Blast from the Past

32

“God help the American taxpayer,” Polly said with some feeling.

Jack acknowledged that it had been a questionable use of public funds, but what was the point of power if you couldn’t abuse it?

“Fuck the American taxpayer. I’ve given them twenty-eight years of my life. Uncle Sam owes me.”

“He doesn’t owe you anything. You love being a soldier.”

“Murderer, you used to say.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s because I’m a soldier that I lost you.”

“You didn’t lose me, Jack, you discarded me and I don’t think it was because you were a soldier. I think it’s because you were a gutless bastard. In fact, I think you still are, since you seem to think that calling or writing to an old flame would result in a court-martial for treason.”

“I told you, Polly, I couldn’t.”

Polly didn’t understand and she wasn’t likely to. Of course he had lost her because he was a soldier. The army would not have accepted his and Polly’s relationship in a million years. Jack had been faced with a straight choice and he had chosen his career. That did not mean he liked it, it did not mean that a part of him had not regretted the decision every single day since.

“Why did you have me traced, Jack? Why are you here?”

“I thought you already had your answer. I already told you how I found you.”

“This is a subclause. Why did you find me?”

“Why do you think? To find out what I’d let go. To find out what you’d become.”

“Jack, we knew each other for one summer in a totally different decade and you dropped me. That was it, end of rather stupid story. Now you turn up out of the blue talking about us like we were a Lionel Ritchie lyric. What is this about?”

“That summer was the best summer of my life, Polly. The best anything of my life.”

“You just miss the Cold War, that’s all.”

“Well, hell, who doesn’t?” Jack laughed. “And what’s happening with you in the new world order, then? I noticed when I met him that you weren’t the prime minister yet.”

“I never wanted to be prime minister, Jack. I wanted there not to be any prime ministers. I wanted the nation state with its hierarchies to be replaced by an organically functioning system of autonomous collectives.”

“With you as prime minister.”

“Not at all, although obviously some kind of non-oppressive, non-authoritarian body of governance would be required.”

“And anybody who didn’t like your non-oppressive, non-authoritarian governance could get shot.”

“That wouldn’t happen.”

“Polly, it always happens when you fucking idealists get to defending your revolutions. You always start shooting people. By any means possible, as Lenin said. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao. The most pious murderers in hell…”

Polly very nearly rose to it. Very nearly slammed her fist on the table and launched into the ancient and terminally tedious arguments of the left. Just in time, she hauled herself back from the brink.

“Jack, this is ridiculous! Are you out of your mind! I’m a completely different woman now, twice as old, for a start, and you turn up after nearly twenty years quoting Lenin and trying to continue the conversation we were having.”

Jack smiled. She was just the same. The same passion, the same beauty.

“I don’t know. I just thought it might have been kinda fun, you know, for old times’ sake. Like the first time we talked.”

“Fought.”

“Yeah, fought. In that hellhole on the A34.”

“Except then, of course, we ended up in…”

Polly did not finish the sentence. She did not need to. Her eyes gave the thought away. She did not need to say “bed” because there it was, right there, not ten feet from either of them. Her bed, unmade and inviting, the duvet tossed aside, the deep impression of Polly’s head still there upon the pillow. A bed just climbed out of. A bed ready to be climbed back into.

“I’ve never been in one of those restaurants since,” Polly said.

Jack fixed his stare on hers. She could feel herself going scarlet.

“That day changed me too, Polly. I’ll never forget it.”

“They’re just so disgusting. I mean, how do you ruin tomato soup?”

“I didn’t mean the restaurant, Polly, I meant…” Jack’s tone spoke volumes, but Polly was trying not to listen. She stuck resolutely to her topic.

“Putting a stupid hat on a sixteen-year-old school-leaver does not constitute training a chef.”

“Polly, how long can you stay angry at a bowl of soup?”

“No, but really. How do you mess up tomato soup? It was hot on the top and cold in the middle. With a skin on it! That has to be deliberate,” said Polly, once again reliving the horror of that gruesome cuisine.

