The Secret Wound Read online

  DAY 3

  “IF YOU ARE IRRITATED BY EVERY RUB, HOW WILL YOUR MIRROR BE POLISHED?”

  J RUMI

  BACK IN “La Torretta” Gurtha unpacked his cases. Nuala was on his mind. What was it that he missed so much about her? There was something intertwined with her flesh and blood that mysteriously glowed and burned in a way that he didn’t understand. It pervaded her glance, her crooked smile, her gestures with the hand tapping on the sofa as she sang, her humour, the way she dressed, her gentleness. There was beauty in seeing her fringe plastered against a sweating forehead, beauty in the grey hair which needed another blonde rinse, in her swollen tummy, in her sitting on the bed at night in her pyjamas, taking out her dentures and placing them in a cup of Steradent. Watching her do all these simple things brought him peace.

  One evening, more than a year before, Nuala, had stood beside the bed, looked at her swollen ankles and asked.

  “I think it’s spreading all over me. Am I going to get better?”

  He knew that her heart problem wouldn’t be cured, yet he couldn’t bring himself to say, “No – you’re not going to get any better. Yes, it is spreading all over you.”

  She gazed at him with that direct eye contact that he was used to receiving, insisting.

  “My mother died like this. Her legs were swollen like mine. It was the end of it all for her.”

  Gurtha said nothing as he straightened the duvet. Nuala sighed.

  “Thank you. You are very kind.”

  She smiled at him and sat on the bed. Gurtha kneeled on the carpet at her feet.

  “Would you like me to help you put the elastic bandages on your legs?”

  “Yes please.” Nuala stretched a leg towards him and rolled up her trousers. “They feel good.”

  Nuala’s death had surprised everyone by its unexpectedness. Nuala - a beautiful thrush sweeping over the ground at great speed knowing exactly where she was going and why. She was fearless – so different from Gurtha – who felt himself gripped by an anxiety about living which easily turned into a feeling of sheer panic. When Nuala was alive, her sense of direction, her confidence in the meaning of life, eased Gurtha’s distress that ultimately life may hold no meaning other than what he chose to make of it.

  Where was Nuala now? He had read somewhere that love could grow even in death. How could that happen? Hadn’t Nuala said to him that she would always be with him – always around? Maybe she was wrong about that. He shuddered to think that Nuala lived a life believing in something which wasn’t true. If what Nuala valued wasn’t real, it negated her life. If everything she thought, felt and did was based on ignorance, then her life had no more reality than the short flickering dance of a Mayfly.

  He suddenly remembered that he had forgotten Paddy again.

  The phone rang for quite a while before Paddy picked it up.

  “Hi Dad. How’s it going?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Gurtha.”

  “Where’s your Mother?”

  “What are you talking about Dad? You know that Mum’s dead.” Gurtha took a deep breath.

  “Are you OK?”

  There was silence on the end of the phone. Gurtha’s voice increased in volume and intensity,

  “Are you there Dad? Speak to me.”

  “Of course I’m here – sure where else would I be?”

  “Dad, I’m coming over. You’re coming on holiday here to Mallorca. I’ll see you on Friday. Don’t forget. Get your swimming trunks packed. You love swimming.”

  “I don’t swim any more,” Paddy rasped on the end of the phone.

  “You’ll love the sea here, it’s warm. Didn’t you swim in Bangor on New Year’s Day?”

  “That was when Nuala was alive,” Paddy whispered.

  “Wasn’t it?” Paddy searched to hear Gurtha’s response.

  “Yes Dad, it was. But you will have a great time here.”

  “I’m not so keen on flying,” Paddy stuttered.

  “I’ll be with you. If we go down, we’ll go down together.” Gurtha wished that he hadn’t said that.

  “That means that we will be with Nuala then does it?” Paddy sounded anxious and pleased at the same time.

  “Dad, Nuala is watching over us.” The lie stuck in his throat.

  “Do you not feel her around you?”

  “I don’t know where she has gone. She’ll be back soon.” Paddy put the phone down.

