James Bond: The Authorised Biography (7 page)

Bond asked him why he did it. Gregoriev's reply was to provide James Bond with something of a motto in the months ahead.

‘Ah,’
said Gregoriev, ‘
mais j
'
adore les sensations fortes.’

As a gambler, Bond could appreciate the logic of Gregoriev but he loved life too much to follow him. When the Russian offered him the gun he refused it. He had other ways by now of finding
les sensations fortes
.

One was through skiing. Now that he had conquered the Aiguilli, nothing could hold him back, and he soon gained a reputation as the wildest skier in the university. When he was writing of the events described in
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
, Fleming was impressed to discover that Bond had been down the Cresta run in a bobsleigh about this time. Bond also mountaineered under the most hazardous conditions. It was all a way of proving himself and of enjoying
les sensations fortes
. For Bond insists that he took these risks out of sheer joy of life, and was indignant when a psychiatrist suggested that he was suffering from an acute death wish. Fleming understood him here. In
Dr. No
he writes of Bond's ‘usual blind faith that he would win the duel’. Bond says that this faith has never quite deserted him.

There were other motives though behind Bond's mountaineering which Fleming failed to understand. Bond climbed because his father had. At times he bitterly regretted that Andrew Bond was dead. In
From Russia With Love
, Fleming described him flying above the Alps and, looking down, imagining himself again ‘a young man in his teens, with the leading end of the rope round his waist, bracing himself against the top of a rock chimney on the Aiguilles Rouges’. What Fleming didn't know was the emotional battle there had been behind the climb. As he looked down from his aircraft, Bond was not having the nostalgic memories that Fleming seemed to think. He was remembering a very private battle long ago as he had forced himself to follow a certain route up the mountainside in an attempt to lay the ghosts of his dead parents.

During his first months at Geneva, Bond had been developing his appetite for life. He was voracious. The same greed which had made him a glutton as a small boy was now directed outwards, and he was hungry for experience. One of his girl-friends was to compare him with the character of Nora in Ibsen's
The Doll's House –
always waiting for something
umnderbar
to happen. But that first Easter in Geneva, it must have seemed as if this ‘something
umnderbar’
had finally arrived.

It was the beginning of April. Term was over, but James Bond was in no hurry to leave Geneva. He enjoyed the rackety routine of life with old Frau Nisberg; he enjoyed the silence of his room with its views across the lake; he enjoyed Frau Nisberg's cooking. He had told Aunt Charmian that he would be back with her for Easter, but the thought of England secretly depressed him – that grey weather, that appalling food and all those boring dreary people. Even the thought of dear Aunt Charmian failed to reconcile him to England. He would recognize the anxiety behind her smile. She would be worrying what he was up to. And brother Henry would be there. He would much rather not see brother Henry. So James Bond decided to stay in Geneva just a few days longer.

The day after he made this decision, he was awakened by the noise of a car hooting in the street outside. This was unusual in that sleepy side-street and Bond, who had been late to bed, tried ignoring it. The noise continued. Finally Bond, bleary-eyed, looked through the window. There in the street below stood the gleaming form of a
café-au-lait
Hispano-Suiza. In the driver's seat, thumb firmly on the horn, sat his friend ‘Burglar’. Bond forgot his tiredness. He forgot Easter in England. Within half an hour he was dressed, packed, breakfasted and sitting beside Burglar bound for Paris.

Although Bond had had little contact with the Brintons since leaving Eton, he was as fascinated as ever by the rich. From that previous trip to Paris, he had picked up the idea of money as a source of freedom, glamour and excitement – in short, for those
sensations fortes
for which he craved. Now he was having a fresh chance to sample them, for Burglar wanted him to spend Easter with him. Without a second's hesitation Bond agreed.

It was a memorable day with the great car sweeping towards Paris through the early spring. They stopped at Mâcon where they lunched off
Poulards comme chez soi
at the Auberge Bressane. Burglar insisted on champagne. When they drove on to Paris, he promised Bond that they would have a night to remember. Bond, slightly drunk, agreed. And so occurred that evening which Fleming has described as ‘one of the most memorable of his life’.

