The War Zone (15 page)

The rain stops. Jessie goes out to see Caz, which is the first signpost, because Jessie and Caz aren’t that close, Jessie doesn’t turn to Caz for anything much other than a cover for seeing Nick or, if this is it and I know it is, for this.

It’s six o’clock. The TV’s on, the news. Jessie goes out and for ten minutes or so, nothing. Mum’s feeding Jake. The news drones on. Dad’s washing up—this is really significant, this is pre-emptive guilt, not that he never does it, but not at this time of day, more likely first thing in the morning when he gets up. It’s all coded. Not one action is simple, unconnected. It’s all part of the dream I’m moving through, every detail dull with reality, I’m being tested, this is all a test, a run-through but soon my real life will start and that will seem like a rehearsal for something else, too.

Where is Jessie now? She’s been gone twenty minutes, maybe more. She could be anywhere in the village. She could have met Nick at some prearranged spot and hopped straight on his bike, they could be in Sidmouth by now. But they’re not. She’s not. In my mind I can see her and she’s waiting somewhere, she’s between two stools, vacant, emptying her thoughts of any awkward emotional bonds she might have which could get in the way of what she’s about to do.

The local news begins. The telephone rings. A signal? I want to get it, but I can’t reach, I’m too far up, I’m on an elevated column, totally remote, looking down at my family in a zoo, running through the corridors. I can’t reach out to touch them or anything near them. I’m moving, getting higher all the time, more and more precarious.

It’s for Mum. Dad plays with Jake while she talks. How can he do that? If this is it, how can he play with Jake one minute and then—? He looks relieved when Mum hangs up. Far away, he looks relieved. She takes Jake. ‘Who was it?’ he asks. He’s not really interested. A friend of hers from London who’s just had a baby too. He picks up a newspaper, puts it down, turns a half circle, looks at Mum, tit out to Jake, looks away. His head is below me, at the foot of my column; I could drop a rock on it. ‘I’m going for a run,’ he announces, glancing out the window. ‘It looks all right out now.’ These words are coded. Listen to the radio, a state of war exists but only I know it. ‘I’m out of shape. Do you know where my sports socks are?’

He leaves little to chance, my dad. Before he goes out, hairy legs looking too old or too hairy for synthetic blue running shorts, his face wearing an odd, slightly puzzled, slightly pained expression, he tells Mum he’s not taking a key, will she be here? Of course she will. Where’s she going to go? Take Jake for a drink? He looks at her for a moment longer than necessary before jogging out the door and then I watch him, a forty-year-old man, or early forties or whatever he is, pumping away, running over bumps and gravel and grit, running steadily up the climbing village road, a steep overgrown grass verge on either side, the hill and the cliff ahead, the sky orange and purple, stretched out with cloud, on fire after the rain. I watch him. His mouth turns grim with the effort, he stumbles a little over a ditch then rights himself, not losing pace, running because at the moment he thinks he’s got something, he can’t recognize the taste of shit in his mouth.

And then I follow.

It’s my place. Not right here, not the shelter, but this stretch of hill and the cliff is important to me. It can be so fucking beautiful, it is now—it’s just that they’re inside together and I’m right when I really would have liked to be wrong, I would have liked something to scramble it all up and say, ‘Look how stupid you’ve been, you arsehole, you joke, you waste of space.’

I’m cold. There’s no wind, it’s August, the sun’s still highish, and I’m numb, no sense in my fingers or my back, it won’t come back, I know it, I can feel where the nerve cords have severed themselves, my body is crippling itself to match my mind.

I can taste metal in my mouth. Everything’s metallic. The fields are liquid gold, even the sheep, but it’s not a pretty color, it’s not like one of those shitty commercials where everything has the same quality, where cow crap would look as glorious as a steaming plate of instant anything. My body is wrecking itself, molding itself into the twisted shapes cars make when they run under a lorry. The camera in the bag is one more part of me, screwed up in supermarket plastic, incomplete. I remembered the tiny lithium battery. Even though it was in my hand, I couldn’t feel it and I kept telling myself that I’d forgotten it but I hadn’t, it’s here.

Dad walked some of the way. There’s this prize at the end of it for him, his daughter waiting with wide-open legs, and still he can’t make it, he can’t run it, he has to take breathers every now and then. He didn’t look back once. Maybe that’s part of his deal with whatever drives him, not to look back, but I was there and I just hope to fuck he felt something was following him, I hope he felt a little uneasy, a little dirty about this.

