The MG swept out of Shirley Street on to Eastern Road and followed the coast. Across the wide harbor entrance were the emerald and turquoise shoals of Athol Island. A deep-sea fishing boat was passing over them, the. two tall antennae of her twelve-foot rods streaming their lines astern. A fast motorboat came hammering by dose inshore, the water-skier on the line behind her executing tight slaloms across the waves of her wake. It was a sparkling, beautiful day and Bond’s heart lifted momentarily from the trough of indecision and despondency created by an assignment that, particularly since his arrival at dawn that day, seemed increasingly time-wasting and futile.
The Bahamas, the string of a thousand islands that straggle five hundred miles southeast from just east of the coast of Florida to just north of Cuba, from latitude 27º down to latitude 21º, were, for most of three hundred years, the haunt of every famous pirate of the western Atlantic, and today tourism makes full use of the romantic mythology. A road-sign said “ Blackbeard’s Tower 1 mile ” and another “ Gunpowder Wharf. Sea Food. Native Drinks. Shady Garden. First Left .”
A sand track showed on their left. The girl took it and pulled up in front of a ruined stone warehouse against which leaned a pink clapboard house with white window frames and a white Adam-style doorway over which hung a brightly painted inn sign of a powder keg with a skull and crossbones on it. The girl drove the MG into the shade of a clump of casuarinas and they got out and went through the door and through a small dining room with red and white checked covers and out onto a terrace built on the remains of a stone wharf. The terrace was shaded by sea-almond trees trimmed into umbrellas. Trailed by a shuffling colored waiter with soup stains down his white coat, they chose a cool table on the edge of the terrace looking over the water. Bond glanced at his watch. He said to the girl, “It’s exactly midday. Do you want to drink solid or soft?”
The girl said, “Soft. I’ll have a double Bloody Mary with plenty of Worcester sauce.”
Bond said, “What do you call hard? I’ll have a vodka and tonic with a dash of bitters.” The waiter said, “Yassuh” and mooched away.
“I call vodka-on-the-rocks hard. All that tomato juice makes it soft.” She hooked a chair toward her with one foot and stretched out her legs on it so that they were in the sun. The position wasn’t comfortable enough. She kicked off her sandals and sat back, satisfied. She said, “When did you arrive? I haven’t seen you about. When it’s like this, at the end of the season, one expects to know most of the faces.”
“I got in this morning. From New York. I’ve come to look for a property. It struck me that now would be better than in the season. When all the millionaires are here the prices are hopeless. They may come down a bit now they’re gone. How long have you been here?
“About six months. I came out in a yacht, the Disco Volante . You may have seen her. She’s anchored up the coast. You probably flew right over her coming in to land at Windsor Field.”
“A long low streamlined affair? Is she yours? She’s got beautiful lines.”
“She belongs to a relative of mine.” The eyes watched Bond’s face.
“Do you stay on board?”
“Oh, no. We’ve got a beach property. Or rather we’ve taken it. It’s a place called Palmyra. Just opposite where the yacht is. It belongs to an Englishman. I believe he wants to sell it. It’s very beautiful. And it’s a long way away from the tourists. It’s at a place called Lyford Key.”
“That sounds the sort of place I’m looking for.”
“Well, we’ll be gone in about a week.”
“Oh.” Bond looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“If you’ve got to flirt, don’t be obvious.” Suddenly the girl laughed. She looked contrite. The dimples remained. “I mean, I didn’t really mean that—not the way it sounded. But I’ve spent six months listening to that kind of thing from these silly old rich goats and the only way to shut them up is to be rude. I’m not being conceited. There’s no one under sixty in this place. Young people can’t afford it. So any woman who hasn’t got a harelip or a mustache—well not even a mustache would put them off. They’d probably like it. Well, I mean absolutely any girl makes these old goats get their bifocals all steamed up.” She laughed again. She was getting friendly. “I expect you’ll have just the same effect on the old women with pince-nez and blue rinses.”