The Grand Hotel

by Gregory Day

  This got me thinking. Would the pictures on the leaves fade as quickly if they had never been removed from the spot where they had fallen in the bush? Or, exposed to the air and light where they fell, would the images fade, or at least change, even more quickly than they had in the cereal box? All of a sudden this seemed a most important question, and I decided to see if I could find out the answer, if for no other reason than to make sure I hadn’t begun to destroy the very thing I had lovingly noticed in the first place.

  On a Sunday morning I went back out into the bush and tied little bits of string to new picture-leaves I found, attaching the strings at the other end to a fencewire or a branch, or some other thing that would be suitable as a stay. And then, the following Saturday, I went back out to the leaves to check what had happened. To my surprise I found the leaves completely transformed, to the extent that not only had the images vanished but also the whole palette of each leaf had become unrecognisable in only a week’s worth of weather and light. Green had become russet, russet had become pale gold, pale gold had become a kind of oaten white. Totally disenchanted, but reassured in my task of collecting the leaves for annotating and safekeeping, I went home thinking of new storage techniques, convinced that I was to the pictures in the leaves as a curator is to the objects in a museum. Without the impulse to preserve, the beauty of the natural world would simply waste away all around us.

  It took me ages – well, it actually took me until I was sixteen – to find the deeper lesson in the beauty of the leaves I had collected. My elder brothers had all moved out of home by this time and thus I was in line to take up residence in the much treasured barn, where of course I still reside to this day. Gathering all my stuff together from my bedroom in the house, in order to carry it out to the barn, I came upon the old cereal box of gumleaves from years ago. Opening it up, I gently tipped out the contents onto my bedroom chair and began to sort through them.

  As I flicked through the leaves, I was invaded by a mounting sense of what I could only describe as shame. One by one I checked the script on the cardboard labels against the leaves they had once described. And time and again, without fail, I was left with an empty sense of nothing but my own imagination. Stuffed away in the forgotten box, the leaves had of course lost all their vibrancy, all their imagery, and were, without exception, drab, brittle and grey. And yet, on the labels, written in my immature hand of four years previous, were wondrous titles like ‘Reef in the Sky’, ‘The Flight of the Eagle’, and ‘The Singing Leaf’.

  In one instant I realised what it was that I treasured so much about seeing the pictures in the leaves. It was not just the images I had been enjoying but each image’s special span of existence, each picture’s fragile time in the light, and in each brief and imaginary moment it was the air itself that was the painter.

  This was happenstance – ‘accident and chance’ my mum would call it – but to me it was a lot more. By the vanishing of the images in the cereal box, I understood instantly that the world itself was a kind of artist, that time was a kind of music, and that it was a misunderstanding of nature, in short a sin, to stuff that music away in some old forgotten box. That was like throwing a blanket over beauty, like silencing music, silencing time, which in the end was the same as silencing life. I swore to myself, right there on the very day that I moved into the barn, in the kind of moral swoon readily available to a dreamy and excitable sixteen-year-old, that I would endeavour never to silence the world’s music again. Instead, I swore, I would treasure the pictures in the leaves as I noticed them, and leave them where they lay. I would treat them as my teachers of time, colour and the universe, and I would spend my life trying to make pictures that no museum curator’s blanket could be thrown over.

  Well, I’d be the last person to suggest that I’ve succeeded in such pure ambitions, but in The Grand Hotel at least, I’ve had a taste of what I understood so deeply back when I was sixteen.

  In those days following the brawl, The Lazy Tenor and The Blonde Maria were often seen out walking when normally they would have been holed up in their rooms. The Lazy Tenor’s neck had three deep gouges in it from where Joan’s Otway claws had grappled him, and he’d been persuaded by Maria that swimming in the ocean would help them heal more quickly. It struck me again, as I occasionally sighted them walking the clifftops or lying beside the Siren’s rockpool, what a handsome couple they were. The Christmas holiday tourist season was fast approaching but for the time being the two of them could lounge about the quiet spring shoreline like a pair of millionaires.

