The War Zone

by Alexander Stuart

  ‘No, you wouldn’t.’ I feel my fingers dig in, pressing hard on to the bone. I want to bruise her, I want her to remember this. Then I let go. ‘You couldn’t.’

  ‘What is it? Are you all right?’ Her expression has changed. She looks at me, concerned, as a thought strikes me like a wave of pain, washing over me, blanking everything else out.

  She touches my face. Contact. She needs contact, constantly.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I haven’t screamed and told you to fuck off or anything, which I probably should have.’ Yes. Why not? ‘It’s a pretty weird thing you’re suggesting. I’m not saying I’m not pretty weird, but really it’s something on a level I’ve never thought about.’ She stares at me, trying to measure whether she’s getting through. ‘Not seriously.’

  But I’m falling, groundless. It has only just occurred to me that I never for a moment thought that Dad might be the instigator here. His prick looms large in my skull like some kind of medieval puppet, but I don’t see Jessie at threat. Somehow I felt she must be in control, she always seems in control to me – would I even know if she was in trouble? So much for the protective brother.

  She touches my arm, smiles encouragingly. ‘Are you all right now?’

  I don’t know. Am I?

  6

  I

  did a deal with Dad for coming down here – before, when he was just my dad. Now I don’t know what he is. I look around me and I see other selves warring with the ones we thought we knew, the

  ones we felt safe with.

  I got a video camera out of it, but I also got Devon. I was wrong.

  This is the Dead Zone. Devon may have some balls, but the people

  down here don’t know they’re alive. They don’t know what’s happening.

  They think everything’s still the same, they think we’re OK, it’ll work

  out, Radio Four will still broadcast shipping forecasts and agricultural

  reports. They don’t know what’s going on. They haven’t seen the

  politicians pissing in doorways, the football thugs jumping up and

  down on the roofs of cars until they crease like cardboard, the snouts

  of police dogs slobbering over the surfaces of restaurant kitchens. It’s all right for Jessie, she’s got art college to go to, this is just a

  break for her before she aims herself back at London, back to all that.

  There’s no addiction to chaos here, no love of the fire. Maybe I can’t

  read them, maybe they go home at night, switch off the TVs and radios

  and tear at each other, mentally and physically. I stand in the pub with

  Mum and Dad sometimes and wonder: there’s an open-faced bluster,

  a beer-bolstered glow, that you don’t see in London, that maybe is

  what good health used to look like. Mum’s healthy, she looks fresh and

  happy and shiny, like an apple, firm, somehow recharged by having

  a baby – but she works out, my mother, she’s a leotard childbearer,

  city-fit.

  Anyway, I did a deal. I saw it coming, I saw the inevitability of it,

  this was no whim, this was going to happen. I could sense a new will

  in the air, as if my little embryonic brother was dictating his terms from

  the darkness of the womb. They were already committed to Devon,

  Mum and Dad, even while they were going through the motions of discussing it with us. Jessie was no problem, she could shack up in London with her friend Kate (and who knows who else?) under the supposedly watchful eye of Kate’s parents. Which makes me think

  – when did it start? If Dad and Jessie are really going at one another, when did it start? Dad wanted to move down here, yet he knew Jessie would be going back to London to art school. Was that a factor? Did he want her alone up there, or did he even think about that? Is this Jessie’s madness? I don’t know anything any more. Nothing is simple, nothing is ever what it seems. It’s like the level of life we all think we live on only scratches the surface. We’re blind to the rest, except when violence or anguish or some other kind of pain or beauty makes us break through, forces us to glimpse a larger world. The nightmare is that I can’t see any connection between that larger world and our little

  one that isn’t a lie.

