Bond knocked on Vampiria’s door. He had had his hair cut and a massage and was wearing his dark navy-blue worsted suit, a heavy cream silk shirt and a pale blue knitted silk tie. He sensed he was back to normal – feeling as well as he had in months.
Bryce Fitzjohn opened the door to her caravan. She was wearing a ginger gaberdine double-breasted trouser suit with a white cashmere polo neck and her hair was pinned up in a loose bun.
‘Too early?’ Bond asked.
‘No – perfect timing. Vampiria is no more, consumed by hellfire.’ She looked him up and down approvingly. ‘You seem very fit and well, Mr Bond. Step inside. I don’t want to kiss you with half the crew looking on.’
He went inside and they kissed, gently, passionately. Bond felt a kind of release inside him, a rare surge of well-being. Perhaps he could let everything go for twenty-four hours and be himself with this wonderful woman.
‘How was your trip to Americay?’
‘It was . . . interesting.’
‘No new scars?’
‘A scar-free sojourn, I’m glad to report.’ He smiled, reassuring her, but he made the qualification to himself – at least none visible.
Bond drove her back to Richmond in his Interceptor II.
‘Is this a new car?’ Bryce asked.
‘On approval. I’m not sure I can afford it.’
‘Are you all right, James?’
‘I am now,’ he said with real sincerity. ‘I was feeling a bit out of sorts – and then I saw you again.’
‘We do our best,’ she said, reaching over to touch his cheek with her knuckles. There was an understanding between them, Bond thought. So much of what they communicated was unspoken. She already knew him, it seemed – his necessary reticences, places he couldn’t go – and he received in return her covert messages of desire and affection, of real warmth. The hidden currents of their conversation were deep and strong.
Back at her house she told him they were having a repeat meal: champagne, a steak and a tomato salad and a great bottle of red wine. When she went into the kitchen to decant the wine – she’d chosen a Chateau Cantemerle 1955 – Bond slipped into her study and replaced her passport in the top drawer. Dennis Fieldfare had swiftly reconstituted it in its original form – it looked completely identical to the one he’d purloined, though maybe one day Bryce would wonder how she’d acquired those US immigration stamps while she’d been busy filming Vampiria in the Thames Valley, but Bond reckoned he’d managed the duplicity without being discovered. She would have no idea how helpful she had been.
They ate, they drank and later they made love like old and practised familiars.
‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said, lying in his arms, smoothing the forelock from his brow with a finger. ‘I’ve missed you, absurd though it may sound. And remember you promised me a holiday.’
‘I’m going to take you to Jamaica,’ he said. ‘Ever been there?’
‘No, I haven’t. How rather wonderful.’
‘Stand by for the trip of a lifetime.’
‘How can I possibly thank you, Mr Bond?’ she said, shifting forward and kissing him, letting her tongue linger in his mouth. ‘Maybe I can think of something a little out of the ordinary . . .’ She flicked the sheet away from his naked body.
Bond woke. He had heard a noise. He heard it again – a sharp patter of fine gravel thrown against the windowpane almost like a rain-shower. He looked at his watch – 4.55 a.m. Bryce was soundly asleep. Bond slipped out of bed and parted the curtains an inch and peered out. The opaque grey expanse of the lawn, lit by the moonlight, was revealed below and beyond it, through a fringe of trees, flowed the silvered river at high tide. Then he thought he saw some shadow move in the darkness and felt himself tense, suddenly. He gathered up his clothes and shoes and quietly left the bedroom, dressing quickly on the landing. He pulled on his socks and shoes and then his jacket, shoving his tie into a pocket. There was somebody out there in the garden, he was sure, and he was going to find out who it was.
He went downstairs, not switching on any lights. It was an old burglar’s trick, he was aware – throw some gravel at the bedroom windows and if no lights go on you’re pretty much safe to plunder the ground floor. He picked up the poker from beside the fire in the drawing room and crept through to the kitchen and its door on to the garden. Keeping out of sight, he peered through the kitchen windows at the ghostly expanse of the garden within its high walls. Once again he thought he saw something shift in the big herbaceous border by the fig tree. Were his eyes playing tricks with him? But the thrown gravel was no illusion. Perhaps he should just switch the lights on and the interloper would get the message and try to rob another big house in Richmond instead. But Bond had a strange sense about this wake-up call. Thrown gravel. Thrown coins . . . Perhaps somebody wanted to lure him out into the darkness. Well – he was ready for that.
