Blast From the Past

by Ben Elton

  “There was nothing remotely offensive about my T-shirt!” said Polly, the passage of time having done nothing to blunt the memory of that confrontation. “That receptionist was just a stupid Nazi bitch.”

  “Polly, just because somebody did not approve of what was emblazoned on your T-shirt doesn’t make them a National Socialist.”

  “Take the toys from the boys,” said Polly. “What could be offensive about that?”

  “Beats me,” Jack replied, “unless it was the picture of that huge flying penis you had printed across your tits.”

  Polly never failed to rise to this one.

  “Well, what were those bloody missiles but big blokes’ willies? Nuclear dickheads, we used to call them.”

  “Yeah, we all loved that one on our side of the fence,” Jack said with heavy sarcasm (or perhaps it was irony). “‘Tell us the one about missiles being penis replacements again,’ we used to shout. We’d laugh all day.”

  “You’re only taking the piss because actually you felt threatened.”

  “Terrified. Couldn’t sleep. You know, Polly, maybe it’s kind of late in the day to say this, but the idea of dissing things because of their so-called phallic shape. It’s always struck me as kind of banal.”

  “Because it reveals an uncomfortable truth about yourself.”

  “No, because it’s dumb. Things get shaped straight and thin for reasons of aerodynamics. Missiles and skyscrapers are shaped the way they are on the soundest principles of engineering, not as monuments to the dick. In fact, so is the dick. The dick is shaped like a dick because that is the most efficient shape for a dick to be. That’s why it’s dick shaped. I mean a dick shaped like a table would cause all sorts of practical spatial problems. Surely you can see that?”

  “Jack, it’s a point of satire, not civil engineering.”

  “Yes, but it’s such lazy, unconvincing satire. It always annoys me so much the way you girls trot it out like you’re saying something so astute and revealing. Like with cars; a guy gets a cool car and suddenly according to you and the other femmos it’s his dick. Well, dicks don’t look a bit like cars. No guy ever stood outside a Cadillac showroom and said, ‘Oh, boy, I wish I had one of those. It looks exactly like my dick.’ Jesus, if my dick looked like a Cadillac I’d go see a doctor. Personally, I drive a pick-up truck. You ever see a dick with a trailer?”

  “Jack, I’m not interested. This is your problem. I never—”

  “You might as well say a trombone is a phallic symbol, or a stick of gum! Maybe when a guy shoves a piece of gum into his face what he’s really saying is that he is a subconscious homosexual and has a secret desire to be chewing on a big old Cadillac!”

  “Jack –”

  “Phallic symbol, for Christ’s sake. When they built the World Trade Center do you think they stood around saying, ‘Looks great and it’ll be even better when they put the purple helmet on the top’?”

  Polly used to love this type of conversation with Jack. They would shout and rant and swear at each other.

  Then, of course, they made love.

  “Jack, don’t you think you’re getting a little worked up over this? Protesting too much?”

  “I hate that way of arguing! That is a woman’s way of arguing! Say something outrageous and when the guy gets angry act like he’s got the problem.”

  Polly wondered whether perhaps this might be the reason for Jack’s visit.

  “Is this some kind of therapy thing? Is that why you’ve come? Has some army analyst discovered you hate women and told you to go and confront your past?”

  Now Jack really went off. “Are you kidding me? See an analyst? I’d rather stick my Cadillac in a blender. Analysts and therapists have destroyed the world. They’re a cancer. I’d put the lot of them against a wall and shoot them. Every one. Them, their unconscious selves, their recovered personalities, and particularly, above all, their inner fucking children.”

  Polly had not expected Jack to have suddenly turned into a liberal in the years that had passed since their last meeting, but if anything he seemed to have got worse.

  “You know what, Jack? It’s lovely to see you and all that, but I’m rather tired, so—”

  But Jack wasn’t listening. He was on a subject that moved him deeply, to Polly’s mind rather disturbingly so.

