The Easy Glory of Her Smile

Even after the four o’clock news had started, I hadn’t wanted to leave Kooka’s bedside, thinking that somehow the dreams might find frequency again. Eventually, after half an hour of excited whispering in the pool of light, Maria convinced me that the pattern of Kooka’s sleep could be relied upon. Every night he would dream soon after she finished reading the book, but when the dream was over there would be nothing more – just news reports, film reviews, talkback and comedy re-runs.

So gently we tiptoed out of the room and spent the hour or so until light down in the bar. At last I could quench my thirst. To do so I chose a cup of black Lady Grey tea laced with Black Bush. We both lit cigarettes and by candlelight helped each other join the dots.

I couldn’t contain my excitement – at times I was literally shivering with it – but I was also disappointed that the broadcast had been cut short before the cart got to the hotel. Maria said there was no guarantee that we would progress any further the following night; in fact she suggested it was a distinct possibility that Kooka may simply revert back to Joan Sweeney swimming in the ocean with her lists. I disagreed with her on this; I felt in my bones that by some miracle Kooka was dreaming us towards an explanation for why the old Grand Hotel had burnt down. As far as I was concerned, my vision of the valley full of brolgas proved it.

In hindsight I think my head was full of greedy thoughts as we sat there in the early hours. I should have been satisfied and amazed with what I’d just experienced rather than immediately hankering for more. But, unwise and immature as I am, I wanted more. I wanted everything I could get of these uncanny nightly broadcasts, which by their very occurrence seemed to prove to me that with The Grand Hotel my own life was finally on exactly the right track.

At first light Maria said she would try to get some sleep, so I sat alone on the pews at the big table in the bar. I could no sooner sleep than sing like The Lazy Tenor. My stomach was swarming with local butterflies and my mind retracing again and again the contents of the night. For a start it was intriguing to me that Tom String seemed so familiar. I had never heard his name, nor had Kooka ever mentioned Joan Sweeney having such an offsider. He had always described Joan Sweeney as a phenomenally capable woman who ran the pub with charm and an iron fist, but single-handedly. Now I was wondering what had happened to Tom String, and as I wondered I realised I could simply ask Kooka about him later in the day, or, better still, when I took the old fella up his breakfast.

I looked at the cuckoo clock above the catfish skeleton on the wall. It showed 6.45am. I would wait until 7.30 and then fix Kooka an omelette. Oregano, tarragon, rosemary and mushroom, sea salt from Horseshoe Cove and fresh Otway pepper: a Grand Hotel special, just as he liked it. Then, suddenly exhausted, I rested my forehead on the hardwood of the big table and closed my eyes. And before you could say ‘yellowbellied water-rat’, I had fallen fast asleep.

When I awoke, it was 8.25 and I recalled that it was Saturday – the day we’d set aside for our stoneskimming comp down near the Plinths. After the night I’d had, stoneskimming was the last thing I felt like doing but there was no getting around it. There were a dozen or so people who were really looking forward to the event, and I had agreed to be there on behalf of the hotel. The comp was set to kick off at 10am and then finish with a barbecue in the afternoon. But first I had to talk to Kooka.

I found him sitting up in bed watching a welcome swallow flit about The Sewing Room. The poor bird was in a panic, and Kooka asked me if I’d open both the inland and ocean windows so it could find its way back outside.

After flinging the windows open onto the new morning, I placed the tray with Kooka’s omelette, toast and tea onto his lap and sat down in the wicker chair beside the bed. ‘Sleep well?’ I asked innocently.

‘Bloody oath. Like a twit,’ he said. ‘It was only the swallow that woke me up.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yairs. It was sittin’ right here on the bedside table when I opened my eyes. Just starin’ at me. Buggered if I know how it got in.’

We both looked up to where the swallow was flying back and forth now along the room’s knotty unpainted rafters.

‘You’d think it would smell the air and just head straight out now the windows are open,’ Kooka said.

‘I suppose it will eventually,’ I replied. ‘Doesn’t look real happy in here.’

‘No it doesn’t. Unlike yours truly,’ said Kooka, as he began to tuck into the omelette with relish.

I let Kooka eat his breakfast in peace for a while until I couldn’t wait any longer. ‘I’ve got a question for ya, Kooka. About the old Grand Hotel.’

‘The old Grand?’ he said perfectly innocently. ‘Now that was a wild joint. They used to dance like brolgas in that old hotel.’

My eyes widened. ‘Is that right?’ I said.

