Unconvinced she’s earned it
Rachel Johnson has an epiphany in Jamaica It is one of life’s more tolerable ironies that friends behave much more manfully when asked to cope with failure and misery than with success and good fortune. So I didn’t expect chums to be thrilled, exactly, when I broke the lovely news that I was going to be hors de combat from my various duties for a week because I was going to Jamaica.
‘Bitch!’ said my friend Jess, and that was before I’d explained that when in Jamaica I intended to avail myself fully of all the facilities at the hotel — spa, caviar and champagne bar, private beaches, and so on and so on, with the possible exclusion of golf — and also before I’d mentioned I expected her to do all my school runs for me.
‘Why?’ snapped Maggie, when I told her — which, to be honest, was even more puzzling. I am invited on a press trip in congenial company to a luxy hotel on an island in the sun that I love. What’s not to like?
But instead I feebly replied, ‘Well, it’s nice in the Caribbean,’ before pulling myself together and adding, ‘And although I’m not paying, and I won’t say I’m worth it, I’ve definitely earned it.’ As I spoke, I emitted a brave sigh just to hint at the hardships and stresses that I was much too valiant to bring up to justify my departure.
And so here I am, laptop in lap, actually writing this dispatch from my oceanfront suite at the Royal Plantation, where I ordered my night-night pillows from the ‘pillow menu’ (I chose the buckwheat pillows — perfect for curing stress, insomnia and headaches, all of which, believe me, I had in spades after the long flight and missed night’s sleep).
Below my window, the silken surf of the Caribbean breaks decorously on to the beach every few seconds, like a maiden sti fling a polite sneeze. I am interrupting my typing to swig from a bottle of icy-cold Red Stripe, which is clearly the best way to replace the body fluids that I have lost during a hard day lying on the beach, ordering fruit punches, playing tennis underneath almond trees on a court overrun with a squawking peahen and her chicks, and enduring a four-handed tropical-bliss massage with lime, ginger and grapefruit oils at the Red Lane Spa. During which I had an epiphany which, as you no doubt grimly suspect, I am going to share with you.
However airy and smug I may sound about this trip, the truth is, I actually find it hard to be selfish and leave the hearth and home. Nothing causes me greater anxiety than to be told by concerned friends to spend more time on myself. I am not a natural candidate for self-pampering, and actually experience panic attacks on my rare visits to the hairdresser, because I cannot pretend that I am doing anything more useful there than making myself presentable.
So at first I went around in a soupy daze, even as I drank in the beauty of the shore and the manicured gardens, and marvelled at the fact that only 24 hours previously I had been on Exmoor with seven girls under 13 for my daughter’s three-day birthday celebrations, which was even more fun than I’ve made it sound. At one point I watched a man sabre the neck of a bottle of PerrierJouet to accompany our caviar and blinis, but frankly I could have been watching The Simpsons at home with the children. I wasn’t In the Zone yet, you see.
But then ... as Marva’s strong hands pummelled my back and legs, I can honestly swear that all the guilt simply melted away. As her hands kneaded and dug, I felt the guilt leave and the energy surge back, in a wave as warm as those breaking on the sands below me now.
And what I realised in my epiphany was this. As Marva did her job, I received something from her. It was a transaction. It was as if she were refilling my tank with fuel. She was giving to me — I realised with almost religious excitement — so I could give to others.
I lay there and almost brought tears to my own eyes as I thought of all the people I would try to be more loving to and less neglectful of when I returned rested and recharged, and slightly pink in places.
So I called Maggie to tell her the good news, the news that I knew would cheer her up: that it was a bit rainy in Jamaica. And she gleefully told me that there was a heatwave in London and it was ‘perfect summer weather’.
I told her I was glad it was nice weather in London — and I found that I meant it.
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