As a keen reader of the old Continental
Daily Mail
, Bond remembered the advertisements for Harry's Bar. This seemed the acme of sophistication and it was there that they began. They drank more champagne. They dined in style at Fouquets (on Brinton
père's
account). Inevitably, they wondered where they could find a woman.

‘Nothing but the best,’ said Bond.

‘Naturally,’ said Burglar.

At this time the most notorious, if not quite the most fashionable, brothel in Paris, was the Elysée on the Place Vendôme. Le Chabanaif was wilder, Le Fourcy enjoyed a reputation still for the blowsy splendours of
la belle époque
. The Elysée was different. The superb eighteenth-century house was run like a London club, complete with doorman in full livery, smoking-room with hide armchairs and library smelling of cigar smoke where it was strictly forbidden to talk. The one unusual feature of the place was the presence of a lot of pretty girls with nothing on.

Although distinctly drunk by now, Bond seems to have treated the whole situation with the self-assurance one would hope for – Burglar likewise. The Brinton name secured them entry. According to Fleming, Bond was still a virgin. Bond, in the interests of strict accuracy, insists that technically this was not quite true. But he agrees that this was the first time that he enjoyed the real pleasure that would loom so large in all his subsequent adventures.

‘Until then I hadn't really known what it was there for.’

The girl's name was Alys. She was from Martinique – short, slightly plump, demure and adept in the arts of love. She giggled at him (thus revealing dimples and small perfect teeth), praised his looks, admired his virility, and, in a 500-franc room on the second floor, gave him the courage to accomplish creditably what, by its nature, was still unfamiliar. As an afterthought she stole his pocket book. It contained 1,000 francs, a passport and photographs of his parents. Bond noticed his loss just as he was leaving.

It was stupid of the girl, for the Elysée was respectable. So were its clients. None of them went there for the pleasure of losing pocket books. None of them wanted trouble. So when James Bond, aggressive, outraged and fractionally drunk by now, knocked out the liveried doorman and began shouting for the manager, the manager arrived. Her name was Marthe de Brandt.

Although forgotten now, Marthe de Brandt was famous in her day. The daughter of a judge and a famous courtesan, she was something more than the successful harlot she became. She was beautiful, abandoned and ambitious. She was also undoubtedly intelligent and well-educated. By twenty she was rich, by twenty-five, notorious. Thanks to the generosity of de Combray, the armaments king, she attained sufficient capital to open her own establishment. Thanks to her own attractions, she made the place something exceptional in the pleasure-life of Paris. It was her idea to call it the Elysée after the presidential palace. It was also her idea to base the décor on a London club. Within a few months of opening, it had become an unofficial centre for the political élite of France.

Like many of her kind, Marthe de Brandt was something of a spy. It was not hard for her to gather information from her guests and it was mere common sense to sell it to the highest bidder. At the time that James Bond met her she was already in her late twenties and a little past her prime – small, very blonde, with a determined mouth and periwinkle eyes. She was very rich. As far as one can be precise about such things, she worked mainly for the Eastern powers.

It is hard to know what such a woman can have seen in young James Bond. Hardly sex – she must have had enough of that. Nor love – the idea seemed absurd. At the time the general explanation was that she wanted someone to corrupt. If by corruption in this context one means teaching a younger person every known form of copulation, then Marthe de Brandt corrupted him. But there was more to the relationship than this. Both of them must have found something they needed in each other. For James Bond she may have been the amorous equivalent of the Aiguilli run. For her the precocious English boy was probably the son she wanted.

The strange thing is that she fell for him at once. Even young Brinton was surprised at the apologetic way this famous woman treated him, reprimanding the unfortunate doorman, summoning the girl, and, after slapping her face, dismissing her on the spot. Then Marthe de Brandt promised Bond that he would have his property returned the morning after, when she had finished her inquiries.

