Creed (5 page)

He yawned more than once, not just because of the list of events ahead of him that week, but because of that morning’s early rise. Creed liked to think of himself as a night creature.

Within minutes the night creature had dozed off.

Someone was leaning on him. Someone was pinning him to the sofa.

He could smell their horribly foul breath. He could feel their warmth.

In his sleep he was afraid; in his rising consciousness he was terrified. But that something, that huge weight on his chest, didn’t want him to open his eyes, wanted him blind and defenceless.

Creed struggled, not with the weight, but with his own will. He
had
to open his eyes. He had to confront whatever held him there. His eyelids felt like lead slabs.

Breathing was not easy. The rise of his chest was inhibited by the weight. The weight wanted to crush him.

Had to fight it. Had to leave the sleep. Had to wake. Had to open his eyes, had to . . .

His eyes stuttered open.

‘
Get outa here!
’

Creed twisted and heaved at the same time and Grin skidded across the room, her claws digging into the single rug which travelled along with it over the polished boards.

Creed sat up and threw a cushion after the cat. Grin yowled and headed for the staircase.

‘
Judas Christ!
’ the photographer yelled after her. ‘
You coulda given me a heart attack!
’

He massaged his chest, encouraging the beating to continue, loud though it was. It took a full two minutes for his nerves to settle.

‘Oh . . .’ He looked at his wristwatch, remembering the negs in the drier. He’d been out for twenty minutes at least.

Creed tottered to the darkroom and whisked the glossy strip from the cabinet. ‘Dry as a grasshopper’s tit,’ he mumbled to himself, yawning at the same time. No harm done though.

After cutting the negs into six strips and marking them with a rapidograph, he closed the door and switched on the amber light. Yawning again, he laid them on bromide paper, pressing them flat with a glass plate. He exposed them for five seconds without bothering to do a test strip (he rarely did), then put the bromide through the developer dishes.

With the full light on, he examined the resulting contact sheet. There was the kneeling figure, its back to the camera. And a white blob that was the man’s turned head – nothing clearer than that. Why the fascination? Why such interest in this loony? Instinct, he answered himself. Years of sniffing and catching the scent. There was something more to this and he was curious to find out what.

He placed the neg in the enlarger’s frame carrier, laying down another sheet of bromide under the masking frame below. Normally after focusing he would have used a card to shield parts of the film paper from the light, progressively moving it across the surface in a striped pattern of varying exposures; this time, however, he went for a straight twenty-second exposure.

Something was wrong with the negative image, but he couldn’t figure out what.

Killing the enlarger light, he lifted the frame and slid the photographic paper into the developer tray. Within a few seconds shapes began to form.

Gently rocking the tray to create a smooth back-and-forth current, he waited for the emerging greys and blacks to make sense.

The crazy appeared as if gliding from a mist – the soles of his shoes aimed at the camera, his raincoat, with creases in the material picked out in fine detail, the slight twist of his torso. Around him the grass, static and hued orange by the darkroom’s light, headstones and trees in the distance. The man’s shoulders, arms stretched forward out of sight. His head, turned, a three-quarter profile, peering towards the hidden lens, the lines, the swirls, ingrained in his features, appearing as though meticulously drawn with a fine nib.

Creed’s mouth slowly opened as he stared down at the face.

He remembered the eyes. So clear, so penetrating. So . . . fucking scary.

But not present here.

He bent forward, distrusting his own sight. Where the man’s eyes should have been, there was only blackness.

Just two black smudges. That quickly spread and joined together. Rushing now to obscure the whole ravaged face.

Well weren’t they the trendiest of trendies, the yuppiest of yuppies? The men in unstructured suits, hair gleamed back, some with tiny tight pigtails, shirt collars buttoned, not many with ties. The women, mainly in black, skirts generally as short and thigh-hugging as the legs would bear, or wearing floppy trousers that a hippo would be comfortable in. The conversation buzz was low-key, cool, and ego-bristling.

Creed descended the steps into the frothy pool of advertising piranhas, scanning the faces for anyone snap-worthy, a Saatchi or two, a Tim Bell, any personality who transcended the junk-sell world to the real one, someone whose status or troubled personal life might be of interest to the punters. A tall, pale-faced teenager with gel-spiked hair gawked at Creed’s camera and went stiff, his eyes wide and expectant behind small round glasses. The photographer pushed by without acknowledging the youth’s jerky nod. The kid, whose clothes were as ill-fitting but not as expensive as those worn by the pros he rubbed shoulders with, was no doubt a student up for one of the Gold Awards that Benson & Hedges doled out every year to the advertising industry to show it was into commercial aestheticism as much as lung cancer. Creed almost
felt
the boy’s hopes take a dive as the camera passed him by.

The photographer lifted a white wine from a travelling tray and continued through the scrum until he reached an empty corner (corners aren’t the place for advertising folk) where he dumped his bag on the floor. Sipping the wine, Nikon standing proud over his navel like a stubby and misplaced phallus, Creed examined the crowd in more detail. He spotted George Melly in his usual chalk-striped double-breasted and Fedora and prayed the old jazzman was there to hand out prizes and not to sing – the day had been too long for such a climax. There were a few other familiar faces, but not one that merited a single frame of black-and-white, let alone colour. Across the gallery two raised television screens ran a looped tape of nominated commercials, illustrations and photographic stills. They all looked pretty classy to Creed; pretty expensive, too, apart from the student stuff. But how many would really sell the goods they advertised? And who gave a shit anyway? Big budgets and grand locations seemed to be the order of the day; the copywriter or art director’s
next
agency was the important thing, not the product. Even the clients who paid for it all didn’t seem to mind helping the creative teams’ career moves (but then, it was all tax-deductible, wasn’t it?).

