His own day had been scarcely happier. By the time Polly had awoken he was long gone, pointing his TR7 for the coast. Jack had planned it, as he planned everything, meticulously. Everything he owned was in the car. He would not be returning to Greenham. He had arranged for his leave to begin that morning and when his leave ended he was to go to Wiesbaden in Germany. There he would rejoin the regiment that he had left on being posted to Britain. Jack had already done three years at the base and it had not been difficult for him to persuade his superiors that he had earned the right to return to some proper soldiering.
“I thought about leaving some money for you,” Jack said in a quiet voice. “You know, to get back to camp and all, but you were such a feminist and all, I thought it… it…”
“Might make me look like a bit of a tart?” Polly demanded. “Yeah, well, no need to worry about that. That was already sorted.”
They relapsed into silence for a moment before Polly continued to unburden herself.
“I rang the camp, of course,” Polly said. “I didn’t betray you even then, not that they would have believed a mad peace bitch anyway, but I was still careful for your sake. I pretended I was a cab driver who’d overcharged you. They told me not to worry about it. They said you’d gone. They said you’d left the country! Can you imagine how that felt?”
Of course he could, although he knew that she would never believe him. The truth was that he knew how she felt because he’d felt it too. As evening fell that day and he’d leant on the rail of the car ferry, watching England disappear over the horizon, Jack had felt more desolate than he had ever felt. It had been no comfort at all that he had been the architect of his own unhappiness, or that he knew that it was the only thing he could do.
“You left that day!” The bitterness of Polly’s tone wrenched Jack back from his momentary reverie. “You left Britain the same fucking day you left me!”
“Yeah?” Jack said. For a moment he was unsure why she was dwelling on this point.
“Which must have meant that you’d already made your preparations,” Polly explained. “That you’d known you were leaving. That when you made love to me on that last night you knew what you were going to do. Your fucking bags must have been already packed, you bastard!”
“It hurt me too!”
“Good. I wish it had killed you!”
Polly did not believe Jack. She did not think he could have felt remotely what she’d felt. He would never have done what he did. She had been so completely in love with him. She’d trusted in him so absolutely and he’d left her all alone. For weeks afterwards she had been quite literally sick with the pain. Unable to keep food down, she’d scarcely eaten for months. She lost two and a half stone, which left her dangerously underweight, and eventually she had had to see a doctor. At seventeen Polly discovered that it is not just the heart that aches when love is lost, but the whole body. Particularly the guts; that’s where a person’s nervous system really makes itself felt.
“It’s not pretty,” said Polly. “It’s not romantic. It wouldn’t look so good on the Valentines cards. A stomach with an arrow through it.”
Jack thought about saying he was sorry again but decided against it.
“So did you stay there long?” he asked instead. “After?”
“I stayed there until after you people delivered the missiles; three years, in fact, with a gap for the miners’ strike.”
Jack was amazed. “Three years? In that camp? In that toilet? You spent
“I didn’t take them, not then, and I never went to university, either.”
Jack whistled in disbelief, scarcely able to believe it. In his view, Polly had wasted the three best years of her life.
Polly knew what he was thinking. “I was waiting for you, Jack! I loved you.”
“Three years! That’s not love, that’s psychosis. That’s an illness.”
He was right there, it had been an illness.
“I thought I saw you a thousand times. It was pathetic. There I’d be, screaming abuse at these people, and all the time I was hoping they were you so that I could tell you I loved you.”
“Jesus, Polly, nobody takes three years to get over being dumped.”
“It took me a lot longer than that, not that I’d have admitted it at the time. I believed in what we were doing. That camp was my home. But always, at the back of my mind, especially when there were new faces, new Americans on the other side of the wire, I’d think to myself, Maybe this time he’s come back? Surely not everything he said was lies.”
“You were so young, Polly. I thought you’d forget me in a week.”
“I think young people are the most vulnerable in love. They haven’t learnt their lessons yet. You certainly taught me mine.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack quietly.
“Is that why you’ve come back? To say sorry?”
“Sure, if it will help, if that’s what you want to hear.”
The old wound was aching badly for them both.
“I don’t want-” Suddenly Polly was shouting. She stopped herself. Even in this highly charged emotional moment she knew she must not forget the milkman. She dropped her voice to a harsh whisper. “I don’t want to hear anything! I don’t want anything from you. I was asleep an hour ago. Why have you come back, Jack?”
Again the question he did not want to answer.
“Well… why not? Like you said, we never officially split up, technically you’re still my girlfriend…” Jack laughed rather woodenly. “You always used to say that you weren’t into conventional relationships.”
“A relationship with a sixteen-year pause in it is not unconventional, it’s over.”
“I thought you’d be pleased to see me.”
Why he thought that she could not imagine. Except that she was pleased to see him. Despite everything, she was very pleased. Looking at Jack it struck her that he looked tired, almost careworn.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “Do you want something to eat?”
“Not really, no,” Jack replied.
“That’s good, because I don’t have any food. Well, I do have food, sort of, just not real food. Frozen meals, serves two. That sort of thing.”
“Serves two?” Jack’s interest picked up.
“No. I told you there isn’t anybody.”
Jack looked hard at Polly, and for some reason she felt that some sort of explanation was required.
“They say ‘serves two’, but they mean one, in fact not even quite one, really. You have to pad them out with toast and chocolate biscuits. They put ‘serves two’ on it so you don’t feel so pathetic when you buy them in the shop… So you can pretend you’re not alone.”
It sounded so sad. Polly admitting that she was alone. Not positively and self-sufficiently alone, but alone because she had no one with whom to share her life. Lonely alone. The revelation hung heavily in the air between them. Polly smiled reassuringly and tried to make light of it.
“It fools the shopkeeper every time you buy one. Frozen meal for two, madam? Oh, yes, certainly. I’ll be sharing this with my enormous, passionate and deeply sensitive lover. We always like to share eight and a half square inches of microwaved lasagne after an all-night shagging session.”
“How the hell does a beautiful woman like you come to be on her own?” Jack was genuinely surprised.
“Men are nervous of single women in their thirties. They think she’s either got a child already, or that halfway through the second date she’s going to glance at her biological clock and say, ‘My God, is that the time? Quick, fertilize me before it’s too late.’”
“You don’t have to be alone. You’re just being lazy. Not making any effort.”
Who did he think he was? Her mother? He’d be telling her she had lovely hair and a super personality next.
“Not making any effort! What do you suggest I do? Stand naked on the pavement with my tongue hanging out and a large sign saying ‘Get it here’? I go to pubs, parties. I even joined a dating agency.”
Polly said this last defiantly. It had taken her a lot of courage to join a dating agency. It was another of those
