When the gong sounded for lunch he still did not know which picture to choose. To shelve a decision he cleared his mind of everything but the prospect of his afternoon alone with Gala Brand.
16 | A GOLDEN DAY
It was wonderful afternoon of blue and green and gold. When they left the concrete apron through the guard-gate near the empty firing point, now connected by a thick cable with the launching site, they stopped for a moment on the edge of the great chalk cliff and stood gazing over the whole corner of England where Caesar had first landed two thousand years before.
To their left the carpet of green turf, bright with small wildflowers, sloped gradually down to the long pebble beaches of Walmer and Deal, which curved off towards Sandwich and the Bay. Beyond, the cliffs of Margate, showing white through the distant haze that hid the North Foreland, guarded the grey scar of Manston aerodrome above which American Thunderjets wrote their white scribbles in the sky. Then came the Isle of Thanet and, out of sight, the mouth of the Thames.
It was low tide and the Goodwins were golden and tender in the sparkling blue of the Straits with only the smattering of masts and spars that stretched along their length to tell the true story. The white lettering on the South Goodwins Lightship was easy to read and even the name of her sister ship to the north showed white against the red of her hull.
Between the sands of the coast, along the twelve-fathom channel of the Inner Leads, there were half a dozen ships beating up through the Downs, the thud of their engines coming clearly off the quiet sea, and between the evil sands and the sharp outline of the French coast there were ships of all registries going about their business – liners, merchantmen, ungainly Dutch schuyts, and even a slim corvette hastening down south, perhaps to Portsmouth. As far as the eye could reach the Eastern Approaches of England were dotted with traffic plying towards near or distant horizons, towards a home port, or towards the other side of the world. It was a panorama full of colour and excitement and romance and the two people on the edge of the cliff were silent as they stood for a time and watched it all.
The peace was broken by two blasts on the siren from the house and they turned to gaze back at the ugly concrete world that had been cleaned out of their minds. As they watched, a red flag was broken out above the dome of the launching site and two R.A.F. crash-wagons with red crosses on their sides rolled out of the trees to the edge of the blast-wall and pulled up.
‘Fuelling’s going to begin,’ said Bond. ‘Let’s get on with our walk. There’ll be nothing to see and if there happened to be something we probably wouldn’t survive it at this range.’
She smiled at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And I’m sick of the sight of all this concrete.’
They walked on down the gentle slope and were soon out of sight of the firing point and the high wire fence.
The ice of Gala’s reserve melted quickly in the sunshine.
The exotic gaiety of her clothes, a black and white striped cotton shirt tucked into a wide hand-stitched black leather belt above a medium-length skirt in shocking pink, seemed to have infected her, and it was impossible for Bond to recognize the chill woman of the night before in the girl who now walked beside him and laughed happily at his ignorance of the names of the wildflowers, the samphire, Viper’s bugloss, and fumitory round their feet.
Triumphantly she found a bee orchis and picked it.
‘You wouldn’t do that if you knew that flowers scream when they are picked,’ said Bond.
Gala looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, suspecting a joke.
‘Didn’t you know?’ He smiled at her reaction. ‘There’s an Indian called Professor Bhose, who’s written a treatise on the nervous system of flowers. He measured their reaction to pain. He even recorded the scream of a rose being picked. It must be one of the most heart-rending sounds in the world. I heard something like it as you picked that flower.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, looking suspiciously at the torn root. ‘Anyway,’ she said maliciously, ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were a person to get sentimental. Don’t people in your section of the Service make a business of killing? And not just flowers either. People.’
‘Flowers can’t shoot back,’ said Bond.
She looked at the orchis. ‘Now you’ve made me feel like a murderer. It’s very unkind of you. But,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘I shall have to find out about this Indian and if you’re right I shall never pick a flower again as long as I live. What am I to going to do with this one? You make me feel it’s bleeding all over my hands.’
‘Give it to me,’ said Bond. ‘According to you, my hands are dripping with blood already. A little more won’t hurt.’
She handed it to him and their hands touched. ‘You can stick it in the muzzle of your revolver,’ she said to cover the flash of contact.
