by Neil Cross
Jamie slammed the front door hard enough to shake the teetering pile of junk mail from the telephone table. It lay scattered like playing cards across the stripped wood of the hallway.
Sam stayed in the kitchen for a long time. The house hissed with emptiness, like a seashell put to the ear.
Sometimes when he was alone, he heard somebody creeping around upstairs and wondered if it might be Kenneth.
Kenneth was the imaginary friend of his early childhood. Sam had been so at ease in Kenneth’s company that his parents became disturbed and took him to a child psychologist, who pronounced him in every way normal. But, normal or not, nobody was keen to be alone with Sam when Kenneth was around. Even now, mention of Kenneth’s name was enough to bring Mel out in goosebumps.
Perhaps Kenneth had sensed his renewed need. Perhaps he’d come back.
Would he still be a child?
Sam phoned in sick. Barbara sounded neither angry nor surprised. Nor was she moved by Sam’s entreating, repeated apologies. He was irritated that she patronized his insincerity. When he had safely replaced the receiver, he swore at the phone.
He knew his colleagues had anxieties of their own. Marriages were fracturing. Flirtations flickered at the edge of infidelity. There was blood in the stools, a lump in the breast, a loose knot of gristle where once there’d been a proud erection. There were elderly parents who refused to be rehomed. He was aware that his absence would only add to the sum of that anxiety.
But he didn’t care.
He went upstairs, to see if Kenneth were there. But he wasn’t, and Sam laughed at his folly. The obscure series of clicks and creaking stopped the moment his foot touched the stairs. Whoever was there, they left when they heard him. Perhaps it was Justine, trying to make herself known.
With sudden, tearful fury, he hoped not.
He ran the bath and enjoyed the rumble of the taps, the unfolding bloom of steam. All at once, he noticed the bath was full. Several minutes had passed without his knowledge. He knew that such episodes, like leaving one’s car keys in the fridge or forgetting why one had entered a room, came at the minor end of the scale of epilepsy. Temporarily, his mind had been voided by a little fit. He was frustrated by the phenomenon’s elusiveness. He wanted it to happen again.
The bath was too hot and burnt his assessing foot. He ran the cold tap, then forced himself in. Water spilled over the edge. His testicles withdrew from the damaging heat.
Gradually, as the water cooled, he lay back and soaked his hair. Floating, it tickled his shoulders like weeds. He washed and shaved and walked naked and dripping to his bedroom. It smelt of new pine, new carpet and sour old bedding. Other than two lonely socks dropped several feet apart and rolled into strange shapes, the room was empty. Still wet, he lay on the bed. He could smell the sweat of his troubled sleep. He rolled over and turned on the radio. It was 11 a.m. He lay back with a pillow over his eyes and kept the radio’s volume low, so it was little more than a companionable hum.
But there was no possibility of sleep. Shortly before midday, he went naked downstairs and got the whisky. He poured a glass and turned on the TV. He was on the third glass when something occurred to him, an idea. He thought it over for a while, then went to find his mobile phone. He called Ashford’s private number.
Ashford was on lunchtime playground duty, patrolling the gates and fields in an attempt to thwart truancy. He sounded tired. He confirmed that Jamie was not at school today. Then he asked, with lowered voice, how Sam was feeling.
Sam went cold. It seemed that Jamie was not exaggerating. The story of the bitch-slap in the Cat and Fiddle lavatory had spread and grown. He wondered how superb his humiliation had become in the local mythology. He imagined Liam Hooper’s extravagant school-corridor swagger. Dave Hooper, pausing to smile privately before installing a bolt through the shrieking head of a pig.
Sam told Ashford he was absolutely fine, thank you, and hung up.
He’d smoked the last cigarette. He poured himself another drink. When only an inch remained in the bottle, he went upstairs and dressed. Then He cleaned his teeth and rinsed with mouthwash.
