Complete Works of Ian Fleming, page 189
* * * * *
I had never before made love, full love, with my heart as well as my body. It had been sweet with Derek, cold and satisfying with Kurt. But this was something different. At last I realized what this thing could be in one’s life.
I think I know why I gave myself so completely to this man, how I was capable of it with someone I had met only six hours before. Apart from the excitement of his looks, his authority, his maleness, he had come from nowhere, like the prince in the fairy tales, and he had saved me from the dragon. But for him, I would now be dead, after suffering God knows what before. He could have changed the wheel on his car and gone off, or, when danger came, he could have saved his own skin. But he had fought for my life as if it had been his own. And then, when the dragon was dead, he had taken me as his reward. In a few hours, I knew, he would be gone — without protestations of love, without apologies or excuses. And that would be the end of that — gone, finished.
All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that had made his act of love so piercingly wonderful. That and the coinciding of nerves completely relaxed after the removal of tension and danger, the warmth of gratitude, and a woman’s natural feeling for her hero. I had no regrets and no shame. There might be many consequences for me — not the least that I might now be dissatisfied with other men. But whatever my troubles were, he would never hear of them. I would not pursue him and try to repeat what there had been between us. I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn’t care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn’t care, because none of them would ever own him — own any larger piece of him than I now did. And for all my life I would be grateful to him, for everything. And I would remember him for ever as my image of a man.
How silly could one be? What was there to dramatize about this naked male person lying beside me? He was just a professional agent who had done his job. He was trained to fire guns, to kill people. What was so wonderful about that? Brave, strong, ruthless with women — these were the qualities that went with his calling — what he was paid to be. He was only some kind of a spy, a spy who had loved me. Not even loved, slept with. Why should I make him my hero, swear never to forget him? I suddenly had an impulse to wake him up and ask him: ‘Can you be nice? Can you be kind?’
I turned over on my side. He was asleep, breathing quietly, his head resting on his outflung forearm, his right arm tucked under the pillow. Again the moon outside was bright. Red light filtered through the curtains, mixing the black shadows of his body with shining crimson highlights. I bent closely over him, breathing in his maleness, longing to touch him, to run my hand down his sunburned back to where the brown became abruptly white where his summer bathing-trunks had been.
After looking long at him, I lay back. No, he was as I had thought him to be. Yes, this was a man to love.
* * * * *
The red curtains at the other end of the room were moving. Through half-sleeping eyes I wondered why. Outside, the wind had dropped and there was no sound. Lazily I raised my eyes to look above me. The curtains at this end of the room, above our bed, were motionless. There must be a small breeze coming off the lake. Come on! For heaven’s sake go to sleep!
And then, with a sudden ripping noise high up on the opposite wall, the bits of curtains hung sideways. And a big, glittering turnip-face, pale and shiny under the moon, was looking through the glass slats!
I never knew that hair could stand up on end. I thought it was invented by writers. But I heard a scratching on the pillow round my ears and I felt the fresh night air on my scalp. ‘I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t.’ ‘My limbs were frozen.’ ‘I couldn’t move hand or foot.’ I thought these too were fictions. They aren’t. I simply lay and stared, noting my physical sensations — even to the symptom that my eyes were so wide open that they ached. But I couldn’t move a finger. I was — another phrase from books — frightened stiff, stiff as a board.
The face behind the glass window slats was grinning. Perhaps the teeth were bared, like an animal’s, with effort. The moon glistened off the teeth and off the eyes and off the top of the hairless head to make a kind of child’s sketch of a face.
The ghost face jerked slowly round the room, looking. It saw the white bed with the twin smudges of the heads on the pillow. It stopped looking and slowly, painfully, a hand, with shiny metal in it, came up beside the head and smashed clumsily downwards through the panes of glass.
