The Spy Who Loved Me (James Bond, #10)

by Ian Fleming

I wasn’t particularly pleased with the person I was now, but I had hated and despised the other one, and I was glad to be rid of her face.

I was still standing there, cosily listening, when the thunder, that had been creeping quietly up behind my back, sprang its ambush. Suddenly lightning blazed in the room, and at the same instant there came a blockbusting crash that shook the building and made the air twang like piano wire. It was just one, single, colossal explosion that might have been a huge bomb falling only yards away.

It was two weeks later that I got the letter. I had written twice, but there had been no answer. In desperation I had even telephoned, but the man at the other end had gone away and come back and said that Mr Mallaby wasn’t at home. The letter began, ‘Dear Viv, This is going to be a difficult letter to write.’

He had told his parents about me, but they disapproved of our ‘affair’. They said it wasn’t fair to go on with a girl if one wasn’t going to marry her. ‘They are terribly insular, I’m afraid, and they have ridiculous ideas about “foreigners”, although heaven knows I regard you as just like any other English girl and you know I adore your accent.’ They were set on his marrying the daughter of some neighbour in the country. ‘I’ve never told you about this, which I’m afraid was very naughty of me, but as a matter of fact we’re sort of semi-engaged. We had such a marvellous time together and you were such a sport that I didn’t want to spoil it all.’ He said he hoped very much we would ‘run into each other’ again one day

As I saw it, I’d behaved like a tramp, from the very first evening, and I’d been treated like a tramp. In this tight little world of England, I was a Canadian, and therefore a foreigner, an outsider – fair game.

It was at the end of these two weeks that I found myself at Lake George, the dreadful hub of tourism in the Adirondacks that has somehow managed to turn the history and the forests and the wildlife into honkytonk. Apart from the rather imposing stockade fort and the harmless steamers that ply up to Fort Ticonderoga and back, the rest is a gimcrack nightmare of concrete gnomes, Bambi deer and toadstools, shoddy food-stalls selling ‘Big Chief Hamburgers’ and ‘Minnehaha Candy Floss’, and ‘Attractions’ such as ‘Animal Land’ (‘Visitors may hold and photograph costumed chimps’), ‘Gaslight Village’ (‘Genuine 1890 gas-lighting’], and ‘Storytown U.S.A.’, a terrifying babyland nightmare which I need not describe.

Just say who I was. I’ve got a number in my outfit – sort of recognition number. It’s 007. Try not to forget it.’

He let go of me and thrust his gun up into its holster. He smelled of cordite and sweat. It was delicious.

‘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.

A secret agent? I didn’t care what he did. A number? I had already forgotten it. I knew exactly who he was and what he was. And everything, every smallest detail, would be written on my heart for ever.