The Grand Hotel

by Gregory Day

  Joan and I would listen to him as we poured the Dancing Brolgas, look at each other and roll our eyes. We knew Givva would never leave town and that the insurance money wasn’t his to spend anyway. But off he’d go on a longwinded diatribe to whichever Swedish or Italian backpacker he’d managed to bail up. He’d regale them with descriptions of the beauty of the west, tell them about the times he’d spent over there crayfishing in Geraldton in his thirties. But always, after he’d reached a certain threshold with the Dancing Brolgas, he’d end up singing the praises of the old days in Mangowak, the 1970s, and yes, he’d wheel out the old chestnut about singing the song ‘Down Under’, all twenty-seven verses, with Colin Hay from Men At Work when he was passing through town on tour to Adelaide. Some of the backpackers, of course, would know the song – it was a hit all over the world after all – and Givva would get his mileage. ‘Yeah, good bloke, Colin,’ he’d say, taking another sip. ‘Scottish he is. Not many people know that. Doesn’t mind the hoochy cooch either. No, doesn’t mind it at all.’

  It was during the time that The Grand Hotel was Givva Way’s shoulder to cry on that I threw the Happy Hour entertainment open to the clientele. It’s a little known fact that people who live in country areas like ours are often more technologically savvy than city dwellers. People in Mangowak and in the surrounding hills use the internet like people in Melbourne use the trams and trains. There’s no cinema or bands to go to see at night, so invariably people here are involved in some clandestine activity or another on the net. Some are researching surfboard design, others are listening to Alaskan fishing reports, some are co-writing graphic novels with schoolkids in Kyoto, while others are uploading local video grabs onto YouTube. Some, as was evident on the wall of The Horse Room, are using Photoshop to reconstruct the landscapes of the past, while others are connected to research networks monitoring banded seabirds as they fly magnetically across the globe. There’re locals into the gaming scene, global embroidery guilds and of course more and more people around here doing what the Europeans call ‘telecottaging’ – working online from home.

  The idea of handing over the live-streaming from the internet during Happy Hour brought a lot of these bush-technos out of their huts and bungalows. I figured that whatever they did, as long as they weren’t broadcasting free-to-air TV, would be somehow interesting enough to fit The Grand Hotel Charter. There’d be no outright expressions of art, of course – no, the idiosyncratic hobby and the furtively anarchistic fetish would be brought to the fore.

  Luckily for us first cab off the rank was Nan Burns, who, as one of the most vocal critics of the nightly streaming of the Vatican Radio, which had been the staple absurdist fare during Happy Hour since we’d opened the hotel, had taken up the challenge.

  Nan lives by herself these days, on a farm out the back of town, where she spends a lot of time in the warmer months up a fire tower the Country Fire Authority installed on the property years ago. She’s got a very comfortable arrangement up there in that tower, with a kitchen, a bed and shower, and of course beautiful views across the east Otways. With a wireless computer, a telescope, and two huge mounted sets of binoculars she keeps an eye on the landscape around her for wind shifts, for glassy glints and wisps of smoke, and is paid a nominal fee to maintain a webcam and report on fire-related matters to the authorities. Now, with her characteristically biting humour, she displayed her subversive contribution to Happy Hour on the big screen in the bar.

  It was called ‘Nan’s Towering Inferno’ and consisted of wobbly but high-powered footage of all the properties within view of her tower, complete with a voice-over describing how pathetically reprehensible her neighbours were when it came to preparing themselves for bushfire. The catch was she didn’t talk about the clearing of their properties or their sprinkler systems or whether or not they’d built bunkers. Instead, in a deadly serious voice, she talked about the quirks and foibles of the residents themselves, their fondness for the bong or the bottle, their tendency to either blather on or remain monosyllabic, their penchants for not answering the phone and not listening to the radio, their liking for keeping their watertanks empty so they could sing into them instead of drinking or hosing from them, or the men’s fondness for ‘freeballing’, as she called it – i.e. not wearing underwear – and how all these attributes would hamper or hinder everyone in a fire crisis. Basically it was Nan’s shot at the level of emergency-style surveillance that had become expected in our area of late. And because a lot of the people she was talking about were either in the bar watching or known to those of us who were, ‘Nan’s Towering Inferno’ brought the house down.