‘Wonderful work, isn’t it?’

The voice was soft and friendly.

Creed turned to the girl and smiled his Mickey Rourke smile. ‘Wonderful,’ he said.

She was as tall as he, and close to being beautiful; an ideal mate for any hero. Maybe a little too good for Creed, though.

‘You’re Joe Creed, aren’t you?’

He nodded. ‘We’ve never met before.’

‘No. But I’ve seen you around.’

‘And you’ve been dying to introduce yourself.’

She hadn’t smiled yet, nor did she then. ‘I couldn’t hold back any longer. Goodbye.’

He straightened from the wall he’d been leaning against as she turned away. ‘Hey, wait. Can we start again?’

The girl paused. ‘Will it be an improvement?’

‘Could it be any worse?’

At last a smidgen of a smile appeared. ‘I came over because you looked thoroughly bored.’

‘That obvious?’

The smidgen bloomed to a full smile. ‘You’re not part of this scene. But don’t be put off by what you see around you. Most of these people have incredible talent, and they work fast and hard in a business that’s as cut-throat as you can get.’

‘It couldn’t be that you’re also in the business?’

She laughed, a small cough of a sound. ‘Guilty. But I needn’t defend myself or them.’ She flicked her head towards those behind her.

‘How did you know my name?’

‘I asked one of the gallery’s girls before I came over. You have a reputation, you know, and a dubious one at that.’

Creed looked genuinely aggrieved.

‘Am I stopping you from working?’ she asked then, quickly stepping aside as if apologizing for blocking his view.

‘Are you kidding? Unless old George throws a wobbly there’s nothing here to brighten the breakfast table. You want a drink, you want to tell me your name?’

‘No to the drink and my name’s Cally.’

‘As in . . .?’

‘As in Cally.’

‘Oh.’

Creed pretended to survey the white-walled, picture-hung room again, but when she too looked around as if to help him find someone interesting to shoot, he quickly and surreptitiously eyed her up and down.

The girl caught his sneaky appraisal, but pretended she hadn’t. ‘I wonder if I could ask you a favour,’ she said.

It was disappointing to realise it hadn’t been his charisma nor that she had really wanted to relieve his boredom that had brought her over. ‘My body’s sacred,’ he said lest she see his disappointment.

‘It’s quite safe, too. The favour isn’t really for me – it’s for a friend of mine. Well, my boss, actually.’

Creed had already lost interest. He drained the rest of his wine and waggled the empty glass at a nearby waiter. The young man, whose uniform was loose black trousers and equally loose white shirt (buttoned at the throat, of course, with no tie), quickly came over and offered his tray of drinks. Creed took a claret without returning a thank-you.

The girl, Cally, waited patiently for his attention.

‘I work for a production company,’ she said, realizing after a while he wouldn’t prompt her. ‘Page Lidtrap. We make TV and cinema commercials, prestige shorts for big-name companies, management films – all kinds of things really.’ She was aware she hadn’t caught his attention. ‘We’re just putting together our first feature movie. It’s a major step for us.’

‘Parker and the Scott brothers are way ahead of you.’

‘We’d like to catch them up.’ She didn’t like the mocking in his eyes, but she persisted. ‘The thing is, we need some media attention. We’ve got a certain amount of financial backing, but we need more, and you know how a recognisable name helps on that score.’

‘Nope, I don’t know. It’s not my field.’

‘Take my word for it then. It definitely opens a few doors even if you’re soon kicked out again.’

If she hadn’t been such a looker, Creed would have told her to get lost there and then; but her body was appetizing and the more you studied her face, the more beautiful it became. He liked her hair too – darkish blonde, medium length, swept back. ‘You think I can make you famous?’

‘Not me. Our director, Daniel Lidtrap. And it hasn’t got anything to do with making him famous – I know that isn’t possible. But if his face started showing up in the gossip columns and the glossies, well, that might just help the process.’

The request wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t unusual at all. Most celebs and pseudo-celebs went out of their way, even begged, to get their names and pics in print; it was only when they reached superstar status that they pretended otherwise. Creed scarcely knew of any big name who didn’t secretly – or overtly – love, even crave, the attention, for publicity was like a drug and there was nothing that the famous loathed more than cold turkey. On the scandal side, too, many so-called ‘clandestine’ affairs had been carried on at the most popular restaurants and nightclubs for the paparazzi and gossip columnists to suffer guilt over the exposure. What this girl obviously failed to understand, though, was that he, Creed, had no influence at all as to what appeared on the page. He merely supplied the shots and the picture editor and writer decided what should be used. The fact that this guy – what was his name? Traplid? – was a total unknown as far as the rest of the world was concerned meant he hadn’t a chance in hell of making an item.

His smile was warm. ‘Well, I might be able to do something . . .’

Her face brightened and he noticed that her front teeth were slightly crooked, a tiny flaw that strangely enhanced her attractiveness. If Creed had thought harder about it he would have realized that this was because that small imperfection somehow made the girl more accessible; it held her beauty to realistic terms, rendered it more natural, less sublimely classic.