‘Well, by all accounts, Noely, it’d make your Grand look like the Women’s Temperance Union! No offence of course.’

‘None taken, Kooka. They were different times I suppose.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Mind you, even back then the old Grand had a bit of a reputation.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh well, I think Joan Sweeney was an enlightened woman. She ran a clean house, kept a nice table, but she also knew what keeps a man in the sticks sane. I mean there’s no point feeding ’em grog on the one hand and tryin’ to convert ’em on the other.’

‘What? Was she religious?’

Kooka looked up from the plate. ‘Joan Sweeney? No, I wouldn’t reckon. But she was of a strong mind. She had deep beliefs.’

‘What kind of beliefs?’

‘Well it’s hard for me to say I suppose. I mean I’m only going on what I’ve got in the archive, just a scrap of info here and part of an old letter there, but I’d say she was, well, a modern thinker.’

‘In what way, Kooka?’

‘Well, for a start she believed she was definitely the equal of any fella. I can recall a part of a letter one of her offsiders wrote, where he said that “if it wasn’t for the easy glory of her smile, most coves’d think she was a toff. She has that natural dignity which no money can provide.”’

I loved the way Kooka quoted from the letter, and wondered straightaway if it was Tom String who wrote it.

‘Mind you, Noel, she wasn’t short of a quid,’ Kooka said.

‘No? Where did her money come from?’

‘Well she was a widow. Her husband was a barrister, part of the old squattocracy.’

‘I see. And who was this offsider whose letter you’ve read?’

‘Oh he was a fella called String. Thomas String.’

‘Mmm, and what was his story?’

‘Oh well, the story goes she picked him up off the roadside on her way to open the hotel.’

‘What, was he a swaggie or something?’

Kooka rested his fork against the plate and with his eyes followed the swallow’s flight as he thought about this. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘Lots of people camped out in those days, under the stars or in a cave or in the scrub by the roadside. People were on the move. It didn’t mean you were homeless.’

‘So he just came with her right there and then and helped her run the hotel?’

‘Yairs, something like that. He was like a general hand. But most importantly he brewed the beer for her. In a camp upstream. He didn’t live in the hotel you see. Perhaps because he was half black, I dunno. But he was a great help. She couldn’t have done it without him. No matter how strong she was.’

‘Too right.’

‘Yep, and he stayed for the duration from what I could make out. Now you could never get a swaggie to do that. Not with the call of the road.’

‘The call of the road,’ I repeated.

‘Yairs. They’d feel all cooped up before too long. Like our friend the swallow here.’

I tilted my head back again to watch the panicky little creature scooting and whizzing around the rafters of the room. Even with my mum’s tall broom he was too high up in The Sewing Room to help brush him towards the window.

‘But anyway, that’s enough of all the old stuff,’ Kooka said. ‘As you know, I’m done with it. If I do nothing else, Noel, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life right smack bang in the here and now. I’ve only realised recently what a privilege it is to have lived this long.’

‘Well why don’t you get up out of bed and go and take a look around?’ I joked. ‘There’s not much of the twenty-first century happening up here.’

Kooka shook his head with a kind smile. ‘Oh yes there is, son,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the tranny, the newspaper in the morning, and besides, I’m happy up here on my own. I’m like Joan Sweeney. I’m thinkin’ modern thoughts. That’s of course unless you’re thinkin’ of throwin’ me out.’

I scoffed. ‘Yeah right, Kooka. As if. The Grand Hotel is at your service, kind sir.’

The old man took his last bite of omelette and beamed at me. ‘You’re a good boy, Noel,’ he said. ‘Well brought up.’

‘Yeah, well some wouldn’t agree,’ I sniggered, thinking of Greg Beer. ‘One last thing, Kooka. Whatever happened to that Thomas String you mentioned? Joan Sweeney’s offsider?’

Kooka raised an exasperated time-blotched hand and blew air through his lips like the horse from his dream. ‘Get on with ya,’ he cried. ‘That’s all in the long ago. You’ve got your own Grand Hotel, Noel, and a damn good one it is. The old one burnt down remember, and no matter how hard you look you won’t see old Tom String for the smoke.’

I stood up from the wicker chair, not wanting to push the subject any further. Kooka ran his index finger across the buttery remains of the omelette and toast on the plate and then nodded for me to take the tray. ‘I suppose Maria will be in soon,’ he said, ‘for my massage.’

‘It’s alright for some,’ I replied, motioning for him to finish his cup of tea so I could collect it with the tray. He slurped it up noisily, and I headed for the door.