The War Zone

by Alexander Stuart

‘Here, Jessica,’ a weasel face – or is it a weasel voice? – says

  somewhere behind me, beneath me, whatever. ‘Your brother reckons

  he used to drink in London. Is that right?’

  Caz smiles across at me. ‘He doesn’t look too brilliant.’ I manage

  to inch my way around the alcove toward her. ‘You look like you’ve

  swallowed a bucket of worms.’

  ‘I think I have.’ I steady myself on the shoulder of Colin, I think it

  is – a fat-faced wanker who’s the hanger-on of the group. ‘I’ll be back,’

  I manage through a clogged mouth.

  ▪

  The next few moments are a dreamlike journey, weaving through the tiny pub garden, banging into everything there is to bang into and doing about three unnecessary circuits as I try to keep out of range of Mum and Dad. I get a vivid, whirling picture of the whole village falling down three hills toward this focal point, where an uneven mass of increasingly noisy drunks straddles the road, lit sporadically by the sick white or slow red of cars’ reverse and brake lights scarring the growing darkness as they move in and out of the car park around the back.

  It’s here that I’m headed, too, stepping right in front of an oncoming Hummer in my struggle to reach the toilets in time. I almost don’t make it, feeling my mouth fill with something vile and fluid as I stagger up the step, into the welcoming stench and silence of the gents. My gut pushes upward, like a drum hit from the wrong side, my mouth falls open and I throw myself over the urinal as a torrent of vomit comes out, nearly choking me as I gasp for air.

  There is a quiet that follows throwing up, a sense of peace and achievement matched by an incredible lightness of the stomach. Only your mouth tastes like shit. The rest of you is elated, alive to the freshness of a world unsullied by waves of nausea. Every detail is pure, from the echoing drip of the cistern overhead to the graffiti by the condom machine, like a torch shone on someone else’s mind: ‘Helen – we want to screw you. MM. NH. TF. Clelia can swallow it whole.’

  I’m feeling great by the time I get back outside, ready for anything

  – even Jessie’s friends. The trouble is, I’m with them, they’re not really with me, and as I walk back around from the car park, I have a momentary doubt as to whether I should call it quits now and leave them to it. They’re still there, jammed into the stone alcove by the entrance to the pub, glasses on the table, stoned expressions all around.

  Jessie and Nick are at one end of the group, a little apart from the rest, deep in some intensely private conversation, their eyes locked in some middle zone where nothing else exists. For a moment, she looks like any other older sister. For a moment, I wish I could be where they are. Then, as I skirt around the serious drinkers, crunching over the crisps and shit their dogs are eating off the ground, I glimpse Dad, hard to spot at first in the dark but half lit by the curtained glow of a cottage across the street.

  He is talking to a woman who has The Mouth some of the locals have: like a chicken’s arse, drawn tight with string. I am close enough now to see him as he looks away, glancing at Mum – who is laughing at something someone else has just said – then looking quickly in Jessie’s direction, his head making minute adjustments as he fixes on her and Nick. I want to read something into it, but the thought of them together, her washing his dong and doing whatever else, seems far away, not possible at this moment, yet I know it’s there. What is it to me? Why should I care if it’s Dad’s prick or Nick’s prick she’s interested in?

  He looks away, drinking his pint and nodding at the woman with The Mouth as if to say, ‘Just disappear back into the stonework, why don’t you?’ I feel for him. I feel for both my parents. There are very few interesting people around, most of them just give up or never had it, never had the edge, the urge. When I think about it, maybe Mum and Dad are seriously fucked up – but at least they’re still conscious. ‘Has anyone got any chewing gum?’

  No one hears me. Caz and the other girl are talking. Toe-rag is

  wiping the beer scum off his glass with a finger. John is nodding his head to the blows of some inner battle. My mouth is a toilet, a graveyard. I want to spit, but I swallow instead.

  ‘What are we going to do then?’ asks Colin, bulbous cheeks wobbling in the dim light from the pub. He’s more of an outsider than me, I think. He’s stuck there, practically doubled-over in the most cramped part of the alcove, the resident butt of jokes, the jester figure, any group has one. He’s the one who’d be a future captain of industry in the stories, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to happen to Colin.

