Pigeon Variations - Ch 14 - The Blood Room

Pyser pushed the hotel room door, which was heavy and on a spring. He propped it open with a vacuum cleaner, noting the dense smell of cigarettes. He picked up two plastic boxes from the hallway, one with cleaning products for the bedroom, the other for the bathroom, and placed them on the carpet. 

The blankets on the bed had not been peeled back to sleep under. There was a branded ashtray on the creased covers of the bed with ten or so crushed butts. Next to the ashtray was a light, brown-coloured copy of The Bible. It was opened to The Book of Lamentations. In red pen, the following words were circled:

I was a derision to all my people

and their song all the day.

He hath filled me with bitterness,

he hath made me drunken with wormwood.

Isabelle followed Pyser into the room, carrying a bottle of bleach. He pointed at The Bible and she tut-tutted. She nodded towards the bathroom. Pyser walked towards the door, pushing it open. “Fucking hell,” he said.

More tut-tutting from Isabelle behind him. The tiles on the walls and floor were splattered in blood. Claret in the grouting. Sprayed across the cistern of the toilet. On the mirror. In the grooves of the screws of the shelf on the wall. Over the rings of the shower curtain. The bath was full and had strings of blood in the water.

“Are you seriously asking me to clean this up?” said Pyser.

Isabelle wasn’t spooked. It made him wonder what she had seen as a smack head back in France. “You arrived last this morning so you have to do the blood room,” she said, placing the bleach by the bathroom door.

“Oh come on, leave it out, Isabelle.”

She was having none of it. “Ah, you come on, leave it out, Pyser. You were 20 minutes late and stink of drink. Why should I ask the others to do it who arrive on time?”

He struggled to reply. Fair point. Fuck it. Hardly able to put a sentence together. “I don’t have any gloves,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. He knew that she thought he was weak and pathetic. Acting like the sort of whingy, whiny, "fucking English" that the French chambermaids said they detested. Full of entitlement. Arrogant. 

“Come on, Isabelle – some gloves at least?”

“Downstairs, maybe,” she replied, walking off into the corridor and leaving him to get on with it. 

Hungover and alone again. Chambers of the dead. Shades of Egyptian tombs and Parisian catacombs. The suicider had been a man in his mid to late forties, from Belgium. Well-dressed. Polite. Charming, they said. Wore a Rolex. “Imagine being able to afford a watch like that and wanting to top yourself,” they said. Money. Doesn’t. Bring. Happiness. Booked in for one night only – true in more ways than the girl on reception could have known. “He seemed so nice,” they said. 

The man had cut a wrist in the bath and immediately regretted what he had done. He wrapped towels around his bleeding arm and phoned for help. “I’ve had an accident,” he said. An ambulance took him to Brighton General Hospital. The police, who had been at the hotel a month before enquiring about a murdered prostitute, came and asked questions to the girl on reception and the owners. The Belgian survived. Nobody knew why he wanted to die or why he suddenly wanted to live. The main concern in the hotel, it seemed to Pyser, was how to make the room clean enough for the next guests. Life goes on.  

Pyser walked into the main room. He pulled the curtains and opened a window. The sound of a Harley Davidson from the road by the promenade filled his ears. Two French chambermaids, Sondrine and Clare, entered the room, giggling and frightened. “Can we look?” Sondrine asked. He nodded and they stepped inside the atrocity exhibition. “Belgian bastard,” said Sondrine, who had come over on the ferry with Isabelle from Marseille to start anew. Sondrine and Clare laughed at Pyser as they left the room, teasing, “Ooo, lar, lar.” He was an oddity, a figure of fun to the other chambermaids. How could a young man, raised and educated in England, end up working in a mediocre hotel with a bunch of recovering junkies from France, doing what they themselves said was a woman’s job?

He checked that the armchair was clean of blood and sat down. His stomach was churning. Gurgling. He’d need to wipe the bloodstains off the toilet seat before having a lager / wine poo. Generally, he never spewed but this morning it was a distinct possibility. The hangover was savage and the carnival of horrors greeting him in the bathroom was not helping. Anne wanted him out. She told him that he was to collect his things and be gone from her life. Vamoose. One of Anne’s friends had recognised Pyser copping off with Jenna in the club and had grassed him up. He denied it of course, claiming mistaken identity. She wasn’t having any of it. Fuck her. Didn’t want to be at Anne’s place anyway. He opened a three-pack of biscuits that had been placed on a doily. The Belgian must have been on a downer as he hadn’t touched the custard creams. Hadn’t made himself a tea or coffee or drank water from the bottles on the tray. The kettle was empty and the flex tied up neatly. Pyser wondered if he’d be arsed to make a hot drink and eat a few biccies if he was on the cusp of the eternal checkout.

