The Water Is Warm

by Jennifer Stawska

  I held an image of you in my head and I kept on developing it, thinking over everything that you had said and rationalising why you had said it. I lived in a blanket of warmth that I drew from what you wrote, feeling a softness flowing through my body as I read and re-read everything that you had written. I drank the gentleness with which you wrote and felt it fill me. I wanted to protect you against the sadness and emptiness that you expressed, to reach across the thousands of miles that separated us. I just didn’t know what to do about it. So I wrote to you, that was all I could do and I tried not to swamp you with how I felt but no doubt did so.

  I had this overwhelming wish to see you again even though the very idea seemed hopeless and wrong. The last person I had been involved with was Catherine, and look what a pile-up that was, and I had hardly covered myself in glory with Penelope. I did not want to hurt anyone again, least of all you and, at the time, I think it felt bewildering; this was a man I was thinking about all the time and I knew that what I felt was not just friendship, so it was a whole new ball game. You were in Sweden and I was living, on a temporary visa, in Sri Lanka with no idea about where I was going. What had I got to offer anyone, especially you? Did I really think that there was any chance of you chucking in everything about your life and coming out here? And for what – for whom?

  I do remember, however, forcing myself to admit that I loved you and, having made that self-confession, allowed the penny to drop, it was a huge relief in one sense because it carried my feelings into new, admitted territory. I carried my love for you around with me as my hidden companion, as my world; it meant I could cope with the turmoil, filth and foulness, keep them all at a distance because there were better things in my life. I felt that I was in love even though the love I felt was fantasy. I fell asleep next to you in my mind.

  In one sense fantasy love was warm, protective, inventive, even liberating. I could build up a world around me where nothing really quite touched me except that love. I could be Sunil’s guardian, Raja’s adult supporter through his turmoil, one of the guys at the camp because they involved role play whereas my true world happened with the images in my head which showed me as a nice, kind man who was loveable and loved. Everywhere I went I could imagine you with me and how different things would be if you were there. I talked to you in my mind, treating you as my loving equal, creating a sense of warmth within me, feeling the comfort of being with you. And, at night, I lay with you and held you until I slept.

  Yet, on the other hand, it was also terrifying, because when the fantasy stopped and I really looked at myself, I just saw reality, I saw a mess, someone chasing shadows – a middle-aged man with no substance or future, fantasising about another man with whom he had only spent a few days in very particular circumstances.

  Well, I completely underestimated you and in my self-absorption, it took me a long time to register the true extent of what you were writing. I suppose I get some comfort now from knowing that we were both trying to keep some of our feelings in check, you as well as me and neither of us was writing explicitly about how we were feeling. Looking back now, those feelings show in our letters – as we both remembered when we read them to each other a few months ago when we were in Arugam Bay. Reading them now, the letters are truly painful, like two people stretching out for each other but with fingertips not quite touching.

  Well what happened next was inevitable, I suppose. As we edged forwards in what we wrote, we reached a point where the next step in our letters was for me to ask you if you would like to come back here. I spent ages composing that letter, making sure you had a let out clause, that it was no more than a suggestion. I tried to sound convincing when I said that you needed to think very carefully about what you were doing and that the life that I was leading was not nearly as fulfilling as it might have sounded in my letters. That there were problems here too – that I didn’t know what was going to happen with Raja, that Sunil needed to find his place in his own community, that the camp would not continue for that much longer, my visa would run out and I couldn’t stay here indefinitely… and everything else.

  Once I had made the suggestion to Josh that he might return here, and it did come from me not him, Josh’s immediate response was to speak of his fear that he would be invading my world – that he would become a burden to me because he knew that I had begun to create a life for myself here and he did not want to barge into it. Having talked about that with Josh since, I know that he didn’t mean a word of that, either. Poor man, what was he letting himself in for?

  So, we both played a game of what we did not want until, in the end, I sent him a text message in which I said something along the lines of ‘I would love it if you came here.’ He replied ‘I’m coming.’ Well, that’s how I remember it. It was exhilarating and very frightening.

  So, I made some enquiries in Sri Lanka and, in particular of the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, which was running a programme of building shelters and housing for tsunami victims here. The programme was a long running one and, in fact, it was not until Josh’s 40th birthday that year, 15 November 2005, that the UNHCR formally handed over responsibility for building shelters to the Sri Lankan government. So there was plenty to do and I found out all the details and wrote to Josh explaining how he could apply to work within the scheme.

