TRAVELING IN STYLE : BESIDE STILL WATERS : One of America’s most admired actors traces the perils, the pitfalls and the pleasures of a lifetime of personal travel adventures

This is not a religious piece. Or is it? I don’t suppose we’ll know until it’s written. We start with the disclaimer because one doesn’t expect to stumble over “lofty thoughts” or “uplift” in an article on travel. And yet, and yet. . . .

I dropped the editor’s letter onto the butcher block where my wife, Jessica Tandy, was slicing carrots.

“He wants us to write something about Happy Holidays.”

“You haven’t time.”

“I know, but I want to think about it.”

“You write it, and I’ll correct the spelling.”

“You’ve got to do more than that. He wants a joint byline. You’ve got to be creative.”

“I’m being creative about dinner. Ask him over.”

“He’ll be late. He’s 3,000 miles away.”

“Oh. Too bad. Tell him we’re well-known workaholics and never take holidays.”

“That’s going to be your total contribution? A big fat lie to the travel editor of the Los Angeles Times?”

Jessie shrugged, uttered something more about spelling, punctuation, and my tendency to ramble and went to work on a stalk of celery.

I picked up the letter again and asked, “Do you think I can quote from the 23rd Psalm?”

“I don’t know. Can you?”

“ ‘He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul.’ ”

“Not bad. But I think it’s ‘ the still waters.’ ”

“What?”

“ The; the still waters.”

“Same thing.”

“No it isn’t. He’s talking about particular ‘still waters,’ not just any old ‘still waters.’ He wasn’t sitting in a hot tub when he wrote it.

“Who wasn’t?”

“He!”

“He who?--the Psalmist? The Almighty? You and me? Who ?”

“Don’t shout. If you’re going to insist on semantics, it will be a very dull piece. Just stick to ‘still waters’ and restoring your soul--our souls if you insist.”

“Then you’ll help?”

“After dinner.”

And that was the best I could do.

The water of the lagoon was as still and polished as the magnifying mirror I now have to use when shaving.

I leaned over the gunwale, away from the outrigger, and peered down into magical depths. The water was “gin clear.” Far below were gently moving sea fans, multicolored coral and fish. “Beautiful,” I said. Jess moved to join me--and the outrigger flipped over. There we were, miles from anywhere, both in the water, with an overturned outrigger canoe that I couldn’t right. Fortunately, a fishing boat spotted us and with the help of its occupants we were able to clamber back into our very insubstantial craft. It was a long, cold (because we were wet) paddle back to the Hotel Bora Bora.

I was brought up in canoes--the Canadian Indian variety, of birchbark and later canvas; but with no seats, only thwarts, and light enough to carry across a portage without breaking your back. I ran into a bear once. It’s hard to say who was the more startled: the bear reared onto his hind legs in wild surmise; I flipped the canoe from my shoulders into the bush. We bowed, and he retreated. A walking upside-down canoe must be an intimidating sight.

But an outrigger is something quite different, even more temperamental--at least to the novice. However, it was the only independent means of transportation available to me at that time. We do not favor charter boats as an alternative to that independence.

Bora Bora and the lagoon that surrounds it must be one of the most beautiful spots on earth. During the day, you have the sun, the sea, and a couple of miles away the trembling white line of surf breaking on the outer reef. In the distance are the blue-black-green mountains that rise precipitously out of the sea, and closer to hand the luxuriant tropical foliage of French Polynesia. Best of all is the illusion of aloneness, of silence. I risk another quotation, this one the opening lines from ‘Desiderata.’ “Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

From the Hotel Bora Bora a spider web of causeways, anchored to a succession of shallow reefs, fans out from the beach to a small double-occupancy cottage with a deck on the ocean side. We sat there at night, watching the stars or leaning over the rail, looking into the cloud of plankton attracted by our lights. It hung in the water like rust. Occasionally, the sinister but entirely harmless shape of a giant manta ray would appear from the depths, do a lazy back somersault, inhale the plankton and disappear. First, that ominous shape, the wings gently fanning, then the turn, revealing its creamy white underside, and then only the plankton closing ranks again--one of the most beautiful balletic movements one could hope to see.

