The War Zone

by Alexander Stuart

  I’m ready for John’s bike and whatever ugly surprises he wants to spring on me now. Jessie is draped around Nick and everyone seems ready to go, so I walk right in front of John and force him to stop, which he does, not interested in me any more, watching two panda-faced policemen staring at us from the safety of their car, as they wonder, ‘Shall we have a bit of fun with those boyos? Is it worth the hassle? Are they going to give us a real run for our money?’

  I hop on behind John fast, hoping they haven’t had a chance to clock my young face, and as if by remote control the whole circus rolls out, Caz and Colin taking up the rear with what I presume to be the supplies of beer in an awkwardly clutched cardboard box.

  Then it’s twice down the front just for good measure, cranking the noise level up, racing the bikes, thrilling the little teenyboppers waiting on the sea wall for their lives to change. John’s Suzuki feels different from Nick’s Norton, or maybe it’s John – unpredictable, a bit dangerous because he’s really quite stupid. The second time, he does a wheelie right across one of the mini roundabouts and nearly kills us as we scoot across the front of an oncoming car. We touch down without me falling off and I feel dizzy with fear or relief as he punches the throttle and takes off after Nick and Jessie up a hill, past a looming five-star Victorian hotel surrounded by a maximum-security wall, into darkness.

  ▪

  The water is cold, like it should be, and even though it freezes my balls off I don’t care because I’ve got a bottle of beer in my hand, the sight of Jessie’s and Caz’s and Caz’s friend’s tits ahead of me and anyway the night is muggy – warm and still – not like a night at all.

  The bikes are parked at the edge of the beach, not one of the Wild Bunch being prepared to risk his tires on the rocks and pebbles, and we’ve all stripped down to our underpants, Caz’s friend making the biggest deal about getting into the water before she’d unhook her bra and then shrieking with the cold and chickening out until Toe-rag appeared suddenly behind her and offered a helping hand. Jessie, of course, leads the way, striking out into the water ahead of any of the boys, not even playful for a moment but throwing herself into it, cutting through the darkness with an urgency. As the beer hits my stomach I realize there’s no way I’m going to be able to drink any more tonight, so I discreetly bring the bottle down to waist level, under the water, and let the beer merge with the sea. I bob into the waves the way I’ve seen John do it – head first, no arms, nutting the water – and, shivering with cold, feel their pull, stronger than it ever seems in daylight. I can understand now the kick of a nighttime suicide from the beach – a swim right back into the hungry hole of your Maker.

  ‘Come on, girls!’ Toe-rag calls to those of us close to the shore – me and fat Colin included. ‘Watch your feet – the crabs bite at night!’

  ‘Fuck the crabs!’ John calls from farther out, his head coming in and out of view between moonlit waves. ‘Just no one piss in the water—’ He disappears briefly. ‘It attracts the sharks.’ Back into view, then gone again, his disembodied voice carrying over the swell. ‘Big bastards, hang around all summer looking for virgin meat.’

  ‘You should be all right then, Caz!’ Toe-rag calls, struggling to keep his head above water as he twists about close to me. A hand comes up clutching what I take at first to be seaweed, but then as he tosses the soggy mass in Caz’s direction I see that it’s his pants. ‘Here, wash these for me, would you? John won’t mind.’

  Nick and Jessie aren’t a part of this, they’re off swimming together, out past John. I wish I could do what Jessie does wherever she goes

  – create this feeling that she is what’s happening, that she is cool and everything else hangs or falls on her reckoning. But this isn’t bad, this whole thing, being here at night in the water even if you can’t see what you’re swimming through and there are jellyfish or plastic bags or blobs of scum moving in the moonlight.

  ▪

  Back on the beach everyone hangs around in T-shirts and underwear, drinking beer while Nick and John wreck a stretch of fence and start a fire with the wooden stakes, just adding to the heat. I feel stickier now than before the swim and there’s something on the pebbles, oil or tar, which rubs off on my hands and feet and feels like it’s there for life.

  The air smells great, though, salty and hot, junk food without the food. I can see where Jessica and Nick are headed, it’s obvious, and for some totally confused reason this just aggravates what’s been building in me for days, since I saw her in the bathroom, since I spoke to her in her room.

