Blast from the Past

43

It occurred to Polly that although they had been talking for nearly an hour she still knew almost nothing about Jack’s life. She realized with a tinge of resentment that she seemed to have been giving most of the information.

“So how about you?” she asked “Are you in a relationship?”

“No, I’m married.”

It was a joke, the sort of sexist little put-down in which Jack specialized. Normally Polly despised men who put their wives down behind their backs. She heard that stuff a lot. Scarcely a month went by without some married man or other telling her what a mistake he’d made with his life and how all he wanted was to be able to give his love to someone who would appreciate it. Experience had taught Polly to react to that sort of thing with nothing but feelings of sisterly solidarity.

This time, however, she scarcely noticed Jack’s blokey humour. The knowledge that he was married had taken her completely by surprise. There was no reason for it to have done so, of course. Jack was an establishment man in an establishment job, he was almost bound to be married. She felt deflated. She knew she had no right to feel that way, but none the less she did. The truth was that deep deep down, without acknowledging it even to herself, Polly had been toying with the exquisitely exciting possibility that Jack might have come back for her. From the first moment she had heard his voice over the answerphone something in her most private self had hoped that he had come back to stay. It was nonsense, of course, a ridiculous notion, and she knew that now for sure. He was married, he had a life. All he had come back for was some easy sex. Perhaps not even that, perhaps he had been motivated by nothing more than curiosity.

“Oh yeah, I’m married all right,” Jack mused into his bourbon. “But whatever we had died a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Polly said, although she wasn’t particularly.

Jack performed his favourite shrug. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Literally nothing. I can’t remember the last time we made love. She has a Dutch cap which ought to have been an exhibit in a museum of gynaecology. The spermicidal cream is years past its fuck-by date.”

“So why haven’t you left her?”

“I don’t have the guts.” Which was a silly thing to say to Polly.

“You had the guts before.”

“That was different.”

“How was it different?” Polly asked angrily.

“We were together three months, Polly! We weren’t married! Did you ever try to leave someone you’ve been with for years? It’s like trying to get off the Time Life mailing list. I torment myself. Would she kill herself? Who would get custody of the credit cards?”

“Oh, come on, Jack!”

Polly may not have seen Jack for a long time, but she knew him well enough not to buy this type of bullshit. If Jack wanted something he was not going to let any finer emotions or sensibilities stand in his way. He never had.

“OK, OK,” Jack conceded. “The truth is I can’t leave her because I can’t risk damaging my career. I’m near the top now, Polly. I mean real near. I’m tipped to be the man. Unfortunately the army is about a hundred years behind the rest of the world on social matters. They like you to be married and they like you to stay married.”

Polly could hardly believe that it still mattered, that being a divorce could still be a bar to promotion.

“Oh yes, it can be, Polly, in the army it can. More so now than a few years ago, the pendulum’s swinging back. Can you believe it? I had to leave you for my career and now I can’t leave my wife for the same reason. If I wasn’t such a big success I might almost think that I’d fucked up my life.”

Jack had met Courtney shortly after his arrival in Washington to take up his posting at the Pentagon. They were introduced by Jack’s bumbling old friend Schultz. The meeting took place at a Republican Party fundraiser, and it had been a rare moment of intuition on Schultz’s part because Jack and Courtney became instant friends. They were as similar to each other in outlook as Jack and Polly had been opposites. Courtney, like Jack, was a sincere patriot and a conservative, but also like him she was no bubba-style redneck. The daughter of a Congressman, Courtney was accomplished, cultured and beautiful, and although still only twenty-six, she was already respected in her chosen field of company law. She and Jack made a splendid couple, he the tough, handsome soldier, she “the gorgeous girl most likely”. Between them they looked like the stars of a Reagan campaign ad.

Harry had been suspicious from the moment Jack had introduced him to his new girlfriend. Courtney was perfectly nice and Harry could see that she certainly loved Jack, in an uptight, chilly, preppy sort of way, but Harry did not think that Jack loved Courtney. To Harry, Jack looked like a man going through the motions.

For a while Harry kept his silence, presuming that the affair would blow over, but when Jack wrote to tell him that he had asked Courtney to be his wife and that she had done him the honour of accepting, Harry could deny his fears no longer.

