Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

Michael backed away a couple of paces, his hands held out to appease Josh. “I didn’t,” he said. “I was there, but I didn’t do anything.”

Josh stopped advancing. “I should kill you,” he said. His eyes were welling. Michael could see the mix of rage and grief swelling through his body. “I should kill you now.”

“Josh, please,” Michael said. “You’ve got to listen to me. You’re right, I was in your house. I was there.” He paused. He had to say it. “I saw her fall.”

Josh’s face began to twitch with suppressed tears.

“But it was an accident.” Michael continued. “I swear. An accident.”

Josh was upon him before Michael had time to move. Somehow he breached the distance between them in a single stride and, grabbing at Michael’s T-shirt, pushed him backwards towards the fence. Michael gripped his wrists and wrenched them away, pushing Josh off him at the same time. “Josh!” he shouted, backing farther off, his fencing bag falling to the ground. “For Christ’s sake, just listen. Please!”

Josh was breathing heavily. He looked as if he might come at him again, but then, as quickly as he’d launched his attack, his body softened. “Just tell me why,” he said again, quietly.

So Michael did.

He described how he’d come round that day, looking for his screwdriver. He hated saying the word. It sounded so trivial, so insignificant, to have caused such pain. But that, he told Josh, was why he’d been there. Then Michael tried, as best he could, to explain about his concerns. He’d found the back door open. He’d wanted to make sure they hadn’t been burgled. And then he tried to tell him about Caroline too. But it was too much for Josh. Or too little.

“A ghost? A fucking ghost?” he shouted at Michael. “Is that what you’re fucking telling me? You killed my daughter because you thought you saw a ghost?”

“No!” Michael shouted back. He could feel his own anger rising. If Josh had been there, if he’d just stayed at home instead of going to screw Maddy. If he’d just been there, then none of this would have happened. “Not a ghost,” Michael said. “Just her. You have to understand. It was all so soon. I’d had those fucking letters…It was all—” He broke off and looked at Josh. As if to say, We’ve both done this, both of us. We are both to blame.

“Then what?” Josh said.

There was a bench to the side of the clearing. Michael went and sat on it. With his head in his hands, he told Josh how Lucy had appeared from nowhere, how he’d tried to catch her but he’d failed, and had watched her fall instead.

“And then,” Josh said, pacing in front of Michael, “you left. You fucking left.”

“Yes,” Michael said, staring at the ground. “I left. And I wish with all my life I hadn’t.” He paused, looking up at Josh. “But then so did you.” Josh turned and looked down at him. “You left, too,” Michael said. “You left. And if you hadn’t…”

“All right!” Josh said, cutting his hand through the air. He walked away from Michael. The ground within the clearing’s fence was bare and tired, patches of short grass between the earth. But beyond it, beyond Josh, Michael could see swathes of bluebells carpeting the woodland floor. Beyond the fence there was life. Michael wanted to be out there, among those bluebells. He wanted for all of this to be over.

Josh turned back to him. He looked exhausted. There was so much Michael wanted to ask him. Why had he left the house? Was it really for Maddy? And why then, leaving Lucy alone? But he saw Josh was not to be pressed. He was like a charged mine, sensitive to the slightest of pressures. But he had to keep him talking. Michael knew that, too. So he asked him, instead, how he knew. How had he found out he’d been in the house?

Josh’s answer was short, staccato, his mind engaged elsewhere, battling competing impulsions of revenge and survival. Michael stayed on the bench while he talked, nodding as Josh told him about the soil, the tape, his betraying limp. When he’d finished, Michael knew there was only one question left for them to answer.

“What do you want to do?” Michael said. “Now you know.”

Josh was frowning at him, staring. He nodded, slowly. “You have to leave,” he said. “Samantha and Rachel. You have to leave them. The street, London. You have to go. Now.”

“Go?” Michael said. But he knew Josh was right. They couldn’t continue like this. “And what do I tell them?” he said. “I can’t just disappear. They’ll be suspicious. They’ll call the police.”

Josh laughed. “The police? Yeah, as if they’d be of any fucking use!”

“It’s lucky for you they weren’t,” Michael snapped. Josh stepped towards him. “And me,” Michael said, raising a conciliatory hand. “And for me.”

“Tell them whatever you want,” Josh said, turning away again. He was pacing back and forth, back and forth, as if trying to recall some lost instinctive movement. “You’re the fucking writer, aren’t you?”

Michael got off the bench and went to pick up his fencing bag. “If I go,” he said, “will you tell Samantha?”

Josh looked at him as if he’d spoken in a foreign language. “And tell her I wasn’t there?” He shook his head. “No. But,” he said, pointing at Michael, “if you come back. If you write to them, or call them. I will. I swear. I’d rather bring us both down than have you fucking anywhere near them.”

Michael looked at Josh. He was a new man. A man transfigured by loss, by anger. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes both alive and dead. A man with nothing and everything left to lose.

“Tonight,” Josh said, dropping his hand. “You have to leave tonight.”

IT IS EARLY evening in Manhattan, at the beginning of the Easter weekend. The sun is just an hour from setting over the New Jersey skyline. In a few minutes the red Colgate sign will light up over the Hudson and Statue of Liberty tourist boats will unfurl their sails to steer by the wind towards the mouth of the estuary.

Michael is sitting on a bench beside the river, on a pier across the highway from West Twenty-Sixth. He is at the pier’s end, beside a large steel waterwheel that is turning, water and light falling from its paddles. On one side of him a young woman in shorts, vest, and trainers is stretching her hamstrings, a low fizz leaking from her headphones. On the other, a Mexican couple is sitting on a bench, rocking their baby in its buggy. From farther down the river, at the next pier, Michael can hear music playing from The Frying Pan, a floating bar on a decommissioned fireboat. Together with the pulse of the traffic behind him and the sound of the water falling from the wheel, its faint beat completes a soundscape he’s come to think of as calming. Manhattan is never quiet, but this, whenever he has needed to find space, to think, to remember, to capture a sense of quiet if not quiet itself, is where he comes.

It’s been almost a year since Michael left London. The note he wrote to Samantha on returning from the Heath that day was short and to the point. He told her that leaving was simply something he had to do. That he knew he should say good-bye to her, to Rachel, but he couldn’t bring himself to say those words with them standing before him. The note had made him seem weak and selfish. He knew Samantha would think it a reaction to her offer for him to move into the house. It would anger her. She would think herself a bad judge of character. One day, when Rachel was old enough, she’d tell her to forget him or, at best, forgive him for being so damaged and for passing on that damage in hurting them.

His own hurt is gradually healing. The last letter he received from Daniel, like all of them sent via his publishers, had made it clear it would be just that. The last letter. He had given Michael everything he could. They both needed to move on, he’d said, so he would not be writing to him again. In the same letter he’d told Michael he’d recently moved back east, that Cathy had returned with the girls to upstate New York and he’d decided to follow them. He hoped, he’d written, that one day he might move back in with them. Until then he’d found a cabin to rent outside Hudson and a job at a local organic distributor. Twice a week he drove into Manhattan, delivering local farmers’ produce to downtown delis and restaurants.