  A bit later that night, after The Blonde Maria had sung yet another lascivious set of scalding-hot blues songs with sexual subtexts, songs such as ‘Let Me Play with Your Poodle’, ‘Pig Meat Papa’, ‘The Best Jockey in Town’ and ‘Keep On Eatin’’, I was standing in The Horse Room feeling pretty pleased with myself when Maria herself came down off the stage, marched through the bar and flung herself down onto the couch beside me. She let out a heartrending groan.

  ‘All these songs are driving me crazy, Noel,’ she said. ‘You do realise I left a perfectly good young man back in Melbourne, don’t you, a sweet young Goth with blue hair? I’m a goddess to him, Noel. All I have to do is ask, and he’ll do anything I like. And I mean anything! I was expecting some real man-action down here in the wild west, some vigorous country fare here at The Grand. And all I’m seein’ is a bunch of old farmers and tradesmen farting at the tables, and sunburnt surfies half spent and dribblin’ into their beers. And what’s more they won’t take their eyes off moicoz my physical attributes are just about the only thing they recognise, due to the weird shit you’re dishing up in the rest of the pub. You’d have to admit that things are pretty odd if my cleavage represents the mainstream around here. Where in God’s earth did that fella Givva Way come from? I mean, is he for real?’

  She threw her head back on the couch and lit a cigarette, then let out another deeply frustrated groan.

  I was taken aback. ‘Geez, Maria,’ I said, sitting down beside her, ‘I thought you were enjoying yourself. You’ve been in such good voice. And anyway, there’s plenty of nice fellas here. What about my nephew Oscar over there? He’d give you a run for your money.’

  ‘What, the bass player kid with the big smile?’ she spat out. ‘Are you kidding me, Noel? Granted, I’ve always had a thing for younger men but I would’ve thought you could have picked my type.’

  I gave an ironic frown. ‘Yeah, well maybe you should just try singing a different kind of song. You’ve been mining that “Bed Spring Poker” stuff ever since you got here. It’s gettin’ you all het up. Why don’t you go a bit political? Sober yourself up a bit. Do some protest songs. Get your mind off things.’

  The Blonde Maria took a drag of her cigarette, thinking. Then suddenly she broke into a cheeky smile. ‘There is actually one fella here who I quite like.’

  Naturally my mind started ticking over, considering all the likely candidates.

  ‘Not my brother?’ I spat out in a twisted voice, squeamish at my conclusion.

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘No way. That’d be like, I dunno, incest or something. And your brothers are like old. No, Noel, someone else. You’ll never pick it.’

  ‘Well, how about I don’t even try?’ I said, facetiously. ‘Though I must say I’m relieved that there’s at least one candidate you could consider unleashing your talents on.’

  The Blonde Maria looked up at me, fully grinning now. ‘He’d be a challenge, Noel, this one. A real challenge.’

  ‘I see. Is that so?’ I said. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re up to it. Meanwhile can I get our very own Umm Kulthum another drink?’

  ‘Oh you’re a darling, Noely. Make it a Laphroaig. Neat.’

  By stumps later that night The Blonde Maria was holding a party upstairs in her room, with not a hint of her previous frustration. The air was thick with smoke, even though the windows were wide open to
the night pines. She was playing the DJ, spinning old LPs as the boys from The Connotations, and Joan Sutherland, Givva Way, Darren Traherne, Kooka and a burly Italian tourist named Guido gathered around her. I had to hand it to Maria: she could make the dreariest, most browbeaten and mortgage-pressured men come to life again. She was in fact a genuine flesh and blood bohemian in an era where typically they can only be found in coffee-table books. And because of her insatiable need of drinking partners The Blonde Maria would sup with absolutely anyone, without changing herself a scrap. She’d carry on regardless, as if no matter where she was, or who she was talking to, the centre of the universe was just nearby. She could make even Givva Way feel like he was a part of a seminal cultural underground. Which might go part of the way to explaining how resolutely Givva’s tedious nostalgia for those old bands who toured along the coast in the 1970s would keep surfacing in her midst. Oh man, could he go on about it! But that night, between the acacia wallpapers of her bedroom, with the prerogative of the sexually powerful female, Maria went where no man or woman in Mangowak had gone since young Alex’s accident in the indoor creek. She took to ribbing Givva Way about this godforsaken boring habit of his.

