Past perfect
Tristan Davies steps into a luxurious Caribbean time capsule where they have got the...
ANYONE remember The Young Ones? No, not the comedy with Ade Edmonson headbutting the walls of his student flat, but a reality TV show in which six elderly celebrities were made to live in a country house decked out as a 1970s time capsule.
The idea was to transport them back to their hey day and see whether walking across shagpile carpets, watching Crossroads and sipping Dandelion & Burdock improved their ailing health and failing memories.
Anyway, taking them back to a world where everything was strictly 1975 had a miraculous effect on all of them.
It turns out the shagpile carpets had a lot to do with it. Because it’s not just being surrounded by the things you love that keeps you young. Research shows that if you live in a more challenging environment, you’ll live up to 30 per cent longer than someone who resides in a shiny, minimalist house.
I mention this because I met a very clever man called Bengt in Bequia, a tiny island just a speedboat dash from Mustique, who is conducting a similar experiment. Bengt is the proud owner of the Bequia Beach Hotel, and it was after the third couple had come up to us in the bar and said how relieved they were to see another couple under the age of 60 that I realised just how smart Bengt has been.
Because the Bequia Beach Hotel is full of couples of a certain age congratulating other couples of a certain age for being so much younger than all the other couples of almost certainly the same age.
Bengt, you see, has created a perfect time capsule. By the time you have checked in to one of the 1930s colonial-style rooms with 1950s-style posters, and followed 1960s-style wooden signs to the bar and ordered your first Dark ’n’ Stormy, you’re already feel- ing 20 years younger. It’s not just the decor, agreeable though it is. Everything here exudes old-style charisma, a Pathé newsreel picture of how the Caribbean used to be before the giant cruise liners steamed in.
There’s nothing fusty about the Bequia Beach Club, but everything is as it should be. Charming open-air restaurant on the beach: check. Delicious fresh seafood: check. Friendly but unpushy staff: check. Secluded stretch of sand fringing a gently swelling ocean: check. Cool pool with mysterious rejuvenating powers: check. Friendly faces at the bar swapping rum-punchy gossip: check.
A 30-minute stroll away is the capital, Port Elizabeth, a scruffily teeming one-street town packed with shops, markets and harbour-side bars.
A world away – but only 40 minutes by twin-prop plane – is the Coral Reef Club in Barbados, where we stayed for our second week. It, too, exudes old-school cool, though of a distinctly more upmarket kind. Had the owners of this five-star uber-elegant hotel been so inclined, they could have christened its beach after visiting VIPs. Or you could now be staying in a Harold Pinter Luxury Plantation Suite, or an Agatha Christie Garden Room, or the Jeremy Clarkson restaurant and bar (hot food ALWAYS available after 9pm, no violence necessary). All have enjoyed the hospitality of the O’Hara family, who have owned the hotel since the 1950s, but they’re far too sophisticated to indulge in name-dropping. So you won’t hear it from them that Prince Harry has stayed here. This is the kind of hotel where the rich, famous and we lesser mortals can drift in and out incognito. Having said that, I’ve never seen a more impressive parade of alpha males, hands on hips, stroking their chests, surveying their own hard-earned piece of paradise. And it does make you think, as you overhear one telling another they’re staying for the whole of February, as they do every year, how do they do it? Where does all the money come from? No wonder Agatha Christie was inspired to write A Caribbean Mystery here. There’s still an air of exotic mystery about the place.
But it’s not hard to see why they keep coming back. Yes, every room is high-spec; yes, the restaurant is high-end; yes, there’s a lot of money flying about. But Coral Reef hasn’t lost sight of the good old days. You can bet every dry martini here is shaken, not stirred. There’s no vulgar thud of a beach boom-box. You want to bust some Rihanna moves in a nightclub? Well, that’s just a short car ride away.
The Coral Reef Club is built on good old-fashioned family values. And that’s down to the O’Haras. They may look as if they’ve stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue, but they are a very real presence in the hotel. Matriarch Cynthia glides around the reception rooms and hosts an elegant cocktail party once a week, and sons Mark and Patrick patrol the restaurant. This is not just their livelihood, it’s their home .
The O’Haras probably won’t thank me for bringing it up, but I was struck by a (very rare) complaint they received online.
‘My only negative point would be the owners seemed to have their kids at home for the summer… who took over the beach and sunbeds a little,’ wrote Mildly Irritated of Ascot (or was it New Hampshire?). To think! It turns out the children were on a rare visit to celebrate a 21st birthday.
Anyway, having a few youngsters about the place never did anybody any harm. A bit of competition racing for those sunbeds will – like watching your step on a shagpile carpet – knock 20 years off you!