Ben Elton - Blast From The Past

“Well, I mean, obviously it is his problem if he’s being beaten up.”

“It’s encouraging that you spotted that.”

His attitude was unpleasant. Polly’s point was not an easy one to make. Particularly if Jack was going to take cheap shots.

“But the problem originates with the people who are doing the beating!”

“Great, next time I get shot I’ll take comfort from that. Hey, this is not my problem. The guy with the gun, he has the problem, he needs to get in touch with his caring side.”

How many times in how many pubs had Polly had discussions like this one? The reactionary point of view was always so easy to put, the complex, radical argument always so easy to put down.

“Just because the world is full of Neanderthal morons doesn’t mean we have to run it for their benefit and by their rules.”

Jack searched his brain for a telling argument. Somehow it was important to him that Polly understood his point of view.

“Listen, Polly, when the guy who digs up the street checks out your butt you’re pretty pissed, am I right?”

“Well, yes-”

“You’re furious. You’d like to knock that guy off his scaffolding and drive a dump truck into his asshole cleavage. Well, men don’t like having their butts checked out either, but unlike you they’re actually going to do something about it, they’re going to attack the guy who is checking them out and you cannot run an army with guys either sucking each other off or beating each other up.”

Of course it sounded reasonable. Polly had spent her life listening to reactionary arguments and they always sounded reasonable. Which was why it was all the more important to counter them. Even at nearly 3.15 in the morning. Even with a mysterious ex-lover who had turned up out of the blue after more than sixteen years’ absence. Polly had a policy. It was embarrassing at times and always boring, but her view was that casual racism, sexism and homophobia always had to be confronted.

“People have to learn to restrain themselves,” she said.

Jack had a rule too. It was that he would never suffer pious liberal bullshit in silence.

“Says you, babe, and you and your people can keep on wishing!”

Polly was shocked at how bitter Jack’s tone had become.

“Me and my people?” she said. “What people, Jack? I don’t have any people! What are you talking about? Why are you bringing me into this? None of this is any of my business.”

Polly was not even sure that Jack heard her. He looked strange. There was a different look in his eye; she could see real anger there.

“You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Pacifists.”

“What about pacifists?”

“In the fucking army! Why not? Some Congresswoman is going to announce that pacifists have a right to join the army. In fact, the army should be encouraging them! Running a programme to attract them! Because the constitutional rights of American pacifists are being denied by-”

Jack was becoming red in the face. For the first time he looked his age. A confused, middle-aged man with a chip on his shoulder.

“I’m not interested in your paranoid ravings, Jack. I want to know why-”

But Polly might as well have been talking to herself.

“Fucking constitution! It’s a sponge, it’ll absorb anything anybody wants. It’s like the damn Bible. Everybody can make it work for them. Well, the constitution can only take so much. One day the Supreme Court is going to rule that the constitution is unconstitutional and the United States will implode! It’ll disappear up its ass.”

“Good! I’m glad.” Polly felt tired. She had to leave for work at seven forty-five.

“Jack, I can’t have this conversation with you now. I have to work tomorrow. Maybe we could meet some other-”

Jack lowered his tone. He spoke quietly and firmly. “I’ve told you, Polly, I only have tonight. I leave in the morning.”

He stared at Polly as if that was all he needed to say, as if Polly could like it or lump it, neither of which she was prepared to do.

“Well go, then! Go! I don’t want you here. I didn’t ask you to come.”

Jack did not move at all. He just stood in the middle of the room, looking at her.

“I’m staying, Polly,” he said, and for the first time Polly began to feel a little nervous. Something about Jack had changed. He was being so intense.

“OK, stay, stay if you want to, but… but you can’t just drop in after sixteen years and talk about sexual politics and the constitution, and… It’s… it’s stupid.”

Jack looked tired too now. “You always used to want to talk about politics, Polly. What’s changed? Is there nothing of value left for you people to fuck up?”

He seemed to say it more in sorrow than in anger. None the less Polly wasn’t having any of it.

“I have nothing to do with you or your hangups, Jack,” said Polly calmly. “We knew each other briefly, years ago. We don’t even live in the same country.”

“Politics is international, you always used to tell me that,” said Jack, and he smiled at the memory. “You read it me out of that damn political cartoon book you had, The Start-Up Guide to Being an Asshole… ”

“ Marxism for Beginners.”

“ That’s the one.”

Polly blushed at the memory of how naive she’d been. She had actually given Jack a copy of Marxism for Beginners. Not that she had ever been able to get through it herself, of course. Huge quotes from Das Kapital do not get clearer just because there’s a little cartoon of Karl Marx in the corner of the page. It had been a gesture, a nod towards civilizing him. All Jack ever admitted to reading was the sports pages, and Polly had dreamt of politicizing him. Fantasizing about walking into the peace camp one day with Jack on her arm and saying to the girls, “I’ve got one! I’ve converted him.” She had imagined herself the toast of the peace movement, having persuaded a genuine baby killer to see the light. Polly had been going to make the world’s first vegetarian fighter pilot.

“Wasn’t I the starry-eyed little pillock?” she said.

“Well, did you ever read Churchill’s History of the Second World War ?” Jack replied. The book-giving had, after all, been a two-way thing.

“Be serious, Jack, it was about fifty volumes!”

“Oh, and Marx is easy reading, is it?”

Now they were both laughing. Neither of them had changed at all. They were still a million miles apart in every way but one.

“I wanted you to be a part of my world as much as you wanted me to be part of yours, Polly,” said Jack. “You’re not the only person who got disappointed. I believe that in my own way I loved you every bit as much as you loved me.”

Jack was terrified to discover that he still did.

“You can’t have done,” said Polly quietly, avoiding Jack’s eye, “or you wouldn’t have left.”

“That’s not true, Polly. I had to leave. I’m a soldier. I’m not good at love, I admit that. I don’t find it easy to live with. But whatever love there is inside me I felt for you, to its very limits and beyond.”

While Jack and Polly were wrestling with their pasts in London, back in the States another drama of betrayal was being played out. A man and a woman were sitting alone together in the faded splendour of a dining room that had been beautifully decorated twenty years before. It was dinner time in the eastern states and the couple had been sitting at their evening meal for an hour or so, but neither of them was hungry. Their food had gone cold before them. Hers remained entirely untouched; he had had a stab at his, but really all he had done was play nervously with the cold, congealed gravy.