Blast from the Past

16

Watching from a little way along the street, in the pitch black shadows of a derelict shop doorway, Peter’s inner turmoil was the equal of Polly’s. He could not believe his anguished eyes. A man was entering Polly’s flat, and at 2.20 in the morning! It could only be Polly he was visiting. Hers was the only light that burned in the whole building. What was worse, the man who Polly was allowing into her home at such an hour was the vicious brute who had attacked him and, what’s more, attacked him with scarcely an ounce of provocation.

Peter could hardly begin to imagine what was going on. To his knowledge Polly had no current boyfriend. There had been a man a few months earlier but he didn’t seem to visit any more. Perhaps it was the bricks that Peter had thrown through the man’s car window on three separate occasions that had put him off. Recently Polly had always been alone. But now she wasn’t. Now she was entertaining a violent American in the middle of the night.

Peter slunk further back into the shadows. He must concentrate, decide upon a course of action. He dug into the pocket of his coat for the bag of sweets he had brought with him as a comfort against the lonely boredom of the night. Sucking noisily, he tried to think.

Upstairs, behind the glowing curtain, Polly was again acutely aware of her appearance. She was still wearing nothing more than an old shirt and a pair of knickers and there was a gentleman caller upon her doorstep; it would not do. She rushed to her bed and grabbed the dress she’d chosen and also some lipstick from her handbag. Catching sight of herself in the mirror she could only groan at her pillow hair and the slight reddening around her eyes caused by her crying.

An unbiased observer might have thought that despite the strangeness of the situation and despite everything that had happened in the past, Polly still wanted to look attractive for Jack.

Knowing that she had only the time in which it takes a man to walk up three flights of stairs, Polly attempted to brush her hair, wipe her eyes and pull off her nightshirt all at the same time. She soon realized that these activities were incompatible. Particularly if one is also attempting to apply lipstick and search the unsorted clean washing bag for an unladdered pair of tights.

“Calm. Stay calm,” Polly said to herself as her stomach executed a particularly startling element of the Olympic gymnastic routine, which it had been performing ever since Polly had been awoken scarcely five minutes before.

Outside Polly’s flat, in the well of the building, Jack was climbing the last flight of stairs.

So this is where she ended up, he was thinking.

There is always something rather depressing about the communal areas of multiple-household houses. The mounds of junk mail and local advertising freesheets behind the front door. The piles of letters addressed to long-since-departed occupants stacked on the rickety hall table. The bicycles obstructing the way, the unloved and unwashed stair carpet, the large and perplexing stain on the elderly wallpaper. The single framed print hanging on the wall on the first landing, the dead lightbulbs suspended pointlessly from their dusty flexes.

Such an extraordinary visit, thought Jack, and such ordinary surroundings. It was enough to quite depress a man.

Arriving at Polly’s door, Jack checked the number one more time against the information in his file and knocked. Inside Polly yelped and stubbed her toe against a chair.

It was too late to get dressed. Swearing quietly, she pulled her nightshirt back down (better an old shirt than topless, she reasoned) and snatched up her dressing gown from where she had left it on the floor. One glance told her that it was not acceptable. It was as old and stained and horrid as the stairwell outside. No eyes but hers should ever look upon it. Stuffing the offending gown under the bed, she ran to the cupboard from which she had taken her selection of dresses and, scrabbling inside amongst the Chinese puzzle of wire hangers, she located and pulled out another gown. It was a tiny fluffy one, a Christmas present, slightly see-through and trimmed with fake fur. She had never worn it and she certainly could not do so now. She would rather be stained and torn than completely ludicrous and slightly pervy.

There was another knock. Polly could prevaricate no longer. In desperation she flung on a plastic rainmac. It did not look good, but it covered more of her than her nightshirt did, and it would have to do.

Polly approached her front door and peered through the spy hole. She recognized Jack instantly; even the darkness and the magnified fisheye effect of the spy hole could not disguise that handsome face and classically firm American jaw.

Jack was back.

Polly took off the chain and opened the door.

There he stood, in the shadows of the upstairs landing.

Like a spy.

He had on one of those timeless American gabardine overcoats that could as easily be worn by Humphrey Bogart or Harrison Ford. A coat that is forever stylish; like Coke and Elvis, age does not wither them. Jack wore it well, the collar turned up as with all the best men of mystery, and the belt knotted at the waist. Very little light emanated from Polly’s lamplit room, and Jack was illuminated only by the streetlight orange which glowed through the bare window of the landing. Peter Lorre seemed almost to be hovering at Jack’s elbow. He did not actually say, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” but he might as well have done.

“Jack? It really is you, isn’t it?”

Polly was also in shadow, dimly backlit by the glow of her bedside lamp. The whole scene was classic noir.

