by Julia Green
People on the beach stop talking to watch the procession. It’s a moment of magic, the whole beach enchanted for one long night, and this year, when it is midnight, we are going to take the candles down to the sea, and set them sailing on the water for Joe.
Gramps has installed himself grandly in the director’s chair which Dad carried all the way for him, now placed firmly in the sand. ‘Like Canute!’ Gramps keeps joking, to anyone who stops to listen. ‘Trying to turn back the tide!’ He waves his glass in one hand. Lisa and Maddie are keeping it topped up with brandy. ‘Strictly medicinal,’ Gramps says. He looks happier than he has done for ages. Dad sits next to him as much as he can, when he’s not being hauled off to help Ben’s dad and Dave with the barbecue. It’s a grown-ups’ party, this one, properly organised, and for once Izzy’s just a guest. Sally says she doesn’t have to start work till Monday.
‘It’s good to be back,’ Izzy says. ‘It seemed like I was away ages!’ She sits cross-legged next to me on a rug on the sand.
‘How was your mum?’
‘Fine. She liked her birthday.’
‘And your exams?’
‘Oh, passed. You know. All fine.’ She looks at me with her river-green eyes. ‘For what they’re worth.’
Things like that don’t matter to her.
‘So. How’ve you been, Freya? Did Matt look after you? I asked him to.’
‘You asked me to look after him, Izzy!’
‘Did I?’ She turns her head, searching for Matt. He’s talking to Luke, they’re setting up speakers for the music. She turns back to me again.
‘And did you? Look after him?’
I laugh. ‘No. We went swimming, once. He was working, mostly. He can look after himself, anyway.’
‘And Danny boy?’
‘What about him?’
‘How’s he?’
‘Just fine! This is his last night. They’re going back tomorrow.’
‘Will you be sad, Freya?’
‘Kind of. I’ll miss him. We’re good friends now.’
Izzy laughs. ‘Just good friends. Honestly, Freya! Listen to yourself.’
‘I found something amazing,’ I say. ‘I meant to show you earlier. I found it here, on this beach.’
‘A bead?’
‘How did you guess?’
‘I knew you would, if you kept looking long enough.’
‘I wasn’t looking, then. It sort of found me.’
‘The best way, of course. What’s it like?’
‘Green glass, with gold spirals. Really beautiful.’
‘I’ll make you another necklace, if you like. With a proper chain and everything, not string, this time.’
‘It broke, the string. I lost the talisman necklace when I was swimming.’
‘You didn’t need it any more.’
I laugh. ‘What are you, Izzy? My guardian angel, or a witch, or a fairy godmother, or something?’
Izzy stands up. She shakes out her crazy hair, the braids all combed out so it falls like a crinkly curtain round her shoulders. ‘Take your pick!’ she says. ‘What would you like me to be?’
‘Just you.’
‘It’s funny, isn’t it,’ Izzy says, ‘how everything’s changing all the time. Nothing stays still. Look at you. And your mum and dad, too.’
Things get lost and things return.
The music starts up. Izzy twirls round, so her dress floats out.
‘Shall we dance?’ she says, holding her arms out to me in a mock-old-fashioned way, as if we’re about to waltz round a dance floor.
But Matt is already there, one arm round Izzy’s waist, spiriting her away to dance with him on the silver sand.
It’s like a dream. It’s as if I’m watching everything happening, but I’m part of it too. Mum’s wearing the orange dress, waiting for the magic to begin, and maybe it will: every so often Dad, talking to Gramps, goes quiet, watching her, a little smile on his face. Evie and Sally start dancing together, larking about. It’s almost dark now.
Danny comes over. ‘We’re off in the morning,’ he says.
‘I know. I’ll come and wave goodbye.’
‘Will you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Here.’ He pushes a piece of paper into my hand.
I can just about see it’s an email address and a phone number and a postal address in Danny’s careful writing, his name printed clearly at the top. He lives in London: it’s only an hour and a half away from me by train.
‘Thanks, Danny. I’ll give you mine tomorrow. Promise.’ I hug him, and he looks so surprised and happy I stay hugging him longer than I meant to. And then I find I’m holding his hand, and we stay sitting together like that quietly in the dark, and it seems the most natural thing in the world. Funny, how things just happen.
Above the wine-dark sea, a golden harvest moon rises. On the beach, the paper moons each throw a small coloured circle of light on the sand like an echo. Later, when the moon is high in the sky, we will float the candles on the water. Each small light will sail out bravely across the dark water, bobbing on the waves, its tiny flame flickering and wavering. We’ll remember Joe, and watch each star of light float out further and further away, into the darkness.
Accidents happen. Things change utterly in an instant. This is my life now, here, without Joe. You just have to get on with it. Keep hold of the memories. Seize the small moments of happiness.
