Ben Elton - Blast From The Past

“Or you.”

When Jack got back to the base that night he went straight to the bar and ordered beer with a bourbon chaser. The room was empty save for Captain Schultz, who was alone as usual, playing on the space invaders machine. Poor Schultz. He hated the army as much as Jack loved it, not that he would ever have admitted it to anybody, even himself. Schultz tried not to have strong opinions about anything, in order to avoid unpleasant arguments. He had joined the army because that was what the men (and some of the women) of his family had always done. The fact that he was entirely unsuited for military command, being incapable of making a decision, was irrelevant. There had never been any choice for Schultz.

Jack had known him at West Point where Schultz had just scraped through with a combination of family connections and very hard work. Not too long afterwards, while billeted at the US base in Iceland, he had been made captain virtually by default. Schultz’s superior had found the posting rather cold and had attempted to warm himself up by trying to seduce every young woman in Reykjavik. After one too many dishonourable discharges the man was dishonourably discharged and Schultz found himself achieving early command. Jack had found it an interesting circumstance that he, the most successful student in his year at military academy, and Schultz, the least successful, should be advancing at much the same pace. Jack’s rise was due to his own excellence, Schultz’s to the frailty of others, but they were destined to shadow each other throughout their whole careers.

That night in the bar Jack wanted someone to talk to. He was still thinking about the conversation he’d had with Polly and was in a rare communicative mood. He wished that Harry was there so that he could talk to him about the painful mixed emotions he was experiencing. But Harry was thousands of miles away in Ohio. There was only Schultz. Jack stood by the space invaders machine and watched Schultz lose all his defenders in a very short space of time.

“Jesus, Schultz,” said Jack. “That must be the worst score anybody ever got on that machine.”

“Oh no,” Schultz replied, giving up the game. “I’ve had much worse.”

“What the hell are you like with a gun?”

“As far as possible I try not to use one,” Schultz said, sipping at his soda.

“Tell me something, Schultz,” Jack enquired. “Did you ever really really want something you couldn’t have?”

Schultz considered for a moment. “Sure I did, Kent. Why, only tonight in the refectory I absolutely set my mind on the profiteroles and then they told me they just sold the last portion. I hate that. They should cross it off the board. Why do you ask?”

“Forget it.”

Jack finished his drink and returned to his neat little army cell.

“ Dear Harry,” he wrote. “What the hell is wrong with me? I’m in pain here and nobody hit me. When I started this thing with Polly I thought I could handle it. You know, I thought I could have some laughs, get my rocks off and walk away when I felt like it. Except now I don’t want to walk away. Even thinking about ending it makes me want to go and punch someone. This is ridiculous, Harry. I mean, what am I? Some kind of soppy dick like you that lets himself get stupid over a girl? Never in my life did I get stupid over a girl. Suddenly I’m risking my career for one! I’m sneaking out of the camp with my collar turned up and my hat pulled down just so I can be with her! I must be out of my mind. In fact, I am out of my mind, because she’s in it! All day this woman is inside my head! I can’t do my job, I’m a safety hazard. I’m trying to monitor the arrival of nuclear warheads and I’m daydreaming about being in bed with Polly! Did you feel this way about Debbie? Of course you did. You still do, you lucky fuck. You and Debbie were made for each other. You fit, like one of those horrible kissing chairs you make. You’re allowed to love each other. Nobody ever said ‘A furniture maker can’t fall in love with a fire woman.’ But me! Jesus, my colonel would probably prefer it if I told him I was sleeping with the corpse of Leonid Brezhnev.”

Their embrace ended as suddenly as it had begun.

Polly broke away. “I shouldn’t be hugging you, Jack. I shouldn’t be hugging you at all.”

So much of her longed to continue, but a larger part remembered the hurt that this man had caused her.

Jack stepped back too. He had not expected their embrace. It had confused him.

“Yeah, well, like I said, it’s good to see you.”

Polly wanted to look at Jack properly. She turned on the lamp on her desk. The extra light further illuminated her dowdy room and she regretted switching it on.

“I’ve often wondered what your stuff would be like,” said Jack, looking around.

Things were not at their tidiest. As a matter of fact, they never were. Things had only once been at their tidiest in Polly’s flat, for a single afternoon, shortly after Polly had moved in and her mother had come to inspect. In preparation for that visit Polly had tidied and cleared and cleared and tidied and polished and buffed and tidied again.

Her mother had thought the place was a mess.

She also thought that the plates should be in the pan cupboard, the pans should be where the mugs were and the mugs should go on little hooks of which there were none, but nice ones could be got at Habitat. Polly’s mother then set about effecting all of these changes with the exception of the mugs, because she did not have the hooks. The mugs she left on the draining board to await Polly’s DIY efforts and there they had remained (sometimes clean, more often dirty) ever since.

Polly’s little life seemed suddenly small and depressing. Poky would have been a good word for it, or dingy. She felt embarrassed, which was really rather unjust because if anyone in that room had reason to feel embarrassed it was Jack, and yet Polly knew that it was she who was going red.

Hurriedly she began to tidy up. Polly was a dropper of things and a leaver around of other things. She did not tidy up as she went along, she tidied up once every seven days on a strict routine and she was already nine days into the current cycle. There were knickers and tights on the floor, a dirty plate and various mugs by the bed, and magazines and books everywhere. Polly felt that at least the intimate clothing had to be hidden away; also anything that had mould growing on it, particularly if the two were one and the same thing.

As Jack watched Polly scurrying about, stooping to pick up her knickers and bras, he could not help but remember Polly as a young girl, searching for her underwear in hotel rooms and the backs of cars. Once she had not been able to find the elusive garment at all and they had risked going down to dinner, not only in fear of being seen together but also in the wicked knowledge that Polly was naked beneath her little denim skirt. What a wonderful meal that had been. Jack had kicked off his shoe beneath the table and as they ate his bare foot had lain between Polly’s legs. In the long years since that glorious meal Jack had relived it in his memory a thousand times. He doubted that he had ever had a happier moment. Certainly not in a motel restaurant, anyway.

“Bet you didn’t think things would look as shitty as this,” Polly said, stuffing dirty clothes into the clean clothes drawer.

As he watched her moving about Jack knew that it was as he had feared. That he was still in love with her.

“No, I didn’t. I thought it would be much more shitty than this.”

Jack could see that virtually everything Polly owned was on view. Her furniture, her clothes, all of her stuff. It didn’t seem to him that she had changed very much either. There were her souvenir mugs from the 1984 miners’ strike. A poster advertising a concert at Wembley Stadium to celebrate the release of Nelson Mandela. One of those plastic flowers that dance when music comes on (but only if the battery hasn’t been dead for five and a half years, which in this case it had). A poster of Daniel Ortega proclaiming “Nicaragua must survive”, a poster of Garfield the cartoon cat proclaiming that he hated mornings. A clipframed front page of the London Evening Standard from the day Margaret Thatcher resigned (Jack, like many Americans, could not understand how the Brits had ever let that one happen; anyone could see that she was the best thing they had had in years – it was like after the war, when they dropped Churchill). Polly had lots of books. A couple of IKEA “first home” easy chairs, a rape alarm, a small TV. Thirty or forty loose CDs and forty or fifty empty CD boxes.