showerhead gurgled, and sneezed, and then dribbled. I took a shallow bath instead.
I was lucky. It could take hours before a call to the States came through, but the operator rang me back after only twenty minutes. Louise answered, and although she sounded quite close, I kept hearing an echo, so that she said everything twice.
“I’m going to the Marriotts’ this evening. They’re having a cookout they’re having a cookout.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Are you going to see your sister this weekend?”
“I don’t know, it depends if Dick’s coming home if Dick’s coming home.”
“Listen, I have to go, but I love you.”
“Be careful, Jimmy, won’t you please won’t you please?”
“I’ll be careful.” I hadn’t been allowed to tell her whatI was doing here in England—only that it was connected with my work for the intelligence services during the war. But Louise wasn’t the kind of woman to be easily fooled. She had stood in the bedroom doorway watching me pack as intently as if she were making an 8mm home movie in her head—a home movie that she could play back later, in her mind’s eye, if I never came back to her.
I had known Louise since college. We had dated once or twice, and had a good time together, but Louise was always much more serious than I was. She liked string quartets and art galleries and live theater, while I preferred beer and swing music and W. C. Fields movies. Not that I wasn’t academic. You couldn’t help being academic, with a father like mine. But I wasn’t a
sensitive
academic. I didn’t carry a lily around, and I didn’t lisp.
As it happened, though, Louise and I met up again in 1949, at a friend’s party in North Beach, and I invited her to Mill Valley for the day. We were both different people by then. She had been through a violent marriage and lost a baby. I had been chasing
strigoi
in Europe. We saw qualities in each other that we hadn’t been able to appreciate when we were younger. In Louise, I saw thoughtfulness, and a deep appreciation for the value of human life, but an unexpected willingness to have fun, too. I don’t exactly know what she saw in me, but I always tried to be kind to her, and protective, and I even pretended to like her cheese and macaroni.
Terence called for me at 2:30 PM and we drove to Croydon. Terence was right, Croydon was “pretty grotty”—a densely overcrowded suburb with mile after mile of Victorian and Edwardian shops and pubs, interspersedwith sorry-looking semidetached houses and filling stations and used-car lots. The sky was beginning to cloud over, although the heat was still unbearable. Terence was steadily perspiring in his coat and necktie, but he didn’t make any attempt to take them off.
We reached an ugly red-brick pub called the Red Deer, where the main road divided. Terence took a right up a steep, narrow street lined with scabby-looking plane trees. We passed a huge Victorian church, faced with flint, and then pulled up outside a large three-story house. There were two men standing around outside the front gate, smoking. Terence said, “Couple of our chaps. Couldn’t have the constabulary here, somebody might ask awkward questions.”
I climbed out of the car and looked up at the house. It was massive and clumsily proportioned, built of the same shiny red brick as the pub we had passed, with a gabled roof and window frames painted bright blue. The front garden sloped up from the street, and was crowded with laurel bushes. The soil was so chalky here that the flowerbeds were strewn with big white lumps of limestone.
Terence introduced me to his “chaps.” Like Terence, they both seemed to be far too young to be MI6 operatives, like two schoolboys. One of them said, “Don’t know what the latest score is, by any chance?”
“Last I heard, Evans took four wickets for sixty-four.”
“Crikey. I thought he’d broken his finger.”
“Our dog handler not here yet?” I
I was lucky. It could take hours before a call to the States came through, but the operator rang me back after only twenty minutes. Louise answered, and although she sounded quite close, I kept hearing an echo, so that she said everything twice.
“I’m going to the Marriotts’ this evening. They’re having a cookout they’re having a cookout.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Are you going to see your sister this weekend?”
“I don’t know, it depends if Dick’s coming home if Dick’s coming home.”
“Listen, I have to go, but I love you.”
“Be careful, Jimmy, won’t you please won’t you please?”
“I’ll be careful.” I hadn’t been allowed to tell her whatI was doing here in England—only that it was connected with my work for the intelligence services during the war. But Louise wasn’t the kind of woman to be easily fooled. She had stood in the bedroom doorway watching me pack as intently as if she were making an 8mm home movie in her head—a home movie that she could play back later, in her mind’s eye, if I never came back to her.
I had known Louise since college. We had dated once or twice, and had a good time together, but Louise was always much more serious than I was. She liked string quartets and art galleries and live theater, while I preferred beer and swing music and W. C. Fields movies. Not that I wasn’t academic. You couldn’t help being academic, with a father like mine. But I wasn’t a
sensitive
academic. I didn’t carry a lily around, and I didn’t lisp.
As it happened, though, Louise and I met up again in 1949, at a friend’s party in North Beach, and I invited her to Mill Valley for the day. We were both different people by then. She had been through a violent marriage and lost a baby. I had been chasing
strigoi
in Europe. We saw qualities in each other that we hadn’t been able to appreciate when we were younger. In Louise, I saw thoughtfulness, and a deep appreciation for the value of human life, but an unexpected willingness to have fun, too. I don’t exactly know what she saw in me, but I always tried to be kind to her, and protective, and I even pretended to like her cheese and macaroni.
Terence called for me at 2:30 PM and we drove to Croydon. Terence was right, Croydon was “pretty grotty”—a densely overcrowded suburb with mile after mile of Victorian and Edwardian shops and pubs, interspersedwith sorry-looking semidetached houses and filling stations and used-car lots. The sky was beginning to cloud over, although the heat was still unbearable. Terence was steadily perspiring in his coat and necktie, but he didn’t make any attempt to take them off.
We reached an ugly red-brick pub called the Red Deer, where the main road divided. Terence took a right up a steep, narrow street lined with scabby-looking plane trees. We passed a huge Victorian church, faced with flint, and then pulled up outside a large three-story house. There were two men standing around outside the front gate, smoking. Terence said, “Couple of our chaps. Couldn’t have the constabulary here, somebody might ask awkward questions.”
I climbed out of the car and looked up at the house. It was massive and clumsily proportioned, built of the same shiny red brick as the pub we had passed, with a gabled roof and window frames painted bright blue. The front garden sloped up from the street, and was crowded with laurel bushes. The soil was so chalky here that the flowerbeds were strewn with big white lumps of limestone.
Terence introduced me to his “chaps.” Like Terence, they both seemed to be far too young to be MI6 operatives, like two schoolboys. One of them said, “Don’t know what the latest score is, by any chance?”
“Last I heard, Evans took four wickets for sixty-four.”
“Crikey. I thought he’d broken his finger.”
“Our dog handler not here yet?” I
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