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    The Spy Who Loved Me: A James Bond Novel
    The Spy Who Loved Me: A James Bond Novel
    The Spy Who Loved Me: A James Bond Novel
    Ebook209 pages3 hours

    The Spy Who Loved Me: A James Bond Novel

    By Ian Fleming

    3/5

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    JAMES BOND AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HIM BEFORE

    Unlike the rest of the books in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, The Spy Who Loved Me is told from the perspective of a woman who fell for 007—and owes him her life.

    Vivienne Michel, a precocious French Canadian raised in the United Kingdom, feels like a foreigner in every land. With only a supercharged Vespa and a handful of American dollars, she travels down winding roads into the pine forests of the Adirondacks. After stopping at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court and being coerced into caretaking at the vacant motel for the night, Viv opens the door to two armed mobsters and realizes being a woman alone is no easy task. But when a third stranger arrives―a confident Englishman with a keen sense for sizing things up―the tables are turned.

    Still reeling in the wake of Operation Thunderball, Bond had planned for his jaunt through the Adirondacks to be a period of rest before his return to Europe. But that all changes when his tire goes flat in front of a certain motel…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 23, 2023
    ISBN9780063298903
    The Spy Who Loved Me: A James Bond Novel
    Author

    Ian Fleming

    Ian Lancaster Fleming was born in London in 1908. His first job was at Reuters news agency, after which he worked briefly as a stockbroker before working in Naval Intelligence during World War Two. His first novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953 and was an instant success. Fleming went on to write thirteen other Bond books as well as two works of nonfiction and the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Bond books have earned praise from figures such as Raymond Chandler, who called Fleming “the most forceful and driving writer of thrillers in England” and President Kennedy, who named From Russia with Love as one of his favorite books. The books inspired a hugely successful series of film adaptations that began in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. He was married to Ann O'Neill, with whom he had a son, Caspar. He died in 1964.

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    Reviews for The Spy Who Loved Me

    3/5

    437 ratings28 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Fleming's macho fantasy writing really stumbles here where a female character is the narrator, and through her Fleming channels his one-dimensional views of women.
    • 1/5
      Unfortunately, no one goes into a Bond novel expecting to find women being treated with respect - in Ian Fleming’s style, women - and, to be frank, most other characters - are simply props for Bond to use as he sees fit. However, where most other novels still have some value as spy thrillers with mostly fun plots, this one gets terrible real fast.
      In The Spy Who Loved Me (side note: the plot of the film version has nothing to do with the book), Fleming thought it would be a good idea to write from the point of view of the ‘Bond girl’. It wasn’t. The book is highly misogynistic, and much, much worse than what Fleming would usually write.
      All in all, probably the worst of all Bond novels (I haven’t read them all yet, but I doubt it can get much worse than this). Fortunately, it’s a relatively minor one - Bond doesn’t even show up before the last third - so, if you haven’t read it, please take my advice and just skip it. You won’t be sorry.
    • 4/5
      Quite unique among the Bond books, The Spy Who Loved Me benefits from diverting from the rest of the series with a change of formula, narrator, and placement of Bond within the story.
    • 4/5
      An experiment for Fleming, which he ended up hating, and one of the few diversions away from formula, when he writes this memoir from the point of view of the female protagonist, who has driven down from Canada, and has ended up baby sitting a motel due for closure. Most of the book deals with her, and her alone, and in fact, Bond doesn’t appear until the last third. Although this is a diversion from his normal story telling, there are several Fleming tropes here, with a damsel in distress, some nasty dragons about to kill her, and heroism coupled with a perchance for bacon and eggs. Different but the culture and viewpoint has horrifically dated, and some of the blatant misogyny is difficult to stomach.
    • 2/5
      I feel like Donny Kerabatsos wrote this book instead of Ian Fleming because this was out of his element and not in a good way. I sometimes like it when authors try to break away from their formula and write something completely different, but with this book it didn't work for me. I think it's because it's the 10th book of a series were the formant aren't the same, but overall it the same formula that just works for spy novels.