  ‘I want some danger,’ Caz says. The other girl laughs. ‘Sit next to Colin then,’ John tells her. ‘He’s been farting all night.’

  ‘Piss off!’ Colin can risk this. Nobody takes him seriously.

  ‘Let’s just go,’ Jessie says. She is standing with one hand on Nick’s shoulder, totally in control, not threatening Nick’s position as leader but rather enhancing it, reinforcing it.

  ‘Let’s take a ride.’ Nick’s voice is softer than the others, a slightly different accent. He seems to know something they don’t – nothing tangible, maybe just something about himself. ‘Let’s go,’ he says. ‘Tonight’s too beautiful to miss.’

  And they all get up. Caz turns and looks at me, standing behind her. She frowns. I think she half likes me, though I’m hardly a serious proposition for her. It’s only when all of them start working their way out of the alcove and through the tight-knit boozers in the garden that I fully realize just how much a part of the picture they are. Everyone knows their names! If they were a threat – some really ugly fuckers from out of town, say, some dyed-in-the-wool Hell’s Angels – the local constabulary would be down on them like a ton of bricks. And no polite questioning, either – they’d be stuffed in the back of a police van, driven around for a few hours over some remarkably bumpy country roads, then dumped across the county line where their bikes would be found in a tangled heap. But Jessie’s friends are just playing, and she’s just playing with them. She wants the real fire.

  ‘Is there a good beach we could go to now?’ she asks Nick as we head around the back to the bikes. ‘I’d love to swim in the dark.’

  ‘Fucking tourist!’ Toe-rag says. ‘I need a slash.’ And he disappears into the ladies’ toilet, singing out and banging on all the doors, but there’s no one in there.

  ‘OK,’ Nick says. ‘Yeah . . .’

  ‘OK, yeah,’ Jessie mimics, giving him a hard time. The bikes are in front of us, a mixed bunch, none of those monster machines that weigh more than a house and hit 60 mph before your bum’s even on the seat. Jessie stops by Nick’s aging Norton. She looks right for this, she looks more dangerous than the bike – I don’t know what it is about her, she’s only wearing jeans and some sort of half-amputated shirt.

  ‘Pauline’s party is tonight, isn’t it?’ Caz says, coming up behind me, accidentally kicking a can or something that rattles across the stones of the car park.

  ‘Boring.’

  Caz’s friend tilts her head mockingly at John, who is checking something on the rear axle of his bike, an old but powerful Suzuki. ‘Been there, done that one, have you, John?’

  ‘Fucking right.’

  ‘I heard she’s got AIDS,’ fat Colin says, toughing it out with the rest of the boys. ‘Got it off a Marine.’

  ‘Probably got it off me,’ John says, lighting a cigarette and sitting on his bike.

  ‘Shut up,’ Caz’s friend tells him.

  Toe-rag comes out of the ladies, startling a middle-aged matron on her way in, and saunters across the car park like a bovver boy looking for trouble. It’s all an act. I’m not saying he couldn’t handle himself, but he’s not really a bastard. I’ve known a few.

  ‘Well, then . . .?’ Jessie says to Nick, perching on his bike with her feet up on the seat in front of her, blocking his place.

  Nick takes his bike off its stand, throwing her off balance, but Jessie’s
hands grab the seat under her and she stays where she is, feet still in front.

  ‘Anyone got any money?’ Nick asks, sitting on her feet so that Jessie has to struggle to slide them out from under him. ‘We can pick up some beer in Sidmouth.’

  He starts the bike, a loud, farting rumble that stirs up the heavy air of the car park. Caz climbs on behind John and he starts his, Toe-rag following next, with Caz’s friend on the back, so that now there’s a rich, belting roar filling the night, compromised only by the stuttering ph-ph-phut of Colin’s machine, half motorbike, half wimp.

  ‘What about Tom?’ Jessie asks Nick, and I think: all right! She proves herself, Jessie does, at moments like this.

  ‘Oh, he’s coming,’ John states firmly above the noise of the bikes. I’m not sure for a moment what he means by this, but he edges Caz off the back of his bike, staring at me steadily with what could be menace left over from earlier in the evening.

