The Grand Hotel

by Gregory Day

  Since there was nothing doing and the flat shore was not very interesting, Oliver had stretched himself, with his hands behind his head, on a bench that partly surrounded what in a small yacht would have been the cockpit and in a great ship the quarter deck. In the Black Swan it was something betwixt and between: a part of the after-deck, between the Poop and the cabin skylight, over which, when they were in port, an awning could be spread, and even a rug with some wicker chairs and a table; for this boat was no racing toy, but a floating bungalow, yet not meant to lie half hidden under the willow branches of some inland back-water; rather to sail sturdily from sea to sea, and be a home for the hermit at the ends of the earth.

  As Maria read, Kooka closed his eyes so as not to be distracted by her dishevelled beauty. As a consequence it wasn’t at all long before he raised his hand for the nightly instalment to finish. It was late after all; the old fella was obviously very tired.

  Of course we were very thankful for this, not only because of the others waiting at the Sewing Room door but also because, in her now-drunken state, Maria was having great trouble reading without slurring the words. As she gratefully closed the pages of George Santayana, I slowly leant across her to the bedside table and switched the tranny on.

  Three commentators were discussing the long-forgotten sketchbooks of the Australian artist Jean Gullyside. Two of them were gushing about her position in the ‘outsider art’ and ‘brute art’ movements while the other one was dismissing the Gullyside sketchbooks as ‘purely psychiatric’. Now this was the first discussion I’d heard on the radio for months that interested me, but I couldn’t believe the timing. I was suddenly caught between not wanting Kooka to fall asleep and send the tranny into static and, of course, wanting him to very much.

  For better or worse, however, I could see Kooka showing the telltale signs of sleepiness where he lay under the crocheted rug. Our plan was that when (or if, as we still couldn’t be absolutely sure that the broadcasts would continue) the static began, we would use it as sound cover to let everyone quietly file into the room. We just had to bank on the fact that the static would last long enough for this to be achieved.

  As I say, I was torn, as on the tranny the two commentators went deeper and deeper into their appreciation of Jean Gullyside’s work, the sceptical third commentator out in the cold. Eventually, as the discussion turned to the possibility of staging an exhibition called Scrawl, devoted purely to Australian works done in coloured pencil, old Kooka finally crossed over and the tranny spluttered before going completely silent.

  Maria and I looked at each other, concerned. All we could hear were the frogs in the night, and beyond that the hiss and occasional crash of the ocean down at the rivermouth. There were no Plinth bells, and looking up to the tiny window high in the western wall it was blank, with no bogong moth trying to get in to the light, just bare cold glass and the unpainted sheoak sill.

  We sat frozen in our chairs and waited to see what would happen. On the pillow Kooka’s closed eyes had narrowed his brow into a furrow. It was a look of concentration, even though he was asleep, as if the dreaming kookaburra on the branch had once again spotted his prey. Eventually his face relaxed into a deep pleasured smile as someone out in the hallway bumped lightly against the door. At that very moment the tranny burst back into life; well, into the raucous half life of oceanic static anyway.

  Carefully I got off my chair and tiptoed to the door. This was the moment we’d all been waiting for. Turning the knob, I found my friends just as I’d left them, waiting patiently and attentively, proving that it doesn’t always take a bucket of cold water to sober people up. Between them they had drunk a lot of Dancing Brolgas and a lot of Black Velvets that night, but no one had the giggles and no one was throwing up. It was only The Blonde Maria back on the wicker chair next to Kooka’s bed who was showing signs of being a little worse for wear.

  First Nan then Darren stepped up and quietly entered the room. Under directions they stuck close to the eastern wall, well away from the pool of light, before rounding the northeast corner and lowering themselves to sit on the floor under the inland window. Carefully then Joan Sutherland and his dairy family came in, Dylan and Dougie obviously enraptured by the late-night adventure; I winked at them all as they stepped past me in the doorway. They turned right along the eastern wall in the same direction as Nan and Darren. Finally came Ash and Dave, Jim, Oscar, Givva and Veronica, again under my directions. These six entered the open Sewing Room door and headed the other way, to the left along the eastern wall, towards the ocean window where the lump of Kooka’s boxed-up archive sat inert and shadowy in the dark. I watched as the silhouettes of Ash and Dave crossed in front of the ocean window before they sat down with their backs against the boxes of the archive. Jim and Oscar followed them and sat under the window while Givva and Veronica sat on either side of the southeastern corner of the room.

