He had gone back in time, become a baby again, and connected in a visceral way to his mother who was dead. His body did not pump blood but liquid pain from which he could not flee any more than he could stop his eyes from seeing. The two parts of life were one. Life trembled into being. It was organic and cellular – an osmosis – a membrane of being in which information and feelings were interchanged – from inner to outer and from outer to inner. He looked from the window of the car, watching an elderly man, curved over an ivory walking stick, remove his hat. Gurtha found himself lifting his hand and waving like a King at the man who bowed back and smiled in acknowledgement.
The car maintained a slow and respectful pace until it reached Carlisle Circus, an acceptable distance from the Church, at which point it picked up speed as if the funeral directors had another engagement for which they were late.
Cornelia, taking off her black gloves and popping them into a black paten handbag, broke the silence.
“I know it’s a very difficult time for you with the horror of what has happened to Nuala – but it could be good for you to have a break from Belfast for a while – a transition in life to a new beginning. I know you love Mallorca. I can find you a house to rent for as long as you want and maybe you can even hold one of your art exhibitions there. I know of one or two galleries which would be ideal.”
“I’ll think about it.” Gurtha replied listlessly, tightening his black tie and rubbing his sweating hands on his black linen suit. “It depends what happens with the police investigation.” He raised his hands despairingly into the air. “And with Paddy.”
Lily leaned forward, “We’ll keep an eye on Paddy. You do what’s right for yourself.”
Laura rested her hand on top of Paddy’s.
“Anything at all Paddy that you need – you only have to say and we will take care of you.”
Paddy rubbed his nose and stared out the window.
“It’s odd that Nuala isn’t here. Where is she? She wouldn’t want to miss a party.”
Laura brushed a tear away from her cheek and turned to Gurtha.
“It’s only natural. He’s in a state of shock.”
Gurtha nodded as he looked out the window.
“Aren’t we all?”
♥
A number of strands ran through Gurtha’s professional life, including running art exhibitions for emerging new talent and part-time lecturing on Consciousness Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast. He spent the greater portion of his time as an Executive Coach supporting senior leaders in creating a vision with their teams, identifying strategic priorities and executing strategy. The most lucrative part of his career was his work as a motivational speaker. He had a reputation for enlightening and amusing his audiences in equal measure.
♥
“The Troubles” in Northern Ireland had long since settled into a simmering unrest rather than a boiling cauldron of hatred. Belfast in 2012 was a place where hope flourished and few wanted to return to the old days of violence. That was what made Nuala’s murder all the more shocking. It wasn’t a sectarian murder as far as anyone could see – but it was murder nevertheless.
Cornelia, also in the car, was a long standing friend of Gurtha’s who had recently been coming to terms with the death of her husband Henry. He had died three months earlier in June 2012 from a heart-related illness. Before retiring, he been a Bank Director. He was quite a bit older than Cornelia. His death at 69 was unexpected. Cornelia attributed it partly to the karma from many years of intense socialising in the 1970 and 1980s. She called those the years of plenty when, as a Bank Director, Henry was obliged to creatively use his vast monthly expense budget. His target was to host twenty lunches a month, a figure which he frequently exceeded. He also succeeded in overspending his clothes budget. Henry used clothes to reflect his character – bright orange jackets with silky navy blue trousers which, if inspected carefully, hid delicate orange flowers. His favourite was a cerise pink suit with a navy blue pin-stripe. To accompany these striking choices, he wore a different coloured cravat with a white shirt each day of the week – red on Sunday, purple on Monday, turquoise on Tuesday, green on Wednesday, orange on Thursday, indigo on Friday and amber on Saturday.
Once suitably attired, he revelled in inviting solicitors and accountants to spend hours consuming lobster thermidor, washed down with copious glasses of Moet, followed by beef bourguignon accompanied by Chateauneuf du Pape and a baked Alaska with more Moet or a glass of Sauternes. With all of this entertaining he was understandably a bit on the plump side with three chins which stylishly complemented a cravat rather than a tie.
