Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica (9 page)

Nonetheless, the chance to vote for the first time had given ordinary Jamaicans new confidence that their interests and opinions mattered. As a consequence, support for self-government and involvement in politics grew. From 1945 onwards, this sometimes manifested itself in political violence, with the victims more often innocent bystanders, rival trade-union or party groups rather than the colonial authorities.

Even the wife of the Governor was no longer immune from criticism. Molly’s mass marriages ‘had caused more harm than good. A number of happy homes have come to grief,’ Adolphe Roberts would complain. ‘Lady Huggins,’ wrote
Public Opinion,
‘must have been sent out by the Colonial Office to sell British Imperialism. The salesmanship was good but the article for sale was shoddy.’ According to leaders of the PNP, her Women’s Federation constituted ‘political activities’. The Governor, they argued, should ‘put a restraining hand upon her’. There were also hints that her personal conduct was bringing the Governor’s office into disrepute; that he should not ‘let his attractive wife roam at large and, from all appearances, do very much as she liked’.

Molly’s lover, Kirkwood, was furious, and at a party given at King’s House defended her from attacks by the PNP leaders. Edna Manley, who was at the party, noted in her diary that night that ‘Kirkwood had “too many” and went all over the crowd saying “the PNP” is a pack of crooks, bastards and anti-British. He and Lady Huggins are pretty matey. It’s funny because when she came to see me she said she didn’t like him, he was all “I – I – I.” So is she, poor darling.’

In his 1947
Horizon
article, Fleming summed up local politics as ‘the usual picture – education bringing a desire for self-government,
for riches, for blacker coats and whiter collars, for a greater share (or all) of the prizes which England gets from the colony’. He saw the independence movement as materialistic – an urge to own ‘all the desirable claptrap of the whites’ such as cars and racehorses. ‘Two men are fighting each other to take over the chaperonage of Jamaica,’ he reported, before describing Bustamante as ‘a gorgeous flamboyant rabble-rouser’ and Manley as ‘the local Cripps and white hope of the Harlem communists’. The latter, he declared, has ‘the right wife to help him’. Of the two leaders, Fleming wrote, ‘you would like both of these citizens although they would both say that they want to kick you out’. Fortunately, he concluded, ‘holding wise and successful sway is the Governor, Sir John Huggins’, assisted by Hugh Foot as Colonial Secretary and Lady Molly Huggins, ‘a blonde and muchloved bombshell’. ‘Heaven knows what the island would do without her,’ he added.

Local politics for Fleming, reporting in 1947, was picturesque, populated by ‘zany’ characters, reassuringly old-fashioned rather than a ‘grave danger’. He was confident that the ‘edge’ would be kept off the rising political ‘passions’ by ‘the liberality and wisdom of our present policy’. Pax Britannica, it seemed, still ruled in Jamaica.

1948 Lady Rothermere

Bond knew that he was very close to being in love with her.

Diamonds are Forever

Fleming had written frequently to Ann Rothermere during his 1947 stay at Goldeneye, extolling the wonders of his Jamaica. Later that spring, back in England, their relationship became much more passionate and intense. Fleming stayed close to the Rothermere circle, taking advantage of any absence of Ann’s husband to steal some time with her. Often this was spent in furious argument. On one occasion they were surprised by Ann’s sister-in-law Virginia, who reported: ‘They’d just had the mother and father of all rows. Clearly they thrived on it. They liked hurting each other.’

In late August, the pair met up for a secret rendezvous in Dublin. Afterwards Ann wrote to Ian, ‘I loved being whipped by you and I don’t think I have ever loved like this before … I love being hurt by you and kissed afterwards.’ If they could not be alone, Fleming tagged along with the Rothermere party. They all saw New Year in together at the Chelsea Arts Club, but in January came what Ian and Ann had been most looking forward to: Ann’s first visit to Jamaica.

Considering that she was married to a newspaperman, Ann was incredibly indiscreet when she arrived at Kingston. On page 12 of the
Gleaner from
13 January 1948 is a photograph of Ian and Ann standing next to one another, just off the aeroplane from Miami, saying how pleased they were to be there – Ian ‘happy to be home’ – and that
they would be staying together at Goldeneye. (The same page carries a large notice of a public meeting with a photograph of Bustamante in full oratorical flow and the appeal: ‘Come in your Thousands!’) With them, as a sort of chaperone, was mutual friend (and a previous lover of Fleming) Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, whose marriage to the Duke had been dissolved the year before after many years of separation. The party was met by the Bryces and conveyed to Bellevue above Kingston, now much refurbished. After a couple of days there, which included lunch with the Governor and Lady Huggins at King’s House, the three headed for Oracabessa.

