And whatever else was true or false, he knew this girl did love him. He reached out and wrapped his arms round her. She sighed and clamped her lips to his mouth while his hands slid down her dress and pulled her by the hips roughly against him.
When they had kissed for a minute, Bond said, ‘Now we’re going to order dinner. Exactly as we described.’
Scarlett went to the telephone. There were tears of relief in the corners of her eyes. ‘Shall we skip the eggs Benedict?’ she said.
‘Just this once. But I’d like a real drink first. A jug of martinis.’
Scarlett began to order rapidly. ‘What year Château Batailley do you want?’
‘’Forty-five will do,’ said Bond.
‘They’re sending out for that vintage. Dinner will be up in half an hour.’
‘Time enough,’ said Bond. ‘Now come here. My boss told me to “press the flesh” and I don’t like to disobey orders.’
The belle-époque furnishings of the room included mirrors on the doors of the many wardrobes, as well as one above the marble fireplace. Bond watched Scarlett as she undressed, slipping out of the black dress, the stockings and the black underwear. There were four, eight, sixteen of her. She was multiplied in reflection, stretched to infinity in the soft light of the warm hotel room.
‘In the words of one of Felix Leiter’s bosses,’ said Bond, hoarsely, ‘we are in a wilderness of mirrors.’
Then he ran his hands over Scarlett’s naked body and took her roughly, quickly, with the pent-up urgency of their long and chaste association.
Scarlett was in the bath when the dinner arrived, and Bond took a martini through to her.
‘I also brought you this,’ he said, taking a bottle of Floris gardenia bath essence from his pocket.
‘So it’s just as we planned.’ Scarlett smiled from the bath as she sprinkled some drops into the water.
Bond tipped a glassful of the icy martini down his throat and sighed with happiness as he wheeled the room-service trolley to the bed. He took off his own clothes and put on the white towelling robe from the bathroom door.
He lay back on the plump pillows and sucked the smoke of a Chesterfield deep into his lungs, then exhaled in a blissful stream, while Scarlett, naked as she had promised, prepared the caviar and the sole meunière. She sat cross-legged at the end of the bed, looking at him with her wide brown eyes, as though she feared he might disappear.
Bond drained the Bollinger. ‘I miss Poppy,’ he said. ‘She was so … demure. Surprisingly so, for such a wild child.’
‘Whereas Scarlett, who as a banker you’d expect to be restrained –’
‘Is anything but.’
‘And which one,’ said Scarlett, ‘would you like me to be tonight?’
‘I think Poppy till midnight,’ said Bond, drawing the cork on the Château Batailley, ‘but from then on pure, uninhibited Scarlett.’
They talked through the events of the past week over dinner. Bond told her of his final encounter with Gorner as she cleared away the plates and glasses.
Scarlett took the last of the champagne and slipped under the bedclothes, leaning back next to Bond against the pillows. ‘What will happen to me, James?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My job. I mean, on my very first assignment, I’ve made the terrible mistake of having an office romance.’
Bond got off the bed, stood up and walked to the window. He was aware of how much his body ached – his rib, his shoulder, his hip, almost all his muscles.
Beneath him he could see the City of Light stretched out from the distant place de la Concorde, up through the Opéra and Pigalle to the terrible tower blocks of the northern banlieue.
He pulled the curtains together tightly, thinking of M, and Julian Burton, the new psychological-fitness trainer, Loelia Ponsonby, Moneypenny and all the others.
‘Some office,’ he said, returning to the bed.
‘Yes,’ said Scarlett, smiling as she pulled back the covers to reveal her naked body – pink from the bath, clean, soft and waiting for him. ‘And some romance.’
Acknowledgements
Hardware: James Holland, Mark Lanyon, Rachel Organ, Lt.-Col. John Starling, Rowland White. For the Ekranoplan, see autospeed.com and www.se-technology.com/wig
Software: Atussa Cross, Hazel Orme.
Elsewhere: Andrew Burke/Lonely Planet; Patrice Hoffmann.
Bondage: Henry Chancellor, Zoe Watkins, Simon Winder.
With thanks
SF
London, 28 May 2008
About Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks began his working life, like Ian Fleming, as a journalist, working for national newspapers in London from 1978 to 1991. Since then, however, he has been a full-time author and his novels have been among the most widely admired of their time. They include the epic Human Traces (2005) and the much-loved Birdsong (1993), which has sold more than three million copies. He is also the author of a triple biography, The Fatal Englishman, and a book of literary parodies of other authors (including Fleming) called Pistache. His most recent novel is Engleby (2006). He first encountered the Bond novels as a twelve-year-old; the books were banned at his school, but he read them by torchlight under the sheets.
About Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming was born on 28 May 1908 in London. He wrote his first novel, Casino Royale, in 1952 – and introduced James Bond to the world. For the next twelve years, Fleming produced a novel a year featuring the most renowned spy of the age. He also wrote, for his son, a children’s story about a car that flies – Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang – which has inspired both film and stage productions.
Fleming was educated at Eton, where he was a noted athlete. After failing to complete the officers’ training course at Sandhurst, he spent a formative time in Austria and Germany, learning languages and gaining an enduring love for the Alps. He joined Reuters and learned to write accurately and fast. A further career in the City of London was cut short by the outbreak of war in 1939.
As assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence throughout the Second World War, he found his niche, and his experience in Naval Intelligence was to provide many of the incidents and characters in the Bond novels.
Later, while working for the Sunday Times as foreign manager, he would spend two months each winter in Jamaica and there, at Goldeneye, he wrote his novels. His interest in cars, travel, good food and beautiful women, as well as his love of golf and gambling, was reflected in the books that were to sell in their millions, boosted by the vastly successful film franchise.
Ian Fleming lived to see only the first two films, Dr. No and From Russia with Love: he died of heart failure in 1964 at the age of fifty-six.
Sebastian Faulks, Devil May Care
(Series: # )
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