Shaken, not stirred, by 007

And Mary Clive recalls a disastrous 1938 holiday in Capri with a sunburnt Fleming

- Mary Clive

From autumn 1937 to May 1938, I dined with Ian once a week, and was absolutely fascinated by him. Every time he was different and every time one said, ‘This is the real Ian.’

It was like peeling an onion. You peeled off layer after layer, and in the middle there was nothing. He was an enormously difficult crossword puzzle. He was glittering but had no heat; he was elusive; he was lovely but useless, like a Christmas-tree ornament.

Ian was the best-looking man I have ever seen, with a broken nose and a damned soul/ fallen angel expression. He was slightly round-shouldered but with marvellous legs – appreciated only in bathing dress.

I had a walk-out with him – although throughout our acquaintance sex never did rear its ugly head. He turned his best side up when talking to me, but he found it a strain and could not keep it up for very long.

By the time I got to know him in the 1930s, he had become a stockbroker in Rowe & Pitman. Ian was thoroughly ashamed of being a stockbroker as he thought it a ghastly profession.

He would tell me stories — nearly always stories about himself and a girl, and they were so vividly told that one could see everything happening.

His attitude to his affairs was ingenuous excitement during the pursuit, naughty triumph and then contempt and repulsion. Like many Don Juans, Ian did not like women, and they brought out the worst in him. He wanted women to behave badly – to punch his nose in a masculine way and to be slippery as he was. He was very feminine and needed a masculine-style partner.

In spring 1938, we had a row. I told him I liked him only as a substitute for the man I was really in love with (Meysey Clive, later my husband). It was typical that he enjoyed this row – indeed any row – and he never asked the name of my real passion nor anything about him.