That’s the setting in which I realised, eventually, that there was no going back to England even if I had wanted to. Reality dawned slowly and, as it did so, it became so very obvious. I could not possibly go back to the bar – there was no question of that, come what may, until the criminal trial was over. But once you have cocked up your career it is difficult to retrieve it and, more than that, you have to have commitment and drive to survive at the bar and I had lost both. I kept asking myself ‘what is the truth?’ and I knew that the answer to that did not lie in court cases so the whole thing seemed like a farce, a system based on social convenience rather than substance. In that frame of mind I knew that if I went back to chambers I would simply screw up again and I was hardly going to be welcomed with open arms if I went back, cap in hand, asking to be given another chance.
It was obvious, also, that the door between me and Catherine was closed and locked and there was no going back to her either. Therefore, when I went back to the UK in December it was with the intention of tidying up my affairs and leaving for good. I had worked that out on the many nights when I sat in my room in Coonoor watching the ceiling fan turning and turning above me. I kept asking myself where I was going and knowing that only the man with the condom on his nose could answer that. I had money in the bank and I wanted to see the world even though I had no idea what that meant.
I spent six weeks back in Europe, two of them in France with my mother’s family for what turned out to be another miserable Christmas. It was not just that my head was still full of what had happened the previous Christmas but also that my mother made it very plain that she thought I was a sinner for whom prayers had to be offered – she told me that she lit candles for me in the church and that the priest included me in prayers at mass. The rest of the family made it equally plain that they thought that I was pathetic – they are hard working farmers and I was the drop out from England. They had a farm to run and did not want a failed lawyer moping around. I can’t blame them either.
When chambers opened again after the Christmas break I had meetings with Dave and the head of chambers, tied up all of the loose ends and financial arrangements such as chambers rent, clerks fees and payment of outstanding fees into my bank account. I couldn’t bear even asking about my personal stuff in chambers. Then I handed in my written resignation which was immediately followed by a notice on the chambers website that I had chosen to retire from the bar and chambers wished me well.
By the end of February I was back in southern India, just knocking around, doing nothing. It’s quite easy to pass your time in that way – I spent a month pretending to be interested in the carvings on the beach at Mahabalipuram and a couple of weeks sweating it out in the heat of the temples of Madurai after the cooler winds of February and March had passed. The thing that sticks most in my mind from that time is trying to persuade a mother in a bright green sari in Chennai to take her child for treatment for leprosy rather than using him to increase her income from begging; multi drug therapy does not cost a lot and can halt most types of the disease but the mother would have none of it despite my offer to pay. That, and seeing a man have a fit in the middle of a busy road in Bangalore and walking on – the failed Good Samaritan story.
I had to return to the UK for the criminal trial – that hung over me like a dark cloud and I dreaded going back. It was the thing that stopped me ditching the past from my mind. I did think about ducking out of that as well – just not turning up - but realised that I couldn’t. That much I did owe to Catherine and, what is more, I kept in contact by email with Jennifer and there was no way that I was going to tell her that I was wimping out of the trial.
The trial, though, was the last thread that tied me to the UK and once that collapsed there was nothing holding me back and it was time to cut it. The snip of the scissors was represented by me selling my bike. That was the final cut.
Before doing so, however, I made one last trip down to Devon to see the places of my childhood. I went into Exeter and bought myself a new pay as you go mobile and a new laptop on to which I transferred a few files that I had already also put onto a memory stick. Then there was one carefully planned ritual that I had to perform on the return journey to London.
Just off the M5 south of Bristol there is a hill called Brent Knoll which looks a bit like Glastonbury Tor without the tower at the top. There is a straight stretch of motorway south of the hill where the Huntspill River passes under the road. It is a wide, slow moving drainage river which, when it is properly maintained, serves to prevent the surrounding wetlands from flooding. I stopped on the hard shoulder of the motorway with Brent Knoll just visible through the gloom. From my side pannier I took out a small bag into which I had stuffed my wig and gown and a copy of a family law textbook that I had written. I leant over the railings of the river and dumped the bag together with its contents into the water. It hovered for a moment on the surface and then sank out of sight. I then took out my old mobile with its contact list bearing witness to the past, and I hurled it into the air and into the river.
Next went my old, chambers laptop. Then I put in my earphones, turned on my iPod, got on my bike and drove, flat out (and, why not?) down the motorway listening to trance music - subtila, var det?
So that is when I finally ran away. Just as I had run away from Catherine, Martha and everyone else. Like a dog with its tail on fire, wanting to hide away from the thing that was destroying it. I had not the first clue what the future held or why I was going back to India.
‘You can’t run away from yourself, Simon.’ That’s what Jennifer said to me and I knew that she was right. But it was too late for that.
‘I need to be free,’ was my feeble reply. However, it’s trite but true to say that you can never be free from yourself. I knew that then and I know it now. The prickly pear of conscience keeps reminding me, usually at three o’clock in the morning. I can remember very clearly indeed that, as the plane left the Heathrow runway in early August 2004, I looked around at the other passengers and felt a total outcast. Felt? I was one and rightly so after what I had done.
