“How much would the car normally cost?” I ask Matthew, Aston Martin’s press officer.
“Eighty-two thousand pounds,” he replies. “Plus I’ve put in about nine thousand pounds of extras.”
“Like an ejector seat?” I say.
“Extra-soft leather,” he replies. “And a connection to plug in your iPod.”
“Oh, REALLY?” I say. “An iPod connection?”
The Aston Martin was Bond’s car of choice because he knew that if he lost Goldfinger’s scent, “he’d have to do some fast motoring to catch up again. The DB3 would look after that. It was going to be fun playing hare and hounds across Europe.”
On Wednesday a very elegant man called Hugh delivers the gleaming silver Aston Martin to my house. “Wow!” I say, politely. But I don’t feel it. I’m like a sociopath when it comes to expensive cars. I feel no emotion.
Hugh shows me the interior. The leather is soft and red and hand-stitched. The dials are silver. The speedometer goes up to 220 mph. And there’s the connection for the iPod! I’m going to really catch up on podcasts on this journey, I think.
Hugh is like Q, running through the gadgets. He shows me the button that turns on the sensor that bleeps when you’re reversing and you’re about to hit something. Then he shows me the button that turns the sensor off “if it gets annoying.”
“How would that ever get annoying?” I wonder. “Unless you’re reversing for miles. But who does that?” And suddenly I feel ever so slightly Bond-like. These gadgets are mine now. According to Aston Martin’s website, it took one hundred people one hundred days to build this car. There’s a gang of boys watching us. I only half notice them because I’m lost in my unexpected Bond reverie. But then one of them crosses the road and leans in through the window. He looks about twelve.
“Do you know what happens to people who drive cars like that around here?” he says.
“I have no idea,” I reply in a voice that sounds half Bond-like and half petrified. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“They get hurt,” he says.
There’s a silence. “Oh, really?” I say.
“Yes,” he says.
I turn away from his stare and look straight ahead.
“What would Bond do in a situation like this?” I think. He’d probably stab him in the face.
“That was a terrible indictment of our country,” Hugh says, after the boy leaves.
“Wasn’t it?” I say. And then—with a roar of the engine—I set off for Dover and the P&O ferry.
James Bond did not take the car ferry to France. This is the one part of the journey where my plans must diverge from his. He headed instead for Lydd Ferryfield Airport, in Kent, where he drove up a ramp and straight into a Bristol plane bound for Le Touquet. This used to be a regular practice for the rich until the hovercraft killed off the business in 1970.
I haven’t yet got used to the Aston Martin. I’m finding it overpowering. I embarrassingly judder to an unexpected standstill on Upper Street, Commercial Road, and the A258 in Dover town center. Passersby shake their heads witheringly at me. I think they’re mistaking my ineptitude for arrogance. Were I in my customary crappy car, they’d understand my stalling for what it is. Instead, they’re seeing a fabulously sleek Aston Martin braking abruptly, then revving like a lunatic. They probably think it’s my sick, slightly odd way of conveying superiority over them.
I reach the ferry. I wind down the window. “It’s not my car!” I shout gaily at the immigration officer.
He stares askance at me. “In that case, sir,” he says, “please park it over there and step out of it.”
“No, no, no!” I say. “I—”
“Sir,” he says, “park the car over there and step out of it.”
“It’s not my car because Aston Martin has lent it to me!” I yell.
“Oh,” he says. “OK. Sorry for the confusion. We’re on the lookout for a stolen Maserati. I’m an idiot. I saw the Aston Martin and thought Maserati.”
“No probs,” I say.
“Have a good trip,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say, and roar off.
I was expecting the hostile glares from passersby to continue into France, but once we reach Calais everything changes. I’m still getting constant looks, but now they are looks of adoration. For the first time in my life I am interesting to Frenchmen. They’re finding me mysterious and fascinating. Frenchwomen, however, don’t seem attracted by me. I’d have assumed from the books that they’d all want to have sex with me the minute they saw the car, but they don’t seem to notice me. It’s the men and the adolescent boys who are smitten.
It’s a long six-hour drive to Orléans, a place Bond had never cared for: “A priest and myth ridden town without charm or gaiety.” I head, as Bond did, for the Hôtel de la Gare: “When in doubt, Bond always chose the station hotels. They were adequate and it was better than even chances that the buffet de la gare would be excellent. And at the station one could hear the heartbeat of the town. The night-sounds of the trains were full of its tragedy and romance.”
The Hôtel de la Gare annoyingly doesn’t exist. So, instead, I check into the Hôtel Terminus, on the edge of the railway station. Le Cosy is the nearest restaurant. It is 11:00 p.m. Usually I don’t eat after 7:00 p.m., but tonight I make a rare exception. I order everything Bond ordered—two œufs en cocotte à la crème, a large sole meunière, an “adequate” Camembert, a pint of rosé d’Anjou, a Three-Star Hennessy, and coffee. It is all incredibly delicious. I get drunk.
I am a happy drunk. The car is parked outside. I watch contentedly as a stream of adolescent boys stare adoringly and take pictures on their phones. Then my happy drunkenness turns to maudlin drunkenness. I’m sick of being the center of attention. Having an Aston Martin is, I reflect, like having a face made of gold. Some people are awed, others hate you and want to hurt you. And there’s nothing you can do to get rid of it. I can’t help thinking that an Aston Martin would be a liability for a spy.
The coffee and the Camembert and the wine and the brandy swirl toxically inside my now churning stomach. I stumble back to the hotel and to bed. At 3:56 a.m. I awake with a confused shriek, grab my notepad, and scrawl, “3:56 a.m. Hair triangle horse chest,” and then fall asleep again. I do not know what “hair triangle horse chest” means.
Bond awoke the next morning, fresh as a daisy, had breakfast and a double coffee at the railway station, and then jumped in his car to continue his pursuit of Goldfinger, motoring “comfortably along the Loire in the early summer sunshine. This was one of his favorite corners of the world.”
I awake the next morning feeling unbelievably nauseous and constipated, and stumble blearily across the road for breakfast at the railway station. If there ever was a restaurant here, there isn’t now, just a vending machine selling crisps and Twixes.
Had this been the case in Bond’s day, would he have eaten a Twix for breakfast? I wonder. Probably, judging by his constant desire to fuck up his body. I eat a Twix and begin to hate James Bond.
I check the novel and read to my disgust that there’s a lot more eating and drinking to be done today. Bond had a big boozy and meaty picnic in the foothills of the Jura Mountains, followed in Geneva by a boozy dinner of Enzian liquor, “the firewater distilled from gentian that is responsible for Switzerland’s chronic alcoholism”; choucroute; a carafe of Fondant; a glass of Löwenbräu; a slice of Gruyère; pumpernickel; and coffee. I feel envious that Bond ended his journey inside Goldfinger’s villa. Being tortured is the only time during the entire trip he’d have managed to use up any calories.
I jump in the car and head toward Geneva. It was here that Bond picked up a passenger, a pretty Englishwoman called Tilly: “Their eyes met and exchanged a flurry of masculine/feminine master/slave signals.” I’ve got a passenger, too—a photographer called Duncan. Our eyes meet and he belches. “Sorry,” he says.
This stretch—through the Loire Valley toward the breathtaking, misty foothills of the Jura Mountains—was Bond’s favorite: “In May, with the fruit trees burning white and the soft wide river still big with the winter rains, the valley was green and young and dressed for love.”