Maestro in the DARK
A mysterious midnight musician tickles Bobby Jordan’s imagination in a Barrydale hotel
FROM a great height, I fall towards the earth. A light appears in the darkest corner of the globe and I hurtle towards it, desperate to turn it off. It is my bedside light. When I get there, it is too late — I have already woken up.
Another strange dream in the Barrydale Karoo Hotel.
I flip over onto my side and turn off the lamp. Light rain knocks at the window and shadows scuffle. Somewhere downstairs, an unsteady hand molests a geriatric piano. A ghost? I hope so. A phantom visitor would not be out of season in this 76-year-old small-town hotel at the foot of the Langeberg. “What is that noise?” groans my wife. “Just a ghost. Go back to sleep.” She does, carried away by the tinkling melody.
But I am awake now and slip out of bed to inspect the window-view. Rainwater twists down Laing Street in muddy ribbons, wet tar swinkles beneath ageing neon invites.
Inside the room, my cellphone blinks, battery exhausted. It is 12.25am. I tiptoe across a weekend litter of raincoats, hiking boots and empty wine glasses next to a freestanding bath. Room 16 has been kind to us so far, with its retro furnishing and promise of Milky Way sleep. Yes, the Garden Suite looked fancier — and more expensive — but nothing beats weekend embedding on the second floor of a Karoo hotel at the sleepy end of a paisley-pattern corridor.
I press onwards across room 16 but am startled when a face appears to my left. It is me, or the ghoulish outline of me, staring from the mirror. I am relieved. However, my thoughts return to the musical ghost downstairs. Who could it be? The life story of this haunty-house hotel is script-writer heaven, blessed with a huge cast of potential phantoms.
The Fullard sisters, for instance, who kept a tight ship and ran the hotel like a seminary, decrying any sinful habits. Easy to see how they might take umbrage at the hotel’s current schedule of weekend music events featuring consummate sinners such as Valiant Swart and Piet Botha. Could that be the Fullard sisters spooking downstairs? They can sure hold a tune.
Or could it be Anna Jordaan, the legendary nymphomaniac who bonked most of Suurbraak before she was forcibly removed to the far side of the Tradouw Pass, after which she fell upon Barrydale like a ravenous beast deprived of flesh. Barrydale, however, didn’t seem to mind. That was a long time ago, of course.
But could Anna be back on the prowl, come to liven things up a bit? I should really take a look. Out into the corridor I go, my socks a shocking blue against the cream carpet. With every step, the floorboards creak. Seventeenth-century Cape-Malay herdsmen watch me from framed pictures along the walls. The hotel has had several makeovers in its time, but its current décor belies its three-star grading. Each room is an interior statement. Diners sit beneath gaudy pop-art and a centrepiece tree, or retire to a lounge featuring “organic” chandeliers, like giant bundles of braai kindling. Little wonder the place is haunted; nobody wants to leave.
Compared to all that style, I feel sorely out of place as I pause at the top of the staircase, above the pub. I imagine the ghost there, craning its neck, casting an opaque gaze in my direction. If it wafted through the ceiling now, it would catch me stranded in a pair of Woolworths briefs and K-Way beanie. I’m not sure even Anna Jordaan would bonk that.
Yet there were stranger outfits creaking these floorboards during the time of Philip Uys and Riaan Bosch, under whose watch the Barrydale burst into life as a kind of country cathedral to gay counter-culture. This was a wonderful era, full of flare-ups, bust-ups and hook-ups. There was enough sin to keep Suurbraak in church for a month of Sundays.
All of this makes me strangely excited as I teeter along the hotel corridor and out onto a small verandah overlooking the
hoofstraat bottle store. Has the ghost returned to settle old scores, or just to score?
Swirling rain wets my lips, frisks the town with icy fingers. I withdraw inside and creak along the corridor. Should I venture downstairs? Probably not. I have no business with the disembodied, at least not for now. My place is back in room 16.
Within seconds, I am back in bed, staring at a plume of musical notes seeping through the ceiling. I want to tell my wife about it but it is too late — I am already asleep.
The morning comes gently to the Barrydale Karoo Hotel. Wisps of wood smoke and birdsong hover over town.
Bruce the barman is apologetic when I ask about the mystery pianist. Couldn’t stop the guy after he’d had a few drinks. Not bad for a one-handed farmer, though.
Turns out, the only ghost slinking around the hotel is me.