The Re-Opening Before the Re-Opening

We will be delighted to see you at the Trafalgar Hotel for the Re-Opening before the Re-Opening. It had been done the old fashioned way, through the post, and with little cards bigger than a credit card but smaller than a postcard, that pointed to them being specially made. There were little blue and gold chevrons at the corner, and an artist’s impression of the Hotel. But there was also a little personal note, in Sally’s distinctive handwriting. Somehow you could never quite decide whether it looked untidy but was really neat, or the other way round.

“Hi, Dora, can’t believe it’s been over four years now! But Don and I have decided that our little family, the January family, will get together before we re-open to the public. All on the house, of course! And you will have your old bedroom. We can’t wait to see you again, but please let us know either was ASAP. Lots of Love, and hopefully see you soon! Sally and Don”.

Dora still wasn’t quite sure how they’d found her, as she had used an old address and a false surname when she was at the Trafalgar. Well, an assumed surname. But there were ways of finding people, weren’t there? She was torn between being a little unsettled by the fact that she had been found, and touched that Sally and Don were asking her back to the Re-opening before the Re-Opening. With the rest of the January Family.

She couldn’t remember who had first used that expression, but there was nothing outlandish about it. Or was there? They weren’t a family, after all. And it wasn’t even as if they’d stayed in touch. But she only needed to close her eyes to see them, with that strange logic of the mind’s eye. There they were, in the breakfast room of the Trafalgar Hotel.

Peter, whom Sally called “Part of the furniture, but in a good way!” He was the kind of man who had probably been called “The elderly gentleman” since he was in his fifties, and whose old fashioned courtesy and innate shyness were sometimes pierced through by a dry, slightly wacky sense of humour. He was an utterly undemanding, self-effacing man, but Sally saw to it that he always had his own special tea, at breakfast. Dora never found out what was so special about it, nor what would happen if any of the others, herself included, had asked for it. He was the most long-standing resident, and apparently one of the stars of a local pub quiz team, though Dora had never heard about them taking part in any competitions. She had once, briefly, been in a pub quiz team herself, but had no particular wish to do so again, so didn’t mention it.

Jules was a travelling salesman, but not just any travelling salesman. There was something vaguely exotic about Jules. He was from Switzerland. At times Dora did pause to wonder about this. She didn’t see much evidence of the little town on the English east coast having a significant trade relationship with Switzerland. Chiding herself for stereotyping she reflected that she had never so much as seen a cuckoo clock in one of the souvenir shops, nor fondue in offer in any of the cafes. It was true that a couple of times, on the little table in the lobby where the post was put, she had seen a couple of communications from Switzerland – either a letter, or a larger, A4 envelope that presumable contained some kind of forms or order sheets or whatever. And there was the odd phone call coming through at the breakfast table, though presumably he took most of his calls in the privacy of his own room. Dora spoke French and had told Jules so he would know that she understood what he was saying. He had nodded and thanked her, and it was never anything of any particular significance or that he wouldn’t have wanted people to hear.

Dora made a point of being scrupulously honest about small things that didn’t matter. She had this notion, though she wasn’t quite sure she believed it, that behind her back folks would say things like, “You can trust Dora. She’s honest.”

Olive was revisiting the scene of childhood holidays, though Sally and Don hadn’t owned the Trafalgar then. But they had known the previous owners, and still visited Mrs Cynthia Harper, who was the kind of woman people called indomitable in her nursing home. There was even a picture of her and her mild looking husband Clive in the reception area. Apparently Cynthia (with Clive in tow) had pulled the Trafalgar up by its bootstrings (that was the kind of phrase people used but Dora was never quite sure what they were) and transformed it from a Boarding House to a Private Hotel. Over the years, the word Private had been dropped. But Don and Sally had further transformed it. Sometimes Olive reminisced over her lightly boiled egg and muesli (perhaps there was a Swiss influence in the town after all!), “Back in the day,” (she was fond of the expression back in the day) “you never heard of a hotel except the very posh ones having private bathrooms and TVs in the bedrooms. But don’t misunderstand me, I like it.” Olive valued her privacy and the others respected it, but she seemed to thoroughly enjoy these chats in the breakfast room. Dora wasn’t quite sure how long she was staying. But the fact was, all of them were staying longer than you normally would in a hotel. It was the kind of thing you didn’t discuss and just accepted.

