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 ground, 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.

‘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.’