“This isn’t a marriage proposal, Jack, it’s a career move!” Harry thundered in his reply. “It’s too damn convenient to be true. If you asked the IBM mainframe to come up with the perfect bride for you it would have come up with Courtney. But real life isn’t like that. You know that better than anyone because you loved Polly. Love is rarely convenient. Courtney isn’t for you, Jack. You aren’t in love with her, you just think you look so good together that you ought to be in love.”

It was combative stuff but Harry was sure that his instincts were right. He still had Jack’s letters from the final summer that Jack had spent at the Greenham camp. Then Jack really had been in love, with all its attendant joy and pain. Now it seemed to Harry that his brother was merely acquiring a lifestyle appropriate to his status and position.

“Have you thought about Courtney?” Harry wrote. “I thought you officers were supposed to be gentlemen. That girl trusts you, she loves you; don’t you think she has a right to know that you’re still in love with another woman?”

This last point was Harry’s secret weapon. He was aware that Jack wouldn’t take it lightly and he didn’t. Fortunately for the two brothers, they were half a continent apart; otherwise there might even have been blows. Jack furiously denied Harry’s accusations. He loved Courtney, she was a terrific person. Of course he knew that he did not feel quite the same for her as he had once felt for Polly. His knees didn’t buckle at the thought of Courtney, his insides didn’t ache, but surely that was a good thing? His love for Polly had been stupid and obstructive, more an obsession than a proper adult emotion. Jack certainly had no wish to go through his married life poleaxed with love and lust every time his wife walked into the room. It would be far too time-consuming. He had things to do, a career to forge.

“You think there’s only one way of being in love?” he wrote back to Harry. “You think it always has to be like you and Debbie? Instant fucking devotion? You think I have to be some kind of wet puppy dog drip like you? Jesus, I hope not. Let me tell you now. If ever me and Courtney start acting like you and Debbie did, take my gun and shoot me!”

Jack had a point and Harry knew it. When he had first started dating his wife Debbie it certainly had been a bit gruesome. They were both very young and their powerful mutual attraction had manifested itself in a public gooeyness that should have remained private. They kissed at the dinner table, giggled together in corners and occasionally even talked babytalk in front of friends. It was inexcusable behaviour, but they just could not help themselves. There is no love like young love and theirs truly had been love at first sight. What’s more, it was a love that had lasted. Harry and Debbie had become that rare thing, high-school sweethearts who seemed to have made a good and permanent marriage.

“Yeah, well, not every marriage starts with snookey fucking ookums, pal!” Jack wrote furiously. “Courtney and I are adults and we love each other like adults and we’re going to get married like adults, so fuck you!”

Jack signed off, but there was a PS.

“By the way, do you want to be the best man?”

It was a magnificent wedding attended by senators and congressmen, senior army and air force personnel. There was a message from President Bush and his wife Barbara, who knew Courtney’s parents, and the cream of Washington society were in attendance. Even Jack’s father made an effort, ditching his habitual fringed suede jacket and hiring a tuxedo for the occasion.

“Don’t worry, son,” he said. “I’ll kiss ass to your Nazi pals.”

The only tiny upset on the big day was the late arrival of Jack’s old pal Colonel Schultz. Almost inevitably Schultz had gone to the wrong church and had let his staff car go before realizing his mistake. He and Mrs Schultz arrived in a taxi just as the bride and her father pulled up in their limo.

At the reception Old Glory hung upon every wall, an eight-foot-high ice sculpture of the American Eagle glowered from within a sea of flowers, and impeccable waiters served Californian méthode champenoise. The band struck up Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” and Jack and Courtney led off the dancing, looking stunning, he in his dress uniform, she in a cloud of white silk, and the whole room erupted into cheers and spontaneous applause. Such a very good-looking couple, so assured, so strong, so confident. Even Harry, standing at the back of the crowd with his arm around his beloved Debbie, believed in that moment that Jack had made the right choice for his life. He still could not help wondering what the English girl whom Jack had betrayed would have made of such a scene had she witnessed it, but in the glamour and romance of the moment Harry dismissed the thought. It had all been so long ago. His brother claimed to have forgotten his first great love and she no doubt had long since forgotten Jack.

The band moved on to Huey Lewis and the News’s anthem to eighties cool, “Hip To Be Square”. Harry and Debbie joined the bejewelled and unco-ordinated mob on the dancefloor.

