The War Zone (12 page)

And upstairs I’m on my own. Dad is shut away below me arguing over steel or titanium cladding or something, dredging out the drawings and files that had been dumped in the musty understairs cupboard when we arrived here. Mum, Jessica and Jake are safe outside, baking now that we’re back to fission heat, not likely to move except to pee and, later, get dinner. I’m on my own and I know what I’m doing. I’m not a victim, I’m not going to be a victim, I’ve got to take this matter in hand. Jessie is confident about every situation, except sometimes she’s not, just occasionally there’s a chink in her armor when she thinks she’s not beautiful, when she thinks she’s not blessed, when the world falls apart and she can’t fight it and she’s alone and anonymous and the smallest thing could crush her, reduce her to nothing, a hole, a mistake, a blob of human fear. I know that feeling—I can’t say I have it all the time, but I’m familiar with it, far more so than her, and it’s because of that that I’m still frightened by the possibility that Dad may be the one, that Jessie is wrong, this is his sickness. I don’t know which is worse, whether I want them both to be guilty, or one, or whether I really think they’re guilty or sick at all. So far they haven’t hurt me, not reached out and torn my skin, burrowed into my head with a power drill. They’re in my head but it’s all inside, it hasn’t broken through the bone yet one way or another—and it’s what happens when it does that worries me. But maybe it’s not sick, maybe Jessie’s right, there shouldn’t be any boundaries. Maybe incest is safe sex in the world of AIDS.

But I’ve got to move forward, I can’t just sit back and let it all run away from me. I need to know what’s happening, it’s worse not knowing. And at the moment, I don’t know. At the moment, Dad and Jessie are playing charades for Mum’s benefit, and maybe for mine—does Dad know I know? Jessie won’t stop. Even if Dad started it, she won’t stop. However it started, this is too dangerous for her to want to give it up. I could see Dad chickening out—maybe—though he’s a lot like Jessie, she took his madness and amplified it. But not Jessie. I’ve got to stop it.

So I’m looking for clues. I’m alone in her room feeling a charge in my heart as scary as if I were committing a real crime. I’m sweating with the excitement, leaving little damp patches where my soles have been, but it’s too urgent to put some shoes on now or to grab some jeans to stop the trickles running down my legs. She’s a few feet away, diagonally down in the garden, and she’s extra-sensitive, Jessie. If I’m not careful, her antennae will prick and she’ll know better than me what I’m looking for and whether she has anything to fear from what I might find.

The room isn’t a mess but somehow it isn’t tidy either. I pass it all the time and yet now it feels more foreign than ever, I’m trespassing, I am the intruder. The bed’s rumpled and she’s left a pile of her jewelry in the middle of it, some of the stuff she makes herself—all spikes, teeth and coils, like a tribal punishment—and the rest is stuff that Mum has given her or men have given her or she’s stolen. Her cardboard boxes are all around the room, waiting to go back to London and art college, and there’s a new picture stuck on the window, cutting down on the light coming in through the small panes, giving the fleeting impression of a shrine. I haven’t seen it before and it’s amazing, a head-and-shoulders portrait of Jessie, clumsy, like a graffiti cartoon, yet it’s her, there’s something in the daubed mouth and slashed eyes which is Jessie when all the hunger’s there, when nothing is enough, she can’t push herself far enough. It’s signed ‘Sonny’ and there’s the Greek infinity symbol underneath the name. It makes me feel strange, that someone else can see her like that, paint her that clearly. It makes me feel as if she’s watching me now, watching my smallness as I slide out the drawers of the old dresser which still has the lace cover that was here when we came, part-buried now under a pile of Jessie’s make-up and CDs.

I go through the drawers quickly: two filled with clothes, nearly all black, some underwear, boxes of tampons, unopened packs of tights and ankle socks, a tin of oil pastels and scalpels, more make-up. The bottom drawer has a different character to it, stashed with Jessie’s shoes and belts and two packs of condoms and a pair of what look like elbow-length black rubber gloves that I didn’t know she had, plus a buff colored envelope which may be the treasure I am seeking—letters, information, evidence. But there’s nothing inside of much use, just some unwritten postcards from various galleries, empty envelopes with foreign postmarks and pointless messages scrawled in a variety of hands—‘The burglar alarm just went off, LB’ ‘Keep crossing the Albert Bridge’—and books of matches from cafés and bars I’ve never even heard of.

