The Water Is Warm

by Jennifer Stawska

  And I can go on to remember how, when you came back here from Sweden, you coaxed Sunil into the water, slowly, patiently helping him to overcome his fear and turning the sea into a shared playground. How you walked along the edge of the sea, you with your arm around Sunil’s shoulder as you spoke to him quietly, knocking together as you joked your way along the beach. How you and I both helped Raja to leave the bottle behind and love his nephew with a warmth that outshone the sun.

  I can see you holding Sunil’s hand as he stepped deeper into the water, smiling at Sunil and offering him encouragement, giving Sunil your full attention. Once again, I can see you holding Sunil’s hands as Sunil half laughs, half cries as you take him into the water so that it reaches up to his waist and I watch you bouncing on your feet as the waves come in with the sunlight dancing on the water’s surface.

  Now, in the next picture that I want to paint, Sunil is a confident swimmer again and I watch as the two of you duck under the waves, jump up from the floor of the sea collapsing side-wards like whales and race each other through the water. But most of all I watch you glide down into the water, your straight, tanned, powerful legs pointing up with God given grace and beauty that I did not deserve to see. And when you come out of the sea I see you both shake your heads to clear the water from your hair and riddle your ears with your fingers as if mimicking each other.

  You walk up the beach towards me, with Sunil dancing in front of you, pretending to stamp on your feet, and you shout: ‘Hey Englishman, why are you not swimming today?’ before coming to lie down on the sand next to me in the shade with an oomph of relaxation as you stretch out and put your hands behind your head, resting it on the towel next to me

  ‘Hey, Viking,’ I smile at you. ‘Get back on your longship. Can’t a man sleep?’

  But you and Sunil laugh and exchange looks to take the piss out of me. ‘What does that spell, Sunil?’ you ask, writing in the sand.

  ‘Lazy,’ Sunil replies and you both point towards me.

  ‘OK. OK. OK. My turn’ and I take over, playing and swimming with Sunil and this time it is you who stretches out on the sand and watches.

  And that is happiness. That is what I knew and that is what I have lost. That is Sunil. And that is you, Josh, about whom I could write enough pages to fill an art gallery with descriptions and probably will try to do so. And if that is not as close as anyone can get in this mortal life to the peace of God, then I don’t know what is. Living in the love of the God that we found and knew; and living in the love of each other. My brown eyed boy.

  Time to get on with this, that’s way too long a run-up. I’ve already deleted pages and pages about sitting with you under the Bo tree in the gardens in Colombo when you first came back here, watching the sea together from the veranda at Arugam Bay, swimming under the waterfall near Belihuloya, riding the motorbike together like twenty year olds, finding faith together…Loads of stuff. All that can come later.

  Six years back I go, to when I screwed up my life in London before I met you – that’s the context of how we came to meet so it has to go in; it’s also why I know you as my redemption. How much can I remember of what happened at the point where I must really get underway? Quite a bit, actually, because we talked about it a lot and, do you know what, Josh? When I can’t remember I can plug the gaps by making up the story. Why not? That’s something else we learnt. How to tell each other stories. In the quiet of the night when all I could hear was your voice as you lay next to me in the half light of the shack. Or when I would take my mind to the borders of imagination filling you with stories that I had put together during the day, longing to upload them into you, full of anticipation. Anointing you with words and coconut oil.

  So, here goes. Start at the beginning, go on until the end, and then? Well then, fuck knows – there’s a joke about that which I might tell later, along with the one about the man wearing only underpants at the fancy dress party.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I used to work as a barrister, before I came here. I practised in family law cases and, like all my colleagues, worked on a self-employed basis from a set of chambers in the area of London with the Masonic sounding name of ‘The Temple’.’ I was a member of the Inner Temple - that sounds even worse now, when I come to think about it. I had always done cases concerning children, parents and relationship breakdown. I wore the uniform, competed with the aim of winning and played the part.

  Chambers was a very rich and traditional place to work that now belongs to a totally different life – it feels like a different planet. The shack where we lived in Unawatuna would probably fill only half of the waiting room, if that. The carpets were red, the walls were painted a soft golden yellow and there was a constant smell of freshly brewed coffee. I shared an expensively furnished room with another barrister and friend called Jennifer Stawska, who plays quite a large part in my story. The walls of our room were lined with bookcases filled with leather bound law reports and there was a mahogany table in the middle of it around which we would hold meetings or, as they are called in the legal world, conferences. The room smelt of leather and polish and the bright lighting came mostly from the central and ornate chandelier whose many bulbs shone out a disgraceful but defiant disregard for the preservation of the environment.