Jack and Courtney’s marriage started off fine and for a year or so they were happy. They liked each other and found each other attractive enough to ensure a respectable if unspectacular sex life. The sad truth was, though, that Jack’s heart was never truly in it. Harry had been right, and by the second anniversary that fact was becoming difficult to disguise. Jack had two loves in his life and neither of them was his wife. One was the army and the other, despite all Jack’s denials, was Polly.

The breakdown of affection was hard on Courtney. She truly had believed herself in love and her wedding day had been the happiest day of her life. Unlike her husband, Courtney had not experienced real love before. Her career had always taken precedence over romantic entanglements and so inexperience fooled her into imagining that what she felt for Jack was the real thing. Therefore when Jack’s attitude and manner began to grow colder she was deeply hurt. Nothing had changed as far as she was concerned, and yet it seemed that they were no longer happy.

Jack knew that he was hurting Courtney but he did not know how to stop. His cruelty to her was neither verbal nor physical, but simply that he had married her in the absence of love.

Jack wanted to write to Harry about it but he could not. Harry’s life had changed too and he did not have room in it for Jack’s problems. His beloved wife Debbie had left him. She had fallen for another man, a fellow firefighter, and one day she had told Harry that she was leaving. Debbie explained that even the most perfect love affairs sometimes have sell-by dates and she had reached hers. In vain did Harry protest that those sell-by dates are usually meaningless, that the food is just as good for months afterwards – years, in the case of tinned food. You just have to have the courage to not take the easy way out and throw it away but keep it until you had need of it. Debbie felt that the metaphor was overstretched. The simple fact was that she had become besotted by a big, tough, brave guy and that she no longer loved the man she had married almost as a girl, the man who spent all day making chairs and tables.

“How long has it been going on?” Harry asked.

“It doesn’t matter how long,” Debbie replied, unable even to look at the man whom she had loved so well and for so long.

And Harry knew that it had been going on for some time. His love had been betrayed.

Soon Jack and Courtney’s marriage was also over in everything but name. He led his life and she led hers, which, during Jack’s seven months in Kuwait and briefly Iraq, began to include the occasional love affair. There was no question of divorce. Courtney was a traditionalist, besides which Jack’s career had finally begun to hit the fast track. After the Gulf War he was promoted rapidly and began to mix more in political circles. The Democrats were not going to stay in power for ever and the Republicans were on the lookout for likely lads who might help to break their hold on power, particularly handsome war veterans. Courtney was highly ambitious, and her marriage to Jack became what Harry had suspected it was all along: a mutually supportive marketing exercise.

One thing Courtney was grateful for was that, despite her occasional indiscretions, Jack appeared never to have affairs. She and he had occasional sex and that seemed to be enough for him. The only thing that Jack wanted to get inside was the uniform of the commander of the army.

“We’re friends, sure enough,” Courtney confided in her mother, “but I don’t really think he has passion for anything but leadership.”

It was not true, of course. Jack still had passion for one other thing besides ambition, although he had imagined that passion was long buried. He still craved Polly and now, as Jack stood once again before her, Polly knew it. She could see it in his eyes as he stared at her across her room.

“So your wife doesn’t love you and now you’re here. In the middle of the night,” Polly said. “What’s the idea? Suddenly fancied a little blast from the past?”

There. She’d said it. The thing she’d been wanting to ask from the beginning. Had he come here to try to fuck her?

Jack stared into his glass, nervously rotating it in his hand. The question was banging around his head. Had he come back to try to fuck her? The truth was, of course, that he hadn’t, but by Christ he fancied it all the same.

“Well?” Polly asked again. “You’re miles from home. Your wife doesn’t understand you. Did you suddenly remember me and get a little horny, Jack?”

That he could answer. “Not suddenly, Polly. Always.”

And he meant it. Not one day had gone by since the terrible night he’d left her when Jack had not wanted to see Polly again. To taste again the delights of sex with the only girl he had ever loved.

Polly could see that he meant it, too. It was written in his eyes. Deep inside her something was laid to rest. He had loved her after all.

“Oh, Jack.” She stepped forward. She knew that she shouldn’t. As a strong woman and a feminist she should spurn his selfish desires. She knew that he had only come back for a night. That he would leave again in the morning as he had done before, but she didn’t care. If anyone had a right to a bit of comfort by General Jack Kent it was her. Let the devil take tomorrow; she was opting for one less lonely night.

