The Grand Hotel

by Gregory Day

  Eventually I emerged from the ocean and sat, tingling all over, on the beach. Still no one was around; it was my lucky day. I lay back and let the warm sun dry me. Before long I had fallen fast asleep.

  When I awoke groggily some time later, I sat up to see a woman I recognised at the far end of the beach. It was Jen Sutherland. She was sitting on a rock at the end of the cove, where the sand finishes and the tide begins to run in over the potholes of the reef just there.

  I stood up quickly and put back on my clothes. I would have liked to leave her in peace and go my own way, but I felt paranoid about doing so. What if she suspected her husband’s affair with The Blonde Maria and interpreted my departure from the beach as collusion, as if I was avoiding her? Fact was, I had colluded with Joan, even to the extent of agreeing to back him up with his bogus story of how he’d broken his arm. He’d told Jen he’d fallen off a ladder while trying to fix the hotel’s outside light.

  I decided I couldn’t risk it. I liked Jen, I respected her good sense and kindness, and so, saying a quick farewell to my solitude, I strolled over towards the rock to dishonestly declare my innocence by saying hello.

  Jen wasn’t surprised to see me. She turned from her reverie and smiled sweetly. ‘I saw you sleeping there, Noel. I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  She was naturally shy, so I knew this would have suited her. But now she moved over on the rock above the tide, to make room for me to sit down.

  ‘Joan’s at home with the kids, of course, because of his arm,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s all a bit inconvenient for you, Noel, but it’s a godsend for me. I can’t remember the last time I sat by myself on the beach like this.’

  ‘And now I’ve come along and ruined it,’ I said.

  ‘Oh no,’ she laughed. ‘I was just beginning to get bored.’

  I didn’t believe her; the dreamy looking woman I’d observed sitting on the rock as I woke up was far from bored.

  We sat in silence watching the tide poking its way into all the igneous nooks and pots and crevices of the brown and jagged reef. I felt a little nervous; Jen had such a quiet dignity about her. Any dignity I had at that moment seemed a trifle compromised.

  ‘I’ve always been superstitious about living on the coast,’ she said, breaking the silence. It was an unexpected remark from one usually so private.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I dunno. There always seemed to be dickheads coming from this direction when I was growing up.’

  I laughed, but actually I was taking note of the fact that it was the first time I’d ever heard Jen Sutherland swear. ‘Dickhead’ was just not one of her words. She was clearly feeling raw.

  ‘But when I sit on a rock like this and get some time alone, I can understand what all the fuss is about.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s good,’ I said.

  ‘Back home I used to love crawling on my belly out onto the blackwood boughs above our river. To just be by myself there, at dusk, in all that peace and quiet. I even wrote a very bad poem about it once. “When Time Stands Still”, it was called.’

  She laughed a little at the memory. ‘But this is different,’ she said. ‘This is like watching time passing.’

  I nodded. We watched the water together.

  Eventually I asked, ‘How are the boys?’

  Jen smiled. She raised her arm and pointed while answering, at a gannet plummeting into the water about a hundred metres out. ‘Oh they’re alright. Happy to have their dad home. Happy to write on his plaster.’

  Again I laughed. She’d obviously seen what I had written in the hospital. The gannet bobbed on the water for a few seconds after its dive, then flew up into the air again. We both watched its path, hoping to see it dive again.

  I said, ‘You know years ago a guy Veronica and I went to art school with turned his back on it all and went into advertising. A lot of people gave him shit about it, told him he was selling out and all that. Veronica was one of them. But I liked him and couldn’t help feeling sorry that everyone was giving him such a rough time. So one day I rang him up to say I had an inspired idea and that he had to come down here to see me. When he arrived, I planned to bring him to the beach to watch the gannets dive. I was gonna explain that the only reason their heads didn’t explode when they crashed into the water at over a hundred kilometres an hour was because they had little air sacs just under the skin of their brow to cushion the blow. I was gonna tell him that these were the world’s first airbags. Then I was gonna suggest the ad. A beautiful luxury car snaking its way down the Great Ocean Road in dramatic winter weather. Out to sea behind the car the gannets are sheering down out of the sky, plummeting into the whitecaps. There’s lush choral music in the background, the voice-over explains the connections. The car, complete with airbags and every other luxury feature, would be touched by the gannet’s magic and included by implication in the beauty and wonder of the natural world. It was the perfect ad for a Volvo or Merc, and I knew it would get him off to a great start if he could get it to the right people.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Jen said. ‘It’d be a certainty.’

