by Ben Elton
Campbell left Polly that day. He had his kids and his political future to consider and the initial all-consuming passion between him and Polly was dying out anyway. Margaret took him back, accepting his protestations that Polly had seduced him. She didn’t want to take him back, she hated the idea, but she was a middle-aged housewife. She did not know what else she could do apart from have it off with the windowcleaner in revenge, which she did.
Polly could no longer afford the house on her own and moved out. After a week or two of sleeping on floors she shifted into the Stoke Newington loft where Jack was to find her. Polly was alone once more, rejected and homeless, just when things had seemed to be shaping up. Polly simply could not believe what an idiot she had been. She did not even have the energy to hate Campbell. She was too annoyed with herself.
Her next all-consuming relationship was to be with Peter the Bug.
30
Jack reached into the bag he’d brought with him.
“I brought some Bailey’s and some Coke. Is that still what you drink?”
“Young girls drink stuff like that, Jack. It’s like eating sweets but with alcohol. We give it up when we discover gin.”
Jack began to put his bottles away.
“Oh, all right, go on, then. I’ll get some glasses.” Polly’s resistance had lasted all of ten seconds. “I haven’t got anything to offer you, I’m afraid,” she said.
Polly had stopped keeping booze in the house. She only drank it. Not that she was an alcoholic, but if there was alcohol around she would certainly have it. After all, how could a girl come home from the sort of job she did and ignore a nice big treble gin and tonic if it was standing on the sideboard? And once you’ve had one treble gin it seems slightly absurd not to have another. If there was a halfway decent late film on the telly or she’d rented a video, Polly could do half a bottle in an evening. She would pay for it, of course, with a saucepan by the bed all night and a slightly spacy nausea to follow, which sometimes lasted for two whole days. As Polly got older she had begun to find it safer to drink only in the pub.
Jack had also brought some bourbon for himself. Polly went into her little kitchen and rinsed out two glasses, being careful to thumb off the lipstick on the rims. A girl did, after all, have standards.
Jack poured the drinks long, alarmingly so. Polly was not sure that she could handle a quarter of a pint of Bailey’s.
“But you aren’t married?” Jack enquired casually. “I mean, you’ve never been married?”
“No, I think marriage is an outmoded and fundamentally oppressive institution, a form of domestic fascism.”
“Still sitting on the fence, then?”
Polly laughed despite herself.
“And you live alone?” Jack added.
“Yes, Jack, I live alone in Stoke Newington, which is, incidentally, a long way from the Pentagon. How the hell did you find me after all these years?”
Polly reminded herself that it should be her setting the conversational agenda not him. Jack had no reason to be in her flat and certainly no right to be asking her about her personal life.
“Why are you here, Jack?”
“This guy, the married one. Did you ever tell him about us?”
“I said, why are you here?”
There were so many reasons why Jack was there. “I told you. To visit.”
“Jack, that is not a good enough answer.”
“You want me to go?”
He had her there and they both knew it. She did not want him to go, so she remained silent.
“Did you ever tell your boyfriends about us?” Jack continued.
“Why would you care?”
“I’m curious. You know … about what you thought of me after … if you thought of me at all. How you ended up describing me, to your friends and stuff … Did you tell them?”
“What possible business is it of yours whom I tell about any aspect of my disastrous life?”
“Well, none, I guess. I just wanted to know.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Polly, “if you tell me how you found me.”
Jack laughed. Finding people was no big deal to him. “That’s easy. I’m an army general. I can get things found out.”
“You mean you had me traced?”
“Sure I had you traced.”
Now it was Polly’s turn to laugh. “What? By secret intelligence or something? Spies?”
“Well, you know, it’s not exactly James Bond. I mean nobody died or anything or used a pen that’s also a flamethrower. I just had you traced. Any decent clerk can do it. You start with the last known address.”
31
“A field, general?” the spook had said.
“That’s right, Gottfried, that is the last address I have for her. A field in southern England called Greenham Common. We used to have a base there.”
Gottfried was a captain in military intelligence. He had a keen brain and he spotted instantly that as addresses went this one was on the vague side. He did not say so, of course, it was not his place. Gottfried had the gentle, self-deprecating air of a good butler and like a good butler he missed very little. He enquired if perhaps this field had a house on it or even a hut.
“No,” Jack replied. “When I knew Polly she lived in a bender, although I doubt that it’s still there. I guess with carbon testing you might pick up traces of the fireplace, but I doubt that would help.”
“A bender, General?” Gottfried asked.
“Yes, a bender, Gottfried. It’s a shelter made of mud, sticks, leaves and reeds.”
“I understand, sir,” and something about the slight quiver of Gottfried’s eyebrow made Jack fear that what Gottfried understood was that Jack was out of his mind.
“Perhaps, General,” Gottfried enquired gently, “if you just gave me the surname of the young lady in question we could discover her address from the British tax authorities. I feel certain that they would co-operate if we made the request via the Embassy.”