The noise was a trigger that released me. I screamed and hit sideways with my hand. It probably didn’t help. The crash of glass had wakened him. I might even have spoiled his aim. But then came the double roar of guns, the solid slap of bullets into the wall above my head, another great splintering of glass and the turnip face had gone.
‘Are you all right, Viv?’ His voice was urgent, desperate.
He saw that I was and didn’t wait for an answer. The bed heaved and suddenly the moonlight threw a great block of light through the door. He ran so quietly that I didn’t hear his feet on the concrete floor of the car-port, but I could visualize him flattening himself against its wall and edging round. I just lay and stared aghast — another literary word, but an accurate one — at the jagged remains of the window and remembered the glistening, horrible turnip head that must have been a ghost.
James Bond came back. He didn’t say a word. The first thing he did was to get me a glass of water. The prosaic action, the first thing a parent does when the child has nightmares, brought back the room and its familiar shapes from the black and red cave of the ghosts and the guns. Then he fetched a bath towel and put a chair under the smashed window and climbed on it and draped the towel over the window.
I was suddenly conscious of the muscles that bunched and relaxed in his naked body and I was amused at how odd a man looks without any clothes on when he is not making love but just moving about a room doing a kind of household chores. I thought that perhaps one ought to be a nudist. But perhaps only under forty. I said, ‘James, don’t ever get fat.’
He had fixed the towel as a curtain. He got down off the chair and said absent-mindedly, ‘No. That’s right. One shouldn’t get fat.’
He put the chair tidily back beside the desk where it belonged and picked up his gun that he had put down on the desk. He examined the gun. He went to his small pile of clothes and took out a new clip and substituted it for the old one and came over to the bed and slipped the gun under his pillow.
Now I realized why he had lain like that, with his right hand doubled under the pillow. I guessed that he always slept like that. I thought his must be rather like a fireman’s life, always waiting for a call. I thought how extraordinary it must be to have danger as your business.
He came and sat down on the edge of my side of the bed. In the filtering scraps of light his face looked drawn and sort of blasted, as if by shock. He tried to smile, but the tense muscles wouldn’t let him and it was only a crooked sketch of a smile. He said, ‘I nearly got us both killed again. I’m sorry, Viv. I must be losing my touch. If I go on like this I’m going to catch trouble. When the car went into the lake, remember a bit of the roof and the rear window was left sticking out of the water? Well, there was obviously plenty of air trapped in that corner. I was a damned fool not to have worked that out for myself. This fellow Sluggsy only needed to knock out the rear window and swim ashore. He was hit several times. It must have been hard going for him. But he got to our cabin. We ought to be dead ducks. Don’t go round the back in the morning. He’s not a pretty sight.’ He looked at me for reassurance. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry, Viv. It ought never to have happened.’
I scrambled off the bed and went and put my arms round him. His body was cold. I hugged him to me and kissed him. ‘Don’t be silly, James! If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have got into all this mess. And where would I be now if it wasn’t for you? I’d not only have been a dead duck, but a roasted one too, hours ago. The trouble with you is you haven’t had enough sleep. And you’re cold. Come into bed with me. I’ll keep you warm.’ I got up and pulled him to his feet.
He caught me to him. He reached down with both hands and pressed my body hard into his. He held me like that for a time, quite still, and I felt the way his body was gaining warmth from mine. Then he lifted me up and laid me softly back on the bed. And then he took me fiercely, almost cruelly, and once again there came the small scream from someone who was no longer me and then we were lying side by side and his heart was pounding wildly against my breast and I found that my right hand was clenched in his hair.
I relaxed my cramped fingers and reached down for his hand. I said, ‘James, what’s a bimbo?’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll tell you when you’ve told me.’
He laughed sleepily. ‘It’s gangster language for a whore.’
‘I thought it was something like that. They kept on calling me that. I suppose it must really be true.’
‘You don’t qualify.’
‘Promise you don’t think I’m a bimbo?’
