Never Say Die (James Bond 007) 1 / Overcoming the Monster (2 of 2)

James Bond came to his senses at around three-thirty in the morning.  Something had startled him in his semi-conscious, drunken state, and it hadn’t presented itself to him with immediacy.  He found his feet and set the empty snifter of Scotch down on the coffee table with a clunk and reached into his jacket.  Producing his 7.65mm Walther PPK short, he flicked the safety catch up. 

He wasn’t sober in any sense of the word and moved with slow, calculated steps, taking the bottle of Scotch with him.  He drew open the sliding patio door ponderously and went out onto the balcony.  The ’21 Macallan was what was left of his inheritance.  The bottle had in fact been purchased in the year of his birth by his father, Andrew Bond, and had shared a drink of it with his brother, James’ late Uncle, Max.  Bond’s first car had been left to him by Maximillian Bond, a one-and-a-half-litre Bamford & Martin Sidevalve Short Chassis Tourer.  He still missed him and the motorcar dearly.  Being in a perpetual state of drunkenness had wreaked havoc in Bond’s mind.  He couldn’t help but find comfort in times gone by than the uncertainty of future.  He looked out over the sprawling world of millionaire playboys, aristocrats and the finer things in life and was totally appalled by it.    

‘You’ve had quite enough,’ a controlled voice spoke.  The neighbour, in the room next door, with a polite and controlled voice of someone used to dealing with drunks.  Considering his age, perhaps he had once been one.  ‘Son,’ he said.

Bond coiled with the speed of a rattlesnake, twisting round in the air in fright.      His gun arm hung low at the waistband and the whisky bottle was brought up in front of his face to defend himself.  After he had a moment to look at the man leaning on the balcony across from him, he felt rather silly and slipped the gun back into his holster.  He reached behind him and pulled the deck chair closer to him, sitting himself down in it with a thud. 

‘What are ye drinking?’ the man said in a thick Highland accent, not taking much notice of him now.  His gaze was fixed on the waves, which rushed to and fro, along the sands of the beaches into the distance.

‘Scotch.  It’s good stuff, you should have one.’

‘No, it’ll just keep me awake.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Is that all that’s keeping you up?’ he said.

Bond shrugged and took a healthy swig from the bottle, he held it by its neck and placed it on the ground beside the threaded deckchair.  He took a Morland Special out from his gunmetal cigarette case and offered one to the elderly Scot, who took it and nodded his appreciation.  He couldn’t think of anything much to say and instead of slurring, sat there in complete silence.  The old man broke it after a long moment.

‘You know drinking away your problems isn’t going to solve anything?’ he said.

‘Currently, it’s the only answer I have,’

‘And what of your friends?  What would they say if they saw you now?’

Bond stopped for a moment.  Thought about the question.  Then said, bitterly: ‘I don’t have many friends.’

The old man, who looked at him for that remark, returned his attentions to the sea.  The gentle rushing sound it made when it broke the shore seemed to soothe him.  Bond noticed the slow rising and falling of his chest through his dinner jacket.  He figured him for a Captain, something in the Royal Navy, retired, probably a decorated hero in the First World War, and not one of those entitled bastards either who served under the pretence of King and Country.  In reality, their family names wouldn’t have been worth a damn if they hadn’t enlisted.  The man was quite portly, with dark intelligent eyes, his gaze resting on things, taking in every detail for periods of time.  Bond wondered what the man must have thought of him.  ‘Sorry,’ he finally said.

‘That’s all right, you’re angry.  Remind me of my son, you’re probably about the same age,’ he said.  As though an afterthought, he asked another question: ‘Stressful job?’

‘At times,’ James Bond replied, finishing his cigarette and looking for somewhere to put it.  He tried not to show it, but the man interested him deeply.  He wasn’t one of the typical Royale congregation, too rich with a property in Nassau or someplace, too empty and pompous to talk about anything other than his money, as is the tendency, not that they are aware of it, of the wealthy classes.  He seemed like a man that had something on his mind worth saying, some story or essence he wanted to convey before the sun rose and his wife, or whoever was in his room, expected him to join them at breakfast, probably at some ungodly hour.  Then again, he didn’t seem drunk and Bond noticed the strain in his eyes, he looked tired and in need of sleep, probably spent the evening talking too much over very little (which had visibly worn him down), the dark eyes turned back to him and the man gestured.

‘That’s something my son would say.  Definitely not the talkative kind.  Better educated than me but can’t converse for nothing, the jumped-up wee shit.’

Bond sat forward, laughed.  ‘Where is he now?’

‘Buried over the Cemetery at Hanwell, just up the Uxbridge Road.  Been there a good few years now.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’

‘Eh, no matter.  Not your fault.  But that is,’ he said in a convincing tone, which sounded faintly military.  He was pointing at something and Bond realised that it must had been at the bottle.  The Scot took another pull at the Englishman’s Morland and examined the end of it, holding the end upright, the long line of ash didn’t fall off.  He watched it as he spoke, taking an occasional puff off it, determined to see for how long it would burn before the line of ash broke and it fell over the balcony edge. 

He said: ‘My son had been oot partying with some of his friends in the Riviera.  Not the nicest of types, you can imagine.  He had lost a girl who’d been very special to him.  She died during the final days of the War, heart-breaking.  My wife and I had never met her.  His friends said it was terrible to see him go the way he did.  Something in him cracked, something deep beneath the skin.  He thought it was his fault, while he was off galivanting and whatnot, she had stayed at home.  An American bomb went off in a town not far from here, a fragment of it caught her, clipping her skull.  He was busy celebrating, having sold what he used to sell and had  raised more than enough to retire on. 

When he heard what had happened to her, Lealia.   He spent his days drifting, often drunk.  Eventually, he drove down from Saint-Tropez to her hometown and a week later, he crashed the car, which was meant to be a present for her, into the mouth of the sea.’

Bond blinked quickly, clenching his jaw.  God he was drunk!  The gentleman looked out to sea again.  Judging from his glum expression, the eagerness in his eyes, he wagered that the catastrophe had taken place across the very street they sat.   

‘His mother died from a broken heart.  She wasn’t strong enough after it happened,’ he said.  The Morland was finished now.  The ash still in place, he tossed it over the balcony and followed it down with his eyes.  He nodded genteelly, found his feet and slid open the patio door: ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for, without needing that stuff.  It’ll get better, it has to.’  He nodded, turned on his heel, and closed the door behind him.  Bond heard the key turn in the lock and a clicking sound.     

Padding back through into the room, digesting the man’s words and processing them over and over in his mind, he knew that he had a point.  Bond was going over to a place he wouldn’t, or even couldn’t, come back from.  He turned the bottle over and over again in his hand, set it down over by the end of the coffee table, screwed a Brausch silencer to the end of the PPK and looked down the barrel.  It was in his sights, he had a clear shot.  There was a click, the magazine dropped out from the well and he ejected a bullet, catching it in his hand and setting it down on the table.  It took him some time to get off to sleep, but he managed it.  When he woke up the next morning, he knocked on the gentleman’s door.    The cleaning lady was shocked to see him, standing there, well-presented and clean-shaven. 

‘Il est à la maison?’ he said.

‘Non,’ she replied.  ‘He has left the hotel.’

James Bond nodded perfunctorily, gripped his suitcase a little tighter and moved down the corridor with purpose, outside he got into the Bentley and raced towards Dover.  He wasn’t happier, or of stable mind, but he was sober and well-enough to consider seeing a doctor.  Baby steps.