Blast From The Past

For now, however, he was still inside the house. Inside her house. Even the police hadn’t found him out! Surely this was a sign that fortune was on his side. Surely now he could do exactly as he liked.

52

Polly laughed. It seemed the only thing to do. “I wonder who’ll turn up next,” she said.

But Jack was not laughing. Quite the opposite, in fact. His face was like stone. The last thing he had expected was to find the police at the door. It reminded him as nothing else could of the vulnerability of his situation.

Polly caught the look on his face and stopped laughing. She remembered the last thing that Jack had said, before the police had called.

“Jack,” she said. “What did you mean before, about what you have to do?”

Jack could not look at her. “Did you ever hear about an army general named Joe Ralston?” he asked. “He was in the news a year or two back.”

Polly did not want another endless, pointless conversation. “Tell me what’s on your mind or bugger off.”

“I am telling you,” Jack said quietly. “Joe Ralston was all set to become the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff. The most powerful soldier on earth. Employing about half a million people and spending an annual budget of trillions of dollars.”

“Which is totally obscene,” said Polly, unable to restrain herself.

“You know where he is now?” Jack continued.

“No, and I don’t care.”

“Well, I don’t know either, because he never stood for that top job. He withdrew his candidacy and retired from the army. Because fifteen years ago he had an affair. Fifteen years ago, while separated from his wife whom he subsequently divorced, General Joe Ralston had an affair. That is why the best soldier in America could not pursue his destiny.”

Polly remembered the case. It had indeed been on the news in Britain.

“Your people made that happen, Polly,” said Jack.

“My people? Which people would those be, then?”

“Your people, your kind. You see, around the same time that Joe Ralston was considering his application, a young lady combat flier called Kelly Flinn got caught fucking the civilian husband of an enlisted woman. She was forced to resign her commission, but not before the whole damn country had had a crisis about whether the army would have hit her so hard if she’d been a man.”

Polly recalled this case also. The British press always gleefully reported any example of America in the throes of self-torture. But she still could not see what it had to do with her.

“You know what you people have done, don’t you, Polly?” Jack continued. “You’ve created an ungovernable world.”

Polly had had enough of this.

“What people? Who are ‘my people’?”

“Your kind. Liberals. Feminists.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t be so pig ignorant!”

Jack poured himself more whiskey and tried to refill Polly’s glass, but she had had enough to drink. He took a gulp of bourbon and continued.

“They tried to indict the president of the United States for dropping his trousers! Are you pleased about that?”

“I don’t care, Jack! I don’t give two tosses! What does any of this have to do with me? What the hell are you talking about?”

Jack took a breath. He did not want to shout. He wanted her to understand what he was saying.

“The president of the United States, Polly. The most powerful man on earth. The commander in chief of the most formidable army ever known. The person responsible for weapons of destruction that could obliterate life on this planet a thousand times over. That man had put the world on hold, in order that he could prepare to be taken to court to decide whether or not one night six years ago he showed his dick to a female employee. Do you think that is a good thing or a bad thing?”

Polly shrugged. “If the president’s a nasty little shag-rat that’s his problem.”

“Plenty of guys are nasty little shag-rats.”

“Yes, well maybe it’s time they started facing up to the consequences.”

Despite his efforts to remain calm and reasonable Jack’s frustration bubbled over and he banged his fist down on the table.

In the room below, the milkman looked up from his cornflakes.

Four twenty: Shouting and banging, he noted piously in his little book.

“Traditionally women have been aware of what men are like,” Jack continued, “which is why they didn’t tend to go into guys’ rooms in the middle of the night!”

“A woman should be able to go where she damn well pleases!” Polly snapped back, unwilling to be lectured on gender behaviour by the likes of General Jack Kent.

“That’s right!” Jack snapped back. “And on this occasion one did and in the process she claims she got to see the then governor of Arkansas’s dick! Late one night she accepted an invitation to his hotel room, he proffered his penis, she declined, retreated and there the matter rested for six years! He didn’t beat her up, he didn’t rape her, he showed her his dick. Then suddenly the whole world was discussing this episode, the whole world! My God, there was a time when a girl would have been proud to see a future president’s dick! She would have told her grandchildren! ‘Hey, kids, did I ever tell you about the time the president showed me his dick?’”

“Yes, and there was a time when millions of women suffered endless abuse and harassment in silence.”

“For Christ’s sake, can we get a sense of proportion here? It’s like a witch hunt! Oh yeah, except we deserve it, don’t we, we guys? Because every horny guy is a rapist, isn’t he? I forgot that.”

Jack could still remember vividly how during the Helga trial in Bad Nauheim it had seemed as if the whole army was on trial, like they had all gone to that hotel together.

“Jesus! There are women in the States – college professors! – saying wolf whistling is rape! That seduction is rape with flowers!”

Polly pointed her finger straight at him. “I don’t know anything about that, Jack,” she said, “but I do know that you know something about rape.”

For a moment he could not believe what she had said. It was just too surprising.

“What?” was all he could say. “What?”

Polly’s voice was suddenly quiet again. “That last night, the night you left me. In that guesthouse. You made love to me like your life depended on it. You made love to me like a beast…”

Jack could scarcely believe what she was suggesting.

“You too! You wanted it! You were totally involved! What are you saying here? That I raped you? When you wanted it every bit as much as I did?”

Polly nodded quietly. “Yes, of course I wanted it, Jack. I gave myself utterly and completely and happily.”

“Thank you!” said Jack.

“But do you think I would have done that if I’d known? Known that you were leaving? That your ticket was booked? If you’d taken me to your little hideaway that night, a seventeen-year-old girl, Jack, and said, ‘What I’m going to do now is fuck you for two hours and then walk away without a word and never see or speak to you again,’ do you think I’d have let you have me?”

There was silence for a moment. “Well, no, but-”

“That’s rape, Jack. Not big rape, maybe, but rape of sorts. You took me by deceit and manipulation. You took something I would never have given had I known the truth.”

For a moment it almost sounded convincing. Except that it wasn’t – it couldn’t be. Jack did not believe that the world could be run that way.