Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

I don’t know where to look. Her dress is pushed back now and between her hot, spreadeagled thighs is the kind of vivid detailing of wet cunt that even the magazines I buy never manage to provide.

‘Does it hurt?’ Jessie asks, a little girl again, gripping Dad’s arm as we all look on.

‘Yes,’ Mum gasps. ‘Yes, it does.’

She yelps, and I think we all move forward into the haze of sweat, motor oil and birth smells that hang over the open door. Dad takes Mum’s hand as something foreign pushes its way past her hole, and slowly a wrinkled curve of skin and bone becomes a head. My face burns, with what I’m not sure, either it’s the thought of those two French bozos being here to witness this, or the waves of realization that hit me concerning my own humble beginnings. It’s one thing to know that we were all born once, quite another actually to see a straggly ape take its place in the world as your brother (so this is the idea, is it, Mum, of having us kids along for the ride?), especially with all this nature around – collapsing trees, symphonic birds, the sun’s heat. It’s a shock to the system: my cells seem to recoil from the reminder of where they came from – and where they’re going to. For standing here, watching a new life take shape, watching the blood, the pain, watching my mother on her back like an animal, I understand for the first time in my life that I am going to die one day – we all are, Mum and Dad, Jessie, me, even the baby. It’s so obvious that it hits home like a hammer and yet it doesn’t depress me, fuck it, I can take it, I can live up to it, when it comes I’ll go fighting. I’ll take some life with me!

The kid is out now, squirming in the light, eyes peeling apart through layers of blood and muck, its mouth opening and closing but making no sound so that my mother urges Dad, ‘Quick, slap it, make sure it’s breathing…’

It is. ‘God, what a sound’ I say. Its wail seems filled with such rage and indignation that, I swear, already it’s blaming us for something.

Mum is laughing and crying at once. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘An alien,’ Dad says, wiping some of the gunk from the creature’s face. ‘A boy, I think… Right, it’s a boy.’ He stands back from it, turning to us, grinning like a witchdoctor, his hair and eyes alive in the morning light. ‘This is just the start,’ he says, staring at his offspring. His face contorts as he looks at it, getting ugly for a moment, almost scaring me, then brightening, grinning again. ‘It’s too late, skip,’ he tells it. ‘You’ve got your papers. You’re stuck here with the rest of us now.’

‘What the hell do we do with this?’ Jessie asks, touching the limp cord of flesh that connects our brother’s belly to a disgusting lump of liver and blood. (Funny to think that her navel had one of those once. And mine. Of course, Jessie’s is still on display, what’s left of it – a neatly curled little bump, protruding slightly from her soft tanned belly, beaming satellite messages at those French bastards.) ‘We can’t just leave it like that.’

‘That’s the beauty of hospitals,’ my father says. ‘They do all that for you.’

‘Tie it,’ my mother says, lying back exhausted.

‘With what?’

‘Find something,’ Mum says. ‘A shoelace…’

But we’re all wearing sandals or slip-ons. Then one of the French dickheads obliges with some kind of canvas cord from the back of their giant truck. They have been standing about through all this, unable to go but not able to do much either except cry when the fucking baby appears as if it’s one of theirs. Now, they take the lead. After checking that Mum can withstand a bit of movement, they trot around to the wrecked nose of the Bentley and start hefting it off the tree. Dad stands by at the open driver’s window and steers as he helps push it back to the verge of the road. It rolls on to the rough grass with a gliding, uncontrollable scrunch, then sits there, dead, useless, an expensive junkheap.

And the boys aren’t finished yet. Having cleared a path to the tree, they get the life roaring in that great shitpile of theirs, haul it up over the brow of the hill and aim its huge metal bumper at the heart of the oak. A belch of diesel, the rumble of literally man-sized wheels, then branches splinter and the metal bar takes whole chunks out of the timber, but nothing budges. The muscle-bound dick at the wheel spits past his vast side mirror, kicks the machine into lower gear and lets the engine burn itself into a frenzy of deafening, air-blackening meanness. Choking on the fumes, my father tries to stop the contest, aware that the last thing Mum needs now is this. He’s pissing in the wind. Even if they could hear him, these boys are determined. No tree is going to fuck with them and get away with it. The French choose their battles well.

It ends predictably. The tree doesn’t want to win, that’s its problem. It just lies there, taking a beating, letting the artic pound away at its bark. The driver is smart. Having failed to get it rolling head-on, he maneuvers the lorry perilously close to the dipped verge and pushes from the side. There is a glorious moment of doubt, when it looks as if the truck is going to tip over, rather than the tree move, but then something snaps in the tree’s resolve and it goes. With a sound like splintering beer crates, the trunk is shunted free of the road.

The rest is anticlimax. A timeless journey in the elevated cabin of that lumbering Eurogiant. These truckers don’t have it bad. Behind the driving cab, their sleeping space is like a budget hotel room: curtains, a washstand, a portable TV, a fridge full of plonk. And the art on the walls makes it interesting. If those girls are French – if those girls are my age, which they look – maybe I’ve been wrong about the race, maybe another trip is overdue.

Mum lies on the bed with her newborn. For a while there, she was glowing; now she just looks washed-out, eager to hit the hospital sack. Dad plays with the baby, teasing its tiny fingers and staring at it, trying to read its mind, trying, from the look of him, to leap inside its skull and get some answers. The kid just frowns, mistrustful of everyone for the moment, as well he should be. Jessie plants herself firmly next to Dad and the baby, giving the French boys nothing now, staring straight at them when they glance back with ugly scowls. And me? I’m all over the place. I’m knackered, my bones ache, but I’m flying. The morning feels great, sleep seems like a drug I’m not ready for, and I’m even getting to like the idea of having a kid brother.

‘Fuck me,’ I think. ‘This could get awfully boring.’

So we’re back in the canoe. Mum is in hospital, and we’re lazing on the water, trying not to think, which isn’t difficult. That slightly sick feeling you get in your stomach with lack of sleep goes well with the heat and the wine.

Dad and I are paddling. Jessie’s between us, doing a Cleopatra number, radiant in the sun on her barge while her minions sweat.

I dip my wood in the water, test its weight. I feel like everything’s fine, this is one of those times that is preordained. Nothing can cock this up, we’re all too powerful.

‘I could take more afternoons like this,’ I say generously.

‘God, he’s actually enjoying himself.’ Jessica’s voice is like a cool breeze behind me.

‘Don’t pressure him. Can’t you see he’s suffering withdrawal symptoms?’

I glance back at Dad, who is scratching his leg beneath his ridiculous Hawaiian shorts. ‘I’m not giving any ground,’ I warn him. ‘The country still feels like bullshit to me. It’s not real.’

Jessie prods me in the back. ‘You mean you get confused because you can’t tell the difference between a flower and a tree.’