The Grand Hotel (11 page)

She threw her head back on the couch and lit a cigarette, then let out another deeply frustrated groan.

I was taken aback. ‘Geez, Maria,' I said, sitting down beside her, ‘I thought you were enjoying yourself. You've been in such good voice. And anyway, there's plenty of nice fellas here. What about my nephew Oscar over there? He'd give you a run for your money.'

‘What, the bass player kid with the big smile?' she spat out. ‘Are you kidding me, Noel? Granted, I've always had a thing for younger men but I would've thought you could have picked my type.'

I gave an ironic frown. ‘Yeah, well maybe you should just try singing a different kind of song. You've been mining that “Bed Spring Poker” stuff ever since you got here. It's gettin' you all het up. Why don't you go a bit political? Sober yourself up a bit. Do some protest songs. Get your mind off things.'

The Blonde Maria took a drag of her cigarette, thinking. Then suddenly she broke into a cheeky smile. ‘There is actually one fella here who I quite like.'

Naturally my mind started ticking over, considering all the likely candidates.

‘Not my brother?' I spat out in a twisted voice, squeamish at my conclusion.

‘No,' she laughed. ‘No way. That'd be like, I dunno, incest or something. And your brothers are like
old
. No, Noel, someone else. You'll never pick it.'

‘Well, how about I don't even try?' I said, facetiously. ‘Though I must say I'm relieved that there's at least one candidate you could consider unleashing your talents on.'

The Blonde Maria looked up at me, fully grinning now. ‘He'd be a challenge, Noel, this one. A real challenge.'

‘I see. Is that so?' I said. ‘Well, I'm sure you're up to it. Meanwhile can I get our very own Umm Kulthum another drink?'

‘Oh you're a darling, Noely. Make it a Laphroaig. Neat.'

By stumps later that night The Blonde Maria was holding a party upstairs in her room, with not a hint of her previous frustration. The air was thick with smoke, even though the windows were wide open to the night pines. She was playing the DJ, spinning old LPs as the boys from The Connotations, and Joan Sutherland, Givva Way, Darren Traherne, Kooka and a burly Italian tourist named Guido gathered around her. I had to hand it to Maria: she could make the dreariest, most browbeaten and mortgage-pressured men come to life again. She was in fact a genuine flesh and blood bohemian in an era where typically they can only be found in coffee-table books. And because of her insatiable need of drinking partners The Blonde Maria would sup with absolutely anyone, without changing herself a scrap. She'd carry on regardless, as if no matter where she was, or who she was talking to, the centre of the universe was just nearby. She could make even Givva Way feel like he was a part of a seminal cultural underground. Which might go part of the way to explaining how resolutely Givva's tedious nostalgia for those old bands who toured along the coast in the 1970s would keep surfacing in her midst. Oh man,
could he go on about it
! But that night, between the acacia wallpapers of her bedroom, with the prerogative of the sexually powerful female, Maria went where no man or woman in Mangowak had gone since young Alex's accident in the indoor creek. She took to ribbing Givva Way about this godforsaken boring habit of his.

It started around 2 am, with everyone well and truly sluiced. The Blonde Maria was leaning over the turntable changing records, wiggling her arse like a cancan girl as she did so. As the needle skew-whiffed onto the vinyl, she quickly turned back into the room and said, ‘Oh Givva, can you tell me again about the night you smoked the spliff with Colin Hay?'

As applause from
Charles Aznavour at Carnegie Hall
rang out of the speakers, the rest of the room groaned. For a moment Givva looked confused. Then Guido the Tourist piped up: ‘Who eez theez Coalen Ay?'

At that Givva collected himself and went straight back into gear. ‘Aw, mate, come on. Colin Hay? Haven't you ever heard of “Down Under”?' He began to sing the song.

Guido's jowly face took on a look of recognition. ‘Oh yeez, I haff, of corz,' he said.

‘Yeah, well Givva helped him write the lyrics,' said Jim.

