I Saw a Man (10 page)

He’d found the club on the Internet, a small but dedicated group of fencers, mostly épée and foil, who met twice a week in a school sports hall in Highgate. The first time he’d attended a session was on a blustery night at the end of October. Banks of fallen leaves choked the kerbsides. Others swirled in eddies along the pavements. The hall, in contrast to the night outside, was bright, lit by strip lights buzzing overhead. His kit smelt musty, and his limbs were leaden, unfamiliar with the movements of his youth. But the counsellor was right. For a few seconds, maybe even minutes, he’d forgotten. For precious moments the parts of his mind and chest that had been constricted with Caroline’s death had relaxed. For the first time since Peter had called on him that afternoon it had felt as if he was breathing to the full depth of his lungs. So Michael returned the following week, and had continued to return every week since, finding, behind the mesh of his mask, the anticipation and clatter of the fights, the ache in his thighs and forearms, a release. An action that was neither past nor future, but purely present.

―

Michael had lent Josh the screwdriver a couple of days earlier. The night before Josh had broken his glasses. They’d been sitting in the kitchen after dinner, the remnants of a lasagne in the middle of the table, their wineglasses showing the tide marks of a bottle of red. The girls, after a round of good-night kisses, had already gone to bed. Having settled them upstairs, Samantha had returned to Michael and Josh in the kitchen, where, once again, they’d fallen to talking about New York, a city they’d discovered they shared twice, as somewhere they’d all lived, and then again as a memory.

“But where did they all go?” Samantha said, angling a piece of Brie onto a biscuit. “That’s what I want to know.”

Josh was bent over his glasses, trying to tighten a screw in their wire frames. “What do you mean ‘go’?” he said, not looking up. “Into shelters, hostels, given rooms.”

“But how do we know that?” Samantha countered him. “How do we know they weren’t just all shoved into New Jersey or the Bronx?”

“Because”—Josh lifted his head to look at his wife—“if they were, then I’m pretty sure New Jersey and the Bronx would have let us know soon enough.”

“Not if he paid them enough.”

Josh shook his head and went back to studying the wire frames. He’d changed into a loose-fitting shirt, one side of its collar frayed by the attentions of Lucy’s fingers. He was tired, and looked it.

“You have to admit,” Michael said, looking up from a
Vanity Fair
he’d been browsing, “it was pretty quick. When I first moved there people were still calling Bryant Park Needle Park, remember that? Then, in what felt like only months, they were screening films there, holding Christmas fairs.”

“That’s what I mean,” Samantha said, tapping the table. “Too quick. Giuliani isn’t stupid. He knew if they were off the streets of Manhattan, maybe Brooklyn, too, then that’s all that mattered. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Shit.” Josh ducked his head below the table. A concave lens lay beside his plate.

“The fucking screw fell out,” he said from under them.

Samantha shook her head and drank the last of her wine.

“Got it!” Josh emerged again, his face flushed. A miniature screw was balanced on the tip of his index finger. For a few moments none of them spoke. Michael returned to the magazine, while Samantha stood and began clearing the table. Fitting the loose lens into the frame, Josh twice tried to drop the screw’s thread into place. Both times it fell to the table instead.

“I’ve got a screwdriver for that,” Michael said after Josh’s second attempt. “In my blade kit. It’s magnetic.”

“Well, look at you, James Bond,” Samantha said from the dishwasher.

“Thanks, Mike, that’d be great.” Josh pushed back his chair. “I haven’t got time to—” he continued as he walked out of the kitchen.

“I can take them—” Samantha started.

“I said it’s fine Sam,” Josh called from down the hall, cutting her off. “No drama. I’ll fix ’em tomorrow.”

The next day Michael called round early at the Nelsons’ front door. He knew the girls would be having breakfast in the kitchen and his appearance at the back of the house would only give Samantha another distraction as she tried to feed and dress them before taking Rachel to school. It was Josh who answered his knock. He was recently showered, the hair above his temples still damp. He wore a laundry-pressed shirt, red tie, and polished shoes. Together with an unfamiliar pair of glasses and a fresh shave, he looked like the younger brother of the man with whom Michael had eaten the night before.

