Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

A woman in a petrol-blue shawl behind them began cracking pistachio shells into a cupped hand, the painted nail of her thumb prising them open. Somewhere by the door the greetings of old friends rose above the room’s murmuring talk, like a piece of driftwood lifted on a wave.

“How old are you, Lucy?” Michael asked her.

“She’s four,” another voice said. Michael looked up to see an older girl looking down at them, her chestnut hair cut in a bob. She wore jeans, trainers, and a sweatshirt with the name of a boy band down one of its sleeves.

“Four and a quarter!” Lucy protested.

“I’m seven,” her older sister said, as if she hadn’t heard her. “My name’s Rachel.”

She spoke confidently, a child brought up among adults.

“Do you want to come and see my drawings?”

“What do you think, Lucy?” Michael said. “Shall we go and see Rachel’s drawings?”

Lucy hit the sofa with Dolly’s head. “They’re stupid drawings!”

“Well,” Michael said, trying to placate her, “isn’t that for me to decide?” He stood up. “Do you want to come, too?”

But Lucy wasn’t listening anymore. Michael’s acceptance of her sister’s invitation had instantly demoted him in her interest. Lowering herself beside the sofa, she was already talking to Molly and Dolly instead.

“Come on,” Rachel said, taking his hand. “They’re in the kitchen.”

―

The question Michael had managed to avoid among the Nelsons’ guests was eventually asked by Josh himself. They were standing together at the bottom of the garden, looking out over the ponds. Rachel, as promised, had taken Michael into the kitchen to look at her drawings laid across a coffee table in the conservatory. Samantha had been at the oven, sliding out trays of canapés.

“Now, don’t take up all of Michael’s time,” she’d said, her face flushed in the heat. “Someone else might want to talk to him, too.”

She needn’t have worried. All Rachel had required was a brisk tour through her work before a request from her mother soon sent her back into the party, a bowl of olives in each hand. Michael asked Samantha if he might help, too. Giving him another of her smiles, she told him it was fine. She spoke to him as if they’d known each other for years. And yet her manner was also somehow distant, her air of familiarity defused, he suspected, by the generosity with which it was applied to all whom she met.

Removing a last tray of canapés from the oven, Samantha had followed her daughter down the hallway towards the voices at its end. Michael listened to her heels diminish down the wooden floorboards. He thought about following her but didn’t. After the crush of bodies next door, the quiet of the unpeopled kitchen was calming, as was the cleanness of the winter light falling through the conservatory. He needed time to collect himself before he entered the party again. Or perhaps he would leave. Perhaps it was still too soon. Perhaps, he admitted to himself, he shouldn’t have come at all.

A copy of the Herald Tribune was lying on a chair beside him. Opening it, Michael began flicking through its pages, his eye naturally drawn to articles about the wars. The presidential candidates were filling their speeches with talk of surges and exit strategies. A group of road workers had been killed by ISAF bombing in eastern Afghanistan. An FBI investigation had concluded fourteen civilian deaths at the hands of Blackwater were “killings without cause.” Michael was still reading the paper when Josh entered. He made straight for a drawer in the kitchen’s island and took out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.

“Smoke?” he said, holding them up.

“No, thanks,” Michael said.

“Join me anyway?” Josh nodded at the back door, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Outside, the afternoon light had pulled the Heath into focus, a palette of oranges, greens, and browns beneath the blue sky. As Michael and Josh walked down the garden towards the ponds, Josh lit a cigarette.

“Sam doesn’t like it,” he said, the smoke thickening his breath. “But, well, it’s my weekend, too, right?”

As they reached the fence at the bottom, Josh took another deep draw. Leaning against the fence, Michael breathed in more deeply, too. The air above the water tasted of iron and fallen leaves. The trees beyond, which had just that morning been so busy with wind, were bare and motionless. A dog was swimming in the pond, only its golden head visible above the water. Its owner, a woman on the other side, was calling to it from the water’s edge.

“Jasper! Jasper!”

“Christ,” Josh said. “Jasper? No wonder it wants to stay in the fucking pond.”

Michael watched the dog make a slow turn back towards his owner’s voice, his nose high as he paddled into the shallows. Reaching the bank, he trotted up the slope towards her, the long hair of his flanks heavy with water, his paws dark with mud.

“You married, Mike?”

The question seemed to come from nowhere. Michael kept his eyes on Jasper as he stopped short of his owner and shook himself dry. After such attention among the other guests, he’d been distracted by this dog’s brief escape. And now Josh had asked him, so he’d have to answer.

He turned to face him. Josh pointed with his cigarette at Michael’s wedding ring. Michael glanced at it, too. It had never occurred to him to take it off. As far as he was concerned, he was still married.

“I was,” Michael said, touching the underside of the ring with his thumb.

“Ah, shit,” Josh said. “Divorced?”

“No,” Michael replied, looking out at the pond again. “She died.”

“Jesus.”

Michael heard Josh take another drag, then blow out a thin plume. “God,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

Michael had never had to say those two words before. Since returning to London he’d avoided them. But now that he had, they felt untrue. As if someone else were speaking through his mouth.

“I like it best when it’s frozen,” Josh said, drawing his cigarette across the air in front of him, its tip glowing in the movement. “Last year all this, the whole thing, was ice. The girls wanted to skate on it, but, well, you know—”

Michael knew Josh was talking to fill the vacuum. He wanted to let him know he didn’t have to.

“That’s why I moved here,” he said. “We had a place in Wales. But when it happened—”

Josh nodded in understanding, but also, it seemed to Michael, in calculation, too. Was he remembering the night he’d moved in? How they’d stood together in his flat, the meagre pile of boxes and bags abandoned in the living room?

“Was it an accident?” Josh asked.

“Sort of,” Michael said, taking another deep breath and releasing it in a sigh. “But also not. She was in Pakistan. Well, in the border area—”

He broke off, unsure how to continue.

“Was she serving?”

“God, no!” Michael allowed himself a bemused smile at the thought of Caroline in the army. “No, she was a reporter. Wrong place, wrong time. You might have read about it. It was in the papers.”

“What was her name?”

“Caroline,” Michael said. “Caroline Marshall.”

Josh took another drag on his cigarette. “That’s terrible,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, Mike. Just terrible.”

Michael nodded. He was right. It was terrible. That was the word, and it would always be the word for it, however much time passed, or however much his memory might fade. He ran his hand across the top of the fence, to feel the realness of its grain, the dampness of its wood against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bring it up. I mean, at your party.”