  Thankfully the static continued as I gently closed the door on the creek and made my way back to my chair. Kooka’s sleep had not been disturbed and the knot of pleasure on his face seemed if anything to have deepened since I had got up to let everyone in.

  Minutes passed. Still the static reigned, and I feared it would be the two Sutherland boys sitting with their parents on the wall behind me and to my right who would grow impatient first. They were only kids after all.

  I needn’t have worried. What followed next most definitely kept their interest. As the shape of Kooka’s mouth opened into a perfect O, the static ceased on the tranny, to be replaced by the solitary pleasure of Tom String.

  He was obviously out in the bush because the first sounds we heard were the ratcheting and sawing of nearby wattlebirds in the trees. Then the charismatic song of a dusky woodswallow and the flow of a river nearby. And then Tom String’s voice, in a tone Maria and I had not heard before, groaning with pleasure. We could hear a bright rhythmic sound too, of liquid and skin squelching, and it became clear that we were listening to him masturbating.

  Immediately I was wondering what everyone in the darkness against the walls was making of it, and in particular I could sense Jen Sutherland’s disapproval that her boys were in the room. Tom String’s groans became more fervent, until they turned from just sounds of sexual pleasure into words of pure devotion. ‘Aw, missus ... they’re like raspberries ... so pink and right. Can I juice them, here, in my teeth, like this? ... oh yes ... and feel here, put your lovely lady’s hand on big Tom String ... oh yairs ... oh, my sweet missus ... Joan ... and slip ’em off ... oh missus, that’s right ... look at that ... it’s you, oh ... how do ya do? ... let me ... touch ... oh ... oh ... your arse, your lilywhite arse ... oh yes, and there it is ... oh, like silk, like a silk purse ... can you feel that? ... oh yairs ... the full ... yes it’s good ... and you ... you’re good ... I love ... oh ... Joan ... aw...’ere ... oh ... oh, missus! ... missus! oh, fark, fark, oh faark,aw ... yairs ... I love ... oaaah.’

  With a huge exhalation Tom String arrived at his destination and his voice descended into a soft vulnerable whimpering. His ecstasy stilled. In front of us Kooka hadn’t moved but the O shape of his mouth had closed and the look of intense pleasure had exchanged itself for the usual impervious peace of a sleeping face.

  Maria looked over at me, her eyes bright with surprise, as if to say, ‘We weren’t expecting that!’

  She was right; we weren’t. The half Aboriginal ex-stone-cracker’s love for a barrister’s widow was a love played out alone, and it ended in a sound almost like sobbing. My heart couldn’t help but go out to him.

  In the deep stillness after Tom String’s whimpering finally ceased, a crow called from somewhere out in the day, a slow lazy raarkthat echoed in the air, followed by another raark, and eventually, after almost a minute of silence, another. Then, from below where Tom sat, came a sound I’d heard before. It was unmistakable: the rough bark of the brolga – first once; then twice; and then it made a fibrillating kind of clucking sound. I shivered, realising in a flash where
Tom String was: on the ironstone rise above his upstream brewer’s camp, where months ago I had found myself laughing for joy at the wondrous dancing brolga. But before I had a chance to dwell on the implications of this, other human voices began to be heard, and the light tinkling of metal. Then a bell, yes, unmistakably a bicycle bell.

  In the Grass-Tree Glade

  It was a man’s voice, and a woman’s, and as the focus of Kooka’s dream left Tom String on the ironstone rise it became clear that it was the voices of Mr Arvo and Joan Sweeney we were hearing, as they were preparing to set off from the hotel for their picnic.

  ‘I hope you approve of corned silverside, Mr Arvo,’ Joan Sweeney was saying, ‘because that’s what was left over and I’ve used it for the sandwiches. We’ve got fruit as well, of course – apples and peaches – and Tom String smoked an eel. Plus I took down two boiled eggs from the jar in the hotel bar and some peanuts. And I brought two bottles of Native Companion Ale, which I thought we could share.’

  ‘Oh that’s all very kind of you, Mrs Sweeney, but I didn’t think you drank alcohol?’