      One reason I thought I'd like this novel was for the fact the narrator is a female character. As a feminist, this got me excited to hear a Bond novel dared to have a book with a female lead. Yet this is where it just doesn't work. The books are all in 3rd person, so having a narrator just threw me off. Most of the time this book felt forced. It was like Fleming was trying to hard to get a female audience. And in my mind you don't try to get an audience of the opposite sex because it never works. Maybe Fleming's editors told him to write this book.

      I also really didn't like the Bond Girl (or narrator) in this book either. You would think that since she is telling the story, maybe we'd get a new type of girl, but she is just like some of the previous ones. She was uninteresting and it felt like a man was writing a female character. I know I'm a guy saying all this, but I read unisex books were the voice is a person rather then a sex and Bond books are more for the male sex. Fleming can write a good character for Bond, but not his Bond Girls.

      I do like the fact this mentioned Glens Falls because I have family from there and it give this book a personal touch, but overall this book wasn't very good. I saw on here this book was rated the lowest of all Bond books and I have to agree. You're out of your element Fleming!
    • 3/5
      I was very tempted to give up reading this book, during Part1, as it was cringeworthy! But thankfully it picked up in the remainder two parts and Fleming returned to a more Bond-like story telling and this minimised his misguided foray into a "from her perspective" of emotions and feelings and got on with what he's good at, which is baddies and action
    • 2/5
      Very unlike the other James Bond books. Bond only appears about 60% of the way through the book and the first half of the story could have been condensed into one chapter.
    • 2/5
      This is such a strange "James Bond" book, as James is barely in it! He doesn't show up until chapter 10 - and there's only 15 chapters! Overall, this is a pretty boring effort. It is written from the point of some woman named Viv, and the first 6 chapters are all about her, and they are dull, dull, dull. Then two tough guys, Horror and Sluggsy, cross her path, and then, finally, 007. SPOILER ALERT - he rescues her, has sex with her, and then leaves her. The End.
    • 3/5
      This was the first James Bond story that I have read, though I've seen quite a few of the movies, including the one that shares a title with this book. However, the only similarities between this book and the movie are the title, and a character by the name of Bond, James Bond. It was an okay read, full of terribly corny dialogue and characters, some PG-13 type sex and violence, and not much else.
    • 2/5
      I don't like how this starts off pretending that James Bond is real and that Fleming is just communicating something he learned from other sources. I hate that trope. With the exception of A Series of Unfortunate Events, I've never seen it done really well enough to not completely disjoint me from the story.Edit: Ugh...At least the first five chapters are the life-story of an insipid, obnoxious Bond girl as well as her adventures in being raped by her boyfriend. This is not why I read Bond.Update: It continued in this vein. It was painfully boring until Bond's eventual arrival near the end of the book. Viv was just an annoying character (though Fleming did a pretty decent job characterizing her). She was not likable (or even pitiable). Hopefully, this was an experiment on Fleming's part and this is never repeated.
    • 4/5
      I'm glad that I decided to go back and read this one, which I had previously skipped. Although Bond has an important role, this entry in the Bond series (#10) is quite different in style and content from the others. A first-person narrative of a girl just reaching adulthood in the early 1960s into whose life gangsters & violence (and eventually James Bond) suddenly erupt.
    • 4/5
      An odd Bond --as if written by Mignon Eberhart or some other damsel-in-distress writer --POV s a young Canadian woman (living in Britain) sent to close down a motel in the the woods of upstate New York, menaced by two sadistic gangsters when James Bond just happen to stop by en route from an assignment in Toronto and rescues her.
    • 4/5
      It's hard to go wrong with a classic like this and Ian Fleming didn't disappoint. It's a fast paced action adventure and the low page count makes it impossibly fast to read.It is one of the shortest and most sexually explicit of Fleming's novels, as well as a clear departure from previous Bond novels in that the story starts off the the perspective of the "Bond girl." In fact, most of the book is from her perspective and takes place before she ever meets 007!A young Canadian woman by the of Vivienne Michel finds herself traveling across America on a scooter. She breaks for a bit at a motel and is offered a job watching the place by herself until the end of the season. On her first night alone, two thugs come in to rough her up and do who knows what else. Bond himself does not appear until two thirds of the way through the book, when he waltzes in the motel after suffering a flat. Obviously he saves the day and seduces the girl, but in order to learn all the awesome details you'll have to read this classic for yourself.
    • 4/5
      It was a long time ago that I read it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and all the more so for the fact that it was told from the perspective of the woman.
    • 2/5
      The Spy Who Loved Me is the ninth novel in the James Bond series and completely different from Fleming's other books in the series: The story is told from the view point of a female character and is devoid of much of the action and language that are the coin in the world of espionage. Instead, what we have is a sexual ingenue who gains experience rather quickly through this story arc which takes her from her native French-speaking Canada to London, Switzerland and back to North America. In seeking to start over from her misadventures of the heart and body, Viv has fled Europe and seeks to start over in Florida. She first heads back to her hometown and then starts her journey southwards. In upstate New York, short on funds, she agrees to work as a front desk clerk at The Dreamy Pines Motor Court. Here, a situation develops and Viv finds herself in a jam.

