The Man with the Golden Typewriter (47 page)

I am so sorry this hasn't been done before, but quite honestly both Michael and I forgot all about it. Anyway, it should come as a pleasant Christmas present!

You are quite right to have raised all this and I am delighted we shall at last get our accounts straight.

Yes, please do get the scroll a bit more scrolly if you can.

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

5th December, 1963

My dear Michael,

“You Only Live Twice”

We seem to be having the most tremendous arguments about what is a “tanka” and what is a “haiku”, and I can't understand why somebody can't look it up in a dictionary and find the correct answer.

But at the present moment you have certainly got it wrong by changing my “syllables” for “letters”.

If you will, as I have, consult Professor Blyth, Volume 4, 1952, you will find that “the haiku is the traditional Japanese verse of 17 syllables”. [. . .]

Regarding the mention on Page 16, line 7, of “tanka of thirty-one syllables”, which seems to have been missed in the general argumentation, I think this should also stet unless someone of high authority on either side of the Atlantic shouts me down.

I am sending copies of this to Phyllis Jackson, Victor Weybright and Playboy, and I hope we have now heard the end of Japanese poesy.

 

17

The Man With the Golden Gun

‘I don't want yachts, race-horses or a Rolls Royce,' Fleming told journalist René MacColl in February 1964. ‘I want my family and my friends and good health and to have a small treadmill with a temperature of 80 degrees in the shade and in the sea to come to every year for two months.

‘And to be able to work there and look at the flowers and fish, and somehow to give pleasure, whether innocent or illicit, to people in their millions. Well you can't ask for more.'

It was a wistful vision of a future that Fleming knew was unlikely to materialise. By the start of the year he was in serious decline, and although Jamaica cheered him up as always, the end was written on his face. When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation came to interview him at Goldeneye he spoke with intelligence and clarity but looked appallingly unwell. So tired and drooping were his features that it was hard to believe he was only fifty-five: he might have been a good ten years older. Nevertheless, he summoned enough energy to write what he had decided would be the last Bond novel.

The Man With the Golden Gun
saw 007 transported once again to Jamaica. Having left Japan, where Fleming last stranded him, he reaches Vladivostok only to be brainwashed by SMERSH. When he returns, with murder in mind, the Secret Service foils his attempt to assassinate M with a poison-gas pistol. After intensive de-programming he is given one last chance: a do-or-die mission to kill the sharpest gunman in the business, Francisco Scaramanga. A ruthless character, Scaramanga does
a nasty trade in drugs, prostitution and gambling, has murdered several British agents, and is cooperating with the Soviets to disrupt the Caribbean sugar trade. Naturally, he has all the attributes of a true Bond villain: he wields a gold-plated Colt 45 that fires silver-plated bullets of solid gold; and he has three nipples.

Using the pseudonym Mark Hazard, Bond wangles his way into Scaramanga's confidence as a personal assistant. When his cover is blown, his employer devises a colourful death on a tourist train. But Bond manages to shoot his way out of trouble, and, having killed a carriage-load of Scaramanga's associates, pursues Scaramanga himself through the jungle, where they meet in a final, deadly duel.

When Fleming sent the manuscript to Howard and Plomer, he was fairly confident that it worked – or could work, once he had polished it up. But the usual process of refinement proved beyond him. That Easter he played a game of golf in the rain, drove home in wet clothes and caught a cold which developed into pleurisy. On further examination it was found he had blood clots in the lung. He spent a long time in hospital and then in June was sent to recuperate, once again, in Hove. Visitors were discouraged lest they raise his blood pressure, but the few who were allowed found him sitting quietly at a window, cigarette in hand and staring out to sea.

Fleming's outlook was not improved by the death of his mother, who died on 27 July 1964. Recognising that he was the most fragile of her brood, she had always been a support. But now she was gone, and with her went what remained of his spirit. Her funeral was held at Nettlebed, the Fleming heartland, with a wake at his brother Peter's house, Merrimoles. Everybody noticed how ill he looked, and, when he asked for a glass of gin, Peter's housekeeper remonstrated that this wasn't what the doctors recommended. ‘Fuck the doctors,' came his reply.

