The Grand Hotel

by Gregory Day

  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 Catand 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 a
sked 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 reliableenough, 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 officiallythat 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 Classby 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.

  A New Use for Frankincense

  For the second night of the hotel we changed the recording in Duchamp, swapping ‘The Irridex’ with a piece called ‘Lifeline to the Perfect Man’. Like the night before I got Kooka to read it onto tape in his warbly old-timer’s voice:

  If you experience no sexual problems whatsoever or are living happily in a loving long-term relationship, you could well be feeling isolated in contemporary society. This could pose all types of problems but is nothing to be ashamed of; we all want to feel like we belong.

  Please call our free number here at The Grand Hotel to talk with us and work through your issues.

  And remember: true happiness is a lonely place.

  Once again, when we opened at three, people were hell-bent on drinking fast just so they could hear what Duchamp had to tell them. And like on the opening night, when the tradesmen arrived after knock-off at 4.30, you could have sold tickets to get into the toilet. They thought ‘Lifeline to the Perfect Man’ was, once again, a pisser.

  On the verges and banks of the grassy ditches all around the house there were half as many cars and utes as the previous night, but just as many people inside the hotel. The cut rate for walkers and cyclists had chimed in nicely and an unexpected by-product was that Greg Beer, our local coppa, congratulated me on what he thought was a masterstroke in the battle against drink-driving.

  Greg Beer’s personality will always be defined for me by the fact that back at primary school he chose to spend his lunchtimes picking up papers in the yard while the rest of us were hounding bluetongue lizards or throwing water bombs. ‘Before you get too carried away,’ I said to the wiry sergeant in the bar, ‘tonight we’re calling for contributions towards our “Clippin’ the Eucalyptus Film Night”. We’re g
onna show as many examples as we can get of legendary drink-driving escapades captured on people’s home movies. You know, picnics being sideswiped, bogged Holden station wagons, utes in creekbeds. And plenty of people just driving along, without a care in the world, playing a tune with their zigzagging vehicles on the leaves of the roadside gums. You’d be aware yourself, Greg, that there’s bound to be a bumper crop.’

  Greg Beer frowned at me. ‘And why would you wanna do that for, Noel? Just when I thought you were making some kind of valid community contribution.’

  I laughed. ‘Oh this’ll be a great contribution, Greg. It’s the gathering of local history. Speak to Kooka about it, he’ll tell you. You shouldn’t deny your past after all. You shouldn’t cover over your history, should you? Well, there’ll be none of that at The Grand Hotel, I can assure you of that, Sergeant.’

  Greg Beer gave me one of his squinty looks, as if he thought I was barking mad. In actual fact we both knew the truth was a little more complex. I had just touched a raw nerve. Greg Beer and his sister Susan had had a hard time being raised by their alcoholic mother, Meryl, in their fibro house up on Carroll Street, and at times Greg’s whole subsequent life as an abstemious policeman seemed like one hugely determined effort to erase the memory. No doubt the image of his poor mum slumped over the green Coolabah cask in the Carroll Street kitchen was in both our minds as we agreed to disagree over the drink-driving question in the bar.