Ben Elton - Blast From The Past

The disaster’s name was Campbell. Handsome, clever, highly qualified (a doctor), Campbell was also an extremely married man. He and Polly met during a weekend conference entitled “Race, gender, sexual preference and local government”. Until tea on the second day Polly had found the conference only slightly more interesting than being dead, but Campbell changed all that. Like her, he was a Labour Councillor, but unlike her he was a leading light in the local party, very much tipped to be selected as the parliamentary candidate to fight the next election. John Smith had died and Tony Blair’s leadership had ushered in a whole new generation of slick, handsome, media-friendly professionals. Campbell was perfect for it, if a little old at forty.

Their affair was electric, one of those instant physical attractions that cannot be denied. Polly and Campbell missed the final session of the conference, “How Many Members of Senior Management Have a Clitoris?”, because they were having sex in a stationery cupboard. After that they seemed to be incapable of meeting without having sex. They took appalling risks, having it off in council offices, at Campbell’s surgery, behind the speaker’s chair at the town hall, in carparks, behind hedges, in front of hedges, on top of hedges and in the toilet of the Birmingham Pullman.

Polly worried about Campbell’s wife, but Campbell of course assured her that he and Margaret had long since drifted apart. This, sadly, would have come as surprising news to Margaret, who had absolutely no idea that anything was wrong.

If Margaret was ignorant of what was going on, then Polly was not much wiser. Campbell was arrogant and weak and he spun a web of desperate lies around himself and both women. When he and Polly moved in together he told her that the three or four nights he spent away each week were out of obligation to his children. He explained that although he and Margaret were now separate they were still friends and had decided to maintain the family home until the kids grew up. To Margaret he explained that he had taken up a part-time teaching post at the University of Manchester Medical School and hence would be away for half the week.

It could not last, of course. Campbell’s lies got ever more desperate, particularly to Margaret. He told her that Telecom had still not installed a telephone line in his Manchester flat; he told her that for some reason his mobile could not get a signal where he was living. He told her not to phone the university as the cuts had so overstretched the secretarial staff that private calls were frowned upon.

And he told her, of course, he still loved her.

One Sunday morning Margaret turned up while Polly and Campbell were having breakfast together in the house they shared in Islington. Margaret had discovered the address from an electricity bill she had found in the laundry. It was probably the most excruciating encounter of Polly’s life. She had stood there, a piece of toast frozen in her hand while the man who had said he loved her begged tearful forgiveness from the wife he claimed to have left.

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.

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.”

“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.”