He drove with overstated, drunken caution (losing concentration only once, on a zebra crossing) and was outside the school gates by 3.30 p.m. At 3.40 he heard the bell ring. It was the same bell. Its familiarity made him grimace, and he gripped the steering wheel, hard. Within a few seconds, the first pupils had appeared at the exit gates. Soon they had become a surge, an inundation of shapes and sizes and ethnicities, similarly dressed. Navy-blue with yellow shirts for the girls. Black blazers and white shirts for the boys. A great variety of training shoes. As he watched, several of the kids piled into waiting parental cars. Most did not. The school run had not yet been fully established in this part of town.
Sam had not supposed the sudden horde would be so overwhelming. He despaired of sighting Liam Hooper. He got out of the car. Standing on the pavement, waiting, he felt furtive and strange. He suspected that certain of the waiting parents, grim at the wheel of their Renault Espaces, had already marked him out as a potential paedophile.
He wished he had a single friend among them and knew he never would.
When the tide had diminished to a sporadic trickle, he spotted Liam Hooper. He looked much younger. Hardly more than a boy. He strutted alone through the gates, bag slung over one shoulder.
Sam lit a cigarette and leant against the car. Liam came scuffing down the street, chewing gum. Sam stepped out in front of him.
At first, Liam didn’t recognize him. His passing confusion, edged with fear, was disarming. Sam saw how much bigger he was than the boy, and how much stronger. He felt he could reach out and rip Liam’s head from his shoulders and rend the limbs from their sockets.
He said, ‘Get in the car.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Get in the car.’
‘No fucking way.’
‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘Too fucking right you’re not.’
Liam tried to barge past. Sam blocked his way.
‘Look, Liam. I just want to talk.’
‘You heard what Dad said. Talk to him.’
Sam set his mouth.
‘Right,’ he said.
He opened the boot, and threw in the car keys. Then he slammed the boot closed.
‘There you are. Proof. We’re not going anywhere. So, please. Just get in the car and hear what I have to say.’
Liam looked at the boot.
He said, ‘You’re fucking mad in the head, mate.’
‘Probably,’ said Sam.
Assorted pedestrians—parents, slow-moving pensioners, and straggling schoolkids—were beginning to pay attention to them.
‘Come on,’ said Sam. ‘For God’s sake. Just get in the car. Leave the door open if it makes you feel better. Sit in the back with the door open. I just want to talk.’
Liam responded to a challenge, not an invitation: he met Sam’s eyes for too long and walked round the car with an air of defiance, an insolent swagger. He sat on the front passenger seat (leaving the door very slightly ajar) and removed a cigarette from a ten-pack of Benson & Hedges kept in the breast-pocket of his blazer. He lit it, exhaled at the ceiling.
Sam took his place in the driver’s seat. He made himself small and hunched, nervous about making the kind of physical contact that might be misread.
Liam said, ‘What?’
Sam took time to light his own cigarette, fresh from the stub of the first.
He said, ‘What would it take to make you leave my son alone?’
Liam turned in his seat until he was facing Sam.
‘I haven’t touched your precious son. I haven’t fucking touched him.’
There was a silence.
Sam could hear Liam’s breathing, shallow and outraged. Sam looked dead ahead, as
if the car was in motion.
‘All right,’ he said, at length. ‘Fair enough. What would it take to make you stop whatever it is you’re doing?’
Liam drew twice on his cigarette.
‘I don’t even know!’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done. It’s not my fault if Jamie’s a—’
‘If Jamie’s a what?’
‘A mummy’s boy.’
Sam looked at his hands, tight on the wheel of the stationary car.
‘Jamie lost his mother,’ he said. ‘She died.’
Liam shrugged.
‘So?’
Sam didn’t risk looking at him. He thought Liam’s defiance had a belligerent, wounded quality—perhaps the aggressive self-justification of one who knows himself to be in the wrong.
‘So,’ Sam said, ‘it doesn’t help if you go on about it all the time. Jamie’s much younger than you, and he’s new here. Give him a break. Just, you know. Find another target.’