  ‘It happened, didn’t it?’ I ask her, taking her away from Nick and the others, cornering her between the sea and a great fist of water draining in five or six black fingers over the beach into the waves. ‘Not just what I saw – the whole thing, you did it together, didn’t you, you and Dad?’

  She shakes her head, almost sad. But not friendly, she’s scared, I’ve scared her a bit. ‘You’re unbelievable.’

  I hold my ground. I feel like we’re somewhere else, we’re not on a beach. Nick and the rest don’t exist. ‘Tell me I’m not going crazy.’ I can hear the wash, that sucking sound, the hiss – evil, faceless. ‘It happened, but say it’s not going to happen again.’ I’m looking at her, she seems far away, I’m the one who’s strange, I’m making her think about this. ‘Please!’

  Then suddenly I’m back on safe ground. No more weird hissing. She’s got to talk. I’m in control here. I’ve got my sneakers on and I can feel my feet sticking to them with the tar from the beach. I can hear the others pissing about. Smell the bonfire, feel the heat, though I’m cold now. Jessie looks at me, guardedly. ‘I can’t understand you,’ she says. ‘Why do you keep on about this, it just makes it more difficult, don’t you realize that?’

  ‘Because it’s important.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want any of us to be hurt.’ She might even mean this, but it sounds like bullshit.

  I feel sad. She looks sad, but I feel it. I know she’s going to tell me, she wants to, she tells me everything. I don’t think I can take it. I thought I could, but I want to turn and walk away, let her go and do whatever she wants to do with Nick.

  She looks back at him. I watch her, wondering if he thinks we’re talking about him. ‘It’s all right,’ Jessie says. ‘We did do it, but it’s all all right.’

  ‘What is?’ I’m stupid. I don’t want to think.

  Now she’s cruel. ‘Look, any minute now I’m going to walk over there, have a drink, talk to Nick and go off in search of a nice spot where he can fuck me.’ That Chelsea voice again; she makes ‘fuck’ sound like a long drink. ‘If you were a little bit more sure of yourself and perhaps didn’t have me around and weren’t afraid of what John might do to you, you’d try the same thing with Caz—’

  ‘You think?’ I try to sound tough, throw it back at her. Anyway, she’s wrong. No she’s not.

  ‘It’s not much different with Dad.’ A cool statement. ‘It’s the same act.’

  ‘Oh, Jessie—’ I want to hear. I want to hit her.

  ‘I wanted to know what it would feel like. The walls didn’t come tumbling down.’

  I can’t speak. The waves break, the black water behind her moves, keeps on moving. I don’t feel anything. I can’t feel, I can just see my father’s face, unreachable somewhere in the depths of my mind, but I can’t find how I’m supposed to feel now.

  Jessie flicks her head as some insect buzzes her ear. Who is she? She’s not my sister. ‘It’s no different than me screwing Nick,’ she says. There’s something about her teeth when she talks, very precise, perfect, her tongue loves to find them, touch them. She’s a total bitch. Indescribable. She doesn’t give a shit about anyone. ‘It’s all all right, OK? I mean there’s nothing wrong. I don’t want there to be anything I wouldn’t do.’

  I’m trying to take this in. ‘What? Like murder, torture?’ I’m getting angry. ‘Do you hate Mum? What about me? Do you hate me too?’

  ‘Cal
m down, will you?’ There’s a lull in the others’ voices. ‘This isn’t the place.’ We’re attracting attention. So what? But they’re talking again, John’s narky laugh dominant.

  ‘Why—’ I’m struggling. ‘Why did Dad do it?’ This is it. This is the worst for me. ‘Why did you let him?’

  Jessie laughs. She actually laughs. Not a funny laugh, she’s not that sure of herself, but a laugh. ‘I didn’t let him. I told you, I want to go farther than all the way. Nothing’s enough, you know that, we’ve had this conversation. Incest is brilliant. It’s scarier than shagging some Adam in a pub car park or stroking another girl’s thigh in some Fulham café.’ She stares at the waves, pleased with herself, scared, thrilled. ‘Dad didn’t want to – but he did. It’s a pull, it’s like the water there. One foot in and you’re not sure. A little more and it’s got you, it’s alive, you want it.’ A black heart, that’s what Jessie wants. She likes the idea, she’d like the devil to come knocking. Banging, in her case. ‘Dad wanted to.’

