The running of a hotel inevitably brings requests from the guests. Nothing is ever quite right for everybody: one guest will want a larger towel; another will wonder why there is no fridge in the room; and so on. The usual hotel owners will listen to these complaints and make an effort to deal with the problem. Larger towels may be found, or at least promised. Fridges can be held out as a possibility, even if realistically they are not. The important thing, as any hotelier will tell you, is that the guest should feel that their request is a reasonable one and that something will be done to attend to it.

But at Marlin House it was different. ‘What do you need a fridge for?’ was Georgina’s response to a guest who liked the idea of keeping a supply of cold milk in the room.

‘Because the milk curdles so quickly in this heat. It would be nice to make tea in the room.’

‘Plenty of milk in the kitchen. Go ask for it there.’

‘Well, could we at least have some biscuits in the room? To snack on?’

‘Food in the rooms brings cockroaches.’

Georgina’s fierce reputation grew. ‘A delightful setting,’ wrote one travel writer, ‘which is well worth a visit if you are in that part of the Caribbean. The rooms are comfortable and the Caribbean-style cuisine delicious. But do not engage with the management on any issue.’

Such comments served only to fuel curiosity, and people started to choose the hotel in order to experience at first hand Georgina’s highly individual style. Usually they were not disappointed. In fact, they delighted in the disgrace into which an inappropriate request or suggestion cast them. The hotel was becoming legendary.

Georgina’s famous look of disapproval could be imitated over the dinner table but never equalled. Her thunderous expression when a female guest was unwise enough to ask Marcus, in the middle of a party, to dance with her was talked about for months.

At the end of their first five years in the hotel, Marcus and Georgina decided to hold a New Year’s Eve party to celebrate the success of the hotel and the new year itself. Word got out, and it was not long before all the rooms were taken for the new year holiday. Reviewing their bookings, Marcus smiled with pleasure at the thought of what this would do for the hotel’s finances, but Georgina frowned. Although she never admitted it to Marcus, guests annoyed her. They were so needy, so helpless. They made stupidly fussy requests. They never seemed pleased with what you gave them. Their conversation was so dull, their questions so childish.

‘If I’m asked again about those humming birds, I shall scream,’ she said one day. To the next guest who asked her, ‘What are those lovely little birds with their long tails? The ones that hover in front of the flowers? Look, there’s one now!’, she replied, ‘Small vultures,’ and turned on her heel.