Pigeon Variations - Ch 10 - Farewell Marseille

Brighton wasn’t all ponces. The French housekeeping girls in the hotel on the seafront were alright. They had left Marseille to find work and escape their scag habit.

He worked with them as a chambermaid. The job itself was a sham. Same as every fucking job. Being told what to do by jumped up, chinless twats who don’t have a clue. Except for Isabelle, the Head of Housekeeping at the hotel, she was alright. Sound as the proverbial pound. She was so professionally French with her fags and cropped hair, but she was what he called good French, not annoying French.

“Your room cleaning is crap,” she’d say, telling him straight. No messing. “Rooms 2, 7, 8 and 11 are not good.” She would make this tut-tutting sound. “You have to go back and do them again.”

“You what?”

“You know how bad a job you did. Go back and do them properly.”

Pyser would have told anyone else to jog on. Didn’t matter if they were right or wrong. With Isabelle, he took it. She was a fighter and he respected her for that. She didn’t let people take the piss. Not from him. Not from the other chambermaids. Not even the hotel managers, Mr and Mrs Darwish.

He went for a drink with Isabelle after work on Brighton seafront. It was unusual for her to agree to a drink but she said yes, she’d come for one until her boyfriend, John, a builder who was much older than her, came to pick her up. They sat at a wooden table that was sticky from spilled drinks. She nursed a glass of white wine as he drank half his pint in one go.

“You English and your pints,” she said.

“I love a pint. Nothing makes me happier.”

“Not so happy in the mornings.”

He was usually the last to arrive, carrying a can of fizzy drink and eating a bag of crisps. They both knew he had a massive problem with booze but she didn’t lecture him, trotting out all the tedious boring shit about health, money, blah, blah, blah.

She wore thick-rimmed sunglasses, smoking a Marlborough red, looking all French New Wave. “I love Brighton in the summer,” she said, “but winter, oh my god.”

He looked at a couple of fit mums pushing prams. He definitely had a thing for older women. They were more grateful for a bit of cockeroo than the younger ones.

Isabelle took her first sip of the wine. “That’s disgusting,” she said, pulling a face.

“You want me to take it back?”

She carried on drinking. “Pah, English wine,” she said.

He wanted to take her glass back as he could then order a second pint. He knew he should’ve ordered two pints at the bar. The first of the day didn’t touch the sides.

“Do you reckon you’ll ever go back to Marseille?”

“No, there is nothing for me there.”

“Fair enough. I can’t see myself going back to London. I’m done with it.”

She looked at the sea, exhaling smoke. There were deep scars along her thin arms. “I went out with a dealer and he was a bad, bad boy…” She made that tut-tutting sound and shook her wrist. “I had to leave, otherwise I was….” She blew a raspberry and said, “Kaput.”

He picked up her cigarettes and looked up at her. She nudged her Zippo towards him on the table.

“I’d like to live abroad one day,” he said, lighting a fag.

“You’re too English.”

“What does that mean?”

She started laughing. “You’re so English.”

The pints eased Pyser’s hangover. Took the edge off. Drinking every day now. The hangover was so brutal when he woke up he considered either calling in sick or drinking before he went into work. Beer for brekkie. A slippery slope. A lunchtime snifter or two was allowed, maybe, but booze for breakfast on a workday was frowned upon. You could take drugs in the morning, though. That was fine. Only a line or two, when cleaning rooms, to clear the pipes. It helped with the dizzy spells. Medicinal.

Isabelle started talking about her cousin, Loic, who was coming over for the summer, and how she knew he would flirt crazily with the other chambermaids.

Pyser didn’t know the bloke and he sounded like an annoying, womanising twat. Changing the subject, Pyser said, “What happened with the dealer?”

She paused. “Who?”

“The bad boy you mentioned. Your dealer boyfriend, what went on with him?”

“I’ve told you before. We've talked about this... I left him, took my things and caught the ferry to England.”

“But did he try to find you? Do you hear from him?”

She seemed frustrated. “It’s in the past. Why do you always have to ask these questions? Going on about life. Being deep. Why can’t we talk normal?”

“I’m interested.”

She sucked on the cigarette and exhaled. “I heard he turned into a… how you say… faisan?”

“What’s that?”

“A bird.. faisan … In the countryside. You eat them.”

“Pheasant?”

“Yes, phea-sant.”

“That’s sad.”

She shrugged. “It happens. Could be any of us, right?”

“True. A pheasant’s pretty decent.”

“Can we talk about something else now?”

Pyser cadged another ciggie. They looked at teenagers playing table tennis, listening to the clicking of the ball as it bounced back and forth across the table.

“Can you play?” said Pyser.

She didn’t answer. She seemed lost in thought. Probably thinking of life back in Marseille, wondering what became of her faisan ex.

Her latest boyfriend arrived, John. He was such a geezer. So obvious. The twat flashed Pyser a manly, territorial stare.

“You staying for a drink?” said Pyser.

“No, we can’t,” he replied.

They were going to be late for a film they were off to see. Course they were. It was bollocks. They’d go for a drink together in another pub without him. Pyser imagined the cunt driving around with a St George’s Cross flag on his transit van, listening to fucking Chart music and thinking about his next bulldog tattoo.   

As the two of them walked off, holding hands, Pyser necked the wine Isabelle had left in her plastic wine glass.

Waste not, want not.