The War Zone

by Alexander Stuart

  ‘Where were you?’ Mum has the aggrieved tone I’ve heard her use with her clients when they do a runner, fail to show up in court or for their probation officer. ‘Why did you turn your phones off? Your father’s been out all night, driving around looking for you.’

  ‘It was our decision,’ Jessie says, answering them both, making a show of strength which she knows will only count in her favor. ‘Well, not a decision really. We had a party on the beach. We just lost track of the time.’

  ‘It wasn’t much of a party,’ I add, seeing the next question forming on my parents’ lips. ‘We built a bonfire. And went swimming.’

  ‘Moron,’ Jessie whispers, crushing my burnt toes with her shoe.

  ‘Swimming?’ my mother echoes, a new look of horror transfiguring her face. ‘Do you have any idea how dangerous it is swimming off the shore here at night? What if one of you had got caught up in the current? Or swept against the rocks! What would you have done then? You couldn’t even see each other.’

  ‘There was a moon,’ Jessie offers, but she knows we’re just riding this one out.

  And we’re still standing in the hall, no one’s moved, the light hasn’t been switched on, we’re locked in this tableau of recrimination, but the gears are changing, the initial anger is running down, we’re bumping toward a new area of judgment and penalty.

  It’s Jake who breaks the spell that holds us all fixed to the spot by crying out with his eerie ‘I’m hungry’ call, the ghost of a cat’s wail, a sound which always leaves me feeling uneasy when I’m lying in bed at night. Mum turns and runs up the stairs to see to him and Dad, who isn’t nearly as ready as Mum to let go of his rage, ushers us into the kitchen, his silent, watchful gaze ominous as far as our getting off this lightly is concerned.

  He indicates two chairs where we should sit. This is the courtroom, we are the accused, but where’s our lawyer – Mum’s still upstairs? His back to us, he puts the kettle on. Jessie arches her eyebrows at me across the table, a look of superiority to everything, me, him, the situation. Dad’s hair, from behind, is sticking up on one side at a weird angle, like one of his architectural drawings gone wrong, as if he’s snatched an hour’s sleep in a chair at some point and it’s traumatized his hair, ironed it stiff in the wrong direction.

  ‘I called the police,’ he says, and my heart sinks. I can see this is going to take a great deal more explaining than either of us thought, we’re going to have to deal with the filth’s patronizing reprimands as well. ‘But I thought better of it.’ Dad still has his back to us, as if it’s more than he can do to look at us at the moment. He rinses the cups. ‘I thought, why bother them at this time of the night? If my children are stupid enough to go off with a bunch of paleolithic bikers – and I’m stupid enough to let them—’ He turns and looks at us now – ‘then why waste the time of the authorities?’

  I have this strange wish suddenly – strange isn’t a strong enough word – that this could be a schoolday, that we could get through whatever lecturing we’re going to be forced to endure, eat a token breakfast (I don’t feel hungry, I think I’m hungover) and then take off for school and a day of dozing through lessons and dropping subtly misleading hints about the night’s activities to whoever will listen. Except that I don’t have a school right now; I’m stateless, I’ve got the horror-prospect of starting a new one in September on top of everything else.

  Dad finishes with the cups and stands watching us. He says nothing for a moment, lets the intensity of his examination pin us to our chairs, a needle-like ray that is all the more powerful because we know in the more boring, rational parts of ourselves that he’s right, we were stupid, anything could have happened to us – and in Jessie’s case, did. This is what I fix on suddenly, that he’s not so much angry with both of us as furious with Jessie for taking off with a reject Hell’s Angel.

  ‘You ought to have more sense, Jessica,’ he says at last. ‘Even if you think you’re old enough to stay out all night flirting with the local rat pack, you should have thought about Tom. One o’clock, I could have taken. Half past one, even. But you’ve pushed it too far. There’s no point in us treating you as an adult if you’re not prepared to behave like one.’

  ‘Time just ran away with us,’ I say, in an effort to see how much this is simply between Dad and Jessie.

  ‘You’ve both got watches,’ he responds, his tone no less testy with me than with her.

