The Lighthouse

CHAPTER TWO. Breasts

Ester gets herself comfortable on her high stool at the bar and removes her rubber gloves. She adds a little tonic to the shot of gin in front of her and drinks it down. She likes to have her first drink of the day when she finishes the downstairs rooms.

It is just after eleven. It is always quiet at this time, just before lunch. There is only herself and the new girl and one customer, a man at the other end of the bar. She is aware of him staring at her but she does not turn and look at him, not yet.

When she puts down her glass, she spots a smear on the rim, a red lipstick stain which is not hers. She calls the new girl over, holding out the glass for her to see, but the girl just takes it, thinking only that she is being given Ester’s dirty glass.

Ester sits with one foot resting on the crossbar of her stool and the other foot touching the floor, a position which makes her look as if she is on the point of going somewhere, but she is not. She can see herself reflected in the mirrors behind the bottles on the shelves. She spent a long time that morning at her dressing table trying to get her face right, but she can see, looking at herself now in the space between two bottles of mediocre red wine, that the make-up around her right eye and on her cheekbone is too heavy.

Her vest top shows off the bruises on her upper arms, rows of dark ovals like smudgy police station fingerprints, as well as her slackening bosom and the tattoo above her left breast — a rose, fully open, the petals loose and beginning to drop. Her top’s thin straps sink into her flesh, which is pale and doughy like uncooked pastry.

Now she looks at him, at the lone customer, a middle-aged man standing a few metres away. His broad shoulders are rounded, hunched over the bar. With his flat backside and short, thin legs, he makes the shape of a question mark. He is drinking a cup of coffee and peeling a hard-boiled egg, still watching her.

Ester, speaking German, says, ‘You’re not a guest here.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I came in for breakfast.’ Making small talk, he moves up the bar towards her with his naked egg, the white giving between his broad thumb and his short fingers. He stands so close that his foot is touching hers, but she doesn’t move hers away. He bites into his egg and she hears it being wetly masticated inside his mouth.

She fingers her hair, which is yellowy like the rubber gloves, like the crumbly egg yolk. She says, ‘I have to get back to work. I’m just taking a break.’

‘I have places to be as well,’ he says, and Ester sees the eggy, claggy inside of his opening and closing mouth. ‘I’m just passing through.’

She notices the butterfly tattoo on the back of his other hand, the hand which is not holding the egg, the thumb of which is hooked into his belt at the buckle. She gets down from her stool and walks to the internal door which leads to the guest rooms, glancing back at him before going through.

The man puts the last of the egg in his mouth and follows her, leaving the broken eggshell behind him on the bar.

He lies on his back in a bed which was vacated that morning by an American couple, whose dark hairs Ester can still see on the pillowcases. He is looking brazenly, unblinkingly, at her breasts and nothing else.

In her flat-chested youth, Ester collected pictures of other young women’s breasts in a scrapbook — breasts in bras from the underwear pages of her mother’s catalogues, breasts in bikinis from travel brochures, bare breasts from the plastic surgery adverts at the back of her mother’s magazines and from the magazines her father kept under his side of the mattress. As a teenager, she spent a great deal of time poring over these pictures of coveted breasts. Now nearing forty, she has almost forgotten this phase, but this man’s gaze reminds her of herself in her bedroom with her scrapbook on her lap. She gets onto the bed, and he does not take his eyes off her breasts, and she does not really look at him at all, looks near him, past him. When he has finished, he closes his eyes and falls asleep.

He was quick, but that’s just as well. Ester still has two rooms to do before lunchtime. There are toilets and sinks and baths to be cleaned, floors to be mopped, carpets to be vacuumed, beds to be made, including the one they are lying in.

In the past, she always used beds she had already changed, but since receiving complaints about the sheets, she makes sure to use rooms she has not yet cleaned. Or she uses rooms whose occupants are out for the day, brushing off and straightening up the bedding afterwards, and sometimes, while she is there, browsing the contents of drawers and suitcases, picking up perfumes and lipsticks, testing them on herself. If guests ever notice their possessions, these small items, going missing, they rarely say anything.

Ester looks at the man lying asleep at her side. He is turned towards her, the ends of his fingers resting on her arm, just touching her, his butterfly still reaching for her spoiling rose. He has a crumb of egg yolk in the stubble at the corner of his mouth. She moves away, and his fingertips slip from her skin.

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, she leans down and gathers her clothes from the floor. She puts them on, picking off hairs.

His jeans lie tangled at the end of the bed and she reaches for them, going through his pockets and finding a packet of cigarettes and a red Bic lighter. She takes a cigarette to the open window to light it, leaning her bare elbows on the sill and watching the people going by down below. When she exhales, her smoke puffs out over their heads like bad weather.

Dropping the burning cigarette end out of the window, not waiting to see it land, to see the sparks as it hits the pavement, she turns away. She pauses in front of a full-length mirror to tidy her hair and her face, the smeared pink of her lipstick. Then, slipping her feet into her flats, she leaves the room.

She is a few steps away from the still-closing door when she sees Bernard arrive at the top of the stairs at the other end of the corridor. He looks her way, sees her, and holds up the rubber gloves which she left on the bar beside her tonic bottle. She walks steadily towards him, takes the gloves and thanks him, and then fetches the cleaning cart she has already sent up in the lift. Wheeling it into the next bedroom, room six, she is aware of Bernard watching her before turning and going back down the stairs to the bar.

Ester goes first into the small en suite bathroom and picks up the used towels which have been left damp on the floor. She sprays disinfectant onto a cloth and wipes down the toilet, pours bleach into the bowl. She cleans the bath, pulling a clump of hair from the plughole. Rinsing her cloth and squirting more disinfectant, she polishes the sink and the tooth glass. She mops the lino, straightens the shower curtain, puts out clean towels and complimentary soap.

In the bedroom, she strips the sheet from the bed, shakes it out and inspects it and then smooths it over the mattress again. She turns over the pillows, plumping them up. She wipes down the laminate furniture, hoovers the carpet and sprays the room with air freshener. As she unplugs the vacuum cleaner, she hears footsteps in the corridor, heavy shoes coming from the far end, passing the door of the room she is in and going down the stairs.

She centres the vase of plastic flowers on the dressing table and puts a sachet of instant coffee, an individual portion of UHT milk and a packet of two plain biscuits by the kettle and a mint on one of the pillows.

She pushes her cleaning trolley out into the corridor and down to the far end, fetching clean bedding from her linen cupboard. She opens the door to room ten and finds the messy bed vacated, the bathroom empty.

Downstairs, the question mark steps through the door leading from the guest rooms into the bar. Thinking about having another drink but deciding against it, he crosses the room and exits into the street, into the midday heat, walking away in the shade. Bernard, standing behind the bar, watches him go.

Ester is expecting a Mr Futh to arrive in time for lunch, and a honeymoon couple around four. The rooms are ready and she has asked the kitchen to prepare a plate of cold meats for Mr Futh. Fetching herself a measure of gin and a fresh bottle of tonic from behind the bar, she sits down on her stool and waits for her guests to arrive.