I remember I shuddered when they mentioned the woman, the nanny, alias refugee from Bosnia. Bernard cast a glance in my direction at that moment and had the wisdom not to draw me in. He resisted a previously misjudged urge to tell people about me, my past. "Michael, you're half Yugoslavian or something, aren't you?" he had once blurted out at a dinner party and I had replied that I have no history I like to discuss. I'm not half anything; I'm wholly nothing. He liked that, but he had no idea what kind of sorry truth was in it.

I remember that we sat around for hours in the garden. The sun was so persistent under that unreal, blue sky. The creak of the hammock, the clinking of wine glasses, the occasional semi-drunken hysteria over an averagely funny story. Bernard's anecdotes. The fat baby burbling and spitting out runny food, and what it had just sucked out of Anita's breasts. Dapples of light and shade through the motionless leaves. A bee that came and went, taking a sniff of white wine, and some small bird sang out from its perch on the wall at the bottom of the garden.
Envy drowned along with energy or purpose. You know when your have reached the glass that should be the last one. I had passed that one by. I dangled a leg over the side of the hammock and watched a tiny sliver of white cloud dissolving as it spread across the sky. Idyllic. Peaceful. Even the fat baby sounded better out of doors. Even the company of James and Stella with all of their perfection and belonging was tolerable quite suddenly.
It was then. It was then I heard a window opening. I might not have looked up at all had the reflection of the glass not caught my eyes and made them squint. It was the upstairs flat, the old man's flat, and he had opened the window very slowly. I saw him standing there and then he leaned slightly forward and looked straight down at me. His face, something about his face I can't forget. It all happened in such a narrow slice of time, so fleeting and unfinished that I cannot forget it. Then he vanished, took a step back into the shadow of the room and was gone.
I told no one. It is locked away carefully and it's part of me now, part of the me that is present. It is incorporated into those images that make up my consciousness, myself. I don't know how long after that the old man climbed up onto a chair, put the rope around his neck and kicked his life away. I don't know if he wrote his note while our voices drifted up, our jokes and laughter, the baby spluttering, the birdsong. I don't know if he looked out through the open window one last time and saw the same English sky with those strands of vanishing pale cloud. I heard a sound though at some point and thought it was the window closing. A sound like the slam of a door. The window remained open and there was no light up there long after we had all moved into the conservatory and lit the candles.
Anita had been chirping on about him. During the afternoon she was teasing Bernard about the old man, threatening to go up and invite him down for a drink: it was an ongoing game she liked to play. They had often said they wished he would move away or "pop his clogs" so that they could buy the flat upstairs and have the whole house to themselves. She thought it might be a laugh to have him down for a drink and pretend to find him interesting. In point of fact she referred to him more often than not as the "Kraut lout upstairs". He hardly left the flat at all or if he did he spoke to no one. He made no noise, had no visitors and at Christmas he was alone. I only saw him that one time.
I wonder if he heard any of it? I wonder if I had gone up there myself, might a knock at the door have altered everything? Things can turn in a moment. You can unclick out of action for the most absurd of reasons. Once I almost struck a woman hard across the face after she admitted she'd been cheating on me. My hand was shaking and longing to strike. The betrayal and anger were almost overpowering. Then she suddenly asked me if I'd like a cup of tea and I found myself saying yes please, that would be nice. Just like that. Yes please, that would be nice. Not, sod you and your cup of tea. No, the hand that was going to knock her into the middle of next week received the cup and saucer quite normally and I sat down, wondering if could still get all my belongings into the back of my car.
There is no comparison of course with whatever the old man's circumstances were. I see his face. I am a conspirator after the event. I know that I stared back and when he vanished I felt the cold of his room, the depth and permanence of his shadow. The last one to see him alive. That phrase, you hear it on the news, you read it in the papers or detective stories. It never had meaning before. I never thought it was significant or troubling, just a fact. There must always be that person, that last person to see you alive. So what? But you see, I feel he hasn't really left me. That's what troubles me. He left his stare, his final gaze with me. He knew that he would never see another human being. I was his last image of otherness and of life, save those weary memories he might have had or his dreaded future.
Once, long ago on a seemingly endless journey, I was trapped with a lonely and dull man. We were the only two travellers on the overnight train to Edinburgh. My unwelcome companion just wouldn't shut up. He was a physicist, amateur I think, or just unemployed since he was so obsessed and angry about his subject. He told me something that comes back now: he said that matter is altered when you look at it. Was I listening? Was he boring me? No, no. I told him, aching for silence, do continue. This is fascinating stuff. Why I said that, I don't know. Probably pity since you can't really tell complete crashing bores that their tedious tripe is killing you, unless you lack all humanity.
So I allowed him to babble on at me and nodded from time to time in a snaky kind of sleep with my eyes open and my brain switched off. In spite of the fact that I was running on auto pilot and unable to follow a word he said, one thing stuck: a seed was there all of this time and now it has germinated into a happy little sapling. It is this: a certain kind of energetic look or stare can alter forever its recipient. Am I haunted then? I want to laugh. But I do not laugh. I see instead the old man's face and I try harder to understand its expression. He has invaded me.
I was drunk. I must remember that. I was drowsy in the hammock and almost fell asleep just before my eyes were dazzled by the reflection from the window as it opened. All the times I have been to the house, day and night, winter and summer, and never once had I seen the old man or even heard him. In fact it had always seemed like Bernard's house. One could easily have forgotten there was a separate flat upstairs, occupied by an old German who had chosen to stay on in the country after his internment during the Second World War. It was surprising to notice the window opening. I happened to be there. I happened to be in the very place he chose to look his last. I like to think it was a coincidence: that he intended to see no one, to exchange no glance, leave no alteration with his eyes.
But suicides are often meticulous, the note, the folding of clothes, even the cancelling of the milk.
He did not look sad. He was thin and drawn. His hair was dark grey and he was clean-shaven. His eyes were calm, yes...they were calm and accepting. He did not look down and hate me or envy me. If he heard our inane conversation and laughter, he was passing no judgement on it; I am sure of that. But you know how it is when you half hear something, a whisper round a corner perhaps? A song from a radio several doors away, while the traffic whizzes by? That. That is what I feel: this face enters my thoughts and I have to consider the possibility that the bore from hell on the overnight to Edinburgh wasn't such a crank after all.
I see that Bernard's joint is going to burn his fingers. I take it from him gently and pull him to his feet.
"Come on, you old junky," I say and guide him to the sofa.
He falls with a grin and mutters something about me being no fun at all these days and I tell him that I love him too, hopeless bastard.
I leave by the back door so that I won't disturb Anita or the fat baby. But I am also going that way so that I won't pass the door in the hall that leads to the old man's staircase. The clouds are parting and the moon spills out across the lawn. It is warm and still. The honeysuckle fills the air with the smell of childhood, an invented childhood. I look up. I look up and I know something; I know, with the same certainty that I take a size eleven shoe, that there is now a crescent reflection in the window above. It darkens. The clouds gather again and I find that I am cold after all. I slip on my jacket and hurry off in search of a bustling street or crowded bar, where I may be anonymously content.

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