“Do you know, I have never told my wife about us.” Jack was still fighting it, still holding back.

“I don’t want to talk about your wife.”

“I thought you did.”

“Well, I don’t.”

Polly shifted her weight slightly from one bare foot to the other; it was a tiny move, but sexual. A loosening of the body. Jack glanced up. She still stood that same way that she used to, relaxed, a little lazy on the hips. He felt his whole resolve dissolving.

“Yeah, well anyway, I never told her. I never told anyone.”

“As if anyone would care now?” said Polly. “As if it matters in the slightest after all these years. Unless you’re embarrassed or something. Is that it? Are you scared that one day someone else but me might find out that you’re a craven shit?”

“Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to share you, even in my memories.”

Polly’s emotions were on a knife edge. They could not have been more mixed if she’d run them through the washing machine. It is true that her desire for him had begun to overcome the anger she felt about his ancient betrayal. However, it did not take much to bring sixteen years of resentment back into focus.

“That’s nice,” she said. “Especially considering all you left either of us with is memories.”

Jack looked so crestfallen that she felt sorry for him. Something she would not have imagined possible only an hour before.

“OK, OK,” she put in quickly. “It was a long time ago. Different decade, different world order. It happened, that’s all. I suppose you’re not the only guy in history who did the dirty on a girl. And anyway. You did come back…”

Polly’s stance relaxed further and the room positively hummed with Jack’s longing. Her left hip dropped a little lower, pushing the knee forward. Her mouth fell slightly open. She rested her hands upon her thighs and was reminded that she was still dressed in a rather unflattering plastic rainmac.

“Think I’ll take off this raincoat,” she said. “My nightie’s probably slightly less stupid.”

Polly let the raincoat slip off as if it had been a neglige and stood before Jack dressed only in a shirt, the top couple of buttons of which were already undone. She was breathing more quickly now and her bosom was again rising and falling defiantly. Her hair, which Polly had thought a mess, might also have been described as gloriously tousled, ravishingly unkempt.

She was so beautiful, Jack could hardly bear it, yet still he hesitated.

“It’s been a long time, Jack,” said Polly, which was clearly a nice way of saying, “Come to bed.” She took a step or two towards him.

Jack could not help but catch a momentary glimpse of Polly’s thighs as the movement of her legs parted her shirt at its hem. He was inches from the soft, pale splendour of Polly’s most private self, and he could scarcely bear it. This had been no part of his plans.

Polly bent down and took the glass from Jack’s hand. In so doing her nightshirt fell forward and Jack was almost painfully aware of her breasts as they hung before him inside the gaping shirt. He looked. How could he resist? He stared. For a moment he could actually see between her breasts and through to her stomach beyond and the top of her knickers, which were crimson against her skin.

“I’ve missed you too,” Polly whispered softly, her mouth not nine inches from his ear. “I’ve been lonely.”

“It’s an international epidemic.”

Polly put Jack’s glass down on the little table beside his chair. Or rather on top of the pile of magazines, books and coffee mugs already on top of the. little table by his chair. Then she took Jack’s hands and drew him to his feet. Jack could now feel the warmth of Polly’s breath, the warmth of her body. Her hair smelled exactly the same as it had always done. He could see that her nipples had hardened again beneath the thin cloth of her nightshirt. She had always had such responsive nipples, he remembered. They were up and down all night, leaping into life at the slightest provocation, an infallible barometer of the state of her arousal. The current provocation was scarcely slight. They were both consumed with a taut, vibrant desire and the points of Polly’s breasts seemed almost to be straining to reach him.

“You’re such a beautiful girl, Polly. Still just the same.”

“Nearly the same,” Polly replied. “It’s all still here, just a little closer to the ground.”

It did not seem so to Jack. She appeared to him as beautiful as the day they had first met. As the day he had left. Polly reached up to him and took his face in her hands.

“Hello, old friend,” she said and drew his lips towards hers.

And then they kissed. This time Polly did not break away as she had done when Jack first arrived. It was a kiss that spanned sixteen years, a kiss so charged and full of memory and emotion that it was a wonder that the mouths of two people could contain it all.

