Locals and donkeys approve of my beach house

We had running water, ceiling fans and a few working lights. But no kitchen. There were no doors, screens or shutters, and while the wooden floors upstairs had been stained, they had yet to be varnished.
 
The building crew called out cheerful greetings - "Hey bossman!" - and kept working on whatever it was that was making so much dust and noise. It was an early evening this July and I had just flown down to Salt Cay to take possession of my Charming House.

It was a bit of a shock. When I last saw it, Don Shope had demolished all of the old cottage except for the stone walls of the kitchen and back parlour, and was raising the frames to replace the main section of the house, lost to termites. The new version was, well, grand.
 
We had raised the roofline and the ceilings and turned the old gabled attic of the Bermudan Cape into a true second floor, and it was startling how much space that had created. And then we added the veranda. The Charming House gazed over the Caribbean with a whole new stature.

Don demonstrated the outdoor shower, which worked, and chuckled: "I told you I'd have it good to move into when you came back." I strolled the few yards down to the beach as the sun went down. We went to the bar for supper, and brought home a bottle. Then I tore the shipping wraps off my old Indian charpoy bed, laid it out on the veranda and slept under a fresh sea breeze.

It was a rapturous night: sleeping at last in my own house on a distant isle of the Old Caribbean! It didn't matter that a donkey jumped the front gate and, with no doors to stop him, strolled into the kitchen to feast on the cardboard packing cases holding my pots and pans. I learned that Salt Cay donkeys regard cardboard as food.
 
Today, four weeks on, the place is done. We fitted my old copper bath tub and laid down tiles, put the kitchen together and plugged in the ice-maker, made the frames for the window screens and painted the shutters. We took rasps and sandpaper to the rougher edges of 'island-style' but left the craftsmanship on show because it belongs here in this house. Careful inspection reveals that each rear gable is a little different - each created according to the ways of the man who built it.

All of Salt Cay comes by to visit, for the Charming House has become an island wonder. Ruffled feathers are smoothed by happy reminiscence as Grandma Nettie and Lionel the fisherman and all of the others gaze around, happy that this is still the Lightbourne house and running hands over the timeless texture of shiplapped planks.

Bruce the Cable and Wireless guy arrives to reconnect me to the 21st century with a high-speed telephone line. "I heard about this place, man," he confides from high on the utility pole. "I'd come here as a kid, and I tell you, you not just made Felix's place good, you made it beautiful."

Now that’s vindication.
Series concluded
Charles Laurence's Americans column will resume later this month ·