Free Blast From the Past by Ben Elton Page B

little way along the street, in the pitch black shadows of a derelict shop doorway, Peter’s inner turmoil was the equal of Polly’s. He could not believe his anguished eyes. A man was entering Polly’s flat, and at 2.20 in the morning! It could only be Polly he was visiting. Hers was the only light that burned in the whole building. What was worse, the man who Polly was allowing into her home at such an hour was the vicious brute who had attacked him and, what’s more, attacked him with scarcely an ounce of provocation.
    Peter could hardly begin to imagine what was going on. To his knowledge Polly had no current boyfriend. There had been a man a few months earlier but he didn’t seem to visit any more. Perhaps it was the bricks that Peter had thrown through the man’s car window on three separate occasions that had put him off. Recently Polly had always been alone. But now she wasn’t. Now she was entertaining a violent American in the middle of the night.
    Peter slunk further back into the shadows. He must concentrate, decide upon a course of action. He dug into the pocket of his coat for the bag of sweets he had brought with him as a comfort against the lonely boredom of the night. Sucking noisily, he tried to think.
    Upstairs, behind the glowing curtain, Polly was again acutely aware of her appearance. She was still wearing nothing more than an old shirt and a pair of knickers and there was a gentleman caller upon her doorstep; it would not do. She rushed to her bed and grabbed the dress she’d chosen and also some lipstick from her handbag. Catching sight of herself in the mirror she could only groan at her pillow hair and the slight reddening around her eyes caused by her crying.
    An unbiased observer might have thought that despite the strangeness of the situation and despite everything that had happened in the past, Polly still wanted to look attractive for Jack.
    Knowing that she had only the time in which it takes a man to walk up three flights of stairs, Polly attempted to brush her hair, wipe her eyes and pull off her nightshirt all at the same time. She soon realized that these activities were incompatible. Particularly if one is also attempting to apply lipstick and search the unsorted clean washing bag for an unladdered pair of tights.
    ‘Calm. Stay calm,’ Polly said to herself as her stomach executed a particularly startling element of the Olympic gymnastic routine, which it had been performing ever since Polly had been awoken scarcely five minutes before.
    Outside Polly’s flat, in the well of the building, Jack was climbing the last flight of stairs.
    So this is where she ended up, he was thinking.
    There is always something rather depressing about the communal areas of multiple-household houses. The mounds of junk mail and local advertising freesheets behind the front door. The piles of letters addressed to long-since-departed occupants stacked on the rickety hall table. The bicycles obstructing the way, the unloved and unwashed stair carpet, the large and perplexing stain on the elderly wallpaper. The single framed print hanging on the wall on the first landing, the dead lightbulbs suspended pointlessly from their dusty flexes.
    Such an extraordinary visit, thought Jack, and such ordinary surroundings. It was enough to quite depress a man.
    Arriving at Polly’s door, Jack checked the number one more time against the information in his file and knocked. Inside Polly yelped and stubbed her toe against a chair.
    It was too late to get dressed. Swearing quietly, she pulled her nightshirt back down (better an old shirt than topless, she reasoned) and snatched up her dressing gown from where she had left it on the floor. One glance told her that it was not acceptable. It was as old and stained and horrid as the stairwell outside. No eyes but hers should ever look upon it. Stuffing the offending gown under the bed, she ran to the cupboard from which she had taken her selection of dresses and,