Read Online The War Zone by Alexander Stuart - Free Book Online

the cleaning, she’d take them in the same matter of fact way she seems to take everything. But what do I know? I just wish she would. ‘I am hot,’ she says, as I lay the camera on the kitchen table, next to a pile of Jessie’s junk. Lucy has the fridge door open, kneeling as she drops ice cubes into the lime cordial she’s made. ‘I think I stepped on a wasp on the way over, but it was too tired in this heat to sting much.’ Her feet are bare. She turns and looks at me, straightening up. She lifts a foot to show me; the sole is black, but I can just make out a small red welt. ‘You should clean that,’ my mother shouts from the garden, all seeing when it comes to injuries and health. Lucy goes outside. I follow her, wishing she were six or seven years younger, my age. Mum puts aside the headset and the book and looks up. She has a smoothness, Mum, a healthy and refined sheen which makes Lucy look coarse. I think it’s the coarseness I like. ‘I’ll wash my feet in your bath, if that’s all right,’ Lucy says. She crouches for a moment, next to Mum, glass in hand, the light bleaching her off-white dress and shadowing the outline of her legs. I don’t know what to do with myself. I just want to stare, but I think Lucy suspects this, so I take myself off to the broken stone wall which edges two sides of our scraggly lawn and sit on it, arching my back to throw my face and chest up to the sun. Jack stirs and Lucy says, ‘I’ll get him,’ her voice sounding further away than it is, swimming with the sunspots inside my head. ‘What’s your problem?’ she says a moment later. ‘Too hot—or hungry?’ Then, to Mum: ‘How is he?’ ‘He’s fine. He’s in charge, why shouldn’t he be? But at least he sleeps at night. Apart from feeding, he doesn’t wake.’
    ‘He looks like you.’
    ‘I think he looks like himself. He’s his own person.’ I open my eyes as Mum slips a tit in his mouth. Lucy is standing over them, watching Jake suck furiously. Sensing the moment, I make a move for the house. ‘Already he’s got a strong will,’ Mum says, trying to shift Jack into a more comfortable position in the shade. I walk past, unnoticed, and dart into the house. ‘And a strong mouth,’ Lucy says, still with Mum. ‘Does that hurt?’ I hear Mum laugh. ‘He doesn’t care if it does.’
    When Lucy comes in, I have the camera in my hand again, trying to look as if I’m doing something when all I want is to be inside while Lucy’s inside. She starts vacuuming and I shoot her, hoping she won’t know there’s barely enough light to see anything. I follow her as she pulls the lead out of the vacuum and finds a socket, then lugs the machine to the top of the stairs and starts working her way down. She always does the stairs before anything else, maybe because she wants to get them out of the way first, because they’re the most boring part of cleaning the house—although in terms of vacuuming, I can’t imagine that one thing is more boring than another. Lucy is too bright to be a housekeeper, and yet somehow I don’t think it matters much to her. God knows what she thinks life is about, but I don’t think cleaning enters into it. Then again, she has a curious respect for the oddest things. Maybe she knows something I don’t?
    I position myself at the bottom of the stairs, pointing the camera up at her. ‘You’re wasting your time on me,’ she says, not irritated but not really interested in the camera either, the way some people are. ‘It’s reality TV,’ I say. She pauses a moment and runs a hand across her face, wiping it dry. ‘How come you’re always around the house when I’m cleaning?’ She knows. She must do. ‘Do you like to get in my way?’ I want to say yes. I want to say, ‘Lucy, I think you’re amazing. Please come up to my room and let me touch you.’ I stare up at her, forgetting about the camera. As she leans forward over the vacuum on the stairs, her dress hangs from her. I