Blast from the Past

48

The milkman’s radio alarm went off, wrenching the milkman from his slumbers. He was surprised to discover that he had nodded off again after all. He had not imagined that he would do so what with all the talking and walking that was going on upstairs. However, the milkman resolved not to let the fact that he had been back to sleep diminish his righteous anger. He still had his notebook cataloguing the disturbances of the night and he decided that he would add a couple of instances more, since he was sure that the noises must have continued while he slept.

Upstairs they heard the music too.

“What the fuck?” Jack enquired.

“It’s the milkman,” Polly explained. “He gets up at four, the radio will stop at four twenty-five, then his door will bang.”

Three floors down in the stairwell Peter also heard the music. He imagined that it must come from Polly’s room. Were they dancing? Or maybe they were doing “it” to music? Either way, Peter’s jealousy and resentment were amply fed. What should he do? How could he douse the fire of hatred that was burning inside him? Peter had never thought of himself as having a murderous disposition, but that American certainly deserved to die. Peter put his hand to his injured nose and nearly yelped in pain. He wondered if it was broken; it was certainly swollen. Now he had made it bleed again, a steady flow of drops falling onto his trousers. Peter spread his knees and allowed the blood to drip between his legs and stain the stair carpet. Her stair carpet; she would be walking over his blood. Then Peter positioned the blade of the knife under his bleeding nose and watched the metal turn red.

Upstairs in Polly’s flat Jack was a little anxious. The milkman’s alarm call, unusually early though it was, had reminded Jack that the night would not last for ever. Dawn was to be at seven fourteen that morning and Jack wanted to be away long before then. He had found out the things he needed to know. He was reasonably certain that his history with Polly was a private one, and he knew the whereabouts of Polly’s stalker.

One thing Jack was certain about: this man Peter would have to die. Whether Polly liked it or not, Peter was a dead man.

“I have to leave quite soon,” Jack said, taking another slug of his drink.

It was like cold water. Somehow Polly had stopped thinking about Jack’s leaving.

“I want you to stay,” she said.

“I can’t, not for much longer.”

Polly felt desperate. All those familiar emotions were back, all those painful old feelings, the ones it had taken so many years to get over. Why had he returned if only to tease her and then leave her again? Now she must suffer the pain of rejection a second time and live with a newly broken heart.

“I got promoted recently,” said Jack.

Polly did not know what to say to this. It was such a non sequitur. Did he think she was still interested in making polite conversation?

“I’ve been promoted quite a lot over the last few years, actually. I’ve done very well.”

What was he talking about? Was he still fighting himself? Perhaps he really did want to stay. Perhaps he really wanted to make love. Perhaps this chattering was just a way of avoiding making a decision.

“Congratulations,” said Polly. “You certainly never let anything stand in your way, did you?”

Everything Jack said reminded Polly of his desertion.

“You do not make four-star general just by avoiding ruinous love affairs. Nor by working hard or being talented. You have to get lucky. Very lucky.” Jack paused for a moment and then said, “Sex.”

“What?” Polly asked.

“That’s what got me where I am today.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sex is what made me, Polly. What brought me to my current elevated status.”

“I’m not interested, Jack,” said Polly wearily.

“I need to tell you what brought me here today,” Jack insisted.

Polly sat back. It was pointless to resist. Whatever Jack wanted to do or say he would do or say in his own good time. She tried to concentrate as he spoke.

Jack began. By the end of the Gulf War, he said, he’d been a full colonel, one of the most successful soldiers of his generation, but despite this his prospects for future advancement had not looked particularly good. Traditionally, war was the way to get promoted in the army and despite Saddam’s honourable efforts real wars, proper wars, were becoming less and less likely. There was, according to George Bush, a new world order. The Soviet Union had collapsed, taking with it the Warsaw Pact, thus depriving the Western allies of their best available enemy. The Chinese, who had always been next in line to fight, were embracing capitalism and waging war on the stock market. MacDonald’s was opening up in Beijing, and the US was importing gangsters from Moscow. The West had won. For career soldiers like Jack it was a depressing time. All those weapons and nobody to kill. It just wasn’t fair.

Of course there were the various UN, humanitarian and peacekeeping missions around the world, but that wasn’t soldiering, and it certainly wasn’t the way to make a four-star general. As Jack and the guys moaned to each other over bourbon in the mess, it was a very tough call to set your career alight dropping powdered milk on dead African people. Or digging up football pitches full of skulls in Bosnia.

Jack had seen the way the wind was blowing when Bush wimped out of going all the way to Baghdad.