  Gurtha placed his mobile phone on the table in the gazebo. He held his head in his hands. What was Paddy doing now?

  He imagined him opening the front door, walking up the road to buy fish and chips for his tea. He might first call into Sean Graham’s, the Bookies on the corner, to place a bet on a horse. What would he be wearing? Maybe he would have chosen his tweed jacket, a navy blue V-neck jumper, a blue shirt and tie, navy corduroys, brown loafers. On top of that he would be wearing loneliness. It was as though the air that touched Paddy was permeated with loneliness. He breathed it in and he breathed it out. Paddy was so soaked in loneliness that he became almost invisible like the air around him. Loneliness dissolved him. He would walk into Sean Graham’s, place a bet and leave and no-one would even register that he had been and gone.

  That was the story of Paddy’s life. He moved almost unnoticed across the planet without any sense of motivation or intent. Those who looked at Paddy did so only with the curiosity with which you might watch at a beetle scurrying in a straight line and then taking a sharp turn to the right. You didn’t know where it was going or why, or what feelings, if any, it had on its journey.

  DAY 4

  THE NEXT day was Gurtha’s birthday. He sat on a chair outside La Torretta. A gentle breeze blew through the olive trees waving the branches constantly from side to side. As they moved, the colour turned from olive green to silvery white. The trunks remained solid, rooted in the dry, red earth. The sky was blue – a light blue hiding the stars. Above, there existed a starry universe hidden by the light of the sun. Gurtha listened to the buzzing of the cicadas, feeling the scorching August sun tingle his body into awareness, smelling the pine needles roasting on the barbeque of the earth, seeing the movement within the olive and palm trees.

  He could have brought Paddy with him when he left Belfast on Sunday 11th August but he wanted to make sure that La Torretta would be suitable, to purchase essential food supplies, minimising any agitation which could arise for Paddy being without Nuala. He placed a photo of Nuala and Paddy on their wedding day in Paddy’s bedroom which was beside Gurtha’s. He sat a packet of King Edward and Hamlet cigars beside Paddy’s bed with a blue lighter with the words ‘Mallorca’ written on the side. He wondered what else he could do. He had bought bacon and there was wheaten bread in the freezer, Kerrygold butter and PG tips tea. He remembered that Paddy loved digestive biscuits. He could buy those later in the supermarket in Soller. He added biscuits to his list along with a reminder to buy Guinness and pushed the notebook into his pocket.

  Protected from the late afternoon sun, he sat in the gazebo and tried to listen. He wasn’t listening to the sounds of the birds outside, or the rustle of the breeze in the olive trees. He tried to listen to what was happening inside his head and what was whispering in his body. There were no words to be heard in his head – only a sensation of discomfort – almost nausea. As if he had eaten something which had disagreed with him. He found his breath shortening. Then he realised that the memory of finding Nuala dead flickered once again into his head, together with sensations of nausea, panic and difficulty breathing. Images on the wallpaper in the hallway where he had found Nuala were now magnified in his mind. Hummingbirds flew from the wallpaper and, rather than buzzing over purple flowers, they whirred around his head. He saw the skirting board with its flaking white paint, the hallway tiles with Molly’s muddy cat footprints. These images were fading in and out of existence, speeding up and circling around the central image of Nuala’s body.

  The mobile rang. It was Cornelia.


  “Don’t forget it’s your birthday tomorrow. The party is organised.”

  Gurtha replied. “It is Nuala’s anniversary tomorrow.”

  Cornelia’s voice mellowed.

  “I’m sorry – of course you must be thinking of Nuala. I am as well.”

  There was a moment of silence as Gurtha looked down into the valley of Soller where Saint Bartholomew’s twin spires reached towards him. An intense nausea rolled through him making it difficult to speak. He heard words coming out of his mouth which he had previously no intention of saying.

  “Barry seems to have helped you move on after Henry’s death.” There was silence on the phone. He heard Cornelia take a few deep breaths before answering.

