Blast From the Past by Ben Elton Page A

turns out to be some kind of organic barbed wire. It’s probably just about possible if you’ve brought a groundsheet, a mattress, a blanket, some DDT and a scythe. Otherwise, forget it. Pretty soon Jack’s elbows and knees were in cowpats, Polly’s knickers were in shreds and something with two hundred legs and fifteen sets of teeth had crawled up his backside.
    For the second time since they had begun their desperate groping Polly and Jack were forced to put their passion on hold. With Polly’s virginity still pretty much intact, Jack suggested a hotel.
    ‘OK,’ said Polly, getting up and putting what was left of her knickers back on. ‘But I haven’t got much money, so I’ll have to pay you back later for my half of the bill.’
    Jack laughed, feeling a tremendous wave of affection sweep over him for this strangely intense girl. At that point the sun, which had disappeared into some clouds, came out again behind Polly and all of a sudden she was bathed and silhouetted with an almost luminous golden glow. She looked like some kind of pure and lovely teenangel and Jack’s conscience began to trouble him.
    ‘Polly, how old are you?’ he asked.
    ‘Seventeen,’ said Polly defensively.
    ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Jack.
    ‘But I’m a lot more mature than you, mate,’ Polly added. ‘I know that it’s dangerous to play with guns.’
    Seventeen. Jack had been hoping for at least nineteen, possibly twenty, although he knew that twenty would be the absolute limit.
    ‘Polly. I’m thirty-two. I’m fifteen years older than you.’
    Polly shrugged.
    ‘Are you a virgin?’ Jack asked.
    ‘What if I am?’
    It was worse than Jack had thought.
    ‘I can’t do this to you,’ he said.
    Suddenly it was not the sunlight that made Polly glow but righteous indignation. Her cheeks reddened and her eyes took on a fiery glint.
    ‘Listen, you patronizing bastard,’ she said. ‘You aren’t doing anything
to
me. I do things for myself, all right? If I choose to go to bed with you – or in this case to a field with you – if I choose to use your body for my pleasure, then that’s my business. I am a woman and males do not have a say in my life. In fact, emotionally and politically I’m a lesbian. It just happens to be my misfortune that I fancy men, that’s all.’
    Jack had never been overly receptive to radical feminism in the past, but he was warming to it. ‘OK,’ he said.
    They got back into the car and drove to a nearby hotel. It was a large, redbrick, eighties place, built on a roundabout in the middle of nowhere with toytown turrets and pastel-coloured Roman pillars in the foyer. Polly wanted to hate the place as a prime example of the reckless urbanization of the countryside, but she could not because in fact she found it all desperately romantic. This, considering that the hotel was really just a large carpark with a leisure complex, conference centre and executive miniature golf course attached, Jack found very touching.
    There was some trouble at the check-in desk, not because of Polly’s age – she was, after all, perfectly legal and did not look particularly young. It was the T-shirt she was wearing that required careful negotiation, the objection being that it had a picture of a cruise missile on it that had been altered to make it resemble a penis. Polly explained that this was a comment on the masculine nature of war.
    ‘I’m afraid that other guests might find it offensive,’ the receptionist explained.
    ‘Oh, and I suppose nuclear arsenals aren’t offensive?’ Polly enquired.
    ‘Nobody is attempting to bring a nuclear arsenal into the hotel,’ said the receptionist. ‘Perhaps the gentleman could lend you his coat?’
    Jack could not do this because he did not wish to advertise the uniform he was wearing underneath. Polly was clearly a loose cannon and a troublemaker and Jack did not want the manager phoning his colonel and complaining about the type of girl American officers brought to the