  It started around 2 am, with everyone well and truly sluiced. The Blonde Maria was leaning over the turntable changing records, wiggling her arse like a cancan girl as she did so. As the needle skew-whiffed onto the vinyl, she quickly turned back into the room and said, ‘Oh Givva, can you tell me again about the night you smoked the spliff with Colin Hay?’

  As applause from Charles Aznavour at Carnegie Hallrang out of the speakers, the rest of the room groaned. For a moment Givva looked confused. Then Guido the Tourist piped up: ‘Who eez theez Coalen Ay?’

  At that Givva collected himself and went straight back into gear. ‘Aw, mate, come on. Colin Hay? Haven’t you ever heard of “Down Under”?’ He began to sing the song.

  Guido’s jowly face took on a look of recognition. ‘Oh yeez, I haff, of corz,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well Givva helped him write the lyrics,’ said Jim.

  Before Guido the Tourist could begin to weigh up whether or not this was possible, the room burst into laughter. And soon enough they all began to speculate as to what some of the co-written verses might have been, the ones that Givva had always assured us the cappo pigs from the record company had rudely edited out of the final famous version of the song:

  Sittin’ stoned in a west coast hotel

  Bored to tears in a living hell

  I got up to leave for the next show

  But some mad bastard called Givva Way wouldn’t let me go

  He was singing, ‘I come from a...’

  Oscar began to play the iconic flute riff from the song on the mouth of his stubby. And the banter continued:

  Travellin’ in an EH Holden

  In the years gone by so golden

  I said, ‘Givva, will you please piss off now?’

  But he just smiled and said, ‘Sorry, Col, I don’t know how.’

  And we were

  Livin’ in a land...

  Before long a torrent of hypothetical verses was ringing out, with The Connotations tinkling the wine glasses along with Oscar’s stubby-flute and everyone joining in on the chorus. Givva was the butt of them all, of course, and over in the corner on the bentwood chair, quite blotto and still in his working overalls, he was shaking his paint-flecked mop of black hair and looking glum. Eventually, though, after things got so drunken and ridiculous that even Guido the Tourist had a go at a verse, Givva perked up, seemed to get the joke, and began happily singing along in the choruses at his own expense.

  It was a good hour at least before this joyful musical carousing calmed down and someone suggested it was time for more food. In typical fashion Joan Sutherland volunteered, and as he lifted his heavy frame up to go down to the bar everyone took a breather. They reached for their drinks and cigarettes and began to sip and sigh happily in the aftermath of the laughter.

  It was in that pleasant lull at 3am that the resolute Givva Way was heard to say, ‘Nah, but fair dinkum you should have been there, Maria, back then with Colin Hay and the musos and that. You would have loved it, you really...’

  A torrent of howling abuse burst through the upstairs windows of the hotel and into the night sky. It rained down on the poor house-painter where he sat innocently on his bentwood chair. The cries of astonished disbelief were so loud in fact that they were heard all the way down the starlit Mangowak valley. Even Big Ted, the laconic doyen of the riverflat kangaroos, swivelled his old grey ears southward to catch the sound.

  As two ringtail possums peered into The Grand Hotel from high up in the pine tree beside The Blonde Maria’s window, they witnessed a chaotic scene. For the howls of astonishment were not the only things hurled in the direction of Givva Way at that moment. Along with them came thrown shoes, rolled-up magazines, disposable cigarette lighters, LP covers tossed like Frisbees, abalone-shell ashtrays, car keys, an empty cigar box, indispensable guitar capos, a tennis ball and a mug half full of sarsaparilla – anything at all in fact that his uproarious fellow drinkers could find to throw at him.

