What Lois Saw

Lois wasn’t the only receptionist at the East Parade Hotel. Sometimes Leanne, the owner, was at the neat little curved reception desk, and sometimes, at the height of the season, they took on temporary staff. But Lois was part of the furniture. People said that, and then came over all confused and embarrassed and were at pains to assure her they meant it as a compliment except it might not have come out that way. She assured them it was fine, and most of the time, she meant it. She had been one of those temporary receptionists once, trying to pay off her student loan. But she discovered she liked it, and when Leanne asked her if she would like to take the position full time, she didn’t hesitate. 

     Her parents hadn’t been best pleased. They knew Leanne and liked her, but couldn’t help thinking their bright younger daughter hadn’t gone through university and got a 2.1 (that they were sure was nearly a first) to work as a receptionist. Lois accused them of being snobs and they had to admit that perhaps she was right. Anyway, they decided it wasn’t worth risking their very good relationship with Lois. They were considerably placated when she started doing postgraduate work with the Open University and told themselves that now she had the best of both worlds.

     Lois had what people called a pleasant face. She wasn’t exactly pretty, and certainly not beautiful, and didn’t have the mixed blessing of being a handsome woman. But she had a good, clear skin, and rather unusual blue-grey eyes, and though she wasn’t remotely fussy or prim, there was something neat and graceful in the way she moved, and the way she talked, and just in the way she was. 

    She was very well-organised, too. Even when she’d first started as a temporary summer receptionist, and with no experience in that kind of work, she’d never double-booked a room, or forgotten who wanted an early breakfast, and who liked to be near the lift. It was odd, really, as her friends and family would have said that generally she was inclined to be, if not exactly scatty, certainly a bit absent minded and dreamy at times. And even now, when they were quiet, she would often sit there intent on her book, or just day-dreaming, until she was needed and became Lois the Receptionist again. 

     Lois had discovered she had a talent for organising other things, too. She’d first employed it that very first summer. The East Parade Hotel, as Leanne proudly said, was not one of those that ripped single travellers off with excessive supplements and poky little rooms. In fact it was generally agreed that the best view in the hotel was from one of the single rooms on the top floor, looking out across the promenade gardens to the sea. And Lois, who could be quite a solitary person herself, never saw it has her duty to try to encourage people to pal up, or to share a table at breakfast on principle. But when she first met Charlotte, and then Brian who booked in about an hour later, somehow she just knew that both of them were lonely, and that they had a great deal in common. There was nothing wrong with helping them a little along the way and seeing how things turned out. But Lois did not make them share a breakfast table or the like. She just made sure they both came down at about the same time, and that they just happened to fall into a conversation at the self-service breakfast buffet, and in the course of that conversation they discovered that they both had a weakness for crazy golf, and they decided, as they sat down at the table (which they had, of their own volition – wasn’t it? – decided to share) to have some fun at the crazy golf course. That evening they told Lois that they had been like a couple of big kids, laughing as they took shots at holes underneath windmills and swirling round miniature helter-skelters, and even wending their way round little pirate ships. 

     She was quite touched, though not remotely surprised, when they sent a note – an old-fashioned, handwritten one – to the East Parade, and specifically to her, telling her that they had got engaged. 

     She continued to be firm with herself, and to see things clearly, and not just through those unusual blue-grey eyes of hers. Leanne, who wasn’t given to fanciful musing about other people’s eyes, once said they reminded her of the North Sea, opposite the hotel, on one of those days when you weren’t sure whether the sun or the clouds would prevail. Lois had been very tempted when she met Simon and Annette, who came in the week after the late August bank holiday, when it was still officially summer, but you found yourself half wishing it would stop hanging around so you could honestly say it was autumn and start getting used to it. But in the end she decided against it. They got on well, and perhaps, in another place, at another time, if they chanced to meet again, something might come of it. But not yet. And not at the East Parade Hotel. Simon was happiest with the sports section of his newspaper at the breakfast table, and Annette with her mobile. Generally, Lois didn’t much like people using their phones at mealtimes, though of course she didn’t say anything to the guests, but she knew that Annette was worried about her father, who had had an operation, but insisted that she didn’t miss out on the holiday she’d been looking forward to. She could have told her he’d be fine, but it might come across as glib and irritating rather than reassuring, so she held her tongue.

