Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

‘Oh, this is ridiculous.’

‘SAY IT!’

He’s like a robot – it means nothing to him:

‘… you’re fine .’

Nothing. I look at Jessie, try to imagine him banging into her, but instead think of Sonny peeing all over my face. What does it take? My hand with the knife is steady, but it’s going to shake soon. My other arm aches. I’m against the door and they are waiting there, on the bed, by the cot. I’m not as strong as they are – my dad is going to count on that in a moment – and still I’m pissing about.

Jessie speaks quietly. I think she wants to help.

‘Give me the knife. I’ll do it. I’ll kill him quite happily.’ ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ Dad says, and he laughs, his patience for sane argument exhausted, sick of the both of us.

I believe her. I rock slightly, gripping the red handle tight, my other fist clenched, and look at her properly for the first time since I came into the room. She is in a fine state, wrapped in Mum’s robe, her hair all tight and damp-looking the way it was that day in the bath, in the mirror, her smudged mouth set with a kind of manic determination that I think certain girls’ schools – I’ve seen it on her friends’ faces, though never like this – must teach.

‘I’ve been trying to find out at what point it changes,’ she says, and Dad leans back hard against the wall, banging his head in a sort of gesture of defeat, and pressing one hand down onto the pillow for support. ‘At what point do you give it all up – your daring, the link between how you live and how you dream? Dad’s got us–’ she turns on him with the kind of contempt I thought she only reserved for me, ‘–but we’re not what he wanted, we’re about two per cent of what he thought he was capable of.’

‘Right!’ says Dad, looking for a fight now, straightening his back as if he doesn’t fucking care how much it hurts anymore. ‘Is it just fear?’ Jessie’s hand reaches behind her, searching for something – the cot, a reference point. ‘Are you just afraid that what’s in you isn’t so very special? Or do you just bury it? You work and you fuck and you load it with trinkets, property, children. You half remember it and something happens, you get extra-daring one day, really charged with your own–’ she searches for the word, watching him, watching him listen to this and try to deny it in his head, ‘–essence, and you fuck me, but then you lose it again, you suffocate it, it’s dead, it’s worse than before.’

All through this her other hand has been toying with the belt, twisting the half-knot, untying and retying it, letting the robe slacken a little, then pulling it tight.

‘God, you’re fucked up!’ she says. ‘You’ll do this—’ And she turns and hitches the bathrobe up, sticking her bum out at us so we can see where she’s smeared it with lipstick or something, right down the crack, a violent, raging red. ‘You’ll stick your cock up my bum, but you won’t give me what I want. You won’t give me a baby!’

I feel winded. She’s knocked all the fight out of me. I stare at them both with a strange kind of concentration, watching under water, watching him move as she turns back to us, opening the robe and shaking it down from her shoulders to show something quite obscene and wrinkled on her belly. He grabs for her, but his movement is impeded by one hand sinking into the mattress for support, so that he has to reach out twice.

I start toward him with the knife, but Jessie is still talking, her eyes locked on mine, confusing me with my own guilt: this isn’t something I should see, we’ve run into each other in the middle of a dream, in a school corridor or in Sonny’s bathroom or on some weird sea wall with the water thrashing, and I’ve been watching her play with herself.

I step outside myself even as I lunge forward and see how guilty I am: I’m at fault here; I keep having these dirty thoughts.

‘I want him to make me pregnant, Tom,’ she says, ‘but that’s the one thing Daddy won’t do.’

‘ Jessie! ’ he screams, catching hold of the robe which is hanging from her elbows now, and tugging her to him. But I slash with the knife, throwing myself on the bed and getting close but not close enough, burying it deep in the duvet, the mattress, and dragging it back. He lets go of Jessie and pushes me off, his hand ramming into my skull with a blinding pain, so that I stumble back off the bed but manage to stay on my feet with the knife still in my hand.

He comes for me now and I move for his arm, his right bicep, not certain how much I want to achieve, but buggered anyway from anything more than a surface gash by his other hand swinging around to force my wrist up behind my neck, his strength – even though I’ve allowed for it – surprising me, it’s so long since we’ve tangled with each other.

The knife knocks against the door and he bellows, ‘ Drop it! ’ and I could laugh because Jessie is yelling ‘ Don’t! ’ – and I don’t know whether she means don’t drop it or don’t fight.

I try to floor him with a knee to his exposed groin, but he anticipates this and smashes my leg with his own, jarring me with the pain. ‘Stop this fucking nonsense!’ he says, trying to push my hand with the knife back, but I grab the handle with my other hand, cutting the soft pulpy bits of my fingers in the process, but bringing it down fast enough to stick him below the ribs with the blade.

And I feel sick. Suddenly everything looks different. I get the full belt of his breath in my face as he wheezes out, and I realize that I don’t want to hurt him like this. Some other way – but not like this.

His stomach is wet with blood, though I didn’t think I cut him that deep, and Jessie looks stunned, bending to support him, Mum’s robe still half off her, that thing on her stomach smudging up against him as she stares at me and says nothing more useful than ‘ Fuck! ’

I have an impulse to take my father and hug him, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I feel freaky, more wired up and frightened than ever, not sure what I’ve done. I want to stay but I want to run more and I pull open the door and look back at Jessie who has got Dad on the bed – there’s an awful lot of blood – and hear her say, ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t go now!’ but I’m down the stairs and the front door opens with the third tug and outside the day is starting. I chuck the knife back behind me, taking in the wrecked barbecue and the smashed table on the lawn like a still life in some crisp arty photograph, and race around the gate to where my bike is against the wall and run with it, hearing the chain spin and catch, feeling terrified and empty and realizing with a totally misplaced sense of shame that I’ve emptied my bladder in my jeans.

Ikeep moving, but there’s nothing behind me. Even before I am out of the village, the day seems disconnected from the night. The sun comes up and it’s like something artificial – the sky on a dimmer switch. The rush of birdsong sounds electronic, an extension of the sea’s interference noise, another track on the ambient CD to create the total effect. A farm harvester (or whatever it is) crawls uphill in front of me, blocking the road, moving even slower than I can pedal, its heavy machinery like sculpture: weird forms caked in a dried mud and dust that have nothing to do with the experience of my life.

I am back on the road to Exeter – three times in less than twenty-four hours, but the slog is druglike, I can deaden my mind through the sweat on my body, the ache in my injured arm and fingers as I grip the handlebars, pushing the pedals down/around/up, identifiable twisted bits of tree and broken bush approaching then vanishing behind me.