A Village Atmosphere

On the day of that first meeting the weather was fine and it soon became apparent that everyone’s real concern was to welcome me back and to ply me with questions and taunt me with absurd speculations about what I’d been up to while I’d been away. Ash Bowen, who when he’s not tiptoeing around his bush block in an apiarist’s suit is quite the cultural connoisseur, reckoned I’d taken some cushy flat in Melbourne and hung out with the art crowd. And that I was too embarrassed to admit it. Nan Burns, my oldest friend going way back, who to this day likes to think of me as innocent, wide-eyed and idealistic, reckoned I might have gone away to work in one of Steve Waugh’s orphanages in India. My brother Jim and Oscar were prepared to believe just about anything when it came to my flights of fancy, and Darren Traherne only wanted to know how the shotgun I’d borrowed from him before I went stood up to the rigours of my exile.

‘Bloody well,’ I told Darren. ‘I spent many a night on a cleft or under an overhang oiling that gun, wiping it, kissing it and bowing to it, terrified that you’d shoot me with it if I brought it back in bad nick.’

Big Gene Sutherland was the only one present who was certain he knew what I’d been up to. He let out a huge dairyman’s laugh as each person uttered his or her speculation, slapped his big thighs as I tried to explain where I’d actually been, and then asked me for the name of the child.

‘C’mon, Noel,’ he said, as I looked at him nonplussed. ‘You’ve always been a dark horse. Where’re you hiding the bird and what’re you calling the kid?’

Nan scoffed. ‘What are you on about, Gene? You reckon he’s been sheltered by the Sisters of Mercy or something? What a load of old fashioned crap. We all know Noel can’t get a root.’

Gene burst into loud laughter again, his big Otway dewlaps shaking. And so it went, for the next half hour, with everyone seated on the pews around the living-room table and me pouring wine and handing around stubbies of beer while providing plenty of clownish fodder for the jokes. Finally I had to draw their attention to the purpose of the meeting. I cleared my throat loudly, like a councillor, and began with a grin.

‘In my time away with the art crowd,’ I said, ‘reflecting on the possibilities for creative expression in the new century, and in the months I spent working with the sick, the homeless, the poor and unloved in India, and, of course, through the invaluable insights and maturity I have gathered since conceiving and then having my first child, I have come to the conclusion, which you may have all already realised a long time ago, that God’s a comedian. I used to think he was airbrushed and perfect, then I thought he was drunk and negligent, then of course I considered the possibility that he didn’t exist at all – but you know in my time away I just couldn’t come to terms with any of those ideas. Eventually, with the wise counsel of some very accepting and good-humoured animal friends, I decided he could very well exist, but only if he was a jokester. Because how else can we explain the goings on around us? The indoor creek, Wathaurong Heights, and now of course the Plinths and the bells, eh?’

‘What about the meteorological station?’ interrupted Darren Traherne. ‘That’s pretty sick.’

‘What about it?’ I said.

‘What, are you fuckin’ blind or something, Noel? They painted the chimneys red.’

I went straight to the double doors leading onto the verandah, stepped out and had a look. Sure enough, up there on the cliff the old white limestone chimneys of the meteorological station were painted a bright Noddy-from-Enid-Blyton red.

I returned inside. ‘Well that’s pretty cheery,’ I said.

‘Yeah, you can’t have white chimneys, mate. They get dirty,’ said big Gene, with another hearty laugh.

Kooka piped up. ‘Funny how they used the local stone to put the Plinths in, to give the place a maritime feel in the year of the bloomin’ ship, but when it comes to the met station it isn’t good enough for ’em. They reckoned the red lent much more of a village atmosphere.’

‘A village atmosphere,’ repeated my brother Jim.

‘Yeah, a village atmosphere,’ said Kooka.

