They reached the canyon after two hours. The guide instructed them, “Follow me. Don’t wade to the left. There are several underground caves and strong currents. Six people died here last year after being swept underground and not being able to find a way out.”
Cornelia didn’t wait. She jumped into the water first, rolled onto her back and waved at them, “Come on – don’t be cowards. It’s easy.”
Gurtha was the last to jump. If he could have walked back down the mountain along an easier path, he would have, but he knew that the path down would be worse than facing the waters in the canyon. He jumped. It took an hour to descend – scrambling over rocks, walking through emerald pools surrounded by trees, jumping from small waterfalls. Cornelia walked and swam side by side with the guide while Gurtha struggled to keep up. After half an hour, when the waterfalls were behind them, Gurtha was able to swim more freely and for the rest of the journey he felt like a salmon, his body flooding with excitement, in anticipation of what was coming next.
The letters started arriving one week after leaving Saint-Beat.
Dear Gurtha,
You said that “perfection” is freedom from wanting anything to be different. Letting the moment be. How does that relate to Good and Evil? I can decide to commit an act which others may consider “Evil”. Is that perfection – if it is letting the moment be?
Cornelia
Gurtha found himself waiting for the post to arrive with a sense of excitement. What question would Cornelia ask him? What answer would he give? It was like a game of chess without rules. He didn’t know into which square he would move – it depended upon the question posed by Cornelia.
♥
Whether it was the hot Mallorcan August breeze or the smell of rosemary, thyme and mint blowing through the window of Clio which made him remember Saint-Beat after such a long time, he wasn’t sure. The memories of that week surfaced with the force of a tsunami, crushing over the top of him. Laying stark his primal desire to know what had happened to Henry and what had changed Cornelia. How could she have begun a relationship with Barry?
♥
He parked the car some distance from the house. He didn’t want Barry to see it. He opened the wooden gate leading into a small rose garden. As he walked along the path, he felt strangely disorientated, nauseous and dizzy. As he knocked on the front door, he caught sight of his reflection in the glass and it frightened him. He didn’t recognise himself. His hair was dishevelled; his eyes looked a little wild – opened too wide – staring, as though he had seen a ghost. He heard the familiar click of heels along the marble hallway. Cornelia looked at him through the glass panel. Her appearance wiped out his reflection. He thought he saw a faint smile on her lips, as though she had guessed that he would visit. The door swung open.
“Where’s Paddy?” She leaned forward to kiss him on both cheeks. He looked into her eyes. He could see now that she had aged. He noticed that her eyes were slightly puffy and lined at the corners. Had she been crying? She was wearing eye liner and it made her eyes look more sunken in her face. He noticed a small blemish on her nose with concealer to hide it. Her hair looked slightly brittle and broken compared to what he remembered – her neck wrinkled when she bent her head forward.
“Come in. Where’s Paddy?” She repeated.
Gurtha stepped into the hallway and trailed his fingers through his hair, “He’s reading.”
“Coffee?” Cornelia turned into the kitchen.
Gurtha hesitated in the hallway, almost tempted to retrace his steps and leave. He was filled with a strong sense of foreboding. He listened as a chainsaw cranked into life in the back garden. Its drone insistent and deliberate – then a splutter – silence. It started again with increased intensity.
“Barry’s cutting wood for the winter.”
Unaware that Gurtha was there, Barry stood beside a pile of pine, almond and olive trunks, wearing a white shirt and jeans. He took an axe from the ground, placed a log on a plinth of wood and began to axe it into kindling. His face glowed in the early morning sunshine. He raised the axe above his head and swung down swiftly on the pine log. It splintered in two. He straightened the two halves and swung again at one of them. His eyes focused on the wood. Beside him a small fire was smouldering.
“We’re not meant to burn anything until October. It’s illegal. Don’t you love it when you get away with it?”
Gurtha caught Cornelia by the wrist.
“You have to tell me what happened to Henry.”
Cornelia pulled her wrist free, “What do you mean? What happened to Henry? He died.”
