Read James Bond: The Authorised Biography for Free Online Page A

now lined and battered by the last few years. The two boys also must have borne the marks of their ordeal. They, too, looked older than their years and both of them seemed strangely out of place among the well-to-do children of their neighbours. They were oddly dressed. James Bond ascribes his subsequent sartorial conformism to childhood anxieties on this score. He still remembers other children laughing at his lederhosen . He says he also felt distinctly foreign here in Wimbledon. He was not used to hearing English spoken – he and his mother generally conversed in French. As a result, he felt himself painfully unwanted. Although back in England, he was as much of an outsider as ever.
    But the member of the family who fared worst was undoubtedly Monique. During the long months in Russia she had hung on, because she had to. The boys depended on her. Now that all this was over, she fell to pieces. Her zest for life deserted her. A photograph taken that July gives an idea of what was happening. The face is still beautiful but white and drawn, the thin hair turned prematurely grey, and there is a hunted look about the eyes.
    James's brother, Henry, was the only one who seemed unscathed by life. The two boys were entered for the summer term at Kings College School. This was something of a stop-gap, since Andrew, possibly as a gesture against the wealth of the Delacroixs, had entered the boys for Eton when they were born. But the school was convenient, barely five minutes' walk across the common. Henry settled in and soon became a favourite pupil. James was difficult and withdrew in on himself. Then came the disaster that shaped his life.
    *
    It started with his mother's nervous breakdown towards the end of that July. She had been acting strangely for some time, complaining that the Russians were pursuing her and that she had seen several of the Soviet secret police from Perlovska watching the house from the common. Then one night she went berserk and tried to stab Natasha, the Bonds' devoted Russian maid. Fortunately, Andrew Bond was at home. The doctor came and Monique was sent off to a sanatorium at Sunningdale. She soon seemed to recover, but the specialist advised a change. At his instigation, Andrew Bond decided that the time had come to forget the past, make peace with the Delacroixs and take his wife home. It must have been a difficult decision for a man of his proud nature.
    James Bond remembers how his father saw him and his brother off from King's Cross for their summer holiday in Glencoe. It was an emotional occasion. Andrew Bond assured them that he was taking their mother off to Switzerland and that when she came back she would be cured and happy. He promised that the days of wandering were over. The family would settle down and they would love each other. It was an unusual speech for so reticent a man.
    The boys had been at Glencoe nearly three weeks when they came back from a day on the moors to find the house in uproar. Aunt Charmian had suddenly arrived from London. James Bond remembers that his grandfather was in tears. The sight was so unusual that it took some while for him to understand what his aunt was saying. The boys were to get their things together. They were to be calm and sensible. From now on they would both be living with her at her house in Kent. There had been a frightful accident … climbing in Switzerland … their parents had been killed.
    It was Henry who broke down and wept. James Bond surprised everyone by his self-possession. He says that in a strange way he was prepared for what had happened. When his father saw him off from King's Cross three weeks before, he knew that he would not be seeing him again. Now he remembered his father's words, ‘You must look after yourself, laddie. If you don't there's no one else that will.’
    The death of James Bond's parents remains a mystery to this day, although their son was gradually to piece together something of what happened. It seems that