Pigeon Variations - Ch 20 - Keep Schtum

Pyser landed a job as a Kitchen Porter for £2.50 an hour. He was paired with Tony, who had owned the restaurant until losing it playing cards.

The story went that the guy drank himself into madness. His wife left him and then he was sectioned after being found walking down Western Road in his Y-fronts, screaming his head off about killer crows.

Dario, the winner of the poker game, had hired Tony out of pity. Some kind of vague salute to their former friendship.

Pyser was no stranger to insanity but, by any measure, Tony was off his fucking rocker. They stood side by side at the sink. Their work station. Cockpit. Maverick and Goose. Pyser scrubbed sauce stains from a pot that was still warm. Tony dried and unloaded plates from the dishwasher.

Out of nowhere, Tony said, “I prefer Michael Jackson to Madonna.”

“Right,” said Pyser.

“The King of Pop.”

“I think they’re both complete piles of shit,” Pyser replied. It wasn’t strictly true. He thought Off the Wall was a stonker of an album and he had a peculiar affection for the song, Like a Prayer, which he couldn’t properly explain or rationalise.

It was a Friday night and the restaurant was heaving. A French Chef, Jacques, and his younger Algerian assistant, Michael, were working at the cookers, their faces shiny with sweat. Waiters and waitresses shouted orders from the restaurant.

Dario stood by the till, wearing his blue cotton shirt – tight over his fat belly – and beige chinos, sipping chicory coffee and dabbing his bald head with a silk handkerchief. He watched the staff, monitoring the quality of the food, how it was served, and how the customers behaved as they gorged themselves on oysters, seabass, seabream, monkfish, chicken breast, pheasant, pigeon and thick steaks. Nobody but him was allowed to use the till.

The bin under the sink was full of leftovers. Squashed chips. Bits of lettuce. Tomatoes. Fish bones. Mussel shells with their umbilical stubs. Lemon rinds. Mushrooms and coffee grinds. All mixed with dollops of ketchup, mayonnaise and tartare sauce. Tony, who had a full head of immaculate white hair, noticed something in the bin and reached his hand by Pyser and into the wet scraps.

“What are you doing?” said Pyser, jutting his waist to one side. 

Tony picked up the skeleton of a squab. He nibbled at the bits of flesh and sucked on the bones.

“Don’t do that,” yelled Pyser, “it’s gross.”

Tony didn’t listen. Earlier in the week, one of the waitresses, Dani, had seen him rummaging through a rubbish bin in Churchill Square in broad daylight, swigging dregs from a crushed lager can.

It made Pyser feel sick. He walked over to Jacque and Michael. “We have to feed Tony. The geezer’s starving. Come on, he’s eating pigeon bones.”

They ignored him. He didn’t exist. 

Besides, as usual, Jacques, a former soldier, was arguing with Michael about Algeria.

“You fucking people,” he hollered as he worked across three frying pans and four pots, using a dirty cloth to stop his scarred, calloused hands from burning on the metal handles. “I was there and saw what happened. Throwing grenades into trucks we were driving, full of women and children. They were blown to pieces.”

Michael was on the grill. He side-stepped to the counter and took another order from a waitress and added it to the row of dockets fixed to a string with bulldog clips.

“Have you seen who’s come in?” the waitress said.

Michael looked over the counter into the restaurant. Pyser did the same. There were two women in tight, low-cut dresses and lots of make-up. They were escorted by a couple of older men in expensive suits and designer sunglasses. Michael grinned as he recognised the prostitutes. To the waitress, he said, “Tell them I’ll come say hi,”

“Will do, petal.”

Michael then turned round and went back to the grill, using a spatula to turn a swordfish. “Don’t tell me about the women and children.”

“Babies,” snapped Jacques. “Dead babies.”

“Because the French army didn’t murder us? Didn’t treat us like slaves in our own country? What were we supposed to do, not fight back? My sister was raped by one of you animals.” Michael spat on the floor to express his disgust at the French army.

Pyser walked back to the sink. Tony was rummaging in the bin. The poor fucker must have been starving. The smell of leftovers and the heat of the kitchen killed Pyser’s appetite. No way he could eat. Not with the filthy plates, pots and pans. Trousers soaking wet from scummy water splashing over the rim of the sink. Covered in stains and greasy filth. The smell of food lingered long after the shower when he got home. Stayed in the hair. Skin. Taste buds. The one joy when back in his room was to unscrew the top on a bottle of cider.

Hearing ice cubes crackle in a glass… Turning on the radio…

Michael barged passed him, laughing. Opposite the sink, there was a hallway where customers crossed from the restaurant to walk down a narrow, winding flight of creaky stairs to the toilets.

“My beautiful lady,” said Michael to one of the prostitutes.

“Hello, babe.”

The woman had an incredible body. Her dress was short and tight. She shrieked of sex. Michael whistled at the woman, “When are you going to let me take you out?”

“You can’t afford me, sweetheart.”

“Come on, these old men can’t show you a good time like me.”

“Old men have money, whereas you…” the woman couldn’t finish what she was saying for laughing.