  ‘You don’t understand what it’s like,’ Jessie says, offering her first real defense, although she seems anything but defensive, more like the roles are reversed and she’s explaining life to him. ‘You can’t constantly look at your watch. Either you’re having a good time or you’re not. If you didn’t want me to take Tom, you should have said so.’

  ‘Jessie,’ Dad says, his voice harder. ‘Don’t try me.’

  ‘We were in good company,’ Jessie goes on. ‘It could have been a lot worse. Nick’s great. He doesn’t smell and he’s got a job. I would have thought you might have liked him.’

  ‘If he’s who I think he is,’ Dad says, conceding nothing, ‘he looks ten years too late for life. Did he give you that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That cut on your face. That didn’t get there by chance. Is that his idea of a good time?’

  Jessie looks at me and I look back, a dread building up in me not that she’s going to say anything about what we said but that what I’m witnessing here is somehow more fundamental than what I saw in the bathroom. Whatever Jessie thinks this is about, this is about possession. Dad thinks he possesses her, not just in the normal way that parents delude themselves that they possess their children, especially daughters

  – it’s more complicated than that now because of what has happened. He’s frightened, I can see that and it’s not something you want to see in your dad. He’s frightened he’s going to lose her. Or maybe he’s just shit-scared about the whole thing. But he’s also enjoying it, he’s like her, he’s high on the danger. And where am I in all this? Do I count? What does he feel about the rest of us now – are we still a family? I don’t even know if I want us to be.

  The kettle boils and cuts out. Jessie has taken a long time to answer. ‘Oh, that,’ she says. ‘I got a branch in my face on the way down to the beach. It’s nothing.’

  Mum comes back down, Jack hanging on one tit, less bothered than any of us that the night is on its head – it’s bright outside but we’re all totally knackered. Dad puts tea in the pot and milk in the cups, a kind of ugly hard edge detailing every sound, even the closing of the fridge door.

  ‘You didn’t get that from a branch,’ Mum says, standing by Dad, supporting Jack in one arm, solidarity against the wrongdoers. She glances at me, searching for the truth, but I stare at the table trying to find the stack of torn envelopes and postcards and the cup-rings on the old wood interesting.

  ‘Can I have a glass of water?’ I ask, suddenly conscious of how foul my mouth tastes and wanting anything that will distract from the matter at hand.

  ‘There’s a glass on the drainer,’ Mum says, shifting to one side to let me up.

  I fill the glass, turning the tap too far and spraying a fierce jet of water over the sink, the wall, me. Dad pours three cups of weak tea, too impatient to wait for it to stand, and looks inquisitorially at me as I sit back down and he hovers over a fourth. ‘Do you want one?’ he asks. I shake my head without meeting his eye.

  Mum sits down, maneuvering Jack into a comfortable position on her lap while watching us like a border guard trying to decide whether to shoot us now or later, when our backs are turned. ‘I think we should all drink our tea and get to bed,’ she advises, a trace of our grandmother’s, her mother’s, Polish accent slipping through as it does sometimes when she is tired or pissed off.

  ‘Not before we’ve discussed precisely how we are going to resolve this,’ Dad says, allowing no room for argument. ‘You may think this is just bad news, coming home like this, and that it will pass. Well—�
�� He looks at Jessie first, then at me. He knows how our minds work, how much we’re anticipating the short, sharp shock – no funds, no TV, how bad can it get? He goes on, ‘This time you’re going to have to pay.’

  Yeah? Well, bollocks to that! I’ve been through these before and so has Jessie. I can’t really see what the big deal is here. Compared to setting fire to the school, this is nothing. It wasn’t even a good time. But Dad is enjoying it. Even in my current fallen state, I can recognize a crap line when I hear one and this is an act. Dad knows we know we’re guilty; we’re not stupid. Mum’s right, we should go to bed and they can keep the screws tightened for a while when we get up. But this is what I thought: this is between Dad and Jessica, and I’m just caught in the crossfire.

  ‘You’re both housebound for a week,’ he announces. ‘No exceptions. No trips out, no shopping, no visits from friends, no phone calls, no email and no drinking.’ A frown in my direction, but I’m incidental. ‘And Jessie – no Nick. I know you’re going to be able to do what you like in a few weeks’ time, but that is then and this is now.’ A glance at both of us. ‘Is that clear?’

