If I must haunt a building when I die, it will be the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall. It might just be vast and beautiful and intriguing enough for all eternity. I will glide invisibly between the green-shaded snooker tables, mischievously nudging elbows; earwig the gossip of foreign royalty in the Great Gallery; and — if drinking is permitted in the afterlife — down a Princess Mary in the glittering cocktail bar.
But mostly you will find me in the subterranean marble swimming pool. If there is a more exquisite pool in Britain, I have yet to swim in it: the Moorish mosaic pillars, the dark wood and brass, and the water always at 28C (82.4F), the optimum temperature for a swim.
And, as a ghost, I shall use the Turkish baths any day I choose. Although mortal women are confined to Tuesdays, which is Ladies’ Day, a concession to female members that did not please the old guard. But despite this feminine invasion, the baths retain a masculinity, a pleasing escape from the whale-music and aromatherapy baloney of girlie spas.
The steam baths comprise a series of rooms, each hotter than the last. The first is the fridgidarium, a dark ante-room of curtained cubicles, each containing a small teak bed, covered in fresh linen. Here you are encouraged to lie down and recover after a busy afternoon. Or you can lounge on plush sofas reading the mags provided and be served tea and dainties. But silence please — and what a welcome rule that is; I remember one trip to the Sanctuary spoiled by a garrulous hen party.
Next is the tepidarium, a marble room filled with teak deckchairs and marble benches. Entering, you pass a lectern bearing huge leatherbound tomes, in which RAC members can record their weight before and after a steam bath. Needless to say, only men would commit this shame to paper. One fellow’s log stretches back 32 years and as his weight increases so does the jocular despair of his annotations: “12st 7lbs (79kg) — Grotesque!”; “13st — Blubbery rubbery”; and “13st 2lbs — too much alcohol and peanuts. Get to it, man!” The following rooms — the caldarium and laconicum — are hotter still. Women bask in robes or bathing suits: few are rude enough to be totally naked. There is a raging sauna and a dense steam room, then it’s time to brave the icy plunge pool before returning back through the rooms in descending order and a little lie down in your frigidarium cubicle. Or you can make an appointment at the lavatorium, not what it sounds, but a marble slab where you lie while a masseuse buffs you with a kind of pan scourer.
I defy anyone not to feel re-born after two hours here. Luxurious yet austere, it feels like the wash-house of some deluxe monastery. And if you want a day spa in the centre of London there is none more exclusive. Only members and their guests are admitted (I was given a month’s temporary membership to write this article). And to join the RAC involves being nominated by two existing members. Then, if accepted, paying the £1,750 entrance fee (less for young members, offspring and spouses of members), plus up to an £875 annual subscription.
This is a mighty wad but, if I still worked in Central London, I’d pay it. Besides the London Club, with its squash courts, gym and therapy centre, you have access to Woodcote Park, the RAC’s country club near Epsom, which is another world of restaurants, pools, fitness centre and tennis courts, plus a magnificent golf course. However, golfwear scares me and, anyway, I’m infatuated with Pall Mall. There was a 1970s perfume advert in which a figure strides into the wood-panelled sanctum of a gentlemen’s club. But a hat is removed and a cascade of shiny hair tumbles down. It’s a woman! Colonels gasp and pop their monocles, but the daring sex-spy girl just laughs. Sitting in the RAC smoking room, I feel like that audacious intruder. I can’t believe they let me in here; among the gents chewing cigars over an afternoon rubber of bridge or snoozing discreetly in wing-backed chairs.
Why does anyone join Pall Mall’s other august clubsm the Garrick, Reform or Athenaeum, when the RAC has that pool? And the food is very surprising — light, elegant, delicious — in contrast to the public school dinners I’ve eaten farther up the street. And why did media types bother to set up such dowdy imitators as the Groucho Club and Soho House when they could meet in Rococo opulence here? Of course, the RAC is regarded as stuffy and old-fashioned. But, frankly, I’m weary of dressing down, of rudeness, networking BlackBerry bores and staff with attitude. I fancy a little civility and manners, a bit of grace and formality. I could write a loving monograph on the Art Deco splendour of Brooklands restaurant, the maître d’ who remembers your name and makes you feel comfortable even as a woman eating alone.
I like the empty phone booths in the lobby, the only place you’re permitted to use a mobile phone, and that you’re forbidden to read business papers in the club because overtly working is vulgar and you’ve come here to relax. I like the man-size drink measures, the RAC post office — so convenient — the only private one in the UK except at Buck House. I like bringing down the age of a room a little and the pleasing thought that I might become an older man’s poppet.
Sitting in the smoking room taking tea on a hot afternoon, I observed a backgammon player being told quietly, but insistently, to put his jacket back on and I found myself thinking “Quite right too!” But herein lies the problem with the RAC, at least in fitting it into my lifestyle. The dress code demands that men wear tailored jacket and trousers, shirt and tie in the restaurants. Women must dress with “ commensurate formality”, which is vague and had me rootling through my wardrobe before each visit.
Several times during the month I booked a table for lunch, then phoned friends to discover that they were wearing some scruff-bag atrocity that wouldn’t get them through the door. Or returning from the cinema on Saturday night, I’ve fancied a nightcap but realised that my husband was wearing (forbidden) jeans.
And although children over 7 are permitted in Pall Mall, they, too, must observe dress codes and my sons don’t own any shoes which aren’t trainers.
So although I would love to be a member, to crawl languidly across that pool, first I must wait for my children to grow up, then I must get some smarter friends and possibly a new husband. Or, maybe, I’ll just wait until the glorious hereafter.
Quality of treatment 9/10
Therapists I’d give them 8/10
Ambience Seriously exclusive, refreshingly ungirlie
Wallet watch If you don’t have a few thousand pounds knocking around for membership, forget it
Do it again? Please, for the rest of my life
Need to know The Royal Automobile Club, 89 Pall Mall, London SW1 (020-7930 2345)
