Seeing Peter that night, her own son, the flesh of her womb, squatting in a filthy gutter like a rat, had torn at her heart. He was sinking back into madness, she could see that, and this time it would be deeper and more terrible than the last. Peter needed help, that was obvious, help that clearly she could not give him. She was the problem, she had made him in every sense. The help he needed lay outside their home, but to reach it Peter’s mother knew that she would have to betray her son.
38
Once more Jack hauled himself back from the erotic adventure his whole being craved. It was not the time. He had things to do. The key to his future lay in his past and it was Polly who held it.
“Opposites may attract, Polly, but they’re still opposites,” he said, hiding behind his drink. “I guess we’re lucky we didn’t last too long, huh?”
This comment, rather brutal in the circumstances, brought Polly back to earth with a jolt.
“Oh yes, very lucky. You probably did us both a favour,” she said bitterly. “When you had your final screw and then snuck off while I lay sleeping. You bastard.”
Suddenly her eyes glistened. Polly’s old enemy. Her tear ducts were responding as they always did when her emotions bubbled up. Although on this occasion some of the tears were for real. Jack was surprised to see Polly become so quickly upset, surprised to discover that the wound was still so raw, even after all the years. It made him feel ashamed. She had been the last person on earth he had ever wanted to hurt.
“It was my job, Polly.”
“What? Fucking and leaving? Nice work if you can get it,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a teatowel.
Jack studied the carpet. “I had to leave. I get orders. It’s a security thing.”
“A security thing? Not to say goodbye? Oh yeah, of course, because World War Three would probably have started if you’d said goodbye.”
What could Jack say? It had not been possible for him to say goodbye, that was all, but he knew that there was no point in saying so now.
“I mean, a note or a call to tell me our affair was over,” Polly continued bitterly. “That might have been just the excuse the Russians had been waiting for to wipe out the free world.”
All the intimacy that had existed between them a moment before had now evaporated. Polly was suddenly cold.
“I’m sorry,” Jack pleaded, “I couldn’t.”
“You were too fucking gutless to face up to the fact that you were betraying the trust of a seventeen-year-old girl and, what’s more, over sixteen years later you’re still too fucking gutless to admit it. ‘It’s my job.’ Pathetic!”
She was right, of course. He’d been too scared to say goodbye. Scared of seeing her hurt, scared of a scene, but most of all scared that had he woken her and seen once again that adorable, trusting, innocent love light in her eyes he would not have been able to go through with it. He loved her too much to risk saying goodbye.
Polly, of course, had known nothing of Jack’s tortured emotions. To her his departure had come like a cruel thunderbolt. She had no more expected the relationship to end than she had expected it to begin. She never dreamt that Jack had in fact tried to leave her many times during the latter part of their time together. In fact, from the moment he realized that he was in love with her he had been trying to find a way out.
“What can I do, Harry?” Jack wrote in anguish to his brother from the camp. “How do I find the courage to end this? How do I find a way to leave?”
In vain did Harry advise that if the army was forcing Jack to break his own heart and also the heart of an innocent, idealistic girl then maybe it was the army that he should be leaving and not the girl. Jack screwed up Harry’s letter in fury. Harry was a furniture maker, he did not understand the soul of a fighting man, he did not understand the all-encompassing power of truly vaunting ambition. Harry had never dreamt of being a leader of men.
“What do you know, you flake? Nothing,” Jack wrote back “Try to understand that your weak sensibilities mean nothing to me. Try to understand that I would break the heart of every girl in the world. That I would tear out my own and feed it to a dog in the street if just once I could get the chance to lead an American army into a battle. Any army into battle. You think that’s sick, I know. You think somehow Mom got inseminated by the devil, but it is what it is. I’m a soldier, first, last and only.”
“Bullshit, Jack!” was Harry’s reply. “You call me a flake! You’re the damn flake! You want to lead an army? You want to fight the world? You can’t even find the courage to hurt one seventeen-year-old girl.” Except in the end, of course, Jack did find the courage.
39
She sat waiting for him, as she always did, hiding in the darkness afforded by the bus shelter. Her heart thumped with excitement, her ears strained at the approach of every car. She was used to waiting for an hour or more for him to appear and as autumn approached it was often chilly. Polly didn’t mind. She knew that when he did arrive she would be instantly warmed by the furnace of their desire. What was more, tonight was to be a rare delight; they were actually to sleep together, sleep in the true sense of the word, be present for each other’s dreams. Usually this was not possible, but occasionally Jack had a pass and those were the best times, times when they had the whole long night in each other’s arms.
As Jack’s car approached, Polly knew he would be moody. He always was of late, glum and preoccupied. She didn’t mind that either. It was his job, no doubt. Who wouldn’t be glum if they were an agent of mass murder? And he always got over it quickly. Polly soon made him smile, sometimes just a glance from her would make his face light up. She never imagined that he was glum because he was trying to say goodbye.
“I couldn’t do it,” Jack wrote to Harry after one such night. “I tried, just like I tried the other times. I told myself again that this would be the night I would leave her but again it wasn’t. ‘Goodbye’ is such a small word. Why can’t I say it? Every time I try it comes out as ‘I love you’. Because whenever I look into her eyes I just want to stay looking into them for ever.”
When Harry read this he tried to phone, he sent a telex, he even thought about getting on a plane. He wanted to shout, “Don’t do it, you fool! Don’t throw love away, it’s too rare a thing. Sometimes it only comes once in a lifetime.” But it was no good. By the time Harry got Jack’s letter Jack had already left Polly in the only way he felt he could. Abruptly and absolutely. Without a word.
It had been a wonderful night. Completely and exclusively passionate to the exclusion of all else, even conversation. Sometimes on their evenings together they would have some supper and talk, but on that last occasion they scarcely said a word. Jack drove them to the little country hotel he had chosen, they checked in, went straight to their room and began to make love. Time and again they made love, fervently, desperately.