‘He’s not a target.’
‘I accept that,’ said Sam. ‘But please. Even if you don’t mean what you say, think about the effect it has on Jamie. It might be fun to you, and it might not even mean much. But it means a lot to Jamie.’
Liam found the ashtray and tapped into it a few centimetres of ash.
‘It’s not my fault if he can’t take a joke.’
Sam closed his eyes, turned it into a long blink. His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. His fingers were pale, livid round the knuckles. He relaxed them. Felt the blood flow.
‘It’s not a joke to Jamie. That’s the point.’
‘That’s his problem.’
‘Look,’ said Sam. ‘I’m appealing to you here, man to man. I’m asking you to understand the effect you’re having. I’m sure that if you understood, then—’
‘Is this all you wanted to say?’ said Liam.
He pushed open the door.
‘Wait,’ said Sam.
Liam glanced over his shoulder.
Sam searched his pockets. He found and lit another cigarette.
He said, ‘Money.’
‘What?’ said Liam.
‘I’ll give you money.’
Liam’s weight was still on the open door.
‘What for?’
‘To leave Jamie alone.’
Liam closed the door and sat back in the car seat.
‘How much money?’
‘How much will it take?’
‘Are you joking?’
‘No,’ said Sam. ‘I’m not.’
Liam waved his hand below his nose.
‘You’re just pissed,’ he said. ‘It stinks like a fucking brewery in here.’
‘That has nothing to do with it,’ said Sam.
‘You’re talking bollocks. It’s pathetic.’
Sam rested his forehead on the steering wheel.
‘Be that as it may,’ he said, ‘please try to understand. I’m treating you like an adult, so try to behave like one.’
He glanced sideways. Liam appeared to be listening.
‘Look,’ said Sam, ‘if you want to know the truth, I wish you didn’t exist. I think the world would be a better place if you weren’t in it. But you do exist, and you’re hurting my son. And the funny thing—the thing that’s a real laugh—is that I can’t stop you. There’s nothing I can do. When you’re older, when you’ve got kids of your own, you might understand how ridiculous that is. At the moment you don’t, because you’re young and you think the world revolves around you. Do you understand any of that, Liam? Is there another way to stop you? Because if there is, I’d like to know what it is.’
Sam couldn’t read Liam’s expression. There was contempt, and some embarrassment. It occurred to him too that Liam was a little frightened. That thought made him unutterably weary.
He said, ‘So. What do you think?’
‘You’re going to pay me money to be nice to Jamie?’
‘You don’t have to be nice to him, if that’s too hard for you. All you have to do is stop giving him a hard time. I don’t know. Find someone else to pick on. Whatever it takes.’
‘How much money?’
‘Five hundred pounds.’
‘Fuck off. Are you taking the piss?’
‘Sadly, no. Five hundred pounds. Cash. In your hand.’
‘Have you got it on you?’
‘Of course not. I can meet you on Monday—if you agree.’
‘What if I don’t agree?’
Sam continued to rest his head on the steering wheel. He felt a smile stretch his lips.
‘Well, Liam,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to kill you, won’t I?’
‘Yeah,’ said Liam. ‘You and whose fucking army?’
Sam lifted his head and turned to face him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This way seems much easier.’
‘All right,’ said Liam. ‘I’ll do it. For five hundred quid.’
He offered his hand. Sam thought he must be joking. Then he realized that, having been exhorted to, Liam was trying to behave like an adult.
Sam extended his own, hairy-backed hand. They arranged a place and time to meet. Then he watched Liam Hooper swagger down the long curve of Blackstone Road, and wondered how hard he had to work not to look over his shoulder, or run away to exercise the unexpected thrill of victory.
He drove home more carefully still. At a red light, his attention drifted and he entered again that timeless fugue state. He was awakened from it by the driver of the white van in his rearview mirror, leaning on the horn. Sam held up his hand in apology.
