Solo

we can go to. See you at eight.’

·5·
     

IMPORT–EXPORT
     
    Bond slid very quietly out of Bryce’s bed and stood there for a moment, looking down on her as she slept deeply, lying on her side, one breast innocently exposed. She was a beautiful mature woman, Bond thought, pulling on his trousers and remembering the last time he’d made love – weeks and weeks ago – and how different in almost every degree his partner had been then. He moved to the door in bare feet and turned the handle slowly, thinking about the rest-house on the edge of the Zanza River Delta with Blessing Ogilvy-Grant in his arms. He smiled with a certain bitterness – that was when all his misfortunes had begun.
    He left the bedroom door ajar by an inch and padded downstairs to Bryce’s study. He switched on the light and sat at her desk, sliding open the top drawer and taking out her passport. The date of birth pretty much fitted – and he was more than happy to shed a few years. The name was both masculine and feminine. All he needed to do was have the photograph and the gender designation changed – and he had exactly the man in mind who could do that. He would become Bryce Fitzjohn, ‘professional actor’. ‘Actress’ could be easily tampered with. He slipped the passport into the back pocket of his trousers and went through to the sitting room, where he poured himself an inch of brandy into a tumbler and sipped at it, turning his back to the warm embers still glowing in the grate of the fireplace, thinking back agreeably over their evening together.
    Bond had arrived on time (in a taxi from Richmond station) and when Bryce opened the door to him she kissed him on the cheek – a good sign, Bond thought – and he smelled the scent of ‘Shalimar’ on her. She was wearing a black velvet dress to just above the knee with a low scoop neck. Two diamonds glittered at her ears and her thick blonde hair was brushed casually back from her brow. There was a bottle of Taittinger champagne waiting in an ice bucket on a table in the sitting room that she asked Bond to open. They toasted each other as they had done that evening across the dining room in the Dorchester.
    ‘Here’s to breaking and entering,’ she said.
    ‘Where’s this little restaurant of yours?’ Bond said. ‘We don’t want to be late.’
    ‘It’s about ten yards away. I thought it’d be nicer to eat at home.’
    They both knew exactly what was going to happen later and that knowledge provided a satisfying sensual undercurrent to their conversation as they ate the meal she cooked for him – a rare sirloin steak with a tomato and shallot salad, the wine a light and fruity Chianti, with a thin slice of lemony torta della nonna to follow.
    They were both worldly and sophisticated people of a certain age, Bond reasoned, and no doubt her sexual history was as varied and interesting as his. Well, maybe not quite . . . Still, the point was, Bond thought as he looked at her clearing away the plates, that there was no pretence involved here. No artificial wooing or effortful foreplay. They both candidly wanted each other, in the way that men and women know this instinctively, and they were going to bring this state of affairs about with as much fun and seductive expediency as they chose.
    They went back through to the sitting room, where Bond lit the fire. They drank a brandy, smoked a cigarette and talked to each other – deliciously postponing the moment they were waiting for. In fact Bond sensed the timbre of her voice change, dropping, growing huskier, as she told him of the disaster of her last marriage – there had been two – to an American film producer with, it turned out, a significant drug problem. He thought it was remembered emotion, but he quickly sensed that the huskiness in her voice was desire: it was a signal, and when Bond stood up and crossed the floor to her and kissed her she responded with an ardency that surprised him.
    They made careful love in her wide bed, Bond relishing the smooth ripeness of her body. Afterwards, she sent him down to the kitchen for another bottle of champagne and they lay in bed drinking and talking.
    ‘You say you’re a “businessman”,’ she said, studying his lean form as he lay there beside her. ‘Import–export, whatever that means. Yet you’ve more scars on your body than a gladiator.’
    ‘I had a difficult and dangerous war,’ Bond said.
    She reached over, her full breasts shifting, and touched