Blast From the Past

by Ben Elton

  “Well, ye-es,” said Polly, slightly confused.

  Jack looked about him. “So, let’s go.”

  “What?” Polly enquired, not yet catching on.

  “When I say run,” said Jack, “we run.”

  “You don’t mean …” Polly began.

  “Run!” said Jack.

  12

  If Jack had been trying to find a way to impress Polly he had hit the nail on the head. This is the stuff! Polly thought as they charged out of the restaurant and ran for Jack’s car. She could scarcely believe that her despised enemy, a member of the US military, could ever do anything so cool as to run out of a restaurant without paying. Never judge a book by its cover, she might have reflected, had she not been so breathless with excitement.

  They tumbled into the car and as Jack hit the ignition the sound system leapt into life along with the engine. It was playing Bruce Springsteen, Jack’s preferred driving companion, and by a happy chance the tape was cued up on “Born To Run”. Suddenly Polly found herself bang in the middle of the Boss’s runaway American dream and she shouted with delight as, with tyres screeching and Bruce pumping, Jack pulled out of the carpark and onto the road.

  “This is brilliant!” Polly shouted as Jack kicked down the accelerator, hammered through the gears, cranked up the Boss and left any pursuers to eat his dust.

  About a mile along the road, which they seemed to cover in about fifteen seconds, Jack slammed on the brakes and executed a spectacular handbrake turn off the main road, which nearly threw Polly out of the car. Suddenly they found themselves bumping along what was little more than a dirt track.

  “Think I’ll give the main roads a miss for half an hour,” he remarked casually. “That manager kid is bound to have called the cops by now. Wish I had my off-road jeep four by four. Then we could have some fun.”

  “Four-wheel drive cars are destroying the countryside,” said Polly.

  “Yeah. So?” Jack enquired.

  They soon arrived at a gate that led into a field and Jack was forced to stop. After that it was all rather spontaneous. They scarcely spoke, just grabbing each other with passionate fury and feeding on each other’s mouths and faces, tearing at each other’s clothes. Later on, Jack would remember thinking that Polly even kissed angrily or at least with the same kind of serious commitment that she seemed to put into everything else she did. Polly was not thinking anything at all. Her mind had been emptied by this sudden and completely unfamiliar surging physical desire. Nothing like it had ever happened to her before. She had often wondered over the past three or four years what true passion felt like and whether she would ever experience it herself. She would wonder no more.

  Then had come the inevitable environmental frustrations. It just isn’t easy to make love in cars. In his efforts to get to Polly Jack very soon found himself with his knee in the glove compartment and his stomach impaled upon the gear stick. It was most frustrating. Jack had not experienced anything like it since high school and his body had been suppler then. He was halfway to being on top of Polly but he could get no further, not without major organ removal.

  “Fucking gear stick,” Jack growled, speaking for the first time since they had fallen upon each other.

  “It’s your own fault for driving a TR7,” said Polly, feeling rather self-conscious because Jack had one of her breasts in his hand. “Everyone knows a TR7 is a wanker’s car.”

  “Well, it would need to be,” Jack replied, extricating himself. “You certainly can’t fuck in one.”

  It was no good. They would have to go elsewhere. Then, as if by magic, the sun burst through what had until then been a rather grey day. The field beyond the gate turned golden. A glorious meadow carpeted with long, swaying grass with butterflies hovering lazily above it. Had that field been candlelit, strewn with red velvet cushions and with Barry White’s greatest hits wafting softly from speakers hidden in the hedges, it could not have seemed more like a good place for sex.

  “Come on,” said Jack.

  They climbed the gate and fell together into their five-acre bed.

  Deflowered amongst the flowers, Polly thought to herself, being not quite out of her teenage poetry stage.

  It was a disaster. Making love in a field is almost as difficult as doing it in a car, especially if it’s been raining the night before and you have a problem with pollen and what looked like soft grass turns out to be some kind of organic barbed wire. It’s probably just about possible if you’ve brought a groundsheet, a mattress, a blanket, some DDT and a scythe. Otherwise, forget it. Pretty soon Jack’s elbows and knees were in cowpats, Polly’s knickers were in shreds and something with two hundred legs and fifteen sets of teeth had crawled up his backside.

  For the second time since they had begun their desperate groping Polly and Jack were forced to put their passion on hold. With Polly’s virginity still pretty much intact, Jack suggested a hotel.

  “OK,” said Polly, getting up and putting what was left of her knickers back on. “But I haven’t got much money, so I’ll have to pay you back later for my half of the bill.”

  Jack laughed, feeling a tremendous wave of affection sweep over him for this strangely intense girl. At that point the sun, which had disappeared into some clouds, came out again behind Polly and all of a sudden she was bathed and silhouetted with an almost luminous golden glow. She looked like some kind of pure and lovely teenangel and Jack’s conscience began to trouble him.

  “Polly, how old are you?” he asked.

  “Seventeen,” said Polly defensively.

  “Oh, Christ,” said Jack.

  “But I’m a lot more mature than you, mate,” Polly added. “I know that it’s dangerous to play with guns.”