Before Guido the Tourist could begin to weigh up whether or not this was possible, the room burst into laughter. And soon enough they all began to speculate as to what some of the co-written verses might have been, the ones that Givva had always assured us the cappo pigs from the record company had rudely edited out of the final famous version of the song:

Oscar began to play the iconic flute riff from the song on the mouth of his stubby. And the banter continued:

Before long a torrent of hypothetical verses was ringing out, with The Connotations tinkling the wine glasses along with Oscar's stubby-flute and everyone joining in on the chorus. Givva was the butt of them all, of course, and over in the corner on the bentwood chair, quite blotto and still in his working overalls, he was shaking his paint-flecked mop of black hair and looking glum. Eventually, though, after things got so drunken and ridiculous that even Guido the Tourist had a go at a verse, Givva perked up, seemed to get the joke, and began happily singing along in the choruses at his own expense.

It was a good hour at least before this joyful musical carousing calmed down and someone suggested it was time for more food. In typical fashion Joan Sutherland volunteered, and as he lifted his heavy frame up to go down to the bar everyone took a breather. They reached for their drinks and cigarettes and began to sip and sigh happily in the aftermath of the laughter.

It was in that pleasant lull at 3am that the resolute Givva Way was heard to say, ‘Nah, but fair dinkum you should have been there, Maria, back then with Colin Hay and the musos and that. You would have loved it, you really...'

A torrent of howling abuse burst through the upstairs windows of the hotel and into the night sky. It rained down on the poor house-painter where he sat innocently on his bentwood chair. The cries of astonished disbelief were so loud in fact that they were heard all the way down the starlit Mangowak valley. Even Big Ted, the laconic doyen of the riverflat kangaroos, swivelled his old grey ears southward to catch the sound.

As two ringtail possums peered into The Grand Hotel from high up in the pine tree beside The Blonde Maria's window, they witnessed a chaotic scene. For the howls of astonishment were not the only things hurled in the direction of Givva Way at that moment. Along with them came thrown shoes, rolled-up magazines, disposable cigarette lighters, LP covers tossed like Frisbees, abalone-shell ashtrays, car keys, an empty cigar box, indispensable guitar capos, a tennis ball and a mug half full of sarsaparilla – anything at all in fact that his uproarious fellow drinkers could find to throw at him.

The Lazy Tenor

For the life of me I couldn't work out who it was that The Blonde Maria had set her sexual sights on, and I wasn't completely sure whether or not I cared. But only a week or so after her groaning confession in the sunroom, a week in which Sergeant Greg Beer made not two but three separate inspections of the premises (apparently he'd had complaints about the noise from a couple of kangaroos down on the riverflat), a strapping visitor in a bottle-green suede coat, who was to have a romantic and a cataclysmic influence on both Maria and the destiny of the hotel, turned up from the city. I took one look at him and was sure her pent-up frustration would be cured.

When I say this was a visitor from the city, that is not exactly true. In fact Louis Daley, or The Lazy Tenor, as he came to be known to us, was born and bred in a broken-down scrubland of central Victoria that to this day still goes by the name of Blokey Hollow. He was patient with his parents and brothers on the windridden family farm but as soon as it was physically and linguistically possible he had fled, tripping over tractor parts and shingleback lizards as he went, in search of, to quote the man himself, ‘whatever the fuck was on offer in the big smoke'.

His departure from Blokey Hollow had subsequently set many adventures in train. Not only that, he had managed to find himself a few good square meals in his travels as well, which had seen him grow from the malnourished rag of thistledown he was when he left the crumbly asbestos home of his childhood into a six-foot-four, broad-shouldered, honey-voiced exemplar of the male species.

Louis Daley's arrival in The Grand Hotel was greeted with warm aplomb, for not only did he have a twinkle in his royal-blue eyes but he also announced that news of the good cheer and virus-like freedom of The Grand had begun to spread.

‘So,' bellowed the new arrival, heaving a tattered red Adidas sports bag onto the bar, ‘this then is the famous Grand Hotel.'

Darren Traherne, from where he stood at the sink twisting dirty beer glasses onto an upturned bottlebrush, looked at him querulously and said, ‘Famous? I dunno about that, mate. We've only been open five weeks.'

‘Well you're quick workers then,' said Big Lou Daley.

Immediately sensing a colourful new ingredient for his archive, Kooka hit the record button on the Grundig where it was propped up at the other end of the bar. He plugged in a microphone and ran the lead down along the floor ashtrays until the mic itself was lying on the bar right under the big man's nose.

‘Go on?' said the old-timer.