  I’m not hearing half of this. I’m watching her, I’m taking it in somehow, but not the words, I don’t need to hear them – I’ve already heard them. I look at her. Her mouth is a foreign object momentarily static in space. ‘You’re making this up,’ is the best I can manage.

  ‘You asked me. You wanted to know.’

  I turn. Nick is calling her, but Jessie waves him off, she’ll be over in a minute.

  She touches me. ‘Look, I’m sorry, OK?’

  This is too much. This is the ultimate sick joke. She has to be joking. I punch her, not nearly hard enough, but suddenly, in the gut. ‘No, it’s not bloody OK!’ I want to fight her, I want to push her in the sea. ‘How can it be OK?’ Suddenly I’m grappling with her, our feet are wet, I’m shoving her backwards, tearing at her face, forcing her down into the spray; but just as suddenly there are hands on me, locking tight around my arms, and Nick is with Jessie.

  ▪

  I feel like a wally. I don’t care, but I feel utterly useless. I don’t really care about anything, but the others all think I had some petty brothersister row with Jessie and I feel about four years old, but more miserable than it’s possible to be at four. The beach seems like the end of the world: no daylight, just a yellow moon and a bonfire and I’m stuck with a gang of morons who don’t really want to know me, who feel embarrassed by my presence now, I’m spoiling their fun, they want to drink and party and there’s this kid here who still fights with his sister. Even Caz has been treating me differently, as if maybe she misjudged me before, I’m younger than she thought, I can’t handle it. Maybe it’s sympathy, but I don’t want her fucking sympathy.

  My eyes are sick, they keep closing but I’m not tired. I don’t want to sleep. My head’s on the pebbles, I don’t care about the tar in my hair. I’m staring up at the sky which looks weird, smeary, there’s a mist building up or something. I’ve watched Nick and Jessie, they’ve gone off like the chosen two, all of Jessie’s stops pulled out as a result of our little run-in. Even John must feel small. I think he gave Caz a quick one in the chalk cave at the end of the beach, but it can’t have been anything monumental: she’s lost all interest now and he’s louder and more aggressive than ever – actually, I think, quite nervous. But Nick and Jessie must be moving the earth. They’ve been gone ages and the gathering has passed the joky stage, people are getting a little edgy.

  ‘Must be a grubby one,’ says Toe-rag.

  ‘Swimming in the quim,’ says John, opening the last beer. ‘They’ll wear the beach out,’ offers fat Colin.

  ‘Children,’ Caz’s friend says.

  And they behave as if I wasn’t there, as if it’s not my sister who’s

  bonking the balls off their compañero. I drift in and out, flames flickering in my eyes, blankness, a sort of half-words, half-picture image of Jessie and Nick as a humpbacked whale – two whales, I suppose – humping on the beach, the pebbles rolling up and down noisily, knocking against one another, grinding in the wash of their sex – not that I know what it’s like. It’s hot, I know that. It’s sore, something is very sore, like my cock when I play with it too much. They’re burning up, Nick and Jessie. It hurts, I can feel the hurt, sharp and well-defined, small and far away. My feet are burning. That’s it, my feet are burning. I can smell the rubber of my sneakers smoldering. That bastard John has put my feet in the fire! I must be half asleep because it takes an eternity to move them out. It’s an effort of will – move, legs, move. Then they hurt more! I want to cry out, but that’s just going to give him what he’s looking for, so I grit my teeth and kick the shoes off. John watches me, laughing as I rub my toes, while Caz talks about the most disgusting thing she can think of to eat.

  ‘A shit sandwich,’ butts in Toe-rag.

  ‘Too obvious,’ reckons her friend.

  ‘Food,’ says John, his intellectual prowess clearly boosted by the

  pain he’s inflicted on me. ‘That’s pretty disgusting.’

