my barn-loft at six o'clock sharp by wattlebirds doing power-saw impersonations. Groaning, I waited for them to stop but no, they were in for the long haul. So I propped myself up on some pillows, got comfortable, and ran the last night's events over again in my mind. Somewhere along the line the wattlebirds must've stopped, because I dozed off, and when I awoke it was nine o'clock and I felt grateful for the extra sleep. I climbed down the ironbark ladder, got dressed, and like some honorary treasurer of old decided I had better attend to the banking.

There's never any mention in Hugo Ball's diary account of the Cabaret Voltaire of who managed the Dada money and how. Presumably they just cut all the banknotes up for collages and used the coins as gypsy necklaces. For The Grand Hotel, however, the money was siphoned off into a black Aquila shoebox at the end of each night. This shoebox was then taken under my arm out to the barn when I went to bed, where I placed it inside an old canvas fishing bag flung into a corner full of rods and nets and reels. I dimly remembered now that when I did this the night before for the very first time, the shoebox was immediately filled to overflowing.

After counting the money and placing it in its denominations, a sudden wave of emotion hit me where I sat at my desk. Before I knew what was happening, giant teardrops had begun to fall from my eyes, running down my cheeks and rolling off my jaw and onto the money. I was silent – there was no whimpering, not even a sigh – but the tears were giant sized and kept coming nevertheless. After a good ten minutes of this I felt just like a cow who'd been milked. Those tears obviously had to come out. Otherwise, given all the excitement of the time, I might have foundered or developed mastitis and ruined things for everyone.

By the time the globulous tears had stopped, the top layers of that first night's takings were drenched. I lifted a dripping ‘crayfish' – our local nickname for the orange twenty-dollar note – to my nose. It smelt salty, like the sea. ‘Oh well,' I reasoned, trying to flick some moisture away with my finger. ‘It's still legal tender – whether it's bathed in tears or not.'

I gathered it all up, placed it back in the Aquila box in its piles and headed off in Kooka's Brumby round the coast road to Minapre to put it in the bank.

By the time I got back home, I felt fresh as a wild freesia. Pulling into the drive, I switched off the ignition and immediately heard the bells clanging on their Plinths at the rivermouth. But then I heard laughter and singing from around the front on the verandah. I made my way inside, popped the empty shoebox into the cupboard under the cutlery-drawer cash register, and went out the front to investigate the mirth.

Seated around the table on the verandah, where a thirsty clique of Boat Creek lifesavers had been ensconced in their bright polar fleeces and zinc cream the previous night, were Joan Sutherland, Kooka, and the musical and housekeeping saviour I'd been waiting for: The Blonde Maria.

The last thing I had wanted was for the original edge of The Grand Hotel to be blunted by The Barrels' endless homages to Dick Dale, 1960s cartoon themes, and the
Morning of the Earth
soundtrack. So, after running it by Jim the week before we had opened, and not realising I was about to kill two birds with one stone, I had rung my friend Dean Kelly up in Dookie to locate his little sister Mary, who since leaving the family farm had become quite a sensation in the most high-cred pockets of the Melbourne music scene. My perhaps fanciful idea was that Mary might like to come down to The Grand from time to time to front The Barrels and keep us and them on our musical toes.

When I got hold of Mary on the phone, she explained to me how she only made ends meet by cleaning big houses around Brighton and St Kilda during the day while performing under the name of The Blonde Maria at night. Sounding a little burnt out by the hectic pace of her city life, and being a country girl at heart, she unexpectedly jumped at my offer. In fact she asked me right away if I thought there was any chance of it becoming a permanent arrangement! Then, to sweeten the deal, she suggested that she could help us out by doing a spot of cleaning around the hotel during the days as well.

When I'd put the phone down, I could've jumped for joy. But when she didn't turn up for the opening night as she'd promised, I'd written off the arrangement as just a momentary flight of bohemian fancy on her behalf. Now, however, out on the verandah, Kooka had the Grundig propped up on the table, with its Bakelite ‘record' button on, as The Blonde Maria, dressed in a three-quarter flared floral dress, with jeans on underneath and a pale green headscarf, was in full song. She had a half empty stubby of Heineken in front of her, a half dozen or so empty ones standing beside that, a cigarette poised between her fingers in mid-air, and her voice was pipey, in a tremulous way, but strong, a throaty flute. Kooka and Joan both were loving it.

I hadn't seen Dean Kelly's little sister since she was seventeen but now, ten years later, she had not only changed her name but also grown into an attractive young woman, with a big-jointedness about her that would have appealed to the bullockies back in the droving days. She had quite the presentation too – let's just say she was not afraid of showing off her attributes, which of course would have also appealed to those bullockies of yore. They say some women have a way with men, the common touch, but often it's just big breasts. And if they can sing as well, wow, the cocktail can be genuinely explosive.

A man like Joan Sutherland, for instance, can get confused in the crossfire. I could see at the table that he was having trouble choosing exactly what it was he wanted to concentrate on, the song or the freckled cleavage. In the end I think he realised that if he didn't waver too much, if he just locked his stare on the freckles and left it there, then his ears would be freed up to listen as well. Nevertheless it was quite a strain and by the time the song was finished I think the big boy from the banks of the Barroworn was well and truly exhausted.

The Blonde Maria stood up and opened her arms wide to embrace me. ‘Young Mary Kelly,' I said, whispering in her ear, ‘you're a sensation.'

‘Noel!' she cried. ‘The Grand Hotel is amazing. These two lovely fellas have already given me a guided tour.'

‘You like it?'

‘Oh yeah, it's glorious. I rang to tell Dean and he said to say you should think about a franchise.'

I scoffed at her brother's joke. He'd always enjoyed having a lend of me. ‘How long have you been here?' I asked her.

