Blast From The Past

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 methode 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.

The band moved on to Huey Lewis and the News’s anthem to eighties cool, “Hip To Be Square”. Harry and Debbie joined the bejewelled and unco-ordinated mob on the dancefloor.

Jack and Courtney’s marriage started off fine and for a year or so they were happy. They liked each other and found each other attractive enough to ensure a respectable if unspectacular sex life. The sad truth was, though, that Jack’s heart was never truly in it. Harry had been right, and by the second anniversary that fact was becoming difficult to disguise. Jack had two loves in his life and neither of them was his wife. One was the army and the other, despite all Jack’s denials, was Polly.

The breakdown of affection was hard on Courtney. She truly had believed herself in love and her wedding day had been the happiest day of her life. Unlike her husband, Courtney had not experienced real love before. Her career had always taken precedence over romantic entanglements and so inexperience fooled her into imagining that what she felt for Jack was the real thing. Therefore when Jack’s attitude and manner began to grow colder she was deeply hurt. Nothing had changed as far as she was concerned, and yet it seemed that they were no longer happy.

Jack knew that he was hurting Courtney but he did not know how to stop. His cruelty to her was neither verbal nor physical, but simply that he had married her in the absence of love.

Jack wanted to write to Harry about it but he could not. Harry’s life had changed too and he did not have room in it for Jack’s problems. His beloved wife Debbie had left him. She had fallen for another man, a fellow firefighter, and one day she had told Harry that she was leaving. Debbie explained that even the most perfect love affairs sometimes have sell-by dates and she had reached hers. In vain did Harry protest that those sell-by dates are usually meaningless, that the food is just as good for months afterwards – years, in the case of tinned food. You just have to have the courage to not take the easy way out and throw it away but keep it until you had need of it. Debbie felt that the metaphor was overstretched. The simple fact was that she had become besotted by a big, tough, brave guy and that she no longer loved the man she had married almost as a girl, the man who spent all day making chairs and tables.

“How long has it been going on?” Harry asked.

“It doesn’t matter how long,” Debbie replied, unable even to look at the man whom she had loved so well and for so long.

And Harry knew that it had been going on for some time. His love had been betrayed.

Soon Jack and Courtney’s marriage was also over in everything but name. He led his life and she led hers, which, during Jack’s seven months in Kuwait and briefly Iraq, began to include the occasional love affair. There was no question of divorce. Courtney was a traditionalist, besides which Jack’s career had finally begun to hit the fast track. After the Gulf War he was promoted rapidly and began to mix more in political circles. The Democrats were not going to stay in power for ever and the Republicans were on the lookout for likely lads who might help to break their hold on power, particularly handsome war veterans. Courtney was highly ambitious, and her marriage to Jack became what Harry had suspected it was all along: a mutually supportive marketing exercise.

One thing Courtney was grateful for was that, despite her occasional indiscretions, Jack appeared never to have affairs. She and he had occasional sex and that seemed to be enough for him. The only thing that Jack wanted to get inside was the uniform of the commander of the army.

“We’re friends, sure enough,” Courtney confided in her mother, “but I don’t really think he has passion for anything but leadership.”

It was not true, of course. Jack still had passion for one other thing besides ambition, although he had imagined that passion was long buried. He still craved Polly and now, as Jack stood once again before her, Polly knew it. She could see it in his eyes as he stared at her across her room.

“So your wife doesn’t love you and now you’re here. In the middle of the night,” Polly said. “What’s the idea? Suddenly fancied a little blast from the past?”

There. She’d said it. The thing she’d been wanting to ask from the beginning. Had he come here to try to fuck her?

Jack stared into his glass, nervously rotating it in his hand. The question was banging around his head. Had he come back to try to fuck her? The truth was, of course, that he hadn’t, but by Christ he fancied it all the same.

“Well?” Polly asked again. “You’re miles from home. Your wife doesn’t understand you. Did you suddenly remember me and get a little horny, Jack?”

That he could answer. “Not suddenly, Polly. Always.”

And he meant it. Not one day had gone by since the terrible night he’d left her when Jack had not wanted to see Polly again. To taste again the delights of sex with the only girl he had ever loved.

Polly could see that he meant it, too. It was written in his eyes. Deep inside her something was laid to rest. He had loved her after all.

“Oh, Jack.” She stepped forward. She knew that she shouldn’t. As a strong woman and a feminist she should spurn his selfish desires. She knew that he had only come back for a night. That he would leave again in the morning as he had done before, but she didn’t care. If anyone had a right to a bit of comfort by General Jack Kent it was her. Let the devil take tomorrow; she was opting for one less lonely night.

“Do you know, I have never told my wife about us.” Jack was still fighting it, still holding back.