The Water Is Warm Read online

  THE WATER

  IS WARM

  Dedication

  In memory of Josua Sebastien Ohlsson

  15th November 1965 – 15th February 2008

  -and-

  Simon Robert Greenwood

  8th August 1962 – 15th May 2008

  THE WATER

  IS WARM

  JENNIFER STAWSKA

  First published 2018

  Copyright © Jennifer Stawska 2018

  The right of Jennifer Stawska to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and

  The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB

  www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

  ISBN e-book: 978-1-78545-290-1

  Cover design by Kevin Rylands

  Internal design by Andrew Easton

  Printed and bound in the UK

  This is just as Simon wrote it. I have only edited it and put a few bits of jumble into some sort of shape.

  I also added the last chapter.

  J.S. - Feb. 2017

  Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta via era smarrita.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  POSTSCRIPT

  JENNIFER’S CHAPTER

  CHAPTER ONE

  Josh and I used to play a game. ‘Describe what you can see,’ he would say and I would do my best to put into words the scene around us. Then he would do the same for me, reaching out into the world before he spoke and then drawing into himself everything that he could see, hear, touch and smell. He would hesitate, caught in that moment of doubt which he did and which always floored me, look straight into my eyes and pause for a second more before breaking into his smile, with its soft hint of ‘you’ll have to help me with this Simon.’

  ‘Go on,’ I would tell him and often I would touch his arm with my hand. Then he would start, quietly, gently, full of tone and full of colour, pouring words like shafts of light into my mind.

  ‘So…’

  I would close my eyes, clear my thoughts of everything else and just listen as his voice filled every corner of my being. He had the most beautiful voice.

  We would play the game when we were lying next to each other on the benches outside Raja’s hotel at Unawatuna looking deeply into the equatorial night sky while listening to the sounds of the beach. We used it to fill each other’s minds while we watched families busying themselves around the sun-bleached tents of the refugee camp in Galle, as we smelt the spices and smoke of their cooking. We played it in words of buzzing anticipation as we painted in spoken images our future lives together in Sweden, in Lulea where we should be now, while lying beside the waterfall near Belihuloya, surrounded by birdsong and the smell of damp vegetation. Even in the hot stillness of the shack in which we lived, before we slept surrounded by the rhythm of the sea, your head on my chest as I stroked your hair or traced your hand with my fingertips and smelt you next to me – that unique smell. Part earth, part salt, part fresh sweat. Your smell.

  It was at night-time, though, that the game of words really mattered. Times when I woke in the dark, often with the monsters eating into my mind or the rain hammering on the corrugated iron roof above us. Times when I turned into you, moved my head so I could feel you breathing, stroked the side of your face, your hair, your arm to wake you. Felt you stir, slowly, softly.

  ‘Tell me, Simon.’

  And I would lie on my back and I would do just that. I would tell you all about the world around me, taking you to the thoughts that kept gnawing into my brain. All of it, the reservoir of words I could never have said before. You would rest your head against me and let me glide my fingers through your hair as I searched for what I wanted to say.

  There were times when the anguish of the past still caught up with you, too, despite everything that you were. Then, well then, I would wake to feel your arm sliding from your side of the bed under my neck, the soft warmth of your breath as you buried your face into my back, the gentle draw of your hand as it traced the contours of my body, calling to me for comfort from the night’s fears. I would feel your feet guiding my legs to you as your knees fitted into the back of mine and the thrilling, electrifying warmth of your chest when it first touched my back. I would push against you, fold into you as if you were a comfortable chair, feeling you surround me, wanting as many parts of me to touch you as I could.

  ‘Tell me, Josh.’

  Then you would tell me with words that spanned the universe. It all came more easily to you, the words flowed like the sweetest nectar, but I learnt soon enough. And it wasn’t all monsters and anguish either. It was the excitement and the silence of the night, too, as we learnt to be together. Learnt a new way of life. Told each other about ourselves as we inched our way forwards, blending our thoughts and our bodies together.

  Those were long, long talks in the dark. Talks about the past, about faith, about love, ab
out the future. About things that needed to be said and which we could only ever say when wrapped in the safety of the world we created. Just the two of us. Emptying ourselves into each other, opening the sluice gate on our fears and letting them flow away, then falling back in the afterglow, every muscle in my body, every cell in my brain having sung its song and been heard. And then sleeping in peace. The peace of God, where heaven lies. Where you and I lay.

