The James Bond Anthology

The Governor paused. ‘Pretty extraordinary, really. A man like Masters, kindly, sensitive, who wouldn’t normally hurt a fly. And here he was performing one of the cruellest actions I can recall in all my experience. It was my law operating.’ The Governor smiled thinly. ‘Whatever her sins, if she had given him that Quantum of Solace he could never have behaved to her as he did. As it was, she had awakened in him a bestial cruelty – a cruelty that perhaps lies deeply hidden in all of us and that only a threat to our existence can bring to the surface. Masters wanted to make the girl suffer, not as much as he had suffered because that was impossible, but as much as he could possibly contrive. And that false gesture with the motor-car and the radio-gramophone was a fiendishly brilliant bit of delayed action to remind her, even when he was gone, how much he hated her, how much he wanted still to hurt her.’

Bond said: ‘It must have been a shattering experience. It’s extraordinary how much people can hurt each other. I’m beginning to feel rather sorry for the girl. What happened to her in the end – and to him, for the matter of that?’

The Governor got to his feet and looked at his watch. ‘Good heavens, it’s nearly midnight. And I’ve been keeping the staff up all this time,’ he smiled, ‘as well as you.’ He walked across to the fireplace and rang a bell. A Negro butler appeared. The Governor apologized for keeping him up and told him to lock up and turn the light out. Bond was on his feet. The Governor turned to him. ‘Come along and I’ll tell you the rest. I’ll walk through the garden with you and see that the sentry lets you out.’

They walked slowly through the long rooms and down the broad steps to the garden. It was a beautiful night under a full moon that raced over their heads through the thin high clouds.

The Governor said: ‘Masters went on in the Service, but somehow he never lived up to his good start. After the Bermuda business something seemed to go out of him. Part of him had been killed by the experience. He was a maimed man. Mostly her fault, of course, but I guess that what he did to her lived on with him and perhaps haunted him. He was good at his work, but he had somehow lost the human touch and he gradually dried up. Of course he never married again and in the end he got shunted off into the ground nuts scheme, and when that was a failure he retired and went to live in Nigeria – back to the only people in the world who had shown him any kindness – back to where it had all started from. Bit tragic, really, when I remember what he was like when we were young.’

‘And the girl?’

‘Oh, she went through a pretty bad time. We handed round the hat for her and she pottered in and out of various jobs that were more or less charity. She tried to go back to being an air hostess, but the way she had broken her contract with Imperial Airways put her out of the running for that. There weren’t so many airlines in those days and there was no shortage of applicants for the few hostess jobs that were going. The Burfords got transferred to Jamaica later in that same year and that removed her main prop. As I said, Lady Burford had always had a soft spot for her. Rhoda Masters was pretty nearly destitute. She still had her looks and various men had kept her for a while; but you can’t make the rounds for very long in a small place like Bermuda, and she was very near to becoming a harlot and getting into trouble with the police when Providence again stepped in and decided she had been punished enough. A letter came from Lady Burford enclosing her fare to Jamaica and saying she had got her a job as receptionist at the Blue Hills Hotel, one of the best of the Kingston hotels. So she left, and I expect – I’d been transferred to Rhodesia by then – that Bermuda was heartily relieved to see the last of her.’

The Governor and Bond had come to the wide entrance gates to the grounds of Government House. Beyond them shone, white and black and pink under the moon, the huddle of narrow streets and pretty clapboard houses with gingerbread gables and balconies that is Nassau. With a terrific clatter the sentry came to attention and presented arms. The Governor raised a hand: ‘All right. Stand at ease.’ Again the clockwork sentry rattled briefly into life and there was silence.

The Governor said: ‘And that’s the end of the story except for one final quirk of fate. One day a Canadian millionaire turned up at the Blue Hills Hotel and stayed for the winter. At the end of the time he took Rhoda Masters back to Canada and married her. She’s lived in clover ever since.’

‘Good heavens. That was a stroke of luck. Hardly deserved it.’