Descendant

“Really? I wouldn’t know. All I know is, Margot Kettner and your mom, they were very close.”

“I never heard her mention any Margot Kettner.”

“More than likely you weren’t listening.”

I put the photograph back on top of the piano. “No, Dad, you’re right. I probably wasn’t. You know me.”

A Postcard from England, 1961

I settled down in Kenwood Hill, Louisville, under the name William Crowe. They gave me a new social- security number and a new bank account and even a new passport. I started up a freelance business consultancy, pretty much along the lines of the work I had been doing before I was sent to England.

I made friends, I joined a couple of local charities, I played golf at Quail Chase. I dated a few women, and with one of them (a vivacious redhead called Mandy Ridgway) I had a long and serious relationship that almost went as far as marriage. Somehow, though, I could never bring myself to make the commitment. Every time I thought about marriage I thought about my Kit, lying on the top shelf of my bedroom closet, and the possibility that I might be called on to use it again.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” said Mandy, one September evening in 1961, as we sat in Stan’s Fish Sandwich on Lexington Road, eating rolled oysters.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s always like there’s something on your mind. Something private. Something that’s worrying you.”

“Such as what?”

“You tell me. But wherever we go, you’re always looking around you, like you’re checking everybody out. Look — you’re doing it now. You’re not looking at me, you’re looking over my shoulder.”

“Sorry. It’s a bad habit, that’s all. Guess I’m just nosey.”

She reached across the table and held my hand. “There’s something else, too. A couple of times lately you’ve been talking in your sleep.”

“Oh, really? Don’t tell me I’ve been calling out another woman’s name.”

“Not unless ‘Duca’ is a woman.”

The next morning, I opened up my mailbox and found a plain yellow envelope in it, postmarked Washington, DC. Inside was a compliments slip from MI6 in London, and a picture postcard of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, with an improbably blue sky.

The postcard was dated June 12, 1961, so it had taken nearly three months to reach me. Presumably it had been vetted by MI6 and then by US counterintelligence before it had been decided that it was harmless, and that they could send it on.

The writing was loopy, in smudged purple ink. “Dear Jim, Even after all this time I still think of you. I am so sorry for the way things turned out. Poor Bullet died late last year. I would love to know how you are. Yours, Jill.”

I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach, very hard. I sat down at the kitchen table just as Mandy came in, tightening the belt of her robe. “Jim? Are you OK?”

“Sure. I’m fine.”

“I was thinking maybe we could go to Shakertown today. You’ve never been, have you? It’s really fascinating. Actually, I have an unnatural craving for a slice of their lemon pie. I hope I’m not pregnant.”

“Not today, Mandy, OK? Something just came up.”

She came over and sat on my lap and kissed my ear. “I certainly hope so,” she said, suggestively.

It was Jill herself who opened the front door. Her hair was different, flicked up like a tulip, and she was wearing a tight white sweater and a russet-colored tweed skirt. She looked even more beautiful than I had remembered her — dark-skinned, with those dark feline eyes, and those full, suggestive lips.

“Jim!” she said, in total shock, and clapped her hand to her mouth.

“Hey, I got your postcard,” I told her, holding it up. “I thought of writing back — but then I thought — nah, I’ll come over to see you instead.”

She rushed out of the doorway and threw her arms around me and kissed me. I felt like I was in one of those ridiculously romantic TV commercials. But she felt so good, and she smelled so good, and she seemed to be so delighted to see me, that I really didn’t care.

“Oh God,” she said. “I thought I was never going to see you again.”

“Oh, yeah? I hope you didn’t think you could keep me away that easy.”

“Why don’t you come inside? Mummy and Daddy are both out for the day. When did you arrive?”

I followed her into the house. Outside the living room window, a gardener was raking up beech leaves from the lawn and burning them on a bonfire. There was a melancholy smell of smoke in the air.

“Would you like a cup of tea? Or a drink, perhaps?”

I took hold of her hands and looked at her. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous she was. What’s more, I couldn’t believe how excited she was to see me, after more than four years. After all, I was forty-three now, while she couldn’t have been much older than thirty-one.

“I could murder a beer, if you have any beer.”

“I think Daddy’s got some Mackeson’s.”

We sat together on one of the flowery-covered couches. “Are you still married?” she asked me. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

I told her about Louise, and she nodded seriously. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “But maybe it was all for the best.”

“Maybe. What about you? Nobody swept you off your feet yet?”

“Not the way that you did.”

“I’m flattered.”

“I’m not flattering you, I’m telling you the truth. I’ve never been able to get you out of my mind.”

I sipped my stout. There was something in her intonation that made me think: This isn’t just about sexual attraction. This is something more.

“I suppose there was some unfinished business between us,” I said, warily. “A few loose ends that needed to be tied up.”

“I know what happened to Duca,” she said.

“So they told you.”

She reached out and gently stroked the twisted burns on the left side of my neck. “You were very brave,” she said. “There aren’t many men who would have the courage to face up to a creature like that.”

I didn’t say anything, but watched her eyes.

“You’re different from other men. That’s why I couldn’t forget you. That night we slept together. I felt it. And then, when I saw you and Duca together. ”

“What happened, Jill? What happened that day in the surgery? What did Duca do to you?”

She turned her face away, in profile. “Nothing. He didn’t do anything. It didn’t do anything.”

“But afterward, you were dizzy, and you were sick. Duca must have done something. Did it cut you? Did it scratch you? Did it inject you with any of its blood?”

“I was frightened, that’s all. I was suffering from shock. I didn’t have any experience of Screechers, not like you. I simply couldn’t take any more.”

“OK,” I reassured her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the third degree. It was just that I was worried about you.”

“I know,” she said. “But you didn’t have to worry. And you don’t have to worry now, ever again.”

I stayed in England for another five weeks. Jill and I saw each other nearly every day. We went walking in the parks, we visited the National Gallery, we sat in pubs talking to each other as if it would take a whole lifetime of talking for us to catch up.

We made love, in my hotel room, with the gray afternoon light falling through the net curtains, and the sheets twisted beneath us. Afterward she would lie next to me and stroke my back with her fingertips, so lightly that my