“I have money.”

“Not enough for this,” the woman said, raising her skirt to flash her lacy, completely see-thru knickers.

Michael doubled-over laughing. It was as if her shaved pussy was the funniest thing he had ever seen. He slapped the wall as the woman held the bannister and navigated the stairs in her red high heels.

Pyser could tell she was as high as a kite. Pupils like saucers. He looked at Tony. His fellow KP was now happily using a finger to scoop out the innards from a trout skull. “Michael, please can you give him some food, look at what he’s doing?”

Michael was still cracking up, shaking his head and walking to the kitchen as Jacques hollered for him to come back.

Tony sucked trout brains off his finger like it was fresh cream.  

“Bring those,” said Michael to Pyser, pointing to the heavy pots. “We need them, plus those knives and spoons.”

“Move out the way, you crazy bastard,” said Pyser to Tony. He picked up the pots like a good boy. The Jim Morrison fantasies he had back in his room in the Peckham houseshare seemed like a century ago. Brighton was supposed to be a temporary thing. A summer at most. A stop gap until figuring out the next move. Jim Morrison, the Lizard King, didn’t wash plates. Fact. Probably didn’t ever do the dishes. Ray Manzarak would. The Doors’ keyboardist would offer to wash and dry.

Pyser carried pots into the kitchen. Was Jim Morrison good at maths? That’s something the Oliver Stone bio never addressed. The struggles with dyslexia. Jim’s angst of knowing at some stage that he was going to transform into another creature. The Lizard King. Fuck off. Not that people turn into lizards. No, that wasn’t a thing. In the news it said that Human Avian Transitions (HATS) are on the rise. He knew his turn would come. It was never in doubt. The scary part was the not knowing what bird he would be. Still, any bird had to be better than this fucking joke of an existence.

The colonial politics of Algeria raged on in the kitchen fiercer than any episode of Question Time. Jacques ordered Pyser to take the dirty pots and pans off the cookers. Those pans were fucking lethal. Red hot weapons of mass destruction. The chefs laughed their bollocks off that time when he held the top end of the handle on a frying pan. The hot metal melted the skin off his thumb and forefinger. Rookie error. Funny. Haha. The pain of carrying on washing up for that shift, hour after hour, watching blisters inflate like balloons. Comedy gold. Washing plates for a living. Sleeping in a suicide room. Home. Living with drifters. Fuck ups. No lock on the door. These constant mixed emotions. Thoughts criss-crossing. Wanting to improve himself and then feeling like this was what he deserves. That crushing worthlessness. You’re bacon rind. You’re fish scales. A dud scratch card. No fucking prizes. Zero. Try again. Maybe. No thanks. Anne told him to read Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground. Randomly, he did too. Went down to the beach with cans of lager and some gear. It was fucking top notch. They should have taught that at school as opposed to the fake working class wank fantasies of Arthur Miller and George Borewell.

Pyser returned to the sink. Scrub-a-dub-dub. He looked at Tony next to him, mopping the floor as the dishwasher leaked.

It was only ever going to end one way for him after losing that card game and tonight was the night. A customer, when going to the toilet, had seen Tony from the hallway eating trout brains and had complained. Dario was never going to stand for that kind of thing. No way. They may have been friends once but what the fuck was friendship in the grand scheme of things? No one gives a toss about each other in the restaurant game. Business is business. If you work in hospitality, food and leisure, you’re as disposable as a plastic fucking fork.

The last customers paid up and the staff waved goodbye. Once they had gone, Dario started shouting. The twat had a vicious temper. He really cut loose on Tony, letting the poor bastard have it.  

“What do you think you’re doing? How dare you do that in my restaurant. Yes, my restaurant.”

There was confusion on Tony’s face, like when a dog doesn’t understand a command.

Dario kept on.

Jacques, Michael and a few of the waiting staff watched on the sly as they went about their jobs. Pyser wanted to step in. He would’ve done, back in the day. Decked the cunt. Who did he think he was? Pot bellied twat. Except Pyser was in a bind. That £2.50 an hour may have been a criminal rate, but it meant he could pay for a roof over his head. Without it, he was well and truly fucked. So he kept schtum like poor people are supposed to do.

By stages, Tony was deciphering what Dario was telling him. It was painful to see the penny drop. He untied his dirty apron and dropped it on the counter. He put on his lemon coloured, designer linen jacket, torn at the elbow and, with his crop of perfect white hair, he walked out of the restaurant, swallowed by the night of Brighton seafront.

No one said a word, let alone goodbye.  

Dario ranted and raved. The armpits of his shirt were dark with sweat. The floor, he said, was still filthy. As were the tables.

The staff dutifully cleaned. Repositioned the chairs. Scrubbed. Wiped. Mopped. Brought tables in from the forecourt.  

Normally, after a busy night, with good tips, the staff were buzzing. They played music. Laughed and joked.

Tonight, there was silence, apart the exchange of solemn, knowing looks.

Everyone, minus the fucking twat of an owner, was thinking the same thing.

What happened to Tony could happen to them.