by Gregory Day
From the beer garden Jen Sutherland miraculously appeared with a first-aid kit and, grabbing a cushion from one of the bar-room couches, propped it under Kooka’s head and made him more comfortable. As I leant across and clicked off the ‘record’ button on the Grundig, it seemed that Kooka was coming around. Maybe he had just fainted? Joan took two white towels from his wife and ran them under a cold tap behind the bar. He handed them back to Jen, who wiped the old-timer’s brow and told everyone gently to stand back.
After a few minutes it seemed that Kooka was quite stable. He still hadn’t opened his eyes but he was breathing evenly and responding to questions. When Jen offered him a glass of water, he shook his head and asked for a claret. Jen suggested that mightn’t be such a good idea but Kooka was adamant. ‘A claret. Lovely,’ he said, in a hoarse but calm voice.
As the licensee of the hotel and a great supporter of Kooka’s historical activities, I cut straight to the chase. I reached up above the bar into our claret store and popped the cork on a 1971 Hardys Red. Slopping a bit into a glass to check that it hadn’t turned, I took a sip and then filled up the remainder. What a drop! It was full, complex, a tonic for even the healthier among us, let alone those who’d just fallen off their perch.
‘Here you go, old fella,’ I said, leaning down and putting the claret to Kooka’s lips. Still he didn’t open his eyes. But he took a sip and breathed easy.
‘Been known to cure a broken leg,’ he said quietly.
He took another sip and ran his tongue across his lips. But then his eyes pinched again and he grimaced, obviously still in some kind of pain. ‘Nice drop,’ he said in a whisper, and then, ‘Hit “stop”.’
‘What’s that, Kooka?’ I said.
‘Hit “stop”,’ he said again, but still I couldn’t make out what he meant. I looked over my shoulder at Jen to see whether she heard it more clearly. Jen just shrugged.
‘Sorry, Kooka, I didn’t catch that,’ I said, leaning in towards him with my right ear.
‘Hit “stop”,’ he said again, but this time added, ‘on the Grundig.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s already done, Kooka. I stopped the tape just after you fell.’
Kooka nodded slowly. ‘More plonk,’ he said then.
Before long he had drained the glass but was still wincing occasionally with pain and hadn’t opened his eyes. What were we going to do? At some point he’d have to see a doctor, but he didn’t look like he wanted to be moved far right then. The Lazy Tenor, who’d been waiting patiently at the corner of the bar to resume his narratives, suggested we carry the old fella upstairs and pop him on his bed in The Sewing Room. It seemed like a sensible idea.
‘Would you like to lie down upstairs for a while, Kooka?’ Jen whispered in his ear, as she stroked his brow with the cool towel.
The old man nodded. ‘Yairs,’ he said. ‘A little lie down.’
The problem was he couldn’t walk. We weren’t even sure he could stand. Eventually we decided we’d have to carry him.
Immediately The Lazy Tenor left his talking post at the corner of the bar and moved towards Kooka. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry him upstairs.’
Before any of us could protest, The Lazy Tenor had bent down on his haunches and carefully, even tenderly, lifted Kooka up off the hotel floor. In one fluid movement he hoisted him over his left shoulder, just as you would a bag of Yeo potatoes. Kooka didn’t even flinch. He just hung there, claret-lipped, slack-mouthed, draped over The Lazy Tenor’s towering frame, where he promptly fell fast asleep.
The Lazy Tenor marched out of the bar, through the sunroom, past The Horse Room and Duchamp and up the stairs. I followed with Jen, the first-aid kit and the bottle of 1971 Hardys. As we reached the Sewing Room door, I could hear the opening strains of ‘Peace in the Valley’ coming from downstairs. It seemed that Kooka’s turn had changed Jim’s mind. The Barrels were up and running again.
Since Kooka had moved into The Sewing Room, I’d paid little attention to it. In fact I’d hardly even been in there since the day we helped him move. To my surprise now, as we entered, I found the room just as we’d left it that day. The boxes and crates of the archive sat unopened near the ocean-facing window, and the only furniture was the single bed in the middle of the large room, the wicker chair beside it, a small bedside table and Mum’s two old standard lamps. Apart from that the room was empty and as always seemed quite a vast and cavernous space.
