I travel for my magazine – one of the better-known fashion glossies. I suppose you would call it a job in a million: Kenya, Canada, Finland, Lapland, Argentina, Japan … you never know from one moment to the next where the Fashion Editor’s fancy will take her, and you have to be ready to pack your bags and go at a moment’s notice; footloose and fancy-free.
You must know the sort of thing. A black wrap-around (cotton for coolness) against the wide blue yonder of the Persian Gulf. Click. White ankle-length in Waikiki. Click. Sables on the Ponte Vecchio. Click.
We might spend days in Bahrain and finally get one picture so that all the chicks would rush like lemmings to the classy boutiques for the cheesecloth shift or the espadrilles, or whatever it was we were plugging.
No matter that our model was covered with bites and had been up all night with the trots and that the espadrilles fitted nowhere. It was my job to get it together so that she looked suitably happy, that the photographer was sober enough to do his stuff, the hairdresser and the make-up girl in the right place at the right time and not scuba diving or chatting up the locals with a view to business, amorous or otherwise.
It isn’t easy, believe me. I earn my money. You could arrive in Bangkok without one vital piece of a two-piece ensemble; in Detroit, on a hair-fine schedule, the thousands of cars all nicely aligned, and the cameraman still arguing with Narcotics over what they swore was dope but which in actual fact were pills prescribed by his doctor for hay fever.
I was good, you see, about dealing with people. I could wheedle my way round obstreperous Customs Officials; produce rooms in hotels that were fully booked; think ahead, so that the whole team with all its paraphernalia remained together in good health and with their wits about them, to all intents and purposes at any rate.
It was one of fate’s odder quirks that the first time in over twelve years I slipped up seriously was in regard to myself.
Of course, it had to be Jamaica! The land of ‘soon come’ and tropical torpor. In Paris or New York the action might have been somewhat faster.
When I first got the job – the promotion, I mean – and the travelling started, my father bought me a Louis Vuitton travelling kit, brown canvas with the squiggles which were actually the designer’s initials interwoven into the dark-brown leather trim. I know it set him back quite a bit. I was thrilled at the time; jetting round the world with my classy luggage. It took me a while to realise that about two-thirds of the travelling population seemed to have identical suitcases.
Whether imitation, plastic trim instead of leather, and not quite the right initials, it didn’t matter. I’d stand next to the porter in Sydney where it all got shunted round and round on a playground merry-go-round, yelling, ‘That’s it! No, hang on, it looks like it but it isn’t … That one! No, mine has a strap …’
It was a sudden decision. The week before I had walked into the travel department of a well-known store and bought one large, roomy, lightweight case in what I can call hideous, shrieking pink. All I had to do was learn the word for pink in a million different languages and – bingo! I’d be away while the others were still searching for the word for porter.
We left Sydney in 12 degrees, raining. I had my fur coat over the blue jeans in which I always travelled – I liked to be comfortable – and a T-shirt topped by various sweaters that I could peel off to suit the climate.
We travelled on a 747; our little team of six with enough temperament between us for a football side, a lot of China-men making a lot of Chinese noise, and a random selection of others. Roughly seventy of us on a plane capable of carrying almost four hundred. Not bad! It mitigated the tedium of the film, the plastic food, the baby, belonging to an American couple, who didn’t stop crying all the way to JFK.
We had five hours to spend at Kennedy. Being in transit, there was nothing we could do but eat and sleep and cuss out the first-class passengers who until then had been segregated from us mere mortals in another part of the plane; splendid isolation from the proles, with their own little upstairs bar.
I was halfway through my pastrami on rye – two inches thick with pickles and French fries on the side – when I caught sight of him. He was the sole only likely-looking man in the whole crowd.
Although I was pushing thirty next birthday, you see, I hadn’t given up, the only trouble being that the older you got the narrower the field seemed to become. I had no intention, however, of spending the rest of my life either alone or embroiled in the trauma of some impermanent liaison.
He was tall and dark and as impeccable, even after eight hours, as only an Italian can be: biscuit suit, black shoes, crisp white shirt, dark tie with a pearl pin. Boy, oh boy! I looked around for a companion but he seemed to be alone.
Sara, our model, interrupted my daydreams to say she had a headache and a sore throat and thought she was sickening for something; she threatened chickenpox, as it was around in her kid sister’s school. By the time I had calmed her down and dosed her up it was time to transfer to the DC9 and the last leg of the flight to Montego Bay.
At Montego the heat hit you like the steam from a kettle. The natives, standing around in bright coloured shirts and pants, chewing indolently on toothpicks, watched us in silence. There was no trouble with Customs and a taxi driver had been sent to meet us. He carried my new pink case.
The manager of the hotel, a harassed fellow Australian, escorted us to our various bungalows. I helped myself to iced water from the vacuum flask on the bureau, took my nightie from my holdall, switched on the air conditioning, flung myself into one of the trim beds and fell fast asleep.
