Ben Elton - Blast From The Past

Polly got out of bed and padded across the room towards it. Across almost her entire home, in fact. Polly’s landlord claimed that Polly lived in a studio-style maisonette and had set the rent accordingly. Polly thought she lived in a bedsit and that she was being ripped off.

The phone was set to ring six times before the answerphone kicked in. Polly watched the machine as it completed its cycle.

She was more angry than scared.

Very angry, terribly angry. Anger had seized hold of her whole body, which was the one thing she knew she must not let it do if she wished to get back to sleep before dawn. In vain she struggled to regain control of herself, but it was too late. The anger had released its chemicals and they were surging through her nervous system like a drug, making her muscles twitch, her stomach squirm and her heart expand like a balloon against her ribs. An anger so powerful because it was born of fear.

The Bug was back. Great holy shit, hadn’t the bastard had enough?

“The Bug” was what Polly called Peter. She had given him that title in an effort to depersonalize him. To resist the relationship that was growing between them. Polly had realized from the beginning, as every victim of an obsessive does, that the more she knew about her tormentor the more difficult it became to remember that he had absolutely nothing to do with her. Every extra detail that she accumulated of the man’s hated existence clouded the basic fact that he had absolutely no business in her life at all. He was a stranger, an aggressive stranger of course, but that did not mean she had to get to know him.

Even when the whole ghastly business became a matter for the police and solicitors, Polly had strenuously avoided sharing in the information that was unearthed about her foe. She did not want to know what he was like or where he came from. She did not want to know if he had a job or friends. She had learnt the bitter lesson that the more she knew about this man the more there was for her to think about, and the more she thought about him the greater was her sense of violation.

Which was why Peter had become the Bug. A bug is a thing that annoys you. It buzzes into your life and is difficult to get rid of, but it can’t hurt you or kill you; all it can do is buzz. A bug is also a minor virus, a thing you accidentally pick up, like a cold or the flu. It could happen to anybody. If you catch one you’re just unlucky, that’s all. It has nothing to do with you.

Above all, it is not your fault.

A bug is something that you shake off. That you determine will not ruin your day and if you cannot shake it off you accept your misfortune philosophically and cope the best you can. You do not become obsessed with a bug. It does not cloud your thoughts and bleed an undercurrent of tension and unhappiness through your every waking moment.

A bug cannot own you.

The “thing” that was Peter was not a friend or an enemy, or an acquaintance, or even a man. He was a bug and only a fool rails and rants and weeps over a bug; only a fool feeds its malignant symptoms with their anger and hurt.

Polly stood waiting for her answerphone message to start and struggled to control her fury.

She scarcely even noticed that she had begun to cry.

General Schultz, General Kent’s chief of staff, was not a very good hustler and there followed what seemed to be an interminable period of introductions and handshaking as the British and American parties greeted each other on the tarmac. Eventually, just when Kent was beginning to suspect that he would be expected to bond even with the man who waved the ping-pong bats, he found himself sitting alongside the senior British officer in the first of a convoy of army staff cars heading for London.

Kent was silent, preoccupied, deep in thought. Despite this, however, his host felt obliged to make some effort at conversation.

“I had the privilege of serving under a colleague of yours,” the senior British officer said. “During the Gulf War. I was seconded to the staff of General Schwarzkopf. Your famous Stormin’ Norman.”

Kent did not reply.

“Splendid name, don’t you think?” Actually the senior British officer thought it an absolutely pathetic name. He despised the way Americans felt the need to attach silly macho schoolboy nicknames to their leaders. “Iron” this, “Hell bugger” that; it was bloody childish.

General Kent knew exactly what his host was thinking and in his turn thought it was pathetic the way the British compensated for their massive inferiority complex by forever sneering at the Yanks. There had once been a time when British soldiers were equally world famous and equally popularly revered, “Fighting Bobs Roberts” of the Boer War, the “Iron Duke” of Wellington himself, but that had been in another century, when… General Kent stopped his train of thought. He did not wish to be pondering the inanity of his companion’s comments. He wished to be left alone to concentrate on his own deep and tormented feelings. To dwell once more upon the summer of his love.

What would she be like? Would she remember? Of course she would remember. She would have to be dead to have forgotten, and he knew she wasn’t dead.

“Not your first trip to Britain, I imagine.” Once more the senior British officer’s voice crashed into Kent’s thoughts. The man was not giving up. He had been instructed to make the American feel welcome and by hell he was going to make him feel welcome even if that also meant annoying him utterly.

“I said, not your first trip to Britain, I imagine…” he repeated loudly. “Been here before, I suppose.”

He had blundered into General Kent’s very train of thought. General Kent had been in Britain before and it had changed his life for ever.

“Yeah,” Kent acknowledged at last. “I was here before.” But his tone suggested that he did not wish to elaborate.

“I see. I see. Here before, you say? Well, I never. Splendid. Splendid.”

Another few cold, dark miles slid by outside the windows of the car.

“Plenty of friends this side of the pond, then, I imagine. People to look up and all that. Old pals to visit?”

Again the Englishman had got it right. There certainly was an old pal to visit, but General Kent did not choose to discuss it. He had never once in over sixteen years discussed the one love of his life with anyone apart from his brother Harry, not a soul, not ever and he certainly did not intend to start now. After this the British officer gave up and the conversation, such as it was, lapsed completely until the Englishman delivered his American through the gates of Downing Street.

“Well, goodbye, General. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure to meet you,” said the senior British officer.

“Yes, it’s been very real,” replied General Kent. “Thank you so much for the trouble you’ve taken.”

“Not at all. Goodbye, then.”

“Goodbye.”

The two soldiers shook hands and parted.

“Surly bastard,” thought the senior British officer.

“Pompous creep,” thought General Kent.

Kent stood outside the famous front door for as long as he dared, breathing in the cold night air, attempting to marshal his thoughts. He must pull himself together. He had an important meeting ahead of him. It was his job to brief the British on White House plans for the eastward expansion of NATO. He needed to be thinking about Poland and the Czech Republic, not about making love in a sundrenched field to a seventeen-year-old girl. He stamped his feet; he must concentrate! It was time to put away the past and think about the present. The past could wait. After all, it had waited these many long years; it could stand another few hours.

“General?”