Solo

back to his flat in Chelsea. As it swung into Sloane Square he felt his spirits lift. Sloane Square and Albert Bridge were the two London landmarks that gladdened his heart whenever he saw them, day or night, all seasons – signals that he was coming home. He liked living in Chelsea – ‘that leafy tranquil cultivated
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 . . . where I worked and wandered’. Who had said that . . . ? Anyway, he thought, telling the taxi to stop just before tree-filled Wellington Square, whoever it was, he agreed with the sentiment. He strolled into the square and made for his front door. He was searching his pockets for his keys when the door opened and his housekeeper, Donalda, stood there.
    ‘Ah, glad you’re back, sir,’ she said. ‘There’s a wee bit of a crisis – the painters have found some damp in the drawing room.’
    Bond followed Donalda into his flat, dropping his grip in the hall. She had been with him for six months now – she was the niece of May, his trusted housekeeper of many years, who had finally, reluctantly, retired, creeping arthritis encouraging the decision. It had been May who suggested Donalda. ‘Best to keep it in the family, Mr James,’ she’d said. ‘We’re very close.’ Donalda was a slim, severe-looking young woman in her late twenties with a rare and diffident smile. She never wore make-up and her hair was cut in a short bob with a fringe – a nun’s hairstyle, Bond thought. He supposed with a little effort she might have made herself less plain and more attractive but the handover of May’s housekeeping responsibilities had been achieved so seamlessly that he had no desire to see that quiet efficiency alter in any way. One morning it had been May, as ever, then the next day Donalda had been introduced. There was an apprentice period of two weeks when both May and Donalda had run his household life, then May had gone and Donalda took over. Absolutely nothing in his domestic routine had been altered: his coffee was brewed to the same strength, his scrambled eggs had the same consistency, his shirts were ironed identically, the shopping was done, the place kept unimprovably clean. Donalda slipped into his life as if she’d been in training for the job since childhood.
    Bond stepped into his drawing room. The rugs were rolled up, the tall bookshelves empty of his books – all boxed and in store – the floorboards were bare and the furniture was grouped in the centre of the room under dust sheets. His nose tingled with the astringent smell of fresh paint. Tom Doig, the decorator, pointed out the patch of damp in the room’s western corner, revealed when a bureau had been moved. Bond reluctantly authorised him to investigate further and wrote a cheque for £125 to cover the next period of work. He had been promising himself for years to redecorate his flat. He liked his home – its scale and situation – and had no intention of moving. Besides, his lease still had forty-four years left to run. Bond calculated – I’ll be eighty-nine if I last that long, he thought. Which would be extremely unlikely, he reasoned, given his line of work – then he grew angry with himself. What was he doing thinking about the future? It was the here and now that intrigued and fulfilled him and, as if to prove the truth of this adage to himself, he spent an hour going over all the work in the flat that Doig had completed, deliberately finding fault everywhere.
    When he’d thoroughly irritated and discomfited Doig and his team he told Donalda not to bother preparing a cold supper for him (she went home at six) and he left the decorators to swear and curse at him behind his back.
    There was a hazy afternoon sun and the day was agreeably mild and balmy. He wandered pleasurably west along the King’s Road towards the Café Picasso pondering a late lunch of some kind. The King’s Road was busy but Bond found his mind wasn’t concentrating on the passing parade – the throng of shoppers, the poseurs, the curious, the gilded, carefree young, dressed as if for a fabulous harlequinade somewhere; a noise, a random image, had triggered memories of his dream that morning and he was back in northern France in 1944 walking through an ancient oak wood towards an isolated chateau . . .
    To Bond’s eyes, it looked as if the Chateau Malflacon had been the victim of a rocket attack by a Hawker Typhoon on D-Day. The classic stone facade was cratered with the shallow impact-bursts of the