  We both had mahogany desks with brass table lights which were topped by green glass shades. There was a large, golden framed mirror at the end of the room above a false fireplace which was surrounded by a black cast-iron mantelpiece on which we kept two decanters, one containing port and the other single malt whisky both untouched for years. On a leather topped side table we kept our legal papers – our briefs - wrapped in traditional pink ribbon and sent in by solicitors. If I turned up in chambers now I would be thrown out as a stinking beggar – it is four and a half years since I set foot in the place but it feels like a lifetime ago. I can’t even remember what it feels like to wear a suit, never mind a wig and gown. If you went in there, Josh, I can picture you blinking at the lights, saying that you didn’t belong there and that you felt two inches tall. I would have to do a huge emotional repair job.

  Well, it is to my room in chambers that I must beam myself back and introduce Catherine Warrenberg who came into it for a conference. Catherine’s daughter, Martha, had been admitted to hospital as an emergency on three occasions in the first four months of her life, having stopped breathing. On each occasion Catherine had been alone with her in her flat in Battersea. However, on the last occasion, the hospital’s suspicions had been aroused because fingertip bruising had been noted on Martha’s forehead; what is more Catherine had reported that she had noted blood coming up into Martha’s mouth just before the paramedics arrived and that was interpreted by the hospital doctors as consistent with attempted suffocation. As a result, the social services had issued care proceedings alleging that Catherine must have attempted to suffocate Martha in a display of that mythical phenomenon which those with a fetish for Freudism used to call Munchhausen’s syndrome by proxy.

  By the time that I got involved in Catherine’s case a deal had been struck with the social services by which Martha lived with Catherine’s mother and step-father. It was a temporary arrangement, meant to last until a court hearing called a fact-finding hearing, could take place within the care proceedings to decide whether the social services could prove its allegations against Catherine. Part of the deal was that Catherine could only spend time with Martha if her mother or step-father were there - it’s called supervised contact in legal language. There had been a glowing assessment of Catherine’s family by social services in which Catherine had told a social worker all about her own upbringing – how her mother and father had divorced, her father abandoned them all and how her step-father, a now retired senior police officer, had stepped in and saved the family.

  Catherine was being represented by a QC, a leading barrister from chambers, but my job was to help the QC and, in the initial stages, to draft a statement in which Catherine had to explain
to the court what had happened and to record her formal denial that she had done anything to harm her daughter.

  When I picked up the brief, therefore, there were already medical reports from the doctors who had treated Martha in the hospital which suggested that there was no medical reason for Martha to have stopped breathing. But more importantly, the doctors were saying that suffocation could cause bleeding within the lungs or airways as blood pressure builds up in the body’s attempt to pump oxygen around it. Further, the doctors were saying that no satisfactory explanation had been given for the bruising to Martha’s forehead. It was being said that the high acid levels in Martha’s blood were consistent with her having stopped breathing on each occasion; so, said the social services, this was not a case of Catherine fabricating stories that her child had stopped breathing – they said that it was a case of deliberate attempted suffocation.

  That was how the first meeting with Catherine was tee-ed up. I had been a family barrister for nearly eighteen years by then and, at the age of 39, was at the point where I was thinking with the endemic paranoia of the bar about whether to apply for silk or to apply to sit as a part-time judge, a Recorder. I used to fret about the effect that taking silk might have on my income – would I find that nobody wanted to brief me as a QC? It is all a bit different here in Sri Lanka, where the average monthly income is about 20,000 rupees - that’s about £90 in the UK; however, like faith, that would have meant nothing to me then.

  I knew from the start that it would be a difficult case, not least because Catherine was herself a member of the family bar, albeit from a different set of chambers. It was Jennifer who first warned me of the pitfalls, when I was preparing for the first conference.

  ‘Watch your back, Simon,’ she said when I told her that Catherine was a member of the bar.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, if you win, the silk takes the glory. If you lose you get crapped on. You won’t get any thanks for this.’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t turn the brief down, can I? The clerks would kill me.’

  ‘It’s not the clerks who will be pilloried around the Temple if things go wrong.’

  ‘Great. Thanks.’

  ‘Just watch your back, that’s all. She’ll be high maintenance. You wait.’

  That’s the gist of what she said. Jennifer didn’t take prisoners and, invariably, she was right. The conference went something like this.

  ‘I’m really sorry, this must seem really strange for you.’ I tried to start the conference on a note of understanding.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Getting advice from another barrister.’

  ‘Let’s just get on with this, shall we?’

  I can remember that first conference very well, even now. I have this image in my head of sitting in a room with a person trapped inside a block of ice. Also sitting in the room was an articled clerk from the solicitor’s office who did nothing to ease the atmosphere. She kept her mouth firmly closed, her head down and directed her Herculean efforts to trying either to write down every single word that was spoken or, during periods of silence, to pull split ends out of her hair.

  ‘Can we go through the three occasions when Martha stopped breathing, please?’ I tried to take charge.

  ‘Haven’t you read the draft statement that I sent to the solicitors? That says it all, surely. What else do you need to know?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but I do need to ask some questions about it to make sure I understand.’

  ‘OK, you tell me, what is it that you don’t understand?’