“We should’a had Saddam’s ass hanging on the Pentagon flagpole,” he and his comrades had assured each other through mouthfuls of beer and chili fries. “But Old Man Bush listened to Pussy Powell. What kind of soldier was he? Too scared to risk his men. For Christ’s sake, what is happening to the world? We have an army that thinks it has a right not to get killed! Powell was probably worried his men would sue.”

In Polly’s flat Jack was pacing up and down telling his story, almost ignoring her. She wondered what on earth he could be getting at. Whatever it was, she wasn’t interested.

“Pussy Powell?” she asked.

“Lots of men left the service,” Jack continued. “But I couldn’t. I didn’t know any life other than soldiering. I had nowhere else to go. Besides, I’d sacrificed too much to give it up.”

They looked at each other. Polly might have spoken but Jack continued.

“Then something strange happened. Just when everybody thought they’d never get promoted again, sex came along. Sex is what saved the entire US military career structure from stagnation. Sex replaced war. Funny, huh? Kind of what you guys always wanted in a way. Make love not war and all that bullshit.”

“What are you talking about, Jack?”

Polly had resigned herself to the evening’s going round in circles for ever.

“Remember Tailgate?” he continued. “Bunch of navy flyers couldn’t hold their brew and started waving their dicks at some lady sailors?”

Polly did recall it. The scandal had been big enough to be reported in the British media. There had been an appalling display of drunken brutality at a US naval conference.

“As I recall, it was all a little more serious than dick waving,” Polly remarked.

“Jesus, did the shit hit the fan. They court-martialled everybody! ‘Sir! Yes, sir! I waved my dick, sir!’ Dishonourable discharge! ‘Sir. Yes, sir! I waved my dick too!’ Out goes another one. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of training – gone! The brass thought they could calm things down by throwing a few minnows to the sharks. They couldn’t. The shit flew upwards. ‘Yes, I failed to ensure that dicks were not waved.’ ‘Yes, I allowed a dick-waving culture to develop…’ You want to know how many admirals were eventually implicated?”

Polly did not. She was not even slightly interested.

“Thirty-two, Polly! That’s a historical fact. Thirty-two admirals. Our attack readiness was compromised. Navy morale was shot to ribbons. Comfort was given to our enemies. And all because we live in a world that thinks it can legislate against guys acting like assholes.”

Polly could scarcely believe it, but even at this point in the evening Jack still seemed to be anxious to compare their political points of view and yet again, despite herself, she could not help but oblige.

“You can legislate against rape and intimidation and harassment.”

“Jesus!” Jack snapped. “These guys were sailors! The navy never should’a let those women anywhere near them. There was a time when being a disgusting fucked-up maniac was a military career requirement!”

“Change hurts sometimes,” Polly snapped back.

“Oh yes, it does, Polly, it sure does. Change hurts all right. I’ve seen men cry. I’ve seen marines cry because they’ve just discovered that when they pinched some secretary’s ass at the Christmas party they were in fact making a career decision.”

Perhaps Jack had been right earlier when he’d spoken to Polly of “her kind”. She could certainly empathize with this situation and her sympathies were not with the weeping marine. At her work Polly was called upon to deal with similar situations all the time and she knew all about the sort of activities that guys called “just bum-pinching”.

“Well, perhaps your friends shouldn’t go round pinching people’s bums, then,” she said.

Jack threw his arms into the air in frustration, spilling his whiskey as he did so.

“Hey! We all know that now, honey! Oh, we sure do know that now! Our learning curve has been real steep! Problem was, nobody told some of these guys till they were in court! Nobody told that poor tearful marine that the way he had always acted, the way his daddy and his grand-daddy had acted, was suddenly criminal behaviour. Nobody ever warned that twenty-year-service marine that it wouldn’t be any Soviet commando that’d take him out in the end but some little girl with a grudge.”

“Yes, well, maybe that marine should give some thought to all the little girls who’ve done the crying over the years.”

“Well, maybe he should,” Jack conceded, although he did so rather aggressively. “And he’s certainly going to have plenty of time to reflect on it, because suddenly there’s been an awful lot of vacancies in the military. I didn’t get these four stars defending democracy, I got them for keeping my dick in my pants.”

“So no female rookies raped on your watch, then?”

“I never was much of a party animal, Polly. In a way I owe that to you.”

Jack was thinking of the poor German girl, Helga, and that bleak night in Bad Nauheim in the early eighties. He knew what men were capable of when they were drunk and in packs. Particularly soldiers. He had been with the UN in Bosnia, had seen what gangs of men could do when no civilizing factor restrained them.

