Blast from the Past

28

“Excuse me,” said Jack. “I have to take this.”

Polly’s look assured him that he was not welcome.

“Yeah?” said Jack.

It was Schultz, General Kent’s number two. After all the years Schultz’s career was still shadowing Jack’s. It was astonishing to Jack that such a man could become a general, but he seemed to have always been in the right place at the right time. And of course he never gave offence to anybody. Being incapable of making a decision, he had never ruffled any feathers and that was an important part of promotion in a peacetime army. Schultz had appeared to simply float up the ranks in the wake of better men. For the sake of the soldiers in the field Jack prayed that Schultz never floated into a combat command.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you, General,” Schultz said.

“Jesus, Schultz, of course you’re fucking disturbing me. It’s the middle of the night. I was asleep!” Jack snapped into his phone.

From a desk deep inside the American Embassy, General Schultz would have liked to point out that some people were lucky to be getting any sleep at all. But he didn’t. He was far too scared of Jack. Instead he apologized and explained that he had been forced to call because their schedule for the following day had changed.

“It’s the Brussels summit on the former Warsaw Pact nations,” Schultz explained.

This was Jack’s least favourite subject. The planned expansion of NATO up to the very borders of Russia. He thought it dangerous madness. Jack had risen high in the army but he expected to rise higher and he had no wish to do so only to inherit a crippled defence alliance for which he would then be held responsible. If, a year or two down the track, NATO found itself overstretched and unable to secure and control its own borders it would be his, not some ex-president’s career, that would end in ignominy.

“It’s in-fucking-sane!” Jack barked into his phone. “We have a defence alliance that has kept Western democracy secure for over half a century and now on the whim of some fat fucking yuppie who just happens to be president we are inviting every basket case this side of the Urals to join. We can’t possibly guarantee their security and we wouldn’t want to even if we could. Half of them are going to end up dictatorships anyway!”

Polly sat down on her bed. It was all too strange to take in. There appeared to be a man using her room to conduct the business of the Western nuclear alliance. She was a peace woman, for heaven’s sake!

In the American Embassy General Schultz was uncomfortable too, horrified that Jack should express such robust views over an easily tappable cellular phone. Jack’s opinion was so alarmingly contrary to that of the president, who was, after all, their commander in chief.

“General Kent, as you are aware, the under-secretary of state feels-”

“The under-secretary of state is a time-serving place woman. A triumph for the Pushy Ugly Women Lobby. She got her job because the president wants to show that in his America not only male assholes can achieve high office.”

Polly harrumphed loudly from the bed. Now she was being forced to listen to laddish, sexist abuse. Jack made a silent sign towards her as if to say that he was sorry and that he wouldn’t be long. Polly grimaced in reply.

Schultz was grimacing too. He was only trying to do his best.

“General, as you know, the under-secretary of state has accepted your proposal that the Russians attend the summit.”

This was something. After all, it was the Russians and their worryingly unstable army whom Jack and this new NATO would be facing.

“But it seems,” Schultz explained, “that the admiral of the Russian fleet needs to get back to the Black Sea by suppertime. I think he’s scared they won’t save any food for him. Or that his flagship will have sunk with the rust.”

This was an attempt at a joke, but it fell flat.

“Funny, Schultz, I’m laughing here. I love to be woken up at two forty-five in the morning by comedians.”

In fact Jack did not think that the desperate plight of the ex-Soviet armed forces was remotely amusing. The fact that the world’s second-largest nuclear force was now in the charge of cold, hungry and embittered guardians who had been stripped of all status and pride struck terror into Jack’s heart whenever he thought about it.

“I’m sorry,” said Schultz over the phone. “It’s been a long night. Just working out the seating for this thing is a minefield. Who gets priority, the Germans or the French?”

“The Germans, of course. The French will take offence wherever you sit them, so you might as well give them something to moan about.”

“Well, anyway, the Russians want the meeting brought forward to noon Brussels time tomorrow,” said Schultz. “That’s eleven a.m. with us here in the UK.”

“Fucking Euros,” Jack grumbled. “They think they can run a single currency; they can’t even synchronize their watches.”

“Our plane needs to leave Brize Norton by ten. Can I get them to send a car for eight?”

“I’ll be here at the hotel waiting.”

Jack put his phone away.

Polly was not happy. She did not like hearing herself denied in such a casual manner. If Jack was ashamed or embarrassed to be with her, then he should not have come. He had no right to sit there, on her chair, in her house, pretending that he was in a hotel. Old and bitter memories welled up inside her once more. Memories of a relationship denied, furtive and secret, conducted as if she had something of which to be ashamed. Memories of sneaking away from camp and skulking in bus shelters, waiting, sometimes for an hour, for Jack’s car to appear. Memories of his making her swear over and over again that she had told no one of their affair. Of never being allowed to call Jack or even write to him directly. Of messages sent via the cold anonymity of a post office box. “Bus shelter. Six p.m.”

For a time it had all seemed exciting and wicked, as if they were spies. But now it all looked merely deceitful and cowardly.

“Why did you pretend you were asleep, Jack? Why did you pretend you were still at your hotel?” Polly demanded. “Still the same gutless wonder? Still keeping me a secret? Still scared what the army will think?”

Jack did not want to quarrel. He had only one night and Schultz’s call had just shortened it. There was so much he wanted to say. So much he wanted to know. He pushed NATO and its business from his mind and returned to the matter in hand.

“You live alone, don’t you?” he said, ignoring Polly’s irritation and stating the obvious.

“I do now.”

“Now?”

“I was in something for quite a long time but the relationship had problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Oh, nothing very much, just his wife and kids.”

Jack looked hard at Polly. Now he thought about it she did look older, of course. No less lovely but definitely older. He was a good judge of faces and he did not think that Polly’s life had been a particularly easy one.

“Tell me about him,” Jack said gently.

Polly nearly did. She nearly sat down and blurted out the whole painful story of how, just when she had been getting herself back together again, she had allowed her life to be hijacked for a second time by an entirely inappropriate love affair. She nearly told him, but she didn’t. Jack knew quite enough about her uncanny ability to choose the wrong men.