I used to be a very frequent poster at ajb007.co.uk - I used to be a mod, in fact. It was a fun place for me to finally talk to people who were as James Bond obsessed as me. The internet can be a wonderful thing.
Around the fiftieth anniversary of Casino Royale being published I wrote this little piece to celebrate it. A bit of faux-Fleming-fanfic. I thought it was long lost - the site suffered a massive server crash at one point that wiped out thousands of posts - but I found a copy in a long-lost folder on my PC. I'm therefore sticking it on here, my little corner of the 007 world. Maybe if I find my serialised fanfic Bond novel I also published on ajb007 which I'm positive Eon stole bits of for its films I'll whack that on here too. In the meantime, here's a load of old nonsense.
********************
James Bond took a lungful of Morlands and wished himself a happy birthday.
He was sitting in the window of his Chelsea flat, looking out over the plane trees that were now shimmering with green again after the ravages of winter. In the distance he could hear the rush hour traffic snarled up on the King’s Road, the roar of high powered engines as SW1’s moneyed classes drove their sports cars to offices in the City or the West End. There was a woman dragging a small child through the gardens at the centre of the square, as she did every day at this time. The woman was Hispanic, but the child was not; he was a pasty-faced five year old in scratchy school uniform, legs exposed in grey shorts to the still chilly April air. Every day the au pair – Bond guessed she was not a nanny from her discomfort around the boy – barked orders at him to follow, and every day he resisted. Always the same.
Once there had been a starched nanny in one of the houses across the way. He couldn’t remember which, but he did remember watching her walking around the gardens with a huge double-springed pram, wrapped up against a chilly winter with a hat and frock coat. Then later, playing with a toddler amongst the daffodils. When was that? How many years ago? Bond guessed that he was probably one of the longest residents of the square. He’d watched the remaining mansions being carved up into flats, or apartments as they now were called. He’d eaten his breakfast to the noise of workmen renovating and dividing once grand houses – or, in the building at the southwest corner, demolishing them altogether. That had been replaced by an “architect-designed” building, three floors of irregular wall shapes and misplaced windows. Bond still couldn’t decide if he liked it, ten years on.
Fifteen years ago! Or thereabouts. That was when he had seen the nanny and child at play. He’d just returned from some business in Cairo – some investigation which had gone wrong. The details were lost now, but he remembered that he had been invalided for a month afterwards. He’d taken to watching the square simply for a distraction in those dull painful times. How old would that little girl be now? She could be at university. Such a long time.
He expelled another mouthful of smoke. Fifty. A milestone by any standards. Not that he held much enthusiasm for birthdays. His secretary had made a few discreet enquiries early the previous week, and Bond had realised that she was planning on buying him a present. He’d made his replies terse at first, then, when she’d persisted, asked for something so obscene (and quite probably illegal) that she had blushed and retreated to her anteroom for the rest of the day. He had been forced to nip to the florists at Vauxhall tube to get her a bunch of apology azaleas. Still, he knew that when he arrived in work, there would be a card waiting on his desk, and quite probably a small wrapped gift of something innocuous – chocolates (which he would give back to her) or wine (which would invariably be unpalatable to all but the man in search of vinegar for his chips).
And that would be it for celebrations. There had been no cards in his post that morning, and Bond had not expected any. He had no family to send greetings, and his friends were few. More drinking partners than friends. Certainly not people given to sending cards with a couple of standard sentimental lines.
Bond crushed the remains of his cigarette into the ashtray and gathered his coat up for work. Perhaps he would take the Tube today. The walk to Sloane Square would be a change. And the car was wedged into its parking space outside again. Bond could not find the energy to begin the series of long and complex manouvers which would extricate the Bentley from between the two Mercedes.
Instead he wrapped the Burberry overcoat around him and ventured out into the street. It had rained earlier, and the pavements still carried Rorschach inkblots of moisture on them – a car here, a cloud there. The rain still lingered as glittering diamonds on the iron railings.