  “Jesus, the entire twentieth century was corrupted by the theories of some Jew who thought women wanted to grow dicks and guys wanted to fuck their mothers! Where I come from that’s fighting talk. We’d have killed that pervert the first day he opened his mouth. We’d have hung him from a tree, and you know what? We would have been called uncivilized.”

  There was something venomous about Jack’s tone that Polly didn’t like. He still had all his charm but it had taken on a steely edge.

  “Jack, I’m not interested in your Neolithic opinions. I have no idea why I’m even having this conversation, I have to work tomorrow. Why are you here?”

  “I told you! I wanted to see you—”

  “So you’ve seen me! What now?”

  What indeed? Jack hardly knew himself. He had thought he knew, but that was before they got talking. Jack had rehearsed all this in his mind so many times. Yet now he was not so sure, not so sure at all. He glanced at his watch. It was gone three.

  “Look, if I’m keeping you,” Polly snapped, “you can go!”

  “I’m not going, Polly. I want to be with you.”

  There was something about his tone that Polly did not like. Something commanding and possessive. Polly did not like men acting as if they had the right to intrude on her own private space. She had had enough of that with the Bug.

  33

  Peter watched as the tail-lights of the police car disappeared around the corner at the end of the road, the spiteful red dots dragging great bloody streaks along behind them in the glistening reflection of the wet road.

  Twice now Peter had been forced to retreat into the shadows as passing cars had disturbed his desperate efforts to recover his knife. Once it had been a carful of yobbos, drunken revellers shouting into the night. Their car had hurtled into the road at speed. Peter had been on all fours and had had to roll out of the gutter onto the pavement. The souped-up white Sierra had screeched past, sending up an arc of spray, further soaking Peter’s retreating body. Another second, a moment’s hesitation, a slower reaction, and all Polly’s problems with the Bug would have been over. But he survived, wetter, dirtier and angrier. The Sierra sped on, its reckless driver unaware of how close he had been to killing a man.

  Peter retrieved his coathanger and returned to his task, but no sooner had he done so than a police car appeared, not screeching and hurtling but prowling. He sat on the kerb and waited for it to pass. It seemed to take for ever, slowing to a crawl as it drew parallel with him. He put his head in his hands and ignored it. The police officers inside the car repaid the compliment. A few years previously they might have investigated, but the night streets were now so full of people with nowhere to go that if the police looked into every sad-looking case they passed they would never get more than two hundred yards from their station.

  When the coppers had gone and he had the street to himself again Peter knelt once more in the filthy gutter and resumed his delicate task. It was clear to him that if he dislodged the knife it would fall completely out of reach. He would have only one chance to touch it with his wire. Hook it, or knock it away for ever.

  “Peter! What on earth do you think you’re doing!”

  He spun around, dropping his piece of wire, which fell with a tiny clatter into the drain.

  “Mum!”

  “Get up out of the gutter!” Peter’s mother said. “You’re filthy and you’re soaking. What’re you doing? Are you drunk?”

  Peter had been gone so long that his poor mother, unable to sleep, had come out searching for him. She had known where to look, of course. There was only one place he would have gone at that time of night. She felt so angry, even though she kn
ew that he couldn’t help it. It was all starting again. Just when she had hoped that perhaps he was getting over his madness it was all starting again.

  “I dropped my knife, Mum.”

  “Good. You shouldn’t have had it, anyway. You know they’re illegal. What were you doing with it in the first place?”

  “Just playing with it.”

  “Playing with a knife? In her street? A knife, Peter! What if you were caught?”

  Sometimes Peter’s mother just wanted to break down and weep. She really did not know how much more of it she could bear. If that woman thought she had it hard, she should try being his mother.

  Peter refused to go home. His mother tried ordering him, reasoning with him, pleading with him, but he was adamant. She stepped forward into the flowing gutter and reached out to him. Her shoe filled instantly with filthy water. Peter merely drew away.