The lagoon’s surrounding necklace of reef is broken at intervals by motus-- small, palm-covered islands. We longed to explore them. But how to get there? The outrigger was out. There were two glass-bottom boats running on set schedules that carried parties, but we wanted something different: our own boat; a loaf of French bread, chocolate, fruits, a bottle of wine, and no schedule. There wasn’t an individual take-care-of-yourself boat for hire.

I found a small scrofulous-looking boat pulled up on the shore. It had a V-bottom and no floor; the strakes were covered with slime and under six inches of water. There was a 6-horsepower Seagull motor and overall the stink of fish. This unlovely craft belonged to a stonemason working in the hotel’s garden. My fractured French was barely up to making a deal, but one was made. The boat was ours for three weeks. We named her the Queen Mary. Using the beach sand and a bucket, we scoured the interior. I scrounged two pieces of plywood to fit over the ribs, and the hotel dug up a couple of battered rattan chairs from some attic or other. These stood rather high on our improvised flooring and looked quite silly.

Never mind, we had our independent means of transportation to the reef and its motus. Our expeditions were pure bliss; not another soul in sight. At low tide we prowled the reef (wearing sneakers) examining the anemones and enormous clams with orange and purple lips, the myriad tiny fish and shrimp. We swam, mother-naked, from the beaches; donned mask, fins and snorkel and explored underwater. On one occasion I ran into a six-foot black-tip shark that was far more horrified than I at the intrusion. The chairs came out of the Queen Mary, and we sat in the shade of a palm tree, eating our bread and drinking our wine. Bliss.

After a week of this, the hotel’s management let me know--with great tact and delicacy--that it might be more convenient if we tied the Queen Mary to the pilings of our own cottage, rather than at the main dock, which was frequented by rather grand visiting power boats and yachts. Whether it was the ineradicable smell or raffish appearance of our craft that prompted this polite suggestion, I’ll never know.

Jessica was changing the sheets when I told her I’d been scribbling away about Bora Bora. I don’t know what it is about our profession that makes people feel that the actress never makes up a bed, or cooks, or swears at a shopping cart, or turns over the compost heap, or that her actor-husband never does the dishes. The day before yesterday a woman attacked Jess in the subway.

“What are you doing here?” she asked belligerently.

“Going to 57th Street.”

“In the subway ?”

“It’s quicker.”

“You must be crazy,” said the disillusioned lady as she elbowed her way to the door.

“What did you say?” I asked. Jess tucked a pillow under her chin, snapped the pillow case, and through gritted teeth, muttered, “Thank you.”

“Anyway, I’ve been writing about Bora Bora and the Queen Mary.”

“Did you say anything about dumping me out of the outrigger?”

“I didn’t dump you. You shifted and . . . Let’s skip it.”

“You dumped me in Elizabeth Harbor, too. You jibed and the boat just . . . .”

“That was 40 years ago, for God’s sake!”

“Well, Bora Bora was 15 years ago. Talk about New Zealand.”

“I haven’t got it clear yet.”

“Clear? We’ve only been back two weeks.”

“I know, but you’ve got to remember. That takes time.”

“New Zealand was beautiful.”

And of course it was. It is. But right now it’s all mixed up with jet lag and trying to catch up, and lost baggage, and guilt over the bills. (When I’m on holiday I always suffer the dangerous illusion that I’m very rich--until the credit card statements arrive.) You have to sort it all out, get rid of the dross of irritating detail so that you can dwell on the golden images: the snow-covered peaks, the beautifully turbulent streams, the serene lakes, roaring jets of steam from the thermal fields, mile upon mile of beautifully reforested woodland. (“We always plant two when one is cut down”) and, of course, that day on the Buller River when a five-pound brown trout stripped every inch of line and backing from my reel so that I had to galumph along the bank in water-filled waders trying to catch up; stumbling, reeling from my knees, and the guide shouting, “Turn him, turn him!”

