The War Zone Read Online Free

traffic, not a car on the road as yet, Jessie has gone back to ours to speak to Dad, and I’m thinking about football. I was watching a DVD of the 1986 World Cup before I went to bed this evening—earlier this evening, tonight, whatever, before I got up again for this gig. Not the final, but the crucial England-Argentina quarterfinal, which we fucked up as always. What wankers! We never pull out the stops until it’s too late, no wonder luck and the refs never shine on us. On screen, you can watch and watch Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal and, fuck it, you just know that if one of our boys had scored that way, he would have owned up. We’re strong on appearances, we Brits, I think we use it to mask something else—a lack of passion maybe, a deep-seated sneakiness that’s always liked putting the boot in where the bruises won’t show. We should have kicked the Argies anyway. Jessie comes over. ‘Dad wants us to find a phone and call for an ambulance.’
    ‘Is Mum all right? Has it happened yet?’ ‘Moron. We would have told you.’ Would they? ‘But we ought to get someone here, a doctor or something.’
    ‘It’s going to be dead easy, finding one of those around here.’
    ‘Well, let’s try.’
    ‘We’ll probably meet some nutter who’ll rape us both and bury us in a ditch. Devon’s full of wonderful people.’ But as we turn to go, we hear the first sign of civilization in ages—a lorry straining up the hill behind us, out of sight. Terrified that it’s going to come rolling over the top and straight into our family group, we run to flag it down. It’s moving on overdrive, a massive articulated Eurotruck which makes even the fallen oak look small. We stand in front of it, forcing the driver to stop, almost blown off our feet by the hiss of hydraulic brakes. The driver gets out, jabbering. He is young, tanned, French, wearing the kind of vest they just don’t sell over here. His companion follows, heavier-set, another Gauloise-smoking-beach-bum-muscle-prick. They both have arms like weightlifters. I can feel Jessie’s hormones humming beside me as she appraises them; I bet the boys are loving the shot of her navel they’re getting where her T-shirt doesn’t meet her jeans. Jessie’s French is a lot better than mine—I don’t have any—so she takes the lead. Predictably, it’s her they want to speak to anyway. They follow us, prattling and watching her arse quite blatantly in front of me, as we go over the hill back to Mum and Dad. The one word I recognize as we all come face to face with the tree and the battered Bentley is ‘ Merde! ’ The lads are clearly impressed. Either they haven’t been listening to Jessie or she’s got something wrong, because when they see Mum lying across the front seats of the car, her bare feet jammed against the doorframe, her sweat-soaked maternity dress barely covering the rain forest between her legs, they actually look embarrassed. Of course, I am too—a bit—and not just because they are here. Mouths which moments before had smirked with Gallic lust suddenly hang open, unsure of the ground rules for this sort of thing in Protestant Britain. ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,’ says my father, who is attending to Mum in much the same manic way he does to the car’s engine when it gives out—without a clue. ‘Any chance you could help?’ Jessie has cooled noticeably with the French boys in front of Mum’s sprawled helplessness (or does she just feel they’ve had enough encouragement, I don’t think Jessie turns off ever), but Dad takes over, babbling fluently in the way that always makes me feel out of it. God, I hate French at school—not just the language, but their whole prissy Paris Match culture. They’d let a dog fuck their country if they could carry on looking chic. Mum seems to go into a new gear as the French prats concentrate their attention on the tree. They even give it a shove with those wellpacked arms of theirs, but