Blast From the Past (9 page)

There was another knock. Polly could prevaricate no longer. In desperation she flung on a plastic rainmac. It did not look good, but it covered more of her than her nightshirt did, and it would have to do.

Polly approached her front door and peered through the spy hole. She recognized Jack instantly; even the darkness and the magnified fisheye effect of the spy hole could not disguise that handsome face and classically firm American jaw.

Jack was back.

Polly took off the chain and opened the door.

There he stood, in the shadows of the upstairs landing.

Like a spy.

He had on one of those timeless American gabardine overcoats that could as easily be worn by Humphrey Bogart or Harrison Ford. A coat that is forever stylish; like Coke and Elvis, age does not wither them. Jack wore it well, the collar turned up as with all the best men of mystery, and the belt knotted at the waist. Very little light emanated from Polly’s lamplit room, and Jack was illuminated only by the streetlight orange which glowed through the bare window of the landing. Peter Lorre seemed almost to be hovering at Jack’s elbow. He did not actually say, ‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ but he might as well have done.

‘Jack? It really is you, isn’t it?’

Polly was also in shadow, dimly backlit by the glow of her bedside lamp. The whole scene was classic
noir
.

‘Hello, Polly. It’s been a while.’

For a moment it seemed as if she would embrace him. For a moment she might have done. Then the memory of his betrayal descended upon her and turned what had begun to look like a smile into a frown.

‘Yes, yes, it’s been a while,’ she said, stepping away from him, back into her room. ‘Why change the habit of half a lifetime? What are you doing here?’

‘I came to visit with you.’

He said it as if it was a reasonable thing to say. As if no further explanation was required.

‘Visit?! Now?!’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t be bloody stupid. We don’t have anything to say to each other. We have nothing to do with each other. What is this about?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It isn’t about anything, it’s a social call.’

‘Oh well, that’s nice. Perhaps I’d better put the kettle on and crack open a packet of my finest custard creams. It’s after two o’clock in the fucking morning!’

‘I know what time it is. Who were you expecting?’

‘What do you mean?’

Polly felt it was she who should be asking the questions.

‘Who’s the thin man, Polly? The guy you asked me about, the guy who was supposed to be in the street?’

Where could she start? She didn’t even know Jack and now she was supposed to explain to him that she was in the process of being stalked by an obsessive. She was supposed to stand in her doorway in the small hours of the morning and talk to a virtual stranger about the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

Or perhaps the second worst thing, but then Jack knew all about that already.

‘It’s a man who’s been bothering me, that’s all. I don’t think he’ll call again.’

‘Bothering you? What do you mean, bothering you? Like is he your husband or something? Have I walked into a domestic here?’

This was ridiculous. Suddenly it was Polly who was having to explain herself. Only a few minutes before, she’d been asleep, and now she was filling this man in on her personal details.

‘No, a stranger. They call them stalkers. He’s a nuisance, that’s all. He thinks he loves me and rings my bell occasionally. It’s not a problem or a big deal. Forget it.’

Polly always described her torment in a far lighter tone than she actually felt. Like many a victim before her, she found her pathetic vulnerability rather embarrassing. It made her feel weak and inadequate. After all, if it was her life that was being attacked rather than other people’s, perhaps the problem lay with her? Perhaps it was her fault.

Jack was thinking about his recent violent encounter
at
the telephone box. Thin, pale, mousy hair. The description fitted. On the other hand, it would have fitted a million men.

‘Actually, there was a guy like that hanging around the callbox,’ said Jack, ‘but he’s not out there now and I don’t think he’ll be back. Would it be OK to come in?’

And with that Polly realized that even in this supreme moment of strangeness, the Bug was taking over. That was the absolutely worst aspect of the Bug’s crashlanding into her life. She just couldn’t get the bastard off her mind. Whatever she was doing he was always there. She had not been able to fully appreciate a single thing in her life since the nightmare began. Parties, shows, work. Everything had been affected by his existence.

But this, this was different. This was bigger than the Bug, bigger than anything. Jack was back, and he wanted to come in.

‘No, you can’t bloody come in!’