As I began to outline my ideas for the hotel, everyone except Veronica was raising their eyebrows and shaking their heads in disbelief. I made it clear from the outset, however, that absolutely everyone would be welcome at The Grand and that the Dada-style shenanigans would never interfere with the genuine hospitality. I told them also that although I was ready to give over the house as The Grand Hotel, I didn’t want to renovate it, that it had to stay as close as possible to how it presently was, how my papa built it. Sure we’d need to put in a coolroom, a bigger dunny, and turn the kitchen into a bar, but it wouldn’t be tarted up, not in the least. In fact I suggested we go the other way: keep it unfashionably dark, like some nineteenth-century hole in the wall, with its ocean-facing windows boarded up, and that we keep the same furniture, right down to the daggy cane chairs and the laminated brown timber tabletops that had always been in the house. I kept reminding them that as we were running the only hotel in town, we could pretty much do as we liked. I also announced that there was a sweet logic to the idea that for once the economic principle of demand and supply was gonna unleash a crazed originality.

‘But who’s gonna work it?’ asked Nan, rolling a smoke with a sceptical look on her weatherbeaten face. ‘It’s all very well to have all these crazy things going on but who’s gonna pour the beer? Who’s gonna do the hard yards? You’re not a publican, Noel.’

I smiled. ‘Well, technically I’m about to become one. But I was thinking we could all help out. Like in a co-op. And for a wage of course. And remember, we don’t have to open till three in the afternoon if we don’t want to.’

‘Well that’ll piss people off,’ said Darren Traherne. ‘What about counter lunches?’

‘Look,’ I began, ‘I’m not doin’ this to become head of the Hoteliers Association. Kooka’s told me some stories over the last few days about the original Grand Hotel. I think we should follow that spirit. We mightn’t have spotted quoll on the menu and we won’t be amputating fingers on the bar, hey, Kooka, and there won’t be goats kipping beside exhausted prostitutes by the fire, or crayfish races on the verandah, but we’ll do it our own way nevertheless. How does live-streaming Vatican Radio in Happy Hour sound?’

Outside the window a cockatoo screeched. The group all looked at each other, confused. Eventually Gene Sutherland started laughing again and said, ‘Well, no weirder than an indoor creek.’ His humour was farmy and infectious, and pretty soon he was gasping for air, with tears running down his cheeks, as we discussed my idea of the talking urinal. Kooka kept nodding and said that was all very well but that Nan was right, we’d have to know what we were doing with the grog, that someone’d have to take a real interest.

Big Gene thought this was stupendously funny. ‘Don’t think we’ll have any trouble finding someone with a “real interest” in the grog, Kooka. There’d be more volunteers for that than ants on a lolly.’

‘Well, actually, Gene,’ I said, ‘I was thinking that you’d make a pretty fine head barman. You could go on a full-time wage and keep the whole grog side ticking over.’

Gene Sutherland’s family had run a dairy farm on the slopes of the Barroworn River for five generations. It was only recently that he’d given up the ghost and leased the place out to a bloke who wanted to try olives. He had come over to the coast to live in Mangowak with his wife, Jen, and their two boys, with a hint of despair in those friendly eyes of his. There just hadn’t been enough rain, and the big milk consortiums weren’t looking after the small suppliers. I knew he’d been scratching around for work since he came to town. I also knew his expansive good cheer would be perfect behind the bar. He’d been a bit like a bull in a china shop in Mangowak so far – a lot of the new suburban blood just couldn’t handle the sheer volume of him – but the freedom of The Grand Hotel would suit him just fine. It’d be like hand in glove.

For the first time that day Gene’s features went blank. I think he was more shocked by the job offer than by any of the other ideas I’d presented during the meeting. His broad wind-bitten face settled still. Then he gradually started nodding his head, pushing his bottom lip up against his top lip in affirmation, until Nan Burns confirmed it. ‘That’s a great idea, Noel,’ she said. ‘You’d make a purler barman, Gene.’

‘I agree,’ said Kooka, solemnly. ‘Gene’d be a natural mine host.’

‘You’d have to watch your tipple, though,’ Jim said with a wink.

A smile broke back out on Gene’s face and he nodded in agreement at Jim. Then he said, ‘Yeah. Why not, Noel? I’ll give it a go. Never worked in a pub before. Especially not one with a talking pissoir.’

I was rapt. I might have been the publican but with Gene Sutherland’s agreement The Grand Hotel had found its lynchpin and anchor, and there’d be no going back.