by Gregory Day
‘It’s true what I say about the powers that be, Mr Arvo,’ Joan Sweeney went on. ‘I lived with one of those men for the twelve years of my married life. I watched him free cold criminals at the bar and put innocent men in jail. I watched him amass a sizeable fortune with his land claims out in the west here while having Tom String’s countrymen shot, or poisoned by the arsenic in the damper. Of course when my husband died, I inherited that fortune. And the blood that was staining it. Only recently I wrote a letter to the authorities rebutting their disapproval of the way I am running The Grand Hotel. Nearly every word I wrote them was a lie designed to intimidate, in my husband’s name – the respected Sweeney name. But did you know, Mr Arvo, that the Sweeney name is most famous back in Ireland for the proud warrior who long ago, having thrown the supposedly holy book of the occupying powers into a lake, was turned into a bird and condemned to eke out an existence in the treetops of the wild west coast?’
‘No, I did not know that, Mrs Sweeney.’
‘Well that’s how I see my life as a widow, and the burden of the Sweeney name.’
Mr Arvo, buoyed up by the obvious passion of his hostess, and the beer, proposed another toast. ‘Well, here’s to you then, Mrs Sweeney. You are a remarkably singular woman indeed. And now I learn that you are also, according to Irish tradition, quite literally the bird in the bush.’
Joan Sweeney, however, wasn’t quite finished. She took a brief slug of the beer and said, ‘Oh yes, and that’s why I run my hotel as I do. I make sure the men around here have what they need to make them happy and I care little for the so-called consequences. The Grand Hotel’s been great while it’s lasted.’
‘Yes indeed, Joan, if I may call you that. But why talk as if its days are numbered?’
‘They are, Mr Arvo, they are. As are all our days. I don’t for one minute expect the hotel inspectors to be dissuaded by my letter to them. This has been quite a protracted correspondence. I’m expecting them to arrive any day now to close us down.’
‘But didn’t you say that the appointed sergeant from Ballaarat wasn’t well enough to make the ride?’
‘I did, Mr Arvo. But that old cripple won’t be the end of it. There were some in Port Phillip aghast when I left Melbourne to come out here to run The Grand. Eminent friends of my husband’s who were appalled to see his money spent like that. They had always tolerated me in society, while he was alive, but almost entirely for his sake. And I suppose because I was his charming, attractive – and much younger, I might add – wife. I was naive at first. But now that he’s dead and I’ve declared my intentions, there’ll be no more special favours for this bird in the bush!’
‘From the picture you paint, it sounds as if it’s been an achievement to have run The Grand Hotel for this long.’
‘Oh I’d like to think so, Arvo. Thirteen years out here is not to be sneezed at.’
‘Indeed!’
‘But I have enjoyed every minute of it, in a way that those eminences back in Melbourne would never even begin to understand. To slip out of the corsets of town and swim freely in the waves of Mangowak has been my joy. My most excellent freedom.’
A lone magpie started warbling in the trees around the glade. The voices paused, presumably to hear the song.
Eventually Arvo Nuortila sighed deeply. ‘I understand that freedom, Joan. I really do,’ he said, with increased fervour. ‘Unlike yours my fortune is not bloodstained, and yes I have briefly had a mint named after me, but the spiritual wealth I’ve found in my freedom in this country has been my greatest boon. I caught a glimpse of that freedom on my first visit here and I came back to do nothing other than be fully alive! To study life, to examine it in the river and on the shore, to fish for my food, to read the great works and to sing my songs in clean air. Unlike you I have never married, but I have had my disappointments in love. It is inevitable I suppose. But I am gratefully alone now, thankfully alone, in that I come and go as I choose. One can never know when one shall be called from this life to the next.’
‘That is true, Arvo,’ Joan Sweeney replied, obviously moved by this speech of Arvo Nuortila’s. ‘And you put it so eloquently.’
Once again they both enjoyed a refreshing swig on their bottles, and Joan Sweeney made Mr Arvo take a slice of the expertly smoked eel. As he chewed, he murmured in satisfaction, and when he’d swallowed he began to speak of the river. Around the walls of The Sewing Room not a sound was to be heard, as Arvo Nuortila wooed Mrs Joan Sweeney. ‘I know you like your blue ocean best, Joan, but I prefer the river. Perhaps it’s my Finnish melancholia, I don’t know, but I enjoy nothing more than to sit in the late afternoon, listen to the folding of the water onto the bank, watch the white thistledowns sail along in the air, just above the surface, with the light catching in them, making them glow, as they go with the current and the wind, towards your sea.’