“For your glasses,” Michael said, holding up the screwdriver. Its miniature size and transparent yellow handle made it look like a toy from a cracker.

“Ah, thanks, Mike,” Josh said, taking it from him. He nodded at the towel over Michael’s shoulder. “Going for a swim?”

“Thought I might,” Michael said. “Seeing as I’m up. Beat the crowds.”

“Well, all right for some, that’s all I can say,” Josh said as he went into the front room. From where Michael stood on the doorstep he could see the edge of the desk inside its door, Josh’s glasses folded on its corner. Josh put the screwdriver next to his glasses and came back into the hallway. Samantha, in the kitchen at its far end, gave Michael a silent wave. She was standing at the island, pouring milk into a couple of bowls. Michael raised a hand in reply, but the sound of a spoon hitting a table had already made her look away.

“Lucy, please—” Michael heard her say as she slipped out of sight.

“Well, see you later,” he said to Josh.

“Yeah, see you around, Mike,” Josh replied, closing the door. “Don’t swim too hard, now.”

―

That had been two days ago. Michael hadn’t seen Josh or Samantha since. Josh had worked late for the last couple nights. And Samantha, as far as Michael could remember, had left for a spa weekend with her sister, Martha, on Friday morning. From what he understood, it was a trip that had been decreed more than offered by Martha. Along with several of Samantha’s friends, Martha thought her little sister needed a break. To get away for a few days. She and Josh had been having a difficult time. They’d never spoken of it when Michael was in their house, and Josh rarely shared details of their marriage on the jogs he and Michael took on the Heath. But for several weeks now, he’d detected the surface tremors of a deeper disturbance. The last time they’d had dinner, the night Josh’s glasses had broken, he’d sensed it in the air, and in the girls, too, sensitive to the edge in their father’s voice. In Samantha herself, he’d seen no outward change. She and Josh had bickered over the cooking, but no more than usual, and she’d held the same determination she always applied to her arguments in their conversation. But when she hadn’t been talking, when she’d been watching and listening, that was when Samantha had seemed more fragile than Michael had seen her before. Her skin had lost its lustre and the muscles of her jaw were tense. The lightest touch in the wrong place, he remembered thinking, would have been enough to send her fractures running.

―

In the end it had been Samantha with whom Michael had talked the most at that first party in November. Aside from her few initial questions she’d remained largely silent as he’d discussed
BrotherHoods
with Tony, Maddy, and the others. Alert and listening, but quiet. As the party had begun to thin, however, she’d remained in the front room to say her good-byes, as if she was reluctant to leave Michael, or to speak to anyone else for too long before she’d spoken more to him. Eventually Tony and Maddy had also left, Tony helping his wife into a heavy fur coat before following another couple out the front door and into the winter dusk of the street.

There was something of a royal departure in their exit. Samantha kissed them on both cheeks, but with a formality at odds with Josh’s extravagance—his hugging of Tony and his grasping of Maddy’s shoulders as he told her, “It’s been so good to see you guys. Really, it’s been far too long. Far too long.” Maddy nodded her assent with closed eyes, absorbing his enthusiasm with a benevolent smile.

When Josh showed them to the door, Samantha and Michael were left in the room alone. Putting down her glass, Samantha moved between the side lamps, turning them on. She seemed distracted, brittle. Tony’s voice came to them through the windows. “If you say so, Josh,” he called through a laugh. “But I’ll believe it when I see it!” Samantha drew the curtains.

“Coffee?” she asked, as she turned on the lamp beside an armchair.

“Yes,” Michael replied, surprised by his own reluctance to leave. “Thanks.”

They drank their coffees on the sofa. “So Tony really liked you,” Samantha said, prising off her heels and tucking her stockinged feet under her thighs. She pulled a cushion across her stomach and held it there, like a baby, close against her.

“He liked my book,” Michael said. “Which isn’t the same thing as liking its author.”

Samantha smiled, a tired acceptance. “Well, whatever, you’re lucky. Tony doesn’t like many people.” She took a sip of her coffee before adding, “He prides himself on his taste.”

She said the last word as if its own flavour was bitter.

“Josh said they’ve known each other since college?”

“Yes. Tony was best man at our wedding.”