      Enter James Bond. His car has broken down on a dark and stormy night and he seeks refuge at the motel. The scene is set: There's thunder, lightening, bad guys and a damsel in distress! The action unfolds quickly and with missing scenes: For the first time in a Bond novel, we are not sure of what Bond is doing throughout as we are only seeing him when and how Viv sees him. And the image that she sees, without the benefit of actually knowing him, provides another dimension to Bond's character in that we have a greater sense of his physicality and presence via the impact he has on his surroundings and people.

      The sexual content of The Spy Who Loved Me is surprisingly explicit, given that it was published in 1962 - a time when social conventions had not yet allowed for open discourse on sex and sexuality. Even now, nearly fifty years later, the sexual candor may make the listener uncomfortable, especially when Viv delivers the lines about how,
      All Women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that had made his act of love so piercingly wonderful...
      Fleming always manages to deliver a provocative sentiment in his Bond novels; but the whole of The Spy Who Loved Me seems to have been intended to incite unconventional sentiment: The departure from the action-adventure modus, the detailing of Viv's sex life, the contempt Fleming seems to bear women... At the same time, there is a certain literary bravery in Fleming's willingness to write something different and controversial, inserting it into a successful series where certain expectations had been set.

      The Spy Who Loved Me was narrated by the British-American narrator, Nadia May (a.k.a. Wanda McCaddon.) Nadia May delivered the story with confidence and empathy; but Ms May sounds a bit old to be voicing a twenty-five year-old, especially as there is no convention with the story indicating that The Spy Who Loved Me is the reminiscence of an older woman. The tense is only slightly future past perfect, so listeners may reasonably have expected a younger voice. There were minor processing issues in regard to the quality of the audio itself, most noticeably at the beginning of the audio; but nothing terribly egregious: Perhaps a slightly-too-heavy hand on the expander which led to an odd sound chop at the end of some words.

