James Bond: The Authorised Biography (24 page)

Fleming, who had had his own battles with the Paymaster during his time in N.I.D., described him, cruelly but accurately, as ‘the office tyrant and bugbear’ of the Secret Service. Tanner's description was less charitable, and one of his pastimes was to bait the wretched man unmercifully. Bond soon joined in, compiling lengthy memoranda over soap and paper-clips and typewriter ribbons. It passed the time.

More important for Bond's future was the discovery now of his ‘comfortable flat in the plane-treed square of the Kings Road’, a stroke of luck for which he was to be everlastingly grateful. It was some years now since he had lived in the flat which Fleming had found him in Lincoln Street, but he felt his London roots were here and wouldn't have considered any other part of London. The flat was at number 30 Wellington Square. It was on two floors, and his first reaction was that it was far too big for him. But his Uncle Ian had died recently: to his surprise, Bond had inherited nearly £5,000, and suddenly it seemed sensible to spend the money on the one luxury which Bond had never known – a comfortable establishment in London.

He asked Aunt Charmian's advice – she was the one woman on whom he could rely for a disinterested opinion. She was all for it, ‘but who'll look after you?’ she said.

Bond hadn't thought of that.

‘You'll have to have a woman,’ said Aunt Charmian.

Bond groaned.

‘I know just the person. Remember May McGrath? She's been working for your Uncle Gregor ever since your grandfather died. The other day I heard that she can't stand it any more, and, frankly, I don't blame her. She's no cook, I know, but she's a conscientious body. Perhaps I'll write to her.’ And so James Bond acquired both a flat and ‘his treasured Scottish housekeeper’. Life was quite definitely looking up.

He gave a lot of thought to the flat once he had signed the lease. It was typical of him to plan it all minutely. There was a lot of work to do. When it was finished the whole place reflected Bond's personality.

It was a genuine bachelor establishment, for Bond had virtually ruled out marriage now that he was working for the Secret Service. Also it had to run like clockwork, whether he was there or not. May had her private quarters on the lower floor, next to the spare bedroom. Bond had a stylish sitting-room on the floor above with two long windows facing the square. His bedroom adjoined it, the kitchen was behind.

Like le Corbusier's definition of an ideal house, this was quite simply Bond's ‘machine to live in’. The arrangements and the décor were extremely Bond. The sitting-room was positively Spartan – certainly no female hand had put its gentle touch here: dark blue chesterfield and curtains, battleship-grey fitted carpet, green-shaded reading lamp and, on the walls, a somewhat faded set of ‘Riding School’ prints Bond had once acquired in Vienna. He didn't care for them particularly, but as he told Aunt Charmian, ‘they are the only pictures I possess and they fill the space as well as any others.’ As Fleming noted, there was no television.

The kitchen was altogether homelier. Long and narrow, ‘like the galley of an expensive yacht’, it had been carefully planned by Bond, who took a secret pleasure in equipping it. There was a lot of stainless steel and fitted-cupboard space, an air extractor, a large Frigidaire, complete with deep-freeze cabinet, and an elaborate drinks cupboard. He took some trouble finding his dark blue and gold dinner service. It was Minton, and its simple opulence appealed to Bond. Once he had set up the kitchen Bond took great care telling May exactly how it was to run – ‘Breakfast is most important. I lunch at the office, and generally I dine out too. When I'm at home I'll eat some sort of snack, unless there's company. If there is I'll take care of that myself. Please make sure that there's always a supply of fresh unsalted Jersey butter, whole-wheat bread, smoked salmon, steak and caviare.’

This was not just a reflection of Bond's basic taste in food. He was remembering May's limitations as a cook. As Aunt Charmian said, ‘May is more Glen Orchy than Cordon Bleu.’ But he did find that she could organize his breakfast with the absolute precision he demanded – the two large cups of de Bry coffee brewed in the Chemex percolator, the jars of strawberry jam, the Cooper's vintage Oxford, and the Fortnum's honey. He also soon discovered an unsuspected virtue in the worthy May. She was the only woman he had ever known capable of boiling an egg exactly the time required for perfection – three and a third minutes.

