Nothing On Earth (3 page)

‘Everything's fine,' Helen said.

She told Sheila about putting the notice up in the supermarket. She told her later the same week, a morning they had agreed to go down to number three for coffee.

‘You're great,' Sheila said.

‘Am I?'

‘You are, love. You're great.'

Sheila had her gas fire switched on, as in the depths of winter, an armchair pulled over beside it, a hanky tucked up her sleeve. Her hands had that soft paper-thin skin that elderly people often have. Helen and the girl had both bathed, to wash off some of the dust, and put on fresh shorts and tank-tops. They were sitting on a sofa in the bay alcove, as far from the fire as they could manage. There was a plate of chocolate biscuits wrapped either in green or orange foil. The girl had one of each. Sheila asked Helen, ‘Are you not hungry?'

‘I'm trying to lose weight.'

Sheila kept talking about Marcus. ‘Super swimmer,' she said. Sheila had a soft spot for Marcus. ‘Used be in the papers all the time. Harry goes way back with two of Marcus's uncles, on the other side.' She must have meant not the Flood side. ‘They did a lot of deals together across the border in the war.'

‘I still haven't met Harry.'

‘You will. He's not himself at the moment. A bit seedy.' Sheila looked at the ceiling, which Helen took to mean that Harry was laid up in bed. ‘He thinks the world of your husband.'

Paul had borrowed Harry's ladder to lift boxes into the attic, and had said what a gent Harry was. Everyone always assumed Helen and Paul were married. The girl stopped eating for a second, after Sheila said ‘husband'. For something to say, Helen started describing Ute and Benedikt.

‘Who, love?'

‘The couple I worked for,' she said, ‘over beyond.' Flood's phrase in her mouth tasted strange, but Sheila didn't seem to notice. ‘That's why I left an ad in the supermarket, to get a job like the one I had with them.'

‘You're great.'

She couldn't remember what that meant, to be great in the way that Sheila kept saying it. ‘So are you!'

‘No, you are.' Sheila was still perched out on the edge, still looking into flame that never changed shape. ‘You're very brave to come back and make a proper go of it.'

Marcus was up in the caravan every night, without fail, from six o'clock. He arrived on a racing bike, wearing a hi-vis singlet and workmen's boots. He had spiky hair dyed peroxide. He had a golf club that he practised swinging in the dust, chipping pebbles into the townhouses when he looked too distracted for words and it was still scarcely dusk. He had a black-and-white portable television that lit up the inside of the caravan, like a sparkler inside a birdhouse.

‘I should bring him up something.'

She was standing in the bay window of the front room. The room had nothing of theirs in it except two beanbags and a forty-two-inch screen. Paul and Martina were just back from work in the software plant on the ring road, still in their suits, and somewhere behind.

‘Bring what precisely?' Martina asked.

‘I should bring Marcus up some biscuits or something.'

‘Leave Marcus to me. I'll take care of Marcus.'

‘I bet you will.' Helen had followed them into the kitchen, was slouched in one of the other chairs and peering wide-eyed over the rim of her coffee mug. There was no food cooking. Paul had a bicycle clip on the right leg of his slacks; Martina still had her runners on, laces undone.

‘Bet I will what?'

‘Take care of Marcus.'

‘Well . . .' You could never fully tell with Martina. She took in her stride every different thing with an ease, a lightness, that could feel the same every time. ‘Poor Marcus, on his own in his little caravan every night.'

They walked to the pictures, herself and Martina. They turned left at the end of the close, passed the supermarket facing the church and crossed straight through the roundabout for the ring road. That was the first time they went up the town. Two streets, five pubs, a Chinese takeaway, a filling station with a minimart, a hardware shop. There was nobody else around. The cinema was just what Flood had said: a courthouse at the far end of the main street that screened old films on the same night of every month.

A chap with lip-piercings and a circular hole in one of his earlobes ripped their two tickets in half. They squeezed into a double seat, one row back from the very front. They had always shared a double seat as children. The film had already started, the credits, the music. Martina had brought a giant bag of popcorn that she seemed scared to eat for fear of the noise her eating would make. She set the bag across the dip created by their touching legs and linked her arm into Helen's.