“Coupla things,” said Jack firmly. “First, do you want to make colonel?”
“Yes, General sir, I do,” Gottfried replied.
“OK, then. You don’t do this thing I’m asking via the Embassy, understand? You do this yourself. You don’t delegate, you don’t get somebody else to do the legwork, this is just you, OK?”
“As you wish, sir,” Gottfried said.
If General Kent knew one thing about the Grosvenor Square Embassy it was that the CIA were all over it. It was their principal European station, their centre of operations. Nothing happened in that building that they did not know about and Jack did not want them knowing about Polly.
“Next thing,” said Jack. “Her surname wouldn’t help you, I’m afraid. It … it wasn’t real.”
“Am I to understand, sir, that the young lady in question operated under a pseudonym?” Gottfried enquired.
“Yes, she did,” said Jack, reddening slightly. “Her surname at the time I knew her was ‘Sacred Cycle of the Womb and Moon’.”
Jack had asked Polly her real name but she had refused on principle to tell him.
“I am who I decide to be, not who society dictates,” she used to say, and Jack had thought it simply too stupid to argue; it had not seemed important at the time.
Gottfried betrayed not an ounce of the amusement he felt.
“I see, sir,” said Gottfried. “So that would be Polly Sacred Cycle of the Womb and Moon?”
“Yes, it would.”
The spy solemnly produced a notebook and jotted down the name, respectfully repeating it under his breath as he did so.
Jack shuddered at the memory of Polly’s stupid name. Checking into hotels with a woman who insisted upon signing herself Polly Sacred Cycle of the Womb and Moon had to be one of his more excruciating memories. Eventually Jack persuaded her that it just drew attention to them and that they should pretend to be married anyway, but for a while it had been a major embarrassment for him.
At the time, Polly had been
convinced that Jack was only embarrassed because he was so totally uptight and straight. She believed that if only he could centre himself and shake out his shakrahs he would see that it was a lovely name. She found it practical as well as beautiful. For a person who was arrested on a regular basis a good pseudonym was essential and having such a long one absolutely infuriated the police. They used to try to get away with just writing “Polly Sacred,” but she would insist on her full name being noted. It drove them mad, particularly on winter mornings when their fingers were cold.
“OK, that’s all I got,” said Jack. “I’m afraid it ain’t a lot.”
“I’m sure it will prove sufficient, General,” Gottfried assured him.
“Good.”
“So, then, just to recap, sir. A girl called Polly, Greenham peace lady. Seventeen years old in 1981. Find her and kill her.”
“That’s right … No! For Christ’s sake! Jesus, I never said anything about killing her …”
“I’m sorry, sir, I just assumed—”
“Yeah, well don’t. Just find her, OK? Get her address, hand it over to me and then forget we ever had this conversation.”
32
“God help the American taxpayer,” Polly said with some feeling.
Jack acknowledged that it had been a questionable use of public funds, but what was the point of power if you couldn’t abuse it?
“Fuck the American taxpayer. I’ve given them twenty-eight years of my life. Uncle Sam owes me.”
“He doesn’t owe you anything. You love being a soldier.”
“Murderer, you used to say.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s because I’m a soldier that I lost you.”
“You didn’t lose me, Jack, you discarded me and I don’t think it was because you were a soldier. I think it’s because you were a gutless bastard. In fact, I think you still are, since you seem to think that calling or writing to an old flame would result in a court-martial for treason.”
“I told you, Polly, I couldn’t.”
Polly didn’t understand and she wasn’t likely to. Of course he had lost her because he was a soldier. The army would not have accepted his and Polly’s relationship in a million years. Jack had been faced with a straight choice and he had chosen his career. That did not mean he liked it, it did not mean that a part of him had not regretted the decision every single day since.
“Why did you have me traced, Jack? Why are you here?”
“I thought you already had your answer. I already told you how I found you.”
“This is a subclause. Why did you find me?”
“Why do you think? To find out what I’d let go. To find out what you’d become.”
“Jack, we knew each other for one summer in a totally different decade and you dropped me. That was it, end of rather stupid story. Now you turn up out of the blue talking about us like we were a Lionel Ritchie lyric. What is this about?”
“That summer was the best summer of my life, Polly. The best anything of my life.”
“You just miss the Cold War, that’s all.”
“Well, hell, who doesn’t?” Jack laughed. “And what’s happening with you in the new world order, then? I noticed when I met him that you weren’t the prime minister yet.”
“I never wanted to be prime minister, Jack. I wanted there not to be any prime ministers. I wanted the nation state with its hierarchies to be replaced by an organically functioning system of autonomous collectives.”
“With you as prime minister.”
“Not at all, although obviously some kind of non-oppressive, non-authoritarian body of governance would be required.”
“And anybody who didn’t like your non-oppressive, non-authoritarian governance could get shot.”
“That wouldn’t happen.”