  A moment’s pause. It sounds fucking terrible to me, but I’m not going to give him any satisfaction. So we’re dead for a week – so what? I scowl across at Jessica, trying to look unmoved. Her expression surprises me. She is staring at him with what at first might be hatred

  – instant hatred, the kind you can whip up pretty quickly when you need it. But it goes deeper than that; it’s a kind of interest, I can’t put my finger on it but it’s a kind of excitement.

  Mum, Jack and me are the fools. We might as well not be here. I don’t know if Mum suspects anything – maybe not, because there’s nothing obvious and it’s the last thing she would suspect. I’m sure it’s never even crossed her mind. But I’m stuck with it. I’m stuck with the knowledge and it turns everything to shit. I can’t even get angry with him in the normal way. I can’t even resent this punishment. Nothing’s normal any more.

  Dad puts his hand on Mum’s shoulder, breaking the spell with Jessie, resisting the impulse thank God to ruffle Jake’s minimal hair. Mum looks tired and tense. She is usually the one who mediates in these situations, giving shape to Dad’s anger, which is erratic and shortlived. But she’s feeding Jack and she looks ready to accept anything that will cut this drama short.

  Then Dad makes his mistake. And mine. ‘Have either of you got anything to say?’ he asks.

  Another silence. I hear myself breathing from a long way away. Saliva forms in the bottom of my mouth. My tongue prods against my teeth. My lips peel apart. The kitchen divides into irregularly shaped pieces: the pots and plates on the old enamel drainer, the dead flies in the lightbowl, the cups on the table, the ponderous drip of the cold tap, the cracks in the flagstone floor, my family’s faces, the ivy at the window. The fragments split and dance in space, jostling with swimming purple flecks of light.

  ‘Yes.’ The whole kitchen explodes. ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  12

  Sometimes it’s worse when they don’t get angry. You provoke a response, you demand attention, emotion, balls. You have to give a little bit of your life to get angry with someone. When

  you cross the edge and nothing happens there’s something wrong. You don’t want permission to piss around. So Dad must really be off course not to rise to that. If Jessie had said it at this particular moment, I think he would have slapped her, which is not something I can remember him doing in a long time, but the rules have changed, they look like they want damage, those two, they’re locked into something like two fighters circling each other jabbing for first blood.

  But I said it, and Dad’s self-control is the last thing I want. He stands there, waiting, letting me reflect on my words, watching Mum to see if she’s going to comment but she’s less excited by language than action. ‘You’re tired,’ he tells me finally. ‘And it’s our fault. Go to bed.’

  ▪

  And in the bathroom, trying to clean the shit out of my mouth, Mum makes a point of hugging me – sternly, to let me know that this has been a hard night all around, but a hug just the same. ‘Why do you always make things worse for yourself?’ she asks, the voice of my childhood when I used to drive them both wild ripping up papers, drawings, court documents.

  I almost want to cry and I swallow some toothpaste trying not to. It would be so easy just to sink into her arms instead of resisting the cuddle, maintaining my stance, the struggle, my independence. How can I tell her that nothing is all right, it’s all bad and getting worse? Would she believe me anyway? Do I want her to know? She ought to – I need her to, I need her help. I don’t know how much more I can handle on my own, but the weird thing is I don’t want it to stop. Not now, not at the moment. I’m tired and my eyes are stinging and the toothpaste has burned my throat, but when I’m not tired, when I’m fresh and awake and reasonably conscious, what I have, to fight the feeling of my life slipping away and the summer holidays sinking toward term-time and hell, is Dad and Jessie.

  Mum has stopped holding me. She’s standing watching me in the mirror, loving me, she never stops loving me. But she can’t stop the system that grinds us all down and maybe Dad and Jessie can, they should be able to fuck the machinery if anyone can. I don’t know what I’m thinking any more, except that I think I need the idea of Dad and Jessie in my mind like I need London. While it’s only me who knows, in a way I control it.

  The birds are singing outside. Mum’s in the mirror and so is the bath, but this is a different angle and Dad’s still in the kitchen and Jessie’s upstairs and it’s not raining and she’s not sloshing water over his peeled-back foreskin.

  I could tell her now, but I don’t.

