Nothing On Earth

by Conor O'Callaghan

  ‘I’m Paul.’

  Paul had rung their doorbell and the one who answered looked askance at him and then said, ‘No, thank you,’ like those words were his only learned phrase and served as an answer to everything. Maybe he thought Paul was selling chattels door-to-door.

  ‘No.’ Paul laughed. He waved up the close. ‘I live there. In number seven.’ Then he pointed at himself, deliberately. ‘Paul.’ He held out his hand to be shaken.

  The Pole just looked at it, confused, and said again, ‘No, thank you,’ stiltedly, before closing the door. Paul stood there almost a minute, considering knocking again, laughing some more and shaking his head. All the curtains had been removed. Sheila’s furniture was stacked in the front room. Through the double doors to the kitchen there were units and a row of sleeping bags on the tiled floor.

  The sun kept beating. The sun kept beating until the whole world, it felt, was dried to parchment. The back garden remained clumps of topsoil, with only scraps of limp weeds here and there. Martina’s creepers had not thrived. A slip came through the letterbox with a notice warning about the danger of fires started carelessly. It lay there for days among flyers for takeaways and bank letters with red print on them. What fires there were, they thought, were way off in the distance and seemed confined to gorse. Then Marcus’s caravan burned to the ground. It must have been in the small hours. It must have blazed hard, but they heard and saw nothing. One morning it was walls melted inwards, innards still smoking.

  A different night, Paul was woken by the sound of water splashing downstairs. At first he assumed that it was some sort of wish-fulfilling dream and just lay where he was. When it kept running, he went down and found the cold tap in the kitchen sink on full blast. They must have left it on by accident. He sat up the next night, the cold tap on, and the same thing happened. Three to five o’clock. The flow got strong and the water properly cold. Paul figured that the mains back on at night was a secret few enough knew about. They set alarms, sleepwalked down to the sink and filled their bottles. Some nights they were more awake, and sat up tippling from Martina’s plastic picnic glasses as if tap water were Prosecco. They felt merry and full of hope, while yet another glaring dawn grew gradually across the back wall.

  The girl found fortune cookies from the Chinese takeaway Martina had bought. They were in a drawer. Each was still in its cellophane, tasted of nothing but sugar and had a little rectangle of paper in its hollow centre.

  ‘Soon life will become more interesting,’ the girl read.

  ‘Don’t look down upon yourself,’ Paul read.

  ‘In the end all things will be known.’

  ‘You are a person of another time.’

  The Poles seemed to multiply and disappear at will. You never saw the same head twice. Neither of the original brothers, as Paul called them, was anywhere in sight. There were times he thought there was nobody in number three, nor ever had been. Other evenings there would be three jalopies lined up outside, or you would glimpse half a dozen of them, all men, walking in a pack on the hard shoulder of the ring road with bottles of water bought in the same discount supermarket where Martina had got the sun-loungers.

  Then it was August. The mains had dried up altogether. Like the Poles, Paul and the girl were surviving on bought bottles. They would walk to the discount supermarket and wheel a trolley full of translucent litres packed in cubes back along the road and just leave each trolley to die a slow death up on the site. They drank from bottles, made tea with it, rationed what they drank. The attic tank was dry. Its pipes, without any current flowing through them, made occasional whale music. They filled a basin in the bathroom every morning, and took turns to wash in that. The girl went first, since washing in his daughter’s water didn’t bother Paul. Last thing every night, they used the day’s basin to flush the toilet, which was filled with scraps of roll.

  There was comfort in the noise the Poles made. They could be heard most nights in the garden of number three, talking loudly, laughing. It always sounded like they were drinking, but jolly with it. The racket made Paul feel safer and the slight murk of the evenings more approachable. For a while, he and his daughter even started sitting out the back again, watching the sun set somewhere over the wall and the hedgerows beyond.

  ‘What’s the chances of them feeding us dog food?’

  ‘Stop,’ Paul said.

