Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 17.2

It was Joe who found the wall growing in the garden. It was hidden in the tall grass near the fence. On the other side of the fence lay a lot that had been vacant for as long as he could remember. His first thought was that the bricks had always been there, hidden in the grass – old foundations perhaps – but the next day the top row of bricks was poking above the grass, and the mortar between the two top layers was a darker grey, as if it had been freshly laid in the night.

He wanted to tell someone about it. If Alice was still around he would surely have told her. But Alice was dead. He could tell his mother, but she was already worried enough about him. She had suggested taking him to a doctor the other day. When he had asked what kind of doctor, she had told him a "specialist in teenagers." That sounded like a psychologist to Joe. What would she say if he told her someone was turning up in the night and laying bricks? As for his father, he wouldn't have told him anything like that before, and he sure couldn't now. Because he had disappeared.

James Ambrose had been a solitary man to begin with, but after the funeral even less was seen of him. When he didn't show up for dinner, Joe's mother would explain that he was busy. Joe didn't ask what he was busy with. He suspected his mother didn't know. He never saw his father leave the hotel, and when he returned it seemed to be from upstairs, as if he had spent two days repairing the roof.

Six people had been at the funeral: the priest, Joe, his mother and father, a man who introduced himself as Youssef, and Youssef's two-year-old daughter Katy. It had occurred to Joe in a distant way that Youssef was his brother-in-law and Katy his niece, but it all smacked of unreality. He had never seen Alice pregnant. When she had told her father that she was expecting, Joe had been in his room, deep in the book Mr. Heath had given him. He had only looked up when he heard his father's voice, which he had never heard raised in anger before. By the time he had come out to see what was going on, Alice was gone.

She had written to him, explaining everything, but he hadn't gone to visit even when Katy was born. His father forbade it. Joe had only received the one letter from his sister. He wondered if his father had intercepted the others. He wondered if his mother had been allowed to go and see them. Perhaps she hadn't, but had gone anyway. His throat burned when he thought about her sneaking out to see them and leaving him behind.

Alice had been the favourite – Joe had always known that. He had never been jealous, because she had been his favourite too. If someone had pointed it out, he simply would have shrugged. The sky was blue, the sun was hot, everyone loved Alice. It had allowed her to get away with just about anything. Perhaps, if she had been as insignificant and pliable as Joe, things might have turned out different. Her father might have been quicker to forgive her. She might still be alive.

Each day Joe went out to check on the wall. Each day it was a little higher.

Now when he listened for the sound of thje peak hour traffic it was muffled, like it was on a television going in an upstairs room. One day he looked up and saw a helicopter flying overhead, but he couldn't hear it. And he hadn't seen a car pass the hotel in months. A shimmery haze had settled over the street, like a heat mirage on a hot day. When he went out to investigate, the haze seemed to lift.

Joe had never been woken in the night by the sound of hammers and saws, yet each morning it appeared that something in the hotel had been repaired: the architrave a twelve-year-old Alice had gouged while riding her bicycle down the stairs had been replaced; the unknown and possibly otherworldly stain on the carpet in room four, that had resisted a staggering array of cleaning products and hours of fruitless scrubbing, was suddenly gone; the office door, which had never closed properly, now swung silently on its hinges, the lock's tongue gliding home with a satisfying snick, the door square and true in the jamb.