  ‘I will always love you, Simon.’

  That’s what you told me whenever you were just about to fall asleep. When you said it, I took hold of your hand so that your arm lay across my body. And I didn’t let it go until I slept, too. It was a ritual. It was what I needed then and it is what I crave for now.

  Why am I writing this? I’m doing it because nineteen days and four hours ago you did the one thing that you were not supposed to do. You died, leaving me behind. I could have coped with anything else. Now all I can hope to achieve is that I can find a way to remain linked to you and I think that this is the only way I can do that, even if nobody ever reads it. I am determined to carve a headstone for you, Josh, to leave a mark of the person you were and of our time together. If there is anything that I am to leave behind me I want it to be this.

  I suppose that what I’m trying to say from the start is that I will always love you, but you know that already. Whatever I do and whatever is left of you, I will always love you. And, maybe, just maybe, by loving you, not letting go, I can keep you alive for a while, with me as I write. If I experience you it means that you are here – work that one out, Descartes. That’s all I want to do right now. Beyond that, who knows? It’s all horribly confused.

  Well, this therefore is the story that I want to tell of how I have come to be here so that I can put into context what we had. I want this to be a beautiful tale, a tale of your beauty. A tale of your face, a tale of your touch, the way that you moved, the way that you spoke. A tale of the person you were, the life that we made together and the faith by which we learnt to define our lives. It is a tale that I love – I don’t know how to emphasise that; do I say with all my heart? Anyway, it explains, as best I can, why you meant everything to me, why you were my family, my father and my friend. My love, my home, my ambition and my man. My brown eyed boy. I suppose it’s my love story and, do you know what? I like that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  How would I describe the present scene to you if we played the game now? I am in the war-torn Eastern Province of the island where, for the first time, I have been fully exposed to the effects of the bitter civil conflict from which we were largely protected when we lived in the south. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE as they get called) were driven out of this province in July of last year, 2007, after the Battle of Thoppigala but the threat of a major government military incursion to the north still hangs here like a poisoned cloud over every conversation, over every day.

  People here expect that the current skirmishes in the north will develop once again into full scale civil war. If they do, they will spill over into this part of the country leaving innocent citizens once again trying to escape the opposing war machines as they consume the Northern Province and as the government army eats its way towards the capital of the Tamil Tigers, Kilinochchi in the Northern Province. They expect nothing here but death, or at best economic destruction, in this obscene conflict that has been waged in this beautiful country for so long but is now revived officially by the government, led by the President, Rajapakse. Only two months ago, on 2 January, it revoked the ceasefire that had been so carefully brokered by Norwegian mediators, just as the country was beginning to recover from the tsunami.

  They know exactly what to expect here. Why? Because they have seen it all happen before, when this province was cleared out by the army after the LTTE cut off the water supply to government held areas by closing the sluice gates on the Mavil Aru reservoir in July 2006. However, they say, this time it will be for real. It will be final. I have this sense, this smell, of watching people on a conveyor belt to death.

  As for me, well I am working on a laptop in a room where there is one, low wattage light bulb and a single socket. The hotel where I am staying is next to a beach in a place up the coast from Trincomalee called Nilaveli and is owned by a couple called Dharan and Karunya. They are both Tamils, both civilians, both waiting for the onslaught that they know must come sometime from one side or the other and which they expect will tear their lives apart again. The building is silent and empty as there seem to be no other guests. The war drove away the tourists here ages ago even though there is a veiled pretence that everything is normal, that peace is restored. There are even signs in English attached to the walls surrounding the beaches here: ‘Peace begins with a smile.’ Well, I can’t say that I have seen too many smiley faces since I got here.

  But at least the geckos seem to smile as they skit across the walls and ceiling of my room. They just watch me, exuding a dippy constancy, even if not companionship. In the distance there is the sea, which has wrought so much destruction but to whose rhythm we used to listen at night. I am working on a small dressing table which I am using as a desk and on which there is just enough room to place my computer. The bed, offering sleep like the grapes of Tantalus, sits vacant next to me smelling slightly of damp but with a reasonably clean mattress and reasonably clean sheets. In the corner of the room there is a wicker seat where you should be sitting, reading quietly. I keep it just out of my sight while I am typing so I can pretend that you are there. The air around me pulsates as the ceiling fan beats away constantly as long as the electricity does not fail, which it does from time to time. The walls must once have been white but now bear lots of damp patches and cracks. Through a green painted door there is a shower which competes with the hole in the floor, that is the lavatory, for the limited cold water and for the distinction of exuding the strongest smell. Because there is no air conditioning, the room is hot and very humid.