Good things will happen again. They’ve already started. This moment, now, I’m happy.
And that’s all there ever is: this one moment. And another, and another, and the next one after.
About the Author
Julia Green is the Course Leader on the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University, and has had three novels published by Puffin and three by Bloomsbury: Breathing Underwater, Drawing with Light and Bringing the Summer. She lives in Bath.
Learn more about Julia and her writing with a brief Q & A.
When you were Freya's age, what kind of books did you like to read?
When I was Freya’s age, I was reading books for A level English: King Lear and Measure for Measure by Shakespeare; contemporary plays like The Royal Hunt of the Sun by Peter Shaffer; novels by Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd ) and D.H. Lawrence (Sons and Lovers). I read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen). I started reading the Romantic poets about this time (Keats, Wordsworth) and also poetry by Dylan Thomas, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. I loved Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle; Catcher in the Rye
(J.D. Salinger), and historical romances by Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy . . . I read widely, everything I could get my hands on! My parents loved books and our house was full of them. I had a brilliant English teacher called Miss Fox, and she suggested books to me too. We went to see a production of The Tempest by the RSC at Stratford-upon-Avon and I was blown away by how magical it was. I’ve never forgotten it. I use quotations from The Tempest in Breathing Underwater.
When you are writing, to what extent do you draw on your own experiences?
All my stories are a mixture of ‘real life’, closely observed or remembered, and imagination. Different combinations of the real and the made-up. I do use my experiences a lot, but always re-imagined. Memories, thoughts and feelings are transformed in the writing of them. But that’s not the same as saying my novels are autobiographical. They most definitely are not! My characters are not me. They are all imagined, created by me. But I need to feel a connection to the material I am writing.
How long does it take you to write a book?
Different novels take different amounts of time. I think and dream and imagine and write notes for a long while before I start writing down the story. Once I know enough to start typing on my laptop, it takes me about nine months to a year. Breathing Underwater took the longest: that’s because I wrote one version then realised there
was a better way to tell the story, with the parallel sections of ‘This Summer’ and ‘Last Summer’, and I rewrote the whole novel completely! I’m very proud of taking that time to get it right. I’m a slow writer because I think so much, and rewrite and edit a lot. Plus I’m not writing full-time: I have another job, as a university lecturer teaching CreativeWriting.
What do you hope readers will take away from
I hope my readers will immerse themselves in the story. I hope they will be able to ‘see’ the places I describe and imagine themselves there. I hope they will be moved and feel strong emotions alongside my characters, going on their own emotional journey. I hope they will think about things: their own lives, choices, friends, families, relationships. I hope they will put down the book at the end and feel satisfied and uplifted.
If you could recommend just one book for everyone
Impossible question, but if you could only read one book, it would have to be a children’s book: Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. Like the best children’s books, it’s a book for readers of any age. It’s a beautiful and moving story. It’s perfectly constructed, I think, and profound about the connections between the young and the old, between past and present, and the importance of memory.
Why I Wrote Breathing Underwater
The tiny island of St Agnes, the most south-westerly of the inhabited islands of Scilly, has a special place in my heart. It inspired this novel. When I began writing my story about loss and longing and love, I knew this was the perfect setting. ‘My’ island of St Ailla is very like St Agnes; I’ve borrowed some aspects and imagined and invented others. The sound of wind and water, the extraordinary brightness of the stars on a clear night, even some of the names of the beaches, are ‘real’. Like my character, Freya, when I step off the little ferry on to the island jetty I feel as if I have arrived at my ‘favourite place on earth’. Except, for Freya, as her story begins, nothing is that simple any more. This is an island full of memories . . . a place of ghosts and secrets. The story begins with a scene based on another real memory of my own, about a beach, and a drowned boy left on the shore by the retreating tide.
I wanted to write a story about what happens after a loss: about grief but also recovery and healing. I wanted to show the importance of love and friendship. And I wanted to capture the feeling of summer: sand and sea, beach parties, new friendships, a sense that anything is possible.
Freya longs to be part of a bigger, happier family than her own. At sixteen, she’s thinking about friendships, and boys, and making important choices of her own about the kind of person she is and the life she wants to lead. She makes some mistakes, too! All these aspects of growing up fascinate me. It’s important to me that novels deal with real life in a way that allows readers to think – and be challenged, too, by uncomfortable or painful events as well as happier ones. I want my writing to be honest and truthful.
