She didn’t talk to Bond or seem to be aware of him, and this allowed him to continue his inspection without inhibition. She had a gay, to-hell-with-you face that, Bond thought, would become animal in passion. In bed she would fight and bite and then suddenly melt into hot surrender. He could almost see the proud, sensual mouth bare away from the even white teeth in a snarl of desire and then, afterwards, soften into a half-pout of loving slavery. In profile the eyes were soft charcoal slits such as you see on some birds, but in the shop Bond had seen them full face. Then they had been fierce and direct with a golden flicker in the dark brown that held much the same message as the mouth. The profile, the straight, small uptilted nose, the determined set of the chin, and the clean-cut sweep of the jawline were as decisive as a royal command, and the way the head was set on the neck had the same authority – the poise one associates with imaginary princesses. Two features modified the clean-cut purity of line – a soft, muddled Brigitte Bardot haircut that escaped from under the straw hat in endearing disarray, and two deeply cut but soft dimples which could only have been etched by a sweet if rather ironic smile that Bond had not yet seen. The sunburn was not overdone and her skin had none of that dried, exhausted sheen that can turn the texture of even the youngest skin into something more like parchment. Beneath the gold, there was an earthy warmth in the cheeks that suggested a good healthy peasant strain from the Italian Alps and her breasts, high-riding and deeply V-ed, were from the same stock. The general impression, Bond decided, was of a wilful, high-tempered, sensual girl – a beautiful Arab mare who would only allow herself to be ridden by a horseman with steel thighs and velvet hands, and then only with curb and saw-bit – and then only when he had broken her to bridle and saddle. Bond thought that he would like to try his strength against hers. But that must be for some other time. For the moment another man was in the saddle. He would first have to be unhorsed. And anyway, what the hell was he doing fooling with these things? There was a job to be done. The devil of a job.
The MG swept out of Shirley Street on to Eastern Road and followed the coast. Across the wide harbour entrance were the emerald and turquoise shoals of Athol Island. A deep-sea fishing boat was passing over them, the two tall antennae of her twelve-foot rods streaming their lines astern. A fast motorboat came hammering by close in shore, the water-skier on the line behind her executing tight slaloms across the waves of her wake. It was a sparkling, beautiful day and Bond’s heart lifted momentarily from the trough of indecision and despondency created by an assignment that, particularly since his arrival at dawn that day, seemed increasingly time-wasting and futile.
The Bahamas, the string of a thousand islands that straggle five hundred miles south-east from just east of the coast of Florida to just north of Cuba, from latitude 27° down to latitude 21°, were, for most of three hundred years, the haunt of every famous pirate of the Western Atlantic, and today tourism makes full use of the romantic mythology. A road-sign said ‘
A sand track showed on their left. The girl took it and pulled up in front of a ruined stone warehouse against which leant a pink clapboard house with white window-frames and a white Adam style doorway over which hung a brightly painted inn sign of a powder keg with a skull and crossbones on it. The girl drove the MG into the shade of a clump of casuarinas and they got out and went through the door and through a small dining-room with red and white checked covers and out on to a terrace built on the remains of a stone wharf. The terrace was shaded by sea-almond trees trimmed into umbrellas. Trailed by a shuffling coloured waiter with soup stains down his white coat, they chose a cool table on the edge of the terrace looking over the water. Bond glanced at his watch. He said to the girl, ‘It’s exactly midday. Do you want to drink solid or soft?’
The girl said, ‘Soft. I’ll have a double Bloody Mary with plenty of Worcester sauce.’
Bond said, ‘What do you call hard? I’ll have a vodka and tonic with a dash of bitters.’
The waiter said, ‘Yassuh,’ and mooched away.
‘I call vodka-on-the-rocks hard. All that tomato juice makes it soft.’ She hooked a chair towards her with one foot and stretched out her legs on it so that they were in the sun. The position wasn’t comfortable enough. She kicked off her sandals and sat back, satisfied. She said, ‘When did you arrive? I haven’t seen you about. When it’s like this, at the end of the season, one expects to know most of the faces.’