  That, therefore, is how Josh came to return to Sri Lanka. He got work through the UNHCR scheme, gave up the lease on his flat, chucked in his job and jumped on a plane. It took until the end of March 2005 for him to come back, almost exactly three years ago. I travelled to Colombo the day before his return, got a hotel room for us both in the place where we had stayed together previously - the one I have just left - and then went up to Bandaranaike airport the next day to meet him off his flight.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  I can picture Josh now as he came towards me through the crowds. He had his rucksack on his back and was wearing jeans, a brown T-shirt and a somewhat anxious smile as he saw me. He looked no different to many other travellers but I can remember so well the thought that went through my mind as I saw him: ‘This is the man that I love.’ It was that simple. I also remember very clearly thinking: ‘I’ve got to play this right…don’t mess this up, Simon’

  As I approached him he took his rucksack off his back and I went up to him, put my arms around him and held him; and he held me and just said ‘thank you.’ I picked up his rucksack and put it on my back, gave him my water to drink and then we went to catch the bus back to Colombo. We stood next to each other on the bus, our sides touching with every jolt of the ride, and I just remember this sense of overwhelming warmth that I felt for him. An incredible sense of belonging. Incredible happiness. I kept looking at him and smiling like a Cheshire cat. When our bodies touched it felt like an injection that flowed through me. God knows what I said, drivel probably.

  The bus from the airport goes as far as Colombo Fort and so we took a tuk-tuk from there to the hotel. By the time we arrived it was late and we were both tired. I had bought a bottle of gin – Rocklands gin, our signature drink - and some tonic. So we drank loads of that, lukewarm out of plastic cups, talked and then Josh crashed out, knackered. I just watched him sleep for a while and then went to sleep myself.

  I woke at three o’clock in the morning, the real prickly pear hour, in complete panic as the effects of the gin wore off and were replaced with racing, sweating anxiety, as though my heart was going to beat its way up into my throat. I just couldn’t sort out my mind. From the time that my father had died I had developed a technique for getting myself to sleep. I would put myself in a place where I knew that I had felt safe, imagining that my father was lying on the bed next to me after reading to me, as he used to when I was young. Or else I would put myself back in my room at university, the last place I had felt free.

  But, when Josh went back to Sweden I had started to invent something else, an image of him back here with me, just as he was then, right next to me. By then, lying next to Josh had
become my fantasy, my comfort and I had spent the previous weeks getting myself to sleep by following the fantasy through.

  Now fantasy had become reality and I was terrified of it. What was I frightened of? I was afraid that there was no escape, that I had to decide how I felt. That I could not pretend anymore and had to be honest. I knew that, if I wasn’t honest, something that really mattered, something that I really wanted, would pass me by and I would always regret it. But it also felt as though I had to leap across a crevasse and I did not feel as though I had the confidence to do it.

  I knew that I wasn’t good enough for you, that I was too immature. It was more than that though – fantasy was easy because it happened within the locked doors of my mind. I could hide it away and nobody need know about it because I was on my own. I could make up conversations with you in which I would say things that I thought that I would never say to you or anyone else and could build up an image of myself within the fantasy. Simon, the young man with all the answers, who had worn silk ties and designer suits at the bar; not the 42-year-old wreck I knew I then was.

  It all scared me shitless. You had so much about you and spoke like an adult about things that I had never dealt with, about life in its bigger context, whereas I felt like a child. You had opened up when the lingering look struck as you developed your sexuality, and had faced the napalm bombing that followed. I had gone with the flow, and I knew all too well where it had taken me.

  I thought of waking you up, moving across the bed and holding you, wondering if I had the courage to do it and then not doing so. Listening to the ceiling fan and wondering whether some of the noise that I heard in the room might be you stirring. Wondering whether I should say out loud ‘Josh, can I join you, please?’ I knew how much you must have been going through and I was scared, so I didn’t do it. I just turned in the bed a bit and, when you didn’t wake, I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew it was nine o’clock and you had just come out of the shower. You had a white towel around you and were rubbing your hair dry with another and flicking your head to rid it of water.

  ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ I lied. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Well thanks. Must have been the gin.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ll get going. Breakfast?’

  ‘Not here, thanks. Full of fat Americans. Let’s take a walk and find something elsewhere.’

  I got up, showered and we went walking, both of us being overly polite, overly sensitive. Josh did not want me to think that he was invading my space, I did not want to open the flood gates of how I was really feeling. What is more, we both knew that we had affirmed our friendship through letters but we were not a couple then – how could we have been? So we were both feeling our way forward slowly.

  I know precisely when the first breakthrough happened; we were walking in the Viharamahadevi Park and I was asking you when you would come to see Sunil. You said that you would need somewhere to stay when you come to Unawatuna, could I help you find somewhere? You were testing the ice, I know, but it gave me the chance to move things on.

  ‘Well, I thought you would stay with me in my shack. It’s only for a few days, anyway, and you will need to base yourself somewhere after that. So, my home is yours,’ I said.

  We had an elusive conversation – you said that you were concerned, again, about invading my space (how many times did I hear that?), what Raja would think, whether you should base yourself with the UNHCR work and a load of other stuff. By then you must have known very well what I wanted. It was obvious.

  ‘Josh, I am sure about this. It’s what I would like,’ and I put my arm around your shoulder and I saw that you had tears in your eyes.

