Creed (19 page)

‘Lo, Dad.’

Creed’s hand stayed on the door lock. ‘Uhhh . . .’ was all he could find to say.

His small but portly son stepped down one step, light from behind throwing his face into shadow.

‘Sam . . . Sammy?’

No reply from the boy.

Creed moved away from the door, his hand reaching out and clutching the stair-post for support. ‘What . . .’ rage crept in ‘. . . what the f – the hell are you doing here?’

The first sniffle broke from the boy. A knuckle lifted to his face.

‘Okay, okay, take it easy.’ Still shaking from the shock he’d had, Creed began to climb, one hand outstretched to pacify the boy before the floodgates opened. Sammy stared down at him, his shoulders drooped. He was still wearing his school uniform, Creed noticed.

When they were at eye level, Creed three steps from the top, he paused. ‘What’s going on, Sammy?’ he said as gently as he could, restraining himself from grabbing his son’s shoulders and shouting into his face for scaring him half-to-death.

‘She doesn’t want me,’ came the reply that was more petulant than sorry. Another sniffle followed.

‘Who? Your mother? Christ, ’course she wants you, Sammy. Your mother loves you.’

‘She doesn’t!’ The boy turned and stomped away from him into the kitchen.

‘Hey, wait a min—’ Creed ran a hand through his already dishevelled hair. This was all he needed. Usually Evelyn and Samuel teamed up against
him
– God knows what poison she’d fed him over the years – but now it seemed the ranks had split. So what was he supposed to do with the kid?

‘Sammy . . .’ He followed the boy into the kitchen and found him sitting at the table, a loaf of bread in front of him, jam and sugar spread on the slice he was just cramming into his mouth. ‘I’ve got plates in the house, Sam. And you don’t need a carving knife to spread jam.’

The boy regarded him sullenly, his jaw steadily working on the mulched bread.

‘Your mother will be worried sick. Does she know you came here?’

Samuel nodded, then licked jam off a finger.

‘You rang her?’

A shake of his head with another sniffle.

‘Then how does she know?’ Creed pulled out a chair and sat down opposite his son. ‘Will you stop feeding your face for a minute and answer me? How does she know you’re here?’

‘She sent me.’

Creed leaned forward, arms on the table. ‘She sent you here?’

The boy nodded again.

‘Sam, I’m gonna give you five seconds to explain yourself. If I’m no wiser after that you’re in serious trouble.’

Samuel considered him for four of those seconds. ‘Mum put me in a taxi and told the driver where to take me. She gave me the key to get in in case you were out.’

‘She’s got a key?’

Sam shook his head. ‘No, I’ve got it.’ He dipped into his blazer pocket and put a Yale key on the table between them.

The crafty bitch, Creed thought. How long has she had that? Another reason to change the locks. ‘I don’t believe you, Sammy. She wouldn’t send you here.’

The boy shrugged and resumed eating.

‘I’m gonna call her,’ the father warned.

No reaction at all this time.

‘Okay, kid, you asked for it.’ Creed rose and went to the phone. He dialled and watched the boy eating as he waited for an answer.

‘Hello?’

‘Evelyn, it’s Joe.’

The voice at the other end dropped a tone or two. ‘Enjoying your son? You see what I have to put up with?’

‘What’s this all about, Evelyn? Did you send him here?’

‘Of course I did. You are its father, aren’t you? Perhaps you’d like to take on that responsibility for a while.’

‘Evelyn, you know it’s not that easy—’

‘
You think it’s been easy for me all these years?
Bringing up that brat on my own, acting as mother, father, and God knows what else, teaching him things his father is supposed to teach him, laying down the law when he’s difficult – which is
most
of the time – feeding him, clothing him, nursing him. Running myself ragged for the ungrateful little . . . little . . .’ Tears now. ‘You don’t know what it’s been like, you have no idea. While you’ve been having fun I’ve had to work and worry and take care of everything myself . . .’

‘Evelyn . . .’

‘And what do you care, what have you ever done for him? Well enough is enough,
you
can see what it’s like for a while, no, not for a while, for good, permanently, you—’

‘Evelyn!’

The outflow stopped momentarily. Her words were icy, not a tear in them, when she resumed. ‘It’s your turn, Joe. It’s about time you were a father to him, so here’s your chance. See how you like it for a few days.’

‘A few days? You know I can’t do that. Christ, I’ve got a job that keeps me busy at all hours. And I can tell you this –
now
, right
now
, isn’t the time to have him with me.’

‘There’s never a good time for you. You’re just going to have to cope.’

‘Look, Evelyn . . .’ wheedling ‘. . . have a talk with Sammy – Samuel. You know, he’s missing you already.’ Creed watched the boy sprinkling sugar on a fresh slice of bread and jam. ‘He’s really upset, Evelyn.’

‘The little shit!’

‘Hey, c’mon. What’s he done to upset you like this?’

‘Ask him, why don’t you? Ask your son the thief.’

‘He’s been stealing?’

‘Ask him! Money from my purse, money from the other children at school. Did you know he was a bully, too? He’s been taking – not stealing,
taking
– money and sweets from the smaller boys. The headmaster called me in today. I had to go to the school and be told my son –
your
son – was a thief and a bully and if he didn’t change his ways pretty smartish the headmaster would have no choice but to expel him. Can you imagine how I felt? How small, how low, how . . . how degraded! And do you know what excuse Samuel gave me when I got him home? When I asked him why he’d done such a terrible thing? And by then, of course, I’d realized what I’d only suspected before, that he’d been helping himself to money from my purse for months now. Do you know what excuse he gave me?’