Dora was sometimes mildly curious, though she accepted the surface explanation of Peter being part of the furniture, and Jules being on long-term business and as for Olive – well, plenty of old ladies and gentleman spent the winter months in Spain, so why not in Lincolnshire? Anyway, the same respect for privacy applied to her, and that suited Dora very nicely.

We knew each other better than a lot of families did, in some ways, thought Dora, and yet we didn’t know each other at all.

Though it was in a seaside town, the Trafalgar was not on the promenade. It could not, and did not, promise sea views, though it was only a few minutes’ walk away. Dora’s own room, her own old room that Sally had said she could have again, was at the back of the building, and looked out over a street. It was the kind of street that looked very prosaic and even a little shabby in the daytime, but at night when the streetlights both illuminated and concealed, there was something picturesque about it, and you could almost imagine that the buildings were in some Dutch painting. She didn’t envy Olive her room that overlooked the garden. It might have been different if night didn’t fall so early. But it was, after all, January, and though the shortest day was past, on the East coast light faded while it was still afternoon, and the streetlamps smudged the wheelie bins and the cracked plaster and enhanced the contours of the buildings and the rain that had accumulated in little pools in the potholes. She wasn’t the kind of person who was concerned about internal décor, but she rather liked the fact that the colour scheme, inasmuch as there was one, was blue and grey, reminding her of the colours of a school uniform she has worn long ago, and there was something appealing about that, even though at the time she had liked neither the uniform nor the school.

Dora still doubted she would have made any request for a different room. Dora was the ideal guest who was no trouble, but who tempered it with occasional sharp shafts of wit. Though she had never been the kind of person who was the class clown, she had a way with words and contrived to just avoid being bland. And the truth was that though the comparison to a Dutch painting held a certain appeal for her, that wasn’t the kind of thought she lingered on, even when she left the curtains open. She did a crossword, watched some wallpaper television, sometimes read a book, drank an amount of wine that most would have considered too much, and ate packet sandwiches or sometimes filled a noodle snack pot with water from the kettle. She managed to signal that she kept herself to herself without being remotely stand-offish. But she was glad the Trafalgar didn’t offer an evening meal. It once had. It had when Cynthia and Clive ran it, and as Olive reminisced, “It wasn’t actually compulsory, and I think you could come to some kind of an arrangement, but I never heard of anyone who did. To be honest, it wasn’t that great. Cynthia could do a lovely breakfast, but otherwise she was a cottage pie and boiled cod sort of cook, and I’ve never cared much for either.” Sally and Don had briefly carried on serving an evening meal, but then abandoned it.

Dora was sensible enough to know that though nobody would press her on the matter (though sometimes she wasn’t quite sure about Sally, whose friendliness had not tipped over into nosiness, but at times had come too close for comfort) some explanation had to be offered, and she kept it simple and believable, though the truth was neither. She was having work done on her house. The others may have thought it was an odd time of year (and she wasn’t terribly pleased to discover that Don’s brother was a builder) but no-one made an issue of it.

There was no work being done on Dora’s house. For all she knew there could be squatters in it, and it could have been burgled, and the drive would most certainly be overgrown. It was the kind of drive that got overgrown very easily. The damp patch in the ceiling may well have got worse, or even turned into a hole, letting water gush in, and more slates may have been dislodged. I should have gone further away, she sometimes thought, uneasily, and decided that the time was coming to move on from the Trafalgar. There was no real reason for her to stay. Not even the January family. But it was easier. And she had got used to it. She liked hearing Olive’s stories of bygone days at the Trafalgar – she was an interesting raconteur, and also knew when people had had enough. She liked swapping bits of trivia with Peter, and sometimes talking French to Joules, who was complimentary about her language skills. As for Don and Sally, they were sometimes positively parental, which she knew in her heart of hearts was ridiculous, as she was certainly older than they were. She could always find a reason to put off moving on. But she supposed she could, and would, cope with that one day. Going back was another.

She didn’t know if she agreed with Sally when she said it didn’t seem like four years since the January family were together. More than four years, because now it was May. She had sometimes thought it was fanciful to say that time was relative, but it certainly seemed to play tricks. At times January in the Trafalgar seemed more like ten years ago, as if it had happened – well, before other things had happened, instead of after. At others it was as if she had left it only weeks ago. It was also both more real and solid than the life she was leading now, and like one of those contradictory dreams that are “realistic” and have nothing surreal or fantastical about them, yet, on waking, seem to have been stranger than any vivid surreal landscape of mythical beings and either the best or the worst that could happen. She couldn’t help the thought that Olive and Peter must still be alive. Don and Sally would surely have known that or had checked. Well, it wasn’t so surprising. They were old but not ancient, and while Olive had plainly been hale and hearty, Peter had been spindly and stooped, but that was not necessarily a manifestation of fragility. And would Jules really come back from Switzerland? From – where was it he had said he lived? – near Lausanne. Or perhaps he had never left. Oh, he would have left the Trafalgar, of course, but perhaps he had stayed in the area.