The shadows were gathering. When Michael Howard last saw him, ‘on a dark and thundery afternoon a few weeks before his death, he told me suddenly that he knew how hostile I had been to his first book. It was generous of him never to have challenged me about it earlier.' This wasn't the first act of generosity. Despite receiving grander offers from other publishers he had stuck with Cape, and from being an annoying
upstart he had risen to become the mainstay of an increasingly moribund publishing house. By Howard's admission, his books were by now the only thing that kept Cape in profit.

In the following weeks Fleming smoked and drank his life to a strangely symmetrical conclusion. He had moved into a house in Kent at the start of his Bond career, and now that it was over it was to Kent that he returned once again. That August he and Ann motored down to Sandwich where Fleming was due to be elected captain of the Royal St George's golf club. After dinner on 11 August he suffered a heart attack. The following morning, on his son Caspar's twelfth birthday, he died.

A memorial service was organised on 15 September by his sister Amaryllis at St Bartholomew's Church, Smithfield, a spot she chose not only for its central location but because it was said to be the oldest church in London – and with its dense and massive interior it certainly looked the part. Anticipating crowds, Amaryllis had arranged for police cordons, but in the event they were not needed. She played a Bach Sarabande on her cello, and William Plomer, Fleming's friend, ‘gentle reader' and editorial companion, gave the address. Meanwhile, if they had failed to appear at the service, the wider public had their own memorial in the form of Bond.
The Man With the Golden Gun
was published in 1965,
¹
and the next year Cape produced
Octopussy and The Living Daylights
containing the two stories they had to hand, plus ‘Property of a Lady'.

Yet, as William Plomer remarked amidst the massive pillars of St Bart's, this was only one aspect of the man. His envoi was heartfelt: ‘Let us remember him as he was on top of the world, with his foot on the accelerator, laughing at absurdities, enjoying discoveries, absorbed in his many interests and plans, fascinated and amused by places and people and facts and fantasies, an entertainer of millions, and for us a friend never to be forgotten.'

TO ALAN WHICKER, ESQ., The British Broadcasting Corporation, Lime Grove Studios, London W. 12, England

The journalist and broadcaster Alan Whicker wrote in the erroneous belief that an approach had already been made, to enquire if Fleming might like to be the subject of a 50-minute episode in his investigative TV series, ‘Whicker's World'. As an enticement he added that, ‘I have interviewed Paul Getty; Baron and Baroness Thyssen; and have considered in depth the lives of such diverse groups as the Indians of the Guatemala and the Quorn [a British fox hunt].' Understanding that Fleming was currently in Jamaica, Whicker proposed he bring his film crew there in April. He received a stony reply.

23rd January, 1964

Dear Mr. Whicker,

Thank you very much for your letter of the 16th, but, if you will forgive me, I am not greatly impressed by being equated with any of your previous victims!

Moreover, I do not greatly seek publicity and I am daunted by the idea of working away for several days for the benefit of the BBC; apparently without payment.

And I leave here on March 16th.

Wouldn't you rather do the Battersea Dogs Home and forget about me?

TO WILLIAM PLOMER

From Goldeneye, 2nd March, 1964

My dear Wm,

Here is my end, nearly, of term report as usual.

I have somehow managed to write a, nearly, book. Not long, about the same as ‘The Spy who loved me'. But it is nevertheless a miracle – in my opinion – because I felt empty as a Jamaican gourd when I left. It is called ‘The Man With the Golden Gun', which I like & is set, once again, in Jamaica. I've no idea what it is like, but then one never does. I am not
enthusiastic, but then I have lived with this joke, under your lash!, for so long, that the zest is seeping out through my Dr. Scholls. Anyway, I am proud not to have failed you, whatever your verdict! Perhaps I am getting spoiled by success. You must lecture me about this when I get back. Incidentally, & for your ears only, there is a big take-over bid for Glidrose underway.
²
A huge City company! Golly, what you started at the Ivy 13 years ago!

Annie sits & reads Keats & Quennell & moans about the ‘Tristes Tropiques' but gets sleek. She sends her warmest love, as do eye.

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

From Goldeneye, 3rd March, 1964

Dear Michael,

One sudden, brilliant notion.

I am surrounded by books of reference here – about birds, fish, shells, tropical shrubs, trees, plants, the stars, etc. etc. – but every guest says “what does ganja look like?” (marihuana)

Why not do a cool, well-illustrated book on the “narcotic flora of the world”? Expensive. Definitive. With medical effects, etc. I would certainly underwrite it. You can't miss. Get cracking before Weidenpuss or Thames & Hudson do it. A £5 job.

