Breathing Underwater (23 page)

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.