  Seventeen. Jack had been hoping for at least nineteen, possibly twenty, although he knew that twenty would be the absolute limit.

  “Polly. I’m thirty-two. I’m fifteen years older than you.”

  Polly shrugged.

  “Are you a virgin?” Jack asked.

  “What if I am?”

  It was worse than Jack had thought.

  “I can’t do this to you,” he said.

  Suddenly it was not the sunlight that made Polly glow but righteous indignation. Her cheeks reddened and her eyes took on a fiery glint.

  “Listen, you patronizing bastard,” she said. “You aren’t doing anything to me. I do things for myself, all right? If I choose to go to bed with you – or in this case to a field with you – if I choose to use your body for my pleasure, then that’s my business. I am a woman and males do not have a say in my life. In fact, emotionally and politically I’m a lesbian. It just happens to be my misfortune that I fancy men, that’s all.”

  Jack had never been overly receptive to radical feminism in the past, but he was warming to it. “OK,” he said.

  They got back into the car and drove to a nearby hotel. It was a large, redbrick, eighties place, built on a roundabout in the middle of nowhere with toytown turrets and pastel-coloured Roman pillars in the foyer. Polly wanted to hate the place as a prime example of the reckless urbanization of the countryside, but she could not because in fact she found it all desperately romantic. This, considering that the hotel was really just a large carpark with a leisure complex, conference centre and executive miniature golf course attached, Jack found very touching.

  There was some trouble at the check-in desk, not because of Polly’s age – she was, after all, perfectly legal and did not look particularly young. It was the T-shirt she was wearing that required careful negotiation, the objection being that it had a picture of a cruise missile on it that had been altered to make it resemble a penis. Polly explained that this was a comment on the masculine nature of war.

  “I’m afraid that other guests might find it offensive,” the receptionist explained.

  “Oh, and I suppose nuclear arsenals aren’t offensive?” Polly enquired.

  “Nobody is attempting to bring a nuclear arsenal into the hotel,” said the re
ceptionist. “Perhaps the gentleman could lend you his coat?”

  Jack could not do this because he did not wish to advertise the uniform he was wearing underneath. Polly was clearly a loose cannon and a troublemaker and Jack did not want the manager phoning his colonel and complaining about the type of girl American officers brought to the hotel. In the end a compromise was reached. Polly reluctantly agreed to keep her arms folded across her chest while she remained in the public parts of the hotel, thus covering the offending political statement.

  “I thought this country was supposed to have freedom of speech. I don’t think!” Polly muttered as Jack led her away.

  And so began a relationship which very soon was to become an intense and all-consuming love affair. A love affair which, although in some ways desperately brief, would last a lifetime. Two people of different ages, different backgrounds and, most importantly, utterly different principles and values, were to be bound together from that ecstatic moment on.

  Newton said that for every action there is an equal and an opposite reaction. Jack and Polly certainly lent substance to that observation.

  A few days after Jack’s first encounter with Polly he wrote to Harry, angrily anticipating the sibling ridicule he knew he must endure.

  “Oh, yeah, ho, ho,” he wrote. “You think this somehow proves your piss-weak psychological theories, huh? You think that this girl is like Mom, am I right, Harry? Of course you do. You’re so transparent. Well, forget it. In fact before you forget it, shove it up your ass, then forget it. This girl is not a bit like Mom, or Pa, or you. She’s like me! Yeah, that’s right, like me, because she’s a fighter, the real thing, a two-fisted bruiser with poison for spit. OK, maybe what she fights for is a bunch of crap, in fact it is a bunch of crap. Quite frankly I hear less woolly thinking when sheep bleat. But so what? She’s got guts and she fights. She doesn’t sit on her ass smoking tealeaves like Mom. She doesn’t think that stuffing envelopes for the Democrats once every four years makes her an activist. What is more, Harry old pal, she hasn’t hidden away from life making dumb furniture which a factory could make better and at a tenth of the cost, like you, asshole! Polly is a soldier, she’s out there, punching hard and kicking ass for what she believes in. Besides which, she’s the sexiest thing I ever saw in my whole life, so screw you.”

  When Harry read the letter he was pleased. Despite its abrasive tone it was by far the most romantic letter Jack had ever written. In fact it was the only romantic letter he had ever written. The only time Harry could remember his brother being even half as excited was when he had been promoted to captain at a younger age than any of his West Point contemporaries. Jack had never been enthusiastic about anything except sport and the army. He had certainly never talked about being in love and yet now his entire soul seemed to be singing with it. Of course Harry was happy for Jack, but in the midst of that happiness he was also uneasy. It seemed to Harry that his brother now loved two things – soldiering and this English girl. It did not take all of Harry’s intellectual powers to work out that these two things were not compatible. Harry could see that in a very short time the crunch would come and that Jack would have to decide where his loyalties lay.

  It was Newtonian physics again; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Jack’s current happiness was surely storing up an equal quantity of unhappiness for someone.

  13

  “Polly? Polly! Are you there? Are you there, Polly?” The long-lost but still familiar voice breathed out of Polly’s answerphone. It was rich and low and seductive as it had always been.