Dora had stayed in other hotels and guest houses since, when she could afford it (or even when she couldn’t) and when they weren’t closed down in lockdown. But she had never really been on holiday. And she hadn’t been back to the Trafalgar. She had thought about it, and told herself there was no reason that she shouldn’t, but she hadn’t.

It had been part of that hiatus between two realities. And that was something that you couldn’t recreate. Dora was the kind of person who rarely complained about repeats on TV, though she had to admit that the Yesterday channel took it to extremes. It reassured her to watch something that had no nasty shocks or no disappointments, where nobody would act out of character or reveal something unsettling, or question a fact she needed to be true.

Like many people who are generally indecisive, Dora had spells when she made up her mind quickly and was relieved to have the making up over with. She replied that she would be delighted to be at the Re-Opening before the Re-Opening. But this time it would be different. She would not be seeking a refuge after she had let her home go to rack and ruin, and after she had discharged herself from hospital because she couldn’t stand to be there any longer. She need not be in fear of someone well-meaning reporting her as a missing person and expressing concerns for her welfare. I am not different any longer, thought Dora, and the thought both disappointed her and made her give what a certain type of book called a rueful smile as, of course, she was, but it was easier to hide it now, and nobody had ever known how hard it was to hide it then.

So she made her way to the little town on the East Coast, to the little Lincolnshire town that was still shabby and down at heel, but still had an atmosphere about it that kept people coming back to the guest houses and holiday camps and mobile homes, and kept them shopping in the little souvenir shops. To the town with the tall clock tower on the Promenade and the old-fashioned pavilion in the sunken gardens. To the side street and to the Trafalgar Hotel.

She didn’t have a key for her room yet, of course, but saw that the front door was open – that was typical of Sally and Don. And she knew that they wouldn’t mind in the least if she stepped into the hallway, or even into the lounge. They would give her a good telling-off for standing outside, especially Sally, who was decidedly stringent about being easy going.

There was a familiar scent in the air – the lavender furniture polish that Sally favoured. Dora had never been able to make up her mind whether she really liked it or not, sometimes she found it too sickly and heady, and at other times, especially as it had been winter then, she was glad to breathe in the halfway convincing redolence of a synthetic summer. It would have been wrong, somehow disconcerting, if she had changed her furniture polish, and if there were a scent of vanilla or pine forest or whatever.

She heard voices in the lounge, and they were voices they knew.

“It’s so typical of Sally and Don to organise something like this,” Olive said, fondly, “though letting people have rooms for nothing might not be terribly sensible.” Dora smiled. Though she was a redoubtable old lady in many ways, and not someone you messed with, Olive was not one for castigation and condemnation. One of her most “vehement” criticisms was that someone had not been terribly sensible. She had a new hair style, Dora noted. Her hair wasn’t twisted up into a bun, but she’d had it cut short and put in soft waves. It suited her.

“Especially as they have a little one now,” said Peter. “Young Elizabeth – Betsy they call her – three years old and as bright as a button. I never thought I’d be a godfather in my life, and I was so honoured when they asked me!”

“You deserve it, Peter,” said Jules, fondly, and his slight accent was still there, but seemed less pronounced.

Yes, it was wonderful news about Betsy, thought Dora. She had known that Sally and Don longed to have children, and hadn’t been finding it easy to conceive. I wonder who she looks like, mused Dora – round faced and with curly dark hair like Sally, or tall and fair like Don.

“I’m glad they’ve given the rooms a makeover,” Olive said, “Not my place to comment, but I never cared much for that blue and grey.”

That’s a pity, thought Dora, but as long as the view was the same, it didn’t matter.

“Just one thing that’s such a terrible shame and so sad,” Jules said.

“Indeed,” Olive said, with a sigh. “Poor Dora. I only found out later that she discharged herself from the hospital, but she still wasn’t at all well. It was no age. Such a tragedy, she was a nice girl, though I could never quite fathom her.”

And Dora fled silently up the stairs to her room, and it was still furnished in blue and grey, and a January snow was falling as the light faded.