      Redacted from the original blog review at dog eared copy, The Spy Who Loved Me; 05/24/2012
    • 1/5
      Most of the book is a romance, narrated by a woman. If you've read any Ian Fleming, you know this is a recipe for disaster. It's some of the worst stuff I've ever read. There is some action in the middle, which is readable by comparison. Eventually James Bond even shows up, but since there's so little to the plot, he has to be written as sleepy, sloppy, and bumbling. If he behaved at all like James Bond, the bad guys would be dead within a paragraph of his arrival. The girl falls in love with him anyway (naturally - all any woman in Fleming's mind wants is for her rapist to be a gentleman), and her heart will never be the same again.
    • 5/5
      "Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it. Nothing makes one really grateful for life except the black wings of danger."Fleming structured the novel in three sections—"Me", "Them" and "Him" to describe the phases of the story.MeVivienne "Viv" Michel, a young Canadian woman narrates her own story, detailing her past love affairs, the first being with Derek Mallaby, who took her virginity in a field after being thrown out of a cinema in Windsor for indecent exposure. Their physical relationship ended that night and Viv was subsequently rejected when Mallaby sent her a letter from Oxford University saying he was forcibly engaged to someone else by his parents. Viv's second love affair was with her German boss, Kurt Rainer, with whom she would eventually become pregnant. She informed Rainer and he paid for her to go to Switzerland to have an abortion, telling her that their affair was over. After the procedure, Viv returned to her native Canada and started her journey through North America, stopping to work at "The Dreamy Pines Motor Court" in the Adirondack Mountains for managers Jed and Mildred Phancey.ThemAt the end of the vacation season, the Phanceys entrust Viv to look after the motel for the night before the owner, Mr. Sanguinetti, can arrive to take inventory and close it up for the winter. Two mobsters, "Sluggsy" Morant and Sol "Horror" Horowitz, both of whom work for Sanguinetti, arrive and say they are there to look over the motel for insurance purposes. The two have been hired by Sanguinetti to burn down the motel so that Sanguinetti can make a profit on the insurance. The blame for the fire would fall on Viv, who was to perish in the incident. The mobsters, are cruel to Viv and, when she says she does not want to dance with them, they attack her, holding her down and starting to remove her top. They are about to continue the attack with rape when the door buzzer stops them.HimBritish secret service agent James Bond appears at the door asking for a room, having had a flat tyre while passing. Bond quickly realizes that Horror and Sluggsy are mobsters and that Viv is in danger. Pressuring the two men, he eventually gets the gangsters to agree to provide him a room. Bond tells Michel that he is in America in the wake of Operation Thunderball and was detailed to protect a Russian nuclear expert who defected to the West and who now lives in Toronto, as part of his quest to ferret out SPECTRE. That night Sluggsy and Horror set fire to the motel and attempt to kill Bond and Michel. A gun battle ensues and, in the process of escaping, Horror and Sluggsy's car crashes into a lake. Bond and Michel retire to bed, but Sluggsy is still alive and makes a further attempt to kill them when Bond shoots him.Viv wakes to find Bond gone, leaving a note in which he promises to send her police assistance and which he concludes by telling her not to dwell too much on the ugly events through which she has just lived. As Viv finishes reading the note, a large police detachment arrives. After taking her statement, the officer in charge of the detail, reiterates Bond's advice, but also warns Viv that all men involved in violent crime and espionage, regardless of which side they are on—including Bond himself—are dangerous and that Viv should avoid them. Viv reflects on this fact as she motors off at the end of the book, continuing her tour of America, but despite the officer's warning still devoted to the memory of the spy who had loved her.
    • 2/5
      Why did Fleming choose to write a novel in the first person of a female protagonist? I have no idea. Perhaps he was tired of complaints about the way he wrote his female characters; perhaps someone, whom he felt he must answer, had accused him of misogyny and he wanted to show an empathy for the fair sex; perhaps he was simply bored and wanted a change.Whatever the reason, Fleming makes a fair fist of it. His Vivienne Michel is well executed; the character has had less than happy experiences with men but she is resilient and remains unembittered and untwisted. She is a strong yet attractive character. This is not the writing of a misogynist in any degree.The problem with The Spy who Loved Me is that the reader comes away with the feeling that it started from the wrong premise. Graham's "Marnie", my own "Motherhood" or any of du Maurier's forays into the opposite sex, all start with the story and then tell that from the POV that seems to work best. The Spy who Loved Me, on the other hand, gives the impression that Fleming started off with the character and then groped around for a story to hang it on. Very likely under editorial pressure, he tried to turn it into a Bond novel. Unfortunately, some eighty pages have already been spent explaining how Vivienne came to be where she is at the start. When the action starts, it feels as though it has been tacked on as an