Before I close the door on writing about London, there are three final things I want to say about it, whatever may be my guilt. First, I think that my life is different now – that, at least is what I want to believe. I want to think that I have stopped destroying things. Second, there’s no more running to be done. I know that. There is nowhere left that is safe.
Finally, I think, I hope, I have been able to do one thing right. I hope that I am genuine when I say that I have known what it is to be committed to someone I love and who loved me. If I am not genuine about that, if I don’t really mean it, if it doesn’t define who I am now, then what has been the value of my life? It means that I am like billions of people who have lived over the ages - a temporary entity that has just tried to get whatever he can from the world around him for his own temporary advantage. But for what?
If I am genuine, then, that committed love has been given to me by one person – you, Josh. It is the love you gave to me and accepted from me. Proper love that took me to where I belong. And love, true love, is compassionate, you showed me that and that is where I had failed before I met you. It is what Siddhartha and Christ both taught at the core of their philosophy and religion. That is what I feel that I have been given and nothing will ever compete with that. That has been the only way that I have been able to face myself over the past years since I left London. Maybe I’m just kidding myself. I hope not.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Although I took both of my passports – French and English - with me when leaving London, I used my British one most of the time and, when I first went to India in October 2003, I had obtained a twelve-month visa on it which allowed for multiple entries. I therefore went back to India initially and wandered around the north this time, seeing the sights and behaving like a tourist. When my visa was due to expire, I went to Nepal. It is possible to get a Nepalese visa at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport
and at some other borders – the first one lasts for sixty days but it can be extended. So that is what I did.
Nepal is full of imagery. The geography is stunning, the religion intense and the poverty extreme. That’s when I did the skydive and watched the burning ghats. I did the Annapurna trek and swam in the Phewa Lake but I had not the first clue what I was going to do in the long-term. For much of the time I couldn’t face even thinking about the future.
What finally kicked me out of my dream world? It was watching the religious festival, called Dashain, where goats and other animals are sacrificed by being beheaded in public. It took place in October when I was there in 2004. I was in Patan, sometimes called Lalitpur, and was watching as goats were lined up before a man wielding a machete. I saw how one minute the goat was bleating on the end of a rope and the next its head was lying on the ground. After each beheading there would be clapping in celebration and then someone would take the goat’s tail and swing the headless body around to form a circle of blood. To begin with I was appalled by what I was seeing and the brutality of the sacrifice, although I don’t suppose that western abattoirs are any more humane. As each head rolled I witnessed the split second between life and death, like a light being flicked off. But I can remember only too well that, when watching as goat after goat was beheaded, I thought ‘Why am I so different to those goats? Why does my life matter anymore than one of them?’ And I began to realise that nothing would ever matter if I just stood around like the goats waiting for things to happen.
Will, the Australian guy with whom I did the skydive in November, was a great bloke. I had met him first when he signed into the hotel where I was staying on the shores of the Phewa Lake sometime after Dashain.
‘Shit.’ That was the first word I heard him say.
‘Sounds messy.’ I was standing by the reception area.
‘Sorry. I’ve kept my room key from the last place I stayed.’ He showed me the key.
‘They’ll have plenty of others.’
‘No, no. That wouldn’t be fair. I’d better take it back.’ He disappeared in a taxi to a hotel which, I learnt later, was on the other side of Pokhara, about five miles away. That was Will, all over. I must have spent ten days hanging around with him, skydiving and swimming in the lake.
Will told me about a charity in Galle that helps families with disabled children. He had worked there for a while himself and gave me the details, speaking with enthusiasm about the beaches here. He was a surfer. So, I decided to take a flight down here to see if I could do something moderately worthwhile. That’s how I came to be here in Sri Lanka.
I only had a 90-day visitor’s visa when I arrived and so I knew that I would have to apply for a longer one if I was going to remain here. I visited the charity soon after I arrived, liked it and so decided to take the plunge and stay. That meant I needed to get a residence visa which is valid for a year and for which applications should usually be made a month before arrival. So, it took an age of tortuous discussion and remonstrations with the officialdom and bureaucracy of the Department of Immigration and Emigration in Colombo (and two returns to Galle to get more references and details of the work that I would be doing) before I managed to get the visa. That was just before Christmas 2004 and so I decided to spend Christmas Day in the big city before heading south on Boxing day to start work in Galle.
So it was that I was on my way back to Galle on the Queen of the Sea train with the intention of starting work there, when the tsunami struck. I had every possession I owned with me when I boarded the train. I lost the lot, except for the remainder of the clothes that I wore and my money belt.
That’s how I got caught up in it all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The events in which I was caught up that day have been described as the world’s worst-ever train disaster. It is estimated that, of the 36,000 people killed in the tsunami in Sri Lanka, 1,700 people died in it. In the country as a whole a further 6,500 people were said to be missing and many people who had been on the train were also never found so the numbers are imprecise; in the aftermath many were buried in pits dug hurriedly to avoid the spread of disease.