The one place in the flat where Bond did allow himself some self-indulgence was in furnishing the bedroom. He bought a king-sized double bed from Harrods – ‘if you like women, cheap bedding is a false economy’ – blue and gold wallpaper, and a thick, fitted Wilton. But one of his more perceptive mistresses described the room as ‘just like a boy's bedroom, with its knick-knacks and a place for everything’. On the dressing-table was a pair of silver-backed brushes that belonged to his father, and by the head two photographs of women – his mother and Marthe de Brandt.

Bond's early efforts at home-making were interrupted by a summons from the Chief of Staff. It was July. The plane trees in the square were thick with leaves, and Bond was feeling restless.

‘Hope you're not planning to seduce anyone important during the next week or so. M.'s on the warpath,’ said the Chief of Staff.

Now that James Bond was meeting M. again he felt nervous: as he waited in his anteroom he thought about the power M. wielded and how this whole lethal complex of the Secret Service rested upon him. ‘Hideous responsibility – rather him than me!’ thought Bond. The signal light above the door glowed red. Bond entered.

M. was benevolent at first, congratulating Bond on his performance during training.

‘I'm more than pleased. We discussed you at this morning's meeting of department heads. It was agreed that you should be seconded to the 00 section. The 007 number has been vacant for some time. From now on it will be your official code name in the Service.’

Bond felt a certain triumph, but before he could thank M., the old sailor made a gesture of impatience.

‘Now down to work. It's high time you began to earn your living, 007. Do you know Jamaica?’

‘During the war my ship called there briefly – I always wanted to go back.’

‘Well, now's your chance. I want you out there straight away. Frankly, I'm worried. We've been receiving very odd reports from our head of station there – a man called Gutteridge.’

‘Odd, in what way?’ asked Bond.

M. put his fist against his chin and frowned. How could he explain to Bond that he was personally concerned for Gutteridge? He knew the effect the tropics had upon a man. He also knew better than accept second-hand reports about an agent's drinking habits, but there was more to it than that. M. liked the man – they had served together for some while before the war. When somebody like Gutteridge began to send the kind of reports he had been lately, it was his duty to investigate. But it was difficult to explain to Bond that his first assignment with the 00 section might be no more than checking on a head of station's drinking problem.

‘Chief of Staff will let you have Gutteridge's reports for the last few months. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with them before you go. I have a hunch that something's going on – something that could be very dangerous. I'd like you to prove me wrong.’

There was a pause as M. began searching for his matches; when he found them, Bond waited as he lit his pipe. Bond was reminded of the garden refuse burning in the park outside.

‘One further thing, 007; while you are there, please make allowances for Gutteridge. He has his peculiarities like all of us.’

Bill Tanner seemed amused when Bond described the interview with M.

‘Peculiarities – I'll say. I wondered if you'd get this job. Rather you than me, although I wouldn't mind a week or two in Jamaica, even with Gutteridge thrown in.’

Ever since the German booby-trap he was defusing had exploded in his face, the ex-Sapper colonel had suffered with his health; periodically the surgeons still excavated pieces of shrapnel from his body. Lately the sheer pressure of work in the department had been building up, and Bond could see how much this tense young man required a break. As Chief of Staff he was harder worked than anyone in the department.

‘What's wrong with Gutteridge?’

Tanner pulled a face.

‘Frankly, I'm sick to death of him. The man's a lush. He's been around for years, but just because he happened to have served with M. before the war, he's sacrosanct. And I have to deal with him, not M. Just work your way through these and you'll see what I mean.’

Tanner reached behind him for a large, untidy file. It was marked ‘Station K – Top Secret’. He handed it to Bond, and shook his head.

‘Read ’em and then do me a favour. Just put them you know where and pull the chain.’

That evening was one of those rare occasions when Bond ate at home, entirely alone.

May seemed concerned when he announced that he would be quite happy with a tin of soup and scrambled eggs.

‘Ye'd be feelin’ a'right?’ she said.