  I could fight Devon, I realized when it all started, the talk of the

  move, but I’d already blown my best argument – my education – by

  battling through three schools in two years. I don’t hate school, it’s

  not worth the effort, it just seems such a sham, so very far away from

  anything to do with real life, that the only sensible response is to pit

  your will against theirs and see who breaks first. In the first two cases,

  they did – and I left. The jury’s still out on the last one. I had a Math

  teacher there who saw that I got a sort of buzz off the patterns numbers

  make and who not only pushed me but protected me when I fucked up

  elsewhere. I got into trouble and he got me out of it – mostly – I think

  because he respected my spirit, he thought the system was shit himself.

  It taught me something useful, really useful, not just how to fake effort

  or skim successfully. It taught me that natural allegiances come in

  handy, don’t waste them, they can buy you a lot of space. Anyway, it came down to schooling, my love of London and my

  friends. Those were my three arguments against Devon, and I’d as

  good as blown the first one because even while my Math teacher was

  calming the waters, I was pissing on them again. My complaints about

  school were like a religious dirge over the breakfast table at home each

  morning, so that when the prospect of Devon was raised, my father

  would offer various alternatives:

  ‘We could move further, to Cornwall. They’ve still got tin mines

  down there. Perhaps you could leave school altogether and they could

  reinstitute child labor?’

  ‘Couldn’t be worse.’

  ‘There must be religious seminaries in the area. Maybe you’d like

  to be beaten by monks, daily?’

  ‘Jessie would go for that.’ A kick under the table from her. So then

  I’d come back: ‘Why don’t I just board somewhere up here? It’s London

  I’m going to miss.’

  ‘I’d give him three days,’ Mum would remark.

  ‘I’d give him three hours,’ from Dad.

  ‘I wouldn’t give him anything.’ Jessie.

  And my mother would look at me, knowing my answer as well as

  I did: ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Board.’

  ‘Not a chance. Forget it.’ So I’d wail on. ‘I’m going to lose all my

  friends. I’m never going to see them.’

  ‘These are the kids you referred to as “mindless scum’’ only a few

  days ago.’ A sharp look from Dad.

  ‘Yeah, well they are. But at least they’re the mindless scum I know.

  The kids in Devon all have giant foreheads and fingers sprouting from

  their shoulders. They’re all Thalidomide kids down there. They lack

  social graces.’

  ‘That’s a sick remark.’ Mum.

  ‘It’s a sick world. Why do we have to move?’

  So Dad would come down to my level. ‘I don’t know why you’re

  so hooked on London. You want medical allusions? Well, London is

  brain dead, it’s on drips – it’s got aggression pumping in one arm and

  money in the other, and neither can make it work. It’s a lousy place for

  a baby. Anyway, it’s depressing as hell all winter.’

  ‘You think Devon will be better? The people in Devon probably

  forget how to speak
English between the time the last tourist leaves

  and the first of the year arrives.’

  And on like that.

  ▪

  So I set fire to the art department stockroom. I went into school one morning and my mate Luke and I torched the stacks of paper, each vertically arranged in neat compartments. It’s a bastard of a job, getting a good blaze going, but we managed it just as the rest of the school was going through the attendance registers. Couldn’t have been me, could it – I wasn’t there?

  It wasn’t a real fire, I mean the school didn’t burn down or anything, but the art department didn’t look the same again. There’s something beautiful about what a lick of flame can do to wood, the charring effect, little bits of black carbon spiraling up to touch the ceiling – makes a place look lived-in. And oil paints have their own excitement when they blaze. This was performance art on a grand scale, but Luke and I didn’t get any points for it. In fact, we chickened out. I wanted everyone to know we’d done it deliberately, but maybe that would have been a bit heavy-duty, so we opted for the having-a-quick-smoke-ohdear-look-what-happened line. We got a bollocking, suspension and all that, the threat of expulsion, but it could have been worse. I mean that. Someone could have been hurt.

  That did it for Dad, though. As far as Devon went, that took me out of the contest. I think he knew it was no accident. Schools don’t really know you, but parents have a good idea.

  I knew he was angry, because his face changed, as if the tension was wrestling through a forest of muscles and veins in his forehead in an attempt to get out.