     It was a different matter when it came to Penny and Arthur. But that one needed a bit of thinking out and planning. Still, Lois had never minded planning. Step one, make them fall into conversation (that was the easiest bit) and make them discover that they shared an interest in astronomy. Step two, send them walking along the promenade on a clear and starry September evening. Looking back on it, Lois wondered if that might very well have been enough, and she was just showing off, even if only to herself. But the shooting star over the sea was undeniably a very neat finishing touch. And she fancied that even though they were interested in the science and not the superstition of the stars, they might still very well not be able to help themselves from making a wish. 

     Christmas at the East Parade was tricky. Lois sometimes thought that it might be more to the point to go into reverse gear, so to speak. Twinkling tree lights and childhood memories and, frankly, some folk taking a little more wine than they could handle, might well make them see romance and future forever happiness when it was not there. But she didn’t ever pass judgement, and never did experiment to see if she also had the capacity to impose a reality check on people. And nobody was happier than she was when she discovered, entirely of their own volition, that Bob and Margaret had become an item, and that they still were today, and not just when the wine was flowing and Bing was singing White Christmas in the background. 

     It never occurred to Lois to make any distinctions, and in her second year at the East Parade, she made sure that Desmond and David were both on the excursion to Lincoln Cathedral, because she knew that they both loved history and architecture, but had both been wondering if they ought to take the chance to get some sea air in their lungs rather than sitting in a coach and walking round old buildings. They were on a half-board package, which they sometimes offered, especially in the off-season, though generally they only did bed and breakfast. When Desmond and David asked her if there was any way she could possibly find them a table together for dinner, she assured them that she could – and of course, she already had. 

     “They certainly enjoyed that trip to the cathedral,” her friend Maxine, the waitress said later on. “They were talking about nothing else.”

     “Well, I’ve seen it often enough and I never cease to be impressed by it,” Lois said, understanding exactly why Maxine had thought they were talking about nothing but their trip to the cathedral. 

     Lois always had mixed feelings about Valentine’s Day, and was glad that although it was marked at the East Parade, with pink balloons and roses on the breakfast table, they had never, unlike the Oceania next door, gone mad on it. They never offered breaks, on Valentine’s Day or any other time, specifically billed as “romantic”. But it still got a bit of a reputation, and Leanne certainly didn’t mind, as being the kind of hotel where things happened. 

     Last year one of their happy couples, Elizabeth and Tony, even mentioned the East Parade in a letter to a magazine and it got letter of the week. Leanne was pleased, but said that if they’d let her know, they could have had a whole article, and a free night’s accommodation for Elizabeth and Tony, too. Lois was privately rather relieved that hadn’t happened. But she didn’t say so, as Leanne laminated the page with the star letter on it, after having put fluorescent highlighter pen over the name of the hotel, just to make sure nobody missed it hanging up in the reception area.

     Lois had learnt to trust her instincts. Oh, she still had her moments of doubt, and when she did, she always erred on the side of caution. 

     But every time she looked at Robert Ellis, who was in the famous Room 18, the room with the view, and even when she didn’t look at him, she was confused. Robert was in love. Robert was deeply and passionately in love, and yet with whom? He was straight (she had an unerring instinct on that, too) and there were only two single women in the East Parade at the time. Eva was in her fifties, and though Lois certainly had no problems at all with age difference relationships, it stuck out a mile that the two got on famously as friends, perhaps with a hint of mother/son surrogacy, at least for the duration of the break, but that was as far as it went or would ever go. And Andrea was still recovering from a very traumatic break-up and needed and wanted long walks on the beach, not emotional complications in her life. 

     So far as she knew, for the first time in her employment at the East Parade she made a silly error that day, and told someone the rooms they wanted were already booked on days when they were not. She phoned them at once, and they were very nice about it and said not to worry in the least, and they appreciated her getting back to them, so no harm was done. 

     Robert came to the reception desk later on that day, and started what Leanne called a “something and nothing” conversation about the picture in the lift, which was pretty enough, but hardly a great work of art. That was until he stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “I don’t know why I’m going on about that water lily…..” Lois had been about to politely point out that it was supposed to be a lotus, not that he was the first person who’d made that mistake, but he was carrying on talking, “What I really wanted to say is that – you have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life.”

     “Don’t be silly,” she muttered, but as she did, she felt a warmth suffuse her, and as if she had only just realised that her life had been incomplete and that magic didn’t only work for others. She was seeing clearly through those beautiful eyes again!