Alexander Stuart: The War Zone: 20th Anniversary Edition

So, in an instance of life reflecting art, I have now experienced (without the car crash, thankfully) something of what my fictional family in The War Zone experience at the beginning of the novel.

I learned that you definitely should not cut the umbilical cord until a qualified medical professional is present – but I hope that, over the years, I have learned much else besides.

Two pictures of England: I know which one I’d choose.

North London. The Harrow Road. I’ve cycled up here from the poncy foreign calm of Bayswater. Two black kids have just tossed a woman’s shopping bag off a bus, then jumped after it. They don’t want what’s in it, they just don’t want anything to stand still.

A plastic carton of eggs hits the pavement near the relics of a second-hand furniture shop. Squeeze-wrapped sausages vanish under a car tire. My bike scrunches across a box of cornflakes and one of the kids chucks a loaf of bread at my face. It’s amazing, the punch sliced white can carry.

‘Fuck off!’ I shout.

‘Fuck you, Maurice!’ the other kid yells, making the name sound French and faggoty. A ketchup bottle buzzes past my ear and smashes in the road.

‘Maurice?’ I wonder. I pedal harder as both of them come after me, one on the pavement, the other dodging the traffic to try and catch hold of my rear mudguard. I turn two corners and wheel down a street pitted with ruts and pot holes, then slide through a piss-smelling alley between dark houses and come out on waste ground. The boys will find me if they want to, but I don’t think they’re that motivated.

I take a breather and stare out over the view, my pulse racing. Through a wire fence and down an embankment, railway tracks stretch into the distance. A single line curls off at one point into a shed half buried by the shadow of the road bridge. Nearby, the gravel under the sleepers is stained with rust, a color you don’t see much of in Bayswater.

I’m on high ground and the land dips away from me across the tracks, toward the poky back gardens of terraced houses. Their scraggly lawns and washing lines edge on to a dumping ground littered with rotting mattresses, a wrecked pushchair, black rubbish sacks, the scarred remains of a fire.

Above all this hangs a big expanse of sky, blood red where it touches the backbone of the houses, spilling out overhead into a great, glowing fishtank of orange and blue. London is wonderful, I love it. It’s alive, spreading out before me, old and new, humming like the railway track, telling me everything’s great, I can do anything here – if only we weren’t moving next week.

Picture Number Two. Devon. The English countryside, as green and untouched as you can get it. Well, at least Devon has some balls. It’s a little bit wild, not all afternoon tea and morons who actually believe what they hear on BBC radio. But it’s not the city.

We are on the river, Dad, Jessica and me, piled into a canoe. We’ve had no sleep. Our new baby brother has just been born this morning, and we are celebrating. At least, I think that’s what we’re doing. I, for one, am so wired by the night and the incredible sunshine we’re having and by what happened to the car that the details tend to be a little blurry. Of course, it could be the wine. Dad brought a bottle of wine, so he had no option but to share it with us.

What did happen with the car? When we left it wherever we left it, its nose was all punched in, like a prizefighter down on his luck. Did that happen before the baby was born or after? I’m not sure. The last twenty-four hours seem to have got all twisted, so that today still feels like yesterday and the football match I watched on TV last night when we were all so restless might have been this morning after the birth but before this drunken cavort on the river.

Actually, I’ve had very little of the wine. Dad and Jessie polished off most of the bottle. It always tastes like petrol to me, but I love the burn in the stomach, the buzz in the head.

We are drifting under a bridge now, using a paddle to avoid scraping against the moldy brickwork on one side. The air down here is dark and dank and cooler than in the sun – it’s a different atmosphere, a place where bats and water rats hang out.

As we emerge back into the light, a hail of small pebbles hits the water around the canoe, thrown by three kids, a little older than me, a little younger than Jessie. They whistle and shout at her, not bothered by Dad’s presence, asking if she isn’t too hot in her bikini. They seem very keen to draw her attention to something on the water, one of them curving a cigarette packet through the air to splash down close to the object in question. I stare at it, puzzled at first by what looks like an old surgical glove – or a monkey’s bulbous arse at the zoo. Then I realize the truth: it’s a condom, swollen with water (and milk or something, I don’t want to know) and tied like a balloon. Jessica smiles darkly and looks back at the boys, insects all, waving and jeering. They haven’t a clue. They haven’t a clue what they would be tangling with if they tangled with my sister.

This is the picture I’m stuck with, then: Devon, tranquil Devon, the Devon we have moved to, maybe not as tranquil as it used to be, but too bloody tranquil for me. Rubbers in the river are nothing – I want the scum of London, turds in the doorways, the stench of telephone kiosks, the heat from a burning car. London looks beautiful with all that stuff. Everything’s falling apart, but still the city has splendor. The country, well, the country doesn’t know what to do with itself any more. It doesn’t even know how to be healthy: the water we’re paddling through must be thick with invisible pollution, radioactive fallout and yet –

And yet Jessica has just slipped out of the canoe to swim in that muck. It’s clear enough, even the green and slimy weed three feet down is visible, but it feels too warm to me. English water is never warm, not outside, not without the help of some factory somewhere, pumping out hot waste – or a minor cockup at the nearest reactor. But there’s no time to think such thoughts. Something else is happening, something I can’t put my finger on but which leaves me feeling disturbed. Perhaps I’m just tired, confused, heat-hazed?

We have turned a bend in the river and are well out of sight of the boys on the bridge. The trees here grow close to the water, their branches almost meeting overhead so that the sun shoots a web of light across us all. Jessie is swimming close to the canoe, her back flashing in the triangles of sun, her skin browner than I ever manage to get. She kicks hard, reaching awkwardly behind her to untie her bikini…

But wait a minute. None of this is going to mean anything unless I can make you understand how weird we all felt that afternoon, how watching a fresh little bastard come sliming into the world from the collective pool of your family blood makes you think about things you might otherwise not choose to consider. We felt close, all right, but it was a closeness that cut through the bullshit of family life and suspended the rules. I’m talking about honesty. And, you know, when you get down to it, honesty – life without the lies, the protective film of accepted behavior – is bloody dangerous.

Three o’clock in the morning and the family is on the road, Jessie wearing sunglasses, tight black jeans and a T-shirt that doesn’t quite fit. She’s developed well, Jessie has. If she wasn’t my sister, I could take a lot of interest in equipment like that. But the sunglasses? I think it’s the hospital – she doesn’t want to be seen there looking like someone’s daughter. Maybe she’s out to score one of the doctors, I don’t know. I’m scared of those places, too. Scared of the power they have over you, the way they stomp all over you with their jack-boot-administration mentality, leveling everyone to cases, to broken arms, drug overdoses, pregnant bellies. They know it. They revel in it, the control, the right to tell you they don’t give a fuck who you are, what unique traits of character you may possess; you need them and they know it, so don’t come the smart dick around here, sonny.