Perhaps he would have a lunchtime drink with Bill Tanner. A bottle of something red as his own small celebration. Not in the canteen, though. Though, of course, it wasn’t even a canteen anymore, not since the move. Now it was “Sages”, a fully-functioning restaurant with views over the Thames and waiter service. The food, however, seemed to have maintained its level of bare functionality.
Bond turned into the King’s Road, which was beginning to come to life. The traffic was there, but shutters were starting to rise on the shops and boutiques. A heavy street cleaner whirred its automated brushes and sucked away the debris of the weekend.
The people in the Service restaurant were different now, too. At first it had amused Bond to receive respectful nods from his colleagues as they passed him. It had taken him back to his Navy days. Now it was just annoying, the dips of the head, the looks that mixed awe and curiosity. He had become a figure, a celebrity almost within the Service, and that was anathema to his very anonymous soul.
It came back to his age again, Bond reflected. How many agents live to be fifty? Very few. Certainly none of the men Bond had trained with. They’d fallen to enemy fire, to sabotage and murder. In some cases, their own bodies had proved more deadly – Paul Tedworth, the erstewhile 623, whose once fit self had been ravaged by a series of cancers before finally succumbing last autumn. Bond remembered the funeral, at some anonymous church in the Home Counties. Almost every face there was a Service face. No family.
Bond dashed across Cheltenham Terrace, slipping in between a BMW and a Saab that had become entangled in the jam of trying to turn right. He had never expected to see fifty himself. Once he’d thought that his active service days would be finished before he was forty, probably through the most violent form of retirement. That seemed like a long time ago now. Why had he survived? Why was he different? He hesitated to call it luck, because he didn’t feel lucky. Not now.
People in this business don’t last long, thought Bond. People die, people die all the time. Just part of the job. And once, Bond had been just another secret agent, just another man without a silhouette. Now he was fifty though, and people looked at him differently. Now he was James Bond. James Bond was beyond the norm. James Bond was the spy to end all spies.
He waited at the traffic lights for the little green man. Except he didn’t feel special. He felt ordinary – no, worse, he felt a failure. It wasn’t that he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, guns firing, saving the world one more time. He just wanted to do his duty. And death was part of that duty.
How many people had he known who hadn’t reached fifty? His parents to start with. Dozens of friends. His wife.
The sky rumbled overhead, and a soft drizzle began to pat against Bond’s face. He was the one who put his life on the line for his country, and somehow the bullets had missed him. They’d hit the people he loved. Bond paused outside the window of Peter Jones and stared in at the artfully crafted window displays without ever seeing them. He was alone because his survival had been at the expense of others. He was fifty because other people were not.
The rain dripped from the dark comma of hair over Bond’s forehead and ran down his suntanned skin. Why celebrate a birthday that reminded you of death? He turned and headed for the dark maw of the Sloane Square tube station. There were shoppers streaming out, tourists, baffled backpackers who’d got off at the wrong stop.
Bond pushed through their throngs and heard snatches of their conversations. At first their bodies irritated him, annoyed. Women in the way, men dawdling, the elderly with their caravans of shopping trolleys. Their endless chattering bounced off the tiled walls, the concrete floors, people not caring about him and his remorse, people just living. People had always talked like this, wanting to see the sights, the bargains, the way home. People carried on. Life carried on. People didn’t know that there was a secret, a bloody, war behind the scenes.. People didn’t know the plots that would have condemned them, and their parents to death if it weren’t for people fighting for them behind closed doors.
Bond knew. Bond was one of those fighters.
He stood amidst the teeming masses and thought, this is me. This is why I carry on. I am fifty and because of me there is life. My actions have been violent and bloody, my personal cost has been high, but in the end… I am nothing compared with this. He smiled at a confused-looking Japanese woman with a map of the West End. Taking her elbow, he guided her to the Journey Planner on the wall and pointed out her route to Leicester Square. This is why I got to fifty, Bond thought. Because I love life, and my world, and London. Because I want London to carry on being London.
I am fifty now, thought Bond. But his insecurities, his neuroses… suddenly they seemed as important as sparrow’s tears. Fifty meant fifty years of this world. Fifty meant fifty years of life.
James Bond passed through the ticket gate and into another half-century.
