It was a warm, glittering winter day on the big island of Hawaii.

My husband and I were enjoying a week s vacation from his

business, and we were staying at what surely must be one of the

world s most beautiful hotels, its shutters and halls were open

to the sea, and it sat on a winding curve of beach like a

washed-up, sun-bleached shell, a part of the environment rather

than a refuge from it.

Lunch was over, a tempting display of mouth-watering edi-

bles which we always skipped because it was not included in the

American plan of two meals a day and, more to the point, we

were always trying to lose weight and needed to leave some

caloric credit for dinner. Regardless of whether the motive was

frugality or the shedding of a few pounds of real flesh, forgetting

to eat at midday in the tropics wasn t too much of a hardship.

So it was after our nonlunch that we made our way along the

sea path to the tennis courts. We had both signed up for the

roand-robin tournament arranged so that tennis-playing guests

could meet one another, and I was soon hard at work banging