The Caribbean is not for single people. Package holidays are priced on the assumption that you are going with a friend; the sunbeds are laid out in pairs and the local dance routines require a partner you know fairly well. None the less, on the first night of a two-week holiday in Antigua, I was content with my own company as I sat jetlagged in a bar in the island of Antigua.
The sunset had turned the sky purple. My fellow holidaymakers were drunk, sunburnt and irresponsible, as portrayed in public health information films. But the illusory calm was shattered when confronted with a question I'd hear often over the next fortnight. A waitress, scoldingly slamming a gin and tonic down on my table, barked: 'What you doin' here on your own, boy?'
My solitude was breaking the unwritten rules of the Caribbean. Signs of togetherness were all around me: couples walking arm in arm; couples dribbling into each other's frozen cocktails; couples rowing over who had eaten the last olive from the bowl on the bar. But with 'you got mail' noises still ringing in my ears, a packet of duty-free cigarettes was more than enough company. Solitude was a good thing. I had booked a last-minute package holiday, intent on meeting complete strangers whom I would never see again and, of course, to see something of the island.
The level of romance in Antigua can begin to feel like a conspiracy after a while: the island is a popular wedding destination for Americans. The resorts are packed with the bride, groom and their respective families and friends. The ceremonies occur on small podiums on the edge of the shore - the groom putting a lavish tux over his beach shorts for a few hours. This atmosphere of connubial bliss can be contagious so, in order to keep yourself from evolving into a couple, observe a few simple maxims. Never spend more than one evening with the same group of people. Ensure your arms are long enough to apply sun cream to the farthest reaches of your back. When you find yourself trying to light the wrong end of your cigarette, go home.
I paid approximately £600 to hire a showy Jeep for 14 days and was able to escape the world of lazy resorts into a densely vegetated, playful island. The courtesy bus from the airport had shown glimpses of Antigua several decades of development distant from the holiday resorts. People carried their water from the taps in the street while corrugated iron was an integral part of each village, as indeed were cricket and stray dogs. But once you enter the resort gates, Antigua is a world where golf buggies whirr between villas, where the poolside concrete is sticky with the half-dried remnants of spilled fruit purees, and one of the bars serves pizza all day long. The Jolly Beach Resort, where I stayed for a fortnight, has just about everything a holidaying suburbanite could want, bar an uncensored experience of Antigua.
St John's, the island's shambolic capital, wears the island's penury better than you might expect. Down on the dock the cruise ships find a bay so their passengers may mill around the cigar and trinket boutiques before departing again. There is little nightlife here, and few restaurants. It is a quiet, dozy town. Typical of the disorder, the kerbs are built high enough to control the small floods of the rainy season, but are often ineffectual because of the litter piled across the drain grilles. Here the pace of life is slow and harmless and atrocities such as a 'Man badly scratched in casino brawl' are headlined in the island's newspaper. The police appear to carry firearms more as a counterbalance to the handcuffs on the other side of their belt, rather than because of any real danger. The closest I came to feeling uncomfortable was on driving south of the island to a residential area. Following a noise down a back street I discovered a half-built house that had been adapted as a nightclub. The bass notes from the music could be felt in the Jeep. My sunburnt skin and shorts identified me and aware of the stares I was attracting I felt unwelcome and drove on.
On the road to the island's most heavily colonised nightspot, Shirley Heights, is the Old English Harbour. Long, gold-trimmed boats line the docks, toys of those we know must be rich. On the docks the Southern Cross restaurant with its crisp linen and maritime decor offers a view of the harbour, but much of the menu I and my companions tried was shrivelled and salty. Go there for their goldfish-bowl gin and tonics and fancy bread, then get someone else to drive you back to the new restaurant at the Jolly Beach resort. There the lobster is tender and fresh, and the Sancerre worth the price tag.
Sundays are a day of rest, church and cricket for much of Antigua. In the resorts, life is as slow as every other day, but the evenings find a dynamism of their own on one of the highest hills on the island. Shirley Heights was formerly a colonial gun post, but now a steel band and reggae group enliven the bar once a week. From 6pm onwards a crowd bearing camcorders, homemade cigarettes and cans of Red Stripe gathers. To the left, the former British colony of Monserrat puffs ash into the sky, and to the right, planes carrying British and American tourists come in to land.
The steel band and reggae groups play until around 10pm. The music is stereotypical Caribbean, but most aficionados seem satisfied. The sounds are loud, libidinous and loose. By the end of the evening, you may find yourself caught up in the music with somebody with whom you are not as familiar as your dance suggests. And then you can say that, for a moment at least, you obeyed the rules of the Caribbean.