As if she would let him in. As if she wanted anything to do with him.

‘Please, Polly.’

‘No! I’m not going to just—’

‘Please, Polly. Let me in. If you don’t I’ll just keep standing here on your landing. It’ll be morning in a few hours. What will you tell the other people who live in the house?’

The same voice, the same charming, sexy voice.

‘Why the hell would I let you in?’

Jack suggested that old times’ sake was surely a good
enough
reason, and it was, of course. That and the fact that Polly absolutely longed to let him in.

‘For old times’ sake I ought to kick you in the balls.’

‘Well, in that case you’d better do it inside. We don’t want to disturb the neighbours.’

Polly looked at Jack and tried to pull herself together a little, assuming what she hoped was a cool, emotionally invulnerable expression. Interested, certainly, but detached, reserved. In control of her space and her emotions. Jack thought merely that she still had a nice smile. He smiled back at her, his old smile, still fresh as a young boy’s. That smile was so familiar to Polly, so inseparable from her memories of Jack that she could almost have imagined that he had not used it since. That he had kept it carefully in some safe place so that it would remain new and sparkling until the day he brought it out again, just for her. But it wasn’t true. Polly knew that Jack used that smile every day. Whenever he wanted anything.

Polly stood aside. What else could she do? Jack walked past her and into the room. She closed the door behind him, put her rape alarm back on the bedside table, and there they were. Alone together again.

They stood staring at each other, neither of them really knowing what to say or do next. Then suddenly Polly found herself enveloped in Jack’s arms. She did not know how it happened, whether she had crossed the floor to him or whether he had grabbed her, or whether they had simply blended together by instant
osmosis
. But it happened. For a moment at least they held each other and in Polly’s heart a tiny spark leapt instantly into life, a spark that had long lain hidden amongst the dead ashes of the ferocious furnace that had once burnt between them.

17

‘OH, GOD!’ POLLY
shrieked.

‘Oh, God. Oh, sweet Jesus! Oh, God!’

Strange how some people discover their religious side whilst orgasming. Polly never bothered God at all as a rule, in fact she was an agnostic, an atheist, even, if she was feeling brave. Yet while in the throes of carnal climax Polly could make the very heavens ring with her piety and devotion. In fact since that day, only a few weeks earlier, when Polly had discovered sex, the Almighty had scarcely had a moment’s peace.

‘Oh. Oh. Yes … yes, that’s it, that’s it! Oh God, Oh God, oh please, harder, longer, longer, harder … oh yes, oh please … Please … Yes yes yes yes!’

And then finally it was over. A quite spectacular orgasm, fuelled with love and lust and all the gay abandon of youth, had run its noisy course. Slowly the room returned to normal, the overhead light stopped swinging on its flex, the teacups on the bedside table ceased to rattle and the plaster clung less desperately to the walls and ceiling. Jack rolled off Polly’s quivering body and reached for his cigarettes.

‘So, did you come?’

Jack could joke at a time like that. He was older, experienced. Confident and witty. American in the way Americans are supposed to be. Sexily sardonic and capable of sparking a Zippo cigarette lighter into life using only one hand.

‘Just fooling,’ he said. ‘I imagine that there are people in other parts of the country who know you came. Certainly the only people within this hotel who didn’t know you came are either deaf or dead.’

‘Sorry. Was I too noisy?’

‘Not for me, I’m used to it. I used earplugs.’

Polly laughed, but she was embarrassed. Most people feel a little awkward and exposed when it comes to the noises they make during sex and it’s even worse when you’re only seventeen.

Jack lit two cigarettes and gave one to Polly.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll call reception and tell them you’re a Christian fundamentalist seeking enlightenment, asking God to give it to you longer and harder.’

Polly felt that Jack’s joke had run its course. She might have been young, but she was a woman out of whom only so much piss could be taken.

‘Look, I was enjoying myself, all right? And to do that I need to express myself. People should express themselves more. People are too uptight. If people recognized their true feelings a bit more and let them out occasionally there’d be a lot less anger and violence in the world.’