‘There's nobody else here.'

‘I know,' Martina said. Helen was telling her not to worry about the noise. ‘Still.'

There was a family of three in the film, taking care of a hunting lodge in the wilderness through the winter months. The nearest life to them was the ranger's office on the other side of the state. Vast white drifts were mounting against the outside walls and doors.

‘Snow!' Martina whispered. ‘Looks to die for.'

All the corridors, all the floors, were empty. A boy on a tricycle kept speeding down them, around corners, the racket of the tricycle's wheels on bare boards alternating with the carpet's silence. You could hear the reels turning. You could all but hear the column of vivid dust swirling above their heads. Several times they jumped at once. When the boy jolted to a standstill at twin girls in blue dresses, some of the popcorn got sprayed beneath the row of seats in front of them.

‘Jesus!'

The twins spoke in unison, their voices distorted electronically. The piercings guy who had ripped their tickets was slouched in the back row and laughing out loud at parts that were not meant to be funny, even at the part when a man kissed a woman who turned to decomposing flesh in his arms. They watched the credits to the very end, down to the symbols and logos of bodies responsible for funding for the film, until the house lights faded up and the screen scrolled back into its case and the space was just a courthouse once again.

They called for a drink at the lounge belonging to the supermarket, the one opposite the church halfway out from town, on what locals called ‘the old road'. There was just the two of them and a row of regulars at the counter. Martina asked, ‘Have you heard anything back from the von Trapps?'

The von Trapps was what Martina called Ute and Benedikt, though she had never met them. Helen had emailed Ute to say they had arrived and settled in. She had mentioned to Martina that she had written.

‘Nothing back.'

When it was Helen's shout, Martina rested a flat hand over the rim of her glass. A man on a high stool at the bar, well spoken and butty, insisted on paying.

‘I insist,' he said. ‘I knew your family.' He held a crisp twenty between two fingers and wafted it across the bar and informed the barman, ‘For our new neighbours.'

‘Sorry,' Helen said. She said it to Martina, resting the glasses on their table. ‘You have the midget up there to thank.'

Martina raised hers to him, smiled and nodded silent thanks. She said, ‘I'll pretend to drink it,' and let her lips touch the rim. It wasn't like Martina, abstinence wasn't.

‘Are you pregnant?'

‘I wish! I promised Marcus I'd drop up, and I don't want to be plastered.'

Martina had gone walkabout a few evenings, but never said where she was going. The idea of her wandering up to Marcus made Helen feel safe in a way that she didn't understand. So did the thought of her sister wishing she was expecting. ‘You've already made yourself known to him, so?'

‘Didn't I say I would?' Martina leaned forward again and this time actually lapped from the head of her second pint. Martina had this cat-that-got-the-cream expression which always wound Helen up. She had it then. ‘He's lovely.'

‘He said he knew our family.'

‘Marcus?'

‘Not Marcus,' Helen said. All roads were leading to Marcus in Martina's head. ‘The wee chap at the bar who bought the drinks.'

‘Did he say anything else?'

Martina went to get change for the pool table. She was up there a good five minutes, the lad behind the bar teasing her about her cue action and the row of regulars chiming in. Playing was Martina's idea. It was Martina who rested the coins into their slots and held the tongue in until the rack was clear, who placed the balls into the triangle frame, who asked the men if they went in any particular pattern. Martina seemed to love them gawking, especially when she missed the white ball altogether and they cheered. Martina never had to watch her figure. The barman came around and stood behind her and held it for her and got her to position her hands on top of his and showed her how. Helen finished her second pint and sipped at the one Martina had no intention of drinking, situating her lips to fit the crescent Martina's lipstick had left.

