At the Abaco Club, while lunching in the bayfront tiki-hut
restaurant and bar with avid golfer/member Sir
Sean Connery (who
looks his usual suave self, despite eye-popping plaid golf shorts)
de Savary excuses himself to call a manager's attention to someone
lounging, almost out of eye range, down the beach: "Will you go buy
some Skin So Soft, immediately? As many cases as you can get. That
woman is getting eaten alive by mosquitoes."
A little later, in the clubhouse, a meeting gets interrupted
repeatedly as he moves from the table, with apologies, to corner
staff: "Excuse me a moment. You need to put good locks on the loo
doors. I tried to go in, there was someone there ...
"I'm sorry, I'll be right with you." He whirls in another
direction, intercepting the club's riding instructor. "Julia, the
horses. Are they getting enough to eat? All I'm saying is it's not
hard to get corn ..."
Unfortunately, only the privileged few get to personally experience
the enduring whirlwind that is de Savary in action, since his
clubs' basic policy is that nonmembers are allowed, as "prospective
members," only one visit in a lifetime. But Bovey Castle is an
exception. In Devon's Dartmoor National Park, the lordly
early-20th-century estate - mutilated by former owners, but since
restored to grandeur by PdS, who's a historic conservationist as
well as an environmentalist - is a regular resort hotel that also
offers golfing memberships. So anyone can enjoy the de Savary
experience.
Well, anyone who can afford roughly $400 to $3,300 per night for a
room/suite (with $40-per-person breakfasts, $100 dinners, and many
activities extra). But many, evidently, feel the experience is well
worth the price. "We do not struggle to rent rooms," smiles
Henrietta Fergusson, another longtime PdS employee (28 years).
"We've been averaging 77 percent occupancy in the lodge."