“Hello, Polly. It’s been a while.”

For a moment it seemed as if she would embrace him. For a moment she might have done. Then the memory of his betrayal descended upon her and turned what had begun to look like a smile into a frown.

“Yes, yes, it’s been a while,” she said, stepping away from him, back into her room. “Why change the habit of half a lifetime? What are you doing here?”

“I came to visit with you.”

He said it as if it was a reasonable thing to say. As if no further explanation was required.

“Visit?! Now?!”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be bloody stupid. We don’t have anything to say to each other. We have nothing to do with each other. What is this about?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It isn’t about anything, it’s a social call.”

“Oh well, that’s nice. Perhaps I’d better put the kettle on and crack open a packet of my finest custard creams. It’s after two o’clock in the fucking morning!”

“I know what time it is. Who were you expecting?”

“What do you mean?”

Polly felt it was she who should be asking the questions.

“Who’s the thin man, Polly? The guy you asked me about, the guy who was supposed to be in the street?”

Where could she start? She didn’t even know Jack and now she was supposed to explain to him that she was in the process of being stalked by an obsessive. She was supposed to stand in her doorway in the small hours of the morning and talk to a virtual stranger about the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

Or perhaps the second worst thing, but then Jack knew all about that already.

“It’s a man who’s been bothering me, that’s all. I don’t think he’ll call again.”

“Bothering you? What do you mean, bothering you? Like is he your husband or something? Have I walked into a domestic here?”

This was ridiculous. Suddenly it was Polly who was having to explain herself. Only a few minutes before, she’d been asleep, and now she was filling this man in on her personal details.

“No, a stranger. They call them stalkers. He’s a nuisance, that’s all. He thinks he loves me and rings my bell occasionally. It’s not a problem or a big deal. Forget it.”

Polly always described her torment in a far lighter tone than she actually felt. Like many a victim before her, she found her pathetic vulnerability rather embarrassing. It made her feel weak and inadequate. After all, if it was her life that was being attacked rather than other people’s, perhaps the problem lay with her? Perhaps it was her fault.

Jack was thinking about his recent violent encounter at the telephone box. Thin, pale, mousy hair. The description fitted. On the other hand, it would have fitted a million men.

“Actually, there was a guy like that hanging around the callbox,” said Jack, “but he’s not out there now and I don’t think he’ll be back. Would it be OK to come in?”

And with that Polly realized that even in this supreme moment of strangeness, the Bug was taking over. That was the absolutely worst aspect of the Bug’s crashlanding into her life. She just couldn’t get the bastard off her mind. Whatever she was doing he was always there. She had not been able to fully appreciate a single thing in her life since the nightmare began. Parties, shows, work. Everything had been affected by his existence.

But this, this was different. This was bigger than the Bug, bigger than anything. Jack was back, and he wanted to come in.

“No, you can’t bloody come in!”

As if she would let him in. As if she wanted anything to do with him.

“Please, Polly.”

“No! I’m not going to just-”

“Please, Polly. Let me in. If you don’t I’ll just keep standing here on your landing. It’ll be morning in a few hours. What will you tell the other people who live in the house?”

The same voice, the same charming, sexy voice.

“Why the hell would I let you in?”

Jack suggested that old times’ sake was surely a good enough reason, and it was, of course. That and the fact that Polly absolutely longed to let him in.

“For old times’ sake I ought to kick you in the balls.”

“Well, in that case you’d better do it inside. We don’t want to disturb the neighbours.”

Polly looked at Jack and tried to pull herself together a little, assuming what she hoped was a cool, emotionally invulnerable expression. Interested, certainly, but detached, reserved. In control of her space and her emotions. Jack thought merely that she still had a nice smile. He smiled back at her, his old smile, still fresh as a young boy’s. That smile was so familiar to Polly, so inseparable from her memories of Jack that she could almost have imagined that he had not used it since. That he had kept it carefully in some safe place so that it would remain new and sparkling until the day he brought it out again, just for her. But it wasn’t true. Polly knew that Jack used that smile every day. Whenever he wanted anything.

Polly stood aside. What else could she do? Jack walked past her and into the room. She closed the door behind him, put her rape alarm back on the bedside table, and there they were. Alone together again.

They stood staring at each other, neither of them really knowing what to say or do next. Then suddenly Polly found herself enveloped in Jack’s arms. She did not know how it happened, whether she had crossed the floor to him or whether he had grabbed her, or whether they had simply blended together by instant osmosis. But it happened. For a moment at least they held each other and in Polly’s heart a tiny spark leapt instantly into life, a spark that had long lain hidden amongst the dead ashes of the ferocious furnace that had once burnt between them.