  “Everyone has to find their own way to cope with what life throws at them. In the end everyone is on their own, no matter who is with them. You should have learnt how to be on your own with Nuala when she was alive and then you wouldn’t find it so difficult now. Your relationship with her wasn’t a healthy one as you can see by the state you are in a year after her death.”

  Gurtha coughed before spluttering down the phone.

  “She didn’t die. She was murdered. That’s what makes it difficult.”

  DAY 5

  “FORGET SAFETY. LIVE WHERE YOU FEAR TO LIVE. DESTROY YOUR REPUTATION. BE NOTORIOUS.”

  J RUMI

  GURTHA DECIDED to walk from La Torretta to Cornelia and Barry’s house in the Port of Soller. Cornelia had apologised to him on the phone earlier, for her lack of sensitivity at how he was feeling with Nuala’s anniversary approaching. Yet her comments about his relationship with Nuala had sown seeds of doubt in his mind. Was it love that he had felt for Nuala or had he twisted love into something which was about self-gratification – using Nuala to provide his life with meaning? Was he looking for approval from Nuala to confirm that his career, money, lifestyle meant something? She never gave him that approval. In fact she had told him that his life was built on shifting sand. He didn’t know what she had meant by that. She had followed up by saying,

  “Maybe you should give up your big job and find out what life is all about.”

  He never asked her why she thought that or how he was expected to find out what life was about.

  He glanced at his watch to see if it was time to walk down to the Port. Temperatures had fallen and there was a slight breeze. It should be possible to walk down and arrive in a fairly respectable state without sweating too excessively. He could get a taxi back – although not all of the taxi drivers would be happy to twist the twenty seven bends on a stony track, leading from the main road to ‘La Toretta’. Even if he got dropped off where the track began, he could walk home with the help of a torch. He had packed a small rucksack with a rope, a torch, a bottle of white wine and a bottle of red – both from the Bordoy vineyard in Mallorca. Henry would have approved.

  He stood for a few minutes in the gazebo looking at Soller. There was a haze diluting the sunshine. He searched for something new to see. He spotted a house on the mountain across the valley. Who lived there? Wouldn’t it be interesting if they were looking at him this very moment? That simple thought reminded him again of Nuala. He imagined that Nuala was watching him, that she filled the space around him. He wanted to hear her speak – to listen to her laugh. He looked at the olive trees swaying in the breeze, the cheese plant with its slit leaves and the blue delicate plant by the front door. He didn’t know the names of many of these unfamiliar plants and flowers but the fact that he didn’t only made him want to look at them more closely. He approached a small bush with tiny orange and yellow flowers. He picked one and looked more closely. The leaf was the shape of a mint leaf but bigger. The orange flowers were small – the size of your thumb in diameter, with the centre deep orange and the rim of each flower a lighter colour. Each flower in turn was made up of tiny miniature flowers so that each flower was like a bunch of flowers. All that intricacy and beauty and no-one to necessarily see it. As he examined the flower, it disintegrated in his hand – the miniature blossoms spiralling and tumbling onto the sandy earth.