The silence of The Sewing Room was joined now by the silence at the picnic. In the pool of light Kooka looked so still and peaceful he could almost have been mistaken for having died a happy death.
We heard then not Tom String’s brolga but a kookaburra, testing the echo of silence in a branch beside the grass-tree glade. Its call came like a divine ascending scale, climbing rung by humorous rung, and when it reached the top note it paused, before descending down in slower steps, back to earth as if from heaven.
‘May I take your hand?’ Joan Sweeney said to Arvo Nuortila on the picnic rug.
There was no answer.
Silence reigned, nothing at all, until finally we heard the lightest of sounds, the kissing of lips, so light and rhythmic that it could almost have been mistaken for a simple tapping of the breeze.
Then there was laughter, as the lips came away.
‘May I get you a drink, sir?’ said the publican, picking up a bottle of the beer Tom String had carefully and lovingly brewed for her. By Arvo Nuortila’s gasping and gulping, it seemed that Joan Sweeney was holding the bottle up to his tingling lips for him to drink.
He swallowed and swallowed. Then he returned the favour for Joan Sweeney.
The gentlest of breezes was getting up now; you could hear it threading the wattles and crisping the fronds of the grass-trees in the glade. And also among it came the shimmying of fabric, of clothes, as trousers were unbuttoned and a blouse was lifted. The kissing now became percussive, aggressive, as Joan Sweeney and Arvo Nuortila clutched at each other, went seeking one another out on the picnic rug. Cutlery and plates were swept aside in a clatter and the publican cried, ‘Arvo, oh, Arvo, please ... Arvo...’
Cicadas now began to sound in the background. The bush was suddenly loud. But no brolga. Joan Sweeney tore at the Balt, whose breath was too heavy to carry a single needless word. She, on the other hand, kept saying his name, breathlessly over and over, and then she said, ‘Oh, please ... Arvo ... knock me off ... fuck me here.’
Mr Arvo began to grunt, and kissed her and groaned, and after a time she said, ‘Oh, yes, here now ... like a ... oh ... oh my God,’ and before long she was screaming gutturally and Arvo Nuortila was climaxing in shattered groans after her.
When their breathing calmed, they lay for a long time on the rug, with the cicadas switching off and on in the background. They nibbled at the smoked eel and blithely swigged at the Native Companion. Very little was said but there was a good deal of nuzzling. Then, just before they rose to take their leave, as the cicadas began to rise again all around them, Joan Sweeney whispered, but brightly, ‘You were my river, Arvo, your glowing thistledown coming into me.’
Arvo Nuortila chuckled, before replying with amusement in his voice, ‘Then you were my ocean, Joan Sweeney.’
The Night Is a Different Country
As the two lovers rose from their picnic rug, the listeners sitting on the floor around the walls of The Sewing Room, under cover of the plates, bottles and cutlery being packed away, began briefly to loosen their limbs. In the bed Kooka also loosened his, stretching his toes out and upwards under the heavy blanke
ts and the crocheted rug. I froze in my seat, thinking these were the movements of a man about to wake, but I was wrong. His feet and toes relaxed again, but he turned from his back onto his side so that now he was facing the tranny.
I looked across at Maria, who was staring straight at the old man, smiling her head off. But I wasn’t so happy. This was a story that had taken a long time to tell – over a hundred years in fact – but it had begun for me with the dancing brolga in Tom String’s upstream camp only a matter of months ago. I sensed now, this time by the absence of the brolga’s rough bark, that something was amiss. But was there anything I could do? Surely not. What we’d become privy to had already happened hadn’t it, way back in time? It was a tune already scored. There was no way we could influence things after the fact. I felt suddenly inert, trapped, powerless to intervene in events that were affecting my own life greatly.
I took a quick glance over my right shoulder, where in the dim light by the wall I could see Dougie Sutherland sound asleep with his head in his mother’s lap. Big Joan was sitting beside them, with his arm around the shoulder of Dylan. Joan had his eyes closed and his face tilted upwards, intently listening to the picnic being put away.
