The Bat Tattoo

  ‘No,’ I answered. I had a cup of tea and scanned The Times, in which it was reported under the line ORKNEY’S GIFT TO EROTICISM:

  The erotic combination of suspender and stocking that launched a million pin-ups was patented in 1896 by two young islanders who saw the potential in an idea for holding up baggy farm overalls. Andrew Thomson and James Drever, 22, apprentice tailors, went to California and lodged a patent for ‘a clasp serving to secure the stocking’.

  Giles sometimes, not as often as he’d have liked, talked me into wearing suspenders and stockings for him; he said that the division of female flesh by straps or harness of any kind excited him. Now he and his needs were no longer part of the world and I was in tights. I shook myself and looked at my watch: quarter to eight.

  From Doria Road to Kempson is a short walk past Parsons Green and across Eel Brook Common. The air was cold and still with a feeling of impending snow. The street lamps, the lights in windows everywhere, and the people who passed me all seemed part of a silent background that heightened my separateness. I found the house, rang the bell, and the door opened immediately as if Roswell had been standing behind it. ‘You’re here,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that was the arrangement, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Sorry, please come in. I’m really glad to see you.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘You seem a little …’ I could smell that he’d been drinking but drunk wasn’t the word I was looking for.

  ‘I am,’ he said. He helped me out of my coat and hung it in the hall. ‘You look great,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you dressed up before.’

  ‘Thank you. This seemed something of an occasion.’

  ‘I suppose it is, in one way or another. The studio’s on the top floor.’

  I followed him up the stairs past a living room full of books and not too much furniture, a cosy-looking study, and a very sparsely furnished bedroom. The studio was two storeys high with a skylight; for a moment we stood in darkness looking up at the sky, then Roswell switched on two banks of fluorescent lights and there leapt into view a crucified crash-dummy. ‘Oh my God,’ I said.

  Up there on the cross it looked enormous at first but then I realised it was only life-size. The cross was leaning against the wall as if the figure had just been nailed to it and raised up to hang there until dead. The figure was of pale wood, unpainted except for the usual black-and-yellow discs, the blood from the wound in its side and those in its hands and feet; there was also a little blood from the shiny chromium crown of thorns on its bald and eyeless head. The figure was more elongated than the dummies I’d seen in photographs and on television; this had an El Greco effect that accentuated the pain not visible on the blankness of the face. The cross was of a rough dark wood that heightened the pale vulnerability of the body. There was no INRI.

  After the first shock a wave of sadness swept over me; my throat ached and my nose tingled and I thought I might cry but I didn’t. This sadness wasn’t from the crash-dummy Christ but from thinking of the poorness of spirit that had led Roswell to spend all those hours carving it. His soul must be absolutely skint, I thought, for him to come up with this. The reduction of Christ to a dummy made to crash into the wall of our sins, the stripping of a complex and haunting idea to a simplistic metaphor, made me so sorry for Roswell that my heart opened to him and I wanted to take him in my arms and rock him like a baby. I realised that I was standing there looking gobsmacked and I tried to find something to say.

  ‘Drink?’ said Roswell. He seemed calmer now.

  ‘Please.’ There was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on a workbench and I pointed to it. ‘That’ll do nicely.’

  He poured large ones for both of us and we clinked glasses. ‘He dies for our sins,’ he said, and just for a moment I wondered if he was crazy. I was feeling a little crazy myself. The thing was so in-your-face, so asking for trouble, that I half expected the police to arrive at any moment. ‘Is this one of your private commissions?’ I said.

  ‘No, this is off my own bat. It just sort of came to me.’

  We drank in silence for a while, then I said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘No idea. I had no plans beyond carving the figure.’

  ‘Can you get it through the door?’

  ‘It comes apart, the arms are pegged into the body and so on. Getting it out of here is no problem but where would I take it?’