  The Lazy Tenor

  For the life of me I couldn’t work out who it was that The Blonde Maria had set her sexual sights on, and I wasn’t completely sure whether or not I cared. But only a week or so after her groaning confession in the sunroom, a week in which Sergeant Greg Beer made not two but three separate inspections of the premises (apparently he’d had complaints about the noise from a couple of kangaroos down on the riverflat), a strapping visitor in a bottle-green suede coat, who was to have a romantic and a cataclysmic influence on both Maria and the destiny of the hotel, turned up from the city. I took one look at him and was sure her pent-up frustration would be cured.

  When I say this was a visitor from the city, that is not exactly true. In fact Louis Daley, or The Lazy Tenor, as he came to be known to us, was born and bred in a broken-down scrubland of central Victoria that to this day still goes by the name of Blokey Hollow. He was patient with his parents and brothers on the windridden family farm but as soon as it was physically and linguistically possible he had fled, tripping over tractor parts and shingleback lizards as he went, in search of, to quote the man himself, ‘whatever the fuck was on offer in the big smoke’.

  His departure from Blokey Hollow had subsequently set many adventures in train. Not only that, he had managed to find himself a few good square meals in his travels as well, which had seen him grow from the malnourished rag of thistledown he was when he left the crumbly asbestos home of his childhood into a six-foot-four, broad-shouldered, honey-voiced exemplar of the male species.

  Louis Daley’s arrival in The Grand Hotel was greeted with warm aplomb, for not only did he have a twinkle in his royal-blue eyes but he also announced that news of the good cheer and virus-like freedom of The Grand had begun to spread.

  ‘So,’ bellowed the new arrival, heaving a tattered red Adidas sports bag onto the bar, ‘this then is the famous Grand Hotel.’

  Darren Traherne, from where he stood at the sink twisting dirty beer glasses onto an upturned bottlebrush, looked at him querulously and said, ‘Famous? I dunno about that, mate. We’ve only been open five weeks.’

  ‘Well you’re quick workers then,’ said Big Lou Daley.

  Immediately sensing a colourful new ingredient for his archive, Kooka hit the record button on the Grundig where it was propped up at the other end of the bar. He plugged in a microphone and ran the lead down along the floor ashtrays until the mic itself was lying on the bar right under the big man’s nose.

  ‘Go on?’ said the old-timer.

  ‘Oh, God, yeah,’ continued our new guest, glancing down at the microphone and rising to the occasion. ‘I had two different floozies going on to me about it the other night in Melbourne. They had big raps on this place, though they did admit it was a tad unusual. But that’s what got me interested. I gathered it was in a nice quiet spot on the coast and had
cheap accommodation. And so, I said to myself, Lou, your shaggin’ days are over, it’s time to write your life story. So here I am. I’ve got this bloody crappy laptop in this here bag, I’m cashed up, and I’m here to knuckle down. By the way, I couldn’t get a drink could I, mate? Thirsty work that bloody highway.’

  Darren poured Louis Daley a nice crisp Dancing Brolga, and with barely a ‘here’s health’ Lou wolfed it down. ‘Aah,’ he burped. ‘That’s better. So then, have you got a spare room? I’ll pay up front. I’ll be here for as long as it takes me to write the book.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said Kooka, beside him. ‘You’re a writer are you, big fella?’

  Lou Daley just laughed, running an enormous hand over his face and through his bright red hair. ‘Who me? A writer?’ he scoffed. ‘No fear. But I reckon with the things I’ve seen, and particularly the ladies I’ve got to know over the years, I’ve got some kind of blockbuster in me for sure. But no, mate, I’m just a mechanic, if the truth be known.’

  He looked around the room with a big grin on his face, then he leant down towards the microphone and added, ‘Specialising in ladies’ parts.’

  Standing up straight again, he waved his hand dismissively. ‘Nah, I love a good time, good music, and well yeah, life’s been kind enough to me that I reckon I could tell a few stories. Give a few sad-sacks a clue. Anyway, my name’s Lou Daley. Some people call me Big Lou, others call me Louie the Lip, but those who know me well, they call me Lazy.’ At this he opened his mouth wide and let out a huge narcissistic guffaw, slapping his palm down on the bar mat. ‘Hey?’ he said through tears of mirth. ‘Those who know me call me Lazy. Hey? If only it were true.’