  ‘Yeah. But what happened was when he got down here, and we walked down the beach and were sitting watching them dive, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, to give him the idea. It was embarrassing. We sat on the beach and I didn’t say a word. It just felt wrong, to use the gannets like that. And he kept saying, “Come on, so what is it?” until I found myself trying to convince him of what Veronica and the others had been saying all along. That he shouldn’t go into advertising. He got real cranky then, and fair enough too, but I was stuck, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say.’

  On cue the gannet hovered high in mid-air in front of us, tucked its wings back and dived again, straight down, an arrow into the water. Jen and I were in awe, of both the elegance of the bird and of its sheer power, and watched as it bobbed on the surface before taking off and flying away west towards the Two Pointer Rocks.

  ‘Perhaps that’s what Joan needed when he fell off the ladder the other night,’ I joked. ‘An airbag.’

  ‘Might have saved a few hassles,’ Jen laughed.

  ‘Don’t you worry about him, though, Jen,’ I said. ‘He’ll be back at work soon. Do him good to have a spell at home anyway. And we’re making enough to pay him while he’s off.’

  ‘Yeah. He told me that. That’s nice, Noel.’

  We fell silent again until out of the blue Jen started humming, and then her lips parted and she began to sing ever so quietly in a light airy voice. I didn’t recognise the song but her voice seemed as clean as the clear cold water in front of us. Then, just as quickly as she started, she stopped again.

  I didn’t make any comment. I didn’t want to embarrass her. So I said, ‘Oh well, I better be off. Back to the madhouse.’

  She turned to face me and smiled. ‘Noel, it was nice to watch the gannets with you.’

  I stepped down off the rock and laughed nervously, feeling guilty again in the face of her quiet grace. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘you too, Jen. Anytime.’

  A Black Velvet Session

  I walked home with a guilty step, feeling rotten about what I knew and what I wasn’t telling Jen. The brief rejuvenation I’d found by having a walk and a cry, and then a swim and a sleep on the beach, had already disappeared as I stepped along.

  The air had turned thick and damp, as the southerly had brought in the sea mist and then died off to leave it just hanging there over the cliffs and the town. As I walked along Two Pointers Way, all the power poles were fizzing and crackling in the salty damp. If the mist stayed around till nightfall, all those poles would be sparking in the blackness, dotting the night with intermittent light, like crackers going off. When I was a kid and that happened, it was as if some kind of white man’s magic had over-ruled the sky. Mum used to take me to the ocean window in The Sewing Room, pull back the curtain and point out the fizzing, crackling light coming and going all the way down the road. It was wonderful to see but i
t gave me an edgy feeling too: half scary, half as if a celebration had begun. It always added to the fun when Dad talked of how the salt-sparkle from the power poles was a ‘death-trap’. ‘Whole bloody town could catch fire,’ he’d say, and inside I’d catch my breath at his gloomy forecast and imagine the town ablaze, and all because of the magic tottering power poles catching fire in the salt-mist.

  By the time I got home, not only were my shorts wet from swimming but my shirt was still damp as well, from a mixture of the tears and walking in the mist-laden air. It was after lunch, a bit before two. The hotel would have to open in an hour and we were still a head barman short. I made straight for the barn and changed my clothes, and then hung the wet stuff up on the washing line down the side of the building. Eventually the mist would have to clear and they’d get dry.

  I walked across the front of the hotel and entered through the double doors of the verandah. The Lazy Tenor was behind the bar fixing himself a drink. I must say it was starting to feel a little bit rich the way he and The Blonde Maria had taken to helping themselves to whatever food and drink they wanted, without lifting a finger to help with the running of the hotel.