She shifted her position, leaning in closer to Michael as she did. His head felt light with wine and he realised that she, too, must have been more than a little drunk.

“Josh has always looked up to Tony,” she said. Then she laughed suddenly. “And not just literally, either!”

“And Maddy?” Michael asked. “Have you known her long, too?”

Samantha raised an eyebrow. “No. No, Maddy’s more recent. She’s his second wife. Mind you,” she said, as if acknowledging the achievements of a rival, “he’s her third husband.”

“Impressive,” Michael said, although it sounded more impossible to him than impressive. With Caroline gone, he couldn’t imagine the existence of a second, let alone a third, wife. Marriage felt like a finite resource to him, a rare ore he’d already exhausted with Caroline’s going.

“It must be wonderful,” Samantha said.

He looked up and realised she’d been staring at him. She was smiling in a new way, as if she was proud of him. “To live by your writing. To live by what you want to
do.
”

Her emphasis suggested the idea was as impossible to her as Maddy’s third marriage had been to Michael.

“It can be,” he said. “But often it isn’t. Being your own boss. I don’t know, that isn’t always a freedom.”

She looked at him as if he hadn’t understood her. “Perhaps,” she said, looking away to the bookshelves across the room. The lamp at her side lit the fine hairs on her cheek and her upper lip. She wore diamond earrings, small, neat. Her cheekbones were high, and Michael saw how once she must have been beautiful, in quite a remarkable way.

“What would that be for you?” he asked her. “Your ‘do’?”

“My ‘do’?” she said, laughing. “Christ, where to begin?”

―

Samantha’s parents, she’d told Michael that evening, had divorced when she was eight years old. From then on much of her holidays from boarding school in Sussex were taken up with travelling between them. Her mother remarried a New York doctor, leading to Samantha spending a chain of summers and Christmases in Montauk and Vermont. These were the environments of her teenage experiences. On a windy beach at the bottom of a cliff with a surfer, the hairs on his stomach dusted with salt. In woodland huts softened by fir trees and snow. Drinking her first beer as she ate a lobster roll, watching the last train carriages clatter in from Manhattan towards the end of the Long Island line.

From eight to eighteen, despite her frequent visits to the East Coast, Samantha no more than brushed against Manhattan itself. The city was her point of arrival and departure, but never anything more. A handful of afternoons touring the Fifth Avenue window displays in winter, another handful in a bright and sticky Central Park Zoo in summer. A total of twenty days, half of them hot, half of them freezing.

“I suppose that’s why I chose Parsons,” she said, uncurling her legs but still holding the cushion across her stomach. “I mean, I could have gone anywhere closer to home. Central Saint Martins, Kensington and Chelsea. Not Oxbridge, I suppose. I don’t think they do photography, do they? Anyway, that’s not the point. I was determined. New York or bust.” She shook her head. “God, my poor parents. I must have been a right pain in the arse.”

Her teenage desire had been fuelled not just by her own glimpses of Manhattan but also those of others. The work of Nan Goldin, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand. Through the lenses and frames of these photographers, New York became a kaleidoscope of event for her, a maelstrom of the human and the built. All through her first year at Parsons she’d worked diligently to follow their example, spending whole days immersed in the chemical scent of the darkroom. But then one day towards the end of the summer semester, stepping back from her pegged prints bathed in the red bulb, Samantha had seen that she had nothing new to say, or to see. She was twenty years old and beyond the bar or the bedroom it was her first discovery of her adult self.

“Lucky, in a way,” she said, undoing her hair. Running a hand through it, her fingers worked to untangle a knot, as if arranging threads on a loom. “I mean, some people spend their entire lives not learning that. Imagine, all those years producing crap, without knowing it.”

“Those photos in the hall,” Michael said. “You took those, didn’t you?”

She looked at him as if he was trying to catch her out. “Yes.”

“They’re not crap,” he said. “They’re good.”

She nodded slowly, allowing him his point. “They’re not bad. But that’s what I mean. I wouldn’t have taken them if I hadn’t first realised everything else I was doing was so derivative. I mean, it really was, honestly. Terrible stuff. I suppose those are all right. But that’s why they’re on the wall. Because they’re the only ones that were.”

―