Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 13.3

James inherited Black William upon his mother's death, but he never set foot in it again. He left its sale in the hands of an agent, and here it passes out of this history.

James banked the money, took out a lease on a small house in Richmond, and set out to find a job. The war had left the country short on young men, and he turned down three jobs before settling on an offer to become a radio operator for a taxi cab company.

The taxi rank was within walking distance of his house. His route to and from work took him through the backstreets of Richmond, past the dilapidated hovels of factory workers that slouched alongside the ostentatious columns and pediments of gold rush mansions, past tiny churches hiding in narrow lots, past grimy corner pubs. Trams clanked up and down the wide dusty streets.

In a quiet lane between an old church and a vacant lot stood a high narrow building surrounded by a jungle of undergrowth. James stopped outside it twice a day: on the way to work, and again on the way home. He would put his face through the bars of the gates and peer up at the handful of dark windows that weren't boarded up. There was a fountain out the front, but it was dry, and the pool beneath it was caked with a layer of slime and water plants. A FOR SALE sign had collapsed into the tall grass, falling under its own weight, its rotten pickets snapping. The sign had been red once – it was now a washed-out pink. The paths had been swallowed by weeds. Embossed in the stone pediment above the door was this:

IMPERIAL HOTEL

Ten times a week, for five years, James Ambrose stopped to look at the hotel.

Sometimes a man needs five years to make up his mind. This was not the case with James, for it seemed to him that his mind had been made up for him, perhaps in the dim past, before he had even come into the world. He felt he had been waiting his whole life to find the hotel.

However, it wasn't until November of 1949 that he began to take the first steps towards its acquisition. The catalyst for this was a woman by the name of Elinor Horton.

James was young, a war veteran, and handsome in his cadaverous way. But he was shy, which women tended to misinterpret as a lack of interest. He didn't like to talk about himself. If anyone tried to approach a personal topic with him, he would politely change the subject. He had no friends of either sex. He stifled opportunities for friendship instinctively, unconsciously.

He met Elinor in a storm. He was trudging down Church Street in his oilskin coat as the rain pelted down. She was alighting from a tram. She had no umbrella. As she was walking in the same direction as he was, he offered her his, for no other reason than that he knew it was the correct thing to do. She thanked him, and they progressed down the street together. Although James maintained that he did not need the umbrella, for his coat had a hood, she insisted that they share it. When two people share an umbrella they are obliged to walk close to one another. And although he no longer needed his cane to get around, he could not help swaying from side to side a little as he walked, and sometimes her hip brushed his own, sending a little jolt of electricity all the way up through his body to the tips of his hair.

"Are you on your way to work?" she said.

He nodded.

"Ghastly weather. How could I forget my umbrella on a day like this?"

He smiled grimly.

"You don't talk much do you?" She watched him for a moment. He looked away. They continued down the street in silence.

"What's your name?" she said, after a while.

"James."

"I'm Elinor. Where do you work?"

He told her.

"Really? I work there too! Or at least, I do now. It's my first day."

He gave her another strained smile.

She worked in the phone room, which was in a separate building to the radio room, so he didn't see her again all day, but at the end of the day, as he was leaving, he heard footsteps behind him, and she hurried up to him.

"Hello."

"Hello."

"Would you care to walk with me?"

He started to say something, but his mouth had gone dry, so he simply nodded.

The storm had passed, the sun was out, and the streets were glistening under it. As there was no need to huddle together under an umbrella, James maintained a civilised distance.

"Can I have your arm?" she said.

"Oh," he said.

"It's just that, where I come from it's the gentlemanly thing to do. You are a gentleman, aren't you?"  One corner of her mouth twitched, and James almost found himself smiling back. Almost. In any case, he obediently crooked his elbow so she could snake her arm through the gap.

Where she came from was Kent in England. He learned that she was seventeen years old, that she and her mother had recently emigrated, and that Australians found her accent posh, though she didn't consider herself so. Her father had died fighting in Greece. At this, James had glanced across at her, but for the rest of the journey he had averted his eyes from her.

He waited with her at the tram stop until her tram came.

"See you tomorrow," she said as she boarded.

The next morning when the tram pulled up he was waiting for her.