Gently The Lazy Tenor eased old Kooka down onto the bed, and Jen removed his shoes. We let him lie there above the blankets for a time, just to observe how he was faring. There was a little bit of colour coming back into his face but even so he had still not opened his eyes. He was obviously exhausted. The Lazy Tenor stepped back out of the room without a word, no doubt keen to get back downstairs, and left myself and Jen to attend to the old man.
Jen started asking Kooka questions, trying to ascertain whether he’d broken any bones or was feeling any physical discomfort, but he would just shake his head and finally she stopped asking. The two of us sat there with Kooka under the high pitched roofs of The Sewing Room and shrugged our shoulders. We discussed the possibilities in a whisper and agreed that we’d call our local doctor, Bernard Feast, first thing in the morning. For the time being it seemed as if Kooka was happy to rest.
Jen had left her two boys at home with her sister, and so she stayed beside Kooka’s bed for the rest of the night until stumps. Downstairs in the bar The Barrels seemed to have found a way to enjoy just being an old surf band again and The Lazy Tenor had retired to The Horse Room so his stories could be heard without the racket. At closing time, when I went upstairs and took over from Jen, she assured me that Kooka was quite calm. I sat there falling in and out of sleep right through the small hours. Even though I was meant to be keeping an eye on the old bloke, I have to admit that sitting in the quiet of The Sewing Room in the middle of the night flooded me with memories, not only of my goodnight chats with Mum as a kid but also of all the old stories she used to tell us about growing up with Papa in the meteorological station.
When the next morning dawned with the warbling of magpies, Kooka didn’t wake up. Well, he did briefly – he even opened his eyes at one point and looked around the large room – but he closed his eyes again straightaway, rearranged his body among the bedclothes and began to snore.
When Dr Feast arrived after breakfast, he stood at the end of Kooka’s bed for quite some time, just observing him. Eventually he woke the old fella gently, felt his pulse with his finger, checked his heart rate with his ear, before declaring that there seemed nothing much the matter with him. Dr Feast, as thorough and old fashioned as he is, could only describe what had happened to Kooka as ‘a turn’. He suggested he have a break from alcohol and just lie in the bed in The Sewing Room and rest.
After the check-up I did the usual thing and asked Dr Feast to join me downstairs for a cup of tea and a biscuit. We sat in the bar talking casually about the town, and of course about the progress of the hotel. Then, just as he was finishing his tea and getting up to leave, we heard that honey-toned morning voice again, singing from upstairs in Room One.
At hearing the opening words of the famous aria from La Traviata, Bernard Feast’s eyes opened wide at the bar. Without so much as a word to me he put down his Gladstone bag and walked slowly into the sunroom, where he stood listening. Then, as if in a trance, he stepped out of the sunroom and into the backyard. I watched him stop there under the pine trees, looking up towards The Lazy Tenor’s window quite agog.
The Lazy Tenor sang the aria over and over again that morning. The weather was still fine, the pollen still drifting, and with his voice in the gauzy air, time, as we have grown accustomed to it, once again ceased to exist.
I sat down on the two-seater couch in the sunroom and experienced the double pleasure of listening to The Lazy Tenor’s morning song and watching Dr Feast’s enjoyment of it. He obviously knew the piece, because after a while he started mouthing th
e words. When finally The Lazy Tenor concluded his morning session, the good doctor, whose sure hands and safe judgement had brought nearly the whole population of Mangowak and Minapre into the world over the years, shook his head slowly from side to side and began to applaud.
It’s funny but I immediately panicked, fearing The Lazy Tenor mightn’t respond well to applause for what seemed to be just a personal habit of his mornings. Abruptly I raised my hand in the air, gesturing urgently through the window to the doctor to stop.
Dr Feast’s hands fell immediately to his side, but unexpectedly applause could still be heard. It was coming from upstairs. And along with it came muffled cries of ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ through the walls and the floorboards. It was The Blonde Maria, enraptured in her room. She clapped enthusiastically for a few moments longer, and with an ecstatic cry of ‘Magnificent!’ she ceased. The quiet of the riverflat once again reigned over the morning.