I shove it all back in and go back to the drawer above, drawn there suddenly by the tin of crayons and blades. It doesn’t fit somehow. I take out the scalpels and dig underneath, the crayons rattling against the box. There’s pencil shavings and other shit at the bottom, but there’s also a folded-up wadge of paper which when I open it out contains cocaine. I taste it. I’ve had it before—I think. I was never sure if it was the real thing. This seems to be, and this is something—the fact that Jessica keeps cocaine in her bedroom might be something, but it’s not what I’m looking for. I’m not sure what I’m looking for but I’m looking. I fold it up and put it back, my tongue wiping my teeth, numbed.

The reggae pumps up from the garden again after a pause in which I die for a moment and Jessie changes CDs. I glance at the picture of her, which seems bored now, as if I’m wasting her time. I close the drawers of the dresser and look around, deciding that to go through the cardboard boxes is just an impossible task. Trying not to let the floorboards creak too much, I go down on my knees and peer under the bed, my ear and nose brushing against the slightly sour-smelling old rug which, like everything else, came with the cottage.

There’s nothing under there, just more shoes and a heap of Jessie’s paintings, all different sizes and scraps of paper piled up, the bigger ones on top sagging over smaller ones underneath. I pull them out, disturbing a spider which nearly scares the shit out of me. I would have left them where they were but the one on top is just weird. In fact, it’s a very dull picture by Jessie’s standards. No figures, no flesh, no pain. Most of Jessie’s pictures are like her—all impact. She wants to worry you, she wants to get you going. This one does, but in a different way. It’s just a railway line, wasteland, dingy houses, under a drunken mackerel sky—but it’s my railway line, my sky, my London. It’s like looking at a moment in time that was mine, not hers, and I’m fucked if I know how she knew about it. Jessie doesn’t see like this, I’m sure of it. She’s too busy being Jessie. So why did she paint it? Am I that transparent? Does she break into my thoughts while I’m asleep?

I quickly sort through the others to see if there are any more little surprises for me. The paper is mostly stiff with paint and smells funny, dry, powdery—memories of flames licking the art department stockroom. There are some houses on top, all done in Caribbean colors but without the brilliance of the head-and-shoulders of Jessie that Sonny or whoever it was did. Still, this all comes as news to me—I didn’t know Jessie did houses, I didn’t know that anything that couldn’t sweat or fuck interested her. There are a couple of collages in the middle, cut out from magazines, the images small and oddly disturbing, twisted and contorted in intricate patterns, but they’re nothing special. I almost give up, then I lift a crumpled and dog-eared sheet of dull green paper and underneath find gold, though it doesn’t look like gold—it doesn’t look like anything much at first. It’s a chalk sketch, the soft, grainy white lines leading nowhere until I realize that the scribbled mass is hair and the rest of it takes on a solidity that is a cock in close up, extreme close up, sort of halfway through raising itself, neither limp nor properly hard, the foreskin still folded hoodlike over the end.

It’s not just this one—one would be nothing—it’s what follows that freaks me out. To see a prick the way she sees it, and she’s really studied them. This is something she cares about, these pictures aren’t for effect, she wanted to get at something. There’s a whole stash of them and the detail turns me cold. It’s too much.

Whose are they? Is it all the same one? A couple have a hand in them, beautifully drawn, drawn better than I thought Jessie knew how. The prick—or pricks—are unidentifiable, but the hand is Dad’s. The skin is old, older than Nick’s or any of Jessie’s friends (unless she has some buzz for older men that I don’t know about, anything is possible), but the clincher is Dad’s ring, clearly visible, tight up against a familiarly swollen knuckle. The hand isn’t doing anything in one of the pictures, but in the other it’s holding the penis and that makes me sick. It’s posed, he sat there or lay there while she sketched it, holding his dick for his daughter to draw. I’m stupid, I’m naive, I don’t know how the world works. Maybe all dads are like this? I don’t know him, maybe I don’t know anybody. There’s a gulf between us all—me and him, Jessie and me, Mum and me—but it won’t swallow me up like I want it to, it won’t open its jaws wide enough to take me in, it just makes me feel more outside. I can’t feel the horror enough, it’s a failure in me—I want it to hurt and it won’t. Not enough.

