The First Evening

Where was I?  Oh yes, that’s right.  With my wind-whipped hair a mass of tangles, I step from the ferry to a sea of white-linen-wearing young men who are reaching steadying hands, offering me cool towels from trays of flowers, hefting mine and my husband’s bags and directing us to our orientation director.  She’s a young girl with a crisp uniform and neon green headband, and she shepherds a handful of us guests through the open air resort (not a single public space is enclosed except the small internet cafe).  She points out various restaurants, paths to the 7 beaches, the tennis areas and croquet lawn (woefully crispy on this particular day, it’s been a dry year thus far).  We walk along the paths beside the low slung one-story buildings, painted a discreet greeny brown and further hidden by palms, hibiscus, and tropical almond trees.  She takes each separate family through its own room, and when it’s finally our turn she hauls open the heavy door and ushers us into a hotel room with a large King bed, high ceilings, tile floors with seagrass mats – and a back door that opens onto the beach of Caneel Bay.  I am gazing at my genius husband with starry eyes, unbelieving that he found us this room for such a good price – and he is looking somewhat green.  “We’re in the wrong room,” he says.  “No,” I say firmly, telepathically signalling him frantically to shut his pie hole – “Look, here’s a bottle of champagne chilling, with a card that has our names on it.  It must be ours.”  “But,” says my bewildered and soon-to-be murdered spouse, “but I paid for a tennis/garden view room.  We weren’t booked into a seaside room.”  “I can change it,” says the girl, looking warily at us.  “Please don’t be mad, sometimes they make mistakes on people’s rooms, but it’s all quickly mended.”  Clearly everyone in this room but me is mad.

Once I have assured the Professor that I confirmed the room number and the room rate, both written on the same piece of paper no less, and he has read and confirmed that it is in fact our (now shared) name on the champagne card, he starts to relax.  We assure our guide that the room will do very nicely, thank you very much, and bustle her our the door before she realizes their mistake.*  Once she’s gone I wander into the bathroom to explore, and nearly faint at the sight of double sinks, stacks of white towels the size of twin sheets, and coconut shampoo and mango soap in the tile shower.  I flip open the shampoo cap and deeply breathe in the scent of . . . tropical vacation.

I’m still in mainland mode, so I instantly start unpacking and setting the room to rights.  I work at a frantic pace, so eager to get to relaxing that I don’t notice the irony tapping me on the shoulder and handing me a pina colada.  Or Valium.  After a while though, we start to settle down, and start drinking champagne.  Soon our heartbeats slow down, blood pressure lowers, and looming heart attacks recede, looking venemously at our twin heroes, the champagne and the beach.  A few glasses later we stumble around, attempting to dress for dinner, and then walk hand in hand to the stunning Equator restaurant, which is basically a big twinkly open-air circle on the top of what passes for a hill on this island.  It’s the semi-fancy restaurant on Caneel, built atop the ruins of an old sugar mill, and the designers wisely left most of the old ruins intact and crawling with tropical foliage.  At the sight of our young selves at this decidedly old-rich-people resort, the maitre’d asks if we are honeymooners, and if so would we like a romantic dinner for two alone, in a separate roofless room of the sugar mill, with the stars as our ceiling?  Is this really a question?

So minutes later we are installed at a small table-for-two on the grass, within the crumbling stone walls of the former sugar mill, torches our only light, brilliant pink hibiscus our centerpiece.  Although some of the poetry is ruined when we and our cheerful server have to huddle up to one of the torches and hold menus at awkward angles to read, all in all it is a damn romantic evening.  The server calls me “Misses” in musical island tones, and traipses up and down the hill faithfully carrying our various dishes.  We dine on roti, food of the gods (gods also like conch fritters, as do I); medium rare steak and thick slabs of halibut; sparkling water and glasses of wine; and finally, complimentary desserts of rice pudding and rum cake, once again because we’re honeymooners.

We are nearly ill from eating so much, but manage a short stroll along the dimly lit grounds, marvelling at how the low light and the sprawling layout of the resort give us the illusion that we’re the only ones there.  We see a stray cat lurking among the stone ruins, and walk on home, falling asleep in a pile on our porch chair, listening to the rhythm of the waves.

*We’ve since decided, after overhearing nearly a dozen couples mentioning that they’d honeymooned at Caneel years ago, that the resort upgraded us on purpose knowing that honeymooners are a big repeat business.  And now if/when we ever return, we’ll never be able to stay in any other room.  That’s the theory anyway.