Bond spent the night at the Brinton flat on the Boulevard Haussmann. When he awoke a messenger had already brought him an envelope. Inside was his pocket book. It contained two crisp ten-thousand franc notes – also a letter from Marthe de Brandt inviting him to supper.

The remainder of that Easter holiday is something Bond won't talk about. His friends, the Brintons, saw little of him. Nor did Aunt Charmian. Marthe had a small flat in the tiny Place Furstenburg off the Rue Jacob. For the next few months this became his home.

He obsessed her as no man had done before. She obsessed him as no woman would again. His studies suffered – so did her business. Neither of them seemed to notice. The
amour fou
between Marthe de Brandt and her young Englishman became the talk of Paris.

It was a Chérie-like
affaire
. She indulged and spoiled him. He appeared to be her creature. During that Paris spring-time they went everywhere together – to see the horses run at Longchamp (where he was bored), to watch the twenty-four-hour race at Le Mans (where he wanted to drive) and to the latest show at Le Boeuf sur le Toit (where, for the first time in her life, she felt jealous). They drank a lot, fought a lot and loved a lot. She had his suits made by a famous tailor in the Rue de Rivoli, arranged him boxing lessons with Charpentier. When they felt bored, they drove down to Antibes where she had a wistaria-covered villa hidden among the pines. She bought him the famous Bentley with the Villiers supercharger. (Fleming got the details of the purchase slightly wrong – also, of course, the date, one of a number of inaccuracies which have caused Bond subsequent embarrassment.)

Despite their difference of age, they seemed to have appeared a well-matched couple; she was so small and fair and doll-like, he so tall and mature for his age. For these few months they led a charmed existence, almost oblivious of others. Aunt Charmian wrote anxious letters until old Gregor Bond told her he would get over it. Burglar's father tried to warn him of a woman like de Brandt. One night, as they were dining in the crowded Restaurant des Beaux Arts, they heard a drunk American call out, ‘Here is the lovely Marthe and her English poodle.’ It was a well-known brawler called Sailor Hendrix. Bond hit him very hard between the eyes, then pushed his head into his onion soup.

Another time he thought that she had been unfaithful with a former lover, a distinguished figure on the Paris Bourse. The following night she invited the man to their apartment and made him watch as she and Bond made love.

In fact there was only one man in the whole of Paris who could come between them. James Bond met him early that summer. His name was Maddox. He was a curious, dry, bespectacled man of totally indeterminate age, tough as a prewar army boot, and very rich. Bond met him through the Brintons. He appeared a typical wealthy foreigner, a collector of paintings and of pretty women, gourmet and wit and friend of many politicians. Officially, he was military attaché at the British Embassy. Unofficially, he ran the British Secret Service inside France. As an old lover of Marthe de Brandt, he had observed Bond's success with interest. A methodical man, he had checked on him as matter of routine. Then he decided he should get to know him better. But Maddox was a cold fish. Having met James Bond he did what he often did with people he thought might prove useful – he pigeon-holed him carefully away, but kept his tabs on him.

Maddox was always proud of his ability to use unlikely people for his work. A good judge of character, he used to claim that he had rarely been let down. He used to talk about his ‘cellar’ of potential agents. ‘Let them mature,’ he'd say, ‘wait until they're ready to be drunk.’ For James Bond this moment came quicker than Maddox had expected.

At the beginning of 1937 the British Secret Service faced a sudden crisis. For the past year the energies of the British government had been directed to cementing ties with France and with out-manoeuvring the extreme right wing which was pro-German, anti-British and which later formed the main support for Pierre Laval and Vichy France. The British had been having considerable success. As the German menace grew, there had been discreet cooperation between the French and British High Commands, who were unofficially exchanging plans and information. This was all very secret, but in January reports reached London that this information was known in Berlin. Rumours were picked up in Paris and soon published in the right-wing press. Official French Government denials followed.