They’re in there. Jessie must have got here first, I didn’t see her enter, but she’s there, I can sense her as much as hear her voice. I’m outside, on the ledge, moving like a ghost despite my paraplegic body. I’m careful. Having come this far, I want to get it now, I want to nail it, I don’t just want to disturb them and get some fucked-up, feeble excuse.

I breathe. I touch the concrete wall of the shelter, my numb fingers resting on it, telling me from a long way away that it’s chill beneath what’s been warmed by the sun, drawing the dampness out from inside, trying to touch what’s there, to know what they feel. I move around, sucking in as I dodge past the light slits, wanting to look but knowing I must wait for the farthest one, the one that’s covered. Every inch, every step seems to produce a million sounds all orchestrated at once: the brush of my jeans on the wall, the wet rustle of the bushes being drawn aside, the slow thud of a misplaced foot hitting the earth.

I’ve got the camera in my hand, and even though it’s small, it’s an unnatural weight throwing my balance off—the ledge is narrower than I thought. I breathe carefully. I do everything carefully. Something sharp, a thorn or something, scratches my arm and makes me want to cry out, but I stifle it and when I look and see my skin bleeding it seems fine, I can’t feel it, it should bleed some more.

Finally, I get to where I want to go, I lower myself into the bush by the stone slit, holding everything, bracing myself and the damp branches to minimize the noise. Down below, the beach huts glow in the sun, looking less ropey than they do usually—hard, distinct shapes to fall on to. Would it hurt very much? I’d like to know how it feels, I’d like to see myself splodged all over their peeling paint and weather-stained roofs.

I can’t hear anything, that’s what worries me. The seagulls have stopped, I can’t hear the sea up here and whatever insects there might be have shut down suddenly or died or are colluding with Jessie and Dad to make my presence known. That’s what worries me—I can’t hear them, I can’t hear what they’re doing inside. Are they listening for me now, do they know I’m here and are crouching together, waiting for the moment to surprise me, ridicule me, make me the fool, the criminal?

I look. I press my eye to the slit and look. It’s real. It’s nothing. They’re in there together, two strangers, my sister and my dad, people I don’t know. I know every line on their bodies but I don’t know them. Jessie has her back to me. Dad’s face is wrinkled and shadowed, he needs a shave, I could touch that skin, tear it like the rubber mask it is.

I’m outside. Outside again. They’re in there and they’re kissing, or anyway he’s kissing her, that’s why I haven’t heard anything, nothing to hear. They’re in that shithole and they are kneeling, shins buried in the scummy torn mattress, bodies pressed together, praying in the half light, eating each other’s faces, slobbering and sucking, spit running down their chins. Jessie’s got her jeans on but they are half off, rumpled around her knees, her knickers a bit above, the crease marks visible even by the light in there, ugly grooves cut into her skin, the elastic somehow making everything seem a mistake—her body, her life, this.

Dad’s still got his shorts on, but his T-shirt is off, spread on the mattress behind Jessica, presumably to lie down on, to create some kind of a barrier between them and the spongy, infected foam. He’s clutching at Jessie’s back, shoving her shirt up, forcing the flesh into two vertical folds which he holds as if he wants to hurt her, he must do, she doesn’t have that much flesh to spare.

And then someone comes. A voice calls a dog, whistles, ‘Here, boy! Come here!’ Tensing, I duck down, shrinking into the bush, willing the animal not to come near, not now, not after all this. I put the camera down, not even sure if it’s of any use—even if this arsehole goes away—they haven’t said anything yet, I won’t get any kind of real image in there and maybe all they’ll do is mumble and fuck, it won’t mean a thing.

It’s a man, not anyone I know. I can just make him out as he steams up the hill, bloody singing to himself now, the dog nowhere to be seen. He’s about ten years older than Dad, his face is craggy, dull, I wouldn’t want him to be my father, and his hair is long, almost on his shoulders, he looks ridiculous. He’s nothing, he’s not important to me, so long as he goes away. The dog is still out of sight, but it could be anywhere, it could be nosing about right in front of the shelter—there’s a whole area I can’t see from here. I can imagine it, cocking its leg by the entrance, scenting something odd inside, sticking its mutt in, seeing them there with those puzzled dog eyes, baring its teeth, ripping my father’s balls off with one swipe. And what are they doing, Jessie and Dad? They must be every bit as alert as me, more so. Are they pulling their clothes on, nervous, excited? Or are they frozen like me, waiting for this to pass, knowing it will, it must?