I slept like the dead, as I always do after travelling, and woke at seven to hear the maid pottering around in the kitchen.
The table was laid on the terrace. Orange juice and butter and coffee and jam and hot toast and hot buns and a wooden bowl of pineapple, bananas and hazeberries artistically arranged.
I lingered as long as I could over breakfast, knowing that as soon as I made a move all hell would be let loose. We did not have too long for each assignment and most of the time it was all go. My first job would be to rouse the others, who would be full of complaints and not at all anxious to get to work.
I decided to give them another half hour, while I bathed and dressed, before I woke them.
The towel was large, white and fluffy, just as I, sybarite that I am, liked them. I swathed myself in it and rummaged in my handbag for the keys of the new case. A swimsuit and a cover-up were all that would be necessary.
The zipper worked smoothly. I turned back the lid and – wow! Where were my cotton shifts, my voile shirts, my cute little numbers for the evening?
The case was packed beautifully and pristinely with trousers and shirts, some of them embroidered, but all of them utterly and unequivocally male. I sat there on the floor, utterly and completely stunned. It was shrieking pink, it appeared to be new but, quite simply, it was not my case. I had a vision of myself swimming, dining, dancing, in my pale-blue nightie which was, to say the least, transparent.
Stupidly, I suppose because I thought it unique, I had not thought to transfer the leather label bearing my name and address from my old case of blessed memory. All that there was, both on my own and on the one before me, was the flight number – to Montego Bay!
And then I thought, he must be somewhere on the island, in the area really if not actually in the hotel, or he would have made straight for Kingston.
Feeling like a criminal I looked vaguely through the garments for clues and felt a surge of embarrassment as I imagined someone searching my own carelessly packed bag in similar fashion. There was no form of identification that I could see, only that the owner was meticulous in his dress and had someone absolutely super to iron his shirts. The only lead I got was that his initials were FC.
Stirring myself to action, I decided that there was nothing for it but to put on the crumpled jeans and the none-too-clean T-shirt I had worn on the flight and call the manager.
Shock number two: before going to bed I had slung my travel-weary garments in the corner by the second of the twin beds. They were no longer there. I closed my eyes and remembered with horror that this was Jamaica.
In the tiny kitchen the maid, whose name I later discovered was Mercedes, was singing to herself.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said with a wide smile, ‘I don taken yo clo’s and washed him. Reckon you don’ need dem blue jeans no mo’. Look, de sun shinin’.’
‘When will they be back?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you worry ’bout nothin’, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Soon come!’
It was a phrase to cover hours, days, weeks, years. This was the land where the Caribbean tongued the silver sand to reach the coconut palms and the red-leaved almonds; the land of corato, hibiscus, frangipani, oleander, jasmine and jacaranda, whose fragrance was unforgettable at night; the land where no one ever hurried.
The manager was sympathetic, concerned. He came at once. Mike and the others were horrified at my plight. Sara, who had recovered from her indisposition, offered me her clothes. Would that I had been 32–22–33 and ten years younger; I might have been modelling swimsuits too!
Mike, who was the nearest in size, lent me his jeans, which were rough and hard, and Sara a peasant top which did nothing for me except to make me look pregnant.
The manager said to leave it to him. He would contact the airport, instigate enquiries, track down the missing case. Of one thing he was sure. No one had arrived at our hotel with the wrong suitcase in screaming pink. I had to leave it to him. Our schedule was too tight and it was too hot to go tearing round the countryside arguing with officials for whom time had no meaning.
We took off for the first session on the beach at Negril. It was breathtaking and for a while I forgot my dilemma.
Sara did her stuff against the background of mile after mile of deserted white sands fringed by almonds, oranges and coconuts whose leaves fell to the ground like dead sighs. Mike was in terrific form and Sara had never looked better. She wore the blue bikini, which was little more than two pieces of string and matched the sky, the black one-piece and shook her raven hair in the breeze, the brilliant orange kaftan into the back of which I had to stick a clothes-peg to hide the fact that it was not really her size, and the demure white smock, her hair like a schoolgirl’s in pigtails.
After two hours we were all pretty flaked out. We packed our things into the jeep and everyone except me flung himself into the water. I felt like I took my harp to a party and nobody asked me to play.
Back on our own beach we sat at the straw-thatched bar, lapping up banana daiquiris and Planter’s Punch, which did little to improve my mood.
Before lunch, I excused myself, leaving the others to their curried goat and kebabs, and shut myself in my bungalow with a club sandwich.
On my bed Mercedes had laid my own jeans and shirt, clean and dry; it helped a little. I would give it one day, I decided, before collapsing again on the bed, then equip myself at the hotel boutique at the expense of the magazine. I could not work up any enthusiasm for the idea. I liked my own wardrobe.