  ‘I don’t. Not as far as the hotel is concerned. It’s challenging enough being a publican out here without getting slipshod on the grog. It’s the number one rule for the lady hostess: don’t drink with the clientele. You’ll get yourself into all sorts of trouble.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes, but today you’re not so much clientele, Mr Arvo, as my guide to the bush. So I thought a glass of Tom String’s beer might be nice.’

  ‘Well I’m honoured, Mrs Sweeney.’

  ‘Don’t be. I can assure you my motives are selfish.’

  With their picnic basket strapped atop the back wheel of Mr Arvo’s bicycle, the publican and the musical botanist pedalled off from The Grand Hotel. Joan Sweeney was the navigator and on her instructions they headed inland across the riverflat on the Dray Road.

  From behind me, on the wall to my left, it was Veronica who gasped audibly at this first mention of a local landmark that still exists to this day. Of course I could well understand her excitement but raised my hand above my head in the pool of light to remind her not to make any noise. The last thing we wanted now was for Kooka to be awoken.

  As Joan Sweeney and Arvo Nuortila headed along the bumpy Dray Road, we could hear the spokes and guards of their bicycles rattling, as well as the cascading chirrup of wagtails and the chuckles of honeyeaters in the bushes as they passed. It wasn’t long before they had found their way, on a track Joan Sweeney called ‘The Blackboys’, into the hush of the trees. Then, riding into an open sounding glade, they stopped their bicycles and Mr Arvo explained that the plants by which the track had got its name (and which these days we call grass-trees) were actually called Xanthorrhoea. ‘With an X,’ he told her.

  ‘ Xanthorrhoea,’ Joan Sweeney replied happily. ‘What an unfortunate name. It rhymes with diarrhoea.’

  It was an inauspicious beginning to their botanical lesson but both of them were nevertheless amused. Mr Arvo laughed and said, ‘I didn’t invent these names, Mrs Sweeney, I only learnt them.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Joan Sweeney replied, a little unconvinced. ‘Well anyway, shall we leave the bicycles here and take a stroll? I’m sure there are more pleasant names for the flowers all about.’

  Resting their bicycles in the grass-tree glade, their footfalls became audible as they ranged off into the bush.

  ‘What you call “palm” is actually “bracken”,’ Mr Arvo was saying, for the benefit of his host. ‘I’ve seen the way you so cleverly set your flowers in the vases among it. It is also known by its Latin name, Pteridium.’

  ‘I see,’ said Joan Sweeney, with a hint of embarrassment in her voice. ‘I suppose the resemblance is why I called it “palm”. No one else does around the hotel. But you see it always reminds me of Egypt.’

  ‘Have you been to Egypt?’ Mr Arvo asked, surprised.

  ‘Oh no,’ Joan Sweeney replied. ‘But my husband promised to take me there, just before he died.’

  ‘You must miss him,’ Mr Arvo ventured.

  ‘My husband? Oh no, Mr Arvo. We didn’t get on. Though I still have his suits in camphor and pepper in the bottom drawers of my bedroom dresser.’

  Perhaps deeming it wise to change the subject, Mr Arvo said, ‘Do you see the tiny pale crimson spray there? Underneath the acacia?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Joan Sweeney. ‘It’s the Cheery Bell.’

  ‘The Cheery Bell,’ Mr Arvo repeated mildly. ‘Well here’s a case in point. That, Mrs Sweeney, is your state’s floral emblem.’

  ‘The Cheery Bell?’ Joan Sweeney exclaimed, delighted. ‘Victoria’s floral emblem?’

  ‘Yes indeed. Although I’m sorry to inform you that no one else would know it by your charming name.’

  Joan Sweeney laughed. ‘ Touché, Mr Arvo. But alright then, go on. Tell me what my husband’s friends in Government House call the poor little darlings.’

  ‘The flower is known by the name of Epacris, Mrs Sweeney. Or in pure Linnaean Latin, Epacris impressa. Not to be confused with the similar looking Spanish heath, which is also known by its Latin name as Erica lusitanica, or the Erica heath.’

  ‘Erica heath,’ Joan Sweeney replied, once again delighted by this outdoors education. ‘Well, that’s a lovely name for a woman. And I knew an Erica once. She was just a tot. The newborn child of a friend of mine.’

