Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

Dad swings around to grab his tire, but John is already rolling back out, and the Prick has to let go or get his fingers mashed under the mudguard. He follows him outside, but gets thrown by Toe-rag, who drives straight at him, yelling, ‘It’s Larry-boy! Watch out, the dirty old sod’s getting it out!’

I just stand and watch as my father flings himself out of the path of the bike and recovers his balance with surprising speed. Jessie is at the door, but he shouts at her to stay back, and for once she listens. He picks himself up in the middle of the madness, looking crazed himself, his face grey in the lingering smoke, the bikes spinning around him in a field of dazzling flashes and burns, lights streaking past the windows and door of the kitchen as Nick and his crew try to scare the Prick shitless, running their bikes at him in kamikaze collision courses across the tiny lawn.

The Prick stands there, enjoying the chaos, ready for this, as if it’s something he’s been waiting for: steeling himself to lash out at the furies or whatever are circling him, like the hero or poor diseased god he has been forced to play in some mental Greek myth.

Jessie has been yelling pointlessly at Nick to go away, and there’s the faint peep of a siren audible in the brief lulls between the roaring of the motorcycles, but Dad doesn’t want any help from anyone – he wants this fight for his daughter’s cunt – and he dives side-on at Nick, taking him by surprise, knocking the bike over and throwing himself on top.

‘FUCK OFF OUT OF HERE, THE REST OF YOU!’ he screams, his head jerking around to show that he’s ready to take on all comers, and then he lands a punch right on Nick’s face as Nick struggles up, scrunching his nose down with a force that shocks me – its bite, the pleasure the Prick takes from it.

Jessie is through the door in an instant, and I follow.

John and Toe-rag are down on him now with their bikes like a ton of bricks, and one of them obviously whams hard into Dad’s back, because in a moment he’s on the grass, reeling, spitting air out and coughing, then dragging it back in as if he’s going to be sick. Jessie pulls him back from the tangle of Nick and his bike, and I must admit I help: though he’s still the Prick, part of me sides with him against these local wankers; the other wants to put the boot right into where he’s been nicely softened by the bike.

But it’s over. Nick doesn’t want to fight anymore – maybe it’s against his hippie principles to risk losing and try to finish it – and the others’ adrenalin is draining, as he wipes the dark jam flowing from his nose and picks up his machine. The siren is down the dip of the hill now, getting closer, and someone – it has to be Colin – points this out, so they leave the garden, the bikes revving and bouncing over the tree roots at the gate, and take off up the road to the beach, John pouting his rubber lips and waggling his tongue back at us in a totally obvious fashion, while Toe-rag’s accompanying animal grunts fade into the night.

There is a timeless gap before the police arrive, another moment of unreality in which I feel outside my life: the Prick and Jessie are just characters from a dream I keep returning to, and anything that happens is fine, because there is no code of behavior in a dream, you can fuck and maim and die and nothing touches you except the fear that everything is going to go on and on and you are going to come back here again.

Dad is walking now, rejecting Jessie’s and my support, holding his lower back and trying to straighten up, the effort making him sweat, streaks of it running down his lined madman’s forehead and swimming down the sides of his cheeks.

We make it to the kitchen as the piggy wheels draw up outside, and Dad takes my shoulder and presses it hard, and I’m not sure how he’s looking, there’s an effort to conceal something – pain, maybe, or regret – but he’s also trying to draw me into this by keeping me out. ‘Go upstairs,’ he tells me. ‘Don’t get involved.’ And there’s a kind of pleading there, like he needs my help. ‘I want to talk to you,’ he adds, and I think: Fuck you – but fuck them, too, the pigs.

And now Jessie’s all over the place, vicious suddenly – even her fear is loaded – and she pulls away from us both with a look of contempt, flashing resentment at me as if I’m the cause of all this, and she takes the board where she’s been chopping the onions, pronging the sausages, and opens the cupboard door where the waste bin is and rams it all, board and sausages, into the bin, saying, ‘You didn’t want a barbecue, did you?’

Then the police are at the front door and Dad answers, and I crawl up the stairs, letting them see me, letting them see I’m not interested in what they can do. Jessie is still in the kitchen, and one glimpse of the complacent family mug of the mustached copper on the step lets me know that she’ll take the fall for this – but not in any real sense: they’ll take one look at her, her fierce eyes and her belly button mouthing, ‘Fuck you!’ and they’ll put it down to boyfriend trouble that’s got a bit out of hand, and think the Prick’s a prick for letting her out like that.

And I’m right. It takes for ever and I wait in my room, waiting for one of them to come up and plant something on me – they don’t want us here, they know who we are: tourists, and sick ones at that – but they don’t even bother, they’re not even interested in asking whether I’ve noticed my dad boffing my sis lately and then taking it out on the local scumbags.

I hear the muffled voices, the Prick entertaining them in the living room – he knows how to handle tits like these: offer them a drink, nothing too obvious, they know you’re patronizing them, but they’ll play along anyway – and I peer out the window and see the car with its reflective stripe down the side, and the mad old cunt squinting at it, tottering past it on the other side of the road and nodding her head.

She’s probably the one who called them; I’d love to tell her what she’s really missing, sell her a season ticket to the shelter – ‘There, feast your eyes on that, you old cow!’ – she’d probably love it.

I’m right. I hear the mustached one’s voice in the hall, all forced cordiality, advising the Prick that perhaps the young lady should stay out of the local pub for a night or two so as to avoid any repeats of tonight’s little flare-up, and Pricko agreeing that that’s a splendid idea – but perhaps it might be more to the point if the local constabulary kept a watch on Nick and his companions and generally made life painful for them.

And Mr Bill times it perfectly at the door. He says, ‘You know, there’s only three people from London I’ve met that I’ve liked—’ and I can picture him standing there, his uniformed boyfriend already heading back to the car, leaving him to handle the local diplomacy bit. I bet Dad looks at him, wanting to get rid of him as much as I do.

The mustache flickers up, a suggestion of a smile, this is community policing – imagine what it’s like if you’re poor.

‘And now there’s you, sir. Good night.’

The door closes and there’s a pause and then the Prick’s feet on the stairs and he’s at my door – he must be feeling guilty, he must be feeling terrible, even the pleasure he took from creasing Nick’s nose can’t wipe away the strain that’s showing in his features now.

He comes inside, a hand on the door, hunched slightly from some evident difficulty with his back, his face grey and hollow, the lizard skin sagging, cracked and wrinkled, though he’s shaved tonight at some point – earlier, before the fun began. I stare at him and he keeps his hand on the door and I notice his trousers, dirty with grease and grass, and imagine the scruffily hairy legs inside – that sack of crap and cock that’s had Jessie must be ready to drop, wondering what went wrong.