I slept until Mike called me to say it was six o’clock and the manager was having a party on his lawn to which we were all invited. There had been no progress with my belongings.
Mercedes, who came to tidy up, smiled her happy smile and said, ‘Soon come.’ I assumed she was referring to the missing case, and dressed once more in my jeans.
It was quite something. Or at least would have been. The cottage was high up on the hillside where a breeze cooled the milky warmth of the tropical night. The swimming pool was floodlit, peacock-green, the lawn illuminated with flares, and the air filled with the rhythmic beat of a Calypso band.
Boys in white jackets circulated with whisky sours and lobster dip and sausage rolls. Tanned American beauties, all of whom seemed to me at least six foot tall, wore flowers in their hair and were totally captivating with their beautiful bodies in beautiful dresses and their slow-sexy drawls.
I decided that the only thing to do was to drink myself into oblivion.
I can’t tell you how long we stayed, remembering only that at some point, which seemed hours later, we drifted down the hill, Mike supporting me, into the black night.
None of us wanted dinner. Time was catching up with us and we had had quite a day. I fell asleep without bothering to undress and when someone banged at the shutters I looked at my watch and it was one o’clock. I had no idea if it was night or day. A quick glance in the mirror jogged my memory. My clothes were rumpled, my hair like the wild woman of Borneo, and I had mascara running down my face.
I opened the door, assuming it was Mercedes.
It was my pink case and next to it, in the biscuit-coloured suit and pearl tiepin from first-class, was my Italian from JFK.
It was still night, the terrace lit by spots, the cicadas singing. We looked at each other – he so smooth, I so wild I must have looked crazy – then at the pink case. Then we laughed.
How can I describe the next few days? Paradise Lost became Paradise Regained, with no apologies to anyone.
The mornings were for work and the rest of the day for Fabrice – my new love’s name. He had been visiting a friend in Runaway Bay, before coming to the hotel.
He took me to the Great House, Rose Hall and Cinnamon Hill, where we rode through the plantations on beat-up horses, picking peppers from the trees and drinking coconut milk. We swam in the tepid water, lay on the hot sands, sheltered from the rains. At night we watched the limbo dancers, the fire-eaters, and crab races, and danced to the haunting native band.
His father was Italian but his mother Australian. He had been educated in England but now spent his time between his house in Belgravia and his mother’s flat in Sydney; that was when he wasn’t in Rome or Barbados or St Moritz.
I was too old to believe in fairy stories; actually believe. I was content to enjoy the best time I had ever had in my life, knowing that it could only endure for a week.
We lay on mattresses in the private pool of his cottage, drinks in our hands, sunhats over our eyes. Some days we hardly moved, except to call room service when we were hungry. While I worked in the morning Fabrice played tennis or golf, snorkelled or water-skied. We didn’t bother with the Mannheimers or the Joneses. I scarcely had time for Sara and Mike, who in any case were doing their own thing. I was only aware of the passing, too quickly, of the days.
When it was over, I packed my pink case, laying on top as if it were porcelain the Calypso record he had bought me, This is My Island in the Sun, and the sad story of Annie Palmer, the White Witch of Rose Hall. It would pass many Sydney evenings and enable me to recall in a flash the cups of gold, and almonds freshly picked, the starry sky and the symphony of the night.
To look at us you would have thought us a happy throng. Sara with her tan, and Mike with his cameras, saying goodbye to the soursops and the gentle tamarinds, the giant flame trees, and Mercedes in her blue-and-white-striped dress waving happily from the door of the cottage.
I had said goodbye to Fabrice the night before. I could not recall it without distress, so busied myself with the luggage and my myriad responsibilities.
I spent most of the journey sleeping. All of us did, exhausted by the events of the week and the steam heat of the island. I was dreaming of the vultures, or buzzards, I never knew quite which, swooping and rising again over the coral reef, when Mike shook me to say we had landed. I looked out unenthusiastically into the grey bleakness of the Sydney winter and wondered whether it was only the vultures that had been the dream. There was nothing to reassure me that not twelve hours ago I had embraced Fabrice in an agony of farewells.
I took no pleasure in the fact that of all of us I was the first to spot my pink case doing its circular tour on the baggage rack, so triumphantly visible.
I waited only a few moments. A half-dozen cases came tumbling down to be heaved on to the bench in front of me by the familiar Aussie porter.
I spotted mine, which he put down in front of me, then to my utter amazement another, identical – pink twins!
I stood stock-still.
Fabrice was by my side. I thought I would faint with happiness. He picked up the cases, one in each hand, looking at them fondly.
‘One of yours, one of mine,’ he said, then smiled his fabulous smile. ‘Next year when we go back,’ he said, ‘who knows, one of ours?’