  ‘I’ll take him,’ Nick offers quickly. He’s bright, Nick, he sees the moves. ‘Jess, John’ll give you a ride, won’t you, John?’

  So everyone moves around, Colin being the real winner, since he gets to take Caz whereas before he had no passenger.

  ‘You’ve got to ask Mum,’ Jessie tells me as she shifts from Nick’s bike to John’s, more than slightly pissed off at this upheaval.

  ‘Fuck that!’

  ‘You’ve got to.’ She looks at me seriously. ‘You disappear with us and they’ll have the police out. Go on.’

  ▪

  So, feeling like a twerp, with the bikes razzing me noisily as I jog across the car park, I hurry to find Mum and Dad, but they’re not where they were and I’m worried that the others might leave without me. The pub garden is thinning out now, only the committed bores and soaks left. The lights are going out in the village – this town does not live after dark. Maybe Mum and Dad have gone home, but I doubt it; they would have checked on us first. I push open the old door of the pub, the one that leads to the hotel reception desk as well, and turn into the bar, which stinks even before you enter it of cigarette smoke, stale breath and dog smells, not necessarily in that order.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ Dad tells me, approaching from the other door, ducking to miss a low beam. The pub is a haze of last-order drinkers, ears pricked to anything prejudicial we might say, but mouths still moving, the conversation slowly winding down.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ ‘She went home. She was worried about Jack – we told Lucy we’d be back half an hour ago.’

  A flash of Lucy. A tightening of my balls. Perhaps I should go back home with Dad and see her? But she might already have gone. Dad moves past me, toward the door. I hold back, not wanting Jessie’s crew to see me asking for permission.

  ‘Jessie’s boyfriend has offered me a ride on his motorcycle. Can I go? It’s such a beautiful night.’

  Dad turns, looks at me, interested. Is any of this real? I don’t know what’s going on. Fuck it, it’s a simple question. I don’t want to think about this all the time.

  ‘Which one is he?’ Dad smiles. He looks like a dad at this moment, a good one, the kind you’d want, the kind who hasn’t screwed down his attitudes any more than you have. ‘I thought you hated hippies,’ he taunts. ‘They all look as if they’ve come through a time warp.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Is Jessie all right?’ The revving of motorcycles outside.

  ‘Sure. Can I go?’

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘It’s the holidays.’ They’re going to go without me. I know it.

  ‘These roads aren’t safe. I don’t know.’

  I stare at him, man to man, son to father, urgently. ‘Have you heard that thing? No one’s not going to know it’s coming. Anyway, the world’s asleep down here.’

  He frowns. I’ve won – if they’re still there. ‘Do you have your phone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Does he have a helmet for you?’

  I nod.

  ‘How long are you going to be?’

  ‘It’s just a ride,’ I lie. ‘Just up the hill for a while, it’s such a beautiful night.’ We move to the door, me eager to finish this before we get outside – establish my independence and go.

  ‘Don’t go mad,’ he says. ‘And tell Jessica she’s got to come home too.’

  ‘I’ll tell her.’

  We step outside. Nick’s out there, but John and Jessie have gone. And Toe-rag. But Colin’s there, with Caz stuck behind him.

  ‘Tom . . .’ Dad asks, looking at me differently as I turn to go. ‘Are you all right? You look a little the worse for wear.’

  ‘It’s my stomach.’ I hold it, or hold where it used to be. ‘I think it’s some crisps I ate.’

  ‘I wish—’ He breaks off, looks from me to the bikes and back. I want to say something to him, I want to touch him, it’s one of those weird pauses that feel like last-chance situations, except I don’t believe in last chances. He grins. Standing there, my dad looks like trouble – even in his white yachting trousers and summer shirt he looks like trouble, but the best kind of trouble, not some sick bastard who’s fucking my sister.

  Caz calls to me. The bikes rev. Dad nods his head to indicate that I should go. ‘I wish you weren’t bound to repeat my mistakes,’ he says. I don’t know specifically what he means by this, but it’s depressing advice. It’s like one of those double-think mind-benders: once said, you can’t escape it.

  ‘See you,’ I say and run and jump on Nick’s bike. Then, for a beautiful while, I stop thinking.