  Another silence, then I heard myself say, ‘Have you thought of exhibiting it?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This thing that I did, I don’t understand it. It’s as if my hands had something in mind that they wanted to show me but I haven’t figured out what it is. Showing it publicly would seem like betraying a confidence.’

  ‘On the other hand, maybe seeing it on public view would make clear to you what it’s about.’

  ‘I suppose that’s a possibility.’

  ‘Nikolai Chevorski used to say that it’s the viewer who completes a work of art. I think he was right about that.’

  ‘Well, you’ve viewed it, so now it’s complete.’

  ‘You know what I mean — it wants to get out into the world.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sarah.’

  ‘You’ve heard about the new art museum?’

  ‘You mean the American one?’

  ‘Yes, the R. Albert Streeter Museum of Art. There’s a competition and a fifty-thousand-pound prize.’

  ‘What, you think I should enter this?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was beginning to see prospects opening before him and I was feeling good. ‘Yes,’ I repeated, ‘enter it.’

  ‘You really think I should?’

  ‘Yes. If it’s accepted for the show it’s bound to get a lot of attention and even if it doesn’t win it’s likely to make things happen for you.’ As I said this I was well aware that he was well aware that I’d given him no response to the piece other than my initial shock and this practical suggestion.

  ‘You want things to happen for me?’ he said. My glass was empty and he refilled it, his own as well.

  ‘Are you trying to get me drunk?’

  ‘Yes. You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘What was the question?’

  ‘Do you want things to happen for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Should I be honest with you?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to go that far on the first date?’

  ‘Is that what this is?’

  ‘I think so,’ and he kissed me. It was a serious kiss and I felt like a twenty-year-old. With forty-four years of experience.

  ‘Maybe I won’t be honest with you just yet,’ I said.

  ‘Good thinking.’ He took me by the hand, switched off the studio lights, and we went down to the bedroom where I saw the little china nutcracker standing at attention on the bedside table, shouldering his sword and grinning with all his teeth.

  ‘Take the evening off,’ I said, and turned him to face the wall.

  Afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms feeling rather pleased with ourselves, I hummed a bit of the song from West Side Story. ‘I feel pretty,’ I said.

  He kissed me in various places. ‘You’re better than pretty — there’s a lot of you and all of it’s beautiful.’ He went back to his kissing.

  ‘I admire your attention to detail,’ I said. ‘You make me enjoy being a big woman.’

  ‘Pretty knickers!’ he said, picking them up from where they’d fallen.

  ‘They’re new. I wore them in case I got knocked down by a bus on the way here.’

  ‘I admire your foresight. Now they’re historic.’ He climbed over me so he could rub the bat on his left shoulder against the bat on my left shoulder.

  ‘A historic meeting,’ I said.

  ‘Destiny, you think?’

  ‘Destiny expands to fill the knickers available for it; that’s Varley’s Law.’

  ‘I’ve always be
en law-abiding, Mrs Varley.’

  ‘Good. Now that we’re over the hump, so to speak, can I be honest with you even though it’s still the first date?’

  ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I need to do it.’

  ‘All right, do it.’ He wrapped me around him and held me close. ‘But first tell me that this isn’t all there is.’

  ‘This isn’t all there is,’ I said with my mouth close to his ear.

  ‘And tell me that you’re not going away after you’re done being honest.’ He was kissing my neck.

  ‘I’m not going away,’ I murmured, and kissed him here and there.

  ‘OK, I’m ready.’

  ‘Part of what attracted me to you,’ I said, ‘was that I could see you needed work.’

  ‘Work as in employment?’

  ‘No, work as in a house that needs work. I’m a man-improver, I can’t help it. Will you throw me out now?’

  He clasped my bottom firmly with both hands. ‘I don’t think I can let go of you. Feel free to improve me — I always need work.’

  So I worked on him a little and he declared himself much improved. By then we were both hungry but didn’t feel like going out so we went down to the kitchen in knickers and T-shirts (he gave me one of his) and Roswell made salami and eggs with oven chips and there was champagne to go with it, three bottles waiting in the fridge.

