Philip Morrison never told anyone about what had happened that day in the woods. Every boy at the school had been holding their breath, waiting to hear the grisly details but he simply bowed his head, swaying it gently as he bit his bottom lip. This pose would become familiar to all at the school over the next few years. It was as if he wore the secret like a medal around his neck, the weight of it pulling him forward into a stooped, reticent stance. Speculation was rife and fantastical.

A tragedy the papers called it, his year twelve photo beside the headline.
‘Imagine trying to save that fella like that!’ said the mothers at the school gate on the day of the memorial. ‘And now look at him. A broken boy, would he ever recover from seeing what he had seen?’ I listened to it all and thanked God that no one could see my smirk. For what Philip Morrison had forgotten about that day was that I was there also.

And I saw everything.

The woods behind the school were popular with those of us who liked to stay away from crowds. Like myself and Philip. We had never known each other, even though he had been at Linenfield Boys Grammar for the last two years. Before that day I had seen him only once or twice. He used to sit outside our common room and scurry away when he saw me coming. I liked to think that I intimidated him. Philip was a rich kid and an only child, he had that strangeness to him that children without siblings often have, a certain comfort in solitude. Before that day he was just another insignificant younger pupil but, as it turns out, I was much more to him.

I often hung around the woods at lunchtime or when the rest of the boys were forced to go swimming. I couldn’t swim and refused to be taught the doggy paddle as a matter of principle. I would sneak out through a gap in the wire and wander through the woods, smoking or sitting somewhere to read or listen to my Walkman. I was always surprised that more boys did not go there to escape the vast cracked expanse of concrete that was our schoolyard. Everything about the school bored me; I was restless and easily distracted. I had no time for teachers or the other boys at the school and I think Philip was the same. It is a pity that we never really knew each other. We could have been friends.

I saw him years later, a college dropout, in a bedsit not far from the school. He thought that what had happened that day cast a shadow over everything in his life. He used it at every turn to excuse himself from effort of any kind. Of course he never told anyone the real story. Only I knew that. He became a solitary drinker, he would sit at the bar looking down into his drink and see reflected the terrible image of the Flax hole and himself looking into it. He drifted away from normal life year by year and inside kept telling himself that that day had changed him forever. He wasn’t wrong. It had changed me too. He squandered his life, wasted his opportunities, even gave up on love. He rejected his family and the job that waited for him after school. I had never had the opportunities he had been given and yet he threw them away. How sad it made me to see him waste his life like this.

I used to sit in the one place everyday when I wished to escape the confines of the school. A huge twisted elm tree stood in the centre of the forest, the tree was ancient and gnarled. My place was like a naturally formed hammock. That day I was snugly cradled in the arms of the tree, lazily smoking a long menthol cigarette until I heard the sudden shrill ring of the school bell. When I did, I knew I had ten minutes to run back to the school and try and avoid as many of the large muddy puddles as possible. At the time I hadn’t even noticed the silent interloper in my domain. Philip Morrison had followed me through the wire and out to the woods.

He was attracted to me for some reason, perhaps he saw something familiar in my cool detachment. I had perfected a sort of aloofness, which I prided myself on, thinking it would discourage anyone from bothering me. I didn’t realise of course, how immature this attitude was until many years later. I could see that this was no way of living life but alas Philip could not. He never learned this lesson. He was scared of everything. That day he was even scared of me. He crept along behind me, following me as I hurried back towards the school. It would destroy him utterly if I found him following me, so he sneaked along, hiding behind the trunks of fallen trees and watching me retreat away from him. I was oblivious to his presence at the time and would have remained so if I hadn’t fallen.

As I scurried back towards the school and Philip skulked behind me, I hardly had time to jump the many puddles in the way. I moved swiftly towards the school and made to leap over a massive puddle but missed the other edge. My feet gave way below me and I found myself falling into a puddle. But I did not stop falling. My mind was blurred. The world became dark, my mouth filled with filthy water. My throat clutched at air but none would come. I was underwater. My mind spun trying to understand what had happened. I came back to the surface for an instant.

Standing there on the edge of the flax hole was Philip Morrison. Then he was just another of the anonymous younger boys at the school, I did not know that he had followed me to my smoking place for days on end and watched me read and smoke. I did not know that he would look back on this day for the rest of his unhappy life and wish that he was not there. That he was not watching me drown in the dirty water of the flax pool. He was frozen to the spot, he thought I would be able to right myself and get out but of course I was hopeless in the water. He was scared to jump in at first, he thought that I would be angry at him for following me and scared that I would mock him for the standing that he had given me. And the longer he stood there the worse it became, after a minute of watching me thrash desperately in the mucky water, he was scared that I would be angry at him for not jumping in sooner. Only when it was too late and my body had become still and cold did he leap into the water beside me. He pulled me to the edge of the water and when he turned me over he pressed his lips to mine and finding them so cold and still he did not even blow into me but stayed there for an instant and let one of his tiny salty tears splash on my already wet face. It was strange, I know my eyes were closed then but I could see his face somehow and he was absolutely destroyed. His face was pale and trembling and… heartbroken. As the darkness of the world closed in around me I saw him, as if from above, running back towards the school to raise the alarm on the awful tragedy in the woods.

He would spend the rest of his wasted life thinking over those frozen minutes by the flax pool, as he spent time in his darkened flat, forever by himself, he would curse his inaction and wish forever that he could have taken my place. And I, beside him, mute and now infinitely aloof would let him have it.