He opened the door and stepped outside. It was cold and his breath condensed, the first intimations of the winter that was approaching. He gripped the poker hard in his fist and walked down a brick path towards the wall and the gate on to the river promenade. He stopped – listening hard. Nothing. A breeze swirled by and leaves rustled. Bond headed for the herbaceous border where he thought he’d seen the movement in the shadows.
He stood at the lawn’s edge looking at the plants in the border for any sign of broken stems or leaves. He reached into his pocket for his lighter and clicked it on, crouching and holding the flame close to the ground. Some leaves had fallen, one plant was oddly bent over. He moved the flame so it cast an oblique light – and he saw the footprints. The soil was moist and the freshly moulded imprints were an inch deep, four of them. Someone had been in this garden, hiding. What was odd was that one footprint, the right, seemed unnaturally turned into the other, and the right heel seemed implanted deeper than the left – and there were a series of round holes beside them also, as if a stick or a cane had been used to rest on. This is madness, Bond thought – but another more rational part of his brain was saying this could be someone deformed, someone who cannot walk unaided. A cripple of some kind . . .
Then he heard a noise in the street beyond and ran to the garden gate, turning the key that was in the lock and flinging the door open. He stepped out on to the street. The tide was now fully ebbing in the river, flowing strongly back towards the sea. Bond looked left and right. The river-road here in Richmond was well illuminated by street lights but there was no sign of anyone. He thought he heard a car engine kick into life a street away, and pull off into the night.
He felt a great sinking of heart as he realised what he had to do. There was no other option.
Bond went back into the house and poured himself an inch of brandy in a tumbler, took a gulp and then went into Bryce’s study, sat down at her desk and wrote her a brief note on a sheet of her writing paper.
Darling Bryce,
I have to go away suddenly, ‘on business’. You are too good for me and I could never make you happy. These few wonderful hours I’ve shared with you have given my life real meaning. I thank you from the depths of my heart and soul. Goodbye.
With my love, J.
He finished his drink and weighted down the sheet of paper on her desk with his empty glass. She’d find it in the morning when she came down to look for him, calling his name. It was Sunday – they had made plans for Sunday.
Bond closed the door softly behind him and slipped into the front seat of the Interceptor. He sat there for a while, running through his various decisions, his mind constantly returning to the horrific images of Blessing, dead at the hand of Kobus Breed. Perhaps what had happened in the garden had been nothing more than a Richmond burglar trying his luck, but Bond knew he couldn’t live with the possibility of Bryce becoming a victim – like Blessing – because of her association with him. He couldn’t put her in harm’s way – particularly if the harm was to be administered by a man like Breed.
He started the engine – its throaty purr was so quiet he doubted Bryce would wake – and drove slowly out of her driveway, the gravel crunching under his wide tyres.
There was a distinct lemony-pewter lightening in the east, heralding the beginning of the new day – a clear sky with no clouds. Bond turned the Interceptor on to the London road and put his foot on the accelerator, concentrating on the pleasures of driving a powerful car like this, trying not to think of Bryce and whatever dangers had been lurking out there in the darkness of her garden.
He drove steadily homewards, his face impassive, his mind made up, an unfamiliar heaviness in his heart.
He pulled into the square off the King’s Road and sat for a moment in his car, thinking, already half-regretting his act of spontaneous chivalry – of leaving Bryce unannounced, so suddenly, clandestinely in the night. She’d be shocked and hurt after the time they’d enjoyed together, and the love they’d made – she’d never think such an abandonment was done to keep her safe from the merciless savagery of Kobus Breed. All she knew about James Bond was his name – she didn’t have his address or telephone number. She’d never find him, however hard she cared to look. And where would he ever find someone like her again? he wondered, with some bitterness. That was the price he paid for the job he did, he supposed. Falling in love with a beautiful woman wasn’t recommended.
Bond sighed. It was a calm and beautiful Sunday morning. Tomorrow was Monday and he remembered that M had said he had an ‘interesting’ little job for him. Life goes on, he thought – it was some consolation . . . He stepped out of his car into a perfumed, sunlit day and as he strolled towards his front door somewhere a spasm of church bells sounded and a gang of pigeons, feeding in the central garden of the square, clapped up into the dazzling blue of an early morning sky in Chelsea – and vanished.