Quarterly dusts off rare short stories from 007 creator Ian Fleming and Graham Greene
Quarterly magazine surfaces unpublished short stories The Shameful Dream by Ian Fleming and Graham Greene’s ghost tale Reading at Night
James Bond creator Ian Fleming did not need to write about Cold War intrigue to consider the ways people scheme against each other. The Shameful Dream, a rare Fleming work published this week, is a short story about a Londoner named Bone, Caffery Bone.
Fleming’s protagonist is the literary editor of Our World, a periodical “designed to bring power and social advancement to Lord Ower”, its owner.
Bone has been summoned to spend Saturday evening with Lord and Lady Ower, taken there in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.
Bone suspects, with a feeling of “inevitable doom”, that he is to meet the same fate of so many employed by Lord Ower – removed from his job and soon forgotten.
“For Lord Ower sacked everyone sooner or later, harshly if they belonged to no union or with a fat check if they did and were in a position to hit back,” Fleming writes.
“If one worked for Lord Ower one was expendable and one just spent oneself until one had gone over the cliff edge and disappeared beneath the waves with a fat splash.”