afterthought. No doubt it has; it's a McGuffin (the term Hitchcock coined to describe the matter that the film purported to be about). The arrival of the villains is nothing more than an excuse to bring Bond into the thing. When, half way through the novel, James Bond actually arrives, it is far from vintage stuff: a jaded and world-weary depiction of a jaded and world-weary 007.Had Fleming followed his apparent first instincts and written a novel about Vivienne Michel, leaving Bond out of things entirely, he might have done something creditable; it comes across in every line of the second half that he did not want to write Bond. As it is, The Spy who Loved Me ends up neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring.Many years ago, charlatan traders used to sell "mermaids", fabricated from half a monkey carcase sewn onto half a fish. The Spy who Loved Me has a similar quality.(Incidentally, anyone concerned about the infamous "all women like semi-rape" line can rest easy. Placed in its context it is clear that it it is not referring to rape at all.)
    • 3/5
      the story begins on page 78, chapter 8. up util that point, we are given an extraordinary loooooong introduction to our heroine, whose name is Viv (I think). You can see the effect she had on me. Viv is a woman and this may be the best profile of a woman written by a man in the 20th century, but she still scomes out a bimbo. If it wasn't Fleming writing this thing, I'd have thrown the book against the wall and wsaid the heck with it. But with page 78, it gets good, as they say down south.
    • 3/5
      3 stars is for the effort of making an attempt of telling Bond in a different way. Unfortunately as we all know Ian Fleming did not tap into the female sub-conscious particularly well and I was generally shocked with the comment about all women 'loving semi-rape'. Apart from that the story rattles along at a decent pace but it is no more than an afternoon's diversion. Not the best Bond book by a long way.
    • 1/5
      The most telling thing about this book is that when Fleming sold the rights to the Bond series, he specifically mandated they could use no more of the book than it's title.
    • 3/5
      Vivienne Michel er 23 år gammel og franskcanadier, men har trodset sin katolske opvækst og er taget til england.Hun kommer sammen med en Derek, der slår op efter at have taget hendes mødom. Så finder hun Wolfgang, der gør hende gravid og slår op. Efter en abort i Schweiz, tager hun til Canada og køber en scooter og tager på tur ned igennem Usa. Hun tager et job med at passe et motel, mens ejerne er på ferie, men de har planlagt at brænde hytten af for at få forsikringen.Der dukker derfor et par skurke, Sluggsy og Horror op, som tæver og ydmyger hende. Horror er skræmmende og Sluggsy har en sygdom, der har fået ham til at tabe alt hår.Vivienne forsvarer sig med en kniv, da James Bond ringer på døren. Han virker dæmpende på gemytterne og får et værelse på motellet. Her fortæller han Viv om sin nylige træfning med Spectre om en afhopper.Om natten slår forbryderne Viv ned og forsøger at brænde hende og James inde. Det går forbryderne ilde og Bond og Viv trækker sig tilbage til et af de værelser, der ikke er brændt.Lidt en James Bond uden James Bond, da han først dukker op på side 117 ud af 192. Kikset!
    • 3/5
      In view of the entire series, The Spy Who Loved Me added some variety into the picture. While the variety was fun at times, and gave a new perspective to James Bond, by itself it was not that enjoyable. The majority of the book seemed to be establishing the main character, rather than telling an exciting story. When I read a Bond book it is because I want a story a) about Bond, and b) full of action. This work did not live up to my hopes, but is worth a read if you are a junkie for reading the entire series.
    • 3/5
      By far the worst Bond novel I’ve read. Bravely this is told from the perspective of the heroine – but it means that Bond doesn’t appear until approximately ½ way in, by which time we are long since bored. It also includes the incredible line: “Every woman likes to be half-raped”.
    • 4/5
      This one was my first James Bond novel. After more than a decade I re-read it yesterday and I have to say it is still a great novel.Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Bond no. 10, 1962; though Bond features in this story, it is told by the protagonist Vivienne Michel, who is rescued by Bond from murder attack, when her former employer tries to stage an assurance fraud. I can only guess that fleming followed an author's whim to try and show Bond in the eyes of a woman - who is, although courageously aiding Bond in mastering the crisis, nevertheless an adoring "Bond-girl" - so the books drips a bit of admiration...
    • 3/5
      The Spy Who Loved Me is the oddball of the Bond stories. It's told from the point of view of the "Bond girl", and James doesn't even show up until we're more than halfway through the book. He doesn't save the world, just a girl who's being set up in an insurance scheme by some small-time hoodlums. No gadgets, no supervillain. But it's a pretty good read anyway. Not one of my favorite Bond adventures, but not my least favorite either.
    • 3/5
      Oh, Mr. Fleming. This was a very very new low for you. I love you and all, but where was James Bond in this book? I'll tell you where James Bond was. James Bond was making animalistic love to some girl in the shower. I read these books for the espionage, not so that I can read the "erotic romance" so to speak. I don't mind it - don't get me wrong - but a whole book about it fell quite quite short.