Gradually Freya’s story began to emerge in my notebooks and I was ready to start work on the laptop. A dramatic incident on a train journey gave me a key scene for early in the novel, and led me towards a whole set of new characters: the big family that Freya becomes involved with. I wondered at first whether the incident was too painful, but I decided that I needed to be truthful about these things. ‘Growing up’ isn’t always an easy time of life. And for some people life is unbearably hard, through no fault of their own. I hope I have balanced out the pain with moments of fun, happiness and hope. Ultimately, Freya is a person full of life and love and promise. She’s like the swallows, who bring the summer with them.
My Favourite Section in Breathing Underwater
It’s very hard to choose just one section from the whole novel as a favourite. I am very attached to the opening, which is based on a real memory, and which I had to write many times until it was exactly right as the beginning of the novel.
I love my final scene, which is a party, and where there are so many hopeful signs of life and love, and my final image of the candles in the little boats, sailing out into the darkness. But the section I have chosen is the one where Freya swims out to sea, alone and at night, in Chapter 24, because this was the hardest one to write of all. It is a pivotal scene.
I wanted it to have a different feel and tone to the other chapters. It’s the point where the ‘real’ world and the ‘other’ world – which might be called the imagination, or a spiritual dimension, or a projection of Freya’s own need and desperation – collide. As we get right inside this place deep in her head – deeper than thought, even, and closer to the subconscious – language itself has to change. The very short or broken sentences and single words, and the way they are set out on the page, are my attempt to convey this. At the point of real extremity, of crisis, when Freya is exhausted far out to sea, she comes closest to understanding what happened to her brother. She’s so close to him, it’s as if she conjures him up in her imagination – or maybe (I allow this interpretation too) she actually does. Maybe he is there beside her in spirit. And the thought of him, feeling so close to him, brings Freya the strength she needs to swim back to shore against the tide. The effect, afterwards, is one of release. At last she can let him go. Or rather, he lets her go. I found this quite moving to write. Some readers have told me how this chapter touched them deeply; especially those who have themselves lost someone they loved.
Objects from Breathing Underwater
There are many real points of reference to the islands in the archipelago – like Freya, I love the sound of that word – known as the Isles of Scilly. I have been to the islands, walked over the downs and round the maze, swum off the beaches, watched the gig races. I have maps and drawings and notes, which helped me when I was back at home, writing the novel. I redrew my own maps in my notebook, and gave my islands their own names using Celtic words I found on the internet. My sister Sue drew the illustrations which form part of Freya’s blue notebook and which are reproduced at the beginning of the ‘This Summer’ chapters. In the museum on St Mary’s Island, I saw the real ancient beads which have been found at Beady Pool but they were small and plain compared to the one in my imagination, so Sue searched for a glass bead that might be the model for the one she drew for the book. The shells and starfish and pebbles were real ones we collected from the beach. In my attic, I surrounded my writing desk with photographs my son took, to help me keep the flavour of this beautiful place as I wrote my story.
Things to do after reading Breathing Underwater
Buy yourself a blue notebook (or any colour you like) and start making notes and drawings in it, of your own special places. Let yourself daydream and doodle. Pay attention to the small details of objects or places – the sounds and textures, smells and sights and tastes of the real physical world around you.
Learn to swim! Or sail!
Go beachcombing, like Freya and Izzy. Make jewellery with the pretty things you find.
Write down some of your own feelings in your blue notebook. Pour them out on to the page.
Invent a character who is like you but also different from you. Write about what she looks like, who her friends are, what she cares about, what scares her, what her memories are, what she really wants . . . Think about the place where she lives or visits. Use the notes for beginning a story . . .
You can read more about Freya’s life in Bringing the Summer: she’s sixteen, now, and starting A levels at college . . . and she’s about to meet a boy, and a whole family, who will have a huge impact on her life
You might also enjoy reading Drawing with Light: a love story, and a story about a girl’s search for her real mother.
A room of my own
My attic is the place where I can escape to write. It is quiet at the top of the house, and from the skylight windows I can see hills and fields and trees and plenty of sky. It is full of books, some on shelves, others stacked high on the floor. There are piles of paper, boxes of old manuscripts, and photos, postcards, other things that help me to write whatever s
tory I am currently working on. It is very untidy but I know where everything is! A small carved mouse (Toby’s mouse from The Children of Green Knowe) perches close to my laptop.
Also by Julia Green
Bringing the Summer
Drawing with Light
Blue Moon
Baby Blue
Hunter’s Heart
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © Julia Green 2009
Illustrations copyright © Susan Green 2009
The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted
Lines from the poem ‘Fern Hill’ by Dylan Thomas are from The Poems
by Dylan Thomas, published by J M Dent. Reproduced by permission of
David Higham Associates.
Line from the poem ‘Not Waving But Drowning’ by Stevie Smith is from
Selected Poems by Stevie Smith, published by Penguin Books Ltd, 1978.
Reproduced by permission of the Estate of James MacGibbon.
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