  ‘You expected to have something to celebrate?’ I asked.

  ‘I always keep some chilled in case I get seduced by an ardent woman in silk knickers.’

  ‘Yes, it’s good to be prepared for these things.’ He had put on a Thelonious Monk CD, and ‘Round Midnight’ traced its shadowy yesterdays while we ate and drank. The kitchen was a bit ramshackle, with a fluorescent light flickering under the bottom shelf of a unit that had been united in a marriage of convenience with a pine dresser; there were brightly coloured cabinets stuck here and there on the walls, a DIY exhaust fan over the cooker, and a bachelor-not-coping-all-that-well look about the place that warmed my heart. A tidy little spice rack on the wall, however, hinted at a woman’s presence. ‘You’re not married, are you?’ I said.

  He gave me a startled look. ‘Was,’ he said. ‘She died seven years ago.’

  ‘My husband died in 1993.’ Then there was silence as we both looked into the middle distance.

  ‘This table,’ said Roswell, caressing that scarred and variously scorched item, ‘is a plain deal table.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  ‘Back in the States I used to read a lot of English authors and the stories often featured plain deal tables. I always wanted one.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘A plain deal table is a plain deal: what you see is what you get. You might even say it’s a quinsettentially English kind of thing.’

  ‘Quinsettentialism is good,’ he said, pouring more Moët & Chandon. I was feeling cosy and uneasy at the same time: cosy because of the Jack Daniel’s, the lovemaking, the salami and eggs, and the Moët & Chandon; uneasy because I didn’t know where each of us stood in relation to the crash-dummy crucifixion. If it was accepted for the exhibition it would certainly get him noticed and it would likely end up in the collection of some cutting-edge aesthete for whom last week’s shocker was, well, last week. What was I going to say if he asked me what I actually thought of it? After the champagne came Marillenschnaps, so although my brain felt beautifully crystalline by then I did more nodding and smiling than talking while my critical faculty, like some dreadful hopping creature, pursued me through the dark forest of my thoughts.

  Fortunately he didn’t ask my opinion on the crucifixion as art. For the rest of the evening we exchanged histories and got more and more comfortable with each other. We went to bed around three o’clock in the morning, and although I was feeling tired by then the drink seemed to make me wakeful rather than sleepy. For a long time we lay quietly like two spoons, his front against my back. Roswell’s breathing sounded wakeful too but neither of us spoke; I think we were both getting used to the idea that maybe we weren’t alone any more. We fell asleep after a while and when we woke up each of us found the other still there: nobody had gone away. ‘You can look now,’ I said to the nutcracker. I turned him around so he could see how things stood and he seemed pleased.

  26

  R. Albert Streeter

  Here in the Big Apple I am doing it ‘my way’. If one can make it anywhere, one can make it here also. Well, it goes. From time to time a change is good, is it not? In financial matters and also in others. Particularly for the jaded (is there any other kind) hedonist. One tries this and one tries that: sometimes yes, sometimes no.

  Through an advertisement in a publication called Model World, I have found a most interesting new talent. His name is Dieter Scharf, and he has made for me a miniature realisation of a scene adapted from a story by M. R. James. Victoria introduced me to this writer and reads to me from him. Horror has its erotic aspects and our new toy has given to Victoria and me fresh stimulation. Ah, that dreadful hopping creature! Who knows the manner of its pleasures? ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’! I am now reading H. P. Lovecraft and thinking of Cthulhu rising from the sea out of his dead city of R’lyeh. Cthulhu and Fay Wray? For this I hear perhaps ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’. Possibilities of this new direction will not soon be exhausted! I foresee many commissions and so I have started at a lower figure than with Clark.

  I am in close touch with Folsom Bray at the R. Albert Streeter Museum of Art. He tells me there are a great many entries in the competition and I swell with pride at the thought of undiscovered talent that will because of me have its day in the sun. Possibly even at the bank.