    Book preview

    The Spy Who Loved Me - Ian Fleming

    Contents

    Cover

    Title Page

    Part One: Me

    1: Scaredy Cat

    2: Dear Dead Days

    3: Spring’s Awakening

    4: Dear Viv

    5: A Bird with a Wing Down

    6: Go West, Young Woman

    Part Two: Them

    7: Come into My Parlour . . .

    8: Dynamite from Nightmare-land

    9: Then I Began to Scream

    Part Three: Him

    10: Whassat?

    11: Bedtime Story

    12: To Sleep – Perchance to Die!

    13: The Crash of Guns

    14: Bimbo

    15: The Writing on My Heart

    A Sneak Peek at Double or Nothing: A Double O Novel by Kim Sherwood

    One: An Appointment with the Devil

    Two: Bête Noire

    Three: 003

    About the Author

    Also by Ian Fleming

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Part One

    Me

    1

    Scaredy Cat

    I was running away. I was running away from England, from my childhood, from the winter, from a sequence of untidy, unattractive love affairs, from the few sticks of furniture and jumble of overworn clothes that my London life had collected around me; and I was running away from drabness, fustiness, snobbery, the claustrophobia of close horizons and from my inability, although I am quite an attractive rat, to make headway in the rat-race. In fact, I was running away from almost everything except the Law.

    And I had run a very long way indeed – almost, exaggerating a bit, halfway round the world. In fact, I had come all the way from London to The Dreamy Pines Motor Court, which is ten miles west of Lake George, the famous American tourist resort in the Adirondacks – that vast expanse of mountains, lakes and pine forests which forms most of the northern territory of New York State. I had started on September the first, and it was now Friday the thirteenth of October. When I had left, the grimy little row of domesticated maples in my square had been green, or as green as any tree can be in London in August. Now, in the billion-strong army of pine trees that marched away northwards towards the Canadian border, the real, wild maples flamed here and there like shrapnel-bursts. And I felt that I, or at any rate my skin, had changed just as much – from the grimy sallowness that had been the badge of my London life to the snap and colour and sparkle of living out of doors and going to bed early and all those other dear dull things that had been part of my life in Quebec before it was decided that I must go to England and learn to be a ‘lady’. Very unfashionable, of course, this cherry-ripe, strength-through-joy complexion, and I had even stopped using lipstick and nail varnish, but to me it had been like sloughing off a borrowed skin and getting back into my own, and I was childishly happy and pleased with myself whenever I looked in the mirror (that’s another thing – I’ll never say ‘looking-glass’ again; I just don’t have to any more) and found myself not wanting to paint a different face over my own. I’m not being smug about this. I was just running away from the person I’d been for the past five years. I wasn’t particularly pleased with the person I was now, but I had hated and despised the other one, and I was glad to be rid of her face.

    Station WOKO (they might have dreamt up a grander call-sign!) in Albany, the capital of New York State and about fifty miles due south of where I was, announced that it was six o’clock. The weather report that followed included a storm warning with gale-force winds. The storm was moving down from the north and would hit Albany around 8 p.m. That meant that I would be having a noisy night. I didn’t mind. Storms don’t frighten me, and although the nearest living soul, as far as I knew, was ten miles away up the not very good secondary road to Lake George, the thought of the pines that would soon be thrashing outside, the thunder and lightning and rain, made me already feel snug and warm and protected in anticipation. And alone! But above all alone! ‘Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.’ Where had I read that? Who had written it? It was so exactly the way I felt, the way that, as a child, I had always felt until I had forced myself to ‘get into the swim’, ‘be one of the crowd’ – a good sort, on the ball, hep. And what a hash I had made of ‘togetherness’! I shrugged the memory of failure away. Everyone doesn’t have to live in a heap. Painters, writers, musicians are lonely people. So are statesmen and admirals and generals. But then, I added to be fair, so are criminals and lunatics. Let’s just say, not to be too flattering, that true individuals are lonely. It’s not a virtue, the reverse if anything. One ought to share and communicate if one is to be a useful member of the tribe. The fact that I was so much happier when I was alone was surely the sign of a faulty, a neurotic character. I had said this so often to myself in the past five years that now, that evening, I just shrugged my shoulders and, hugging my solitude to me, walked across the big lobby to the door and went out to have a last look at the evening.

