The Bat Tattoo

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘All right, you win: it’s My Life, spelled out in orange peels,’ said Weedy, hanging his head modestly.

  ‘You’ve spelled out your whole life in orange peels?’

  ‘No, no, that’s just the title: My Life.’

  ‘Poor you!’ said Sarah. ‘Your life at the bottom of a dustbin. Do you spend much time in it?’

  Weedy straightened up sharpish. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if your life is inside the dustbin, why are you out of it?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  ‘Never,’ said Sarah.

  Weedy’s eyes started out of his head a little. ‘But this isn’t to be taken literally,’ he sputtered. ‘It’s a metaphor!’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘My life!’

  ‘Which is what, an empty dustbin?’

  ‘It’s empty because it’s been purged; all that’s left is the orange peel of me!’ said Weedy with a vein throbbing in his forehead.

  ‘Then presumably you’ve eaten the orange?’

  ‘I was the orange. It isn’t easy talking Art with you.’

  ‘Show me some Art and we’ll talk it,’ said Sarah.

  At that point Weedy gave up on her and started a conversation with a buxom blonde woman behind him who was entering a canvas covered with a brown-paper flap. Weedy showed her his and she showed him hers and although it was a picture of three kittens he seemed to find that he could talk Art with her.

  The snow began to fall, the queue inched forward as slowly as ever, and there were no public toilets in sight. Some of those in the queue got others to hold their places while they went into the museum; others who were entering buckets and dustbins may possibly have augmented their entries while screened by sympathetic conceptual artists. Sarah and I took it in turns to visit the museum conveniences and were impressed by them and the exhibition space; the snow sky now had a bright overcast and the variously angled skylights provided a coolly critical daylight that intensified the reality of the entries so far booked in.

  There were two men in front of a reception desk and a woman behind it. The men, both heavyset with expressionless faces, looked like builders or movers; the woman might have been cast as a seaside landlady in a black-and-white film. Entrants handed their entrance cards to the woman and were logged in by her. The stamped bottom half of the card was then attached to the entry by the artist. The two men helped unwrap the wrapped entries and waved people on to park their works where they could.

  There were many dustbins variously presented along with other concepts and found objects and there were also paintings done by hand and sculptures of recognisable human and animal figures that had the unconfident air of tourists who’d wandered into a rough neighbourhood. Quite possibly there were great works among the entries; I couldn’t take in much in a passing glance. I imagined The One for the Many among them and I was filled with doubt and confusion. I thought of the eight listening figures in the Orpheus fountain at Cranbrook and shook my head. Sarah had accepted the fact that I myself didn’t know what this crucifixion meant and that didn’t seem to bother her. She’d confessed that she was a man-improver and I wondered if she saw this work and the entering of it in the competition as an improvement.

  The snow stopped, the sun appeared and shed a thin watery light on the wet winter pavement and our queue as we moved slowly forward along the railings, many of the entrants talking into their little telephones. Behind the three-kitten woman was another woman, young, tall, haggard, scraggy, with what looked like a bag of laundry. She was on the phone rather loudly. ‘Of course I did,’ she declaimed, ‘and I brought your black ones too. No, I didn’t; the smell is half the story. Yes, Marcia, it is a new idea, because every pile of dirty knickers is different, that’s what conceptual is all about: there are no two things the same.’

  ‘There,’ said Sarah. ‘Now we know what conceptual art is all about.’

  ‘What worries me,’ I said, ‘is, can you catch it from a toilet seat?’

  ‘Easily. Also from oral Zeitgeist. Best thing is not to swallow and never sit all the way down.’

  ‘Maybe it’s already too late; maybe I’m already conceptual.’

  ‘There’s a simple test: if you see vomit on the pavement and don’t give it a title you’re still OK.’

  ‘Right. I’ll keep my eyes open this Saturday night.’

  ‘And now that we’ve used the c-word,’ said Sarah, ‘I’m going to come right out and ask you if this might be a concept that we’re entering?’

  ‘The one thing I’m sure of is that concepts are not what I’m about.’

  ‘Can you say what you are about? I’m just asking — I don’t know that I could answer that question myself.’

  I pondered that question for a long time. I was thinking about the bonking toys I’d made for Adelbert Delarue; I’d never told Sarah about those. I saw them now in action in all their possible permutations. Those four miniature crash-dummy orgiasts had got me into wood and made me begin to feel like an artist. Feeling that way, I did what artists do: I put an idea into visible form; I couldn’t say what the idea was but maybe it would come to me in the fullness of time.