  As I walked in, The Lazy Tenor had a large glass beer jug, a bottle of champagne and two pint cans of Guinness out of the bar on the counter. He greeted me by popping the cork on the champagne bottle and knocking out the overhead light globe. ‘Aw, shit. Sorry, Noel,’ he said.

  I said nothing and watched as he set the champagne bottle down and opened one of the Guinness cans. Quickly he started pouring the contents into the beer jug with his left hand while he picked up the champagne bottle in his right and waited for the Guinness to settle. Placing the Guinness can aside, he then picked up a tablespoon he had ready on the bar, upturned it in his hand, and began pouring the champagne onto the back of the spoon, from where it spilt into the jug. The alcohol glittered and foamed, the Guinness remaining black and steady under the bubbles of the champagne, until slowly they fused. Rather expertly The Lazy Tenor managed to time the pouring so that the brew didn’t overflow the jug. Before long it was brimming at the lip and, beaming from ear to ear with the sight of it, he set the champagne bottle aside.

  ‘Maria said she’d never tasted a Black Velvet before,’ he told me, before remembering to neck the remaining champagne in the bottle. ‘So I had to do the honours. Nothing like it on a misty day like this. I mean, look at that!’

  He held the jug up in the remaining natural light there was in the bar. He was right, it did look impressive. I hadn’t laid eyes on a jug of Black Velvet for years, not since Father Leo Morris used to have one with his Saturday feed of couta, chips and coleslaw in the old Mangowak Hotel lounge. I was too young to ever get to taste one back then and now was keen to try. All of a sudden I felt like I could do with a good stiff drink.

  ‘Do you mind?’ I asked The Lazy Tenor, gesturing hopefully at the jug, and he replied, ‘Go for your life.’

  Perhaps inspired by my childhood memories, I ducked behind the counter and fossicked in the sideboard cupboard until I found the special Lalique champagne glasses that used to be my Aunty Rita’s.

  When I placed two of the Laliques on the bar, The Lazy Tenor was suitably impressed. ‘Hey,’ he said in his rich singer’s timbre. ‘Where did you get them?’

  Aunty Rita’s Laliques were beautiful. The stem between the bowl and the base of the glass was an art-deco figurine in opaque crystal – a naked female figure, a nymph no less.

  The Lazy Tenor’s lips puckered with amusement as he licked them with relish and poured the Black Velvet. In the pristine paper-thin glass of the Laliques the foaming matt-black concoction looked striking indeed. We each took up a glass and were giggling even before we’d tasted a drop. Such was the effect of Aunty Rita’s Laliques. And then we wished each other good health and drank. And my word did it taste good.

  The Lazy Tenor’s interest in opera, of course, betrayed a high-mindedness that otherwise he kept well hidden. It had occurred to me that his bawdy tales from ‘The Tradesman’s Entrance’ were set up to disguise the musical vocation he preferred to keep to himself. But perhaps relaxed now in the full knowledge that I’d not only heard but also appreciated his voice, he couldn’t help but express his appreciation of the elegant craftsmanship of Aunty Rita’s glasses.

  ‘I feel like Tito fuckin’ Gobbi, drinking from one of these!’ was his ecstatic observation.

  I’d heard him mention this name once before. ‘Who is Tito Gobbi?’ I dared ask.

  The Lazy Tenor scoffed and stared at me with derision. But then he took another sip, raised the Lalique in the air again and said, ‘Never mind. Tell me about these glasses.’

  So I told him about Aunty Rita and her South Yarra parties and how we were the poor country cousins. And I told him also what I knew of René Lalique himself, whose biography was passed down to us in the paraphernalia that came with the glasses when Aunty Rita died. All I really remembered of it was that Lalique had been born in a tiny country town in France but at an early age the family had moved to a suburb of Paris. From that day on they had visited the country town on summer holidays, and young René had developed a deep affection for the river and the unspoiled natural world of his birthplace. When later he became famous for his art-nouveau glass design, it was the naturalism in his work, the filigree, the plant forms, the birds, that set him apart. And this was all due to his attachment to the nondescript little town where he was born. Beyond that and of course his fame, I couldn’t really tell The Lazy Tenor much. Judging by his reaction, however, it seemed like it was enough.