It was prematurely dark. As he walked into the house on Balaarat Street, rain began to spatter on the kitchen windows, the sound of uncooked rice shaken in a plastic bottle. He turned on the downstairs lights.
In the living room, he flicked through some new CDs, but there was nothing he wanted to listen to. He had lost the ability to enjoy new music. Music had become an exercise in nostalgia, a mortification for which he had little stomach. There was nothing on television that he could bear to watch. The radio was chirpy and irritating. He went through the freezer drawers, looking for something to eat. He put a small boulder of lamb mince in the microwave to defrost.
He listened to the microwave’s comforting, domestic hum. Then he gathered about himself all the ingredients for a spaghetti Bolognese, which had long been his speciality, the thing he cooked best. Or, at least, it was the meal his family had claimed to like the most.
His family.
He smiled bitterly as he rifled through cupboards, seeking out a tube of tomato purée and then the garlic he knew was in there somewhere. He laid out the ingredients on the chopping board. The silence and the rain were oppressive. He returned to the living room and put on a Motown compilation CD. It was like the memory of sunshine.
When Jamie got home the air was rich with the familiar, garlicky smell of Bolognese. But it didn’t matter. Jamie was a series of sense impressions—the key in the lock, the rustle of a parka being removed, the slamming of the door; hurried footsteps on the stairs. Another door banging.
It might as well have been Kenneth.
Sam was patient. He knew the candid appeal for love seldom won it. He cooked and drained the spaghetti, tonged it on to two plates, on to each of which he spooned two dollops of sauce, sprinkled with fresh parmesan shavings. Not without some pride, he stood back and examined what he’d done, while the wind and the rain battered harder at the walls and windows.
He uncorked a bottle of wine and poured himself a large glass, which he downed like Ribena. Then he went to the foot of the stairs and called Jamie down.
A stiffening at the deep heart of the house let him know that Jamie had heard, but he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t come down. Sam gave up calling him. He sat at
the breakfast bar, listening to the rain, and ate his Bolognese alone. Sipping more wine, he spooned the remaining sauce into a Tupperware container, and the container into the fridge. Jamie’s meal he scraped into the swingtop bin.
When he rose, early the next day, Jamie had already dressed and gone.
Not to school, he supposed.
He wondered how it had come to pass that, sometime between the death of Justine and the move to Balaarat Street, he had lost his son. He had been replaced by an unfamiliar creature he did not greatly like. Perhaps he and Jamie were simply ghosts of each other: they had joined Kenneth, become three imaginary boys, haunting the same house. Perhaps like ghosts or old photographs they were fading. Perhaps one day they would simply become invisible to one other.
On Monday morning, he was on the corner, ready to meet Liam on his way to school. He felt like an illicit lover, a pederast, a drug dealer. The engine was idling, the radio blared jaunty inanities. He watched people go past. Eventually he saw Liam in the rearview mirror and leant across the passenger seat to open the door. Liam got in and sat next to him. He smelt of hair gel and cigarettes and brand new trainers.
Liam said, ‘All right?’
Sam opened the glove compartment and reached inside. Although it seemed a bit theatrical, he’d put the money in a Jiffy bag. Liam upended it into his lap and ostentatiously counted through the notes, all twenties. Then he restuffed the Jiffy bag and slipped it into his Puma schoolbag.
Nothing remained to be done and there was nothing to say, but Liam didn’t seem ready to leave. Sam felt the weight of silence that trapped both of them.
To break it, Sam said, ‘That’s it, then. You’ll leave him alone.’
Despite himself (Sam thought) Liam glanced down at the bag. He seemed weighed down by its contents.
‘It seems stupid, really,’ Liam said. ‘When you think about it.’
Sam laughed.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well. Don’t be late on my account.’
Liam shrugged. He’d never cared about being late before and he wasn’t going to start now. He checked the zip on the sports bag and got out of the Rover. Outside, he ducked his head to light a cigarette.