‘OK, OK. Fine. I’m glad to have been a part of your personal fulfilment programme. There was me thinking
we
were having sex and it turns out you were making a contribution to world peace.’

Polly and Jack smoked in silence for a few moments. Polly wasn’t really angry. In fact she loved fighting with Jack. She loved everything about Jack with the exception of his ‘Death or Glory’ tattoo. Never before in her short life had she experienced such emotions, such passion. Every atom of her physical self tingled with it. The tips of her toes were in love, the hair on her head was in love, the backs of her knees were in love. And such exciting love, dangerous and wrong. Illicit love, forbidden fruit.

Polly stretched out under the covers and felt the crisp clean hotel sheets against her body. What luxury. Only rarely did Polly experience such exotic delights as clean sheets, let alone fresh soap and towels. And a lavatory! Her own personal lavatory. With a door! Only a person who does not normally have the use of one can understand just how wonderful having a lavatory is. Polly would sit on it for half an hour and read the hotel brochures, never tiring of news of mini-breaks for two in the Cotswolds, the Peaks and the heart of England’s glorious Lakeland. Jack said he sometimes felt that Polly only slept with him in order to use the toilet.

‘That’s not true, Jack,’ Polly assured him. ‘You’re forgetting the little chocolate mints the maids leave on the pillows.’

Jack got out of bed, crossed the room, drew back the curtain slightly and looked out.

‘Can’t we have the curtains open occasionally?’ Polly asked. ‘It feels so claustro’.’

‘No,’ Jack replied. ‘It makes me feel too exposed. I mean, if we were caught together …’

Why did he have to remind her about that? Just when she was so happy. He was always reminding her about that.

‘I know. I know! You don’t have to go on about it.’

‘Hey, baby, I do have to go on about it because that’s how I stay careful. And I have to stay careful because if my colonel ever found out about us my career would be over, you hear that? Everything I’ve worked at since I was seventeen would be gone. You’re only seventeen right now, Polly. You don’t have a life to throw away yet, but I do. They’d court-martial me, you know that? They might even throw me in the hole.’

Jack returned to bed. Some ash from Polly’s cigarette fell onto the sheet. She tried to brush it off but only made it worse.

‘Leave it,’ said Jack irritably. ‘We’re paying.’

‘I hate that kind of attitude,’ Polly snapped. ‘We’ve paid so we can act irresponsibly. And I hate this sneaking about too, this constant tension.’

‘I do not have a choice but to sneak about. I have to be discreet, which is something, incidentally, you have made considerably more difficult by your decision to dye your hair puke colour.’

In her heart of hearts Polly had to admit that the orange and green highlight effect she had tried to create had not really worked.

‘If you don’t like sneaking about, baby,’ Jack continued, ‘go hang out with one of your own kind.’

‘You don’t choose who you fall in love with, Jack, and don’t call me baby.’

Polly was starting to look a little teary. She didn’t like it when he referred to their relationship in such a casual manner.

‘Oh, come on, Polly, not the waterworks.’

All her life Polly had cried easily. It was her Achilles’ heel. She wasn’t a crybaby; it was just that strong emotions made her eyes water. This was actually quite debilitating in a minor sort of way. It made her look a fool. It would happen in the middle of some particularly frustrating political argument. There she would be, banging her fist on the pub table, struggling to find words to express her deeply held conviction that Mrs Thatcher was a warmongering fascist and suddenly her eyes would start getting wet. Instantly Polly would feel her image transforming itself from passionate feminist revolutionary to silly overemotional little woman.

‘Well, there’s no need to cry about it,’ Polly’s dialectical opponents would sneer.

‘I am not bloody crying,’ Polly would reply, tears springing from the corners of her eyes.

The tears were there now and Jack did not like emotionally charged situations. He liked to pretend that life was simple. Polly thought him repressed and out of touch with himself. Jack just felt he had better things to do with his time than get worked up about stuff. But the truth was that he was worked up, terribly
worked
up. Beneath his highly cool exterior he was anguished and distraught. Because Jack was in love with Polly and he knew that he would have to leave her.

‘Jack,’ said Polly, ‘we need to talk about where we’re going.’