  ‘You see blokes like him were a dime a dozen in Europe back then,’ he began enthusiastically, still holding his Lalique aloft. ‘Work like this, the music, the architecture – yes, even the fuckin’ glasses they drank from were fair dinkum.’ Then he gave a bitter laugh. ‘But growin’ up in Blokey Hollow ... mate, I might as well have grown up on the moon. It’s like starting off the back-markers. You got Buckley’s.’

  Out of nowhere The Lazy Tenor had for the first time admitted to having thwarted ambitions. It was curious. Either the unique craftsmanship of Aunty Rita’s Laliques had made a deep impression or The Blonde Maria had been getting in his ear about becoming a household name. The last thing I was gonna do was be nosey about it though. So I just stood at the bar and sipped the Black Velvet, and let him hold forth.

  ‘But do you reckon this Lalique cunt was some kind of toff, just coz he made beautiful shit? I doubt it. You said he was from a small town too, hey? He was probably a terrible shagger, just like me. Thing is, people round here think you have to talk with a marble in your mouth to be artistic. So a bloke like me’s gotta change, you know what I mean? You gotta change the way you talk, the way you walk, just coz God gave you a voice. Well where’s the fuckin’ logic in that? I’ve got the voice. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?’

  He was getting het up now and gestured for me to drink up so he could pour me another one. I drained the glass and he poured from the jug. ‘Isn’t The Blonde Maria expecting you upstairs?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘She’ll keep,’ he said. ‘She’s asleep anyway. The Black Velvet was gonna be a surprise. But what with these glasses you’ve pulled out of your arse, fact is, I can drink with you and cuddle the lady at the same time.’

  We laughed, and toasted our good health again.

  ‘Now where was I?’ he said, with the velvety foam on his upper lip. ‘That’s right. Fuckin’ hell, she’s on at me upstairs about “getting my act together”, as she calls it. “Well what would I wanna do that for?” I say. “Because you’ve got a gift,” she says. “Yep, so why turn it into a punishment?” I say back.’

  ‘How would it be a punishment,’ I asked, ‘to have a singing career?’

  ‘Mate, have you ever been to the opera in this country? It’s a fuckin’ joke. Half rate singers and fucknut tossers in the audience pretendin’ they care. They wouldn’t know Caruso from Perry Como half of ’em. I just couldn�
�t tolerate it. All that grandstandin’. Back in Italy when the whole show started, it was an absolute shitfight. You had your toffs in the boxes and the riff-raff down below, and the toffs’d be pissin’ and spittin’ on the riff-raff from a great height, people’d be throwin’ punches and fucking in the seats, and all while the opera was being performed. Now compare that to the Presbyterian shit they serve up in Melbourne. Fuck, if I’d been born in Venice in the fifteen hundreds I would have been a household name alright. You better believe it. But not now. Not here.’

  ‘Well, you could go overseas,’ I ventured.

  The Lazy Tenor’s jaw dropped. ‘Don’t you start,’ he said. ‘I thought we were having a pleasant drink. If I wanna be nagged at, I can just go back upstairs.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, well drink up, and tell me what you’re gonna do now you’ve lost your head barman.’

  I drained my glass and let The Lazy Tenor pour me another. But I was starting to feel peckish. So I went around behind the counter again and upturned a packet of peanuts into an imitation parquet bowl.

  ‘Good idea,’ said my drinking partner. ‘That’ll keep the orchestra in tune.’

  With a bodysurf and two Black Velvets under my belt I was feeling unusually good now. The concoction was extraordinarily drinkable and as a result it occurred to me that The Lazy Tenor might have a way with alcohol as well as women and song. So I put it on him. Had he ever poured a beer behind a hotel bar?