Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

I get up and go over to her. If the sister’s watching, let her wonder. I lean over her. I’m shaking. I’m ready to run. I can’t say what I’m going to say and stay.

‘You’re going to misinterpret this—’

My voice is tiny, it sounds girlish to me, someone else’s voice, far away.

‘It’s not going to help you, stuck in here alone with Jack—’

I touch her arm briefly, to convince me she’s there. The words won’t come. I don’t know what to say. Then:

‘Don’t trust him.’

I’m across the room before the words mean anything. I didn’t think she’d take me seriously, but her eyes look panicked – maybe it’s me she’s worried about, my games are getting crazier, Dad and me have come to blows?

It’s not enough, but it’s said. Her mouth opens with a question, but I’ve got the door open.

‘I’m sorry.’

And I’m home.

I’m knackered. The ride back has finished me, I just want to be dead, but as I approach the cottage, standing on the pedals to force my bike up the hill, I spot the Prick in the garden trying to get a fucking barbecue going. I skirt around and ditch the bike behind our wall, avoiding him and climbing in through a window so that when I walk into the kitchen where Jessie is, I can feel the pain smash into her chest when she turns and finds me there.

‘Christ, Tom!’

I’d like to spit at her gaping face as she stands there staring at me, but I’m too busy taking in the detail – the pronged sausages on the board, the chopped onion, the fork in her hand.

‘This is nice,’ I say. ‘Life goes on as normal. Mum’s in the fucking hospital with Jack and you two throw a party!’

‘God, you’re a shit.’ Jessie looks different: a little cowed, as if it’s all getting too much for her. Something’s been said in my absence – I wonder what? ‘One day,’ she says to me, ‘you’ll make somebody a lovely wife.’

I ought to punch the coiled little navel that is poking its ugly mouth in my direction from between her black jeans and black hacked-off top, but I’m distracted by a spark of life outside – the Prick pouring lighter fuel onto the barbecue coals. The flames cough hungrily, the smoke thickens and Jessie bares her tanned, deceitful neck at me, the hair bristling, color rushing there like what’s left when you take raw meat off a plate. She stares out the window and utters, in that dulcet, girls-school tone of hers, ‘Oh, fuck!’

I can hear what’s happening before I see it – the uneven blast of Nick’s motorcycle as he runs it at the stumpy tree roots guarding our path, the skid of his back wheel on the lawn as it churns up clumps of turf and throws them into the barbecue smoke. Then the sight of Nick’s leather jacket shining, his smooth, sharp face staring first at the cottage, then turning to deal with Dad – a doomy prick playing with fire, preoccupied by some inner hole, unprepared for this invasion of his sovereign state.

Nick looks different from when I first saw him at the pub – his hair shorter like Jessie’s, younger, as if he’s not caught up in the game everyone else is of trying to look older. He stops the bike and steadies it, two maybe three feet from the barbecue flames, the sputtering smoke wafting past him as Dad beats the tongs on an invisible drum, trying to adjust his mind to this confrontation.

‘My daughter doesn’t want to see you.’ The Prick’s voice swings clearly through the open door as Jessie goes to sort them both out. He sounds like any other uptight, reactionary prick on a summer’s evening – not the slobbering leech he is. He puts the tongs down on the grill and blocks Nick’s view of the house – and mine of Nick – by stepping in front of the bike.

But Jessie is already there, wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans and advancing toward Dad’s back as if he’s something she can walk through.

‘Brilliant move, coming here now, Nick – why couldn’t you call?’ Dad steps aside to look at Jessie when he hears her voice, his eyes hard, his face corrugating into a real bastard’s mask – the mask he uses on site.

‘Go back inside, Jessie. I’ll deal with this.’

The force of his anger surprises her – but not that much. ‘Let me talk to him, I can—’

‘I SAID GO BACK INSIDE, JESSIE!’

Now Nick is the voice of reason. He sits back on the bike, letting go of the handles, keeping its weight between his legs, his manner that of someone who has some kind of an ultimatum to deliver. ‘There’s no need for argument,’ he says, his soft voice accented with his country twang, yet tougher for a moment than either of them – ruthless in its decisiveness. ‘It will take us two minutes alone to find out if there’s even anything to argue about.’

Dad stares at him. He’d like to swat him, he’d like to smudge Nick’s fluids all over a rolled-up newspaper – I can see the fear in his eyes, the competition. ‘Don’t try to be reasonable with me,’ he says, acting the affronted father but taking it past the accepted limits, locked in a hostile, patronizing style that he brings his own evil twist to. ‘Reasonableness is an insult to my intelligence. I know you’ve fucked my daughter, and I want you out of my garden – now!’

I think Jessie gets a kick out of this. I think Jessie gets a kick out of seeing Nick’s astonishment at these words, even if the openness of them worries her just a tinge. I think – and this is just my feeling, right, I’m just a sick observer in all of this – I think Jessie would like to get down on the grass with Dad now and do him in front of Motorcycle Boy. But Dad’s said his piece and he’s obviously cheered by it, because he tells them, ‘All right, five minutes. You can say your goodbyes, tell your lies, and see if you can pull the wool over my eyes.’

He starts back toward the kitchen and I disappear fast. There is a truly ugly mood settling over tonight – he’s cracked, something’s snapped in him – and I want to be part of it, but at my own speed. The beauty of this is he doesn’t even know I’m home yet; he’s got that surprise to come. If I thought there was going to be some pain in the Prick’s countenance while he times them out there, I might hang around, but on this one he’s won – it’s already over, any fool can see that: Jessie just wants Nick to go.

Upstairs I lie on my bed, my legs like lead from the bike ride, and try to rest a moment, but Jessie won’t let me go. The window is open and I could get up and shut it, but I’m finished so I lie there in the half light – it’s darkening outside; inside it’s the same old Afghan bombsite – and hear their words, closer than I want them to be, the garden’s too fucking small, I’m between them, particled in the air displaced by their breath.

‘What’s going on, Jessie?’ This is said as if he’s got a right to know. Nick’s a trier – for a boring old hippie, he keeps on trying, but he’s losing my sympathy fast. He should belt her.

‘Don’t ask me. You started it.’ Sister, dear – definitely a bit defensive tonight. Could my warning to Mum have sparked a call? She’s stuck there in the hospital; maybe she’s had time to work things out?

‘Want to come for a ride?’ The Norton is switched off at the moment, but I can picture Nick’s hands on the key even as he doubts the point of this – he knows something, or thinks he does. He’s impatient for an answer.

Silence. I lie there but it’s no good: I have to see what’s going on. I stumble across the room, kick a chair leg and curse – I’d like to kick Jessie’s guts. The air at the window is warmer than it’s been all day. Everything’s weird. I can hear the sea – a low interference noise in the background, lapping around Britain, keeping us apart, sloshing around the cottage, keeping our nonsense in.