  What about religion? To me Christ was not divine, only a charismatic man who died in a horrible way. And as far as I could see, Christianity had done more harm than good in the world. And yet, the idea of a man crowned with thorns dying on a cross — was that something to be taken liberties with? The crucified Christ at St John’s in the North End Road was shiny fibreglass but it had no pretensions. Could I say the same for mine? I put my hand in my pocket and felt the small wooden hand Sarah had given me. This whole project had gone from me and I was tired. The salt of it had lost its savour and I wanted to go home.

  ‘UFO Number One, come in, please,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘Just before you disappeared I asked you what you were about.’

  ‘I can answer that one now, Sarah. I’m about to get all this lumber out of here and go home.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because this thing has gone from me and now it’s time for the next thing.’

  ‘What will that be?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Maybe the next thing is to finish this thing.’

  ‘Oh God, you’re going to improve me.’

  ‘I warned you.’

  ‘Go ahead, improve.’

  ‘Maybe entering this competition was a bad idea but walking away from it now would be a failure and I need you not to fail.’

  ‘Why do you see it as a failure?’

  ‘Because whatever this is, you have to get all the way into it before you can get out of it.’

  I remembered boyhood fights, not those that I won but the others. When Joe Milanic dared me to knock the chip off his shoulder I did and he made short work of me but at least I hadn’t walked away. What about now? From what shoulder had I knocked the chip when I took adze and mallet to the limewood? Well, I’d probably find out if I stayed with it and I’d probably lose Sarah’s respect if I didn’t. Maybe lose her altogether.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘you’ve convinced me.’

  She looked at me as if my head were transparent and every one of my thoughts was visible to her, especially the last one. ‘I think you convinced yourself,’ she said, and kissed me.

  Now that I had shown Sarah who was in charge I felt a lot better and I also felt like a canoeist being swept towards the edge of Niagara Falls. In no time at all I was over the edge, plunged blindly through the thundering waters, and rose to the surface in front of the builders and movers and the seaside landlady as Annunciation was checked in by Ms Menses whose name was actually Philippa Crutchley-Sweet. ‘Annunciation, number seven six o,’ said the landlady.

  It was very warm in the museum, and the bulkier of the two men had by now rolled up his sleeves to reveal a Sacred Heart tattoo on his left arm and a har
p on his right. ‘Are you a builder or a concept?’ he said as I approached with my timbers.

  ‘You tell me,’ I said, indicating the parcels on Sarah’s dolly.

  ‘On a building site a two by four is a two by four but here you never know,’ he said. ‘Let’s be having these wrappings off.’

  I took a deep breath, undid the twine, and removed the paper from the first parcel. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed as the head and torso came into view.

  ‘The One for the Many,’ I said.

  ‘Lucky for you we Christians don’t do fatwas,’ he growled as he flexed his Sacred Heart. ‘You can’t leave this here in pieces. Put it together and park it somewhere.’

  ‘“But whereunto shall I liken this generation?’” said his colleague. ‘Matthew 11.16.’

  ‘The One for the Many, your number is seven six one,’ said the woman behind the desk with a barely perceptible shake of her head as she stamped my card and handed me the stub.

  ‘You’ve got to hand in your entry card for that,’ said the Hibernian one as he pointed to Sarah’s dolly.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided not to enter it after all.’

  ‘“The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened,” said he of the gospel. ‘Keep it moving, luv. Matthew 13.33.’

  Sarah and I restacked the parts of my crucifixion on the dolly; then she pushed it and I carried my cross and other lumber through the already-entered entries until we found enough space to put everything together. I set up the easel to support the figure on its cross. Then I quickly assembled the figure, pegged it to the cross, and pegged the cross to the easel.

  There it was then, reared up for the world to see, and I could feel people staring at it — it was impossible not to stare. The enormity of what I had done hit me like a ton of bricks, and I half expected my crash-test-dummy-saviour to yell, ‘Get me out of here!’ but it said nothing. ‘Well,’ I said to Sarah, ‘are you happy now?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I am: crazed, I think.’

  ‘Crazed is better than chicken.’

  ‘It’s like that, is it?’

  ‘It’s all kinds of things, and that’s one of them.’

  ‘Righty-o. Well, we’ve done this. They don’t seem to be handing out T-shirts, so we might as well go home now.’

  ‘You’re pissed off with me, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m pissed off with myself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. I’m a little short of answers today.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  At that moment I was reflecting on how strangers become intimate but at any moment intimates can become strangers again. I’d wrapped the dolly in our discarded brown paper so we could get into a taxi with it, and we walked down to Old Street and found one fairly soon. There we were then, just the two of us in a private space that seemed to be closing in on us.

