“So,” said Blofeld. “Then the meeting is now closed. I will instruct the disposal squad to take care of the remains of No. 12. No. 18, please connect me with No. 1 on 20 megacycles. That waveband will have been unoccupied by the French Post Office since eight o’clock.”
7.
“Fasten Your Lap-Strap”
James Bond scraped the last dregs of yoghurt out of the bottom of the carton that said: “ Goat-milk culture. From our own Goat Farm at Stanway, Glos. The Heart of the Cotswolds. According to an authentic Bulgarian recipe .” He took an Energen roll, sliced it carefully—they are apt to crumble—and reached for the black treacle. He masticated each mouthful thoroughly. Saliva contains ptyalin. Thorough mastication creates ptyalin which helps to convert starches into sugar to supply energy for the body. Ptyalin is an enzyme. Other enzymes are pepsin, found in the stomach, and trypsin and erepsin, found in the intestine. These and other enzymes are chemical substances that break up the food as it passes through the mouth, the stomach, and the digestive tract and help absorb it directly into the blood stream. James Bond now had all these important facts at his fingertips. He couldn’t understand why no one had told him these things before. Since leaving Shrublands ten days before, he had never felt so well in his life. His energy had doubled. Even the paper work he had always found an intolerable drudgery was now almost a pleasure. He ate it up. Sections, after a period of being only surprised, were now becoming slightly irritated by the forceful, clear-headed minutes that came shooting back at them from the Double-O Section. Bond awoke so early and so full of beans that he had taken to arriving at his office early and leaving late, much to the irritation of his secretary, the delectable Loelia Ponsonby, who found her own private routines being put seriously out of joint. She also was beginning to show signs of irritation and strain. She had even taken upon herself to have a private word with Miss Moneypenny, M’s private secretary and her best friend in the building. Miss Moneypenny, swallowing her jealousy of Loelia Ponsonby, had been encouraging. “It’s all right, Lil,” she had said over coffee in the canteen. “The Old Man was like that for a couple of weeks after he had got back from that damned nature-cure place. It was like working for Gandhi or Schweitzer or someone. Then a couple of bad cases came up and rattled him and one evening he went to Blades—to take his mind off things I suppose—and the next day he felt awful, and looked it, and from then on he’s been all right again. I suppose he got back on the champagne cure or something. It’s really the best for men. It makes them awful, but at least they’re human like that. It’s when they get godlike one can’t stand them.”
May, Bond’s elderly Scottish treasure, came in to clear the breakfast things away. Bond had lit up a Duke of Durham, king-size, with filter. The authoritative Consumers Union of America rates this cigarette the one with the smallest tar and nicotine content. Bond had transferred to the brand from the fragrant but powerful Morland Balkan mixture with three gold rings round the paper that he had been smoking since his teens. The Dukes tasted of almost nothing, but they were at least better than Vanguards, the new “tobaccoless” cigarette from America that, despite its health-protecting qualities, filled the room with a faint “burning leaves” smell that made visitors to his office inquire whether something was on fire somewhere.
May was fiddling about with the breakfast things—her signal that she had something to say. Bond looked up from the center news page of The Times . “Anything on your mind, May?”
May’s elderly, severe features were flushed. She said defensively, “I have that.” She looked straight at Bond. She was holding the yoghurt carton in her hand. She crumpled it in her strong fingers and dropped it among the breakfast things on the tray. “It’s not my place to say it, Mister James, but ye’re poisoning yersel’.”
Bond said cheerfully, “I know, May. You’re quite right. But at least I’ve got them down to ten a day.”