Nobody’s reported seeing him go down and we’ve got S and R out looking for him, or wreckage.”
“Perhaps a Sidewinder popped him.” There was a large segment of sarcasm in Bond’s voice.
“There were no missile-carrying aircraft around, sir, as I’ve already told you.”
“Well, what do you think the one up my backside was, Wings?
A Scotch mist?” Now, quite angry, James Bond turned on his heel and left.
In the wardroom bar that night before dinner, the atmosphere was only slightly subdued. It was always a bit of a shaker losing a pilot, but the strange circumstances surrounding this loss, coupled with the fact that the Spanish pilot had not been a natural mixer, helped to calm what often causes a slight twitch among young pilots.
So, when Bond entered the wardroom, the bar hummed with near enough the usual high-spirited pre-dinner chatter. He was about to go over and join two of the other Navy pilots from the course, when his eyes landed on someone he had been watching from afar since reporting to RNAS Yeovilton. She was tall and very slim; a WRNS First Officer (Women’s Royal Naval Service - “Wrens” as they were referred to) who was always much in demand, as she had the kind of looks and figure that make middle-aged men regret their lost youth: a sloe-eyed combination of self-confidence, together with a hint of complete indifference to the many officers who paid court to her, “Like hornets around a honeypot,” as one crusty old visiting Admiral commented. Her name was Clover Pennington, though she was known to many, in spite of her upbringing in the bosom of a well-connected west country family, as “Irish Penny”.
Now this dark-haired, black-eyed beauty had the usual quota of three young Lieutenants toasting her, but, on seeing Bond, she stepped away from the bar towards him. “I hear you had a near-miss today, sir.” Her smile lacked the cautious deference her rank demanded when approaching a much senior officer.
“Not as close as our Spanish pilot it would seem, Miss er, First Officer Bond let it trail off. Recently, he had not been given the chance of spending much of his time with women, a fact which would have gladdened M’s heart.
“First Officer Pennington, sir. Clover Pennington.”
“Well, Miss Pennington, how about joining me for dinner?
The name’s Bond, by the way, James Bond.”
“Delighted, sir.” She gave him a dazzling smile and turned towards the wardroom. Daggers were invisibly hurled in Bond’s direction from the eyes of the three young officers still at the bar.
Tonight was not a formal wardroom dinner, so Bond seized the chance while it was on offer. “Not here, First Officer Pennington.”
His hand brushed her uniformed arm with the three blue stripes, denoting her rank, low on the sleeve. “I know a reasonable restaurant about a quarter of an hour’s drive away, near Wedmore. Give you ten minutes to change.” Another smile which spoke of a more than usually pleasant evening, “Oh, good, sir. I always feel better out of uniform.”
Bond thought unpardonable thoughts and followed her from the bar.
He gave her twenty minutes, knowing the ways of women when changing for an evening out. In any case, Bond also wanted to get into civilian clothes, even though it would have to be almost another kind of uniform, Dunhill slacks and blazer complete with RN crest on the breast pocket.
Before taking up his new duties, M had advised, “Shouldn’t take that damned great Bentley with you, 007.”
“How am I supposed to get around, sir?” he had asked.
“Oh, take something upmarket from the car pool - they’ve a nice little BMW 520i, in an unobtrusive dark-blue, free at the moment. Use that as your runabout until you set sail for distant shores.” M, Bond would have sworn, was humming “Drake’s Drum” as he left the office.
So it was that the dark-blue BMW pulled up in front of the officers’ Wrennery, as the women’s quarters were known, twenty minutes later. To Bond’s surprise she was there, waiting outside wearing a fetching trench-coat over civilian clothes. The coat was tightly belted, showing off the neat waist and adding a touch of sensuality.
She slid into the passenger seat next to him, her skirt riding up to expose around four inches of thigh. As Bond swung the car out through the Wrennery gates he noticed that she did not even bother to adjust the coat and skirt as she pulled on the obligatory seat-belt.
“So where’re we going, Captain Bond?” (Did he imagine the throatiness of her voice, or had it always been there?) “Little pub I know. Good food. The owner’s wife is French and they do a very passable boeuf Beauceronne, almost like the real thing. Off duty, the name’s James, by the way.”
He heard the smile in her voice, “You have a choice -James.
My nickname’s “Irish Penny’, so most of the girls call me Penny.
I prefer my real name, Clover.”
“Clover it is, then. Nice name.
Unusual.”
“My father always used to say that mother was frightened by a bull in a clover field when she was carrying me, but I prefer the more romantic version.”
“Which was?”
Again, the smile in her voice, “That I was conceived in a patch of clover - and my father a respectable clergyman at that.”
“Still a nice name,” Bond paused to negotiate a long bend.
“Only heard it once before, and she was married to someone very big in intelligence matters.” The reference to Mrs. Allan Dulles was a calculated come-on: almost a code to attract Clover into the light in case they were both in the same business. M had said there would be other officers around, on this deep cover assignment. But Clover Pennington did not rise to the bait.
“Is it true about this afternoon, James?”
“Is what true?”
“That someone tried to put a Sidewinder up your six.”
“Felt that way. How did you come to hear about it? The incident’s supposed to be low-profile.”
“Oh, didn’t you know? I’m in charge of the girls who maintain the Harriers.” On most stone frigates, as shore stations are called by the Royal Navy, maintenance and arming was, to a large extent, performed by Wrens. “Bernie - Wings that is - passed me a curt little memo. He writes memos rather as he speaks, words of one syllable, especially to the Wrens. I always imagine he regards us as having very limited vocabularies. We’re checking on all your aircraft’s electronics, just to be sure you weren’t getting some odd fredhack.”
“It was a missile, Clover. I’ve been at the receiving end of those bloody things before today. I know what they sound like.” “We have to check. You know what the Commander (Air) is Though it has only been hinted at, and never admitted in print, Bond almost certainly saw action during the Falklands War. It has been said that he was the man landed secretly to assist and help train civilians before the real shooting war started.
like: always accusing us of infesting his precious Harriers with Wrenlins.” She laughed. Throaty and infectious, Bond thought, something he would not really mind catching himself.
“Wrenlins,” he repeated half aloud. He had almost forgotten that old Fleet Air-Arm slang, culled and altered from the RAF’s “gremlins”.
Today’s young people, he presumed, would take for granted that gremlins were creatures conjured from Spielberg’s brain for a popular, if zany, movie.
Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting at a table in the quiet, neat restaurant ordering the pate and the boeuf Beauceronne that delightful and simple dish of rump steak cooked with bacon, potatoes and onions. Within an hour they were talking like old friends, and, indeed knew people in common, for it turned out that, while Clover’s father had been what she called “a humble man of the cloth”, his elder brother was Sir Arthur Pennington, Sixth Baronet and master of Pennington Nab, a stately home which Bond had enjoyed, in more ways than one. “Oh, you’ll know my cousins, Emma and Jane, then?” Clover asked, looking up sharply.