  The Lazy Tenor held no grudges from the fight; in fact he’d laughed the whole thing off when he re-emerged from his room later that same night to continue recording the exploits from ‘The Tradesman’s Entrance’ in The Horse Room. The wounds on his neck were his only concern, and whether or not they would affect his morning arias. As it happened, that was the main purpose of their walks to the beach.

  When he’d begun to sing his aria on the morning after the brawl, the expansion of his vocal muscles had reopened the fresh wounds. According to Maria he sang on despite the pain and with blood trickling from his neck, across his collarbones and down his naked chest. She told me this with the telltale wide eyes of devotion you see on people who claim to have witnessed some kind of religious miracle at Lourdes or some other sacred site. I understood straightaway how appealing the trickling blood would have been to Maria, a true marriage of sacrifice and song, and I listened every morning for any difference in The Lazy Tenor’s actual tone. But I couldn’t detect any extra profundity or artistry, or indeed any divine atmosphere around the arias. Of course, as far as I was concerned, his voice could not possibly have improved from what I had already heard, but Maria begged to differ.

  The very person I needed to keep an eye on things and to make sure we didn’t make ourselves vulnerable to the prying gaze of Sergeant Greg Beer was the person whose madness had kickstarted our new problems: Joan Sutherland. It was Joan, after all, who had averted the disaster when Greg Beer came to inspect the smoke alarms. But now that he was sick at home, and Jen was required to nurse him, once again I felt as if I had to do the work of three men. I decided not to complicate matters by employing a replacement bartender but rather to redouble my own efforts and to keep a closer eye on the goings on of the hotel. All the clientele, bar the passing trade, knew the police were waiting to pounce, and it was heartening to observe everyone on their best behaviour in those next few days – still enjoying themselves, of course, but with no inclination to cause another stir.

  I actually have fond memories of the lovely rhythm we settled into during those fateful days, beginning each morning with The Lazy Tenor’s bloodletting aria. I’d have a quiet breakfast with whoever came down to the bar before taking something up to Kooka. Then I’d make my way over to the river and swim like a merman on the seaward end of the indoor creek while listening to the Plinth bells ringing down at the rivermouth. After lunch we’d ready ourselves to open and after 3pm we were of course in full swing right until stumps.

  Such was my weariness after mopping and tidying beyond closing that come one o’clock I often couldn’t get to sleep in the barn. Those early December nights were quiet and warm, and it was pleasant just to sit up in my loft with a cigarette and a sketchbook, and unwind. There would be no more wild parties in The Blonde Maria’s room, no more frankincense fumigations in the bar down below, not while Greg Beer was watching. The ironic thing, however, was that right under his nose, and right under mine for that matter, the most radical events to ever take place in The Grand Hotel were unfolding on those quiet, seemingly innocuous evenings in the wake of the brawl.

  Every night, after making love with The Lazy Tenor, The Blonde Maria had been treading her path through the willows and ducks in the hallway to read aloud to Kooka from the novels in the bookcase in her room. By early December, a week after the garden party brawl, they were re-reading The World of Carrick’s Cove, after making their way through The Country of
the Pointed Firsand nearly all the novels of Esther May Protheroe. But of course it wasn’t the novels that were drawing The Blonde Maria to Kooka’s bedside every night but rather the electronic telepathies being transmitted through his little black transistor.

  Initially Maria would listen, as if in a pact of good faith, to the old man’s dreams, and in the morning, by asking him apparently unimportant questions while massaging his feet, she would patch together a version of what was taking place in them, of who was who and what referred to what. At first, of course, she’d had no idea who the woman was screaming in the fire, just as she’d had no idea who the woman was swimming in the waves with her lists. But then one night Kooka burst into wakefulness in the middle of the fire-woman’s screams. Or at least Maria thought he’d awoken. He sat up straight in the bed, his eyes even opened and looked wildly all about the room, but he was still locked inside the dream. And then, in tandem with the tranny on the bedside table, Kooka spoke – in fact he yelled – calling MOTHER MOTHER I’M HERE OUT HERE! THROUGH THE DOORWAY! IT’S JOHNNY MOTHER! I CAUGHT THE TRAIN! And before Maria could lean over to quieten the poor old man, he slumped back into the bed again, closed his eyes and lay there quietly as the horses’ hooves came clattering down the street and the firemen appeared.

