The Man with the Golden Typewriter by Bloomsbury Publishing

Author:Bloomsbury Publishing
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781632864901
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

10

For Your Eyes Only

When Fleming flew to Jamaica in 1959 he had already made a head start on his forthcoming portfolio of short stories. Among the host of peculiarities that had caught his mind during his trip to the Seychelles the previous year was the stingray – or more specifically its tail. Possession of these fearsome items was strictly regulated: citizens were forbidden to own a specimen more than three feet long, it had to be bound at each end and could only be used as a walking stick. As Fleming pointed out, in the wrong hands they could be vicious weapons: ‘A single lash with the five foot tail can maim for life.’

Fleming used it to dramatic effect in ‘The Hildebrand Rarity’, which he wrote shortly after his return to Britain in 1958. Here, Bond is on leave in the Seychelles when he encounters an American millionaire, Milton Krest, cruising the islands in search of rare specimens for his tax-dodge charity, the Krest Foundation. The object of his attentions when Bond meets him is a pink-striped fish – the Hildebrand Rarity – to acquire which he is happy to poison great stretches of ocean. A brash, brutal man, he has a trophy wife named Liz whom he likes to keep in order with the aid of ‘the Corrector,’ a three-foot stingray tail (unbound) that hangs on the bedroom wall. When one day he is found dead with the Rarity thrust down his throat it is clear that his wife was the culprit but the incident is hushed up as an accident.

The expat community of the Seychelles also provided a source of inspiration. ‘There are innumerable wafer-thin “Colonels” living on five hundred a year [who] are uninteresting people, the flotsam and jetsam of our receding Empire,’ Fleming wrote, ‘who put nothing, not even a touch of the authentic beach-comber back into the haven they have chosen to whine out their lives in.’ He gave a milder but no less scathing portrait of the claustrophobic nature of colonial life in ‘Quantum of Solace’, a cautionary tale in the Somerset Maugham style1 that describes the fate of a glamorous air stewardess who marries a shy diplomat stationed in Bermuda, only to find after she embarks on an adulterous affair that her seemingly unworldly spouse has a fine line in revenge. The quantum of solace to which the title refers is the measure of love that allows a marriage to survive; when it reaches zero there is no hope. Perhaps this was a reflection on the state of Fleming’s own relationship, but more likely it showed his increasing despondency with Bond and life in general. Having listened to the tale, as recounted by the Governor of the Bahamas, Bond leaves for his next task – a meeting with the FBI and US coastguards – in anticipation of an event ‘edged with boredom and futility’.

Like ‘The Hildebrand Rarity’, ‘Quantum of Solace’ had also been written the previous year, so with these two stories in his pocket he only had to come up with a few more.

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