    I hate pine trees. They are dark and stand very still and you can’t shelter under them or climb them. They are very dirty, with a most untreelike black dirt, and if you get this dirt mixed with their resin they make you really filthy. I find their jagged shapes vaguely inimical, and the way they mass so closely together gives me the impression of an army of spears barring my passage. The only good thing about them is their smell, and, when I can get hold of it, I use pine-needle essence in my bath. Here, in the Adirondacks, the endless vista of pine trees was positively sickening. They clothe every square yard of earth in the valleys and climb up to the top of every mountain so that the impression is of a spiky carpet spread to the horizon – an endless vista of rather stupid-looking green pyramids waiting to be cut down for matches and coat hangers and copies of the New York Times.

    Five acres or so of these stupid trees had been cleared to build the motel, which is all that this place really was. ‘Motel’ isn’t a good word any longer. It has become smart to use ‘Motor Court’ or ‘Ranch Cabins’ ever since motels became associated with prostitution, gangsters and murders, for all of which their anonymity and lack of supervision is a convenience. The site, tourist-wise, in the lingo of the trade, was a good one. There was this wandering secondary road through the forest, which was a pleasant alternative route between Lake George and Glens Falls to the south, and halfway along it was a small lake, cutely called Dreamy Waters, that is a traditional favourite with picnickers. It was on the southern shore of this lake that the motel had been built, its reception lobby facing the road with, behind this main building, the rooms fanning out in a semicircle. There were forty rooms with kitchen, shower and lavatory, and they all had some kind of a view of the lake behind them. The whole construction and design was the latest thing – glazed pitch-pine frontages and pretty timber roofs all over knobbles, air-conditioning, television in every cabin, children’s playground, swimming pool, golf range out over the lake with floating balls (fifty balls, one dollar) – all the gimmicks. Food? Cafeteria in the lobby, and grocery and liquor deliveries twice a day from Lake George. All this for ten dollars single and sixteen double. No wonder that, with around two hundred thousand dollars’ capital outlay and a season lasting only from July the first to the beginning of October, or, so far as the NO VACANCY sign was concerned, from July fourteenth to Labour Day, the owners were finding the going hard. Or so those dreadful Phanceys had told me when they’d taken me on as receptionist for only thirty dollars a week plus keep. Thank heavens they were out of my hair! Song in my heart? There had been the whole heavenly choir at six o’clock that morning when their shiny station-wagon had disappeared down the road on their way to Glens Falls and then to Troy where the monsters came from. Mr Phancey had made a last grab at me and I hadn’t been quick enough. His free hand had run like a fast lizard over my body before I had crunched my heel into his instep. He had let go then. When his contorted face had cleared, he said softly, ‘All right, sex-box. Just see that you mind camp good until the boss comes to take over the keys tomorrow midday. Happy dreams tonight.’ Then he had grinned a grin I hadn’t understood, and had gone over to the station-wagon where his wife had been watching from the driver’s seat. ‘Come on, Jed,’ she had said sharply. ‘You can work off those urges on West Street tonight.’ She put the car in gear and called over to me sweetly, ‘’Bye now, cutie-pie. Write us every day.’ Then she had wiped the crooked smile off her face and I caught a last glimpse of her withered, hatchet profile as the car turned out on to the road. Phew! What a couple! Right out of a book – and what a book! Dear Diary! Well, people couldn’t come much worse, and now they’d gone. From now on, on my travels, the human race must improve!

    I had been standing there, looking down the way the Phanceys had gone, remembering them. Now I turned and looked to the north to see after the weather. It had been a beautiful day, Swiss clear and hot for the middle of October, but now high fretful clouds, black with jagged pink hair from the setting sun, were piling down the sky. Fast little winds were zigzagging among the forest tops and every now and then they hit the single yellow light above the deserted gas station down the road at the tail of the lake and set it swaying. When a longer gust reached me, cold and buffeting, it brought with it the whisper of a metallic squeak from the dancing light, and the first time this happened I shivered deliciously at the little ghostly noise. On the lake shore, beyond the last of the cabins, small waves were lapping fast against the stones and the gunmetal surface of the lake was fretted with sudden cat’s paws that sometimes showed a fleck of white. But, in between the angry gusts, the air was still, and the sentinel trees across the road and behind the motel seemed to be pressing silently closer to huddle round the campfire of the brightly lit building at my back.