Gurtha looked through the window again. Barry lifted the chainsaw and plunged it into an olive tree trunk.
“At Easter when we were together in La Quinta, he seemed well.”
Cornelia spooned coffee into a filter jug. She glanced at him with what he recognised as total distain.
“Henry was not a young man. He had a heart condition. He died from heart failure. Admittedly, it was shocking that he had only just been discharged from hospital and I thought that he was recovering. I do not know where you are going with this line of questioning. What do you think happened to him? No-one lives forever.”
Gurtha took two steps back and looked again through the window. Barry rubbed his hands on a cloth before he placed on top of the axe. He walked towards the house. Gurtha whispered,
“He’s coming.”
Pouring the boiling water through the coffee filter, Cornelia whispered,
“Please go. We need to talk, but not now. It’s not the right time.”
She gently pushed Gurtha towards the door. She hesitated, her voice trembling.
“Did Nuala say something to you about Henry? Is that what this is about?”
Gurtha found himself intuitively lying.
“Yes she did. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Cornelia opened the door and kissed him briefly on the cheek.
“It’s complicated, but I do want to tell you. We owe it to one another, don’t we? Honesty – no matter how painful it is. That was our motto, was it not? You said our relationship was about ‘The Good, the True and the Beautiful.’ You said that to live up to that was terrifying to others. When you don’t live up to it yourself – life isn’t worth living is it?”
The kitchen door creaked open as Barry came in from the garden. Cornelia gently pushed Gurtha out of the front door and closed it, leaning back, sighing deeply before gathering herself into a state of composure and walking lightly towards Barry.
“I knew that you would be needing a coffee.”
She threw her arms around him, hugging him, unable to stop crying.
Barry stepped back and held her at a distance, looking into her eyes which no longer seemed so threatening but more like dulled emeralds.
“What’s going on?”
Cornelia lifted a tissue and wiped her eyes.
“You don’t love me do you? I know it – even if you won’t admit it.”
♥
Driving back to Paddy in La Torretta, Gurtha remembered the bedroom in Saint-Beat, the moonlight streaming through the window, the owl sleeping above in the rafters, the sense of Cornelia’s presence by his side, requiring nothing more than stillness and silence in response. It was then he knew that, with her, he was capable of touching something beyond, something mysterious and deeply joyful. It needed nothing else than listening to her breathing, feeling her closeness, smelling the aura around her as though Cornelia was a burning stick of incense. Why did he now feel impelled to control her beauty, her spirit, her will? It was like wishing to pin a butterfly to a board and give it a label. He had no idea why he had tried to influence her by lying that Nuala had said something about Henry. Maybe it was a bait to continue an intimate conversation with her – an attempt to return to the feelings they both shared at Saint-Beat.
As he rounded the last bend and the car bumped roughly over the rocky path, he knew that it was the absence of her qu
estions which he missed most, more than the absence of her physical presence. In her presence there was an awakening of some kind of intuition of a beauty beyond form – a knowing. Her questions were the bridge to a connection to a spirit greater than either of them. As he stopped at the gate leading to La Torretta, he knew that in one way they were soul mates but in another way there was a dark energy which swirled around their being. A dark cloud enveloped them; a cloud veiling what was hidden, veiling the unspoken lies which nourished them.
♥
That night Gurtha had a dream in which he walked along a narrow path. On his left was a wire fence beyond which lay a long flat field leading to West where the sun was setting. To his right was a steep drop into a canyon with sheer sides. The narrow path was covered with glossy magazine pages which had been scattered as far the eye could see ahead of him. It was slippery to walk on these, so he walked slowly, becoming more aware with every step, of the danger of falling. It became increasingly harder to know where the path lay below the shiny pages. He felt a familiar sense of panic arise in his stomach and chest. The fence to his left was too high to climb, yet the flat ground leading to the sunset so attractive and easy to walk. The sun was touching the horizon. There was nothing familiar around – only wide open spaces which seemed more appealing than continuing alone on this narrow slippery path. He felt trapped – no way forward, no way back no way to the right, no way to the left. He stopped, frozen with fear. Then on his left, on the other side of the fence stood the shadowy figure of a man. The sun had set now and it was not possible to make out his features – only that he was smaller than Gurtha and that his head was shaved. It was also difficult to say what he was wearing. He was more like a walking shadow, an embodied presence. The man reached his hand towards Gurtha. Gurtha grasped it tightly and then, with his help, heaved himself over the fence and fell on the grass on the other side. The man disappeared. Gurtha walked towards the horizon where the sun had also vanished. He felt relief. He knew who the man was. It was Paddy. He looked back at the fence and the ravine. He knew he would have to return, but not now – for the time being, he was safe and so was Paddy.
