“For Christ’s sake, can we get a sense of proportion here? It’s like a witch hunt! Oh yeah, except we deserve it, don’t we, we guys? Because every horny guy is a rapist, isn’t he? I forgot that.”
Jack could still remember vividly how during the Helga trial in Bad Nauheim it had seemed as if the whole army was on trial, like they had all gone to that hotel together.
“Jesus! There are women in the States – college professors! – saying wolf whistling is rape! That seduction is rape with flowers!”
Polly pointed her finger straight at him. “I don’t know anything about that, Jack,” she said, “but I do know that you know something about rape.”
For a moment he could not believe what she had said. It was just too surprising.
“What?” was all he could say. “What?”
Polly’s voice was suddenly quiet again. “That last night, the night you left me. In that guesthouse. You made love to me like your life depended on it. You made love to me like a beast…”
Jack could scarcely believe what she was suggesting.
“You too! You wanted it! You were totally involved! What are you saying here? That I raped you? When you wanted it every bit as much as I did?”
Polly nodded quietly. “Yes, of course I wanted it, Jack. I gave myself utterly and completely and happily.”
“Thank you!” said Jack.
“But do you think I would have done that if I’d known? Known that you were leaving? That your ticket was booked? If you’d taken me to your little hideaway that night, a seventeen-year-old girl, Jack, and said, ‘What I’m going to do now is fuck you for two hours and then walk away without a word and never see or speak to you again,’ do you think I’d have let you have me?”
There was silence for a moment. “Well, no, but-”
“That’s rape, Jack. Not big rape, maybe, but rape of sorts. You took me by deceit and manipulation. You took something I would never have given had I known the truth.”
For a moment it almost sounded convincing. Except that it wasn’t – it couldn’t be. Jack did not believe that the world could be run that way.
“Hey, Polly, people get dumped. It happens, you know. Get the fuck over it. What, you think you have a right not to be hurt? Not to be unhappy? I was a shit, I admit it, but a guy sweettalking a girl into bed is not rape. Little girls getting gangbanged in alleyways, that’s rape.”
Polly smouldered for a moment and then gave it up.
“Get out, Jack. You just don’t get it and you never will.”
“No! No!” Jack simply would not let the argument end. “You don’t get it! The world is not civilized and you can’t make it so.”
There was nothing Polly could do. If Jack did not want to leave she could not force him. She could call the police, of course, but she had no desire to do that. Besides which, despite herself Polly was beginning to become rather interested in Jack’s obsessions. It was obvious to Polly that Jack had some deep, deep problem inside himself. A problem which for some reason he had sought her out in order to deal with. In some ways it was quite fascinating.
“They let the first women into the Citadel this year,” Jack said, producing what appeared to be a non sequitur.
“The citadel?” Polly enquired.
“It’s a military training facility. They let in forty women who want to be turned into shaven-headed, desensitized grunts.”
“How depressing.”
“Is that what you wanted, Polly?” Jack snapped. “For women to turn into men?”
“Why are you asking me this stuff? Don’t you have therapists in the army?”
But Jack was not listening to Polly. “Truth is they can’t do it,” he continued, almost to himself. “They’re not up to it. Ladies can’t run as fast, punch as hard or lift as much as men. At the Parris Island training centre forty-five per cent of female marines were unable to throw their grenades far enough to avoid blowing themselves up. Female trainees are twice as likely to get injured, five times as likely to be put on limited duty! These are the facts, Polly. But facts don’t matter, because this is politics. Politics decides on its own reality, and if anybody objects they will be condemned as sexist Neanderthals and their careers will be over. It is a witch-hunt, Polly. Leftist McCarthyism. We’re living through the fucking Crucible.”
“And you see my problem, Jack, is that I don’t care,” Polly replied. “Don’t you understand? I don’t care!”
Jack was pacing the room now. “The US military manual has been changed to accommodate the equality lie. It’s called ‘comparable effort’. Women get higher marks for doing less. They do six press-ups, the guys do twenty; they only climb halfway up the rope. Assault courses are called ‘confidence courses’ and you get to run around the walls if you can’t get over them. What happens when there’s a war? You think the enemy will say, ‘It’s OK, you’re a girl, we’ll go easy on you’?”
Polly tried once again to get at whatever it was Jack was trying to tell her.
“Why are you projecting all this onto me, Jack? This is pathological. I’m an ordinary Englishwoman living somewhere above the poverty line in Stoke Newington. I knew you when I was seventeen! This has nothing to do with me! Yet it’s almost as if you’ve come to me tonight to blame me for what you think is wrong with the world-”
“Well? Well! Aren’t you pleased we’re falling to bits? Aren’t you pleased we don’t know who the fuck we are any more? Gender politics is rendering the Western world ungovernable!”
Polly had been interested for a moment, but her interest was over.
“It isn’t, but if it was I wouldn’t care! Do you understand? I don’t care about it either way, all right? What happens to your army and who you choose for president is a matter of supreme indifference to me! Because tomorrow morning I have to go to work and wade back into a sea of people who have been abused, cheated, demeaned and destroyed all for reasons of race, sex, sexuality and poverty. They don’t have much hope, but if they have any I’m it, so please, Jack, leave, because I have to get some sleep.”
“OK, OK, I’m going.”
Jack got up and started to put away his bottles, and Polly sat back down on the bed feeling terribly, terribly sad.
53
The milkman had finished his breakfast and brushed his teeth. It was time to go to work. He wondered about going upstairs on his way out and speaking to the woman above. He decided against it. She still had someone with her; it would be embarrassing. He’d have a word that evening, just to let her know that two could play at the complaining game.
He turned off his radio, switched off the lights and let himself out into the hall.
At the bottom of the house, sitting in the hallway, Peter heard the door open and close and then the sound of a heavy footfall on the stair. This Peter knew was his best chance. The man above him, the man coming down the stairs, was the American. It was only minutes since Polly had ordered him to go, and now that was what he was doing. Besides which, who else would be walking out of the house at four thirty in the morning?
Silently Peter retreated into the shadow behind the stair. His enemy was on the floor above him now, the footsteps descending fast. The dark shape of a man appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Peter leapt out of the darkness and plunged his knife deep into the man’s back. He heard the man try to cry out, but there was only a muffled, gurgling sound.
The milkman sank to the floor without a word and lay there gulping his last blood-sodden, strangled breaths beside the bicycle. Looking down at him, Peter noticed that one of the tyres of the bicycle was flat. He also noticed that whoever he had killed it was not the American.