  The Blonde Maria sat dead still. She wondered if anyone else in the hotel had heard Kooka’s cry. She waited. As usual The Barrels were still playing downstairs; she could hear the dull thud of Oscar’s bass through the floorboards. But no unusual movements. And no one coming up the stairs.

  The tranny glitched again and went silent. And then on came Mary and John, and an everyday conversation about Mary’s brother Vin, who was a trainee-priest in the seminary at Manly and wanted to come home for Christmas.

  At that moment, however, Maria cared about nothing but the fire. It had been Kooka’s mother who was screaming all along. And the ‘Johnny’ was him. Of course she knew nothing of Kooka’s history – she had no idea his mother was a Tivoli dancer who became a prostitute in St Kilda and had sent him to her Conebush cousins in Mangowak to give him a future. But now at least she knew something about the fire.

  The following evening, when she entered The Sewing Room with The World of Carrick’s Covein her hand, she managed to broach the subject by referring to the book. ‘You know, Kooka,’ she said gently, ‘I feel sorry for this poor boy in Carrick’s Cove. He’s got such a hopeless father. Every time he’s starting to get somewhere with his boat, the old man ruins it for him. It would be hard to have a parent like that.’

  ‘I reckon so,’ Kooka said.

  ‘What about your parents, Kooka?’ she went on. ‘How did you get along with them? Were they a help or a hindrance?’

  Kooka pursed his lips and looked towards the seaward wall. ‘Well,’ he said, after a pause, ‘I never knew my father, but my mother was no hindrance at all.’

  ‘Well, I’m happy to hear it.’

  ‘In fact,’ Kooka went on, ‘some might say that it was the other way around.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Yairs, well, she was an entertainer, my mum. A little like you, Maria. But they were hard days, and having a bub around as a single mum didn’t really suit her talents.’

  ‘What kind of entertainer was she, Kooka? A singer?’

  ‘No, love, she was a dancer. At the Tivoli up in Melbourne. And she sent me to her cousins down here, the Conebushes, for a better chance in life.’

  ‘Can I ask you a personal question, Kooka?’ Maria said.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Did she die in a fire?’

  Kooka’s eyes narrowed and he sat up a little in bed. ‘Well, how on earth would you know that, young lady? Has Noely been gasbagging to you?’

  The Blonde Maria winced. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But some nights when I’m sitting by your bed, well, you have dreams. It’s like you talk in your sleep or something.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yeah, and ... there’s often something about a fire.’

  Kooka smiled at The Blonde Maria. ‘Yes, well, Mum died in a fire alright. When I was just a kid. But I got my dancing shoes from her. And I got my lovely Mary by dint of dancing. At the 1949 Minapre Debutantes’ Ball.’

  The Blonde Maria’s face broadened into a grin. ‘I never knew you were a dancer, Kooka.’

  ‘Oh, too right I was. Mary and I. I got the talent from my mum. But as for Mary’s talent, well, it was a gift from God I suppose.’

  He licked his lips in satisfaction at the thought. ‘You know, Maria, it’s a long time since anyone’s been close enough to listen in on my dreams. Not since Mary died. I like the thought of it.’ Then he pointed at the book. ‘But let’s get back to that boy and his boat now. I’m keen to see how he gets on.’

  For fear of disturbing the old man’s sleep, she had wept silent tears then as night after night he revisited the St Kilda brothel fire that had killed his mother, thereby proving her love and foresight in sending him to Mangowak to live with her cousins the Conebushes. She had also wept silently, though this time for joy, when by constant dreaming reassurance his beloved Mary had proven to Kooka that yes it was her who had stopped the apricot tree from bearing fruit that first year after she died. By convincing him of this from beyond the grave, she had healed him of the great anguish he’d felt over the vanishing act of her death, and, as a consequence, of the fanatical interest in history that had taken over his life when she died. Or so at first it appeared.