‘Promise. You’re just a darling chick. I’m cow-simple about you.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means crazy for a girl. Now, that’s enough questions. Go to sleep.’ He kissed me gently, and turned over on his side.
I curled up against him, fitting myself close in to his back and thighs. ‘This is a nice way to sleep — like spoons. Goodnight, James.’
‘Goodnight, darling Viv.’
Chapter 15. THE WRITING ON MY HEART
Those were the last words he spoke to me. When I woke up the next morning he was gone. There was only the dent down the bed where he had lain, and the smell of him on the pillow. To make sure, I jumped out of bed and ran to see if the grey car was still there. It wasn’t.
It was a beautiful day and there was heavy dew on the ground, and in the dew I could see the single track of his footprints leading to where the car had been. A bobolink flew crying across the clearing, and from somewhere in the trees came the dying call of a mourning dove.
The ruins of the motel were black and hideous and a ghostly wisp of smoke rose straight up into the still air from the remains of the lobby block. I went back into the cabin and had a shower and began briskly to pack my things into my saddle-bags. Then I saw the letter on the dressing table and I went and sat on the bed and read it.
It was written on motel paper from the writing desk. The writing was very clear and even and he had used a real pen and not a ball point.
Dear Viv,
You may have to show this to the police, so I will be businesslike. I am on my way to Glens Falls where I will make a full report to the police after telling the Highway Patrol to get to you immediately. I will also get in touch with Washington and they will almost certainly put Albany in charge of the case. I shall pull every string to see that you are not worried too much and that they let you go on your way after getting your statement. Glens Falls will have my route and the registration number of the car and they will be able to pick me up wherever I am if you need any help or they want to know anything more from me. You won’t be able to get any breakfast so I shall have the Patrol bring you a Thermos of coffee and sandwiches to keep you alive. I would much like to stay with you, if only to see Mr Sanguinetti! But I very much doubt if he will be turning up this morning. I guess that when he heard nothing from his two strong-arm boys he went like hell to Albany and got on the first plane for the South on his way out to Mexico. I shall tell Washington that that’s my guess and they should be able to pick him up if they get a move on. He should get life for this, or what’s known as ‘from now on’, or ‘The Rosary’, in the language we’ve been learning. And now listen. You, and up to a point me, have saved the insurance company at least half a million dollars and there’ll be a big reward. I’m not allowed to accept rewards by the rules of my job, so there’s no argument about that, even if it weren’t a fact that it was you who took the principal burden of all this and it’s you who are the heroine. So I’m going to make a real issue of this and see that the insurance company does the right thing. And something else. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one or both of those hoodlums wasn’t wanted by the police and has a reward on his head. I’ll see to that too. As for the future, drive very carefully the rest of the way. And don’t have nightmares. These sort of things don’t often happen. Treat it all as just a bad motor accident you were lucky to get out of. And go on being as wonderful as you are. If you ever want me or need any help, wherever you are, you can get me by letter or cable, but not by telephone, c/o Ministry of Defence, Storey’s Gate, London, SW1.
Ever,
J.B.
PS. Your tyre pressures are too high for the South. Remember to take them down.
PPS. Try Guerlain’s ‘Fleurs des Alpes’ instead of Camay!
I heard the roar of motor-cycles coming up the road. When they stopped, there was the brief wail of a siren to announce who they were. I put the letter inside the top of my overalls and pulled up the zip and went out to meet The Law.
* * * * *
They were two State Troopers, smart and young and very nice. I’d almost forgotten such people existed. They saluted me as if I was royalty. ‘Miss Vivienne Michel?’ The senior, a lieutenant, did the talking while his Number Two muttered quietly into his radio announcing their arrival.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Lieutenant Morrow. We hear you had some trouble last night.’ He gestured with his gloved hand at the ruins. ‘Seems like we heard right.’
‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ I said disdainfully. ‘There’s a car in the lake with a corpse in it and another corpse behind cabin Number 3.’
