Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 7: The Lions

I spent the next morning in the shed making Elinor's headstone. Nor, I thought to myself as I worked. I didn't know anything about headstones except that they're made out of stone. Problem was, I couldn't find any stone around the place.

I did discover a little door in the shed though. I opened it and looked in. Bottles. Hundreds of bottles going away into the dark, lying on their sides and covered in dust. There was some wood stacked just inside the door. I dragged out a big piece and brushed the cobwebs off it. I didn't like the idea of turning my back on that open door so I closed it again.

I found a saw and started cutting the piece of wood to make it into the shape of a headstone. It took me forever to saw through it. After a while my hands started hurting, but I didn't mind. It was nice in the shed with the old tools everywhere and the sun coming through the window and the smell of sawdust and the sound the saw's teeth made as it plunged into the wood.

Sophie came down to help me write the thing on the headstone. She even had a special name for it: EPISTAFF. We wrote a practise EPISTAFF on some paper first in case we fucked up the headstone. We were going to write a whole lot of stuff, but we didn't know Elinor very well, and I'm not sure it would have all fit on the headstone anyway, so we ended up playing it safe and copying the other headstone out in the garden.

"It's not a headstone," she said, frowning at my piece of wood.

"Yes it is."

"No it's not. A headstone's stone."

"It's a headwood then."

"No such thing."

"Okay Miss Perfect, why don't you find some stone then?"

"Because that's the boy's job. I'm a girl."

I couldn't fault that logic.

"Well you did your best Benjamin," she went on with her nose in the air. "It will have to do."

"You have to write it," I said. "And if you stuff it up Elinor's ghost will haunt you forever."

"I won't stuff it up." She looked around. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Have you got paint?"

"Of course," I lied.

I looked up at the loft. I could see a couple of paint tins on a shelf up there. "Hold this," I said, pulling an old ladder out from a cobwebby corner. It was one of those ones that extends out – I think they're called extension ladders but I'm not a hundred percent on that.

I climbed up the ladder to the loft. I found some black paint and a little paintbrush and brought them back down again, then I prised the tin open with a screwdriver and looked at the gloop inside.

"Get out of the way," Sophie said. She could be a bossy bitch sometimes. She dipped the little paintbrush inside the paint tin and started writing on the headstone. When she was done she stood back and we both looked at the headstone.

Elinor Ambrose

1932 – 1984

In Loving Memory

"Well you did your best," I said. "It will have to do." I went to pick it up.

"Don't touch it!" she said. "It's got to dry first, stupid."

"I knew that," I said, and pretended I'd been going to put the lid back on the paint tin. It didn't fool her though, not for a second.

While the paint dried we went upstairs and hung out with Fred. He was crying like anything when we got there. He'd pissed his nappy again. I never thought one baby could have so much piss in it. When we'd put a fresh nappy on him I played a game with him where I roared like a lion into his chest. He loved that, old Fred. He tried to roar like a lion too, but all he could make was this squealing sound and all this drool would bubble out of his mouth. Gross.

Later we carried the headstone out and dug a trench for it and wrestled it in. It stood up okay after we'd mounded dirt up around it. Sophie picked some flowers and put them on the grave.

"Nor," I said.

"Nor," Sophie said.

After that we went up for lunch, but I wasn't hungry.