Bond 10 - The Spy Who Loved Me (8 page)

It was strange and lovely to be back after nearly six years. My aunt said she could hardly recognize me, and I was certainly surprised by Quebec. When I had left it, the fortress had seemed vast and majestic. Now it seemed like a large toy edifice out of Disneyland. Where it had been awesome, I found, irreverently, that it looked made out of papier-mâché. And the giant battles between the Faiths, in which I had once thought myself to be on the point of being crushed, and the deep schisms between the Canadiennes and the rest, were now reduced, with my new perspective, to parish-pump squabbling. Half ashamed, I found myself contemptuous of the screaming provincialism of the town, of the dowdy peasants who lived in it, and of the all-pervading fog of snobbery and petit bourgeoisie. No wonder, a child of all this, that I had been ill-equipped for the great world outside! The marvel was that I had survived at all.

I was careful to keep these thoughts from my aunt, though I suspect that she was just as startled and perhaps shocked by the gloss that my ‘finishing’ in Europe had achieved. She must have found me very much the town mouse, however gangling and simple I might feel inside, and she plied me with questions to discover how deep the gloss went, how much I had been sullied by the fast life I must have led. She would have fainted at the truth, and I was careful to say that, while there had been flirtations, I had returned unharmed and heart-whole from the scarlet cities across the water. No, there had not even been a temporary engagement. No lord, not even a commoner, I could truthfully say, had proposed to me, and I had left no boy-friend behind. I don’t think she believed this. She was complimentary about my looks. I had become ‘
une belle fille
’. It seemed that I had developed ‘
beaucoup de tempérament
’ – a French euphemism for ‘sex appeal’ – or at any rate the appearance of it, and it seemed incredible to her that at twenty-three there was no man in my life. She was horrified at my plans, and painted a doomful picture of the dangers that awaited me on the road. America was full of gangsters. I would be knocked down on the highway and ‘
ravagée
’. Anyway, it was unladylike to travel on a scooter. She hoped that I would be careful to ride side-saddle. I explained that my Vespa was a most respectable machine and, when I went to Montreal and, thrilling with every mile, rode it back to the house, in my full regalia, she was slightly mollified, while commenting dubiously that I would ‘
faire sensation
’.

And then, on September the fifteenth, I drew a thousand dollars in American Express travellers’ cheques from my small bank balance, scientifically packed my saddle-bags with what I thought would be a minimum wardrobe, kissed Aunt Florence goodbye and set off down the St Lawrence on Route 2.

Route 2 from Quebec southwards to Montreal could be one of the most beautiful roads in the world if it weren’t for the clutter of villas and bathing huts that have mushroomed along it since the war. It follows the great river exactly, clinging to the north bank, and I knew it well from bathing picnics as a child. But the St Lawrence Seaway had been opened since then, and the steady stream of big ships with their thudding engines and haunting sirens and whistles were a new thrill.

The Vespa hummed happily along at about forty. I had decided to stick to an average daily run of between a hundred and fifty and two hundred miles, or about six hours’ actual driving, but I had no intention of being bound by any schedule. I wanted to see everything. If there was an intriguing side road, I would go up it, and, if I came to a beautiful or interesting place, I would stop and look at it.

A good invention in Canada and the northern part of the States is the ‘picnic area’ – clearings carved out of the forest or beside a lake or river with plenty of isolated rough-hewn benches and tables tucked away among the trees for privacy. I proposed to use these for luncheon every day when it wasn’t raining, not buying expensive foods at stores, but making egg-and-bacon sandwiches in toast before I left each night’s motel. They, with fruit and a Thermos of coffee, would be my midday meal and I would make up each evening with a good dinner. I budgeted for a daily expenditure of fifteen dollars. Most motels cost eight dollars single, but there are state taxes added, so I made it nine plus coffee and a roll for breakfast. Gas would not be more than a dollar a day and that left five for luncheon and dinner, an occasional drink and the few cigarettes I smoked. I wanted to try and keep inside this. The Esso map and route I had, and the A.A.A. literature, listed countless sights to see after I had crossed the border – I would be going right through the Red Indian country of Fenimore Cooper, and then across some of the great battlefields of the American Revolution, for instance – and many of them cost around a dollar entrance fee. But I thought I would get by, and if on some days I didn’t, I would eat less on others.