A little later, as I stood in the backyard listening to Dr Feast’s Peugeot purring away along the Dray Road, I looked up at the second-storey windows for signs of life. The Lazy Tenor’s window was flung open, with Nan’s floral curtains shifting in the subtle currents of the air. But there was no other movement. Finally, upon hearing a footfall and a shifting of furniture from The Blonde Maria’s room, I decided that the poignant aftermath of the aria had disappeared. I made my way back inside for breakfast, reflecting on the pros and cons of our current lodgers. There were definitely marks on both sides of the ledger.
Holy Bohemian
During the course of that day Kooka’s health stayed much the same. I’d check in on him from time to time to find him sound asleep, with a peaceful look on his face, and no sign of any discomfort. The Blonde Maria’s situation, however, seemed to be worsening. She still wouldn’t budge from her room, nor would she even change out of her dressing gown. She’d completed the jigsaw of the Bavarian Alps and was now chewing through the eclectic collection of my mother’s books she’d found on the lacquered Oregon bookshelf in her room.
It was the life of St Thérèse of Lisieux that The Blonde Maria was reading when I knocked on her door just before lunch. Once again I found her sitting at the table in front of the window. This time she was more prepared to speak, although still with a trace of the little-girl voice of the day before.
She asked me straightaway if I’d heard The Lazy Tenor’s singing again that morning. I told her I had and explained that it was Dr Feast who was applauding in the garden. ‘It was beautiful alright,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know whether clapping him might make him go back into his shell.’
The Blonde Maria raised her finger to her mouth in horror. ‘Oh my God, I hadn’t thought of that,’ she exclaimed.
Clearly she was still a little unhinged. But somewhere inside me a tall bird fluttered its wings and I finally realised that her retreat to the room had something to do with The Lazy Tenor’s singing.
‘You know,’ she said, with a sudden change of tone, and holding up the saint’s life in her right hand, ‘this is an interesting book.’
‘Yeah. I think I read it, but years ago now.’
‘Mmm,’ was all The Blonde Maria said.
‘From memory, though,’ I added, trying to fill the gap in the conversation, ‘Thérèse had a lot of insight.’
‘The point is, Noel, it is impossible for a bird to sing a wrong note.’
Rather than explain this remark, The Blonde Maria promptly lit a cigarette. Then, as if she couldn’t focus on any one thing for long, she changed the subject again. ‘Was that Kooka I heard calling in the night?’
‘It could have been,’ I said. I told her about his falling off the stool and how he had to be carried up to bed.
She nodded happily. ‘Yes it was him then. I thought so.’
‘Did he sound okay? He wasn’t distressed was he?’
‘Oh no, not particularly. It was more as if he was dreaming. Calling out to people he knew. But quite happily I think.’
‘I see.’
The Blonde Maria’s expression changed yet again and she stared at me gravely. ‘I’ll never sing again,’ she blurted out.
Inside I frowned but externally I tried to look calm. ‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘I’m not a singer,’ she said. ‘There’s something I am, but it’s not that.’
‘I see. Well, what is it you are then?’
‘I don’t know.’
I breathed through my nose, a bit impatiently now. ‘Well, I’m not a publican, Maria, but look at me.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked.
‘Well, I’m not a publican!’ I said, finally exasperated. ‘We’re all doing things we’re not necessarily suited to.’
The Blonde Maria smiled at me patronisingly. She was once all good times and insouciance but now the vaudevillian had taken another role. ‘But that’s my point, Noel,’ she said. ‘Who wants to continue as a fraud? Not me. You can count me out on that score. At last I’ve encountered a human being who is on the one undivided path. I’ve woken to the living proof the last two mornings. I know now, for the first time, what music is. What it reallyis. That’s good enough for me. We can’t go on like this.’
‘Can’t go on like what?’ I said. ‘It’s a beautiful voice, but hey, so is yours.’
As soon as the words had come out of my mouth, I winced. The Blonde Maria’s voice was good – as an entertainer she was fabulous – but when all was said and done The Lazy Tenor worked on a different plane. We both knew I had proved her very point with the lie.
