Goldfinger

by Ian Fleming

Mr Du Pont was about fifty – pink, clean-shaven and dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires.

A brisk inshore breeze was blowing off the sea, straining the flags of all nations that flew along the pier of the private yacht basin. The breeze was humid and smelt strongly of the sea. Bond guessed it was the breeze that the visitors like, but the residents hate. It would rust the metal fittings in their homes, fox the pages of their books, rot their wallpaper and pictures, breed damp-rot in their clothes.

What else could he guess? Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big – bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world. And what about a misshapen short man with red hair and a bizarre face? That might add up to a really formidable misfit. One could certainly feel the repressions.

Bond went to his suitcase again and took out a thick book – The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature – opened it and extracted his Walther PPK in the Berns Martin holster.

Bond put his camera carefully down on the chair and came and stood in the radius of her scent. She was very beautiful. She had the palest blonde hair. It fell heavily to her shoulders, unfashionably long.

On the first night the girl had brought him tea. Bond had looked at her severely. ‘I don’t drink tea. I hate it. It’s mud. Moreover it’s one of the main reasons for the downfall of the British Empire. Be a good girl and make me some coffee.’ The girl had giggled and scurried off to spread Bond’s dictum in the canteen. From then on he had got his coffee. The expression ‘a cup of mud’ was seeping through the building.

Bond read again the passage that had revolted him: ‘A drunken woman can also usually be handled by using the thumb and forefinger to grab the lower lip. By pinching hard and twisting, as the pull is made, the woman will come along.’ Bond grunted.

It was twelve o’clock. Bond inspected his room, a double with bathroom, on the top floor of the Channel Packet, unpacked his few belongings and went down to the snack bar where he had one vodka and tonic and two rounds of excellent ham sandwiches with plenty of mustard.

Now then,’ Oddjob had dressed and was standing respectfully at attention, ‘you did well, Oddjob. I’m glad to see you are in training. Here –’ Goldfinger took the cat from under his arm and tossed it to the Korean who caught it eagerly – ‘I am tired of seeing this animal around. You may have it for dinner.’ The Korean’s eyes gleamed. ‘And tell them in the kitchen that we will have our own dinner at once.’

Bond thought: That would happen today! The Loire is dressed for just that – chasing that girl until you run her to ground at lunch-time, the contact at the empty restaurant by the river, out in the garden under the vine trellis. The friture and the ice-cold Vouvray, the cautious sniffing at each other and then the two cars motoring on in convoy until that evening, well down to the south, there would be the place they had agreed on at lunch – olive trees, crickets singing in the indigo dusk, the discovery that they liked each other and that their destinations could wait. Then, next day (‘No, not tonight. I don’t know you well enough, and besides I’m tired’) they would leave her car in the hotel garage and go off in his at a tangent, slowly, knowing there was no hurry for anything, driving to the west, away from the big roads. What was that place he had always wanted to go to, simply because of the name? Yes, Entre Deux Seins, a village near Les Baux. Perhaps there wasn’t even an inn there. Well, then they would go on to Les Baux itself, at the Bouches du Rhône on the edge of the Camargue. There they would take adjoining rooms (not a double room, it would be too early for that) in the fabulous Baumanière, the only hotel-restaurant in France with Michelin’s supreme accolade. They would eat the gratin de langouste and perhaps, because it was traditional on such a night, drink champagne. And then … Bond smiled at his story and at the dots that ended it. Not today. Today you’re ...

Bond said curtly, ‘I’ll be glad to take you to Geneva. Now then,’ he opened up the back of the Aston Martin, ‘let’s get your things in. While I fix up about the garage here’s some money. Please buy us lunch – anything you like for yourself. For me, six inches of Lyon sausage, a loaf of bread, butter, and half a litre of Mâcon with the cork pulled.’ Their eyes met and exchanged a flurry of masculine/feminine master/slave signals. The girl took the money. ‘Thank you. I’ll get the same things for myself.’

She pursed her lips obstinately. ‘Why should I do what you say?’ Bond sighed. ‘There’s no point in being a suffragette about this. It’s either that or get yourself killed after breakfast. It’s up to you.’