They arrived at Goldeneye ‘at typical tropical sunset hour’. Violet, Holmes the gardener and two other maids were lined up outside to ‘welcome “Commander” with much grinning’. Ian was ‘ecstatically excited’ to be back, Ann reported.

It was very quickly dark, and the night full of the noise of frogs and crickets. Ann suddenly felt a bit depressed, although she hid it from Ian. The house seemed to her to be extremely rudimentary. In fact, Ian’s mother and half-sister Amaryllis had visited the previous month and been so put off that they had moved out to stay in a hotel. ‘The house is scarcely furnished …’ Ann complained. There was a dining alcove with hard wooden benches but nowhere to sit in comfort. At dinner Ian made it clear that his position was ‘facing the window and staring at the night’.

The next morning, Ann woke early. Ian and Loelia were still asleep. She wandered round the outside of the property, noting sea grapes and orange, lemon and grapefruit trees, along with much miscellaneous bush. Then she ventured down the steep stone steps to the small white sand beach directly below the house and plunged in, finding the water ‘warm transparent shallow’. It was dreamy. ‘Depression totally gone,’ she noted. ‘Only Ian could devise this manner of life.’ Climbing back up the steps, she came across him awake, and furious that she had not waited for him to show her everything. ‘Too full of wellbeing
to be troubled by this,’ Ann noted. ‘Breakfast of paw paw, black [st’c] mountain coffee, scrambled eggs and bacon.’

After breakfast, Ian ceased sulking and the two spent ‘a wonderful day of birds, flowers and above all fish’. Masks and snorkels were employed and Ann found the ‘tropical underwater more beautiful than land, strange alarming canyons of coral rock’.

Ann noted that Ian now ‘devised a halcyon way of life’: a swim at sunrise, then Violet brought his shaving water and received instruction on how his eggs should be cooked for breakfast. Fleming was as meticulous about breakfast as Bond would be. After eating, he liked to read in the sunken garden, then go for a potter in his rubber dinghy or march around with Holmes the gardener making plans. The idea was to plant more flowers to attract hummingbirds. In England, Ian always complained that flowers gave him headaches, but not here. Ann noted dramatically that ‘Each rose has a large black beetle eating its heart out.’ There was also a plan to plant an avenue of palms from the house to the gate on the road. ‘Little will
come of this,’ Ann predicted, ‘as it is clear no work will be done in Ian’s absence.’

There was then a martini before lunch, which would be resolutely local fare, such as silk fish or snapper ‘grilled in butter and served with a great deal of rice’. They also had curried goat, or steak. Ann’s favourite was kidneys or liver grilled over charcoal. Any leftovers were taken away by the staff to share with their large families.

Ian was rapidly accumulating reference books on Jamaican shells, birds, fish, flora and the stars to be seen from Goldeneye. Among these was the 1947 edition of
Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies
by ornithologist James Bond. Loelia was uninterested, but Ann, who had inherited from her father Guy Charteris a keen interest in birds, started using the book as a guide to the specimens found around Goldeneye, which included beautiful rarities such as the tiny vervain hummingbird, or ‘little doctor bird’, and the unique Jamaican woodpecker.

For now, though, the fish were the biggest draw. There was much to admire – butterfly-, angel- and parrotfish, rock beauties and fairy basslets – and there were delicious lobsters to be hunted with trident forks.

Loelia, who described Ian as ‘a curious and complex person, and immensely attractive to women … both clever and conceited’, would usually be left behind as Fleming and Ann went adventuring together. ‘I cannot say I enjoyed my Goldeneye days,’ she later complained. ‘I soon discovered that the reason I had been asked was to spread a thin aura of respectability as chaperone for Ann.’ She and Ian ‘were madly in love’, Loelia wrote, and ‘used to leave in a small boat to fish or study the reef and not return until dusk. I was left on this stick of coral to wander about among the blackamores in the village.’

According to Ann’s daughter Fionn, Ian and her mother loved teasing Loelia. Bond has a go too, in
Moonrakef,
where Loelia Ponsonby (the Duchess’s maiden name) is the secretary he shares with two other
members of the 00 section. Bond and his colleagues have all made ‘determined assaults on her virtue’. ‘I’ll never call you Loelia,’ he says to her. ‘It sounds like somebody in an indecent limerick.’