  “Come home, Peter!” His mother pleaded one more time.

  “I’ll come home when I’ve got my knife back,” was all he would say.

  She gave up. There was nothing she could do. She cried all the way home, her tears mixing with rain, making her half blind.

  Peter went back to the builder’s skip to root out another piece of wire.

  34

  Jack sat back in his seat and quaffed deeply at his whiskey.

  “So come on. My question. Tell me what you do now.” He had some information about Polly from the file that Gottfried had prepared, but not much. Jack had specifically asked his secret agent to confine himself to a couple of current photographs and Polly’s address. He had not wanted even Gottfried to know any more about Polly than was absolutely necessary.

  “I’m a councillor,” Polly replied.

  Jack’s face showed that he was not impressed.

  “What, you mean like an analyst? A therapist? You tell fucked-up people to blame their parents?”

  “Not a personal counsellor, Jack, a town councillor. I’m on the council.”

  Jack laughed. “The council! You’re on the council! I thought all hierarchies were fascism.”

  Yet again Polly rose to the bait. “I was seventeen when I said that, for heaven’s sake! Although they are, of course, but all structures are not necessarily hierarchical—”

  Polly stopped herself. This was ridiculous. “I don’t want to discuss politics with you!”

  “OK, OK. Whatever you say, Polly.”

  A silence descended. Polly was getting impatient with Jack’s enigmatic visit, but she did not want him to go and he did not seem anxious to explain himself, so there was very little she could do.

  “So what do you do on your ‘council’ then?” Jack asked and Polly did not like his slightly patronizing tone.

  “I’m with the office of equal opportunities.”

  Jack sniffed and his patronizing tone became slightly more marked.

  “What? You mean it’s your job to make sure there’s a suitable quota of disabled black Chinese sodomites getting paid out of public funds?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I do,” Polly snapped sarcastically. “You’re incredibly intuitive, Jack. I had no idea you were such an expert on local government.”

  “We have people like you in the army,” Jack said, and now it almost sounded as if he was sneering. “Checking out that we have enough women in combat training. Homosexuals, too, that’s coming. A queer quota. Can you believe that?”

  Polly enquired if this offended Jack, and he replied that it damn well did offend him.

  “You think that makes me a fascist, right?” he added.

  The atmosphere between them, having been definitely warming up, was now becoming chilly.

  “Well, I certainly think it makes you a bit of a dick-head.”

  Jack went over to the kitchen table and grabbed the bottles.

  “Have another drink, babe,” he said, “and let me tell you something.”

  “Don’t call me babe.”

  Polly was still sitting on the bed. Jack marched back across the room and sloshed more Bailey’s into her half-full glass before refilling his own with bourbon. He had not intended to discuss this issue but he felt too strongly about it to let it go. Besides, this night of all nights Jack wanted Polly to understand something of his point of view.

  “Christ, where do you people get off! Gays in the military. What does it have to do with you, anyway? You don’t care about the army, you hate it, you wish it would turn into a network of creches for single mothers! But you still think you can tell us how to run it—”

  Polly raised her hand for him to stop.

  “Hang on, hang on. Hang on! Me?” she said. “Don’t lay your shit on me, mate. I’m a council worker from Camden.”

  “I’m talking about your kind, Polly. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what job you do. Your kind are international.”

  “My kind!” Polly protested. “What the fuck do you mean, my kind?”

  “Your kind, Polly, that’s what the fuck I mean. Your kind.”

