Ben Elton - Blast From The Past

“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.

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 knew 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.

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!”