‘Oh, God, yeah,' continued our new guest, glancing down at the microphone and rising to the occasion. ‘I had two different floozies going on to me about it the other night in Melbourne. They had big raps on this place, though they did admit it was a tad unusual. But that's what got me interested. I gathered it was in a nice quiet spot on the coast and had cheap accommodation. And so, I said to myself, Lou, your shaggin' days are over, it's time to write your life story. So here I am. I've got this bloody crappy laptop in this here bag, I'm cashed up, and I'm here to knuckle down. By the way, I couldn't get a drink could I, mate? Thirsty work that bloody highway.'

Darren poured Louis Daley a nice crisp Dancing Brolga, and with barely a ‘here's health' Lou wolfed it down. ‘Aah,' he burped. ‘That's better. So then, have you got a spare room? I'll pay up front. I'll be here for as long as it takes me to write the book.'

‘How interesting,' said Kooka, beside him. ‘You're a writer are you, big fella?'

Lou Daley just laughed, running an enormous hand over his face and through his bright red hair. ‘Who me? A writer?' he scoffed. ‘No fear. But I reckon with the things I've seen, and particularly the ladies I've got to know over the years, I've got some kind of blockbuster in me for sure. But no, mate, I'm just a mechanic, if the truth be known.'

He looked around the room with a big grin on his face, then he leant down towards the microphone and added, ‘Specialising in ladies' parts.'

Standing up straight again, he waved his hand dismissively. ‘Nah, I love a good time, good music, and well yeah, life's been kind enough to me that I reckon I could tell a few stories. Give a few sad-sacks a clue. Anyway, my name's Lou Daley. Some people call me Big Lou, others call me Louie the Lip, but those who know me well, they call me Lazy.' At this he opened his mouth wide and let out a huge narcissistic guffaw, slapping his palm down on the bar mat. ‘Hey?' he said through tears of mirth. ‘Those who know me call me Lazy. Hey? If only it were true.'

This surprising new guest looked to be in his late thirties, and the old green suede jacket he wore looked like it had accompanied him on most of his escapades. His arrival gave the bar an unexpected charge, so much so that for the first time Happy Hour was technology free that night. Once he'd established that a room was available, Louis Daley propped up the bar for a good two hours, telling anyone who did or didn't want to listen about the book he was going to write.

‘I needed somewhere real quiet, but somewhere I could get a good feed, and a decent drink. Coz this is gonna be a flat-out masterpiece this. It's gonna take some doin'.'

Nan had arrived for her evening shift still wearing a pair of farm overalls, and she and Darren were working the bar. By the look on her face I could see she was taking this new guest with a grain of salt. ‘So has this “masterpiece” got a title yet?' she asked Louis Daley, pouring him another drink.

The big man from Blokey Hollow's face creased with pleasure. ‘I'm bloody glad you asked,' he replied. ‘Too right it's got a title. You ready for it? “The Tradesman's Entrance”. Yep. That's what this book's gonna be called.'

On two separate occasions on that evening of The Lazy Tenor's arrival I was taken aside with conciliatory gestures for ‘a bit of a chat'. Firstly by Veronica. She nabbed me upstairs while I was making up Room One for our new guest. She demanded some answers.

‘You're not going to let that big idiot stay here are you, Noel?'

‘Well, what else am I meant to do? I've told you, Ronnie, any pub of mine has to have open doors.'

‘But he's gross! What a pig! He's in the bar now telling the whole world about his sexual conquests back in Melbourne. “The Tradesman's Entrance”! He's a sick mind.'

I quietly puffed up the pillows of The Lazy Tenor's bed to be – a white cast-iron cot from the long defunct Birregurra Hospital, where my aunt had been a matron. I flicked on the bedside lamp to make sure it was still working, then simply shrugged my shoulders. It wasn't much of an answer but what could I do? Our new guest had come a long way; I could hardly just throw him out on the spot.

‘Look,' I said, ‘he's probably just a bit excited to be out of town. Let's see if he settles down a bit.'

She looked at me dubiously.

‘But in the meantime,' I continued, ‘don't forget Arthur Cravan, the Dada boxer. He was a complete oaf probably, but he was a free agent. He got thrown out of just about every joint he entered didn't he? And what for? Just for being a different ingredient in the pot. Maybe this red-headed fella's a bit like that.'

‘I think you're being a bit optimistic there, Noel.'

‘Maybe so,' I replied, ‘but I'm not ruling anything out.'