DAY 11
WEDNESDAY 21ST AUGUST 2013
“I WANT TO SING LIKE THE BIRDS SING, NOT WORRYING ABOUT WHO HEARS OR WHAT THEY THINK.”
J RUMI
GURTHA WAKENED early and turned on his side to see the alarm clock – 3.00 am. His heart sank – he could not get back to sleep. He remembered another dream from the previous night. Nuala and he were flying through the air together as though they had sky dived from a plane without parachutes. Gurtha felt strong and peaceful and caught hold of Nuala’s hand saying, “Look we can do this … We can float down like a leaf.” They held both hands together, circling around and around, laughing, enjoying the descent. They were not afraid. Gurtha let go of Nuala’s hand and spun away from her on his own. He landed – bouncing on springy green grass. There was a house to his right, which he entered. It was an old tumble down house with wooden window frames and crumbly stone walls. There was glass in the windows. He stood behind the window on the bottom floor, watching Nuala descend, falling through the sky, effortlessly dropping. She landed, tumbling ever so gently like a child rolling down a hill on Easter Monday side by side with her Easter Egg. He rushed out to meet her. They embraced one another. He sat on the grass beside her, waiting for her to speak. She whispered to him, “You’re on the right path. It’s going to be OK. You’ll find out.”
Inside La Torretta, he closed his eyes. There was silence within the room and outside. It was not a calming silence because he became increasingly aware of the churning thoughts in his head. Not that he knew what he was thinking about – only that his mind was not still. Neither was his body. His legs were restless. They wanted to move but he forced them to stay still. He pressed his head into the pillow which was so soft that he could feel through to the hardness of the mattress below. The pillow was soaking with sweat. He turned it over and for a moment it was cool and soft – almost delicious – until he became aware of thoughts again – whirring endlessly within the space of his head. His heart began to thump and quiver in his chest in a frightening way. It boomed so loud, he heard it in his ears, a wild thumping, a drumming, a warning of his own fragility, mortality – that one day it would stop. One moment would be its last palpitation. Fibrillatio and exhalation of the breath would follow. The awareness of that seem to make it beat even faster, louder, heavier within an arising cloud of seething anxiety and panic. How would he find out who had murdered Nuala? If it was Paddy – what would Nuala want him to do about that?
He sat upright. The night before he hadn’t closed the shutters. It was a full moon. The steely light bathed the room. He placed his feet on the tiled floor and allowed the coolness to seep through him like spring water in a stream. He listened for noises from Paddy in the bedroom next door. There was a low level snore, barely audible. He got to his feet and walked to the window. Nothing moved. Everything held in stillness – the silver fleck of the sea in the distance, the pine trees to his right puffy black clouds pushing into the sky, the twisted olive trees to his left, ancient arms posing relentlessly in an unknown dance of minute movement only detected in time with eyes like Gurtha’s which occasionally could see through time, present past and future. He glanced at the clock again – 3.30 am. Only half an hour since he had awakened and the stretch of time that remained for the sun at dawn felt unbearable.