Joan Sweeney and Arvo Nuortila eventually climbed back onto their bicycles, kissing briefly before saying goodbye to the grass-tree glade and heading back along the track they called The Blackboys. They pedalled slowly and without talking through the bush, which must have been darkening, as not only the cicadas could be heard but also the early hoot of a mopoke owl.
‘Now here’s the Dray Road, Arvo,’ Joan Sweeney said at last, after what must have been at least a twenty-minute ride on The Blackboys. ‘I was beginning to think we weren’t going to find it.’
‘Yes, it is darker now,’ Mr Arvo said, ‘quite difficult to see. But it was never going to vanish in our midst now, was it?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Joan Sweeney replied. ‘Although at times the night is a different country.’
Arvo Nuortila laughed lightly. ‘Oh yes, there is that,’ he replied.
‘But now,’ Joan Sweeney said, ‘before we turn onto it, please one last kiss. You know of course that what has happened must remain in the glade.’
‘Oh yes. But also in my heart.’
‘And mine.’
They kissed, leaning aslant on their bicycles. It sounded awkward.
‘You do know, Mrs Sweeney,’ Mr Arvo said, ‘that there are many more little flowers out in the bush here we could name.’
‘Oh yes, Mr Arvo. There must be hundreds. Thank the Lord for Sundays.’
‘Indeed, Mrs Sweeney. Thank the Lord for Sundays.’
They pedalled off again, turning onto the Dray Road, still high on the ironbark ridge but heading back for the riverflat and The Grand Hotel. You could feel, by the sound of the bicycles, that they still pedalled slowly, no doubt reluctant, despite the dark, for their romantic day to be over.
‘It’s a pleasant ride back, with this gentle north wind behind us,’ Mr Arvo remarked at one point.
Joan Sweeney must have simply smiled in agreement, for there was no audible reply.
In my mind I followed the course of the road, as it curls to the east before falling out of the ironbarks and into the valley. The bicycles clattered as they made the descent and then quietened as they reached the bottom, where once again the road turns to head for the sea.
‘There’s the Southern Cross,’ Mr Arvo said, ‘up there over the ocean. See the Two Pointers...’
His voice trailed off. Once again Joan Sweeney made no reply.
But then gradually, out of the night, we began to hear another voice, from a long way off. At first I thought it was the usual panicky sound of the riverflat plovers, but as it came closer and clearer we could hear it was calling and shouting as well.
‘Who’s that?’ Joan Sweeney said immediately, alarmed. ‘Mr Arvo, can you hear that voice?’
‘I can. And listen, a horse ... there’s someone coming.’
Soon there were galloping hooves and we began to make out the words the distressed voice was calling. In the pool of light Kooka’s face also took on a look of distress, as the voice called, ‘Missus Sweeney! Missus Sweee-ney! Coo-ee! Mista Arvo! Coo-ee!’
‘Oh Lordy me, it’s Ding Dong!’ Joan Sweeney cried. ‘Something’s happened. Here he comes now.’
Ding Dong’s horse rode up in a welter of blowing nostrils and thudding hooves.
‘Oh, Mrs Sweeney!’ he cried in his parroty pitch, as he came to them. ‘It’s Tom String, the flippin’ bitzer! He’s gone and euchred the ’otel!’
‘He’s what? What are you saying, Ding?’ Joan Sweeney shouted with alarm.
‘Tom String! I told him what!’
‘What?’ Joan Sweeney repeated. ‘For pity’s sake what, Ding?’
The horse was still snorting and restless on the sandy road as Ding cried, ‘He’s stoked the oven so high with that Heatherbrae coal! He’s stoked and stoked it. Cursin’ and carryin’ on. Till it exploded! BOOM, Mrs Sweeney, BOOM! He’s sheared the kitchen. The wart’s burning The Grand down! Look, missus, can’t you hear?’
‘Oh God preserve us,’ Mr Arvo said. ‘Look, Joan, he’s right. Can you see the glow?’
Without replying, Joan Sweeney took off on her bicycle. The horse was reared about by Ding Dong and galloped off and past her. Mr Arvo set off panting, at top speed as well.
