A TROPICAL EDEN
Simon Courtauld visits a house
haunted by James Bond, and a stricken prime minister
Oracabessa, Jamaica IN THE first week of January, 40 years ago, the Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, bowed to the advice of Sir Horace Evans and his other doctors and decided to resign. Because of the season, he trav- elled up to Sandringham on 8 January and informed the Queen. A few weeks earlier, those same doctors had urged him to get some sun and rest from the 'severe over- strain' which the Suez crisis had caused him. In the confident expectation that he would soon be restored to health, the Edens arranged to take a house for three weeks on the north coast of Jamaica. Known as Goldeneye, it had been built ten years before by Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, next to Oracabessa (`Goldenhead', from the time of Spanish occupation), on 30 acres of land formerly used as a donkey racecourse.
The arrangements were probably made between Lady Eden and Fleming's wife, Ann — who happened also to be mistress of the Leader of the Opposition, though this did not seem to have embarrassed any- one. Hugh Gaitskell never went to Gold- eneye, but it has had quite an exotic mixture of guests over the years. More, indeed, is known of the house than of what Eden did there during his last weeks as Prime Minister. One may imagine that he spent his time in relaxation and thought. But he was to make one significant contri- bution to Goldeneye: he and his wife planted two trees in the garden. Cynics might say that, in view of Britain's involve- ment in and humiliating withdrawal from the Suez adventure, it was about the only constructive thing he did in the last months of 1956. A certain mystery surrounded the trees, because for years no one knew what they were, and it was only quite recently that they were identified by a dendrologist as being of the Santa Maria species. No one seems to know where the Edens found them, but they have flourished in this trop- ical garden. And the Edens' example, of planting a tree to mark their stay in the house, has been followed by subsequent visitors. The names of several of the donors — Princess Margaret, Marianne Faithfull, Quincy Jones, Bono — may be more interesting (to some) than the names of their saplings.
Goldeneye was and is a beautiful spot, with steps leading to a small private beach.
As Fleming once wrote, you could live there on the fruit and coconuts from his trees, and the fish from the sea just beyond the reef. The Doctor's Wind blows lightly in from the sea during the day, and at about six in the evening it is replaced by the Undertaker's Wind which blows the stale air from the island out to sea again.
The house is a bungalow, white-stuc- coed with a shallow-pitched roof and over- hanging eaves. There are wooden jalousies and no glass in the windows, a huge living- room, three bedrooms and, in Fleming's words, 'shower baths and lavatories that often hiss like vipers or ululate like strick- en bloodhounds'. In addition to the Edens, Ian Fleming's guests over the years included Evelyn Waugh, Stephen Spender, Graham Greene, Truman Capote and Cecil Beaton. (A cousin of mine went to Goldeneye to convalesce after polio; his father intended to sail across the Atlantic to spend Christmas with him but was dis- masted off Corunna and never made it.) Noel Coward stayed there in 1948 for `the happiest two months I have ever spent'. But it did not stop him composing a 'memorial ode' to Fleming, in which he complained of the hard chairs, 'the impact of the spare-room bed — and board', the equine prints and `those hordes of ageing faded shells'. The last two verses ran:
Alas! If only common sense could teach The stubborn heart to heed the crafty brain, You would, before you let your house again, Remove the barracudas from the beach. But still, my dear Commander, I admit, No matter how I criticise and grouse, That I was strangely happy in your house; In fact I'm very very fond of it.
One may assume that the Edens were also happy here, far from pressures still being exerted on Britain by America and the United Nations. When the prime minis- ter first arrived at Goldeneye, he was com- pletely out of touch, as the house then had no telephone; however, a direct teleprinter link with 10 Downing Street was installed, so that he could at least approve Cabinet decisions — for instance to impose petrol
restrictions from mid-December. The com- munications equipment was set up in a small octagonal gazebo at the western end of the property, overlooking a public beach — from which sabotage would have been a comparatively simple operation. Perhaps James Bond was being employed to protect the place.
Of the prime minister's detectives, it is known that one of them used to practise with his revolver on the local bush rats, while the Jamaican police guards cut 'God Bless Sir Anthony and Lady Eden' into the bark of a cedar tree. Unfortunately this is no longer to be seen at Goldeneye.
Fleming died in 1964 and Goldeneye now belongs to Chris Blackwell of Island Records (hence the trees planted by Quincey Jones and Bono), whose mother Blanche had been Fleming's mistress. The beach below the house has been extended, bantams wander in the grounds and the interior decor is a bit different today. But Fleming's half-moon- shaped, two-tier desk made of bullet-wood (very James Bond) is still there, at which no doubt Eden wrote his messages for Rab But- ler (who was running the government in his absence), before taking them through the garden to the gazebo in the trees for trans- mission to London.
In the same year Noel Coward bought a house, which he called Firefly, a few miles away in the hills, where he once entertained the Queen Mother to lunch. There is no record of the Edens and Coward having got together during these few weeks; the likeli- hood is that Coward would not have gone to Jamaica until January, a more fashion- able time of year to be in the Caribbean.
In any event, the prime minister returned to his post on 14 December, seemingly, according to Harold Macmillan, 'almost, if not fully, restored'. As Eden wrote later, he had 'no suspicion of the advice the doctors were to have to give' three weeks later. He made what was to be his last speech in the House of Commons on 20 December; two days later the last British forces left Egyp- tian soil.
At Goldeneye, Eden no doubt thought that all his problems, medical and political, would work themselves out; but it was not to be. For three weeks of that winter, how- ever, he had at least some of the therapy he needed — sitting in the garden beneath the almond trees and listening to the surf breaking on the reef.
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