It was Newtonian physics again; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Jack’s current happiness was surely storing up an equal quantity of unhappiness for someone.
13
“Polly? Polly! Are you there? Are you there, Polly?” The long-lost but still familiar voice breathed out of Polly’s answerphone. It was rich and low and seductive as it had always been.
“Are you there?” Jack said again into the telephone.
A little way along the street Peter was getting frustrated. He’d been surprised to see the telephone box occupied. It never had been before at that time of night. He felt angry. It was 2.15 in the morning. People had no business using public telephones at 2.15 in the morning. Particularly his own private, public telephone, a telephone with which Peter felt a special bond. Many times on that very phone Peter had heard the voice of the woman he loved. The cold mechanics within its reciever’s scratched and greasy plastic shell had vibrated with her adored tones. That phone, his phone, had been the medium through which Polly’s precious lips had caressed his senses.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” she would hiss. Hiss directly into his ear, so that he could almost imagine he felt her breath. “Fuck off! Fuck off! Just fuck off and leave me alone, you disgusting little prick!”
Peter didn’t mind Polly’s anger at all. Some relationships were like that, fiery and tempestuous. After all, he certainly gave as good as he got. Peter liked Polly’s fury. It was passionate, exciting. So many nights he had stood listening to those blistering, heavenly tones. Looking at the photographs he’d laid out on top of the tattered telephone directories, sucking on his precious straw and masturbating into the lining of his overcoat.
That telephone box was where Peter had had sex with Polly. It was his telephone box and now some bastard was using it.
Peter felt the knife in his pocket.
A flick-knife he had bought in Amsterdam one night when he had not had the guts to go into one of the shops that had women in the windows. Peter liked to carry that knife about with him for his protection and also because he fantasized that one day he would find himself in a position to use it in defence of Polly. He imagined himself chancing upon her in the street; she would be surrounded by vicious thugs who would be taunting her, pulling at her clothes. She would be weeping with terror. He would kill them all before claiming his reward!
Peter fondled the flick-knife in his pocket.
Still Polly did not pick up the phone. In fact she did not move. She couldn’t; she was too shocked. The only animation she could have managed at that point of supreme surprise would have been to fall over. She avoided this by gripping onto a chair back for support. “It’s Jack,” she heard him say again. “Jack Kent.”
She knew it was Jack Kent, for heaven’s sake! She would never forget that voice if she lived to be two hundred and fifty years old. No matter what was to happen to her, be it premature senility, severe blows to the head, a full frontal lobotomy, she would still be able to bring that voice instantly to mind. Its timbre was resonant in her bones. Jack’s voice was a part of her. But what was it doing broadcasting out of her answerphone in Stoke Newington at 2.15 in the morning? His was quite simply the last voice in the world that Polly had expected to hear. If the Queen had woken her up to ask her round to Buck House for a curry and a few beers it would have seemed a more natural occurrence than this.
Still receiving no reply, Jack’s voice continued. “Weird, huh? Bet you’re surprised… Me too. I’m surprised and I knew I was going to call! How surprising is that? I just got into town. It’s only ten p.m. in New York, so it’s not late at all. Don’t be so parochial, we live in a global village now.”
It was the same old Jack, still cool, still cracking gags.
Still vibrant with sensual promise.
“I can’t believe I just heard your voice, even on a machine. It’s just the same…” Jack’s voice was even softer now. Even softer, even lower. “Are you there, Polly? Look, I know it’s late… real late… but maybe not too late, huh?”
Too late for what? Surely he didn’t mean…? Polly could not begin to think what he meant. She could scarcely begin to think at all.
14
Jack kept talking. He knew she could hear him.
“I want to see you, Polly. Are you there, Polly? I think you’re there. Pick up the phone, Polly. Please pick up the phone.”
Across the street Jack could see that the man he had noticed earlier was walking slowly towards the phonebox. In his hand was what looked like it might be the hilt of a knife, but there seemed to be no blade. The man walked right up to within a yard or so of the phonebox and then stood and stared. Perhaps he wanted to use the phone. Perhaps he wanted to use the phonebox as a lavatory. Perhaps he did not know what he wanted. Whatever was going on, it did not take the instincts of a soldier to work out that this man meant Jack no good.
Their eyes met through the cloudy plastic of the window. Peter and Jack, two men from opposite sides of the world, connected by a woman whom they had both wronged, with whom by rights neither should have been having anything to do at all.
Jack kept his eyes fixed on Peter’s. Matching him stare for stare. Meanwhile, he spoke again into the phone. Delivering his voice back into Polly’s life.
“I think you’re there Polly. Are you there? Pick up the phone, Polly.”
He imagined her standing in her flat, staring at the machine. Its red light blinked back at her.
“Are you there? Pick up the phone, Polly.”
Suddenly Polly did as she was bid and snatched up the phone, fearful that in her hesitation the voice would disappear again, back into the locked vault of her memory, where it had resided for so many years. Clunk. Whirr. Clunk. The answerphone announced its disengagement.
“Jack? Is it really you, Jack?”
Down in the street, outside the phonebox, there was a glint, a flash of orange streetlamp light reflected on shining metal. Peter had pressed the button on his flick-knife and its wicked blade had leapt out into the night, thrusting itself forward from within the hilt, from within Peter’s clenched fist. It glowed orange in the night like a straight, frozen flame.
“Yes, Polly, it’s me,” said Jack. “Listen, can you hold the line for just one second?”
It was not what Polly had expected to hear, and it was not, of course, what Jack had expected to say. You do not, after all, return from the dead, wake someone up in the middle of the night, give them the shock of their life and then put them on hold. Circumstances, however, had forced Jack’s hand. At this supreme moment in his plans, in his life, fate had suddenly dealt Jack a wild card. A mugger had clearly blundered into his life and the situation would have to be dealt with.
Jack kicked open the door of the phonebox. It was a good kick, firm and accurate. A confident kick, which connected with the frame of the door rather than the windows and sent the whole thing swinging outwards at speed and into the man who stood outside. Peter had been in the process of reaching for the door at the time and the force hit him first in the hand and then in the face, surprising him considerably and making him drop his knife.
As Peter leant down to pick up the knife the door swung closed and Jack kicked it again. This time the door hit the top of Peter’s head and he went over into the gutter. Jack left the phone hanging, stepped outside and with one final bit of confident footwork sent Peter’s knife down a convenient drain.