Ben Elton - Blast From The Past

“So why haven’t you left her?”

“I don’t have the guts.” Which was a silly thing to say to Polly.

“You had the guts before.”

“That was different.”

“How was it different?” Polly asked angrily.

“We were together three months, Polly! We weren’t married! Did you ever try to leave someone you’ve been with for years? It’s like trying to get off the Time Life mailing list. I torment myself. Would she kill herself? Who would get custody of the credit cards?”

“Oh, come on, Jack!”

Polly may not have seen Jack for a long time, but she knew him well enough not to buy this type of bullshit. If Jack wanted something he was not going to let any finer emotions or sensibilities stand in his way. He never had.

“OK, OK,” Jack conceded. “The truth is I can’t leave her because I can’t risk damaging my career. I’m near the top now, Polly. I mean real near. I’m tipped to be the man. Unfortunately the army is about a hundred years behind the rest of the world on social matters. They like you to be married and they like you to stay married.”

Polly could hardly believe that it still mattered, that being a divorce could still be a bar to promotion.

“Oh yes, it can be, Polly, in the army it can. More so now than a few years ago, the pendulum’s swinging back. Can you believe it? I had to leave you for my career and now I can’t leave my wife for the same reason. If I wasn’t such a big success I might almost think that I’d fucked up my life.”

Jack had met Courtney shortly after his arrival in Washington to take up his posting at the Pentagon. They were introduced by Jack’s bumbling old friend Schultz. The meeting took place at a Republican Party fundraiser, and it had been a rare moment of intuition on Schultz’s part because Jack and Courtney became instant friends. They were as similar to each other in outlook as Jack and Polly had been opposites. Courtney, like Jack, was a sincere patriot and a conservative, but also like him she was no bubba-style redneck. The daughter of a Congressman, Courtney was accomplished, cultured and beautiful, and although still only twenty-six, she was already respected in her chosen field of company law. She and Jack made a splendid couple, he the tough, handsome soldier, she “the gorgeous girl most likely”. Between them they looked like the stars of a Reagan campaign ad.

Harry had been suspicious from the moment Jack had introduced him to his new girlfriend. Courtney was perfectly nice and Harry could see that she certainly loved Jack, in an uptight, chilly, preppy sort of way, but Harry did not think that Jack loved Courtney. To Harry, Jack looked like a man going through the motions.

For a while Harry kept his silence, presuming that the affair would blow over, but when Jack wrote to tell him that he had asked Courtney to be his wife and that she had done him the honour of accepting, Harry could deny his fears no longer.

“ This isn’t a marriage proposal, Jack, it’s a career move!” Harry thundered in his reply. “It’s too damn convenient to be true. If you asked the IBM mainframe to come up with the perfect bride for you it would have come up with Courtney. But real life isn’t like that. You know that better than anyone because you loved Polly. Love is rarely convenient. Courtney isn’t for you, Jack. You aren’t in love with her, you just think you look so good together that you ought to be in love.”

It was combative stuff but Harry was sure that his instincts were right. He still had Jack’s letters from the final summer that Jack had spent at the Greenham camp. Then Jack really had been in love, with all its attendant joy and pain. Now it seemed to Harry that his brother was merely acquiring a lifestyle appropriate to his status and position.

“ Have you thought about Courtney?” Harry wrote. “I thought you officers were supposed to be gentlemen. That girl trusts you, she loves you; don’t you think she has a right to know that you’re still in love with another woman?”

This last point was Harry’s secret weapon. He was aware that Jack wouldn’t take it lightly and he didn’t. Fortunately for the two brothers, they were half a continent apart; otherwise there might even have been blows. Jack furiously denied Harry’s accusations. He loved Courtney, she was a terrific person. Of course he knew that he did not feel quite the same for her as he had once felt for Polly. His knees didn’t buckle at the thought of Courtney, his insides didn’t ache, but surely that was a good thing? His love for Polly had been stupid and obstructive, more an obsession than a proper adult emotion. Jack certainly had no wish to go through his married life poleaxed with love and lust every time his wife walked into the room. It would be far too time-consuming. He had things to do, a career to forge.

“ You think there’s only one way of being in love?” he wrote back to Harry. “You think it always has to be like you and Debbie? Instant fucking devotion? You think I have to be some kind of wet puppy dog drip like you? Jesus, I hope not. Let me tell you now. If ever me and Courtney start acting like you and Debbie did, take my gun and shoot me!”

Jack had a point and Harry knew it. When he had first started dating his wife Debbie it certainly had been a bit gruesome. They were both very young and their powerful mutual attraction had manifested itself in a public gooeyness that should have remained private. They kissed at the dinner table, giggled together in corners and occasionally even talked babytalk in front of friends. It was inexcusable behaviour, but they just could not help themselves. There is no love like young love and theirs truly had been love at first sight. What’s more, it was a love that had lasted. Harry and Debbie had become that rare thing, high-school sweethearts who seemed to have made a good and permanent marriage.

“ Yeah, well, not every marriage starts with snookey fucking ookums, pal!” Jack wrote furiously. “Courtney and I are adults and we love each other like adults and we’re going to get married like adults, so fuck you!”

Jack signed off, but there was a PS.

“ By the way, do you want to be the best man?”

It was a magnificent wedding attended by senators and congressmen, senior army and air force personnel. There was a message from President Bush and his wife Barbara, who knew Courtney’s parents, and the cream of Washington society were in attendance. Even Jack’s father made an effort, ditching his habitual fringed suede jacket and hiring a tuxedo for the occasion.

“Don’t worry, son,” he said. “I’ll kiss ass to your Nazi pals.”

The only tiny upset on the big day was the late arrival of Jack’s old pal Colonel Schultz. Almost inevitably Schultz had gone to the wrong church and had let his staff car go before realizing his mistake. He and Mrs Schultz arrived in a taxi just as the bride and her father pulled up in their limo.

At the reception Old Glory hung upon every wall, an eight-foot-high ice sculpture of the American Eagle glowered from within a sea of flowers, and impeccable waiters served Californian méthode champenoise. The band struck up Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” and Jack and Courtney led off the dancing, looking stunning, he in his dress uniform, she in a cloud of white silk, and the whole room erupted into cheers and spontaneous applause. Such a very good-looking couple, so assured, so strong, so confident. Even Harry, standing at the back of the crowd with his arm around his beloved Debbie, believed in that moment that Jack had made the right choice for his life. He still could not help wondering what the English girl whom Jack had betrayed would have made of such a scene had she witnessed it, but in the glamour and romance of the moment Harry dismissed the thought. It had all been so long ago. His brother claimed to have forgotten his first great love and she no doubt had long since forgotten Jack.