  10

  O

  n the beach I take Jessie aside and say something very strange to her. ‘It happened, didn’t it?’ I ask, because my mind isn’t working right any more, I don’t trust it, I can’t. ‘What I saw – in the bathroom. You and Dad. Just tell me, just let me know I’m not going crazy, because I don’t want to be imagining this.’ I should be asking her to deny it, I know, but I want her admission of guilt. I know what I saw, but I want to hear it from her mouth, then maybe I can shut it out of my mind. ‘And then—’

  She looks at me impatiently, water breaking at our feet, a rushing sound, a dragging back. This is the last thing she wants now. ‘And then?’

  ‘Then please make me believe it was only once, it was a mistake, it’s never going to happen again.’ I feel feeble asking this – I should be able to handle it – but I can’t. Can I trust her? Her eyes seem disappointed with me, glazed suddenly, distant. ‘Please!’

  ▪

  But before that there’s the bike ride, fast, cooling in the heat, the speed wrenching away thoughts before they can form, like being part of your own dream, watching yourself move but with no way of getting off or out.

  Nick’s bike seems suddenly wider, heavier, taking the hills like a breeze, eating up gradients which have Dad’s Bentley wheezing. I’ve never done this: ride pillion on a motorbike through flashing hedgerows, dark and blurry, a wall of nothingness hurtling by on either side, like a mindblasting trip through a maze. The light beam ahead is a gunsight, a border patrol nightlight. We’re flying, feeling the bumps and falling into the curves, the machine noise and the speed drilling me hard, pumping my adrenalin. I’m in the helicopter napalming the geeks. There goes the village! There goes the whole of fucking Devon!

  Then it’s different. We’re in the trees, spiraling down toward Sidmouth, dropping on to a shadowy blanket of lights that cuts off where the sea starts. This can’t be England. This can’t be my life. Why can’t it just go on like this, why does the speed have to stop?

  Something alive darts across the road right in front of the bike and Nick almost jerks us off the road, but he steadies us, our necks craning back to see what it was. We continue our descent into town, the lights taking form, becoming houses and shops the way they do in music videos when a blur becomes a set. We’re moving through a network of one-way streets all leading to the sea, and it’s party night, a bunch of eighteen-year-olds are crisscrossing in and out of parked ca
rs, gesturing back at us, moving hunkered down like insurgents, sliding past pub doorways in pursuit of some prey. We glide over the battlefield, glimpse a couple kissing or struggling by a bow-windowed shop, then Nick drives us straight at a curb, up on to the pavement, down a pedestrian alley and out onto the seafront where the others are waiting for us, John launching a beer bottle to smash in our path as we approach.

  ‘Don’t damage anything you can’t fix,’ Nick says quietly as we draw alongside them, his voice still carrying above the sound of his bike. He looks at Jessie, angled back behind John on John’s bike, and even in my ravaged state of mind I see that there’s something clear about Nick, something powerful in his intentions, which gives him the edge over John or anybody else. But I also get a flash that Jessie’s playing around, more than I thought. She’s teasing Nick, very quietly she’s flirting with John, and I’m not sure that I like that.

  ‘Where the fuck were you?’ Toe-rag quizzes Nick. He looks at me, the obvious cause of the hold-up. ‘You must have crawled here backwards.’

  But Nick isn’t listening. There’s some unspoken communication going on between him and Jessica, whereby he seems quite deliberately to shut her out of his mind. Picking up on this, but at her own pace, with no evident submission, she gets off John’s bike, comes over and stands by me, looking as if she might have something to say but might just as easily walk away. I am expected to move, there’s no doubt about that, and for a moment I’m tempted not to, but there doesn’t seem much option so I slide off and stand faced with the prospect of a ride on John’s bike or no ride at all.

  John is turning in tight circles in the middle of the road, waiting to go, waiting to move, frustrated by being here on the front and looking more out of place than usual with a backdrop of fake-elegant hotels, rats’ nests with Riviera pretensions, all palm fronds and colored lights, ready to be requisitioned by the government as proof that normal family holidays still take place. Couples walk along the sea front, robots, their kiddies in bed, their brains dead but perhaps troubled by basic motor responses to John’s manic circling, Toe-rag’s yodels and the general unease our little gathering seems to create.