“Polly, it always happens when you fucking idealists get to defending your revolutions. You always start shooting people. By any means possible, as Lenin said. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao. The most pious murderers in hell …”
Polly very nearly rose to it. Very nearly slammed her fist on the table and launched into the ancient and terminally tedious arguments of the left. Just in time, she hauled herself back from the brink.
“Jack, this is ridiculous! Are you out of your mind! I’m a completely different woman now, twice as old, for a start, and you turn up after nearly twenty years quoting Lenin and trying to continue the conversation we were having.”
Jack smiled. She was just the same. The same passion, the same beauty.
“I don’t know. I just thought it might have been kinda fun, you know, for old times’ sake. Like the first time we talked.”
“Fought.”
“Yeah, fought. In that hellhole on the A34.”
“Except then, of course, we ended up in …”
Polly did not finish the sentence. She did not need to. Her eyes gave the thought away. She did not need to say “bed” because there it was, right there, not ten feet from either of them. Her bed, unmade and inviting, the duvet tossed aside, the deep impression of Polly’s head still there upon the pillow. A bed just climbed out of. A bed ready to be climbed back into.
“I’ve never been in one of those restaurants since,” Polly said.
Jack fixed his stare on hers. She could feel herself going scarlet.
“That day changed me too, Polly. I’ll never forget it.”
“They’re just so disgusting. I mean, how do you ruin tomato soup?”
“I didn’t mean the restaurant, Polly, I meant …” Jack’s tone spoke volumes, but Polly was trying not to listen. She stuck resolutely to her topic.
“Putting a stupid hat on a sixteen-year-old school-leaver does not constitute training a chef.”
“Polly, how long can you stay angry at a bowl of soup?”
“No, but really. How do you mess up tomato soup? It was hot on the top and cold in the middle. With a skin on it! That has to be deliberate,” said Polly, once again reliving the horror of that gruesome cuisine.
“Forget the soup,” Jack pleaded. “Walk away. It’s been sixteen years, you have to let it go now. We weren’t bothered about eating, anyway. We went to that little hotel. Do you remember?”
Polly looked puzzled. “A hotel? Are you sure? I don’t remember that.”
Jack could not conceal his disappointment. “Oh, I thought you would—”
“Of course I fucking remember, you fucking idiot,” Polly said as loudly as she dared without provoking the sleeping milkman downstairs. “I lost my fucking virginity, didn’t I!”
Jack got it. “Oh, right,” he said. “British sarcasm.”
“Irony.”
He hated that. That was a British trick, the sarcasm and irony trick. Earlier in the evening the senior British officer had tried to make the same distinction.
“Oh, yes,” the pompous little khaki shit had said, having cracked some particularly weak sarcastic put-down or other. “You American chaps aren’t big on irony, are you?”
Jack thought it was pathetic the way the British aggrandized their penchant for paltry sarcasm by styling it “irony”. They thought it meant they had a more sophisticated sense of humour than the rest of the world, but it didn’t. It just meant that they were a bunch of pompous smartasses.
“So you do remember,” he said.
“Of course I bloody remember,” Polly replied. “I remember every detail. The soup—”
“Forget the soup.”
“The pie—”
“Forget the pie.”
“I wrote to the restaurant, you know.”
“Christ, hadn’t you made enough fuss already?”
Not that Jack had minded at the time. Usually he hated any kind of scene. Under any normal circumstances the fuss that Polly had made on the first day they met would have ended their relationship right there. The funny thing was that he had loved it then and he loved it still. He remembered every detail. Polly announcing loudly that she resented being forced to eat in a
fucking charnel house, supergluing the sauce bottles to the table. Even now he laughed at the memory of that wonderful, funny, sexy, sunny lunchtime.
“You sure showed them,” he said.
“Non-violent direct action. At least we didn’t pay,” Polly replied.
That was one of Polly’s favourite memories of her whole life. That glorious runner. The suggestion, the decision, the execution, it had all happened in one mad moment. Suddenly the two of them, her and an American soldier, were charging for the door and out into the carpark. It had been such fun, so exciting, piling into his car and screeching out onto the A34 before anyone in the restaurant had realized what had happened.
“I just couldn’t believe that you, a soldier and everything, were prepared to run out without paying.”
After sixteen years Jack decided it was time to own up.
“Actually I did pay, Polly. I left a five-pound note under my plate.”
Polly could scarcely believe it. This was astonishing, horrible news.
“You paid! That’s terrible! I thought you were so cool!”
“I was cool. It got you into my car, didn’t it?”
That was true enough. Jack’s astute deception all those years before had certainly got her into his car, certainly made her breathless and excited and ready for anything. Who could tell? Had that little trick not occurred to him then perhaps their relationship might never have happened. After all, if Jack had simply asked Polly to go with him to a field and then to a hotel, it is most unlikely that she would have gone. It had been the drama of that single moment that had carried her into his arms and changed both their lives for ever.
“You bastard,” said Polly. “If you hadn’t—”
“Polly, life is full of ifs. If that receptionist hadn’t decided to turn a blind eye to your pornographic T-shirt maybe we would have seen sense and walked away.”