  ‘There’s a school nine miles from the village with a good record in math,’ he told me. ‘There’s a school bus. It takes about forty-five minutes each way. You just gave up your right to choose.’

  I wanted to ask, ‘How far is the nearest fire station?’ but it was too easy.

  7

  The deal came later. I knew I’d get something. Dad suffers terrible guilt when he loses his temper, and he must have already been feeling bad about this one, because he did everything to

  make the move bearable for me. It was Mum I had to watch. The little incident over the fire had severely dampened her faith in me, and while I could cope with Dad’s brief outburst of anger, Mum’s disappointment was harder to live with.

  ▪

  ‘This is probably a big mistake.’ Dad’s voice comes to me with an undisguisable edge of love and concern, despite his determination still to sound pissed-off as he hands me the video camera. A moment accompanies the giving of a gift like this, it happens outside considerations of value or acquisition, beyond the emotional range of a TV commercial. There’s magic attached, we both know that: it can do things, this camera, it can steal little bits of life. This is a key fatherson experience (he wants it as much as I do, it’s higher resolution than anything he has and he’s a technology freak, that’s part of it – and Mum, too, with the baby due: home-video time), but it comes with a lecture.

  ‘This is no reward, buster, OK? Tell me something. When you started that fire, couldn’t you see how it would end up? Couldn’t you see the kind of trouble it would get you into?’

  Nothing from me. What can I say? It’s our second day in Devon, and I’m playing it cool. Even with all the doors open, the cottage smells foreign, like someone else’s bed. Outside, the sun is blazing. Time for a spot of cricket and some fighting in the streets. But I’m not looking for aggravation, not today.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I suppose . . .’

  ‘I hope so. You’re not stupid, Tom, don’t try and pretend you are.

  You’re very full of yourself and you like f lirting with danger. But think long-term for a moment. If you can’t persuade yourself out of such ideas now, what’s going to change? Are you going to be pissing about setting things on fire in ten years’ time?’

  ‘You’re going to be an older brother soon,’ Mum says, watching me, working on my conscience, convinced that I have one. ‘You may not want it, but that gives you a certain responsibility. I think you’re bright enough to know what you were doing. But I don’t know which is worse – the thought of you doing it with a degree of premeditation, or being so out of control, that you couldn’t stop yourself.’

  ‘I wasn’t out of control,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Right,’ says Dad. ‘And we’re not unaware of the way that the move’s tangled up in this. Maybe it’s a very selfish decision on our part, but it’s just for one year and sometimes . . .’ He searches for an acceptable argument.

  Mum finds it for him. ‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘either way you choose, someone loses.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. I feel awkward now, I want this to be over. ‘I like change,’ I say. Which is true.

  ‘What I want you to remember,’ Dad says, looking at the Japanesepackaged box in my hands, still unopened, ‘is that you’d better think long and hard about the kind of decisions you make in the future. Colorful is one thing, but stupid is just plain stupid, do you understand me?’

  ▪

  So I use the camera. It’s great. This really is the video age. Nothing is real unless it’s digitized and stuck on YouTube. I point the camera at the family and suddenly they have meaning, although search me for what it is.

  They smile a bit at first, then they forget about that and try to pretend I’m not there, which doesn’t work, of course – then, when they realize that I’m not going to go away, they start to look irritated, you catch a moment in their eyes that says, ‘I want to get on with things, I’ve got things to do, but I don’t want you watching.’ Why are they so secretive? Why is it even the smallest acts expose us to ridicule? On video, everything’s the same. Watching someone drink a glass of water is as private as watching someone pee. It makes you realize that we don’t see each other most of the time. We look, but we shut out the important stuff.

