Cool cat under a hot tin roof

Flying into Salt Cay, a dot in the Caribbean among the Turks and Caicos islands, the shallow sea below is azure blue, the colour of Heaven. You can follow the reef from the air, and watch for the deep dark channel that bore Columbus and Drake from the Atlantic into the Caribbean and was called the Columbus Channel until revision demanded it be renamed the Turks Island Channel.

Just beyond is Salt Cay, shaped like an arrow head with the point facing south, about two-and-a-half square miles, edged with pristine beach. It has a population of 63, the sons and daughters of a salt-raking plantation founded in the 1680s which fades, unchanged and so far undeveloped, into the fresh trade winds.

It is two years since I first saw Felix Lightbourne's dilapidated old house on the beach, just across the road from the imperial ruins of the

Old Government House. Red tin dormers poked through a forest of wild acacia thorns and a donkey stood snorting by the gate. There is a cotton tree in the front yard. I had to have it.

Built of ships' timbers and coral rock, with a tin roof and wooden hurricane shutters - you don't bother with glass in the frames here - the Bermudan Cape cottage was home to generations of Lightbournes, Simmons and Kennedys, names which remain because Salt Cay is an island of people and not just real estate for sun-seekers.

Felix was a tall man and a charmer and it is a secret leaked with pride that he passed away in the arms of his latest conquest, because none could resist him. The piano where they practiced Sunday hymns was left in the front room, too big to move.

From the back window of the