    I suddenly wanted to go to the loo, and I smiled to myself. It was the piercing tickle that comes to children during hide-and-seek-in-the-dark and ‘sardines’, when, in your cupboard under the stairs, you heard the soft creak of a floorboard, the approaching whisper of the searchers. Then you clutched yourself in thrilling anguish and squeezed your legs together and waited for the ecstasy of discovery, the crack of light from the opening door and then – the supreme moment – your urgent ‘Ssh! Come in with me!’, the softly closing door and the giggling warm body pressed tight against your own.

    Standing there, a ‘big girl’ now, I remembered it all and recognised the sensual itch brought on by a fleeting apprehension – the shiver down the spine, the intuitive gooseflesh that come from the primitive fear-signals of animal ancestors. I was amused and I hugged the moment to me. Soon the thunderheads would burst and I would step back from the howl and chaos of the storm into my well-lighted, comfortable cave, make myself a drink, listen to the radio and feel safe and cosseted.

    It was getting dark. Tonight there would be no evening chorus from the birds. They had long ago read the signs and disappeared into their own shelters in the forest, as had the animals – the squirrels and the chipmunks and the deer. In all this huge, wild area there was now only me out in the open. I took a last few deep breaths of the soft, moist air. The humidity had strengthened the scent of pine and moss, and now there was also a strong underlying armpit smell of earth. It was almost as if the forest was sweating with the same pleasurable excitement I was feeling. Somewhere, from quite close, a nervous owl asked loudly ‘Who?’ and then was silent. I took a few steps away from the lighted doorway and stood in the middle of the dusty road, looking north. A strong gust of wind hit me and blew back my hair. Lightning threw a quick blue-white hand across the horizon. Seconds later, thunder growled softly like a wakening guard dog, and then the big wind came and the tops of the trees began to dance and thrash and the yellow light over the gas station jigged and blinked down the road as if to warn me. It was warning me. Suddenly the dancing light was blurred with rain, its luminosity fogged by an advancing grey sheet of water. The first heavy drops hit me, and I turned and ran.

    I banged the door behind me, locked it and put up the chain. I was only just in time. Then the avalanche crashed down and settled into a steady roar of water whose patterns of sound varied from a heavy drumming on the slanting timbers of the roof to a higher, more precise slashing at the windows. In a moment these sounds were joined by the busy violence of the overflow drainpipes. And the noisy background pattern of the storm was set.

    I was still standing there, cosily listening, when the thunder, that had been creeping quietly up behind my back, sprang its ambush. Suddenly lightning blazed in the room, and at the same instant there came a block-busting crash that shook the building and made the air twang like piano wire. It was just one, single, colossal explosion that might have been a huge bomb falling only yards away. There was a sharp tinkle as a piece of glass fell out of one of the windows on to the floor, and then the noise of water pattering in on to the linoleum.

    I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I stood and cringed, my hands over my ears. I hadn’t meant it to be like this! The silence, that had been deafening, resolved itself back into the roar of the rain, the roar that had been so comforting but that now said, ‘You hadn’t thought it could be so bad. You had never seen a storm in these mountains. Pretty flimsy this little shelter of yours, really. How’d you like to have the lights put out as a start? Then the crash of a thunderbolt through that matchwood ceiling of yours? Then, just to finish you off, lightning to set fire to the place – perhaps electrocute you? Or shall we just frighten you so much that you dash out in the rain and try and make those ten miles to Lake George. Like to be alone do you? Well, just try this for size!’ Again the room turned blue-white, again, just overhead, there came the ear-splitting crack of the explosion, but this time the crack widened and racketed to and fro in a furious cannonade that set the cups and glasses rattling behind the bar and made the woodwork creak with the pressure of the sound waves.

    My legs felt weak and I faltered to the nearest chair and sat down, my head in my hands. How could I have been so foolish, so, so impudent? If only someone would come, someone to stay with me, someone to tell me that this was only a storm! But it wasn’t! It was catastrophe, the end of the world! And all aimed at me! Now! It would be coming again! Any minute now! I must do something, get help! But the Phanceys had paid off the telephone company and the service had been disconnected. There was only one hope! I got up and ran to the door, reaching up for the big switch that controlled the ‘Vacancy/No Vacancy’ sign in red neon above the threshold. If I put it to ‘Vacancy’, there might be someone driving down the road. Someone who would be glad of shelter. But, as I pulled the switch, the lightning, that had been watching

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