B efore setting off, my wife and I are dreading our
one-week holiday in Turks and Caicos. The problem is, we have two young children and we’re facing a 14-hour journey. The hardest part is going to be the ten-hour flight to Miami, and, to make matters worse, I haven’t been able to persuade Virgin to give us a free upgrade in return for a plug in these pages. It’s going to be steerage all the way.
In the event, the flight isn’t too bad. I hadn’t realised just how useful babies can be when it comes to clearing space. To an ordinary airline passenger, the sight of a woman carrying a child is only marginally less alarming than an Arab carrying a ticking briefcase. The middle-aged couple we’re supposed to be sharing our row of seats with immediately get up and demand to be relocated. The upshot is that we’re able to put the babies down in the seats next to us instead of keeping them on our laps the whole way.
Beaches, Turks and Caicos, is what’s known as an ‘all-inclusive resort’ which means that everything’s included in the price: room, meals, watersports, etc. The big draw, as far as I’m concerned, is the free childcare. I’ve been told that you can, effectively, check in your kids at reception as you arrive and then pick them up again a week later. Unfortunately, on the first day there, my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter screams so loudly when we try to leave her at the ‘Kuda Kids Club’ that my wife decides that both children should accompany us to the beach every day instead. That puts paid to my plan to read the last 100 pages of The Old Curiosity Shop. I have to spend the day helping Sasha build sandcastles and making sure Ludo (nine months) doesn’t eat the turrets.
The Turks and Caicos Islands — there are 30 in total — is a British colony, though you’re not allowed to use that word any more. The correct terminology is a ‘United Kingdom overseas territory’. It’s likely to remain one for the foreseeable future, too. Unlike the Falkland Islands, I can’t see any of the neighbouring states mounting an invasion. The economy is based on tourism, fishing and offshore financial services, with most capital goods and food being imported. Providenciales, the island we’re on, looks like a building site and the main shopping area is called ‘Port of Call’ — a few desultory boutiques selling mass-produced tat. The only coun try to express any territorial interest in the place since the British saw off the French and the Spanish in the 18th century is Canada. A union between the two countries was first mooted in the Canadian parliament in 1973, but nothing much has happened in the intervening 33 years to indicate it will ever become a reality.
An average of 93,000 tourists visit Turks and Caicos every year and more than half of these are Americans. At a guess, I’d say they make up 70 per cent of the visitors to Beaches. My theory about why all-inclusive resorts appeal to Americans so much is that they provide them with an opportunity to see what life would be like in a socialist society. Given that you don’t have to pay for anything once you’ve handed over your lump sum, there are no status discrepancies between the residents. They all eat in the same restaurants and swim in the same pools (there are six). True, there are 12 different categories of rooms, each priced differently, but once people are out and about in their ‘resort-wear’ it’s impossible to tell who’s paying top dollar for a ‘presidential two-bedroom luxury suite’ and who’s won their holiday in a radio phonein competition in Arkansas. It is, in effect, an egalitarian community. The Hawaiianshirted vacationers aren’t simply leaving America’s shores. They’re taking a holiday from capitalism as well.
The resort has both the pluses and the minuses of a socialist society. On the plus side, it has a great communal atmosphere. Everyone is very friendly and talkative — people actually come up to you and introduce themselves, which makes a pleasant change from London. On the minus side, the absence of any competition between the resort’s ten restaurants — there’s no economic incentive for the staff of each restaurant to outperform each other — means the food is almost universally terrible. The one exception is a Japanese place called Kimonos, but, as in the old Soviet Union, you have to stand in a long queue to get in.
At the end of our seven days, my wife gives the resort eight out of ten while I give it seven. The reason for the discrepancy is that she’s a vegetarian, so the awful food isn’t as much of a privation for her. However, we both agree that the person who’s enjoyed the holiday the most is Sasha. She’s really blossomed here, seemingly becoming much more mature and independent. I think the reason is that in a place like Beaches, where more or less everything is done for you, one of the key differences between children and adults disappears. Back in London, my wife has to prepare all Sasha’s food, but over here all the cooking is taken care of by someone else. The same applies to washing and cleaning. My wife and I have been infantilised and, as a result, Sasha doesn’t have such a keen sense of the power differential between her and us. At mealtimes, for instance, she enjoys nothing more than trotting off to fetch us our food in the form of a banana or a yoghurt. It’s almost as if the parent–child relationship has been reversed and, needless to say, she’s found this tremendously empowering. The problem is, she won’t be at all keen on returning to servitude once we’re back in London.
The return flight from Miami is a nightmare. It’s a red-eye, and in order to get Sasha to sleep I decide to give her a bar of chocolate. I know this sounds crazy, but an American mother-of-six who I met in the resort told me that after the initial sugar rush, small children experience a dramatic ‘crash’ and then fall straight to sleep. The chocolate bar I’ve given Sasha must contain some slow-release mechanism, because she metamorphoses into the Energizer Bunny for nine hours and 45 minutes, only falling asleep 15 minutes before we land. Once again, I have to abandon my plan to finish The Old Curiosity Shop. The upshot is that when I get back to my house in Shepherd’s Bush, after what I imagined would be a week sitting on a beach in the Caribbean, I still don’t know what caused the death of Little Nell.
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