“You may not believe it, but you changed me,” Jack explained. “All that stuff you told me all those years ago. It genuinely affected my outlook, made me see the other point of view. I truly believe that you influenced me for the good, Polly. I believe I’ve been a better soldier because of you.”

The irony of this was nearly too much for Polly.

“And over the years,” Jack continued, “I’ve always asked myself what you would say about stuff. It was almost as if you were still there with me and I didn’t want to make you angry.”

It was true. Jack could not be sure, but perhaps his unfinished love for that passionate, idealistic seventeen-year-old girl he had once known had refined him and caused him to avoid the mistakes made by other soldiers. He wasn’t thinking about terrible incidents like the brutalization of Helga – mercifully such events were rare – but the smaller invisible pitfalls that so many of his colleagues had fallen into. The sort of thing they now called harassment. The comments, the pinchings, the endless catalogue of minor sexual impositions that men had for so long practised with impunity. Jack had avoided them all. He was recognized universally as a gentleman and, while others of his generation had found themselves demonized by the new morality, Jack had prospered.

“I’ve always loved you, you see, Polly,” he said. “I still do.”

Again the circle came round. Polly could see that Jack was struggling with something inside himself but she did not know what it could be. Perhaps it was just the fact of an unhappy and unfulfilled life. Perhaps he was not so different from her, after all.

“What about your wife?” she asked gently. “You must have loved your wife when you married her. Did you love us both?”

“I thought I loved her, Polly. God help me, I thought I did, but now my true belief is that I married her because I was trying to get away from you.”

It was cruel, so very cruel for Polly to hear this now, after so many years of having lived under the shadow of Jack’s rejection. Yet difficult though it was, her heart soared at the dawning realization that he had suffered as much as she had. That perhaps, after all, he had truly reciprocated her love.

“Jack. Oh, Jack. You tell me all this now. After all the years I’ve grieved for you.”

“I have to, Polly. Because…”

But Polly put her finger to her lips and breathed a “shhh”. She had had enough talking now. She would put up with no more. It was her flat and she was going to take control of what went on in it. For the second time that night she crossed the room to stand over Jack, and again, as she walked, he watched the movement of her thighs, brushing against each other as she walked. Polly again took the glass out of Jack’s hand and put it down.

“No more talking,” she said.

“Polly. I mustn’t,” Jack replied, but his eyes were filled with a misty longing.

Polly shushed him again, this time putting a soft finger to his lips. His tongue momentarily brushed the tip. Then she cupped her hands around Jack’s face and gently pulled him to his feet. Then they kissed again, long and passionately.

“No, Polly, we mustn’t. That’s not what I came here for.” Jack spoke almost into Polly’s mouth as she continued to kiss him. Again he succumbed to her embrace. For the time being his passion for her was stronger than the guilt he felt.

Polly unbuttoned her shirt. She did it herself this time, purposefully and quickly. Having done so, she broke off their embrace and stood back, her mouth shining. Then she opened her shirt fully in order to show Jack her body. It was what he had longed for all evening, a proper sight of her, her breasts and her stomach and her neck, her navel and her legs, clear and unencumbered, with only the crimson triangle of her knickers still to be removed.

Jack felt weak with longing. “We can’t do this, Polly,” he heard himself say.

Polly did not reply. She had done with conversation. He could say what he liked, but she was now controlling the agenda. She could feel his desire even in the air between them. She knew just how much he wanted her. She took his hand. For a moment there was the faintest tug of resistance, but after a moment Jack allowed himself to be led to her bed, as Polly had known he would.

She lay down on the bed beneath Jack’s gaze, and spread her shirt wide open on the sheet. Looking up into Jack’s eyes, she could see that they were glistening and wet. He was crying! Not much, hardly at all, there were no actual tears, but she was sure he was crying. She had never seen him cry before. Reaching down to her hips, Polly raised her knees for a moment and slipping her thumbs under the elastic of her knickers took them off. Relaxing her legs again, she lay entirely naked save for the shirt at her arms and shoulders.

“Make love to me now,” she said firmly.

“I can’t, Polly,” Jack replied, his voice cracking.

Polly reached up and took his hand. “Jack. Stop this nonsense. I said make love to me now!”

“I… I… can’t.” Still Jack resisted, although he could scarcely find the words to deny her.

“Yes, you can, Jack. It’s why you came.”

Jack closed his eyes to shut out her beauty, to shut out the magnet of eroticism that lay inches from him. As his eyes closed tears formed at the corners.

“It’s not why I came, Polly.” He said it firmly, dragging the sentence from deep within him. Then he pulled his hand from hers and returned to his chair and drink.