Kooka piped up. ‘Since the crack, Noel. She let herself in and woke us upstairs with her whistling around seven. Joan had flopped here after the big night but we were happy to have an early breakfast, weren't we, Joan? And we haven't regretted it. We've already recorded an account of her family connection to Ned Kelly.'

‘Is that right?'

‘Oh yeah,' Kooka said, hardly able to contain his enthusiasm for a buxom lass from the normally health-conscious younger generation who was prepared to drink with him from daybreak. ‘The Blonde Maria's great-great-grandfather gave Ned the horse he rode to Glenrowan.'

The Blonde Maria beamed my way. ‘Dean's told you that, hasn't he, Noel? Why are you looking so surprised?'

I smiled and shook my head. ‘Oh no, it's not that. I'm just amazed at Joan and Kooka's resilience. We had a pretty huge one last night, you know, and I would've thought...'

‘Oh there's no fear there,' Kooka interrupted. ‘This girl's a tonic. She makes me feel like the state of Victoria's just a tiny little community again. Listen to this.'

Kooka's thick bent-knuckled fingers fumbled with the buttons on the Grundig, rewinding the tape until the numbers on the time-code meter settled in the right combination. He pushed ‘play'.

‘Yes, my dear fellows, our great-great-grandfather, Black Jack they called him, played cards right through the 1870s with Ned on the family farm. From before he was on the run until right at the height of his fame.'

The Blonde Maria's voice on the tape was full of theatrics, as if she was holding court to rapt attention in a hollow windowless cairn on a windswiped peat bog.

‘We're a horsing family, going way back to Tipp, and the story goes that Ned made a special trip to our farm to find a horse
reliable
enough, and with enough
pluck
, to help him declare the Republic of North Eastern Victoria on that fateful day at Glenrowan. Of course it's not all family folklore. It has been recorded
officially
that the horse that Black Jack gave to Ned was found making its way back to Dookie in the days after the siege.'

Kooka clicked off the Grundig, saying fervently, ‘And that's a bloody long way, Noel, from Glenrowan to Dookie, a bloody long way for a horse on its own.'

‘Yes,' said The Blonde Maria. ‘And what I didn't say on the tape is that when the horse arrived back at the farm, Black Jack changed its name to Pigeon, for two very obvious reasons. One, because it'd made its way home by its own instinct, and two, because he suspected the police might come sniffing around, looking for clues. Some people were saying that Ned called for the horse as he fell to the ground in his suit of Cantonese ploughshares.'

‘Pigeon, eh?' said Joan, fascinated and approving. ‘Good name for a horse too. Can I get you another drink, Maria?'

The Blonde Maria glanced quickly at her Heineken, saw it was only a quarter full and said coquettishly, ‘Yes please, my dear. And I hope that you'll join me.'

On top of all her other attributes it seemed The Blonde Maria also had a prodigious capacity for drink. If I had half a dozen Dancing Brolgas as we sat on the verandah that morning, she must have had at least that amount, plus the Heinekens she drank before I arrived. I'd never seen anything like it in a girl her age. By one o'clock, after a solid three hours' drinking, I could see that Joan and Kooka were positively over the moon about the arrival of our capricious new chanteuse and cleaner. But with opening time approaching, I decided that I'd had enough and coaxed Maria away to show her upstairs to her room. As we headed for the narrow stairs, she refused help with her heavy pack, and she didn't miss a single step as we ascended.

We reached the second storey of The Grand Hotel unharmed and found the wide airy hallway punctuated with shafts of northern light, spilling out from the open doorways of the three bedrooms. The shafts of light fell in rhomboids, half upon the decorous old carpet and half up the willow wallpaper opposite. With The Dancing Brolga Ale coursing through my veins, it seemed the old swirl of platypus and duck in the carpet had come to life in the animating light – the hallway was in motion, with the ducks at play in the eddies and whirls of creekwater, the platypus dunking and flipping on the surface and the willows of the wallpapery banks rustling ever so gently in the breeze.

We waded across this scene, The Blonde Maria peering into each room as we went, until she chose the farthest one along next to The Sewing Room, as I was sure she would, it being the most private.

We stepped into the room through a grainy shaft of sun. She slung her pack onto the single bed and looked around delighted. I went over to the sash window and raised it with its customary shudder, then propped it in place with a three-inch nail.

Up there on the second storey, at the same height as the two big driveway pines, the sappy perfume of the old trees was close and sweet. They'd been planted way back in the days of the original Grand Hotel, and as a child I used to clamber out of the upstairs windows and risk my limbs jumping from the hardwood sills onto the branches of the tree closest to the house. High in that tree there'd always be some bird nesting, a magpie, or a nankeen night heron; if time existed at all up there, it was only as a cycle of nature. Now as I looked out, there was no activity in the heavy green fronds and flaky old branches, just the eternal stillness of the needles and the cones. I let myself drift for a moment in a kind of happy swoon until from the spouting above me came a light sprinkling of rainwater. A trio of honeyeaters were taking their afternoon wash.

I turned back into the room and found The Blonde Maria suddenly, instinctively, sound asleep on the bed.

I stood for a minute, looking at her. She was no longer the teenager I remembered sulking on the farm at Dookie. No, she was quite something, and I was so glad she'd arrived.

I checked that she'd have everything she'd need when she awoke: a jug of water, an ashtray, some tea near the kettle on the dresser, a towel, and some old records she might like. In the cabinet space provided under the old three-in-one turntable I saw a few things that might take her fancy:
Charles Aznavour Live at Carnegie Hall
,
Different Class
by Pulp, Tim Buckley's
Starsailor
. Then I quietly slipped out of the wallpapered room and back into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind me.