The fish was caught and released, and I crawled back up the glacial terraces of the river, feeling about as old and as happy as I may ever be.

Yes, I could talk about New Zealand--or how about Africa in ‘66? There are vivid images from that time; Jessica cradling a baby zebra deserted by its mother because of some malformation of its right front hoof; a lion drinking from the washbasin outside our tent at 5 in the morning; the leopard that crept under our Land Rover to take advantage of its shade; the miles of spring savanna between the thorn trees, cropped by game until it looked like some vast and beautifully tended park. And sounds, too--don’t forget the sounds. The sound of silence at high noon, palpable with everything at rest; the hyenas at night, and on one startling occasion the sound of grass being uprooted right next to our tent, and the rumble of the elephant’s belly as the crop was digested--but no footfall, no sound of movement at all from that great weight, only the tearing of the grass, and the digestion.

“Maybe we should talk about Ungava--or Wales! Wales was magical; all those lavender-colored hills; a skyline of worn molars, ground down by glaciers. Remember? Maybe there’s some geological connection. They must be on about the same parallel. . . .”

I trailed off. Jessica was looking at me with patient restraint.

“I wasn’t in Wales. That was another girl.”

“What?”

“You went with Susan--and I’ve never even heard of that other place.”

“Ungava--north of Labrador, east of Hudson Bay.”

“You went with six guys. I wasn’t one of them.”

“Oh. So they’re out--those places, I mean.”

“Up to you. Why can’t you stick to what he asked for? ‘Our favorite place.’ You make it sound as though we did nothing but travel.”

“Come on! Five or six places in 45 years. Average it out. Maybe one major vacation every five years. That’s only seven and I’m not. . . .”

“It’s nine, and they weren’t all great. Remember skiing?”

“Well, you took an awkward fall . . . .”

“And bonefishing at dawn, when I was just about to have a baby. You kept bleating about my shadow and hissing at me to ‘squat, squat.’ That water was cold.”

“But you love bonefishing.”

“I didn’t then--and the boat stank of diesel, the head didn’t work, and the captain was an idiot. Remember that night on the sandbank? Every time I climbed back into the bunk, I’d get pitched out again.”

“We caught fish.”

“ You caught fish. I caught a cold. Stick to ‘still waters’ and ‘soul.’ ”

It was 1927. I was 16 years old, and it was love at first sight. I’d come down from the snow and zero temperatures of Canada and found myself embraced by the Bahamas. It really was an embrace: warm, sensuous, fragrant--and the sea, whether still or in a rage, the most beautiful I’ve seen anywhere on earth.

The water is . . . the cliche expert in me is tempted to say pellucid. I’m always reading about pellucid waters in exotic places, but I’m not quite sure what it means. (“One more drink and I’ll be pellucid?”) Well, I’ve looked it up now and can’t argue. “Transparent, clear” says the dictionary. Accurate enough as far as it goes but not nearly far enough. How do you describe the colors? Royal blue, jade green, aquamarine, amethyst, opalescent? You fall back on the names of jewels, and the sea and beaches are one. Indivisible. A rainbow of color and then a long, blinding strip of white sand between the sea and the coconut palms. Sand upon which you can walk for miles without seeing a footprint other than your own.

Of course, I’m talking about the Out Islands, or Family Islands as they’re now known. Names change. Places change. My introduction was to Nassau, of course, and in those days you took a horse and carriage from the Royal Victoria Hotel out to Cable Beach, and a boat, only a boat, from the Prince George dock across the harbor to Hog Island, now Paradise Island. You won’t find a sign outside the Porcupine Club that reads “No Dogs, No Children, No British.” You won’t find the Porcupine Club. You’ll find a casino. I can’t have that sign right. After all, in those days it was a British colony. Maybe it was “No Americans,” but that seems unlikely.

