James Bond celebrates his fictional 80th birthday
15-Nov-2004 • Bond News
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THE LITTLE suite of rooms is stylishly anonymous, with just a few clues here and there as to its illustrious occupant. Itâs number seven in this quiet retirement complex, but some wag - presumably not the tenant himself - has added two noughts to the single digit on the indicator board inside the electronic gate. The drive winds through pleasant grounds, a single golf hole to one side (modelled, Iâm later told, on the 18th at Royal Sandwich) and to the other, a neatly landscaped lake on which a pair of goldeneye ducks swim placidly, with no apparent sense of irony.
A male member of staff - not uniformed but surely not long out of one - lets me into the private sitting room, explaining that my interviewee is finishing his afternoon nap and will join me shortly. The only visible personal flourishes are a pair of photographs and a small heraldic plaque on a side table. The larger of the photographs shows a couple in Alpine gear squinting at the camera in a hard winter light; the smaller, of a beautiful woman, has a band of black ribbon fixed to one corner. The lettering on the plaque reads Orbis non sufficit, my hostâs family motto. Looking around the antiseptic room, itâs hard to imagine this shrunken world could possibly be enough for a man whose adventures were the stuff of legend.
When, after a few minutes, he comes in, I have the distinct impression that he has been watching me for some time. The handshake is frail, but still firm, and while he holds the grip he pats the tape machine, microphone and notebook in my jacket pocket with a quick and unobtrusive movement of his left hand. Only then does he break the silence in a voice that still - just about - covers an inherited Scottish brogue with a cosmopolitan twang which is compounded by Eton, Cambridge and a lifetime checking in and out of rooms as characterless as these. "The nameâs Bond. James Bond ... but then, you know that."
To mark his 80th birthday, which falls today, Britainâs most famous spy consented to give just one interview. "The Scotshman?" he said. "Yesh, why not?" The tiny speech impediment is apparently new: the result of an ill-fitting replacement denture. His frame is somewhat diminished and the famous unruly comma of hair is now thin and silvery on his brow. He points me to a chair and sits down himself, gingerly and with a faint wince. "Proshtate problemsh," he says apologetically. "Occupational hazard."
He receives The Scotsmanâs gift of a bottle of vintage vodka with sardonic grace: "Pre-Revolutionary? My friendsh will enjoy it. Unfortunately, Iâm no longer permitted..." The friends - certainly those in the tiny club of double-Os - are presumably few and far between. Longevity normally doesnât go with a career in the Secret Service. Bill Fairbanks, 002, was killed by Scaramanga in Beirut as long ago as 1969; Frederick Warder, 004, fell victim to SMERSH in Gibraltar; unkindest of all, Alec Trevelyan, 006 - one of Bondâs closest friends - betrayed the Service and the Crown, apparently in revenge for the death of his Cossack parents. It was a blow Bond felt deeply, though he may have sympathised with Trevelyanâs motives.
DEATH PUT ITS thumbprint on 007âs own early life. Bond was born on November 16 1924, to a Scottish father, Andrew Bond, and a Swiss mother, Monique Delacroix who died together in a climbing accident. Jamesâs one serious attempt at matrimony ended tragically on his wedding day - hence the small black-edged portrait. Eton and Cambridge may have shaped him intellectually, but it was the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve that made a man of a rootless boy.
Bond signed up in 1941, which means he must have lied about his age: why? "Queen and country, old chap. There were still clean causes left to fight back then. Not like thish shamblesh in Iraq." Itâs clear from what follows, most of it politely off-the-record, that Bond didnât rate Saddam as much of a risk to mankind, certainly not in comparison to Blofeld or Scaramanga, and dismisses Iraqâs putative WMDs as pea-shooters compared to the orbiting lasers and space stations he had to deal with in his professional capacity.
Nor is he any more flattering about the present-day intelligence community: "The Cold War was useful cover. It allowed us to keep after the real villains, like S.P.E.C.T.R.E - and the womenâs liberation movement. The Shervice isnât what it was. Hashnât been since they gave Shtella Rimington the top job. Imagine taking orders from a skirt. I ask you." I hesitantly mention Judi Dench. Bond looks at me blankly: "I knew a Julie Drench once. That was her working name, obviously. Shpeciality club in Hamburg..." The voice tails off nostalgically.
He suggests a turn around the grounds. At least thatâs what it sounded like. As we leave he decides that neither hat nor umbrella are needed, throws them nonchalantly at the stand in his lobby and misses. Before pulling the door behind him, he tweaks a silvery hair from the floppy comma on his brow and pastes it to the door handle. He sees my mystified look and explains: "Tradecraft. Forsh of habit." We talk of those whoâve tried to bring his career to life on the screen. Bond speaks easily of "Sean" and "Roger", more diffidently of "George" and "Timothy". When I ask about the present incumbent, he gazes remotely at an elderly fellow resident slashing with a sand wedge on that solitary golf hole and murmurs what sounds like "Guinness", though itâs hard to tell. When I point out that itâs 50 years to the month since he was first portrayed on screen, by American actor Barry Nelson in a 1954 CBS television adaptation of Casino Royale, he narrows those steely eyes: "Youâve been reading my file. Youâre no more from the bloody Scotshman than I was from Universal Import & Export. Who shent you?"
HE CALMS DOWN enough to resume our talk, this time about those whoâve transcribed his adventures in print, about Fleming and Kingsley Amis, John Gardner and Raymond Benson, and about attempts to make the legend accessible to a new generation of readers in the shape of a 13-year-old Bond, hero of Charlie Fast Show Higsonâs forthcoming SilverFin. Bond looks sceptical. Only Fleming and authorised biographer John Pearson have ever given their subject complete satisfaction. As for the others, briefly licensed to tell the Bond story, they: "Misshed the point. Misshed it completely." And the point was what? "Well, sexsh, obviously. All the resht of it - the politics and the plans for world domination and the money - that was a diversion. It was all about sexsh."
Bond winces on the cold garden bench. Is it really prostate trouble, I wonder, or does he still suffer from that sadistic spanking with a carpet beater he took in Casino Royale? Thatâs what real villains do, isnât it, not all that elaborately stagey stuff with lasers and sharks that you see in the movies? "If the bloody Scotshman prints that, Iâll shue them and shoot you". Bond dips inside his nicely tailored (but baggy) jacket and produces a tiny handgun. No longer the Walther PPK (or Walther P99 as it became after Tomorrow Never Dies) but the dinky Beretta .25 with taped grip and shortened barrel with which he started his career. This was what the service armourer once described as a "ladiesâ gun", though it seems an inopportune moment to bring it up, since the tiny barrel is pressed to my upper lip. His mood continues to brighten and darken for most of the rest of our talk.
When it was time to leave, he walked me amiably enough to my car, then kicked my tires contemptuously, muttering something about "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". I had a last glimpse of him as I drove off. Bond had doubled through the rhododendrons and appeared at the gate just ahead of me. As I passed, he dropped suddenly into a firing crouch and mimed a shot at my car, a move his big screen incarnations had never managed to get quite right. Through the windscreen I completed the mime: a blood-dimmed wobble and slump at the wheel. Bond cracked up and then was gripped with a coughing fit. My last view of him was in the rear-view mirror, bent double, purple-faced, a nurse running down the drive towards him. I hope he made it. Happy birthday, 007.
Thanks to `Kyvan` for the alert.
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