Spencer Tracey was on at the Essoldo and she had been looking forward for some time to seeing him. Bond knew this quite well and, when he had teased her sufficiently, insisted on scrambling the eggs himself. Bond had a range of what he called ‘basic survival cookery’ which ensured that he could always manage on his own yet eat, if not in luxury, at least with a certain style. He felt this was essential for any bachelor. His favourite included
steak au poivre
(his secret here was to use Madras black pepper from Fortnums, leaving the raw steak in it overnight), kidneys in red wine with parsley, grilled country sausages from Paxtons, and, of course, scrambled eggs. His
oeufs brouillés James Bond
were cooked slowly and mixed with twice the amount of butter he had ever seen a woman use. Before serving, he liked to add a generous dollop of double cream.

This was what he had now, after a tin of Jackson's lobster soup. He ate off a tray in the sitting-room. It would have been hard to tell which he enjoyed more – the food or his self-sufficiency. When he had finished he had a generous glass of bourbon, lit a Morlands Special and, by the solitary light of his green-shaded reading lamp, got down to reading Gutteridge's report.

He soon saw what had upset the Chief of Staff. Few secret-service field reports rank as great literature, but Bond had never read anything as long-winded and bizarre as these. His first reaction was that the Chief of Staff was right – Gutteridge must have entered his decline. He had a recurrent obsession with the politics of the Jamaican labour unions. Nothing wrong with that. But it was obvious that, mixed up with this, poor Gutteridge also had a major persecution complex. His particular concern seemed to be that Communists were infiltrating the main unions. Much of his information was convincing – detailed accounts of union leaders who had been terrorized into changing their allegiance, stories of intercepted messages from Havana, estimates of how funds from Moscow had been deployed to purchase votes.

But, at the same time, Gutteridge included details of a conspiracy whose major aim was his destruction. There was a so-called ‘Goddess Kull’ who cropped up on a number of occasions. He was none too coherent here, but she was described as ‘the incarnation of all evil’ and also as ‘the great destroyer’. She had her followers and Gutteridge seemed to think that they were after him. One report described how Kull's devotees were howling for him in the night.

It was well past midnight before Bond had finished reading. By any standards the reports were odd and his first reaction – like the Chief of Staff’s – was that what Gutteridge needed was a transfer, preferably to a clinic. But as he prepared for bed he wondered. There was something eerily convincing about these reports, and alone there in the flat Bond could feel something of that sense of fear of the strange man who had written them in the far-away Jamaican night.

Tomorrow Bond would be seeing him. It would be interesting to find out who was right – M. or the Chief of Staff – and, as Bond checked his Beretta and fixed a hundred rounds of special ammunition into the concealed compartment of his suitcase, he wondered how many of them he would be firing in the line of duty.

*

Bond reached Jamaica in the evening, which is the best time to swoop down upon that gold and dark green island. After the cold and regimented gloom of Heathrow, full of that passive misery which brings out the worst in our island race, Bond felt the first joy of the tropics. Kingston, that wonderful, rachitic city, seemed even noisier and smellier than he remembered. He passed the bar, Louelle's, where he had knocked out the U.S. petty officer, and smiled to himself. It seemed a long, long time ago – what a clean-cut young fellow he had been then in his lieutenant's uniform, and how simple life had seemed.

Miss Trueblood had originally booked him into the Wayside Inn, an air-conditioned luxury American hotel, but at the last moment Bond remembered Durban's, once the most fashionable hotel on the island and now a splendid relic of the old Jamaica. Bond loved its enormous rooms, its old-style bar and its verandahs, and secretly enjoyed the feeling that it would not last. He had cabled Gutteridge to meet him here.

Gutteridge was late. When he did stagger in, Bond could only wonder how he had survived so long. The once good-looking face was red and puffy, the well-cut suit was stained and baggy at the knees. Bond could not bear drunks, but there was something about Gutteridge that roused his sympathy. This was how secret-service life could burn you out: in Gutteridge he could almost see a mirror image of himself one day. When Gutteridge suggested they should have a drink, Bond agreed. He even forced himself to listen sympathetically as the man rambled on – about his money troubles and the wife who left him and the slights he had to bear from other British residents.