Whatever the restrictions, they were stuffy, an imported stuffiness that totally belied the relaxed and welcoming warmth, the good humor of native Bahamians. It’s us--or do I say we--the transplants, visitors, tourists, whatever you wish to call us, that wrought changes, not all of them good.

But the Out Islands / Family Islands (exempting perhaps Grand Bahama with its Freeport and one or two others) have not lost their pristine elegance and serenity. Nor have the people changed, not out there at any rate.

In the ‘20s and ‘30s there were not many visitors to the Out Islands, and I was an exception only because of my passion for fishing. My parents were not about to indulge a teen-ager with a charter boat, so I hung around the docks badgering the commercial fishermen until, finally, one of them agreed to take me out on the understanding that I stayed out no matter what the weather, that I didn’t get in the way, and that the boat kept any fish I might possibly catch. The price: a pound--$5 then--per day.

It wasn’t long before I was invited to go out overnight. These were expeditions to the Berry Islands or Andros or Eleuthera; sleeping on the beach, hauling nets, setting pots of handlining. When I tried to pay my last pound, my hand was pushed roughly away, and the captain said, “Keep it in your pocket,” which may have been as valued a compliment as I’ve ever received.

And so I was introduced to the Out Islands. Almost 20 years later I acquired an island of my own--the fulfillment of some dubious romantic dream. My initial investment was very small. Years later it was sufficiently demanding, and our professional lives so busy, that I had to find someone who could afford our “improvements.” No, I don’t miss it. You can’t take it away from me anyway.

Of all those vivid and not-to-be-erased island images, two come sharply into focus. The first night under my own roof--the building incomplete, no windows in place yet, and a gale blowing. An old sail had been lashed across the window opening to keep the weather out. The wind tore the lashings away, and the flapping sail beat the walls of the house in an angry frenzy throughout the night. I lay there thinking, “Dear Lord, what madness have I committed?” and in the morning a four-inch scorpion dropped from the rafter onto my bed. I couldn’t imagine at that moment that I was entering the best holiday adventure of my life.

The other image is better: a sultry summer day; little rivulets of sweat beneath my shirt; rain coming on, and the sky a gunmetal color. No discernable breeze; only cats-paws teasing the surface of the Horseshoe Bay--a “hoody day” they call it down there. I stripped off and fell into the water, too lazy to even swim. The sky grew darker and there was a rumble of distant thunder when suddenly the air between me and those leaden clouds was dancing with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of yellow butterflies. They came in successive waves, new hatched, fluttering above my head and across the water from one shore to the opposite. I have never seen a more magical sight.

When, in 1946, I shared my dream of owning an island with a wonderful old sailor in Nassau, he asked what I was looking for, and I waffled.

“Just an island,” I said, “a nice, small island where I might build a house.”

His eyes crinkled. “Man, there are thousands of islands out there. What sort of island?”

I couldn’t tell him.

Charlie put his hand on my knee. “You look for five things,” and he ticked them off. “Safe anchorage, fresh water, arable soil, height of land, and because you’re a tourist, a beach.”

“Where do I look, Charlie?”

He didn’t hesitate. “The Exumas,” he said. “Maybe the good Lord will send me there when I die.”

I’m no longer the possessor of “Children’s Bay Cay,” but for more than 40 years now we’ve been going back, and back again, to the Exumas. Yes, those have been our happiest holidays.

As you grow older, you own less and enjoy more. We rent now. I no longer have to possess; no longer have to catch fish, have to dive so deep, have to get up on one ski; or check moorings, nurse generators, prime pumps or worriedly count the heads of children swimming. There is no telephone in our friend’s house, no television; no golf, no casino, no movies or night clubs, but there are frangipani, oleander, bougainvillea, and the sea whispering on the beach to one side of us and chortling against rock on the other. We laugh a lot with friends, read, sit in sun or shade beside still waters, and restore.

I asked Jess what I’d forgotten. She turned another page of her script. “Just add that we hope old Charlie has it so good.”