Blast From the Past (30 page)

There was silence for a moment. ‘Well, no, but—’

‘That’s rape, Jack. Not big rape, maybe, but rape of sorts. You took me by deceit and manipulation. You took something I would never have given had I known the truth.’

For a moment it almost sounded convincing. Except that it wasn’t – it couldn’t be. Jack did not believe that the world could be run that way.

‘Hey, Polly, people get dumped. It happens, you know. Get the fuck over it. What, you think you have a right not to be hurt? Not to be unhappy? I was a shit, I admit it, but a guy sweettalking a girl into bed is not rape. Little girls getting gangbanged in alleyways, that’s rape.’

Polly smouldered for a moment and then gave it up.

‘Get out, Jack. You just don’t get it and you never will.’

‘No! No!’ Jack simply would not let the argument end. ‘
You
don’t get it! The world is not civilized and you can’t make it so.’

There was nothing Polly could do. If Jack did not want to leave she could not force him. She could call the police, of course, but she had no desire to do that. Besides which, despite herself Polly was beginning to become rather interested in Jack’s obsessions. It was obvious to Polly that Jack had some deep, deep problem inside himself. A problem which for some reason
he
had sought her out in order to deal with. In some ways it was quite fascinating.

‘They let the first women into the Citadel this year,’ Jack said, producing what appeared to be a non sequitur.

‘The citadel?’ Polly enquired.

‘It’s a military training facility. They let in forty women who want to be turned into shaven-headed, desensitized grunts.’

‘How depressing.’

‘Is that what you wanted, Polly?’ Jack snapped. ‘For women to turn into men?’

‘Why are you asking me this stuff? Don’t you have therapists in the army?’

But Jack was not listening to Polly. ‘Truth is they can’t do it,’ he continued, almost to himself. ‘They’re not up to it. Ladies can’t run as fast, punch as hard or lift as much as men. At the Parris Island training centre forty-five per cent of female marines were unable to throw their grenades far enough to avoid blowing themselves up. Female trainees are twice as likely to get injured, five times as likely to be put on limited duty! These are the facts, Polly. But facts don’t matter, because this is politics. Politics decides on its own reality, and if anybody objects they will be condemned as sexist Neanderthals and their careers will be over. It is a witch-hunt, Polly. Leftist McCarthyism. We’re living through the fucking Crucible.’

‘And you see my problem, Jack, is that I don’t care,’ Polly replied. ‘Don’t you understand? I don’t care!’

Jack was pacing the room now. ‘The US military manual has been changed to accommodate the equality lie. It’s called “comparable effort”. Women get higher marks for doing less. They do six press-ups, the guys do twenty; they only climb halfway up the rope. Assault courses are called “confidence courses” and you get to run around the walls if you can’t get over them. What happens when there’s a war? You think the enemy will say, “It’s OK, you’re a girl, we’ll go easy on you”?’

Polly tried once again to get at whatever it was Jack was trying to tell her.

‘Why are you projecting all this onto me, Jack? This is pathological. I’m an ordinary Englishwoman living somewhere above the poverty line in Stoke Newington. I knew you when I was seventeen! This has nothing to do with me! Yet it’s almost as if you’ve come to me tonight to blame me for what you think is wrong with the world—’

‘Well? Well! Aren’t you pleased we’re falling to bits? Aren’t you pleased we don’t know who the fuck we are any more? Gender politics is rendering the Western world ungovernable!’

Polly had been interested for a moment, but her interest was over.

‘It isn’t, but if it was I wouldn’t care! Do you understand? I don’t care about it either way, all right? What happens to your army and who you choose for president is a matter of supreme indifference to me! Because tomorrow morning I have to go to work and wade back into a sea of people who have been abused, cheated,
demeaned
and destroyed all for reasons of race, sex, sexuality and poverty. They don’t have much hope, but if they have any I’m it, so please, Jack, leave, because I have to get some sleep.’

‘OK, OK, I’m going.’

Jack got up and started to put away his bottles, and Polly sat back down on the bed feeling terribly, terribly sad.

53

THE MILKMAN HAD
finished his breakfast and brushed his teeth. It was time to go to work. He wondered about going upstairs on his way out and speaking to the woman above. He decided against it. She still had someone with her; it would be embarrassing. He’d have a word that evening, just to let her know that two could play at the complaining game.

He turned off his radio, switched off the lights and let himself out into the hall.

At the bottom of the house, sitting in the hallway, Peter heard the door open and close and then the sound of a heavy footfall on the stair. This Peter knew was his best chance. The man above him, the man coming down the stairs, was the American. It was only minutes since Polly had ordered him to go, and now that was what he was doing. Besides which, who else would be walking out of the house at four thirty in the morning?

Silently Peter retreated into the shadow behind the stair. His enemy was on the floor above him now, the footsteps descending fast. The dark shape of a man appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Peter leapt out of
the
darkness and plunged his knife deep into the man’s back. He heard the man try to cry out, but there was only a muffled, gurgling sound.

The milkman sank to the floor without a word and lay there gulping his last blood-sodden, strangled breaths beside the bicycle. Looking down at him, Peter noticed that one of the tyres of the bicycle was flat. He also noticed that whoever he had killed it was not the American.

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.

55

JACK HAD BEEN
about to shoot. At the very moment that she said it he had been about to shoot.

‘What?’

‘When you left me I was pregnant, Jack.’

Every well-honed instinct of self-preservation within Jack’s icy soul told him to shoot and shoot immediately, but somehow he could not, not yet, not for a moment.

‘I don’t think so, Polly.’

‘Well, what the fuck would you know, you bastard!’ Polly snarled. ‘You left me pregnant! That was why I always waited for you … That was why I couldn’t forget you. How could I?’

If she was acting, and Jack was almost sure she was, then she was very good at it; the sudden and bitter venom of her statement was uncomfortably convincing.

It was convincing because it was true. Jack had left Polly pregnant. She realized about three weeks after he had walked out on her. It was not his fault. He could not have known; those had been in the days before AIDS, and Jack had never used condoms because Polly had been on the pill. Unfortunately, like many a young girl before her, Polly had been made careless by love
and
the result was that she suddenly found herself alone and carrying the child of a man who had had his way with her and then gone.

Polly stared at Jack over the vicious snout of his pointing gun, her eyes teary with angry memories.