  That’s pretty much how the atmosphere remained during the conference until right at the end - I asked a few details but if ever I asked anything that already appeared in her draft statement she slapped me down. After about an hour I had as much as I was going to get and, what’s more, I had had enough and I thought I would try to wrap the conference up.

  ‘How’s contact going?’ It was a simple question but very badly worded.

  ‘Contact? What do you mean, contact? This is my daughter you’re talking about.’ And then she burst into tears. It was like watching a plastic ruler snapping. ‘This is such fucking rubbish. I don’t want contact with my daughter. All this is for clients, not me.’ I certainly remember the swearing. Then she drew her legs up onto the chair holding onto them around her knees, looked pitiful and sobbed.

  Catherine is a slim, golden haired and very attractive woman, then in her early 30s. Her voice, which bears a slight lisp, is quiet and soft but she has the ability of shifting her tone whenever challenged or when asserting her own professional identity. As I got to know her better I learnt that she also had a tendency to close herself off from her emotions suddenly, like a door slamming in a hurricane, shutting people out. Then, when the pressure on the door got too great, there was an overwhelming outpouring of stored up feeling. Later that is what drew me to her like a magnet, especially when I heard her release it into her singing. However, this was my first experience of it and it blew me off my feet.

  ‘Would you mind going to the waiting room,’ I said to the articled clerk who was still taking notes. I then walked around the desk and squatted down next to Catherine, holding the arm rest of her chair.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said to her. By that stage I was genuinely sorry that I was stuck with a sobbing client when I had loads of other things to get on with. I was actually asking myself what I was going to do and whether I was ever going to get this weeping woman out of my room.

  ‘No, it’s my fault. You’ve been very kind and I’ve been a complete prat today.’ She sniffed and then looked towards me, trying to smile politely. ‘I must be the client from hell.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve known worse.’ Catherine even made an attempt to laugh at that. ‘But we need to work together. Can we try and do that please, even if you do think I am a complete dick?’

  She laughed again, looked at me, put her hand on mine and said ‘I’ll try. You’re not a dick. I am just finding this hard. You’ll have to bear with me please.’

  ‘Well you can always come back to see me again. We barristers need to stick together. And, no, you’re not just another client.’ That seemed to work. I haven’t the first clue if I meant it. Maybe, maybe not.

  Catherine pulled herself together and I went with her to retrieve the articled clerk who was still scribbling notes in the waiting room, head down. ‘Dirty habit’ I said quietly to Catherine, nodding in the direction of the articled clerk, as we approached the waiting room.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Playing with a biro all the time. Makes you blind.’ She laughed. She has a wonderful laugh.

  After the conference I remained in chambers to complete her statement. Not only did I draft the statement but the events of the case changed my life so I remember it all very well. The statement gave a brief account of Catherine’s background and career but gave a full version of the three occasions when Martha had stopped breathing. I suppose I should mention them now.

  The first occasion happened before Catherine went back to work. She was in her one bedroom flat in Battersea with Martha asleep in her cot. It was about 8 o’clock in the evening. While watching the television, Catherine said, she suddenly became aware that Martha was not breathing regularly. Alerted to this she went over to Martha and, by the time that she had got there, Martha had stopped breathing altogether. She said that she picked Martha up, held her over her left hand and slapped her back with her right hand. When that did not work, she pinched Martha’s nose and gave her a gentle kiss of life. Catherine had estimated that, after about 25 seconds, Martha had given a gasp and started to breathe again which is when Catherine rang for an ambulance. Martha was taken by ambulance to the hospital where she was detained overnight and for the next day but the hospital could find nothing wrong and sent her home again.

  The second occasion was similar to the first except by this time Catherine was back at work and Geraldine, her mother, had cared for Martha during the day i
n a routine that they had established. Catherine was working at her desk at the flat in the evening, she said, when she again noticed that Martha, who was then 3 ½ months old, had stopped breathing. She started breathing again this time after being slapped on the back. Again, the hospital could find nothing wrong although, this time, they kept her in for two days to carry out a larger number of tests. Catherine said that she complained bitterly to the hospital staff about the decision to discharge Martha but the hospital decided that she could not be detained indefinitely and made an outpatient appointment for her to be seen by a consultant neurologist. They provided Catherine with an under-sheet sensor which was intended to sound if Martha’s breathing became irregular and advised her not to place Martha on her front when she went to sleep.

  The third occasion happened on Easter Monday, 1 April 2002 – that date is indelibly imprinted in my mind, not just because it was April Fool’s day but because it was chewed over time and time again as the case progressed. Catherine said that she had been working at her desk again, the sensor sounded and she noticed that Martha had stopped breathing. This time Martha did not respond to being slapped on her back. Catherine said that she had then used her little finger to ensure that Martha’s airways were clear and had held Martha’s forehead firmly as she tipped her head backwards so as to reveal her airways more clearly; this, she thought, might explain the bruises on Martha’s head and she said that it was quite possible that her finger nail caused the bleeding by nicking the side or back of Martha’s mouth.