He thought about sleeping for an hour on the bed. Shut eye. Forty winks. A little snooze. Cleaning the bathroom was going to take ages and if he closed the door and locked it, saying he wanted to be undisturbed, Isabelle would probably leave him in peace. The morning breeze skimming off the ocean felt good on his face, which was burning from too much alcohol. He poured still water from a glass bottle into the kettle, connected the socket and flicked the electric switch. Thought about switching the tele on. Morning TV. That’d make anyone top themselves. Philip Schofield and Martin Lewis cunts. He listened to the kettle boil, picturing Mr Belgium on the double bed, reading The Bible. Put yourself in my shoes, monsieur.

He hath filled me with bitterness. He hath made me drunken with wormwood.

Pyser thought about what must’ve been going through Mr Belgium’s mind. Scary shit. Thinking the words of The Bible might bring salvation. A miracle in a 3-star hotel. The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. Books can transform you, an English teacher used to say. Mr Minker, or was it Mr Robinson? Alone in this cold room. The night is long and full of shadows. Unable to carry on. Oh to be free of this earthly suffering. I am forsaken. Bore off, mate. We’re all fucking forsaken. Get used to it. The hope for life once felt within has vanished. I am empty. We know. We know. Shut up. You self-pitying little tit. Betrayals and self-betrayals. We’ve all been there. Heard it before. Suicide is cliched. Been done to death.

Or were you a nasty bastard, Mr Belgium?

Blowing yourself a kiss goodbye in the mirror. Using scissors to cut up the plastic wrapping of the razor blade and gingerly sinking into the hot, hot bath. Mr Belgium, you’re dynamite. A walking Chernobyl. Did you dare to think about the ones you love? That they might miss you? Were there any loved ones? Only the living experience death, so they say. How afraid were you of the pain? That fancy Rolex won’t save you. Feeling nauseous with the heat and steam. You’ll always walk alone. No laments for sad tossers like you. You worm. You maggot. Blade against vein. There you go. Deeper. And then… He’s only gone and Norman Bates’d it. Party popper of blood. A never-ending fountain. And you changed your mind. All those days, months, years dreaming of the end in a sleepy Belgian town. Lost in adolescent, nihilistic reverie. Goth nonsense. Morrissey bollocks. And then wanting nothing more than to exist, breathe, dance, wank, piss, kiss, go for a short walk on a long pier… Life is a gift and you realised you’d never rollerblade through Ypres again, or take pleasure in the tiny yelps of a dog dreaming.

Too sentimental. Pyser sipped his cup of instant coffee with UHT milk. Granules floating on the surface. He dunked a custard cream. It could have been a Belgian priest done for kiddie fiddling. He’d read about all sorts going on with nonces in Belgium. What do they call them? Paedophile rings. Not a cartel or syndicate but a ring. He decided against a nap. Are priests allowed to wear designer watches? Doesn’t matter. They’re not allowed to fuck kids but they do. He would get the job over and done with. Stop procrastinating. He stood up and that was when he noticed a piece of paper under the frilled valance. He picked it up. Saw that it was folded over and over like amateur origami. He opened it up and there were some Belgian words – or whatever the fuck they spoke – that he didn’t understand and then a few English words that he could make out.

I envy the bird because it is born with a song in its heart, whereas man is thrown screaming into this world and must find his own music.

And then there was more foreign stuff. Pyser quit GCSE French after a couple of months. It was fucking boring to study, but he still liked the idea of speaking a foreign language. Fucking mad how everyone else in Europe, no matter what their background, speaks English.

Pyser slipped the paper into his pocket and left the room, walking down the central flight of stairs to the reception area.

He definitely couldn’t clean the blood room without a decent pair of gloves.

Note - The next Chapter was published earlier on ABC (when the character was called Darren) -- The Careers Teacher https://www.abctales.com/story/mark-burrow/careers-teacher