  ‘Just see how it goes,’ I told you.

  So, that’s the point at which we went to sit under the Bo tree and that’s why that tree means so much to me. It’s where we began to relax with each other, stretched out on the grass in the park.

  ‘This is heaven,’ you said after a while.

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘Well it is for me, too.’

  We lay back in the half shade of the tree with the leaves rattling above us. But both of us knew that there were unspoken words between us, things that we needed to talk about.

  ‘Josh, how are we going to play this, between the two of us?’ I asked a clumsy question which was something like that.

  ‘Come on. Let’s find a bar somewhere and talk this through. Like we talked in our letters.’

  We walked for about half an hour to a pub-like bar on the seafront, on the southern end of the Galle Face Green, near to where we had sat on the night before Josh went back to Sweden. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane. The pub, or Inn, as it calls itself, has live music but we managed to find a table in a corner where we could talk.

  ‘Gin and tonic?’ I knew the answer to that; we had both drunk far too much gin the night before.

  ‘Puff’s drink. Just beer for me.’ You laughed as you said it.

  ‘I’ll join you. But only if I can drink it from a pink cup and through a straw.’ I can play that game too.

  When I came back with a pitcher of Lion lager – the strong version – I poured two big glasses.

  ‘Bottoms up?’ I got you back. We both downed the beer in one and you went off to buy the next pitcher.

  When you came back you asked: ‘Are you OK?’ You could tell I was tired. Well, I went first – played the ‘this is what is really going on in my head game.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t sleep too well. Not much of a welcome party.’ I didn’t want to be like that, it was not as I had planned.

  ‘Tell me.’

  So, I did. Part anaesthetised by the beer (it’s 8.8% alcohol) and part fed up with my own behaviour, I told you how I felt in a stumbling and, I’m sure, often contradictory way. I told you, face to face, how much I had yearned to see you again. How you had become my inner thought, my inner fantasy. I told you how, seeing you, everything that I had thought and fantasised about was here in front of me but I didn’t know how to behave. I told you of my deep-seated fear that I was just not good enough for you, that I would wreck things and not be able to face myself afterwards. I tried to explain why I felt as I did and made a huge mess of what I was saying, getting myself completely tied up in knots. It was one hell of a monologue.

  ‘Simon, and if I told you that I am here because I love you, what would you say then?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Well that’s why I am here. Trust me.’

  That’s when I cried. I really didn’t mean to, it must have been the drink and it took me completely unawares. It has always taken me a lot to do that but with you I really learnt how to do it pretty well. I certainly did it par excellence that day.

  I tried to smile: ‘I am so sorry. I really didn’t mean to behave like this. I haven’t done that for a long time.’ That was all I could think to say.

  You gave me your handkerchief and I wiped my eyes and sorted myself out.

  ‘I’m not worthy of that.’

  ‘Simon, you are. That’s why I am here. I’m the person that you wrote to, remember?’ Your words pinged straight back to Catherine’s words on the night that she and I had first made love and I knew where that had led.

  ‘Josh, I’m not. You have to believe me. I’m really afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I am afraid…’ I couldn’t say it.

  ‘Of what? Please tell me’

  ‘I’m afraid that the most beautiful person I have ever met will just pass me by. And…’

  You cut across what I was saying. ‘I won’t, Simon. I won’t. Why do you think I am here?’

  ‘Because you have an image of me, but that image is not the person that I am.’

  ‘Maybe that’s for me to decide. I’m a grown up man.’

  Then you said: ‘Give me your hand under the table’ and you took my hand and rested it on your knee. We were sitting opposi
te each other at a corner table and nobody could see. You kept your hand on top of mine.

  ‘Yes,’ you said, ‘that much’ and you played with the knuckles of my hand, stroking them with your fingertips under the table. ‘Now, let’s get pissed and enjoy ourselves. Skål.’

  The next pitcher went as fast as the first making my head feel as though it was spinning even more.

  ‘Now, tell me about you, Josh. Really, what is going on for you.’ I was still getting over crying and knew that I could no longer talk sense. ‘I’ve shown you mine. Now it’s your turn to show me yours.’

  ‘What here?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ I had to slow you down somehow and get away from how I was feeling.

  More beer but, through its fog, I did get you to talk a bit about how you felt. The big change that all this meant for you. Leaving things in Sweden and coming to a new way of life in an eastern country. I tried to compare you leaving Sweden with me leaving London.

  ‘They’re a bit different.’ Of course you were right.

  ‘Yes, you haven’t screwed up as I did.’

  ‘No, not that. You didn’t have something to come to. Something that you wanted more than anything else in the world. You ran away. I escaped to where I want to be.’

  ‘I don’t understand why, though…really. I…’

  ‘Why do think I’m here, Simon?’ You said it again and then stared me out, cutting across the whole point.

  Then you said ‘teach you a game’ and taught me the game of ‘Cheers to General Puff’ that you had learnt when you were in London.