Blast from the Past

54

Jack and Polly had also heard the milkman leave. Jack was relieved; he had no wish to encounter the other residents of the building. He finished putting away his bottles, then collected Polly’s glass from the bedside table where she had left it and drained his own.

“I’m sorry about going on so much,” he said. “It’s just that I had to tell you all that stuff.”

“That’s OK,” Polly assured him. “Actually I’m glad. I’m glad you did.”

Jack did not ask her why, and Polly did not tell him. The truth was that the things Jack had talked about, the feelings he had displayed, had made Polly feel better about herself and, more important, better about not being, or wanting to be, any part of Jack’s life. It seemed to her that he had been right in a way about linking her with the ideological struggles he found so frustrating. The world had changed a little and for the better. Big tough guys like Jack couldn’t quite have it all their own way any more. Power was no longer an absolute defence against bad behaviour. Bigotry and abusive practices were not facts of nature; they could be challenged, they could be redressed. And perhaps, in her own small way, Polly had been a part of that change. She and a few million other people, but a part none the less.

Jack had stepped through into the kitchen area and was washing up the glasses.

“Jack, please, you don’t have to wash up,” Polly said.

“Yes, I do, Polly. I have to wash up,” Jack replied, drying the glasses thoroughly with a teatowel.

“My God, you’re a new man and you don’t know it,” Polly laughed.

Having cleared up the drinks Jack took a look around the room. He seemed to be checking that everything was in order.

“So General Ralston dropped his candidacy for the chair of the joint chiefs,” he said. “The Kelly Flinn scandal had put so much heat under the issue of sexual morality in the military that he had to withdraw rather than further provoke the liberal feminist lobby.”

Polly went and got Jack’s coat. “Goodbye, Jack.”

He put on the coat, still talking, still explaining. “Since then they had two other tries to find the right guy. An air force guy and a marine. Both superb officers, both unacceptable. I don’t know why. Probably stomped on a bug during basic training and offended the Buddhist lobby. We have a world so full of people ready to take offence it’s tough to find a fighting man, any man, who never offended anybody.”

Polly was trying not to listen, but she could not ignore the significance of what Jack was saying.

“I presume what you’re getting at is that they’re going to ask you to stand,” she said, impressed despite herself. “That you are going to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Is that what you came here to tell me? Am I supposed to congratulate you?”

Jack stood staring at Polly. He was gathering his thoughts. Then he stepped across the room to where Polly’s answerphone was still blinking out news of the various messages of the evening. Jack pressed the erase button. The machine clunked and whirred in response, wiping clean the tape upon which Jack had announced his rearrival in Polly’s life.

“What are you doing, Jack?” Polly felt a chill of fear shiver across her body, enveloping her like an icy cloak.

“Surely you know now why I’m here, Polly,” he said.

“No, Jack, I don’t,” Polly replied although suddenly she was not so sure.

“People die every day.”

Polly was cold to the bone now. “What do you mean?”

“What I say. People die every day. Famine, war, accident, design. Death is commonplace. A modern fiction has developed that life is precious, but we know it isn’t so. Governments sacrifice thousands of lives every day. At least in the old times they were honest about it. There was no hypocrisy. To be a king or a conqueror you had to kill; no one ever got to the top any other way. Sometimes you even had to kill the things you loved, wives, children… many kings and rulers did that. They still do.”

Polly could not credit the suspicions that were beginning to flood into her mind. Surely this would turn out to be just another monologue, going nowhere.

“Jack-”

“You were an anarchist, Polly,” Jack continued. “A sworn enemy of the state. When I met you your life was dedicated to the confusion of the military policies of your own country and also those of the United States. You were, to put it as I fear the press will put it, as my detractors in Congress and the Senate will put it, a foreign red. An enemy of the US.”

Jack could not be implying what it sounded like he was implying.

“I was seventeen, Jack! A teenager! It was so long ago.”

“Exactly. Seventeen, that’s four years underage in my home state. An anarchist and a child to boot! Twenty years ago people would have laughed and said I was a lucky guy. These days you get burned at the stake for that stuff. If our affair ever came to light it would finish me for good and ten times over. You know it would. A soldier on active duty consorts with juvenile pacifist anarchist? I wouldn’t last ten seconds in a Senate hearing.”

Polly struggled to come to terms with what Jack was saying.

“But only you and I know, Jack!”

Jack had taken his gun from his pocket and was attaching some kind of metal attachment to the end.

“That’s right, Polly. Nobody else knows about us and nobody knows I came here tonight. I’m a NATO general, in Britain for a few hours, asleep in his hotel room. There is a spook called Gottfried, the guy who traced you for me, but he got promoted to our station in Kabul. Nice job for him, convenient for me – the Taliban don’t tend to take the London Evening Standard.”

Jack levelled his gun at Polly’s head.

“I love you, Polly, but I’m leaving you again. This time for good.”

“Peter!” Polly shouted.

“Who?”

“The stalker! He knows, he knows an American was here. He saw you! He could describe you!”

“That’s right. He could, Polly, which is a pity for him because you told me where he lives.”

Jack’s finger was taut on the trigger.

“Jack, no,” Polly whispered.

“I’m sorry, Polly, but you do see I have no choice, don’t you?”

Jack meant it too. As he saw it he had no choice. In fact it was his duty. He saw himself as the best remaining candidate to lead the army he loved, and it was his responsibility to ensure that nothing compromised his ability to command. Jack had already sacrificed Polly once to the oaths he had made when he had joined the service. Now he had to find the courage to do so again. And this time he would have to do it while looking Polly in the eye.

Polly was still sitting on the bed. Jack stood before her, his arm outstretched, the gun levelled between them, his target pale but somehow calm, calmer than Jack had expected.

“We have a child,” she said.