  Maria had listened in wonder as both Kooka’s burning mother and Mary slowly, ever so slowly, disappeared from his nightly broadcasts altogether.

  For a time what remained seemed only the random associative assemblages of an old man’s reconciled mind. There were scenes with present day figures such as Darren Traherne or Nan Burns going out on ferreting trips with Ron McCoy and old Fred Ayling, or other people long dead. There was one long broadcast, which kept Maria up till dawn, where a dead body had been found adorned with forest flowers on the end of the Minapre Pier. The police were called to the scene only to find not a human being but a dead sea elephant ringed with the flowers.

  For Maria these evenings were too weird and magical to communicate, until it became evident that the other mysterious recurring figure she had not been able to explain, the swimming woman with the lists, turned out to be Joan Sweeney, the publican of the original Grand Hotel.

  It was very late one night, around 2 am, three weeks after Greg Beer’s threat. I was drawing up in my loft, with a glass of the Finland wine, when I heard the hotel door open and close and footsteps coming across the yard. Naturally I was curious about who it was but the drawing I was working on – of poor Joan Sutherland curled up in foetal position within a giant Lalique glass – was so absorbing that I didn’t bother to open the timber shutter of the old open-air window in the loft to look out.

  I continued the picture with one ear cocked, noticing that the footsteps did not continue along the crunch of the driveway and out onto the road as I expected but instead had crossed straight over the yard, padding softly, before coming to a standstill next to my barn.

  Now I looked up from the picture of Joan in the Lalique and waited. Silence. Until the anxious call of a plover, way out on the riverflat.

  Then I heard my name called tentatively in the night. ‘Noel. Are you up there, Noel?’

  I put the drawing aside, came down the ironbark ladder, and a few minutes later was sitting quietly downstairs in the barn, sharing my wine with Maria.

  The sweet taste of the Baltic liquor on her lips must have fortified her against the unlikely nature of what she was about to tell me. After the usual enquiries about the chaos of bush refuse and ocean flotsam and jetsam scattered everywhere around my barn, she began to relate the amazing tale she’d gingerly crossed the night yard to tell.

  As I listened without a word to Maria describing what had been happening with Kooka and the tranny beside his bed, I could see that she felt she was gambling on her relat
ionship with me by recounting it. Would I believe her? Would I suspect she was having a lend of me? Would I write her off as finally and categorically mad, like Joan Sutherland seeing constellations in the daylight?

  She needn’t have worried. As she told me in great detail about Kooka’s mother and the fire, about Mary and the apricots, and how these scenes would repeat themselves over and over through the little tranny until gradually they faded away to be replaced by more typical, if fanciful things, it was clear that not even in her most unhinged state could Maria have possibly concocted the scenario she was expecting me to believe. The final proof for me, however, was when she made a particular point of describing what Mary’s voice was like as she spoke with Kooka in the broadcasts. The voice Maria described was inimitably Mary, with the exact characteristics I remember so fondly from my childhood. Mary Dwyer was well brought up, in a country-town sort of way, with her father being Dr Bernard Feast’s liberal-minded medical predecessor in Minapre; and so, as Maria described, Mary spoke not with a plum as such but with well-educated vowels tempered and textured by her more practical country life. As Maria said, you would not have described Mary’s accent as in any way ‘tough’ but there was a matter-of-factness about the way she spoke that precluded her being described as merely upper crust. But more importantly, Maria described to a tee the occasional speech impediment Mary had, a little difficulty with pronouncing the letter ‘r’ when it occurred in the middle of a word. I remember clearly as a child that lovely Mary often said ‘Chwistmas’ for ‘Christmas’, and my brothers and I used to make the usual jokes about such a thing among ourselves. As Maria told me, the word ‘apricot’ often, but not always, brought out this impediment in Mary’s speech, so that when Maria sat in The Sewing Room listening night after night to their love affair from beyond the grave she found the voice of Kooka’s wife unmistakable and distinctive. She said she couldn’t count the amount of times she’d heard Mary say ‘apwicot’ for ‘apricot’, but almost as if it was a hangover from when she was a little girl, because she didn’t always pronounce the word that way.