Blast From the Past by Ben Elton

stay careful because if my colonel ever found out about us my career would be over, you hear that? Everything I’ve worked at since I was seventeen would be gone. You’re only seventeen right now, Polly. You don’t have a life to throw away yet, but I do. They’d court-martial me, you know that? They might even throw me in the hole.’
    Jack returned to bed. Some ash from Polly’s cigarette fell onto the sheet. She tried to brush it off but only made it worse.
    ‘Leave it,’ said Jack irritably. ‘We’re paying.’
    ‘I hate that kind of attitude,’ Polly snapped. ‘We’ve paid so we can act irresponsibly. And I hate this sneaking about too, this constant tension.’
    ‘I do not have a choice but to sneak about. I have to be discreet, which is something, incidentally, you have made considerably more difficult by your decision to dye your hair puke colour.’
    In her heart of hearts Polly had to admit that the orange and green highlight effect she had tried to create had not really worked.
    ‘If you don’t like sneaking about, baby,’ Jack continued, ‘go hang out with one of your own kind.’
    ‘You don’t choose who you fall in love with, Jack, and don’t call me baby.’
    Polly was starting to look a little teary. She didn’t like it when he referred to their relationship in such a casual manner.
    ‘Oh, come on, Polly, not the waterworks.’
    All her life Polly had cried easily. It was her Achilles’ heel. She wasn’t a crybaby; it was just that strong emotions made her eyes water. This was actually quite debilitating in a minor sort of way. It made her look a fool. It would happen in the middle of some particularly frustrating political argument. There she would be, banging her fist on the pub table, struggling to find words to express her deeply held conviction that Mrs Thatcher was a warmongering fascist and suddenly her eyes would start getting wet. Instantly Polly would feel her image transforming itself from passionate feminist revolutionary to silly overemotional little woman.
    ‘Well, there’s no need to cry about it,’ Polly’s dialectical opponents would sneer.
    ‘I am not bloody crying,’ Polly would reply, tears springing from the corners of her eyes.
    The tears were there now and Jack did not like emotionally charged situations. He liked to pretend that life was simple. Polly thought him repressed and out of touch with himself. Jack just felt he had better things to do with his time than get worked up about stuff. But the truth was that he was worked up, terribly worked up. Beneath his highly cool exterior he was anguished and distraught. Because Jack was in love with Polly and he knew that he would have to leave her.
    ‘Jack,’ said Polly, ‘we need to talk about where we’re going.’
    Jack did not want to talk about this at all. He never did want to talk about it, because deep inside he knew that they were not going anywhere.
    ‘You know why people smoke after sex?’ he said, dragging at his cigarette. ‘It’s an etiquette thing. It means you don’t have to talk.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘People smoke after sex to avoid conversation. I mean, in general post-coital is a socially barren zone. Particularly that difficult first time. You’ve known somebody five minutes and suddenly you’re removing your horribly diminished dick from inside of their body. What do you say?’
    Sometimes Polly found Jack’s crude, abrasive style sexy and exhilarating. Other times she just found it crude and abrasive.
    ‘We didn’t say anything after our first attempt, did we? Because we were hiding in a field trying to avoid large insects and the police.’
    ‘Yeah, well let me tell you, it saved us a lot of embarrassment. Any diversion is welcome in such a situation. Even the cops. Think about it. You’re naked with a stranger. What do you say?’
    ‘A stranger?’
    ‘Sure, a stranger. The first time you sleep with someone ten to one they’re going to be a stranger. How many times do you