  Life is good, not always in the same place, but good.

  27

  Roswell Clark

  The R. Albert Streeter Museum of Art at the southern end of Hoxton Square was a misshapen white thing that seemed to have hopped out of nowhere to pounce on the square and rend it from the decent quiet of its pre-modernist past. Already the Lux Gallery near the southwest corner flaunted the glass of its pretensions next to the modest brick front where a blue plaque murmured that James Parkinson, 1755—1824, physician and geologist, had lived there. Rebel Music and Tiger Beer (with a yin—yang logo) carried the trend of change up to the northern end where St Monica’s Catholic Church drew back, shaken, from the self-exposure of the new museum visible through the bare winter trees of Hoxton Square Gardens. On the eastern side Apollo Dispatch looked busy and Thomas Fox & Co, Engineering and Transport, had not yet become a coffee shop but letters were falling from its name.

  The sky looked ready to snow. The ground was black with artists and their entries all round the square and into the street leading from it. I’d hired a man called Nigel to take my entry in his van to the museum and Sarah had come along to help and to see what kind of talent I’d be competing with. We sat in the back with my brown-paper parcels and timbers that looked as if they’d be more at home in a skip. When assembled, they now had a title: The One for the Many. A policeman in a neon-yellow jacket waved us on out of the square to the distant end of the queue and there Nigel dropped us and our burdens and left.

  I’d brought along a home-made dolly, a small carpet-covered wooden platform on casters, and with careful stacking we were able to get the figure parcels on it. Sarah took charge of that while I took the timbers of the cross and those of the easel structure that supported it. I paid Nigel, he drove off, and there we were, queueing with people and works that might or might not be the future of what might or might not be Art. The various lengths of wood I was lumbered with were tied together and were quite heavy; the queue was moving very slowly and I dragged my burden with me as we inched along with more stops than starts.

  ‘It might be easier for you if you assembled the cross and put it over your shoulder,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Maybe this Easter,’ I replied.

  Ahead of us in the queue was a tall dark-haired young woman wearing jeans, a
mangy Persian lamb coat, a Russian hat of the same material, and something of a lip-piercing nature in her lower lip. Her entry seemed to be the contents of a Boots carrier bag. ‘That’s yours?’ she said, indicating the timbers I was dragging.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What do you think of my chances?’

  ‘What do you call it?’

  ‘Boogie Nights.’

  ‘Not a bad concept but it’s, you know, a little retro.’

  ‘What are you entering?’

  ‘I’ll give you a clue: it happens every twenty-eight days or so.’

  ‘This too will pass,’ said Sarah. ‘Used or new?’

  ‘Have a look,’ said she of the menses. Out of the bag she took a bundle of saturated tampons tied together with a small alarm clock, wires, and batteries, like a time bomb.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘that’s a dynamite entry all right. What’s the title?’

  ‘Annunciation.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of Cyndie Dubuque?’ Sarah asked her.

  ‘No, is she a conceptual artist?’

  ‘Clitoral,’ said Sarah. ‘Paintings.’

  ‘Sounds very sixties,’ said the annunciatory woman, and turned away.

  The man behind Sarah was a weedy individual with a quilted anorak, woollen cap, spectacles, pale face, receding chin, burning eyes, and a dustbin. ‘What’re you entering?’ he said, pointing to the parcels on the dolly.

  ‘The dolly,’ said Sarah. ‘These other things are just stuff I bought on the way here.’

  He leered at her in a friendly way. ‘Title?’

  ‘Hello, Dolly.’

  ‘Not bad, but I think the judges are going to want something a little more serious.’

  ‘Like your dustbin?’

  ‘Right. You can see that it’s had a lot of use; it’s all dented and battered.’ He lifted the lid. ‘It’s never been washed — smell it. It’s empty.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Sarah. ‘What do you call it?’

  ‘The title’s down at the bottom, you have to look inside to see it.’