  It was five o’clock when he began to stumble along the uneven track towards a gate which hikers passed en route to Sa Costera. He turned right along the path to the Port. The path became narrow, with a steep drop to his left. He breathed shallowly, holding onto the branches of the olive trees to his right. The last time he had walked to the Port was when he was on holiday with Cornelia and Henry. There had been a thick wire on the right hand side which you could hold and steady yourself. It had gone. He knew that he shouldn’t keep looking to the left but he couldn’t stop himself. It was turning more into a cliff edge and the path itself almost too narrow for two feet to be placed side by side. Although it was obvious that he had to put one foot in front of the other to make progress, the fact that he couldn’t stand still for a moment with his two feet together made him feel dizzy and anxious. He grasped at the olive tree branches to help steady himself but they felt too thin, too weak. He searched with his hand into the tree to see if there was a stronger branch and then froze. His breathing became even more shallow and rapid. What could he do? There was no-one around to help. He needed a hand to help him. He held the lower branches of the olive tree and got down onto his knees. That was worse. His left knee was barely on the path. He attempted to somehow sit down and push himself along a few feet on his bottom, ignoring the thorn bushes digging into his right thigh. Pulling himself again onto his knees, he tried holding onto the branches sticking out from the cliff face with both hands but that didn’t feel right either. He was off balance. He grabbed at a rock jutting out from the terrace and managed to sit down. After five minutes of deep breathing, he resorted to inching along the path once more on his bottom. He made slow progress and eventually reached the half-way point which meant that he had to keep going. He couldn’t turn back. A dog barked far below. He imagined it standing in a garden with a proper path. He so much wanted to be there with the dog. It wouldn’t matter if it mauled him – anything would be better than struggling along this path in what was meant to be paradise. He looked at his watch. It was half past six. They would be wondering where he was. He had stupidly left his mobile phone behind. He realised that for the last hour he hadn’t thought about Nuala.

  ♥

  “What happened to you?” Cornelia in a floating red chiffon dress kissed him on the cheek.

  “It took longer than I thought.” Gurtha raised his hands into the air, “I apologise for being late.”

  “You’re not late. We’re still waiting for Angelina. Come in and let’s get you introduced.”

  With arms outstretched Cornelia walked into the room as though walking on stage,

  “Let me introduce you all to Gurtha Maloney – a lovely Irishman – my dearest, longest standing friend.”

  It sounded as though a round of applause would follow but instead a few heads turned around; there was a low level ripple of “hellos” after which everyone continued with their private conversations. Cornelia swung around to Gurtha, “Aren’t they all sooo rude. I promise you we can educate them.” She took his hand and brought him over to Todd and Stephanie.

  “Don’t be beastly to him. He’s only here a few days. He’s all alone and it is his birthday.”

  Todd stood up, grabbed Gurtha’s hand, shook it firmly, slapped him on the shoulder with his right hand – it was almost a hug – and bellowed.

  “Great to have a man on the scene. We’re outnumbered here with the girlies. Barry, serve the man a drink.”

  Barry arrived with a tray of champagne cocktails. Gurtha helped himself. Barry sat the tray on the circular table covered with plates of olives, potato crisps, almonds and quails eggs. Todd lifted a glass and offered it to Barry.

  “Don’t forget yourself, Barry.”

  Barry shook his head.

  “I’m not drinking until Angelina arrives.”

  Stephanie stepped forward, “Do you mind? You’re ignoring our guest. That’s frightfull
y bad mannered.”

  She pushed Todd to one side and pecked Gurtha forcefully on both cheeks.

  “The first thing you have to tell us is what do you do. That’s all that we’re interested in around here. What do you do, how much are you worth and do you know anyone interesting?”

  Stephanie laughed, throwing her head back, allowing her auburn hair to cover her bare shoulders. She crossed her legs and her blue silk halter neck dress fell in Grecian folds to the floor, hiding her diamantine slippers. Todd raised his eyes to the ceiling, drummed his fingers on the table, and shouted across to Stephanie.

  “Do you have you any idea how boring you are?”

  Stephanie pulled her fringe down over her forehead and slowly twiddled ringlets into her hair, lifting it into the air and then letting it fall down once more onto her shoulders.

  “If there were a competition between Todd and I as to who is most boring who do you think would win, Gurtha?”

  Gurtha lifted a quail’s egg from a white ceramic frilled dish.

  “I don’t think boring would be an appropriate adjective for either of you.”

  He peeled the spotted shell into the adjoining dish, popping the egg into his mouth and managing to smile at the same time.

  Stephanie shook her head from side to side,

  “Oh dear. We have a diplomat in our midst. How ghastly. What do you do when you’re not being frustratingly polite?”

  “I’m a University lecturer, from time to time I run art exhibitions but mostly I work within the business world.”

  Stephanie sat upright in her chair. Her eyes, although slanted temporarily, opened wider.