It was a Buddhist full moon holiday, the Unduvap Full Moon Poya day and also the day after Christmas - this country is renowned for the number of public holidays associated with the full moon, called Poya days. People were travelling to see their families and to escape from the hurly burly of Colombo to the soft beaches of the south. The train could not have been filled with more passengers, so much so that, as often happens here, the roofs of the carriages bore a significant overload of them. Just before the beach resort of Hikkaduwa the train had stopped in the village of Peraliya, near to Telwata, and not far from a place where there is a large statue of Buddha, watching impassively. It is there that the water struck.
Before I give my own account of what happened to me I want to acknowledge immediately that I was one of the lucky ones. I survived and no one close to me died that day either. Many people did not survive and many families suffered bereavement way beyond anything that I have ever encountered in my own life. Like Sunil and many others like him.
As to why I survived when hundreds of others didn’t, I cannot say. But one thing I can say for sure. God had nothing to do with it. How could my survival be a result of divine intervention or something that was ordained by an ultimate and infinite power of universal morality or goodness? Why should a God have saved me but condemned others - children, monks, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians - to death? Why was misfortune piled onto the heads of so many already disadvantaged people? The only explanation is that it was chance. Any other suggestion is a pure contrivance. I am certainly no better than the 1,700 or more people who died and many of them had far greater worth than me, I am sure. Knowing myself as I do, the person described in this writing, how could I think otherwise? Does fortune define value? Of course not. It’s just another fairy story for the feeble minded. I think Kipling had a word or two to say about that.
So, it is with real trepidation that I give my account of what happened to me. I do not want to offend anyone by doing so.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The first thing I want to say is that it was not a wave. It was a surge. A foaming, spitting rush of water. As the first, smaller surge came at about 9.50 a.m. people ran towards the train and scrambled to the other side of it, thinking that they would find protection from the water behind the red carriages which stood proud on the flat surroundings and rickety rails. Water came into the carriages in a way that was not threatening and pulled back to the sea, creating a brief interlude in which people started moving again, some turning back towards the shore as if to see what had happened and what damage had been caused. There was debris deposited everywhere and people, mostly men, were shouting commands.
But then the shouts turned to panic as people saw the second rush of water coming. Outside the train people ran to the apparent shelter of the carriages. I was lucky enough to be standing near a door in a compartment that was so overcrowded that it was barely possible to move. A New Zealander, to whom I had been speaking, was shouting out of the carriage door ‘Run, for fuck’s sake, run’ and was trying to pull people up the steps into the carriage, plainly thinking that he was hauling them to safety. But there was no safety in the carriage and there was neither time nor space to get people onboard.
Other passengers joined in the cry of ‘run’ and what must be the equivalent in Sinhalese. A man leapt up to the carriage window and clung onto it. Others tried to clamber up the train to get on to the roofs of the carriages. Women tried to run towards the train, some tripping on the clutter of debris and others bogged down by the marsh left by the first wave, their wet saris trailing in the water. I saw a child standing alone, frozen in fear and holding her hands to her face as she whimpered, her fingers splayed across her cheeks and shielding her eyes. I saw her disappear as the water overwhelmed her, wiping her from the face of existence. The air was full of screaming, everything r
everberated with an electricity and awareness of impending death. I can smell now the panic of that confined area by the carriage door and the prickling sweat of fear and hopelessness.
The second surge was massive. It appeared grey and I have a picture deeply carved into my mind of the instant before it roared into the train with a force that only nature can create. Above all else the water was vast. Like a colossus. Like Devol Deiyo, the Lord of Vengeance, sweeping everything mortal out of its way. Whether I am right I cannot say but, in the spray and confusion, it appeared higher than many of the palm trees; it is quite impossible to say how high it really was because the sheer force of it caused plumes of reaching spray as it raced up the land. Anyway it was all too quick. The other thing I do remember in that instant before the water struck is the noise of the people on the train. Men pushing to the side of the packed train to see what was happening and shouting things in panic. Women screaming and wailing. Mothers covering their children in the wraps of their saris. And then the massive jolt as the water hit the carriage. And then the cries of helplessness when the packed carriage was pushed sideways and was swept along as it filled with water.
There was no way that the carriages could withstand the force of the water. I remember the feeling of the carriage moving under my feet as it swayed in the torrent and then turned. I felt the carriage break free from the rest of the train as the end in which I was standing turned inland, leaving the other end filling with water. I also remember people pulling at each other, grappling for the chance to survive. I saw people in the water being swept away, arms flailing, some crying out for children who had been carried away from them. I watched as another carriage turned completely on its side onto an area where, only seconds before, people had been trying to shelter from the flow of water. And then I knew that the carriage that I was in was about to turn over also and that I had to jump into the water. That can’t have been more than a split second after the train was first hit.
The Water Is Warm Page 13
