REFLECTIONS: Smiles and tears

Way back in the 1970s, we spent several weeks each year as holiday guests at the Halcyon Days Hotel outside Vieux Fort, always at Christmas and usually once or twice during the rest of the year. The kids were quite small, at least at the beginning of the decade, but by the end of the seventies they were, of course, ten years older. They viewed the hotel as their second home. The staff was pretty fixed—we met the same faces year after year and the management became a reliable fixture. Arriving on the double-decker bus from the airport after a long and fairly arduous journey was like coming home. We always had the same two adjoining rooms on the ground floor and were pleasantly amused to find the small imperfections we had complained about on the previous visit remained unfixed. They added a sense of permanence to the experience. The sliding glass doors were secured by a piece of wood that you had to diligently place along their base each night to stop them from being opened. I cannot recall ever locking the doors to the outside corridor. Yes, that’s how secure we felt way back then.

Martin, the younger of our kids, found his home in the table tennis hall and, with the help of the staff, became quite a proficient ping pong player. My wife and I played tennis most days but the sun was pretty horrendous. And then, of course, there was the nine-hole pitch and putt course that we lovingly referred to as the Golf Course. Neither of us was particularly good at the game but I must admit, to my chagrin, that my wife could strike the ball much better than I could. Her problem was that, like most golfers, she suffered tremendously after each bad shot, no matter how well she was playing otherwise. Golfers have the potential to be such miseries even though they are basically playing against themselves. Anna, of course, spent her time with the horses.

Every day seems to have been full of joy. Our plan included breakfast and the evening meal. During the day the kids took care of themselves; Martin had his milk-shake account while Anna was more moderate in her diet. Breakfast was the main meal of the day. Year after year we were waited upon by Therese and her friends. We got to know them all well and through the years became firm friends. When Rudolph, Therese’s husband, was killed in a roadside accident we suffered with the family and did our best to support the grieving widow and her two young sons who grew up to become fine young men, a credit to their father.

Mike and Mary were also guests and our two families spent most days in close proximity during the vacations. They had arrived in America as penniless refugees from Hungary and went on to become quite wealthy residents of Long Island. Mike designed air conditioning for skyscrapers and Mary made her money in real estate. After they retired to Florida they stopped visiting Saint Lucia but by then we had moved on to live in our own home at Cap. On one memorable Old Year’s Night their room had been set afire by renegade fireworks misdirected from the pool area. No one was hurt although the material damage was quite substantial. The funny thing was that when they visited us years later at Cap, they stayed at the Cariblue Hotel—now the BodyHoliday—where their room was once again set on fire by rampant, renegade pyrotechnics on the very last day of the year.