  ‘And was she named after the flower?’ Mr Arvo enquired.

  ‘Well, if she was, no one informed me,’ Joan Sweeney replied, with a youthful giggle.

  They wandered through the undergrowth chatting like this for at least half an hour, in which time Mr Arvo corrected Joan Sweeney’s names for many other flowers. These included Comesperma volubile, Imperata cylindrica, Acacia verticulataand Kennedia prostrata. The last of them, the small pea-flower she called The Burnt Tongue, because of its tongue-shaped leaf and its burnt looking russet tone, was called Canaliculata. Joan Sweeney burst into more girlish laughter at this and would only explain why after much cajoling by her guide. ‘Say it slowly, syllable by syllable, Mr Arvo,’ she instructed. ‘Can-a-lic-u-lata? See? It’s very rude.’

  Mr Arvo, worldly and confident by temperament, was audibly titillated by Joan Sweeney’s pun. ‘Oh my dear, you are right,’ he said. ‘They didn’t mention that back in the Baron von Mueller’s herbarium!’

  ‘I bet they didn’t,’ Joan Sweeney replied.

  Later on, when they’d made their way back to the grass-tree glade and had spread their picnic rug and laid out their food, Joan Sweeney asked Mr Arvo what it was like to have a herb named after him.

  Chewing very deliberately on the silverside sandwich, the Balt thought for a moment before saying, ‘Well, I suppose it was quite a feather in my cap for a time. But only for a time.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Joan Sweeney. ‘Why only for a time?’

  ‘Well, as I was trying to tell you the other night in the hotel, the Nuortila mint only actually existed for a short period of time.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Arvo? Has it become extinct?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he laughed. ‘No, nothing like that! Unfortunately what happened was I fell out with von Mueller over my praise of Mr Guilfoyle’s approach as the superintendent of the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. Mr Guilfoyle has done a superb job as superintendent but at the time of his appointment Baron von Mueller was most upset at being replaced.’

  ‘I see. And you are a supporter of Mr Guilfoyle’s?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not so much a case of taking sides, for I am a great admirer of the baron. It was just that ... well, yes ... I felt, like others did, that the Melbourne gardens had benefited from a fresh approach. In his time as superintendent the baron’s model was Kew in London, which as a repository for plants from all over the known world is splendid. But what Mr Guilfoyle has achieved in his new landscape in Melbourne, the way that he, with the engineer Catani, has adapted the river to suit his purposes, and the new picturesque roll of the gr
ound, has brought so much happiness to so many.’

  ‘So are you telling me, Mr Arvo, that the great Baron von Mueller was petty enough to hold a grudge? And to strip you of the honour of having the native mint named after you?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Sweeney, I suppose I am. The Nuortila mint is now simply known as the Warburton mint, after the place where it was found. Curious isn’t it?’

  ‘Curious!’ Joan Sweeney cried. ‘That’s putting it favourably, Mr Arvo. But upon reflection I can’t say I’m really that surprised. The authorities, Mr Arvo, otherwise known as “men of importance”, from my experience are rarely to be trusted. Their supposed discernment and loyalty must always be taken with a grain of salt.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Arvo, ‘ cum grano salis?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘ Cum grano salis.“With a grain of salt”. One of my favourite of the Latin maxims.’

  The familiar clink of heavy glass could now be heard as Joan Sweeney produced the bottles of Native Companion Ale from the picnic basket and proposed a defiant toast. There was no slosh, however, of the beer being poured, only the squeaking of two corks and then the glassy tink of the toast. Mr Arvo and Joan Sweeney were obviously drinking straight from the bottlenecks as they celebrated the afterlife of the Nuortila mint.

  Their lips came away as they finished their initial swig. They both gasped with breathless satisfaction at the impressive carbonation of Tom String’s beer.

  ‘It’s odd to see a lady such as you drink from the bottle,’ Mr Arvo remarked.

  There was a brief pause, in which Joan Sweeney could be heard taking another swig. Incredibly she then burped deeply, apologised lightly, and said with an unmistakably flirtatious air, ‘Well, even ladies can be bold in the bush.’

  It was now Mr Arvo’s turn to take another gulp of the Native Companion, which he did in what seemed like an awful hurry. He was either embarrassed by Joan Sweeney’s teasing remark or just plain excited.