  They were at Slattery’s door when she said that about the dog food. They had taken the shortcut up through the slope of high grass. They considered going the long way round, turning right out the road, trekking the hundred yards or so, then turning right again when they came to the entrance to Slattery’s avenue. But it was far too hot for such formalities. They had cut through the undergrowth, skirted the mountain of rocks and muck, and walked in the tracks Slattery had flattened with his quad. She had walked up one track, Paul the other. After two-thirds of the distance, the long grass became lawn, staked saplings and gravel. The tracks Slattery’s quad had ground went around to the rear to what looked like stables. A sign said, ‘Goose eggs for sale’. Peonies spilled out of decommissioned cannon shells.

  ‘Guys!’

  They had heard hounds yelping and Slattery whistling. When Slattery dragged the door towards himself, half a dozen things chimed and rattled. He hadn’t struck Paul as a ‘guys’ kind of guy, but you never can tell. Slattery looked them up and down. He had made it sound informal when they’d spoken. So informal that Paul and the girl hadn’t even bothered to change before leaving.

  ‘Just the pair of you,’ he said. ‘We were expecting herself as well.’ When Slattery had referenced their trauma so delicately, Paul assumed that he knew all about Helen’s disappearance. Slattery pointed at the stubble Paul had let grow into a proper beard. ‘Love the whiskers.’

  The front door must have been seldom used. They had to wade through walking sticks, shotguns and golf umbrellas. Slattery parked them in a room with a white carpet and the smell of something rotting.

  ‘Darling!’ Slattery was yodelling into his hallway’s vaulted silence. ‘Haze?’

  When Hazel neither appeared nor answered, he said, retreating from the room, ‘She’s very excited about your coming, perhaps even a little nervous.’

  Paul made a face at his daughter in the three-seater that backed onto the centre of the room. Behind the sofa there was a table with an antique rotary-dial phone that looked carved from ivory. They weren’t as flush as Slattery would have you think. The upholstery was threadbare at the edges and had wisps of horsehair hanging out of it. The carpet was stained and worn thin. The girl whispered that the sofa felt damp. She moved onto a leather ottoman that had several substantial gashes in it. The coffee-table was a battered trunk covered with glossy dog magazines that had mug rings on them. Paul held up one of the magazines and mouthed, ‘Dogs!’

  The air felt damp, which probably accounted for the fire being lit with slabs of rough turf. When Slattery returned alone, bearing a silver salver of drinks already poured, Paul was standing inspecting the over-mantel.

  ‘Gilt,’ Slattery said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The frame. It’s gilt.’ They both grinned at the misunderstanding, Slattery more so than Paul. ‘Gilt without the U in it. The best sort.’

  ‘Very good.’

  With every chuckle, Slattery shook. Paul watched him shaking, the velvet of his jacket, the ripples of burgundy corduroy and the quivers of flesh visible beneath. His skin looked fresher, more youthful, than Paul had remembered. Brow all perspiration beads, Slattery handed drinks around.

  ‘Please.’

  Tonic mostly, two lemon wedges and dry gin measured out by the thimbleful. The girl as well. It seemed to be the only option. Slattery flopped into the long sofa and Paul tried to ignore his host’s feet not quite reaching the white carpet.

  ‘Sad news.’ Slattery nodded backwards through the long windows down the hill. He didn’t look all that sad. ‘About our friend Flood.’

  ‘I haven’t
actually heard.’

  ‘How have you not?’ Slattery looked delighted to be the bearer of the news. ‘Front-page stuff. On the run. Creditors galore, all wondering where on earth Signor Flood has scarpered off to.’

  Paul felt stung on Flood’s behalf. He wanted to say that Flood’s disgrace explained Slattery’s recent presence on the manor, but there were hours yet to grin through and Flood hardly deserved Paul’s loyalty. Instead, he stirred his drink with his little finger.

  ‘Forgive me! Were you pals?’ Slattery slid to the edge of the sofa until his feet were just about grazing the carpet.

  ‘Me and Flood?’ Paul’s daughter was staring at him. She looked unsure of what her father would say. ‘Eh, no . . .’

  ‘Portgal.’ Slattery missed the middle vowel both times he said that. ‘Apparently our friend has been sighted in Portgal.’