Slowly I straightened my face and stared at her. She had a different look again now, a zealot’s look, a look of shining realisation. She sat before me like some reformed harlot of song, smoking in a dressing gown. I heard my brother Jim’s words ringing in my ears. What would my mother and father make of this hotel their old house had become, with the author of ‘The Tradesman’s Entrance’ in one room, a sick old man taken to his bed in another, and a holy bohemian in between?
For a precipitous moment, sitting there at the table with The Blonde Maria, my humour grew slipshod, my inner vision went blank, and I retreated to the dank loneliness that had exiled me from town. With a psychiatric urgency I clasped my left wrist with my right hand to see if it felt wooden and numb. But no, there was warmth there, there was life. I could still feel the blood coursing through me. I hadn’t reverted. I wasn’t the Reverse Pinocchio. Instead I felt those globulous, tremulous, giant-sized tears welling up in my heart. ‘Oh dear,’ I said aloud. And then, shaking my head in a way that immediately reminded me of my mum when she couldn’t see the lighter side of one of my world-shattering childhood dilemmas, I said it again. ‘Oh dear.’
By the time I’d said it for the third time it was with a hint of irony and a smile. A little laugh of gladness spluttered out of me for the knowledge that despite the madness of the human world I would always remain sane as long as those globulous tears were welling up beside my laughter. As long as they were there, I knew that the garden of my life would have both the sun and rain it required.
Sensing my transition from uncertainty to humour, The Blonde Maria grew a little uncertain herself and retreated back into her shell. She picked up the book of the saint again and buried her nose in it haughtily.
‘Oh dear,’ I said. Yes, I said it again, realising what a debilitating effect The Lazy Tenor’s voice had had on The Grand Hotel’s chanteuse.
Finally getting up to go, I put my hand on Maria’s shoulder and asked her if she could check in on Kooka from time to time, seeing as though they were both confined to their rooms. She nodded into the book, still haughtily, and almost as if I didn’t have to ask.
Kooka Stays Put
The next few days passed smoothly, in the new rhythm created by the upstairs inhabitants of the hotel. The Lazy Tenor would entertain some and upset others every Happy Hour. Jim and The Barrels would stoically ride their way through their sets, and up in The Sewing Room Kooka would lie with eyes shut in the big
space, snoozing and farting and being attended to by myself, Jen and Joan, and in the wee hours of the night by his new saintly companion, The Blonde Maria.
It was early November and all through the valley the mushrooms were still sprouting. They remained on the menu right through the month. Dishes such as ‘Japanese Rising Tide Soup’, ‘Endless Autumn Pasta’, and ‘Perennial Mushroom Pie’ were constantly being invented. It was disconcerting for people, even subtly terrifying, this surfeit of fungi, but nevertheless The Grand Hotel’s purpose seemed stronger than ever – to cheer people up. In this respect we were remaining faithful to the much loved tradition of hospitality in Mangowak.
Each morning The Lazy Tenor would fling open his window and regale the riverflat with his gift. In essence it became a form of metaphysical rent he was paying to the likes of myself in the barn, The Blonde Maria in her increasingly monastic room, and anyone else who bothered to drop by to hear the arias. Even Kooka, whose eyes like a newborn pup’s were gradually beginning to open more and more, remarked to The Blonde Maria that he hadn’t heard anything as good for a long time. ‘It’s like eavesdropping at the doors of nature,’ he told her one evening, when she’d asked him what he thought.
About ten days after his turn on the stool in the bar I took a plate of Endless Autumn Pasta up to Kooka for his lunch. When I’d placed the tray in his lap and opened the ocean and inland windows to circulate the salty air, he asked me if it was possible if lunch could be accompanied by a drink. Well, he was sitting up quite chipper in his single bed, and despite Dr Feast’s recommendations I couldn’t see the harm in it. I went downstairs straightaway and returned with a carafe of red wine.
‘Well, Kooka,’ I said, pouring the wine. ‘I reckon you’ll be up and about again soon. You’ve got good colour. And anyway, it’s time you got that whodunnit game going downstairs.’
