Ben Elton - Blast From The Past

“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.”

“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!”