Afterword in Autumn

After a hot and barren summer the autumn after the hotel burnt down was downright classical in its proliferation of mushrooms, chestnuts, yabbies, whiting and black duck. Not to mention rain. As if the hotel fire still needed dousing, the rain fell in roof-thrumming bucketloads, in looping pitter-pats and wild staccato bursts, and all as if in sympathy with the ashes. Right down the coast the creeks were swollen, their brown mouths brimming to the edge of the white waves, as if they were about to give birth to something. I wore my Rainbird coat and wandered about the riverflat deliriously, throwing a line in here, sliding fingers under the chocolate gills of field mushrooms there, at a loose end but nevertheless ecstatic at the mercurial nature of the light.

Kooka was in the recently rebuilt Minapre Hospital, in the old people’s wing, not so much as a patient but as a permanent resident. He’d recovered fully from the smoke inhalation and, according to the doctors, there was absolutely nothing else physically wrong with him. He’d only decided to stay put in the residential wing because now that there was no longer a house or a hotel for him to live in, he couldn’t be bothered organising anything else.

Through the curtains of rain filing into the bay from the southwest, you couldn’t even see Minapre from Mangowak during those days; it was as if the old glamour cove had receded to an entirely separate and more western universe. Kooka was over there – we knew that – and occasionally we’d brave the bends and visit him, but because of the weather Minapre may as well have ascended into its own rather heavenly idea of itself, taking Kooka along with it, away from our own lowly and worrybeaten world.

One day in early April, in a rare clear-skied moment, I decided to take him round a feed from his old home patch. The last time I’d visited, he’d been complaining about the food, and I knew there was a flash new kitchen down the hall from his room. I figured he might well be up to catering for himself if he had the right ingredients.

So I drove around the road in the shining break, entered the town and parked on the slope between the hospital and the sea.

Upstairs I was ushered by a young male nurse onto the hospital’s new verandah, where Kooka was sitting solo in a floppy lady’s hat, taking in the sun.

We said hello, and he seemed glad enough to see me, though a bit weary. I handed over the bag of food, explaining my idea that he might like to cook himself a meal, and described the contents: yabbies already cooked and peeled, chestnuts already scored, freshly picked mushrooms, Otway pepper, plus my own garlic and herbs. He said he was more than grateful.

We sat on silver slatted seats, comfortable but for the coldness of the metal. We looked back east over the tops of the bluegums and across Snook Bay to Mangowak. In silence. I couldn’t help but wonder, after all that had happened, what was in Kooka’s head nowadays.

‘I’ve been watching the box, Noel,’ he said to me eventually, closing his eyes and letting the sun warm his face. ‘In the common room, just on the other side of the glass there.’

‘Oh yeah, Kooka?’ I replied. ‘Anything decent on?’

‘Nah, not really. It’s just the bloody weather’s been like it has. I keep eyein’ off this perch out here but can never get out to it. So yairs, I’ve been watchin’ the box.’

‘Well, it’s bloody nice out here today,’ I said.

‘Mmm. Too right.’

‘You know, Kooka, I’d have you at my place don’t you? It’s just that all I’ve got left is the barn.’

He waved a hand dismissively. ‘Nah, don’t worry about it, kid. Nan’s offered me a room at hers too, but I don’t want it. You know I could rebuild if I chose. Get out the nailbag. But nah, that’s all in the past.’

‘Fair enough. But how do you go with the others up here, Kooka? There’s a few in worse nick than you. Especially in the top paddock.’

Kooka smiled and shook his head, as if I was a bit of a dill. ‘What are you talkin’ about, Noely? They’re no trouble. It’s just a halfway house, my boy. We’re all in it together. And we’ll all be checkin’ out soon enough.’

I frowned at this but he laughed. ‘It’s no bloody hotel, Noel. More like the holding cell they put you in after a big night. Speaking of which, did they ever catch up with the big fella? You know, the singer Maria was keen on?’

‘Nah, they never did, Kooka. But we’re all still waiting for his book to appear. We’re hoping it might explain a few things. Maria’s doin’ well though. She’s back in Melbourne, but come July she’s touring Europe with her new band.’

‘Tourin’ Europe? You don’t say?’

‘Yeah, Europe. They’re supportin’ some big acts too. She’ll blow ’em away no doubt.’

‘No doubt,’ Kooka agreed. ‘The girl’s a one-off. You know she came and saw me here, when I was still on the oxygen mask?’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yairs. I was a bit rusty to tell ya the truth, Noel. High as a balloon actually, from all that pure air.’

‘Sounds alright,’ I chuckled.

‘Yairs, I suppose it was. But I couldn’t make hide nor hair outa what she was sayin’. She was tellin’ me the strangest stuff, about the fire an’ that, and I reckon I was mishearing her anyway. Poor girl, she must’ve thought I was a looney.’

‘Well, she knows you’re not now. I’ve filled her in about how well you’re doing.’

Kooka nodded. ‘Yairs, well that’s good then. Send her my best won’t you?’

‘I will.’

We sat in silence again, looking out across the water. We could see the Mangowak lighthouse, standing tall, far in the distance.

‘Yairs, so anyway, Noel, I’ve been watching the box.’

‘So you said, Kooka.’

‘You know I met my Mary here don’t you? Her old man was the doctor at this hospital. He ran the joint. They lived in the big house across the road.’

‘Yeah, you’ve told me that.’

‘Yairs, well, I was a nobody then. Son of a dead St Kilda prostitute. Reckoned I had no chance. Thought Mary was a Minapre snob.’

‘But she wasn’t was she, Kooka?’

‘Nah, no fear. Not Mary. Had a definite touch of class though. A definite touch of class.’

‘No question.’

‘So anyway, Noel. Did I tell you I’ve been watching the box?’

‘You did, Kooka. Nothing decent on, eh?’

‘Nup, not really. Bit of sport. Mass on Sundays. But nah.’

Behind us in the common room a group of patients and nurses had come in to get ready for an exercise class. They began moving the furniture about and then the sun went behind a cloud. Kooka winced and I helped him up to go inside.

Briefly we went to the kitchen to put his food in the cupboard and then I saw him down the hallway to his room. He plonked himself in the chair by the corner window, which looked out not on Snook Bay but on an internal courtyard. It was pleasant enough but it wasn’t the sea and you couldn’t see the lighthouse.

Kooka picked up the remote and turned on the television. We sat together in virtual silence then, for perhaps two hours, watching daytime television from America. Early on I protested, but he waved me down, said it was fine, told me to relax. When they came around to get him for his lunch, I reminded him about the food I’d brought, but again he waved me down. Said he might have it for tea.

By the time I was back in the car and rounding the high cliffs at Turtle Head, the rain was belting down. I swished down onto the flat at Bonafide View, took a left at Breheny Creek, and drove the back way home through the bush.

When I got to my driveway, my tears had already dried. And as I got out of the car, I heard a sound and noticed a movement in the ditches near the road. The ditches were full with the rain and now I recognised the sound. The time had come, the local eels were up and about, making their way towards the river and then out to sea for their big migration. Kooka had had a long and wonderful life and now the cycle was beginning all over again. I walked back out towards the road along the driveway, and came out from under the pines and into the rain.