The man walks by, his pinky-brown trousers taking the steps cut into the earth like clockwork, his hand slapping the dog’s coiled chain-link leash against them as he climbs. I never see the dog. It must pass out of my line of sight because I hear him shouting—decades later—while I’m still keeping covered, warning it not to go too near the edge.

Time passes. I cannot move. My life can just end here, that would be fine. There’s nothing. I’m nothing.

I force myself forward. I have to be strong now, if only because I need something to get me from this moment to the next. They are doing what they’re doing and I can stop them, I believe that, but whether it matters any more is something else. Don’t think, just move—move arm, move leg, get back to the crack in the concrete, my window, made for me. Lift the camera, turn it on, I don’t care if they hear me, I don’t give a shit, I could whistle a tune, blow snot through the slit, this is playtime, we’re all mad.

They had pulled their clothes back on, but they must feel safe now. Safe and scared. Turned on, I don’t know. Maybe they don’t care either. I don’t even use the camera properly, I just point and shoot blindly, but they carry on anyway, caught up in their own little world, their own little performance in the middle of a shithole.

My sister talks. I try to listen, to know what she’s thinking, but it’s just mechanical, an instruction: ‘Don’t! Bend back a bit, you’re hurting me.’

Her body seems at odds with my father’s. Each time one of them moves, it seems to throw the other one off. ‘Kneel,’ my father says. He seems to be having trouble balancing. He pulls his shorts off, getting them caught on one foot. His prick doesn’t seem so surprising this time. It just looks ridiculous, it just makes my stomach turn.

I must be sick, watching this. I must really be sick. I shouldn’t be here. Whatever they’re doing, I shouldn’t be here, but it’s my right, I’m part of this too, I want to know what to think when I burn them in their beds, when I smash the camera down on their heads.

‘Your stomach’s going,’ Jessie says, quite nastily. She’s right, it is. She pulls her jeans back down. She could get out of them, but Dad stops her, makes her keep them rolled halfway down her legs.

‘Turn over, OK?’ he says.

She twists, turning herself with her hands, keeping herself up so she’s kneeling in front of him, hands on the ground, off the mattress, looking my way for a moment—does she see me?

He shuffles closer to her, moving on his knees, planting his legs firmly on her jeans, recoiling for an instant when he kneels on something hard, her jeans buttons or maybe her keys, I hope they dig straight into his fucking nerve. He forces her legs apart, although they can’t go far, pulling her to him, his hands on her hips, maneuvering her bottom so that that stick prick ducks down between her cheeks.

‘And you still don’t eat enough,’ he tells her, pushing, shifting his weight from one knee to the other, working on her, leaning forward over her. ‘Otherwise, you’re fine.’

I feel dizzy. My ear throbs, a muscle in my neck pulses. I can’t breathe, but when I do it’s fast. Everything is different from how you imagine it to be. I can’t see, but I know what he’s doing, where he’s going.

She doesn’t answer him. Jessie’s mouth is open, half grimace, half pant, like a dog, like her eyes, which are wide open, button bright, like the bitch she is.

The camera falls because I don’t have the guts to jump. It’s like everything else: disappointing. I chuck it out but it’s no distance, it falls back in and knocks against the side of the hill, not even rock. It hits earth and bounces a bit, then comes to rest still in one piece behind the beach huts, where I hope some fucker finds it.

I start back to the cottage, which is not my home, which is one more cell, another shithole, but I turn, hesitating, thinking I should storm right in there and confront them with it, see the look on

their faces as they try to pull apart, dog on dog, I know what it is now—except I wouldn’t know what to say and I don’t have the strength to hurt them as much as I want to, there isn’t that much strength in the world. I can see them dead but I don’t know how, all there is in front of me is a blurring pitted grass field, no gun or knife or brick, I need someone to lay the weapon out for me, guide my hand, show me what to do. I can’t even walk, I just stumble, not wanting to go anywhere. There is no one. I am totally alone, I realize that, and one day I’ll die. I just wish it could be now.