  “Are you there?” Jack said again into the telephone.

  A little way along the street Peter was getting frustrated. He’d been surprised to see the telephone box occupied. It never had been before at that time of night. He felt angry. It was 2.15 in the morning. People had no business using public telephones at 2.15 in the morning. Particularly his own private, public telephone, a telephone with which Peter felt a special bond. Many times on that very phone Peter had heard the voice of the woman he loved. The cold mechanics within its reciever’s scratched and greasy plastic shell had vibrated with her adored tones. That phone, his phone, had been the medium through which Polly’s precious lips had caressed his senses.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” she would hiss. Hiss directly into his ear, so that he could almost imagine he felt her breath. “Fuck off! Fuck off! Just fuck off and leave me alone, you disgusting little prick!”

  Peter didn’t mind Polly’s anger at all. Some relationships were like that, fiery and tempestuous. After all, he certainly gave as good as he got. Peter liked Polly’s fury. It was passionate, exciting. So many nights he had stood listening to those blistering, heavenly tones. Looking at the photographs he’d laid out on top of the tattered telephone directories, sucking on his precious straw and masturbating into the lining of his overcoat.

  That telephone box was where Peter had had sex with Polly. It was his telephone box and now some bastard was using it.

  Peter felt the knife in his pocket.

  A flick-knife he had bought in Amsterdam one night when he had not had the guts to go into one of the shops that had women in the windows. Peter liked to carry that knife about with him for his protection and also because he fantasized that one day he would find himself in a position to use it in defence of Polly. He imagined himself chancing upon her in the street; she would be surrounded by vicious thugs who would be taunting her, pulling at her clothes. She would be weeping with terror. He would kill them all before claiming his reward!

  Peter fondled the flick-knife in his pocket.

  Still Polly did not pick up the phone. In fact she did not move. She couldn’t; she was too shocked. The only animation she could have managed at that point of supreme surprise would have been to fall over. She avoided this by gripping onto a chair back for support. “It’s Jack,” she heard him say again. “Jack Kent.”

  She knew it was Jack Kent, for heaven’s sake! She would never forget that voice if she lived to be two hundred and fifty years old. No matter what was to happen to her, be it premature senility, severe blows to the head, a full frontal lobotomy, she would still be able to bring that voice instantly to mind. Its timbre was resonant in her bones. Jack’s voice was a part of her. But what was it doing broadcasting out of her answerphone in Stoke Newington at 2.15 in the morning? His was quite simply the last voice in the world that Polly had expected to hear. If the Queen had woken her up to ask her round to Buck House for a curry and a few beers it would have seemed a more natural occurrence than this.

  Still receiving no reply, Jack’s voice continued. “Weird, huh? Bet you’re surprised … Me too. I’m surprised and I knew I was going to call! How surprising is that? I just got into town. It’s only ten p.m. in New York, so it’s not late at all. Don’t be so parochial, we live in a global village now.”

  It was the same old Jack, still cool, still cracking gags.

  Still vibrant with sensual promise.

  “I can’t believe I just heard your voice, even on a machine. It’s just the same …” Jack’s voice was even softer now. Even softer, even lower. “Are you there, Polly? Look, I know it’s late … real late … but maybe not too late, huh?”

  Too late for what? Surely he didn’t mean …? Polly could not begin to think what he meant. She could scarcely begin to think at all.

  14

  Jack kept talking. He knew she could hear him.

  “I want to see you, Polly. Are you there, Polly? I think you’re there. Pick up the phone, Polly. Please pick up the phone.”

  Across the street Jack could see that the man he had noticed earlier was walking slowly towards the phonebox. In his hand was what looked like it might be the hilt of a knife, but there seemed to be no blade. The man walked right up to within a yard or so of the phonebox and then stood and stared. Perhaps he wanted to use the phone. Perhaps he wanted to use the phonebox as a lavatory. Perhaps he did not know what he wanted. Whatever was g
oing on, it did not take the instincts of a soldier to work out that this man meant Jack no good.

  Their eyes met through the cloudy plastic of the window. Peter and Jack, two men from opposite sides of the world, connected by a woman whom they had both wronged, with whom by rights neither should have been having anything to do at all.

  Jack kept his eyes fixed on Peter’s. Matching him stare for stare. Meanwhile, he spoke again into the phone. Delivering his voice back into Polly’s life.

  “I think you’re there Polly. Are you there? Pick up the phone, Polly.”

  He imagined her standing in her flat, staring at the machine. Its red light blinked back at her.

  “Are you there? Pick up the phone, Polly.”

  Suddenly Polly did as she was bid and snatched up the phone, fearful that in her hesitation the voice would disappear again, back into the locked vault of her memory, where it had resided for so many years. Clunk. Whirr. Clunk. The answerphone announced its disengagement.

  “Jack? Is it really you, Jack?”

  Down in the street, outside the phonebox, there was a glint, a flash of orange streetlamp light reflected on shining metal. Peter had pressed the button on his flick-knife and its wicked blade had leapt out into the night, thrusting itself forward from within the hilt, from within Peter’s clenched fist. It glowed orange in the night like a straight, frozen flame.