  ‘Which has no U in it either,’ Paul said. ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  Hazel was unexpected. She came out of nowhere, with so little ceremony that she was in the middle of the room before anyone noticed her entrance.

  ‘Ah, Haze,’ Slattery shouted. Was she deaf? ‘Good girl. Now’s the chance to meet your hero.’

  Paul had pictured some fusty dame in twin-set and gardening gloves. The real Hazel was half Slattery’s age. That, or Slattery wasn’t as old as he initially seemed. What was the phrase he had used? ‘The little lady’ . . . She was poured into a class of flamenco combination: black ribbed dress and thick heels. She had a white perm gelled back at the temples, heavy black mascara and, odder still, satin elbow gloves that were snipped coarsely at the fingers to reveal nails polished black as well. She said nothing. Even when Paul said, ‘Thank you for having us,’ Hazel said nothing.

  ‘How are we looking?’ Hazel did something Slattery took as assent. ‘Good girl. Smells delicious.’

  She led them through to an open-plan modern kitchen littered with dog bowls. Was she mute as well as deaf? They could have been forgiven for thinking their hostess was mute. She had uttered zilch so far. She had barely acknowledged them. Not until she turned from the oven towards them, with a flat casserole dish cupped in silicon pads, did she finally move her lips. ‘Paul.’ Her voice had a tremble in it. So did her hand.

  Slattery stood, wielding a serving spoon, and ladled onto their plates hefty portions of meat and dumpling and pearl onion all bound in thick brown gloop. ‘Can’t go wrong with goulash,’ he said. ‘Please tell me there are no veggies among us.’

  ‘No.’

  The look on the girl’s face said what had occurred to Paul too late, namely that one or both of them could have excused themselves from the main course on ideological grounds.

  ‘No,’ Paul said. ‘Both carnivores.’

  ‘Paul.’

  Twice Hazel had spoken now, and each time she had mumbled the same name. Paul glanced first at Slattery, then at the girl, searching for some clue of what was expected of him.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Slattery said. ‘Drinks.’

  Slattery placed a pitcher of iced water at the centre of the dining-table and disappeared into a different room on the other side of the kitchen. They could hear bottles chink, their host chuntering to himself. The ice was melting quickly in the pitcher, almost visibly, at the surface of the water. When it was first put down, Paul could see his daughter through it, distorted by the pitcher’s curves. Then condensation was forming on the outside of its glass, making it opaque and his daughter less visible. It was thickening. It was gathering into drips that streamed down and made a wet ring on the tablecloth. For months the inside of Paul’s mouth, its roof, tongue and throat, had scraped like sandpaper. Without thinking, Paul reached forward and caught a falling drip with the end of one finger before the drip hit the bottom, and he sucked it. It was so beautifully cold.

  ‘Do help yourself.’ Slattery had a bottle of red in one paw, a corkscrew in the other. His face was pure puzzlement. ‘By all means.’

  ‘Paul.’

  Was Hazel’s speech confined to one syllable? Slattery poured wine into goblets that had stems stained blue, insisting that their guests tuck in while the food was still hot.

  Talk was of Flood. The cowboy Flood was. ‘Cowboy’ was the word Slattery kept using. Paul caught his daughter’s eye. The girl had yet to touch her food. She hadn’t even handled her cutlery. She was staring at her plate. Paul took a lump of bread from the middle of the table and swabbed it with sauce. It tasted of nothing except salt and grease.

  ‘Are we all grand?’

  It was Hazel who said that. Seated now, she had spoken once again. She scarcely moved her lips when she spoke. Her voice was feathery, begging extra attention.

  ‘Grand,’ Paul said. ‘Just waiting for it to cool.’

  Flood was one of a thousand similar cowboys, all coming over the hill on their horses. While Slattery spoke, Hazel concentrated on eating as delicately as she could. Her nerves, of which Slattery had warned them, seemed real. Apart from Slattery’s bark, the loudest thing in the room was Hazel’s knife and fork trying not to clink on the china of her plate. There was something touching about her. Notwithstanding Slattery’s bluster, having Paul and his daughter to dinner did appear to be a big deal. She had gone to far too much trouble, with her appearance and with the place-settings: napkins folded into swans. There was something vacant about her as well, Paul thought. Was she all there?