‘No, I don’t know, Evelyn.’

‘
None at all!
Doesn’t that make you want to hang your head in shame, you bastard?’

‘Me?’

‘
You.
You’re its father. And God, doesn’t it show! Well, now it’s time for
you
to show it some discipline. Let’s see how you handle it.’

‘I’ve told you, I can’t—’

‘
You’ve got no bloody choice!
’

The phone went dead. Creed stared at it and then at the boy. ‘Your mother’s missing you already,’ he said.

The jam around Samuel’s mouth was like a big cheery grin, but his eyes remained sullen. Wearily, Creed went over to the table and leaned against the back of a chair. ‘Right, let me get us both a drink, then we’ll talk. You want milk, lemonade, orange juice?’

‘Diet Pepsi.’

‘Lemonade coming up. You don’t mind if I have something stronger?’

‘Whiskey? Mum says you always drink whiskey.’ The boy seemed genuinely interested.

‘Not all the time, Sam. But tonight I think I need it. You want me to fix you something proper to eat? Some beans or something?’

‘Fish fingers and mashed potatoes with gravy.’

‘Uh, I’m out of fish fingers and I think – I can check though – I think I’m out of potatoes. Hey, how about a burger? I could nip round the corner and bring some back for us both. I’ll get you a milkshake, too.’

‘I’m not allowed.’

‘You’re only ten, for Chrissake. You’re supposed to have those things.’

‘Mum says I’ve got to cut down.’

‘Well, yeah, you can have too much of a good thing, but let’s make tonight an exception. Sam, the other kids at school been calling you names?’

The boy looked down at his bread as if he’d found something interesting crawling in the jam. If he had, it was soon devoured.

Creed regarded his son with a feeling that was dangerously close to compassion. Since Sammy had turned six a rift had opened up between them – not that the link before had been too wonderful in terms of father-son relationships. Evelyn was right: Creed had always been too busy, his working hours irregular, for his natural parental duties and obligations to be effective. And for sure, as every parent knows, there’s more to bringing up children than duties and obligations. Apart from the obvious loving and caring, there is what might best be termed ‘free time’. That’s the hours, even the minutes (they’re all crucial), you give over to just being available, whether it’s to play, tell stories, instruct, or enter into debate. This time is equal to the other two in importance (some might say more so) and that was the biggest problem as far as Creed and Samuel were concerned. Finding time for fun wasn’t easy for this particular working man, but worse than this, when there
was
time, Creed’s boredom level was very, very low. Playing with his son was okay for brief periods, say five, ten minutes or so, but after that his attention invariably wandered, ‘important’ things he had to do suddenly occurred to him; his patience ran out. It’s a problem the selfish have. To be fair to the father, though, the son wasn’t exactly a bundle of joy either.

Samuel was overweight by the age of two and, while on some infants ‘baby-fat’ can be cute, on Creed’s son it was undoubtedly obese – no other way to describe it. His face, with its mop of curly brown hair above it, would have been almost pretty had not his swollen cheeks and forehead recessed his eyes to such a degree that he appeared to be wearing a permanent frown. That, you might remark, was hardly the boy’s fault, especially if his parents indulged him so; but Samuel did have the tendency (and the cunning) to create the most God-awful fuss if he were hungry and sustenance wasn’t immediately forthcoming. Burdened with the difficulties of an already rocky marriage, Evelyn was inclined to appease Samuel rather than endure his ear-bashing tantrums; also, lost affection for her husband was increasingly redirected towards her son (so much so, in fact, that Creed eventually realized that mother and son had formed some kind of tacit alliance against him). And Samuel wasn’t dumb: from an early age he was adept at using mother-love against father’s wrath. The final and irrevocable break-up of the marriage hadn’t helped the kid’s personality any, and naturally enough parental guilt was fully taken advantage of. Creed wasn’t at all surprised to learn that his son had developed into a thief and a bully, for on those odd days or weekends they did manage to get together he had found Samuel not just sulky (unless things were going entirely his own way) but also a little sly and a whole lot spoilt. In truth – and a terrible thing for any father to admit – Creed found his son somewhat obnoxious.

Now he gazed down on the boy who, when all was said and done, was only ten years old, and felt an unfamiliar lump in his throat. The boy might be a bit overweight, he might be a mother’s boy (albeit not quite at that particular moment), he might have an attitude problem,
but he was his son
!

Creed swallowed. ‘So listen, why don’t you hang out with me for a coupla days? Forget about school, that’s always gonna be there. You like horror movies? I’ve got some tapes. You could watch them while I’m out working. Maybe, uh, maybe you could even come along with me in the morning, give you a chance to see how the old man works. What d’you think?’

‘Do you smoke marianna?’

‘Marijuana? Christ no. What makes you ask that?’

‘Mum says you do.’

And what else has she told you? ‘Look, Sammy, your mother and I don’t get along, you know that. That’s why we’re not married any more. She may say things about me from time to time that aren’t necessarily true just to get back at me, you know? Women are like that.’

Samuel nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. ‘Can I have a Big Mac?’ he said.

‘Sure. And a double helping of fries. What kind of milkshake would you like – strawberry, banana . . .?’

‘Kiwi.’

‘You got it. Make yourself at home – you know where the television is – and I’ll be back in ten minutes.’