Jack got it. “Oh, right,” he said. “British sarcasm.”
“Irony.”
He hated that. That was a British trick, the sarcasm and irony trick. Earlier in the evening the senior British officer had tried to make the same distinction.
“Oh, yes,” the pompous little khaki shit had said, having cracked some particularly weak sarcastic put-down or other. “You American chaps aren’t big on irony, are you?”
Jack thought it was pathetic the way the British aggrandized their penchant for paltry sarcasm by styling it “irony”. They thought it meant they had a more sophisticated sense of humour than the rest of the world, but it didn’t. It just meant that they were a bunch of pompous smartasses.
“So you do remember,” he said.
“Of course I bloody remember,” Polly replied. “I remember every detail. The soup-”
“Forget the soup.”
“The pie-”
“Forget the pie.”
“I wrote to the restaurant, you know.”
“Christ, hadn’t you made enough fuss already?”
Not that Jack had minded at the time. Usually he hated any kind of scene. Under any normal circumstances the fuss that Polly had made on the first day they met would have ended their relationship right there. The funny thing was that he had loved it then and he loved it still. He remembered every detail. Polly announcing loudly that she resented being forced to eat in a fucking charnel house, supergluing the sauce bottles to the table. Even now he laughed at the memory of that wonderful, funny, sexy, sunny lunchtime.
“You sure showed them,” he said.
“Non-violent direct action. At least we didn’t pay,” Polly replied.
That was one of Polly’s favourite memories of her whole life. That glorious runner. The suggestion, the decision, the execution, it had all happened in one mad moment. Suddenly the two of them, her and an American soldier, were charging for the door and out into the carpark. It had been such fun, so exciting, piling into his car and screeching out onto the A34 before anyone in the restaurant had realized what had happened.
“I just couldn’t believe that you, a soldier and everything, were prepared to run out without paying.”
After sixteen years Jack decided it was time to own up.
“Actually I did pay, Polly. I left a five-pound note under my plate.”
Polly could scarcely believe it. This was astonishing, horrible news.
“You paid! That’s terrible! I thought you were so cool!”
“I was cool. It got you into my car, didn’t it?”
That was true enough. Jack’s astute deception all those years before had certainly got her into his car, certainly made her breathless and excited and ready for anything. Who could tell? Had that little trick not occurred to him then perhaps their relationship might never have happened. After all, if Jack had simply asked Polly to go with him to a field and then to a hotel, it is most unlikely that she would have gone. It had been the drama of that single moment that had carried her into his arms and changed both their lives for ever.
“You bastard,” said Polly. “If you hadn’t-”
“Polly, life is full of ifs. If that receptionist hadn’t decided to turn a blind eye to your pornographic T-shirt maybe we would have seen sense and walked away.”
“There was nothing remotely offensive about my T-shirt!” said Polly, the passage of time having done nothing to blunt the memory of that confrontation. “That receptionist was just a stupid Nazi bitch.”
“Polly, just because somebody did not approve of what was emblazoned on your T-shirt doesn’t make them a National Socialist.”
“Take the toys from the boys,” said Polly. “What could be offensive about that?”
“Beats me,” Jack replied, “unless it was the picture of that huge flying penis you had printed across your tits.”
Polly never failed to rise to this one.
“Well, what were those bloody missiles but big blokes’ willies? Nuclear dickheads, we used to call them.”
“Yeah, we all loved that one on our side of the fence,” Jack said with heavy sarcasm (or perhaps it was irony). “‘Tell us the one about missiles being penis replacements again,’ we used to shout. We’d laugh all day.”
“You’re only taking the piss because actually you felt threatened.”
“Terrified. Couldn’t sleep. You know, Polly, maybe it’s kind of late in the day to say this, but the idea of dissing things because of their so-called phallic shape. It’s always struck me as kind of banal.”
“Because it reveals an uncomfortable truth about yourself.”
“No, because it’s dumb. Things get shaped straight and thin for reasons of aerodynamics. Missiles and skyscrapers are shaped the way they are on the soundest principles of engineering, not as monuments to the dick. In fact, so is the dick. The dick is shaped like a dick because that is the most efficient shape for a dick to be. That’s why it’s dick shaped. I mean a dick shaped like a table would cause all sorts of practical spatial problems. Surely you can see that?”
“Jack, it’s a point of satire, not civil engineering.”
“Yes, but it’s such lazy, unconvincing satire. It always annoys me so much the way you girls trot it out like you’re saying something so astute and revealing. Like with cars; a guy gets a cool car and suddenly according to you and the other femmos it’s his dick. Well, dicks don’t look a bit like cars. No guy ever stood outside a Cadillac showroom and said, ‘Oh, boy, I wish I had one of those. It looks exactly like my dick.’ Jesus, if my dick looked like a Cadillac I’d go see a doctor. Personally, I drive a pick-up truck. You ever see a dick with a trailer?”
“Jack, I’m not interested. This is your problem. I never-”
“You might as well say a trombone is a phallic symbol, or a stick of gum! Maybe when a guy shoves a piece of gum into his face what he’s really saying is that he is a subconscious homosexual and has a secret desire to be chewing on a big old Cadillac!”
“Jack -”
“Phallic symbol, for Christ’s sake. When they built the World Trade Center do you think they stood around saying, ‘Looks great and it’ll be even better when they put the purple helmet on the top’?”
Polly used to love this type of conversation with Jack. They would shout and rant and swear at each other.
Then, of course, they made love.
“Jack, don’t you think you’re getting a little worked up over this? Protesting too much?”
“I hate that way of arguing! That is a woman’s way of arguing! Say something outrageous and when the guy gets angry act like he’s got the problem.”
Polly wondered whether perhaps this might be the reason for Jack’s visit.
“Is this some kind of therapy thing? Is that why you’ve come? Has some army analyst discovered you hate women and told you to go and confront your past?”
Now Jack really went off. “Are you kidding me? See an analyst? I’d rather stick my Cadillac in a blender. Analysts and therapists have destroyed the world. They’re a cancer. I’d put the lot of them against a wall and shoot them. Every one. Them, their unconscious selves, their recovered personalities, and particularly, above all, their inner fucking children.”
Polly had not expected Jack to have suddenly turned into a liberal in the years that had passed since their last meeting, but if anything he seemed to have got worse.
“You know what, Jack? It’s lovely to see you and all that, but I’m rather tired, so-”
But Jack wasn’t listening. He was on a subject that moved him deeply, to Polly’s mind rather disturbingly so.
“Jesus, the entire twentieth century was corrupted by the theories of some Jew who thought women wanted to grow dicks and guys wanted to fuck their mothers! Where I come from that’s fighting talk. We’d have killed that pervert the first day he opened his mouth. We’d have hung him from a tree, and you know what? We would have been called uncivilized.”