How easily Martina belonged. Even when she was present only through others, she always fitted in. Why was Martina even there? That was the question that Paul used hiss in foreign dark, with just a thin partition between them and the living room where Martina and the girl slept top-to-toe on a fold-out sofa bed. Everywhere they went Martina went as well. When it was just the two of them, Paul made it sound like he couldn't stand Martina's presence. But when Martina was there, at the table eating or chatting in front of the telly, it always felt as if Paul and Martina were on the same side and Helen was their running joke. She had tried to say to them about the noise from things that once belonged to others, which she wished she had said to Flood. They just giggled, ‘If you say so,' and changed the channel. She was sorry she'd said anything, because of the way they reacted and because she realized it wasn't true. The things of a show house belonged to lives that should have happened but never did. They gave off no noise at all, and that was more deafening than anything.

‘Will we make shapes?'

Martina was standing above her, with a bottle of carry-out wine in a plastic bag that had blue-and-white stripes sticking to the bottle's condensation. It had gone eleven, but some light was left and it was still plenty hot. On the half-mile of hard shoulder, Helen was telling Martina the old-fashioned phrases Flood used whenever he called.

‘He's sweet on you.'

‘Flood?' Helen asked, out of breath. Martina was forever doing this, telling Helen about men who liked her, resting all emphasis on the second person. ‘Good God.'

‘Marcus is the same,' Martina said. ‘Full of ancient little turns of phrase.'

They stalled at the end of the drive. The light was on in the caravan. Helen knew that Martina wasn't coming into the house and yet, for something to say, she said, ‘You're heading up?'

‘I am.'

‘So be it,' Helen said. Then she asked something out of the ordinary, something that surprised even herself. ‘Do you ever wonder about Mammy and Daddy?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Just that. Do you ever wonder where they are?'

Martina came right up against her and kissed her very slowly on the forehead. It had been a long time. Martina smelt of coconut. She could almost feel Martina sipping tiny beads of sweat off her skin. Martina asked if she would be okay. Then Martina said, ‘You need to do something.'

‘Same old shit,' Paul whispered. Paul whispered that on the same night Helen came back from the pictures alone. They had three times as many rooms, and Martina wasn't even in the house, but still Paul acted as if they were in the old apartment where hushed pillow talk was the only privacy available to them.

‘I'm sorry,' Helen said out loud. Paul was in bed when she got back, but still awake, still whispering. He had asked her what had kept them. Helen had told him about the lounge and the pool table and the midget at the bar who said he knew the family.

‘Why is she even here?' This was his old refrain, why Martina followed them wherever they ended up, though it had been months since either of them had broached the subject. Mostly, Martina's presence was taken as read. ‘Everywhere we go, she goes too.'

Helen had her head sideways on her pillow, facing away. She could feel one of Paul's legs slide between both of hers. She could feel the tip of his tongue making spirals around that ball of bone at the top of her spine.

‘She gets scared,' she said, turning onto her back. She meant Martina.

‘She has no imagination. She's incapable of imagining a life of her own. So she piggybacks on ours.'

‘Maybe she's in love with you.'

She said that every time they had this conversation. She said that because it always seemed that Paul had instigated the conversation to hear her say it. She coaxed him up on top of her, hooking her feet together and trying to pull him farther into her. She rested her hands on either side of her head, like when you're surrendering, and he propped his on hers so that the small dull ache was the only point their torsos touched.

‘In love with me? Martina?' His breath was thickening. Whenever they made love, they often seemed to talk about Martina at the same time. ‘What are you on?' Or was it the other way around? Was it that whenever they talked about her sister in bed, they ended up doing it? ‘She's too much in love with herself to be in love with anyone else.'

‘Be careful.'

They'd met their first year at university. Helen was pregnant by Christmas and dropped out. She'd promised herself that she would go back, but never did. Paul was Helen's only ever lover and this was the only way she knew. They never used contraception. He would just withdraw at the last second. Paul was slight and no weight on top of her. He supported himself on his arms, as if he were doing push-ups, and his eyes gradually glazed. At the last second, his features seemed to puddle, just beneath the surface of fresh water. At that precise moment, it hurt. It hurt her to think that some day he would stop, or she would stop, and they would never see one another again or speak or touch. Some day, after all they'd been through together, one of them would turn and move away and not come back ever, and the other would fill the remainder of their days circumnavigating the empty space left behind.