Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

‘Nothing’s real,’ Dad says, ‘that’s part of the problem. I heard some Ministry of Defense wanker the other night, talking about how defense contractors had to learn what it was like in the real world. Everyone thinks that some other part of life is more real than their own, or that theirs is the only real world. They’re both equally dangerous points of view.’

‘What’s real to you?’ I ask him.

He thinks about that. This is an afternoon that makes you challenge ideas of reality. School’s out, everybody’s holidaying. Is anyone working today? Well, those hospital Nazis looking after Mother – all crisp linen and fluorescent faces. But they enjoy their work, stoking the boilers with anaesthetized patients.

Dad answers me. He sounds like a chum, not my father. I think we could get on well, if we could ever get rid of these family ties between us.

‘The fact that life goes on,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t stop going on – well, it might, but I wouldn’t want it to. And you two. No escaping you two.’

‘You wouldn’t last a minute without us,’ Jessica tells him. ‘And Mum.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

I can hear him smile.

We pass through a village, marvelously deserted on this weekday afternoon – but not in a cozy way, more as if the entire population had been wiped out and the buildings left standing. Radio One drifts hollowly from open windows and open doors of cream-grey Devon cottages and ugly new houses, full of themselves, full of premeditated, parceled country charm. A Ford estate car stands silent outside the confectioners-and-sub-post-office. A new bike is upturned against a wall, awaiting a puncture repair. The sun beats down, accentuating any cracks in the road visible from the river.

Then someone appears to spoil the illusion: an old woman, older than we allow them to live in London, wearing a cardigan – in this weather – over her faded summer dress. She calls across the street.

‘There’s fluoride in that water. They put it in for the teeth, none of us want it, but they put it in anyway.’

‘Not in the river, surely?’ Dad shouts.

She makes no move toward us, just stands in front of the shop next to the sub-post office, its windows empty save for a small yellow notice taped up inside.

‘The sheep drink it,’ she says. ‘They make sure we get it, one way or another. The sheep drink it, or we do.’

We stop paddling as we approach the village ford, where the water is barely deep enough to let us pass. The canoe scrapes the concreted bottom, but we push it on with our hands and float under a road bridge and away from the centre of town.

‘Why’d you only bring one bottle of wine?’ Jessie asks Dad, as we pass a dingy white shed, its paint peeling, a pile of abandoned oil drums outside. ‘I feel like getting smashed.’

‘That’s why.’

‘It’s not enough.’

She shifts her weight behind me, rocking the canoe. I turn to make a face. She is holding the empty wine bottle in the river, enjoying the push of the water against it.

‘You could,’ I point out, half complaining, ‘always try paddling.’ But she shakes her head, studying the bottle’s neck in her hand. She looks far away, like Mum does sometimes.

Then she looks around at Dad. Neither of us is paddling now. He is sitting, head back, cocked toward the sky, eyes closed.

‘Do you feel older…?’ She pauses, trying to pin down a thought in her mind.

‘He looks it,’ I offer, to help wake him up. He does and he doesn’t. He hasn’t shaved, so the slight sag of his jaw is usefully hidden by stubble. His hair is as wiry and uncontrollable as ever, but the skin around his eyes looks tired, dark and folded like a wary old lizard.

‘…or different?’ Jessie goes on. ‘Having a new son? I mean, it’s been a while.’

Opening his eyes to an impending collision, Dad quickly cuts water with his paddle to curve us away from the bank. He shoots me a look. ‘One of us ought to watch where we’re going.’ Then, to Jessie: ‘I feel – I feel like it’s time to let loose. You know what I mean?’

‘Was it like that with us?’

‘Was it? I don’t know. I was a different person then. You gave me my balls. I’d got one in! I felt on fire. I felt, “Piss on anyone who doesn’t think my daughter is the best thing in the world!”’

‘And me?’ I ask, thinking: let’s see how he handles this one. But I have to look away, because we’re about to hit a sapling growing right in the water. Trees seem to have it in for us today.

‘You I was just worried about. You were a forceps delivery, you came out with this great strawberry mark all over your face… I thought: it doesn’t matter, he’s healthy, that’s what counts, but already I could see you having a hard time. By that evening you were fine, it had gone, it was just the forceps that had done it, but you looked like a little bruiser.’

‘Still does,’ says Jessie.

We are approaching another road bridge. The banks here are steep and grassy, and there’s a smell of cow-shit from somewhere. Or horseshit – I wouldn’t know the difference, right? Jessie has taken the bottle out of the water and is rolling the wet glass over her skin. I know, because she tried it on mine. It’s not cold enough, that’s the problem. It’s not even cool – there is definitely something strange about this water.

‘I sort of wish Mum hadn’t wanted us there, last night,’ I say. ‘It’s going to make it harder being rotten to him.’

‘Dad…?’ Jessie asks. ‘Have you and Mum ever really had problems over us? Do we make it more difficult, if one of you wanted to leave?’

We’ve thought a lot about that, Jessie and I. Whenever serious bother has hit our household, we’ve nearly always been able to pin its cause down to one of us. Those nights when voices have been raised after we’ve gone to bed, when silence has seemed more threatening than a row, we’ve wondered: how does this measure on the scale of things? Most of our friends’ families are divorced or remarried or something; we’ve always felt like the odd ones. But you never know what’s coming. This move to Devon was long talked about, but no tempers were lost – except over me.

‘You want an honest answer?’ Dad says. We’re under the bridge now. There’s a smell of mould.

‘Yes.’

Dad pushes us off the brickwork with his paddle. ‘It depends on the time of day. It depends on how selfish you’re feeling.’

Then we’re out into the light, and pebbles are raining down on all sides. There’s a Durex in the water and some boys are taunting Jessie. I’m sure she enjoys it. A little further on, she slides out of the canoe and swims alongside, her turquoise bikini dazzling against the dull green fur of the riverbed.

The trees form a sort of cathedral around us. Sunlight plays on her skin, on her bruised shoulder (and my bruised head), as she unties her bikini top, then turns on to her back to let her tanned breasts bob out of the water. Her feet kick and she glides away, struggling to remove the other half of her bikini without touching the weed under her feet. Then she rolls over again and swims back toward us, evil intent in her eyes. She grabs hold of the canoe with one hand, hesitating only a moment before putting her full weight on it to tip us in.

‘You stupid bitch!’ I think, without malice, as I go under: I was just getting comfortable. But really it’s OK, the water feels good even if it is giving me cancer.

The canoe floats upside down. Jessie pisses herself laughing as Dad thrashes about, trying to locate the car keys (our other heap, not the Bentley, that’s definitely out of commission for a while) before remembering that they’re in the buttoned-down pocket of his shorts.