Cornelia hinted that a secondary factor in Henry’s heart problem was the fact that his love for the finer things in life meant he was more deeply affected by the stress triggered by the economic crisis of 2008 when his pension fund lost two thirds of its value over a few short weeks. He had planned to continue with a lavish lifestyle of entertaining in retirement and discovered that his pension barely covered his fixed costs. He found himself unwillingly pushed into an aesthetic lifestyle, which caused tension with Cornelia. She repeatedly ignored his pleas for austerity measures in her clothes budget, the visits to Vidal Sassoon and to lavishly redecorating their second home in the Port of Soller, Mallorca. After months of tortured aestheticism, Henry discovered that moderation could be avoided, at least in part, with drinkable wine retailing at under three pounds a bottle.
Gurtha saw Henry’s life as an example of understanding life. Life was simultaneous expansion and contraction. A cloud appeared in the sky and blueness automatically contracted. A feeling of anxiety arose in the body and the experience of peace diminished. If he was to use a see-saw analogy, Gurtha experienced life as sitting on both ends of a wooden plank. As he shot into the sky, he simultaneously plummeted to the ground. Life contained a pivotal point which triggered all movement into being. Being open to this yin yang perspective on life, Gurtha was able to enjoy Henry’s boisterous love of life before retirement, while at the same time being slightly repulsed by it. In a restaurant Henry would order wine insisting on knowing the location of the vineyard and requesting tasting notes.
A waiter held a bottle of AN/2 in his hand, showing it to Henry as though presenting him with an Oscar.
“It is a Falanis wine – thirty five per cent Callet, thirty five per cent Monto Negre and thirty per cent Cabernet Sauvignon. It has a typical Mediterranean, limpid colour with brilliant subtle aromas, spicy, elegant and balanced in the mouth with well integrated tannins. Would you like to taste?”
Henry nodded. The waiter poured a small amount of wine into the bulbous glass.
Henry tasted but not before sniffing. He pushed his thickened nose into the glass and everyone waited in silence for the response.
“Excellent.”
The waiter smiled knowingly and topped up everyone’s glass. Gurtha felt a hint of embarrassment tightening his stomach as Henry swilled the wine in the glass, sniffed it again, before taking the smallest of sips. Gurtha’s discomfort converted into a sensation of disgust – a shrivelling around the heart and throat, as starters arrived. Gurtha observed as Henry and friends became gobbling geese lifting their heads into the air, opening their mouths wide. Henry, in particular, had developed the skill of allowing his uvula to shake in anticipation before his lips were drawn tightly closed and his jaw began to slide quickly from side to side. When he demolished his entrée, crumbs hung like spiders about to spin a web below his lower lip. There would be a smattering of tomato sauce forming a copy of a Miró painting on his orange cravat.
Over the years of friendship with Cornelia and Henry, Gurtha visited their Mallorcan home on a regular basis and sailed with them around the island in their small boat called “Pepino”. Rather than see Henry as hedonistic and excessive, Gurtha chose to see him as a generous man with an abundant capacity to enjoy and be grateful for the unexpected financial bounties which dropped onto his lap with little or no effort.
Mallor
ca was an island where financial success and money in the bank were considered by many as indicators of greatness of character and of superior intelligence. Henry, therefore, found himself a popular person within the expatriate community. Friends liked to brush shoulders with his success – hoping that somehow or other it might be contagious.
Although Gurtha perfectly understood that everyone responds to grief in different ways, he had to admit to being slightly surprised at the rapidity with which Cornelia had found a new partner in Barry after Henry’s death. Barry was a younger man from Cardiff who was lucky or unlucky enough to inherit a fortune from his father’s construction business. This allowed him to retire at the age of thirty five when he joined Cornelia in her house rental business in Mallorca.
Laura, sitting with a straight back in the funeral car, worked in the corner shop close to where Paddy and Nuala lived. Whereas Holy Cross Church provided spiritual food for the local area, it was the corner shop which took care of the physical body. Its counters were piled high with Paris buns, Madeira cake, soda, wheaten, potato bread, slices of ham and a selection finest Irish and English cheeses. Laura swept the floor and mopped it every morning, cleaning the counter glasses while dreaming of one day going to University.