Later on that night at around ten o'clock I was ushered in to stand in front of Duchamp with Joan Sutherland. As our genial barman unzipped his Yakkas, he told me he was ‘a little concerned' about our new guest. ‘It's just Jen and the kids, Noely,' he began. ‘I can't have Dylan and Dougie in the bar with a fella carrying on like that. He was just telling the whole world how his book's gonna begin with him shagging some chemist girl who'd come to his garage to have her car looked at. He reckons he got into the front seat alongside her and then his mate hit the hoist button and up they went. The two of them were up there near the ceiling, rocking her little Hyundai for hours. But he went into too much detail, Noel. I told him to leave off, I tried to be nice, suggested he keep the juicy bits for the book, but Givva and a couple of others were encouraging him. And Kooka, the filthy old mongrel, was recording the lot. I had to send Jen and the kids home. I don't want to tell you what to do or anything in your own pub, but I reckon you'll have to send him packing. That's if it continues of course.'

Because we were standing right where we were, I decided to join Joan and empty my bladder. Before I could reply to his concern, the loop on Duchamp the Talking Pissoir was doing it for me:

The loop had been put in Duchamp to take the piss out of the lifestyle set but now, as Joan and I shook ourselves down, the word ‘freedom' was all I could hear.

The night drifted on like a cloud in the sky or, to be more precise, with the dogged persistence of a bad rumour. Somehow, for the rest of the evening, the usually crisp and salient tempo that could be found in The Grand was sullied. Kooka and Givva Way stayed perched at the bar listening to The Lazy Tenor's stories. (Kooka, of course, could almost be excused due to his vocational ulterior motive. Givva, as usual, had no excuse.) Everyone else hunkered in the corners and pokey shadows of the building. Many clustered sulkily in The Horse Room playing perfunctory games of pool, some nestled disheartened on the verandah and listened to The Blonde Maria and The Connotations sarcastically mocking early Bob Dylan covers (the chanteuse had taken my advice about her singing political songs, but with a grain of salt. Bob Dylan was God to a lot of the old surfie types, especially to the boys in the band, and she was really digging the knife in), while others, like Veronica and Nan for instance, took the opportunity to go home early. They weren't needed, it was true; the amount of beer consumed that night in The Grand was only a fraction of the usual, but I for one was disappointed at the small town conservatism or, dare I say it, the wider-world political correctness that this big red-headed stranger had triggered merely by turning up and announcing himself. Sure he was loud, sure he was an earbasher and yeah, he had a dirty mouth, but we weren't at a meeting of the Presbyterian Quilters Guild! This
was
a hotel after all.

But what a difference a good sleep can make, especially when there's melaleuca and music in the air. On the day after The Lazy Tenor's arrival I woke up to the blessed and freakish delivery of an authentic bit of local spring weather. I'd been dreaming of the sap and the sea. In days gone by my brothers and I would help our parents harvest melaleuca oil and mussels on mornings rich with the scent of flaky timbers. As caterpillars moseyed lazily over the rose-gold clifftop pathways, and new crafts of life emerged from every dusty dangling cocoon nearby, deep in the lilac tidal beat and the dark lap-lap of the water around the jetty poles we'd float like pale jellyfish with improvised scraping tools: paint-strippers, discarded garage-door hinges, screwdrivers. We'd harvest the purple mussels from the old sea-blonded uprights. Then we'd come out of the water and slash the twigs off the whippy tea tree spars of the dunes to take home for Mum to distil and extract the oil. The melaleuca oil was a cure-all then and of course remains so now. But my mother was ahead-of-her-time mad for it. She not only prescribed it for our cuts and colds but used to have us shine our school shoes with it as well. We must have entered the already salty classroom pungent with the stuff.

Looking back, of course, they seem like golden days, when the notion of an indoor creek would have been as strange as a tall ship sailing into Botany Bay. But now as I rolled languidly in my dream towards the familiar scents coming through my loft shutter-door, I felt as though I'd returned to the timeless harvest of my childhood, or as if somehow it had returned to me.

There was a tingling on the perimeters of my waking state. Still half in the dream I could only feel the essence of what it was, an essence so pleasurable, so effortless and heartening that the bridge between golden dream and present day reality seemed no bridge at all. As I emerged, it was as if I was making my descent from high up in the air, and with a pelican's stable wings. The romantic gliding feeling has never left me to this day, nor has the memory of when my eyes opened and I finally registered, albeit unbelievingly, the ingredients that were making up my pleasure.