Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

Beyond his writing, Michael’s life was beginning to move on in other areas, too. He’d begun going for drinks with a group of other fencers after club nights in Highgate. There was a woman among them about whom Samantha often teased him. A divorcée in her early thirties who’d already made it known among her friends that if Michael was interested, she’d love to see more of him. Michael took Samantha’s teasing and probing in good nature, but her comments were an effective sounding of his emotional state. The thought of what she suggested in her jokes still felt impossible to him. Caroline was too present, and perhaps, he sometimes wondered, always would be.

“I suppose,” Samantha had said one night in the pub, as they’d waited for Rachel to finish at her drama group, “you lost her early, didn’t you?”

“Early?” Michael said, although he already knew what she meant.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Samantha said, playing with her half-eaten salad. “I mean before you had a chance to ever feel bored with each other. Or pissed off.”

“Maybe,” Michael said.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry.” She leant forward and laid a hand on his arm. “None of my business. It’s just…”

“No, no,” Michael reassured her. “You’re probably right. It was all just starting, really.”

Samantha sat back in her chair. “It’s what she’d have wanted, you know. Eventually.”

“What? For me to start sleeping with other women?” Michael couldn’t keep the distaste from his voice.

“Yes,” Samantha said. “Or, at least, to have someone. To not be on your own. Unless, of course, that’s what makes you happy. Being on your own.” She smiled and reached forward to give his arm a squeeze again. “But you mustn’t be afraid of it, Michael. Or feel guilty.”

They’d had that conversation more than a month ago, but nothing had changed since, and Michael was yet to make any attempt to find that person, or even begin a journey towards them. But he knew Samantha was right. Caroline would have wanted him to be with someone else. If he was honest, it was possible this might even have been true if she’d lived. He’d often wondered, if never aloud, for how long they’d have been together. He’d hoped forever, of course, but he’d never known for certain. Not for sure. Caroline had found solidity in him, in their marriage. She’d found a peace. But she wasn’t naturally of an exclusive nature, and had always been more multiple than singular of character.

Despite his reluctance to enter another relationship, Michael still missed women physically. Recently, late at night after a day’s work, he’d found himself typing “Hampstead + Escorts” into his search engine more than once, browsing the posed thumbnails of “Erika,” “Giselle,” and “Cindy,” the lists of their services and rates in bold below each of them. But his desire had never taken him as far as the contact email or phone number, and although he’d told himself that hiring one of these girls would be preferable to risking the feelings of a longer-term partner, he’d always ended up closing his laptop and walking away from his desk.

Instinctively, Michael felt that if he were ever to start again with another woman, then it would have to happen elsewhere, beyond London. Already, despite his resolve to be governed by the lives of Samantha and Rachel, the prospect of a move was increasingly seductive. Once the new book was done. Once he knew Samantha and Rachel were further along their recovery. The thought of it, when he allowed it to, excited him. He was grateful to Peter for his flat, but it had always been intended as a holding pattern. And soon, he could feel it, he’d be ready to leave. The guilt, the pain of what had happened here, he would always own. But a move, he knew, would alter the texture of that pain, the nature of its ache. Perhaps to somewhere on the continent, or back to New York. There was something about the fabric of the city that would suit his situation. Its streets, breathing with single lives, were fed by their hungers. Once there, having changed the geography of his living, then Michael could imagine perhaps finding someone: a woman from elsewhere who, having altered her own landscape, might be ready to accept someone like him with whom to share it.

THE GALLERY WAS crowded, so Michael saw Josh only when he’d already been at Samantha’s private view for more than an hour. He was standing in a far corner, talking animatedly to a younger couple, occasionally pointing at the framed print beside them. He was tanned and had lost weight, but still looked much older than when Michael had last seen him at close quarters. The grey that had always seeded his hair had spread, and his face was more lined than Michael remembered. The collar of his shirt was worn on one side, its sleeves rolled. His forearms, Michael noticed, were crosshatched with cuts and scratches.

―

The gallery was owned by a friend of Sebastian’s, the director for whom Samantha worked as a PA. It was a small, two-roomed space on a mostly residential street beyond Flask Walk. Originally a florist’s, it now housed four or five temporary exhibitions a year. It was Michael who’d persuaded Samantha to show her employer some of her prints, but Sebastian who’d done the rest. A week later the gallery owner, Emmanuel, had written to her. Could he exhibit Samantha’s work? Only for a couple of weeks at first, but if it sold, then maybe longer.

With the arrival of Emmanuel’s email, Samantha’s previous confidence in her work evaporated. She told Michael it was too soon, that she still had over a year to go with her MA. That the work wasn’t good enough.

“What happened to the only-half-cooked idea?” Michael asked her.

“Very funny,” she’d said, a spread of her prints covering the dining table. Their family portrait still hung above it, and as she slid the photographs over one another her younger self looked over her shoulder, Lucy on her knee, Rachel sitting on Josh’s lap beside her.

“Seriously, though,” she’d said, running a hand through her hair. “How am I meant to choose? He said he could hang twenty-five at most. Maybe thirty at a push.”

She’d been taking her pond photos for over eight months by then. Over 240 images, all from the same position, at the same time of day.

Michael, who’d been leaning against the kitchen island, came to sit opposite her. “I’ll help,” he said, spreading the prints and turning them round so he could see them.

“Really?” she said. “God, that would be amazing.”

“I wouldn’t get too excited,” Michael said. “I’m no expert.”

“Yes, you are,” she countered, as Michael placed a winter scene next to a morning in March. “It’s meant to be what you’re good at, isn’t it? Finding the story?”

Since that evening, Michael had assisted Samantha with other elements of the exhibition, too. Bringing the framed prints back to her house, choosing their positions in the gallery, suggesting a title for the show: And Again. Earlier that evening, forgoing his fencing-club night, he’d shared a cab over to the gallery with her and Rachel, its floor filled with boxes of wine, glasses, and fruit juice. Samantha had been quiet on the journey, her nerves drying up her talk. “Don’t worry, Mummy,” Rachel had said as they’d driven up alongside the Heath, the boxed glasses chattering at their feet. “They’ll like you, I know they will.”

―

Moving away from the drinks table where he’d been serving, Michael began edging through the crowd towards Josh. He’d barely seen him since the night they’d spoken over the hedge. After moving out, Josh had remained on the periphery of Samantha and Rachel’s lives. He saw his daughter regularly, and he kept in touch with Samantha. But it was one of Michael’s most persistent regrets that Josh had chosen to keep him at a greater distance. Twice now, Michael had seen him on the Heath as he’d walked back from his fencing lesson. Too far away to call, but close enough to make each other out. Neither time had Josh made any attempt to approach him. And somehow Michael had known Josh hadn’t wanted him to go towards him, either. So he’d walked on instead, along his usual route, aware of Josh’s eyes following him.