At seventy, Paddy had not aged well. Thick, dark, curly hairs grew out of the top of his nose, red blotches dappled his face, a thinning of hair in places where he would have preferred a quiff and flabbiness around the waistline, which from time to time he took solace in squeezing.
At school Paddy excelled in his Junior Certificate exams but life seemed to go downhill after that. Like Laura, he didn’t go on to higher education as he felt obliged to earn money to pay the family bills.
There had been a couple of years when he first married Nuala during which Paddy experienced what might be called ‘classical happiness’ – an absence of emotional distress. He worked as a sheet metal worker as his father had done before him, earned enough money to have his suits made by a tailor and his shoes by a cobbler.
After two short years the relationship with Nuala deteriorated for reasons unknown to Paddy and he took refuge in drink. He hated being forced to retire at sixty five and managed to find a job taking money and handing out tickets to clients in a city centre car park. With every year that passed he felt more and more distant from Nuala – a distance which seemed to add pounds and then stones to his weight. He felt like a slug. Nuala called him ‘the pig’.
♥
The funeral car slowed to a gentle speed approaching Pizza Express. The two funeral Directors jumped from their seats and slid the car doors open. Gurtha emerged first, almost stumbling onto the pavement and then turning around to help Paddy. Paddy took Gurtha’s hand, lowering himself from the car as if into a swimming pool. Cornelia reached a hand towards Gurtha, waiting to be helped. For the first time that day Gurtha noticed she was dressed in a deep pink suit with a black trim around the cuffs, collar and skirt. A large beret circle of a hat perched in the middle of her head covered her hair, allowing a fine veil of black lace to cover her face. Before taking Gurtha’s hand, as she descended from the funeral car, Cornelia pulled the veil back from her face and smiled. She waited for Gurtha to do something.
Gurtha reached for her hands.
Once inside Pizza Express, Paddy sat in silence, eating his lasagne with a spoon and drinking Peroni beer which he didn’t much like but they didn’t serve Guinness and Peroni was better than water. Tom and Lily attempted to lighten the mood by talking about Rose and Matthew and their family – four children – two boys and two girls and another baby expected any day. Laura tried to get a conversation going with Paddy as to whether or not he was enjoying his lasagne but he only nodded and kept eating.
Cornelia, did her best sales pitch.
“You’ve just suffered a major trauma in losing Nuala. You could benefit from having a break. Where better to go than to Mallorca? You know it well, you can walk in the mountains, swim in the sea – make a new life for yourself. You can even keep working – Palma is a great hub for Europe and long distant flights are a doddle from Barcelona or Madrid. You can run your art exhibitions. The island is a home to so many artists. I can find you a place to live and a gallery for your exhibitions. You know that it is the perfect place for you. Everyone is calling it the new Monaco of the Mediterranean. Promise me that you will at least consider it?”
DAY 1
SUNDAY 11TH AUGUST 2013,
MALLORCA
“STOP ACTING SO SMALL. YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE IN ECSTATIC MOTION.”
J RUMI
ON THE 11th August 2013, Gurtha boarded Easyjet flight 5672 to Palma, Mallorca. He looked out of the window at 37,000 feet, seeing shadows fall on the deep valleys and craggy Pyrenees, flying over St Jean-Pied-de-Port.
It hadn’t been an easy year since Nuala’s murder. He had managed to continue lecturing but following Nuala’s death he couldn’t engage in the world of coaching or motivational speaking. Coaching involved him having to ask clients questions to help them explore new realities and to encourage them to see a world of infinite possibilities. Motivational speaking required him to energise people with a sense of humour, a lightness of touch, a penetrating depth of insight which, in his state of grief, was inaccessible.