The Sewing Room filled with a natural foreboding and tension. Behind me bodies moved and shifted about in the dark, and Veronica kept gasping. Meanwhile, in the pool of light Kooka was becoming restless in the bed, his face frowning and his head leaning away from the bedside table and then back again, as if the tranny or the lamp were distressing him.
Joan Sweeney rode her bicycle hell for leather through the night, with Ding Dong on the horse out front and Mr Arvo right behind her. Soon enough she started exclaiming and swearing, as the hotel came into view. ‘No!’ she called, still riding. ‘Oh no! Oh, it’s on fire!’
Only a bit further along she threw down her bicycle amidst the crackling of flames. Distressed horses were neighing, poultry shrieking, and Ding Dong coughing and spluttering just up ahead of her. And then Kooka himself started to cough and breathe heavily in the bed in front of me. For a moment I thought I too wanted to cough, but I managed to suppress the urge. But over near the boxes of the archive Ash Bowen couldn’t help it. He coughed not once but twice, then made a harsh throat-clearing sound that seemed to echo in the room like the fire of the dream. And then, just after Ash’s cough, Kooka started to moan and whimper, and behind me Dougie Sutherland woke up in his mother’s lap and said, ‘Mummy, I smell smoke.’
I looked across at Maria. She was no longer smiling. Then Kooka started to call out from his sleep, ‘Out! Get out! Get out of the hotel! There’s smoke, oh, everyone ... Out, out!’
Ash Bowen stood straight up over near the archive and said loudly, ‘He’s right! There is smoke. The kid’s right!’
At the opposite end of the room Nan and Darren both got up from under the window, and Nan said, ‘There is, Noel. Can’t you smell it? That’s fucking smoke alright.’
We heard a huge crash from somewhere else in the hotel. I stood bolt upright from my chair, turned and rushed for the door. I opened it and a wave of hot air took me by surprise as I fell clean over, backwards into the room. Behind me Maria screamed and Dougie started to cry. And Kooka was shouting now, ‘GET OUT! IS THERE ANYONE UPSTAIRS? GET OUT OF THE HOTEL!’
Suddenly everyone was on their feet and rushing over to where I was getting to my feet in the doorway. I remember Joan Sutherland standing there, peering down the hallway. ‘Jesus, Noel,’ he said, in almost a tone of quiet surprise, ‘I reckon the downstairs of the bloody pub’s on fire.’
I got up coughing, as smoke started to filter up through the top of the staircase. We could see, as we looked through the doorway for a final few seconds, that it was beginning to billow up from below. The air was turning gradually b
luish, spectral. There was no possibility of us escaping down the stairs.
‘Darren,’ I yelled, ‘open that window! I can jump out onto the pine tree!’
As a kid I had made the leap countless times from the Sewing Room window onto the thick branch of the pine-tree canopy. I’d never done it as an adult though. Would the branch hold my weight?
They were chaotic moments as my mind groped wildly amidst the noise for a way out. Kooka was still shouting and Maria was singing out in full voice, ‘Oh God! It’s Louis! Louis has set the hotel on fire!’
Jen Sutherland was trying to comfort her youngest son while the older Dylan was standing bravely by his father’s side.
In a flash of inspiration I realised he was the solution. I mightn’t be able to jump out onto the pine tree but Dylan could. He was light enough, perhaps even lighter than I used to be when I did it all the time. It was a lot to ask but what choice did we have? I could show him how it was done, and if he could manage it he could then climb down out of the tree, get my telescopic ladder from behind the barn and bring it over to the window, and we could all climb out.
It was hard to explain, amidst the increasing smoke and noise and the awful urgency, but I brought the boy and his father over to the window and quickly told him what I reckoned. Young Dylan and Joan listened carefully, and then the boy looked up frightened into his father’s eyes. Joan asked him straight out, ‘Do you think you can do what your Uncle Noely used to do?’
The boy nodded yes, without hesitation.
‘Okay, then, quickly,’ Joan said, and I helped his eldest son climb out onto the sill. He had to crouch there like a frog and then leap across four feet of gaping air to the branch, which he then had to koala-tackle with both his arms and his knees as well.
Now, as Dylan got into position on the sill, I could see the fear in his eyes and I dared not glance over at his mother where she was comforting his younger brother by the wall.