  How do I feel right now? I wrote pages and pages of drunken rant about that two nights ago. And I’ve deleted the lot. It’s not what this is about. I just wish you were here.

  CHAPTER THREE

  So, if I am going to get this writing underway properly I am going to make it easy. I’m going to start with a painting of you, me and Sunil – he is Raja’s nephew - at home on the beach where we lived and where we helped to rebuild Raja’s way of life after the tsunami had swept away his hotel and his family along with everything else.

  We are all sitting together under the shade of Priscilla, our favourite tree, as she rocks her 1960s haircut in the coastal breeze like a stoned hippy.

  Sunil is resting his back on your chest with his arms crooked against your knees as he reads out loud from a book. You are following the words of the book with your finger and occasionally correcting Sunil when he stumbles. I am lying on the sand next to you, resting my back on a towel draped over Priscilla’s branches, listening to your voices as you read together and occasionally opening an eye to watch you. But otherwise I am dozing in the cool breeze that wafts in from the sea and mingles with your voices which float softly in the air. The heat beyond the shelter of Priscilla’s shade dances like silent spirits along the beach, distorting the view of the distant headland. Above me Priscilla’s leaves play an offbeat melody to the rhythm of the waves as they bring the jingling sand to life at the water’s edge.

  Your attention is fixed on the book and on the words that Sunil is reading. Occasionally you say something quietly into Sunil’s ear and you both laugh together. But you keep on reading and then I see the flash of the look between you both as Sunil seeks reassurance by scanning your face as he hesitates over a word and you give him what he is searching for through the broadening of your smile, the slight challenge in your eyes, the softening of your voice.

  ‘You know that word. Spell it out.’

  You spell it together, phonetically.

  ‘Now, put all the letters together.’ He does as you tell him.


  ‘Clever boy,’ you tell Sunil.

  He smiles at you and then turns back to the book. You turn to me, knowing that I am following every second of what is happening. You don’t smile, you don’t raise your eyebrows. You just look at me and I know precisely what you are thinking because I am thinking it too. I hold your stare but, in the end, it’s too much and I have to close my eyes. Nothing can ever compare with that moment, it makes me the richest man on earth.

  From there I can move on to the next beach scene easily where I see you bringing Sunil’s attention back to the book. I watch you both as Sunil keeps reading, with you sending out the same message of patience that I saw when you cared for families in Galle, drinking sweet tea in smoky tents. I can see Sunil hitting another difficult word and I can watch you writing it slowly in the sand with your finger and hear the grinding movement of the sand as your finger glides through it to form the letters. Then I can hear you explaining the word to Sunil, getting him to concentrate on it, to learn it, before smoothing the sand over with your hand. And I can study your finger and watch your hand next to me and I feel myself turn, once again, towards it as I do still at night because it helps me sleep. I used to love tracing your hand with my fingertips while I watched you, waiting for you to draw in your breath.

  So then, when the book is finished, I can see you putting it down and both of you pelting along the sand to the sea and playing in a way that only you could. Fresh, frenetic, chaotic play, riven with noise and activity, a memory full of your theatre as you mimic and challenge Sunil, turning him upside down, throwing him into the water, chasing him up the beach. And it is full of Sunil’s smile, feigned complaints and outrageously loud laughter as he turns the chase on to you. I watch you. I watch you and never want to stop doing so, even now.

  And seeing that now reminds me of how, after he was orphaned when the tsunami roared into the train at Peraliya, Sunil had been petrified by the sea and would not go into it for any reason at all – not for fishing, not for washing, not for swimming and not even for cooling down. A nine-year-old boy living on a beach, helping his Uncle Raja rebuild his hotel there, but tormented by the sea. Sunil would stand near to the sea sometimes whimpering in distress wanting to go into it but too afraid to do so because the sea had taken away his parents, his aunt and his cousin and nearly took him away too. The little boy who, despite all his own losses, had looked after me in the hospital at Batapola when I was injured in the same train disaster in which, it is said, at least 1,700 people died.