I have spoken!

Thanks for your gen. Sorry about Monday but after the flight & signing all those books we will be in purdah. Anyway, why promote each other?

Now, get off the [launch] pad!

Cape did, in fact, investigate the possibility. But their enquiries were half-hearted and extended little further than the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew
from whom they received a prim and slight disapproving list of plants in which the only curiosity – and one that Fleming would have enjoyed – was that lettuce (reputedly) had mild narcotic properties. But by then he was dead and they dropped it.

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

‘57th Birthday', 28th March, 1964
³

My Dear Michael,

Warmest thanks for your messages and the Googarty [sic].
⁴
He was in fact a great friend of my mother tho. she only gets a mention. He contributed to my first publication “The Wyvern”, a one-time-only mag I produced at Eton containing my first piece of fiction – a shameless crib of Michael Arlen! But I made £90 out of my venture as a publisher which is more than many can say.

Out this weekend & then to Vic. Square for a week where I
promise
to finish correcting my book. Then to the country for a while.

I say, Cape's
are
in the news with their books these days! Many congratulations to you all.

Got some sweet peas from Andre Deutsch!!! Humpf!

Salud,

Ian

P.S. Happy B-day to you too.

TO VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, ESQ., The New American Library, 501 Madison Avenue, New York, 22

7th April, 1964

My Dear Victor,

I have had your comments on the title of my next book, “The Man With The Golden Gun.”

I had thought of Algren's “The Man With The Golden Arm”, but am I not right in thinking there is no copyright in titles? And, in any case, Algren's was in such a different vein of literature.

And was there not a man called Apuleius who wrote “The Man With The Golden Ass”! However, I have two alternative titles “Goldenrod” or “Number 3½ Love Lane”, to fall back on in case of emergency.

But heaven knows when I am going to get around to correcting the typescript and doing a certain amount of rewriting.

I am absolutely deluged with junk from which I simply don't seem to be able to free up existence. So please be excessively patient this year.

TO WILLIAM PLOMER

While laid up with pleurisy in the King Edward VII Hospital, known as Sister Agnes, Fleming wrote to congratulate Plomer on the recently published diaries of Richard Rumbold which had given him, as editor, an extraordinary amount of trouble. Fleming also made clear that he was finished with Bond.

Chez la Soeur Agnes, 10th May, 1964, Saturday

My dear Wm,

Alas I am ‘gisant parterre' here for the past 10 days with another 2 weeks to go – pleurisy. I thought only aunts got it, but no one will say how ill I am – the usual mumbo-jumbo – and in fact I feel totally ‘remis' though not yet up to correcting my stupid book – or rather the last 3rd of it, but I shall get down to it next week and then you & I will plan
whether to publish in 1965 or give it another year's working over so that we can go out with a bang instead of a whimper.

Your fine opus arrived just in time & saw me over the first 3 days. Oddly enough, on my first night, the night nurse exclaimed when she saw the picture on the jacket. She had been R[umbold]'s nurse at Midhurst in ? 1956. She had much liked him but said he was terribly ‘mixed up' (indeed!) and his looks had gone (who's wouldn't have?) She remembered Hilda well (what a saint!) Odd coincidence.

I remember well, at the Charing X, was it 3 years ago? you telling me that this shower had emptied itself on your head – bales & cases full of letters & papers, & how I commiserated. Well, now time has passed & an infinity of labour (which you don't mention, of course, in your excellent introduction), and the work is done & the memorial stands. What a wonderful &
good
achievement! I read every word & shall now always remember this man I never knew OR heard of. Echoes of Denton Welch
⁵
 – perhaps because of the introspection & Ceylon. What a monster that father was! One of the great ogres as you bring out in a few lines. Wish I had read ‘My Father's Son'. And Ronnie Knox – really! Did this foul deed come in E[velyn] W[augh]'s biography? I bet not. Of course I adored your occasional asides & intrusions – rather like a Zen master with his stick! I would have liked a photograph of HOW he was at the end but that might have been unkind. Interesting his admiration for Paul Bowles whom I think a cold-hearted bastard but I can see that his compactness and discipline would have impressed R.