“Forget the soup,” Jack pleaded. “Walk away. It’s been sixteen years, you have to let it go now. We weren’t bothered about eating, anyway. We went to that little hotel. Do you remember?”

Polly looked puzzled. “A hotel? Are you sure? I don’t remember that.”

Jack could not conceal his disappointment. “Oh, I thought you would-”

“Of course I fucking remember, you fucking idiot,” Polly said as loudly as she dared without provoking the sleeping milkman downstairs. “I lost my fucking virginity, didn’t I!”

Jack got it. “Oh, right,” he said. “British sarcasm.”

“Irony.”

He hated that. That was a British trick, the sarcasm and irony trick. Earlier in the evening the senior British officer had tried to make the same distinction.

“Oh, yes,” the pompous little khaki shit had said, having cracked some particularly weak sarcastic put-down or other. “You American chaps aren’t big on irony, are you?”

Jack thought it was pathetic the way the British aggrandized their penchant for paltry sarcasm by styling it “irony”. They thought it meant they had a more sophisticated sense of humour than the rest of the world, but it didn’t. It just meant that they were a bunch of pompous smartasses.

“So you do remember,” he said.

“Of course I bloody remember,” Polly replied. “I remember every detail. The soup-”

“Forget the soup.”

“The pie-”

“Forget the pie.”

“I wrote to the restaurant, you know.”

“Christ, hadn’t you made enough fuss already?”

Not that Jack had minded at the time. Usually he hated any kind of scene. Under any normal circumstances the fuss that Polly had made on the first day they met would have ended their relationship right there. The funny thing was that he had loved it then and he loved it still. He remembered every detail. Polly announcing loudly that she resented being forced to eat in a fucking charnel house, supergluing the sauce bottles to the table. Even now he laughed at the memory of that wonderful, funny, sexy, sunny lunchtime.

“You sure showed them,” he said.

“Non-violent direct action. At least we didn’t pay,” Polly replied.

That was one of Polly’s favourite memories of her whole life. That glorious runner. The suggestion, the decision, the execution, it had all happened in one mad moment. Suddenly the two of them, her and an American soldier, were charging for the door and out into the carpark. It had been such fun, so exciting, piling into his car and screeching out onto the A34 before anyone in the restaurant had realized what had happened.

“I just couldn’t believe that you, a soldier and everything, were prepared to run out without paying.”

After sixteen years Jack decided it was time to own up.

“Actually I did pay, Polly. I left a five-pound note under my plate.”

Polly could scarcely believe it. This was astonishing, horrible news.

“You paid! That’s terrible! I thought you were so cool!”

“I was cool. It got you into my car, didn’t it?”

That was true enough. Jack’s astute deception all those years before had certainly got her into his car, certainly made her breathless and excited and ready for anything. Who could tell? Had that little trick not occurred to him then perhaps their relationship might never have happened. After all, if Jack had simply asked Polly to go with him to a field and then to a hotel, it is most unlikely that she would have gone. It had been the drama of that single moment that had carried her into his arms and changed both their lives for ever.

“You bastard,” said Polly. “If you hadn’t-”

“Polly, life is full of ifs. If that receptionist hadn’t decided to turn a blind eye to your pornographic T-shirt maybe we would have seen sense and walked away.”

“There was nothing remotely offensive about my T-shirt!” said Polly, the passage of time having done nothing to blunt the memory of that confrontation. “That receptionist was just a stupid Nazi bitch.”

“Polly, just because somebody did not approve of what was emblazoned on your T-shirt doesn’t make them a National Socialist.”

“Take the toys from the boys,” said Polly. “What could be offensive about that?”

“Beats me,” Jack replied, “unless it was the picture of that huge flying penis you had printed across your tits.”

Polly never failed to rise to this one.

“Well, what were those bloody missiles but big blokes’ willies? Nuclear dickheads, we used to call them.”

“Yeah, we all loved that one on our side of the fence,” Jack said with heavy sarcasm (or perhaps it was irony). “‘Tell us the one about missiles being penis replacements again,’ we used to shout. We’d laugh all day.”

“You’re only taking the piss because actually you felt threatened.”