Since Nuala’s death, the world had contracted for Gurtha. He felt himself sucked into a black hole, where light, happiness and potentiality had, with the snap of fingers, disappeared. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he felt that he existed within a vacuum. In a vacuum a ray of light is imperceptible unless there is dust to reflect the energy as light. Nuala’s presence had been like stardust glittering light into darkness.
During his lectures on Consciousness studies, Gurtha spoke with authenticity following Nuala’s death about the pain inherent within the human condition. With poetic intensity he drew upon the reality of grief. Students seemed to enjoy these lectures even more than they had done before. The descriptions of his descent into a private Hell stimulated interest. One of his students asked.
“Is Hell within the human condition finite or infinite?”
Gurtha answered.
“From the perspective of the great spiritual Masters we are told that Hell is a human construct, as is Heaven. Both are infinite in potential. Yet they can both be transcended. We are designed, as human beings, to have the potential to experience a consciousness beyond Heaven and Hell. To do so, there is work to be done. It has been described by great writers such as J Rumi that we have to find our secret wound which creates Heaven and Hell within us. Paradoxically, the wound, as thirteenth century Rumi has said, ‘is the place where the Light enters you’.” It is seeing the wound that heals, allowing us to transcend Heaven and Hell.
Another student - Robby - tubby, pimply red-faced sitting at the back of the lecture hall, raised his hand, asking in a trembling voice.
“What does that mean?”
Gurtha hesitated.
“There is more than one answer to your question. I will give you a suggestion, which may help. Imagine that your body is giving you indications that all is not well. Perhaps you have a cough and there is blood in your phlegm. You ignore it. Six months later you still have blood when you cough and in addition you have a blinding headache. You ignore it. You see where I am going with this? Let’s say that it is not your body that is sick but your soul – your spirit – how will you know that you are sick in spirit and what will you do about it?”
Robby flushed, maroon patches around his neck resembling the appearance of Borneo, Indonesia and the upper part of Australia. He stuttered a question.
“How can you know that something which is not your body, is sick? You wouldn’t feel anything unless that something was embodied – would you?”
Gurtha looked at the pleading eyes of his student. He felt overcome with a desire to loosen the tie around Robby’s pink flowery Paul Smith shirt which he was sure was contributing to the puffiness of his face and the reddening of his neck. It also gave
him a sense of existential isolation from his companions scattered on chairs flopped into sweaters from Fat Face, Gap and Nike.
“You are right – the sickness in the body and the sickness of spirit are not separate. They are not one and they are not two.”
As Borneo faded from Robby’s neck, Gurtha closed his notes registering the fleeting thought that he, not Robby, didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He coughed, clearing his throat.
“Enjoy your summer. I look forward to being with you again towards the end of September when no doubt our worlds will have tumbled in and out of being many times.”
After that lecture, Gurtha proceeded with his plans to spend his summer on a forty days sabbatical in Mallorca, where he would find the equivalent of a log cabin by Walden Pond as did Henry David Thoreau in the nineteenth century. Like Thoreau, something called him to spend time observing nature, reflect on how to discover life’s essential needs. He could, as Cornelia suggested, organise a small art exhibition. He would limit his stay to forty days.
He chose forty days as he knew that the number forty was symbolic of a period when something of great significance could be accomplished. The Great Flood caused by rain over forty days and nights forced Noah to build his Arc. After leaving Egypt the children of Israel wandered for forty years in the wilderness. Moses spent forty days and nights on Mount Sinai before receiving the Ten Commandments. Jesus was tempted for forty days in the desert. There were forty days between the resurrection of Jesus and the Ascension. There seemed to be enough evidence to suggest that something of substance could happen within forty days in Mallorca. Even though he was only planning to stay for forty days, he sold his house on the Malone Road. It was a statement that life was going to be different. He was determined not to return the same person, to the same house, living the same life.
♥
Gurtha drove out of Palma after collecting a hired car. Cars whipped past on the left and then in the lane to the right, heading in the direction of Palma and Andratx. He felt woozy, disorientated. He stayed in the middle lane, only swerving violently to the right, to avoid missing the exit for Soller.
The Secret Wound Page 2