  Jack was sick and tired of them. These liberals, these feminists, these gay activists. The army wasn’t a laboratory for social experimentation, it was the means by which the nation defended itself. He had tried to explain this point at the congressional hearings into sexual bias in the armed forces and what a waste of time that had been. It had been like Canute trying to turn back a tidal wave of bullshit. What an impotent fool he had felt, sitting there in front of that pious pulpit of political zealots and petrified fellow travellers. It was the scared ones Jack despised most. At least the true believers believed, insane Utopians though they were, but the ones who knew he was right were beneath contempt. They just did not have the guts to risk offending the current sensibilities and so they nodded and sighed and stayed silent, mindful of their thin electoral majorities back home. It was McCarthyism in reverse. The liberals had become the witch-hunters: “Are you or have you ever been a homophobic?” There was a terrifying new orthodoxy abroad and as far as Jack was concerned whether it was happening on Capitol Hill or in Camden Council it had to be confronted.

  “We take communal showers in the army, you know that, Polly,” Jack said bitterly. “You think about that. In the field we live in the same dugouts, wash in the same puddles. I don’t want no queer grunt staring at my ass instead of the soap.”

  Polly did not want to discuss this, but like Jack she simply could not let it go. His attitude was just too disgusting. Every liberal instinct in her body screamed to reply.

  “Gay men are not sexual predators, Jack.”

  “How the hell would you know? Straight guys are sexual predators!”

  “Well, yes, you certainly showed me that!”

  “Exactly,” Jack said loudly, as if this proved his point.

  “Keep your voice down! There’s a milkman asleep downstairs.”

  On the floor below, the milkman was not asleep. Jack’s voice had woken him up again and he was gleefully making a note of the time of the disturbance: “Man’s voice: shouting: 3.06 a.m.,” he wrote. It wasn’t that the milkman enjoyed being disturbed, but the upstairs woman had complained so often about his radio, even threatening to involve the landlord, that the current disturbance was manna from heaven. Let her try and complain now.

  Little did the milkman imagine that within a few hours his notebook would be in the hands of the police.

  Jack reduced the volume but his tone remained combative.

  “If you think I’m a predator, well, let me tell you, honey, I ain’t the worst by a long country mile. I’m the norm.”

  Jack was remembering Bad Nauheim and the night that the German girl Helga had pushed her luck too far. Not all men were of the type involved in that terrible incident, but all men were men none the less.

  “If you put any of the men in any unit I ever commanded in a showerful of women,” Jack continued, “they are going to check them out for sure, and if they can they’re going to try and get with them.” “Well, then, they need to rethink their—” Jack
had just sat back down in his seat, but his frustration made him leap up again and take a step towards Polly.

  “Followed by heavy footsteps: 3.07 a.m.,” the milkman wrote solemnly before rolling over and wrapping the pillow around his head.

  Jack was standing over Polly now.

  “I know you don’t like it, Polly, but that’s what young men do! They check out babes and they try to have sex with them and you can make up all the laws you like but that won’t change.”

  Polly rose from the bed and squared up to Jack. There was no way this man was going to win his argument with intimidating body language.

  “Yes, it can, Jack, it’s called civilization. It’s an ongoing process.”

  “Yeah well it’s got a long way to ongo.”

  Polly checked herself. What was she doing? She did not want to have this discussion, she had work in the morning. In fact, it very nearly was the morning.

  “Look, Jack. I really don’t know what we’re talking about!”

  “We are talking about gays in the military.”

  “Well, I don’t want to talk about gays in the military!”

  “Well, I do! It’s relevant!”

  “Relevant to what?”

  “Relevant to me! I want you to understand me.”

  The urgency of Jack’s tone subdued Polly for a moment.

  “You know what straight men can be like,” he continued. “You feel I showed you that.”

  Oh yes, Polly certainly felt he had done that.

  “So why not gays? What’s so different about them, huh? Are you going to tell me that if you put a healthy young homosexual in a showerful of young men who are in the peak of physical condition he is not going to check out their dicks?”

  Polly tried to stop herself replying. She did not wish to be having this conversation. On the other hand she had to reply. Jack simply could not be allowed to get away with this reactionary bullshit.

  “Well, he might look, but—”

  Jack leapt on the point. “And when he does he’s going to get himself beaten to a pulp.”