The Vespa was far more stable than I had expected, and wonderfully easy to run. As I got better at the twist-grip gears, I began really to drive the little machine instead of just riding on it. The acceleration – up to fifty in twenty seconds – was good enough to give the ordinary American sedan quite a shock, and I soared up hills like a bird with the exhaust purring sweetly under my tail. Of course I had to put up with a good deal of wolf-whistling from the young, and grinning and hand-waving from the old, but I’m afraid I rather enjoyed being something of the sensation my aunt had predicted and I smiled with varying sweetness at all and sundry. The shoulders of most North American roads are bad and I had been afraid that people would crowd my tiny machine and that I would be in constant trouble with potholes, but I suppose I looked such a fragile little outfit that other drivers gave me a wide berth and I usually had the whole of the inside lane of the highway to myself.

Things went so well that first day that I managed to get through Montreal before nightfall and twenty miles on down Route 9 that would take me over the border into New York State the next morning. I put up at a place called The Southern Trail Motel, where I was treated as if I was Amelia Earhart or Amy Mollison – a rather pleasurable routine that I became accustomed to – and, after a square meal in the cafeteria and the shy acceptance of one drink with the proprietor, I retired to bed feeling excited and happy. It had been a long and wonderful day. The Vespa was a dream, and my whole plan was working out fine.

I had taken one day to do the first two hundred miles. I took nearly two weeks to cover the next two hundred and fifty. There was no mystery about it. Once over the American border, I began to wander around the Adirondacks as if I was on a late summer holiday. I won’t go into details since this is not a travelogue, but there was hardly an old fort, museum, waterfall, cave or high mountain I didn’t visit – not to mention the dreadful ‘Storylands’, ‘Adventure Towns’ and mock ‘Indian Reservations’ that got my dollar. I just went on a kind of sightseeing splurge that was part genuine curiosity but mostly wanting to put off the day when I would have to leave these lakes and rivers and forests and hurry on south to the harsh Eldollarado of the super-highways, the hot-dog stands and the ribboning lights of neon.

It was at the end of these two weeks that I found myself at Lake George, the dreadful hub of tourism in the Adirondacks that has somehow managed to turn the history and the forests and the wildlife into honkytonk. Apart from the rather imposing stockade fort and the harmless steamers that ply up to Fort Ticonderoga and back, the rest is a gimcrack nightmare of concrete gnomes, Bambi deer and toadstools, shoddy food-stalls selling ‘Big Chief Hamburgers’ and ‘Minnehaha Candy Floss’, and ‘Attractions’ such as ‘Animal Land’ (‘Visitors may hold and photograph costumed chimps’), ‘Gaslight Village’ (‘Genuine 1890 gas-lighting’], and ‘Storytown U.S.A.’, a terrifying babyland nightmare which I need not describe. It was here that I fled away from the horrible mainstream that Route 9 had become, and took to the dusty side road through the forest that was to lead me to the Dreamy Pines Motor Court and to the armchair where I have been sitting remembering just exactly how I happened to get here.

PART TWO

THEM

T
HE RAIN
was hammering down just as hard, its steady roar providing a background to the gurgling torrents from the downspouts at the four corners of the building. I looked forward to bed. How soundly I would sleep between the sheets in the spotless little cabin – those percale sheets that featured in the advertisements for the motel! How luxurious the Elliott Frey beds, Magee custom-designed carpets, Philco television and air-conditioning, Icemagic ice-makers, Acrilan blankets and Simmons Vivant furniture (‘Our phenolic laminate tops and drawers are immune to cigarette burns, alcohol stains’) – in fact all those refinements of modern motel luxury down to Acrylite shower enclosures, Olsonite Pearlescent lavatory seats and Delsey ‘bathroom tissue’, otherwise lavatory paper (‘in modern colours to harmonize with contemporary décor’) that would be mine, and mine alone, tonight!