He fumbled for his slippers – shaking each one before placing it on his feet in case there were scorpions inside. He had seen one, on the second day – only a few centimetres long, transparent with small pincers like a crab. He pulled the sheet over the pillows, as though he covering a corpse, before making his way into the box room where in his suitcase he had stored letters which Cornelia had sent him since Llanthony Abbey. He opened one from those early days. Cornelia had written,
“When Socrates was in prison awaiting his execution, he heard a fellow prisoner singing a complex lyric by the poet Stesichorus. He begged the man to teach him the poem. He was asked why. He replied, “So I can die knowing one thing more.”
Cornelia asked, “What would you want to learn if you only had one week to live?”
Gurtha couldn’t remember how he had replied. He hadn’t the energy to look through the remaining letters for the answer. He only had Cornelia’s letters – not his replies. What would he want to learn with only one week to live? He didn’t know. He only knew that by the end of his forty days in Mallorca he wanted to find out what had happened to Nuala and what had happened to Henry. There was something which Cornelia was holding back. With Barry around it was going to be difficult to find out what she was concealing. At least yesterday he had made a small step forward in opening up a conversation.
He returned to his bedroom and looked at the clock – 4.00 am. He craved sleep – to be able to lie down, close his eyes and drift into that place which was always unknown and yet always like home – dreamless sleep – leaving thoughts completely behind - finding peace in the small death – the disappearance of the world with all its pushes and pulls. He crawled under the sheets, stretched his hands down by his side, stared at the ceiling and felt a gentleness welling within him, stirring calmness from the deep. He allowed himself to sink into it. It felt that he was being taken somewhere, softly, leaving thoughts behind on the surface. He was sinking at last into sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Beautiful sleep.
DAY 12
THURSDAY 22ND AUGUST 2013
THE NEXT day Gurtha wakened with the smell of tobacco in the bedroom. Paddy was making noises downstairs. A frying pan, which Paddy had made for Nuala, was being put to work as Paddy cooked a traditional Ulster ‘fry’. Bacon sizzled, mingling with the tobacco and, before opening his eyes, Gurtha took a few minutes to enjoy imagining the scene below – Paddy in his element, slicing tomatoes in half, crisping the bacon, no doubt searching for his potato bread and soda bread and in their absence settling to fry any bread he could f
ind. He wouldn’t be able to find the wheaten bread which Gurtha had put in the freezer. That would be a surprise for him.
He threw the sheets back and stretched, picked up the journal beside the clock and lifted his mobile phone. There was a message. It was from Cornelia. He eagerly tapped it open:
“Sorry for yesterday. Didn’t mean to be so horrible. You know that everything has changed with Henry’s death. Bring Paddy to the Feast of St Bartholomew on Saturday. We can have dinner with everyone. Afterwards, we need to talk. Cx”
Gurtha immediately texted back:
“See you in the Plaza, Saturday at 8.00 pm. Gx”
He jumped downstairs two stairs at a time and slapped Paddy on the back.
“Thanks for breakfast. I’m starving. How did you sleep?”
Paddy scooped a fried egg onto a plate.
“Not bad. Not the same as home, but not bad. That’s a great frying pan Michael made for me. Nothing sticks to it. Your mother would griddle potato bread the best on it.”
He juggled two fried tomatoes onto the spoon. Gurtha carried the plates to the table, “I thought you had made the frying pan. Did you not?” Gurtha questioned in a low pitched, matter of fact way.
“No. It was Michael who was a dab hand with metal. We called him the the cast master.” Paddy chuckled. “He made them for anyone who asked. I helped him to sneak them out of the factory under my jacket. We were never found out. One of those frying pans flew out every week to a new home.”
Gurtha looked at Paddy. He had a sense that this was the truth. Michael had made the frying pan. It was not so significant, yet it seemed important. Paddy had always said that he had made the pan. The fact that Paddy had made it was the only reason Gurtha had brought it all the way to Mallorca. He had imagined Paddy bringing all of his skills into the making of the pan which symbolised the pride of his trade. If it wasn’t Paddy’s at all and he admitted this, maybe there would be no more lies from Paddy. Gurtha looked at him across the table - he had shaved quite well, with only a small nick of blood on his chin. He seemed to know what Gurtha was thinking.
The Secret Wound Page 14