Goldeneye: Ian Fleming’s House by the Sea (Home, October 1963)
We all know James Bond and the exciting life he leads—but what of his alter ego Ian Fleming? Writer Mary Salter turned sleuth and tracked him down in his sunny Jamaican retreat in Oracabessa: overleaf she reports back to Home.
Full of sun, sea, air, and the things we value…this is how Goldeneye, Ian Fleming’s home at Oracabessa, on the north coast of Jamaica, strikes the visitor. The house has a feeling of space and uncluttered living, of the essentials. Nothing too much, yet everything needed for a house by the sea.
Lord Avon, then Sir Anthony Eden, and his wife planted this exotic tree in front of the house when they stayed at Goldeneye during his illness after the Suez Crisis.
Oracabessa, near Galina Point, the most northernly part of the island, is small and quiet compared with Ocho Rios, only a short drive away and one of the main tourist centres, though Oracabessa is in fact the leading banana port in Jamaica. Turn in at a white gate half hidden in the thick hedge of a by-road, go up a marl drive on to a lawn bordered with shrubs and trees, walk through a cool courtyard into the house (built in the shape of a “square U” is how Ian Fleming describes it), and you find yourself in a 60-foot living room, with magnificent views of the ocean through the open window spaces. Walk out through a door on the opposite side of the room and you are on the cliff edge, looking down onto a private beach and a shady cove with a small harbor for mooring boats. All through Jamaica you find this open air living: rarely a hot room or a feeling of being shut in.
Entrance to Goldeneye, which is built round three sides of a square: bedrooms on the right, kitchen on the left, and living room stretching across both wings.
When I arrived Ian Fleming was down on the beach, just finishing a pre-lunch swim; he keeps to a strict schedule when at Goldeneye: three hours work every morning, a siesta after lunch, then another working session. A glance outside might shake a less determined person, but this house is designed to bring the scent of the sea and the sun indoors. No glass anywhere, only louvered shutters, Birds—including the hummingbirds Ian Fleming studies, writes about and likes so much—fly through the rooms, the “kling-kling” (the Jamaican blackbird) hops in and out in search of food. Not so hard to sit indoors working in such a setting! He has written all his books here. The plot begins to form in his mind during the year, then be comes to Jamaica to do research and write. He works in his bedroom overlooking the sea, at a desk he designed himself.
Ian Fleming is at Goldeneye for only two or three months each winter. For the rest of the year the house is empty or lent to friends, with Violet the housekeeper and Felix the gardener (who is married to Freda the cook) in charge.
Fleming was one of the first Europeans to settle in Jamaica after the war, having been there officially in 1942 when U-boat sinkings in the Caribbean were giving rise to anxiety. Although it rained during most of his week’s visit he took a great liking to the tropics and went back as soon as the war was over. In 1946 he bought a completely flat strip of land (then a donkey race-course) known as Rock Edge, and built the bouse quite cheaply, using local labour and materials. The wooded gardens and tree shaded lawns were laid out, and the staff recruited from the village. The house itself needs very little upkeep: a shingle to be replaced on the roof, a new hinge for the typical wood-slatted shutters from time to time.
At first glance the floors look like dark blue stone, but are in fact of cement mixed with blue dye, polished to a high gloss with cut, bitter oranges. (This is a well-known polishing method in Jamaica—I saw maids in the old “great houses” go into the garden to pick oranges or lemons for polishing the mahogany furniture). Each bedroom has its own adjoining shower. There is a modest hot water system, but the sun heats the pipes enough to wash one’s hair in comfort by midday!
Entertaining is made easy with the three-sides refectory table in the dining area; bench cushions are covered in tough blue twill piped in white. The complete set of Riedinger Vienna Riding School prints is priceless.
Deep sea spear fishing equipment is everywhere, for this is Ian Fleming’s favourite sport. A fine collection of shells and coral is arranged on semi-circular shelves against the wall.
During lunch—with Bimbo, the Jamaican mongrel dog and his puppy, Satan, at our feet—Ian Fleming told me how he makes liqueur. “I call it Poor Man’s Liqueur, and it’s very potent!”
(Take a bottle of rum—preferably 3 Daggers, the kind which is cheap in Jamaica—pour a little into a bowl, add a tablespoon of white sugar and the whole rind of an orange and lemon. Beat with a spoon to extract the juices, then add more rum. Turn out the lights, set fire to the mixture, stirring with a fork till the flame turns from blue to yellow. Then put a plate over the bowl to extinguish it. Serve!)
The living room, with furniture of local mahoe wood and made in the village to Ian Fleming’s design. Bimbo, the Jamaican mongrel, takes his daily siesta.
We went on to talk about making the film Dr. No. Ian Fleming had little to do with this “mainly because showbusiness people are time-wasting characters and I had another book to write.” I asked if there really were huge spiders in Jamaica like the one in the film and was told definitely not. It was hired from a man who collects tarantulas, and made to run up and down the stunt man’s body—Sean Connery, alias James Bond, would have nothing to do with it! This scene was shot in the studio at Pinewood, England—far from Morgan’s Harbour Beach Club, Sir Anthony Jenkinson’s hotel at Port Royal, where the other hotel scenes were made.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the last James Bond book to be published, was written while Dr. No was being filmed; the next one (due next spring) was on the typewriter as we talked, title undisclosed. Casino Royale was the first book to be written at Goldeneye, eleven years ago, followed by Live and Let Die, set in the Jamaican background used for two books and two short stories. From Russia, With Love—his favourite—is being filmed right now; meanwhile Thrilling Cities, published by Jonathan Cape, about some of the fascinating places he (and Bond?) knows so well, is due on the bookstalls any time.
Asked his views on the colour bar, Ian Fleming replied, “I am happy at the way things are going; we are becoming what we basically are—brothers. For me the colour problem does not exist.” So obviously true, with everyone in Jamaica knowing and liking him, his keen interest in local affairs, his roots are deep in the Caribbean.