“Terrified. Couldn’t sleep. You know, Polly, maybe it’s kind of late in the day to say this, but the idea of dissing things because of their so-called phallic shape. It’s always struck me as kind of banal.”

“Because it reveals an uncomfortable truth about yourself.”

“No, because it’s dumb. Things get shaped straight and thin for reasons of aerodynamics. Missiles and skyscrapers are shaped the way they are on the soundest principles of engineering, not as monuments to the dick. In fact, so is the dick. The dick is shaped like a dick because that is the most efficient shape for a dick to be. That’s why it’s dick shaped. I mean a dick shaped like a table would cause all sorts of practical spatial problems. Surely you can see that?”

“Jack, it’s a point of satire, not civil engineering.”

“Yes, but it’s such lazy, unconvincing satire. It always annoys me so much the way you girls trot it out like you’re saying something so astute and revealing. Like with cars; a guy gets a cool car and suddenly according to you and the other femmos it’s his dick. Well, dicks don’t look a bit like cars. No guy ever stood outside a Cadillac showroom and said, ‘Oh, boy, I wish I had one of those. It looks exactly like my dick.’ Jesus, if my dick looked like a Cadillac I’d go see a doctor. Personally, I drive a pick-up truck. You ever see a dick with a trailer?”

“Jack, I’m not interested. This is your problem. I never-”

“You might as well say a trombone is a phallic symbol, or a stick of gum! Maybe when a guy shoves a piece of gum into his face what he’s really saying is that he is a subconscious homosexual and has a secret desire to be chewing on a big old Cadillac!”

“Jack -”

“Phallic symbol, for Christ’s sake. When they built the World Trade Center do you think they stood around saying, ‘Looks great and it’ll be even better when they put the purple helmet on the top’?”

Polly used to love this type of conversation with Jack. They would shout and rant and swear at each other.

Then, of course, they made love.

“Jack, don’t you think you’re getting a little worked up over this? Protesting too much?”

“I hate that way of arguing! That is a woman’s way of arguing! Say something outrageous and when the guy gets angry act like he’s got the problem.”

Polly wondered whether perhaps this might be the reason for Jack’s visit.

“Is this some kind of therapy thing? Is that why you’ve come? Has some army analyst discovered you hate women and told you to go and confront your past?”

Now Jack really went off. “Are you kidding me? See an analyst? I’d rather stick my Cadillac in a blender. Analysts and therapists have destroyed the world. They’re a cancer. I’d put the lot of them against a wall and shoot them. Every one. Them, their unconscious selves, their recovered personalities, and particularly, above all, their inner fucking children.”

Polly had not expected Jack to have suddenly turned into a liberal in the years that had passed since their last meeting, but if anything he seemed to have got worse.

“You know what, Jack? It’s lovely to see you and all that, but I’m rather tired, so-”

But Jack wasn’t listening. He was on a subject that moved him deeply, to Polly’s mind rather disturbingly so.

“Jesus, the entire twentieth century was corrupted by the theories of some Jew who thought women wanted to grow dicks and guys wanted to fuck their mothers! Where I come from that’s fighting talk. We’d have killed that pervert the first day he opened his mouth. We’d have hung him from a tree, and you know what? We would have been called uncivilized.”

There was something venomous about Jack’s tone that Polly didn’t like. He still had all his charm but it had taken on a steely edge.

“Jack, I’m not interested in your Neolithic opinions. I have no idea why I’m even having this conversation, I have to work tomorrow. Why are you here?”

“I told you! I wanted to see you-”

“So you’ve seen me! What now?”

What indeed? Jack hardly knew himself. He had thought he knew, but that was before they got talking. Jack had rehearsed all this in his mind so many times. Yet now he was not so sure, not so sure at all. He glanced at his watch. It was gone three.

“Look, if I’m keeping you,” Polly snapped, “you can go!”

“I’m not going, Polly. I want to be with you.”

There was something about his tone that Polly did not like. Something commanding and possessive. Polly did not like men acting as if they had the right to intrude on her own private space. She had had enough of that with the Bug.