Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [106]
And whatever else was true or false, he knew this girl did love him. He reached out and wrapped his arms round her. She sighed and clamped her lips to his mouth while his hands slid down her dress and pulled her by the hips roughly against him. When they had kissed for a minute, Bond said,
‘Now we’re going to order dinner. Exactly as we described.’
Scarlett went to the telephone. There were tears of relief in the corners of her eyes. ‘Shall we skip the eggs Benedict?’ she said.
‘Just this once. But I’d like a real drink first. A jug of martinis.’
Scarlett began to order rapidly. ‘What year Chaˆteau Batailley do you want?’
‘ ’Forty-five will do,’ said Bond.
‘ They’re sending out for that vintage. Dinner will be up in half an hour.’
‘ Time enough,’ said Bond. ‘Now come here. My boss told me to ‘‘press the flesh’’ and I don’t like to disobey orders.’
The belle-e´poque furnishings of the room included mirrors on the doors of the many wardrobes, as well as one above the marble fireplace. Bond watched Scarlett as she undressed, slipping out of the black dress, the stockings and the black underwear. There were four, eight, sixteen of her. She was multiplied in reflection, stretched to infinity in the soft light of the warm hotel room.
‘In the words of one of Felix Leiter’s bosses,’ said Bond, hoarsely, ‘we are in a wilderness of mirrors.’
Then he ran his hands over Scarlett’s naked body and took her roughly, quickly, with the pent-up urgency of their long and chaste association. Scarlett was in the bath when the dinner arrived, and Bond took a martini through to her.
‘I also brought you this,’ he said, taking a bottle of Floris gardenia bath essence from his pocket.
‘So it’s just as we planned.’ Scarlett smiled from the bath as she sprinkled some drops into the water. Bond tipped a glassful of the icy martini down his throat and sighed with happiness as he wheeled the room-service trolley to the bed. He took off his own
clothes and put on the white towelling robe from the bathroom door.
He lay back on the plump pillows and sucked the smoke of a Chesterfield deep into his lungs, then exhaled in a blissful stream, while Scarlett, naked as she had promised, prepared the caviar and the sole meunie`re. She sat cross-legged at the end of the bed, looking at him with her wide brown eyes, as though she feared he might disappear.
Bond drained the Bollinger. ‘I miss Poppy,’ he said. ‘She was so . . . demure. Surprisingly so, for such a wild child.’
‘Whereas Scarlett, who as a banker you’d expect to be restrained – ’
‘Is anything but.’
‘And which one,’ said Scarlett, ‘would you like me to be tonight?’
‘I think Poppy till midnight,’ said Bond, drawing the cork on the Chaˆteau Batailley, ‘but from then on pure, uninhibited Scarlett.’
They talked through the events of the past week over dinner. Bond told her of his final encounter with Gorner as she cleared away the plates and glasses. Scarlett took the last of the champagne and slipped under the bedclothes, leaning back next to Bond against the pillows. ‘What will happen to me, James?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My job. I mean, on my very first assignment, I’ve made the terrible mistake of having an office romance.’
Bond got off the bed, stood up and walked to the window. He was aware of how much his body ached
– his rib, his shoulder, his hip, almost all his muscles. Beneath him he could see the City of Light stretched out from the distant place de la Concorde, up through the Ope´ra and Pigalle to the terrible tower blocks of the northern banlieue.
He pulled the curtains together tightly, thinking of M, and Julian Burton, the new psychological-fitness trainer, Loelia Ponsonby, Moneypenny and all the others.
‘Some office,’ he said, returning to the bed.
‘Yes,’ said Scarlett, smiling as she pulled back the covers to reveal her naked body – pink from the bath, clean, soft and waiting for him. ‘And some romance.’
.
Acknowledgements
Hardware: James Holland, Mark Lanyon, Rachel