  ‘Your prick,’ Caz says, looking at him, but perhaps I misheard, it’s

  not the sort of thing she would say.

  And Jessie and Nick come back. I’m rubbing the soles of my feet,

  wondering whether the ocean would make them feel better or worse

  and not wanting to seem like a cry-baby when I’m already the kid here, though why should I care? They look the same, Nick and Jessie, except

  they look as if they’ve taken a drug none of us know about. ‘Give me that,’ whispers Nick, draining the dregs of the beer from

  John’s bottle. Jessie sits the other side of the fire from him, sliding in

  comfortably between Caz and her chum.

  I feel sick. I’m not part of life, it’s not going to work for me. This is

  all my continuing punishment – my burnt soles, the fact that my sister

  hasn’t left me anything at all, she’s using it all up – life, sex, energy,

  despair.

  I feel flat. Nothing. My toes hurt.

  11

  F

  ive o’clock in the morning and we’re in deep shit. It’s light, but the mist and heat are spongelike, wrapping around us, clinging to us as we walk the last half mile or so to the cottage, Jessie having thought better of it than to have Nick and the boys drive us to the door on their motorbikes.

  ‘We’re in deep shit, you know that?’ she says, the two of us united again now in joint defense of our misdeeds, except that I haven’t even enjoyed mine, whatever they were, and how can I trust her when she’s wrecked or is wrecking all our futures, even if the wreckage doesn’t show yet? ‘We’ve just got to stay calm and bluff it out. This is probably major coronary time. What did you tell Dad? How long did you say we’d be?’

  ‘I said it was just a ride, I didn’t give a time.’ I watch her. She’s not really bothered, she’s just going through the motions. Jessie can get away with anything and she knows it. Mum and Dad are going to be furious, but they’ll get over it and so will Jessica.

  ‘There’s death,’ she says when she’s reasoning her way through a problem, ‘and there’s being crippled or disfigured, but apart from that there’s nothing much, nothing much they can do to you.’ She doesn’t think in terms of humiliation. ‘Everything else passes. People forget. I do.’

  I believe this last bit especially. Jessie forgets. She has a highly selective memory, good at remembering useful information but even then not infallible. She doesn’t care, she really doesn’t care. Even a grudge she might wish to repay, a score to be settled, will be forgotten if something more interesting comes along. She lives for the moment.

  And the moment is now. We’re at the front door and Jessie looks wrecked, I hadn’t realized how wrecked until now. Maybe she did do something with Nick other than fuck him! But do they know about drugs down here? This is Palookaville, not London, where even your average council estate kid can tell the difference between smack and crack, between street-grade heroin and something special. Jessie has a thin smile on
her lips and pink eyes, but perhaps she’s just tired and well-pleased by Nick’s attentions. Certainly she seems to have put our conversation out of her mind.

  ‘Look repentant but not too much so,’ she advises. She digs in her jeans for the key. There’s a gash on her mouth where I scratched her. And a series of red gouges decorate the calves of her legs where her jeans finish halfway down, which are nothing to do with me. ‘We just lost track of the time.’

  ▪

  If Jessie looks wrecked, Mum and Dad look worse. Mum looks pale under her tan, still dressed in the clothes she was wearing in the pub last night, any relief she might feel at seeing us totally wiped out by the anger which has kept her going until now. Dad has sharp grey lines in the skin at the corners of his eyes which normally appear only after a night up working or a night out drinking with his partners.

  ‘You two,’ Dad says as we walk in the doorway and they both materialize from the kitchen, ‘are spoilt little arseholes.’

  It’s dark in the hall – the cottage seems darker than it ever does at breakfast time, not that breakfast time is ever this early – but Mum’s and Dad’s faces are clearly visible, their eyes raking over the two of us, checking us for damage, speeding ahead of their mouths in accusation.

  ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ Mum asks, staring at me but addressing Jessie, the older, more responsible one.

  ‘I’ll tell you this,’ Dad speaks slowly, trying to find the measure of his anger, close to taking us both and shaking us until it hurts either us or him, ‘if any of your motorcycle-riding friends comes around here looking for you, I’m going to take him off his bike and break both his bloody arms.’