Pigeon Variations - Ch 31 - The Dregs

Note - a version of this was posted on ABC in 2019

Pyser watched his dad in the kitchen, pouring beer into a thin glass and then checking the oven to inspect the roast potatoes.

“Here comes trouble,” his dad said.

Pyser nodded, trying to work out how drunk his dad seemed. Five pints, maybe six? Not crazy drunk – and not shorts – but a decent platform if carrying on through the evening.

“Your mother sent you to spy on me, did she?”

Pyser shook his head. “No, I’ve come to visit.”

His dad raised the glass and drank a long draught. He poured in the rest and squeezed the tin before putting it in the flip-top bin in the cupboard under the sink. His woollen fingerless gloves and long overcoat were tatty and falling apart. “This country,” he said to Pyser, “is going to the dogs. Have you seen what’s happening to the printers? They’ll be made redundant… That fucker Murdoch won’t back down… Whenever people in power talk about either modernisation or progress, you know the poor are going to be properly fucked over. I knew what his game was the second I laid eyes on the lying Aussie fuck.”

Crack open another can. It made Pyser anxious. His dad was the kind of drunk who was fine one minute, even funny and interesting – strangely well-read and knowledgeable given Pyser never saw him with a book – and then his mood would switch. When that happened, you didn’t want to be around him. “They’re going to be replaced by machines,” his dad said. “Cheaper and faster, don’t take holidays, talk back, fall sick and definitely won’t go on strike when they’re being spun lies. I tell you son, the rich love nothing better than getting one over the poor.”

Pyser watched the beer disappear down his dad’s throat. He realised he talked like his old man. He thought the same as the bastard when it came to the haves and the have nots. Funny how complete cunts like them could also take the moral high ground on politics. “Was I a disappointment to you dad? Is that why you treated me like you did?”

His dad was untying the laces of his hob-nail boots. “Go run a bath for me.”

“I’m asking you a question,” Pyser replied.

“I need a soak before dinner. It’s been a hard day.”

“What if I became a pigeon king? Would you be proud of me then?”

“Run that bath.”

Pyser went upstairs to the bathroom, putting the plug in the hole and swivelling the hot tap on full and the cold halfway. He opened the doors of the other two bedrooms to check who was home. He’d forgotten how small the bedrooms were, especially the one he shared with Tony. He heard raised voices downstairs.

The energy of his parents’ anger permeated the flat. Pyser wanted it to stop. The voices became louder. He had no idea what the arguing was about. He wasn’t sure they knew themselves half the time. He couldn’t stand the sound. It’s what made him go and live on the streets. The fighting went to a whole new level when his dad lost his job as a Pools Man. There were moments when he honestly thought his parents might kill one another.

He heard every imaginable insult:

“I made the biggest mistake of my life when I married you.”

“Go on rent-a-mouth, keep on going why don’t you?”

“I shouldn’t have had one fucking kid, let alone two.”

“My mum was right about you and your whole family. You’re a bunch of fucking pikies, the lot of you.”

“When I top myself, I’ll make sure everyone knows whose fault it is.”

“I’m warning you – know when to shut it and give that mouth of yours a fucking rest.”  

The splashing sound of the running water was a distraction from the muffled shouting downstairs. The mirror filled with steam. He wanted an apology. Some acknowledgement of what they put him through, as well as his brother.

With a finger, he wrote a question on the mirror: R U Sorry?

He went down the stairs and stood in the hallway. They were rowing about dinner. His dad was hungry and wanted to know when he could eat. His mum told his old man where to go. She wanted to watch her programme in peace.

Pyser thought about making a scene. He remembered the times when he begged them, pleaded with them to stop and they had kept on fighting, telling him to go to his room.

His dad came into the hallway. He was over six-foot tall, barrel chested with strong, muscular arms. “Is that bath ready?”

“It’s running.”

“It better be.”

“You made our lives a misery.”

“Poor baby. Now let me have my bath and you can hurry to the shop to fetch your mother’s bits. She needs to get a move on with dishing up dinner. I’m starving.”

Pyser let his dad pass. Fucking priceless. He went into the kitchen and pulled a plastic bag from the cupboard under the sink, next to the pedal bin, and then questioned why he was going to the shops. They could fuck off… The pair of them… They could get the cabbage or lettuce or whatever the fuck it was they wanted.

He opened the fridge and pulled the ring pull on one of his dad’s cans of beer. He raised the can and swigged. The gag reflex kicked in and he started coughing and spitting. The beer was salty and sludgy. He realised, with total certainty, that he was drinking the tears of the dead.