‘Yes, miss.’ There was a hint of disapproval at my levity. He turned to his companion, who had clipped back the microphone to the set behind his saddle. ‘O’Donnell, take a look round, would you?’
‘Okay, loot.’ O’Donnell strode off across the grass.
‘Well, let’s go and take a seat somewhere, Miss Michel.’ The lieutenant bent down to one of his saddle-bags and produced a carefully wrapped package. ‘Brought along some breakfast. ‘Fraid it’s only coffee and doughnuts. That suit you?’ He held out the package.
I gave him a full candlepower smile. ‘That’s terribly kind of you. I’m starving. There are some seats over by the lake. We can choose one that’s out of sight of the sunk car.’ I led the way across the grass and we sat down. The lieutenant took off his cap and produced a notebook and pencil and pretended to go through his notes to give me a chance to get started on a doughnut.
He looked up and produced his first smile. ‘Now don’t worry about this, miss. I’m not taking a statement. The captain’s coming up himself for that. Should be along any time now. When they gave me the hurry call I got down the bare facts. But what’s worrying me is that that radio just hasn’t left me alone since then. Had to cut down my speed the whole way here from Route 9 to keep on listening to instructions from the station — that Albany was interested in the case, that even the top brass in Washington was breathing down our necks. Never heard such a load coming over the air. Now, miss, can you tell me how it’s come about that Washington’s mixed up in this, and within a bare couple of hours of Glens Falls getting the first report?’
I couldn’t help smiling at his earnestness. I could almost hear him calling over to O’Donnell as they roared along, ‘Hell, we’ll have Jack Kennedy on our tails any moment now!’ I said, ‘Well, there’s a man called James Bond who’s involved. He saved me and shot these two gangsters. He’s some kind of an English agent, secret service or something. He was driving from Toronto to Washington to report on a case, and he got a flat and ended up at the motel. If he hadn’t, I’d be dead by now. Anyway, I guess he must be someone pretty important. He told me he wanted to make sure this Mr Sanguinetti didn’t get away to Mexico or somewhere. But that’s more or less all I know about him, except that — except that he seemed a wonderful guy.’
The lieutenant looked sympathetic. ‘Guess so, miss. If he got you out of this trouble. But he’s certainly got a fix in with the FBI. They don’t often tangle in a local case like this. Unless they’re called in, that is, or there’s some Federal angle.’ The thin wail of sirens sounded far down the road. Lieutenant Morrow got to his feet and put his cap on. ‘Well thanks, miss. I was just satisfying my curiosity. The captain will be taking over from here. Don’t you worry. He’s a nice kind of a guy.’ O’Donnell came up. ‘If you’ll excuse me, miss.’ The lieutenant moved off with O’Donnell, listening to his report, and I finished the coffee and followed slowly, thinking of the grey Thunderbird that would now be hammering out the miles southward and of the sunburned hands on the wheel.
* * * * *
It was quite a cavalcade that came sweeping up the road between the pines — a squad car with outriders, an ambulance, two other police cars and a recovery truck that came towards me across the grass and went on down to the lake. Everyone seemed to have had their orders, and very soon the whole area was covered with moving figures in olive green or dark blue.
The heavily built man who soon came forward to meet me, followed by a junior officer who turned out to be the stenographer, looked every inch the detective-captain of the films — slow-moving, kindly faced, purposeful. He held out his hand. ‘Miss Michel? I’m Captain Stonor from Glens Falls. Let’s go somewhere where we can have a talk, shall we? One of the cabins, or shall we stay out in the open?’
‘I’ve had about enough of the cabins, if you don’t mind. Why not over there — my breakfast table. And by the way, thank you very much for your thoughtfulness. I was starving.’
‘Don’t thank me, Miss Michel,’ the captain’s eyes twinkled frostily. ‘It was your English friend, Commander Bond, who suggested it,’ he paused, ‘among other things.’