  13

  Sometimes when the cells in my body are really buzzing and the blood’s pumping and I’m feeling truly insane, I know that the weather is just another part of my dream. I create everything – you,

  me, my parents, day, night, this shitty cottage, the mosquito spattered on the bedroom wall, the ugly old woman from the village who walks past our scrawny front garden at least three times every day and squints in with eyes diseased with resentment and age and a life which has either turned her into an aching sour cunt or was something she never understood, never grasped, in the first place. Is this suffering all my doing? I must have tumors warping my brain. I want to start again, clean. Scrub this out, dig the pen in deep as I scribble over and over and over again, eradicating it, removing the pain.

  So the weather’s my fault too. And it’s weird, it’s like me, up and down, changing every minute, blowing hot, cold, grey, black. I lie on my bed trying to listen to my iPod or read a comic book or squeeze my eyes shut and make myself stoned, and the weather keeps getting in the way. Sunlight flashes in through the window like photographic arc lamps, blazing hot for a moment then dimming as the sky darkens and a wind shoves dishwater clouds across the sky. Minutes pass and it’s bright again and I can feel the heat nudging me, edging into the room. Then thunder, great intestinal cracks from the sky, and it pisses down, torrents of rain beating against the earth, smashing the grass down, pummeling everything in its reach, wanting – and I understand this – to hurt.

  Lucy comes, soaked to the skin, and rattles on to Mum for hours about her aunt in France and then starts vacuuming, and I wish I could control her, my creation, better. I’ve been shut inside for three days, allowed out only within a short radius of the cottage like a dog on an extending but finite leash, and the flashes of light have just been false holes in the prison sky, impossible to get to grips with, insufficient to recharge my failed batteries.

  Her hair smells when she comes into my room and she seems to have grown larger, firmer, as if she’s been exercising, toning up for more vacuuming or whatever else it is that she does with her time.

  I don’t shift from the bed. If Lucy is my invention, her damp and wrinkled clothes will simply cease to exist, her jaw will lose the bored, slightly clenched set it has to it
and she’ll vacuum me with her mouth, the cord tying us together in an unmanageable, flailing heap. But she goes on and I lie there listening to noises coming through my headphones, music starting and stopping and starting again, jerking forward and backward like my life, words drumming in my head meaning nothing. You can’t tell me what it’s like to be black in England, I think, as I listen to a singer using New York beats to describe Notting Hill. Because you’ve got a fucking MySpace page and you wear a baseball cap with your band’s name on it.

  ‘What?’ I hear my own voice, muffled, a surprise. I don’t know what I’m saying.

  Her mouth moves again. Sadly, not on me. She shouts, ‘Feeling sorry for yourself then?’

  ‘Not very.’

  She doesn’t switch off the vacuum cleaner. I don’t turn off the music. ‘I hear you had yourselves a party.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘You didn’t invite me.’

  She stands, arching her neck to get rid of an ache, eyes tired, no longer looking at me. I keep the headset off my ears for a moment, but she says nothing else, sticks the vacuum head under the bed, knocking the dulled metal side quite aggressively, breathing over me a dry waft of stale cigarettes, her eyes meeting mine only once, no message I can discern. If she’s my invention, she doesn’t know it.

  ▪

  And where’s Jessie in all of this? How does she take to her incarceration? Like a bat to water, like salvation to a crime. She switches into a different mode, using the time available to even things up with Mum, sticking and unsticking an endless flow of disposable nappies, singing to Jack to knock him out, generally being more companionable than she has been of late, though not so much that it’s obvious.

  I watch her with Dad, to see if it’s a cover, to see if they’re just faking this punishment – she’s taking it too well, there must be more to it. But they keep their distance, not showing any particular resentment or interest, no sustained, message-laden eye contact that I can catch, no sudden flare-ups, not even much body contact, which in itself is unusual for Jessie. She seems suddenly domesticated, teenage mum time again, like one of those awful ex-punk blonds (not that Jessie could ever be blond) who discover family life. Jessie has a side to her that could almost settle for a Chelsea existence, married to a stockbroker or some other wimp criminal from the City, except that I think she’d chain him to the bathtaps after three weeks and go mad after four. The domesticity is a pose and it’s one I can find only two motives for.