  Alas, Slattery was saying, the cowboys had taken over, the cowboys had carte blanche.

  ‘The cowboys?’

  ‘Flood and his ilk.’

  ‘Of course.’ Paul had a piece of gristle in his cheek. He was waiting for a distraction to spit it into his napkin, trying not to gag. ‘It’s really delicious.’

  ‘Shall I tell them what I call the development, honey?’

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘I call it Flanders . . . You know. All the muck and shrapnel. All the poppies, one for every dismembered body lying decomposed underneath. One for every skeleton.’

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘I call it Flanders Fields. I wander down at sunset some evenings, as you know, and I always holler the same thing leaving, don’t I, honey? I’m off to Flanders Fields, I always holler.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Paul was getting freaked by Hazel’s repeated chirping of his name. He was put out, as well, by his host’s description of what was still their home. ‘Very witty.’

  War was Slattery’s thing. He had dozens of glossy coffee-table tomes on it. He had compiled an inventory of names from the surrounding parishes of young chaps – the sons of good families and farm labourers alike – who had all signed up together in the local post office and had perished together within weeks.

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘All right, Haze, all right.’

  Slattery stood again, though mostly it was hard to tell, and poured more wine for everyone, except the girl, who had scarcely touched hers. She was too busy sliding lumps around her plate and occasionally lifting a fork with a morsel on it to her lips. After draining the bottle, Slattery left the room.

  Paul pleaded with his daughter to eat properly. He didn’t really give a damn. He was just trying to fill the air deadened by Slattery’s absence.

  ‘Please,’ Paul said to her, ‘don’t let me down.’

  ‘Eat what you like, sweetie.’ The more puce with wine the inside of Hazel’s mouth got, the more her tongue loosened. ‘Ignore your daddy.’

  In spite of the amnesty, or maybe because of it, the girl shovelled several large forkfuls into her mouth and followed them each with a hefty slug of wine. They sat watching her until Slattery returned with a couple of pieces of memorabilia that he had bought at auction: a pair of scissors prised from dead enemy hands; a gas mask the colour of copper. He gave the scissors to the girl: crooked, rusting at the handle, bearing a Gothic inscription on the inside of one of its blades that the girl read aloud, her mouth half full.

  ‘Kettenhunde.’

&
nbsp; ‘Very impressive,’ Slattery said. ‘And its meaning?’

  ‘Chained dogs,’ the girl said.

  Slattery was adamant that Paul should try on the gas mask. He stood behind Paul and forced the straps at the back. The inside smelt of old rubber and of sick. Paul raised his glass of wine and, for a joke, tried to take a drink. While the others laughed, Paul swallowed the piece of gristle he had been holding in his cheek all that time and felt his throat coated in its grease. He could hear, but he could hardly see a thing and he couldn’t push off the gas mask. Slattery was jabbering on, explaining to ‘the ladies’ that he had spent a weekend with it on once, that wearing it gave you a bird’s-eye view of what it was like to be actually in a war and facing the enemy. Who was the enemy?

  Paul tried to remove the gas mask, but the thing felt suctioned to his head. He tried to say, ‘Please help me get it off,’ but he could hear how muffled his voice was by all the tubing, and the others only laughed again.

  ‘If you say so,’ Slattery said.

  ‘Paul.’

  The mask’s goggles got fogged with his breathing. The straps at the back of his head had no give in them. The other three were receding into mist: Slattery prattling on about craftsmanship, only the girl’s expression and Hazel’s voice displaying any awareness of what was happening.

  ‘Paul.’

  Paul stood, tugging at the straps and growling, ‘Please get the fucking thing off me.’ Slattery came behind him and said to take slow, even breaths. When they finally yanked off the mask, Paul’s beard was dripping sweat, his hair everywhere, and they were staring at him as they might a scuba diver dragged up after a sudden loss of pressure.

  ‘Cheese and coffee?’

  Hazel fetched a hand towel for Paul to rub his head down. It smelt of petrol, the towel did. She said, ‘I wish Martina could have made it.’