The music has stopped. I feel panicked again—Jessie could be on her way up here now. I leap up and cross to the window, the pictures heaped on the floor in two piles—the prick pictures and the others. Down in the garden, Jessie is still in her deckchair, sitting with Mum and Jake like a normal daughter, soaking up the sun. No danger. But there’s a fourth figure, the old woman from the village, standing by the wall on the road side, staring at Jessie’s brazen bare tits with evil eyes and cackling to Mum with words I can’t hear but can imagine. Mum is mediating in her best fashion, playing it quiet and slow, and Jessie’s obviously enjoying the old bint’s nuttiness, though she looks just a little uneasy.

The fact is, although the old woman is something of a local curiosity, she’s part of a trend. We’re not really liked here—not really. They’re polite and all that, but we don’t quite fit in, not even among the other aliens, the rebaptized city dwellers who’ve come to the country to renew their bigotry. We’re a little too odd, a little too private—already I know that I’m going to have to put up one hell of a show at school to convince them that I’m a real scum-bag, it’s something I’ve worked for, not simply my birthright. We haven’t taken down here as a family and, quite frankly, I’m not surprised.

I feel safe now. I feel in charge—a moment’s pause makes all the difference. I gather up the prick pictures and push the others back under the bed. This is going to give Jessie something to think about. When she finds what’s missing, she’s going to shit a brick.

It’s my game now and we’re going to play by my rules.

Jessie’s room again. It’s dark, two o’clock in the morning and everyone’s asleep except me. Her windows are open, the curtains half drawn to let in some air, though there’s a stillness in the

room to match the stillness outside. No sounds, no dog barking, no village traffic, not even a far-off owl or twittering bat or any of those country sounds you’re supposed to be able to hear. London is not like this. In London, there’s always someone walking the street, a thug, a partygoer, some poor homeless sod whose life is now a can of Carlsberg, a filthy coat over his face and his hand down his pants trying to scratch away the lice. This village is dead, it makes me care about nothing. I just want to get out, I don’t care what the rest of my life is like as long as it’s not lived here.

Jessie is sleeping in her bed, her face turned toward me. She’s asleep. I can’t but she can, that’s how it works. She looks a step ahead of me even in sleep, her mouth curled down and open slightly over her teeth, ready to launch any argument I might present into space and convince me that nothing is what it seems. The pictures must still be under the bed—the ones I left. I don’t know if she knows I’ve got the others yet, but if she does she’s given no sign of it. I hesitate, standing over her, scanning the room in the darkness.

Mum and Dad are asleep on the other side of the landing and I don’t want them to hear me. I especially don’t want Jake to hear me. I’ve pushed the door shut but have wedged one of Jessie’s shoes between the door edge and the frame. I’m wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts but I’m sweating despite the fact that a chill blade of fear is working its way between my bones, making me feel that this is a mistake, I should forget about everything and turn a blind eye, things can only get worse for me.

But that’s what I want. If I’m stuck with it, it must be, right? I must want life to get worse, it’s only by getting worse that we’ll get away from here and everything will change. Jessie, you make life difficult for me. I fucking worship you and you mess us all around. You lie there sleeping like a perfect being, immune to the chaos you create, and I have to decide what to do. There’s no one to turn to on this, so I’m blaming you because you’re the only one I can reach.

There’s no light in my hand but I switch it on. The glare is powerful, blinding, the heat instant. I ram it in your face—spit it out, make your promises and your repentance! She’s only half awake and already I’m slapping her hard, sharp, a quick blow across one cheek, a heavier one across the other. The cut is still on her mouth where I scratched her on the beach. I should have scratched harder. She won’t understand unless I can make her feel the pain—and I can’t feel any until she does.

I take her by the shoulders and shake her. She lifts herself off the bed, bleary-eyed, listening to what I’m saying. If only I had that light I could press it in her face, sweat it out of her, make her see what this is doing to me, to all of us as a family.

She sits up. I shove her back. ‘You’re weird, Tom,’ she tells me. ‘It’s not happening now. Go to sleep. I won’t let it hurt you.’ Why should I believe her? ‘Have you told Dad I know?’ ‘I’m not crazy.’ She sits up again, brushing me aside, turning and digging a determined elbow into her pillow. ‘Of course I haven’t.’ Her voice is a whisper, hoarse, sharp, she wants to get rid of me. I sit on the bed. She lies back wearily, keeping her arms above the sheet which is her only covering, pushing it down to her navel to cool off, maybe to reinforce the suggestion that she wants to be left alone to sleep. ‘How can I trust you?’ I ask. ‘I want you to say it’s stopped, but how can I ever believe you again?’ ‘You’ve got to find a way.’