Now their arms were about each other, mouths working with a desperate urgency. Even through the thickness of his uniform Jack could feel the soft splendour of Polly’s body against his. If he chose he knew that he could be upon it in an instant. He had only to throw off his clothes and that divine skin would be against his, those adored breasts crushed against his chest. He clasped her even tighter to him.

“Is that a gun in your pocket?” Polly whispered playfully into Jack’s ear, “or are you pleased to see me?”

Jack loosened his grip, slightly embarrassed. “Actually it’s a gun in my pocket.”

Stepping back for a moment Jack reached under his jacket and took a pistol from his trousers.

“Sorry about that,” he said and laid it down on the table beside his glass. Then he made as if to resume their embrace, but Polly raised a hand to stop him. She could hardly believe her eyes.

“A gun!” she gasped. “You’re carrying a gun! You’re armed!”

“Sure,” Jack replied casually. “I’m a soldier. It’s what I take to work.”

“I’m a council worker but I don’t have a file full of pointless forms and a leaky biro stuffed into my knickers! I can’t believe you’ve brought a gun into my home.”

Where Jack came from, of course, everybody had a gun in their home. People didn’t even think about it. In fact if you didn’t have one you were weird. Obviously Jack knew that things were different in Britain, but it still did not seem like a big deal to him.

“I’m sorry, Polly, but I need it.”

“You need a gun in Stoke Newington in the middle of the night?”

“Yes, I do,” Jack replied. “I’m a target.”

This was not the type of conversation that Polly would have chosen to conduct in the middle of making love, but she could not just let it go.

“You do know you’re breaking the law, don’t you?” she said. “I mean, this is Britain, not Dodge City! You can’t just wander around with a gun in your pocket.”

But it seemed that Jack could.

“I’m one of America’s most senior soldiers. Quite a lot of people about the place would like me to be dead. It’s a diplomatic thing. We have an informal understanding with Special Branch.”

Polly still could not accept it. “You come to my house dressed like Oliver North, you have informal understandings with the Special Branch, you carry a gun! I hate people like you. I’ve spent my life protesting about people like you!”

Jack shrugged and smiled his smile.

“So how is it…” Polly continued, “how the fuck is it… that you’re the only man I’ve ever loved…?”

“Bad luck, I guess,” said Jack. Then he drew her back into his arms.

For a moment Polly thought about resisting. She thought about informing Jack that she was not a tap who could be turned on and off, that she did not consort with gunmen. But then he held her and she held him. Their lips met again with even greater passion, it seemed, than they had done a minute or two before. Again Jack could feel Polly’s divine form crushed against him, could feel her hands pulling at the belt of his jacket. Now he really had to see her naked once more. He stood back a little, not so far as to stop Polly from undoing his belt but far enough for him to raise his hands to the buttons of Polly’s nightshirt. Whatever his original plans might or might not have been, he simply had to see her naked again. He would die if he did not. He knew that it was wrong. He had promised himself that what was about to happen was the one thing that would not happen but he didn’t care. He had been mad to imagine that he could control it. He loved her and he wanted her. Nothing had changed.

Now his hands were at the middle buttons of her nightshirt, his eyes straining, waiting to feast themselves on what lay beneath. His face, usually so mature and assured, was suddenly like a boy’s, eager and scared. Polly, too, could hardly restrain herself. She’d opened his jacket and her hands had stolen to the fastening of his trousers. She neither knew nor cared what had brought Jack back to her door; she was happy to give away the past and ignore the future. Her entire life was crammed into the immediate living moment. Jack’s fingers brushed against her skin as her shirt fell open and he felt her shiver gently at his touch. He shivered also, and by no means gently. Polly’s hands tugged at his zip. His whole body felt as if it would explode. He moved his hands from one button down to the next, allowing his fingers to explore the greater freedom that the opening of Polly’s shirt now afforded. Her breasts felt smooth and firm, the skin springy and subtle. He wondered if he could ever let go now that he had them in his hands again.

“You got rid of the nipple ring, then?” he whispered.

“Yeah, everybody started wearing them.”

Polly had a hold of Jack too, her hand deep in his trousers, gripping the straining erection through his shorts. Now Jack’s hands were at Polly’s waist, the final button of her shirt undone, his fingers slipping under the elastic of her knickers. Another moment and all would be revealed.

Then Polly’s phone rang.