“Well, perhaps your friends shouldn’t go round pinching people’s bums, then,” she said.
Jack threw his arms into the air in frustration, spilling his whiskey as he did so.
“Hey! We all know that now, honey! Oh, we sure do know that now! Our learning curve has been real steep! Problem was, nobody told some of these guys till they were in court! Nobody told that poor tearful marine that the way he had always acted, the way his daddy and his grand-daddy had acted, was suddenly criminal behaviour. Nobody ever warned that twenty-year-service marine that it wouldn’t be any Soviet commando that’d take him out in the end but some little girl with a grudge.”
“Yes, well, maybe that marine should give some thought to all the little girls who’ve done the crying over the years.”
“Well, maybe he should,” Jack conceded, although he did so rather aggressively. “And he’s certainly going to have plenty of time to reflect on it, because suddenly there’s been an awful lot of vacancies in the military. I didn’t get these four stars defending democracy, I got them for keeping my dick in my pants.”
“So no female rookies raped on your watch, then?”
“I never was much of a party animal, Polly. In a way I owe that to you.”
Jack was thinking of the poor German girl, Helga, and that bleak night in Bad Nauheim in the early eighties. He knew what men were capable of when they were drunk and in packs. Particularly soldiers. He had been with the UN in Bosnia, had seen what gangs of men could do when no civilizing factor restrained them.
“You may not believe it, but you changed me,” Jack explained. “All that stuff you told me all those years ago. It genuinely affected my outlook, made me see the other point of view. I truly believe that you influenced me for the good, Polly. I believe I’ve been a better soldier because of you.”
The irony of this was nearly too much for Polly.
“And over the years,” Jack continued, “I’ve always asked myself what you would say about stuff. It was almost as if you were still there with me and I didn’t want to make you angry.”
It was true. Jack could not be sure, but perhaps his unfinished love for that passionate, idealistic seventeen-year-old girl he had once known had refined him and caused him to avoid the mistakes made by other soldiers. He wasn’t thinking about terrible incidents like the brutalization of Helga – mercifully such events were rare – but the smaller invisible pitfalls that so many of his colleagues had fallen into. The sort of thing they now called harassment. The comments, the pinchings, the endless catalogue of minor sexual impositions that men had for so long practised with impunity. Jack had avoided them all. He was recognized universally as a gentleman and, while others of his generation had found themselves demonized by the new morality, Jack had prospered.
“I’ve always loved you, you see, Polly,” he said. “I still do.”
Again the circle came round. Polly could see that Jack was struggling with something inside himself but she did not know what it could be. Perhaps it was just the fact of an unhappy and unfulfilled life. Perhaps he was not so different from her, after all.
“What about your wife?” she asked gently. “You must have loved your wife when you married her. Did you love us both?”
“I thought I loved her, Polly. God help me, I thought I did, but now my true belief is that I married her because I was trying to get away from you.”
It was cruel, so very cruel for Polly to hear this now, after so many years of having lived under the shadow of Jack’s rejection. Yet difficult though it was, her heart soared at the dawning realization that he had suffered as much as she had. That perhaps, after all, he had truly reciprocated her love.
“Jack. Oh, Jack. You tell me all this now. After all the years I’ve grieved for you.”
“I have to, Polly. Because…”
But Polly put her finger to her lips and breathed a “shhh”. She had had enough talking now. She would put up with no more. It was her flat and she was going to take control of what went on in it. For the second time that night she crossed the room to stand over Jack, and again, as she walked, he watched the movement of her thighs, brushing against each other as she walked. Polly again took the glass out of Jack’s hand and put it down.
“No more talking,” she said.
“Polly. I mustn’t,” Jack replied, but his eyes were filled with a misty longing.
Polly shushed him again, this time putting a soft finger to his lips. His tongue momentarily brushed the tip. Then she cupped her hands around Jack’s face and gently pulled him to his feet. Then they kissed again, long and passionately.
“No, Polly, we mustn’t. That’s not what I came here for.” Jack spoke almost into Polly’s mouth as she continued to kiss him. Again he succumbed to her embrace. For the time being his passion for her was stronger than the guilt he felt.
Polly unbuttoned her shirt. She did it herself this time, purposefully and quickly. Having done so, she broke off their embrace and stood back, her mouth shining. Then she opened her shirt fully in order to show Jack her body. It was what he had longed for all evening, a proper sight of her, her breasts and her stomach and her neck, her navel and her legs, clear and unencumbered, with only the crimson triangle of her knickers still to be removed.
Jack felt weak with longing. “We can’t do this, Polly,” he heard himself say.
Polly did not reply. She had done with conversation. He could say what he liked, but she was now controlling the agenda. She could feel his desire even in the air between them. She knew just how much he wanted her. She took his hand. For a moment there was the faintest tug of resistance, but after a moment Jack allowed himself to be led to her bed, as Polly had known he would.
She lay down on the bed beneath Jack’s gaze, and spread her shirt wide open on the sheet. Looking up into Jack’s eyes, she could see that they were glistening and wet. He was crying! Not much, hardly at all, there were no actual tears, but she was sure he was crying. She had never seen him cry before. Reaching down to her hips, Polly raised her knees for a moment and slipping her thumbs under the elastic of her knickers took them off. Relaxing her legs again, she lay entirely naked save for the shirt at her arms and shoulders.
“Make love to me now,” she said firmly.
“I can’t, Polly,” Jack replied, his voice cracking.
Polly reached up and took his hand. “Jack. Stop this nonsense. I said make love to me now!”
“I… I… can’t.” Still Jack resisted, although he could scarcely find the words to deny her.
“Yes, you can, Jack. It’s why you came.”
Jack closed his eyes to shut out her beauty, to shut out the magnet of eroticism that lay inches from him. As his eyes closed tears formed at the corners.
“It’s not why I came, Polly.” He said it firmly, dragging the sentence from deep within him. Then he pulled his hand from hers and returned to his chair and drink.
49
Peter’s mother picked up the phone.
“Camden Police,” said a voice at the other end.
Peter’s mother had anguished long and hard about informing on her son. She was absolutely loath to do it and shuddered to imagine how he would react when he found out. However, she felt that she had no choice. He had been hanging around that woman’s street all night, he was wet through and not himself, and he was messing about with that dreadful knife.