  I know why I got this camera, and the baby knows too. I think he knows everything. He doesn’t care about any of this shit, he’s watched all the time anyway, nothing is private for him and he hasn’t learned to care yet. But already he understands a gift. He understands transactions, that’s what it’s all about. Jessie and I haven’t been raised to respond to tips and bribes, and he won’t be either – we know all the moral complications inherent in gifts (you don’t thank someone for saving your life, you hate the bastard for making you owe him so much).

  I got this camera not to buy my future good behavior – Mum and Dad wouldn’t do that, they know I wouldn’t go for a deal like that. No, I got this camera because, by burning the stockroom, I eased the pain of a decision they wanted to make but knew I’d never agree to willingly.

  8

  Nothing much happens. We’re in the garden, Mum, Jack and me. Dad and Jessie are somewhere else, in the car. This is before the bathroom window, when I still thought I was the

  weirdest thing in my life. It’s another staggeringly hot day, this summer is sick, lurching between nuclear fission and bullet-hard rain. The weather is getting aggressive. I hate all that crap about global warming, but there have been three or four tornadoes spiraling over Europe this year and it snowed in Italy in July. The Italians probably love it; gives them a chance to get on with a bit of off-season football practice.

  Mum is in the garden in her bikini. She looks different, now that Jake’s out here and not in her. Thinner, for a start, but also sharper, hipper if you like – more attuned to what’s going on, less of a heavyweight smiler.

  She’s lying on the grass drinking Pimm’s and lemonade or something equally ridiculous, and reading an incredibly boring-looking book about social welfare. She takes all that stuff fairly seriously, being a lawyer, certainly a lot more seriously than Dad does. He’s a total cynic

  – but an optimist, too. Mum has her cynical side, she’s worked with too many hard-core villains and thugs not to, but she still holds on to a vain belief that the system is worth fighting for. I’d certainly want her on my side if I was stuck in a courtroom, bu
t I’d like a bomb belt under my shirt as well. It’s all so fucking middle-class – I’m so fucking middleclass. There’s a conspiracy in this country. We all play our roles, even the yobbos in the streets just fulfill some middle-class nightmare, they don’t have any real ideas of their own. It takes an outsider to inspire genuine fear – someone whose skin is a slightly different color from ours, someone who doesn’t know the rules, even if he’s lived here a couple of generations; or maybe does know the rules and doesn’t give a toss. Then watch us. We’re wary as hell. I mean, these guys don’t know when to take their hats off. They could get serious, they might forget that some ponce in a wig referees the match, they might just go and whack him with a machete, and post it on the web.

  Mum’s on the lawn, lying prone on a huge beach towel which follows the bumps and pockmarks in the ground. She’s covered in sun screen, I can smell her from here, and listening to some opera or other on her headset. Jake is lying murmuring in his sleep like a drunk on a binge, his lightweight wicker carrycot placed just inside the shade of the kitchen door. Every now and then, Mum looks up from her book, lifts an earphone from one ear and checks that he’s OK. He looks OK to me, he looks like he’s having wet dreams or maybe planning the baby-aspirin dealership that’s going to set him up. Jake looks like a survivor, but you never can tell. There are times when he looks small and helpless like any other baby, but I think he’s only faking.

  Me, I’m so desperate for entertainment that I’m filming the little bugger. I could be down at the beach, getting tossed around by the waves they have down here. The beach is brilliant, I’ll say that for it – a great ridge of pebbles that drops like a shock down to the sea, throwing you off balance if you’re not ready for it, deliberately angled to send you careering into the water, unable to stop. Instead, I’m hanging around, hot as hell in my shorts, a little buzzy-headed from a glass of whatever Mum’s drinking, trying to kill time and look interested as I range my camera over sleeping Jake, the ants massing by the cracks in the step outside the kitchen door, the tangled grass beyond that, like ropey fruitand-veg stall matting, and Mum’s eyes scanning her book, darting up to look my way then ignoring me, her tits cupped in her untied bikini top, a trail of sweat running from the small of her back down a slight fold of her waist to the shadow between her stomach and the towel.