Ian Fleming`s Goldeneye resort drips with Jamaican atmosphere

Over in the paradisiacal Goldeneye resort in Jamaica, on the north side of the island near the banana port of Oracabessa, a wild fig tree grows extravagantly, sending down roots as if trying to outdo all other fig trees in the world, and the charged, fecund atmosphere must have helped Ian Fleming to write his Bond thrillers here during his January and February visits - reports The Sunday Times.

The wooden houses, which are rented out by the day, look as if they’ve just wandered into the jungle and decided to stay; outdoor showers, bamboo recliners, surrounded by palms or banyan trees. You can swim, or take the little boat over a lagoon to a deserted beach, or write on the terraces or desks of the secluded houses, including Fleming’s original house: “I sat down at the red bullet-wood desk... and, for better or for worse, wrote the first of 12 best-selling thrillers that have sold about 20m copies and been translated into 23 languages. I wrote every one of them at this desk with the jalousies closed around me so that I would not be distracted by the birds and the flowers and the sunshine outside… The books featured a man called James Bond... Would these books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday? I doubt it.”

The testosterone-filled Bond thrillers are not so different from the bombastic songs of reggae singers trumpeting their sexual skills: “They don’t call me Mr Lover because I like ice cream,” boasts Shaggy. Maybe it’s something in the air.

This has long been a party island; sexy, exuberant, mischievous, funny and wild. Both the people and the ravishing beauty of the island get under the skin. (Columbus described it as “the fairest isle my eyes ever beheld”.) Noël Coward fell for it after renting Fleming’s estate. Coward’s first estate was the nearby Blue Harbour, on the coast, with a saltwater pool where nobody was allowed to wear clothes, a small beach, a main house and two guesthouses, where his friends — including Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Cecil Beaton and Laurence Olivier — used to stay. John Pringle, who created the Round Hill resort, was asked to meet Olivier and his wife, Vivien Leigh, there, and turned up to see them “naked on Noël’s terrace, Vivien draped over Larry’s cock. It was some introduction!”.

To escape his visitors, Coward built Firefly, a one- bedroom house up on the hill, where he died of a heart attack in 1973 and where he is buried on the hillside. It has been left much as it was when he died: the sun has bleached the books and the furniture, but his typewriter is still on his desk, his florid paintings of men are still in his art studio, and pictures of the Queen Mother’s visit (the lobster mousse didn’t defrost in time, and Coward had to make a last-minute soup, and the white-gloved butler was so overwhelmed by her beauty all he could do was stare at her) are still on the walls. The view of the coastline is peculiarly lovely, with the dense green limbs from the hills resting in the Caribbean Sea as if part of some fabulous sleeping monster.

Jamaica still feels like a giant party. In a remote poor village of shacks, plump-bottomed women were setting up a sound system seven feet high for an outdoor party that afternoon. Tourists party like crazy in the all-inclusive resorts; Hedonism III is the name of one, and plenty have nude or “clothing optional” beaches.

Thanks to `Ken` for the alert.

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