Despite all these gracious trimmings, plus a beautiful site, it seemed that The Dreamy Pines was in a bad way, and, when I had come upon it two weeks before, there were only two overnighters in the whole place and not a single reservation for the last fortnight of the season.

Mrs Phancey, an iron-grey woman with bitter, mistrustful eyes and a grim slit of a mouth, was at the desk when I came in that evening. She had looked sharply at me, a lone girl, and at my meagre saddlebags, and, when I pushed the Vespa over to Number 9, she followed me with my card in her hand to check that I had not entered a false vehicle licence. Her husband, Jed, was more genial, but I soon understood why when the back of his hand brushed against my breast as, later in the cafeteria, he put the coffee in front of me. Apparently he doubled as handyman and short-order cook and, while his pale brown eyes moved over me like slugs, he complained whiningly about how much there was to do around the place getting it ready for closing date and constantly being called away from some job to fry eggs for parties of transients. It seemed they were the managers for the owner. He lived in Troy. A Mr Sanguinetti. ‘Big shot. Owns plenty property down on Cohoes Road. Riverfront property. And The Trojan Horse – roadhouse on Route 9, outside Albany. Maybe you know the joint?’ When I said I didn’t, Mr Phancey looked sly. ‘You ever want some fun, you go along to The Horse. Better not go alone, though. Pretty gal like you could get herself roughed up. After the fifteenth, when I get away from here, you could give me a call. Phancey’s the name. In the phone book. Be glad to escort you, show you a good time.’ I thanked him, but said I was just passing through the district on my way south. Could I have a couple of fried eggs, sunnyside up, and bacon?

But Mr Phancey wouldn’t leave me alone. While I ate, he came and sat at my little table and told me some of his dull life-story and, in between episodes, slipped in questions about me and my plans – what parents I had, didn’t I mind being so far from home, did I have any friends in the States, and so on – innocuous questions, put, it seemed to me, with normal curiosity. He was after all around forty-five, old enough to be my father, and though he was obviously a dirty old man, they were a common enough breed, and anyway Mrs Phancey was keeping an eye on us from the desk at the other end of the room.

Mr Phancey finally left me and went over to his wife and, while I smoked a cigarette and finished my second cup of coffee (‘No charge, miss. Compliments of The Dreamy Pines’), I heard them talking in a low voice over something that, because of an occasional chuckle, seemed to give them satisfaction. Finally Mrs Phancey came over, clucking in a motherly fashion about my adventurous plans (‘My, oh, my! What will you modern girls be doing next?’), and then she sat down and, looking as winsome as she knew how, said why didn’t I stop over for a few days and have a rest and earn myself a handful of dollars into the bargain? It seemed their receptionist had walked out twenty-four hours before and, what with the housekeeping and tidying-up before they closed the place for the season, they would have no time to man the desk. Would I care to take on the job of receptionist for the final two weeks – full board and thirty dollars a week?

Now it happened that I could do very well with those sixty dollars and some free food and lodging. I had overspent at least fifty dollars on my tourist spree, and this would just about square my books. I didn’t much care for the Phanceys, but I told myself that they were no worse than the sort of people I had expected to meet on my travels. Besides, this was the first job I had been offered and I was rather curious to see how I would make out. Perhaps, too, they would give me a reference at the end of my time and this might help with other motel jobs on my way south. So, after a bit of polite probing, I said the idea would be fine. The Phanceys seemed very pleased and Millicent, as she had now become, showed me the registration system, told me to watch out for people with little luggage and big station-wagons, and took me on a quick tour of the establishment.