towards the western coastline of Ireland. ‘Fasten your seat-belts. No smoking’ and there was the green and white searchlight of Shannon and the red and gold of the flare-path rushing towards them, and then the brilliant blue of the ground-lights between which the Stratocruiser trundled towards the unloading bay. Steak and champagne for dinner, and the wonderful goblet of hot coffee laced with Irish whisky and topped with half an inch of thick cream. A glance at the junk in the airport shops, the ‘Irish Horn Rosaries’, the ‘Bog Oak Irish Harp’, and the ‘Brass Leprechauns’, all at $1.50, and the ghastly ‘Irish Musical Cottage’ at $4, the furry, unwearable tweeds and the dainty Irish linen doilies and cocktail napkins. And then the Irish rigmarole coming over the loudspeaker in which only the words ‘B.O.A.C.’ and ‘New York’ were comprehensible, the translation into English, the last look at Europe, and they were climbing to 15,000 feet and heading for their next contact with the surface of the world, the radio beacons on the weather ships ‘Jig’ and ‘Charlie’, marking time around their compass points somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.
Bond slept well and awoke only as they were approaching the southern shores of Nova Scotia. He went forward to the washroom and shaved, and gargled away the taste of a night of pressurized air, and then he went back to his seat between the lines of crumpled, stirring passengers and had his usual moment of exhilaration as the sun came up over the rim of the world and bathed the cabin in blood.
Slowly, with the dawn, the plane came alive. Twenty thousand feet below, the houses began to show like grains of sugar spilt across a brown carpet. Nothing moved on the earth’s surface except a thin worm of smoke from a train, the straight white feather of a fishing boat’s wake across an inlet, and the glint of chromium from a toy motor car caught in the sun; but Bond could almost see the sleeping humps under the bedclothes beginning to stir and, where there was a wisp of smoke rising into the still morning air, he could smell the coffee brewing in the kitchens.
Breakfast came, that inappropriate assortment of foods that B.O.A.C. advertise as ‘An English country house breakfast’, and the chief steward came round with the U.S. customs forms – Form No. 6063 of the Treasury Department – and Bond read the small print: ‘failure to declare any article or any wilfully false statement ... fine or imprisonment or both’ and wrote ‘Personal effects’ and cheerfully signed the lie.
And then there were three hours when the plane hung dead-steady in the middle of the world, and only the patches of bright sunshine swaying slowly a few inches up and down the walls of the cabin gave a sense of motion. But at last there was the great sprawl of Boston below them, and then the bold pattern of a clover-leaf on the New Jersey Turnpike, and Bond’s ears began to block with the slow descent towards the pall of haze that was the suburbs of New York. There was the hiss and sickly smell of the insecticide bomb, the shrill hydraulic whine of the air-brakes and the landing-wheels being lowered, the dip of the plane’s nose, the tearing bump of the tyres on the runway, the ugly roar as the screws were reversed to slow the plane for the entrance bay, the rumbling progress over the tired grass plain towards the tarmac apron, the clang of the hatch being opened, and they were there.
7 ....... ‘SHADY’ TREE
T HE CUSTOMS officer, a paunchy good-living man with dark sweat marks at the armpits of his grey uniform shirt, sauntered lazily over from the Supervisor’s desk to where Bond stood, his three pieces of luggage in front of him, under the letter B. Next door, under C, the girl took a packet of Parliaments out of her bag and put a cigarette between her lips. Bond heard several impatient clicks at the lighter, and the sharper snap as she put the lighter back in her bag
Bond slept well and awoke only as they were approaching the southern shores of Nova Scotia. He went forward to the washroom and shaved, and gargled away the taste of a night of pressurized air, and then he went back to his seat between the lines of crumpled, stirring passengers and had his usual moment of exhilaration as the sun came up over the rim of the world and bathed the cabin in blood.
Slowly, with the dawn, the plane came alive. Twenty thousand feet below, the houses began to show like grains of sugar spilt across a brown carpet. Nothing moved on the earth’s surface except a thin worm of smoke from a train, the straight white feather of a fishing boat’s wake across an inlet, and the glint of chromium from a toy motor car caught in the sun; but Bond could almost see the sleeping humps under the bedclothes beginning to stir and, where there was a wisp of smoke rising into the still morning air, he could smell the coffee brewing in the kitchens.
Breakfast came, that inappropriate assortment of foods that B.O.A.C. advertise as ‘An English country house breakfast’, and the chief steward came round with the U.S. customs forms – Form No. 6063 of the Treasury Department – and Bond read the small print: ‘failure to declare any article or any wilfully false statement ... fine or imprisonment or both’ and wrote ‘Personal effects’ and cheerfully signed the lie.
And then there were three hours when the plane hung dead-steady in the middle of the world, and only the patches of bright sunshine swaying slowly a few inches up and down the walls of the cabin gave a sense of motion. But at last there was the great sprawl of Boston below them, and then the bold pattern of a clover-leaf on the New Jersey Turnpike, and Bond’s ears began to block with the slow descent towards the pall of haze that was the suburbs of New York. There was the hiss and sickly smell of the insecticide bomb, the shrill hydraulic whine of the air-brakes and the landing-wheels being lowered, the dip of the plane’s nose, the tearing bump of the tyres on the runway, the ugly roar as the screws were reversed to slow the plane for the entrance bay, the rumbling progress over the tired grass plain towards the tarmac apron, the clang of the hatch being opened, and they were there.
7 ....... ‘SHADY’ TREE
T HE CUSTOMS officer, a paunchy good-living man with dark sweat marks at the armpits of his grey uniform shirt, sauntered lazily over from the Supervisor’s desk to where Bond stood, his three pieces of luggage in front of him, under the letter B. Next door, under C, the girl took a packet of Parliaments out of her bag and put a cigarette between her lips. Bond heard several impatient clicks at the lighter, and the sharper snap as she put the lighter back in her bag
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