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ said Sarah.

  ‘And a hard one. It was one thing to see that piece in my studio, but seeing it in that museum really spooked me.’

  ‘And now you wish you hadn’t entered it?’

  ‘I agree with what you said about not walking away from it but I haven’t yet been able to get comfortable with the whole thing.’

  ‘Comfort isn’t always possible.’

  ‘Maybe I should’ve had that tattooed on my shoulder instead of a bat.’

  ‘Maybe you should have.’ Her voice had an edge to it. We both sank into our thoughts then, and by the time I looked out into the world again we’d come through the City and were on the Embankment. As Westminster Bridge and Boadicea approached we looked up together and looked away again. The Houses of Parliament came and went, the bridges one after the other, the Battersea Power Station with its legs in the air as always. When we were nearing Fulham Sarah said, ‘I think you could use an evening to yourself. Could you drop me at my place, please?’

  ‘Certainly.’ There was a long silence from there to Doria Road. When we got there I said, ‘Can I phone you tomorrow?’

  ‘Please do,’ she said. We kissed in a small way and she went into her house. So ended the day in which we entered The One for the Many in the R. Albert Streeter Competition.

  28

  Sarah Varley

  I didn’t realise how lonely I’d been until I stopped being lonely. Not being lonely feels good, as if I’m augmented, more substantial, casting a longer shadow. It also means that I have another person to think of. How’s he feeling today, the day after the R. Albert Streeter Museum? What’s he thinking, about me in particular? Was I wrong in urging him to enter that competition? How much do I care if I was wrong? A lot. This is someone I want to stay with then, is it? Yes. Why do I go for men who, in my opinion, need work? Because they seem capable of change, of becoming, with me, someone they haven’t been before. But love changes everyone, doesn’t it? Even those who don’t need work? Yes, but a man like Roswell has a kind of charm that comes from not being altogether sure of himself and not taking me for granted. When we made love the other night I could feel his happiness and I loved him for it.

  How many men have there been between Giles and Roswell? Three that lasted a month or so; two one-nighters. And this …? Looks pretty good to me, OK? OK.

  I wish I knew more about him though. We’ve exchanged histories in a rudimentary way but I’ve no idea where he is in himself at the moment. There’s something bothering him, I know that much.

  29

  R. Albert Streeter

  I have left the selection of the judges to Folsom Bray and he has chosen Thurston Fort of the Royal Academy, George Rubcek the art collector, Harvey Stern the sculptor, and Georgiana Crupper the painter. No critics were included and this surprised me. Bray tells me that Fort is open to everything. Rubcek I know about: he has acquired many pieces of rubbish which are now overvalued by many millions. Harvey Stern’s sculptures are mostly done by quarry crews who from stone shape huge blocks in which he drills little holes. Georgiana Crupper does horse portraits. Well, Bray is the chair. As Director of the Post-Modern Gallery he was a figure of controversy, and so adroit was he at justifying his actions that it was said of him that he could easily move into politics. The sooner the better, said some. Here I have limited my contribution to money; my opinions I contain in myself.

  Fifty works will be accepted for the exhibition. From these will be made a shortlist of ten, one of which will be the winner. The competition is already much talked of and I expect good coverage from the press when the exhibition opens, when the shortlist appears, and when the winner is announced.

  From Roswell Clark I have heard nothing since my letter of encouragement in which I wondered what his talent dreams of. Does it dream of something more than crash-dummies?

  30

  Roswell Clark

  With the entering of the competition one day behind me I felt much better. Sarah made dinner for us at her place and we became comfortable again. The house was full of bright colours, the bookshelves were well stocked, and there was a print of Caspar David Friedrichs’s Chalk Cliffs on Rugen with the sheer drop of its white cliffs to the blue sea. In the foreground, seen from behind, are a woman in a red dress pointing down and a man on his hands and knees looking over the edge.

  ‘He’s afraid of heights, afraid of falling,’ I said, ‘and she’s pointing down into the drop. What does she want him to do?’

  ‘She’s pointing at those little red flowers just on the edge,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I said, ‘and he’ll get some for her, too, if the edge doesn’t give way.’

  ‘That’s what I call a real gentleman,’ she said, and we had a quick cuddle. We were in the kitchen, drinking a Minervois, while good smells came from the oven where the lamb was cooking. Boxes and bags of her merchandise stood on the floor, some ready to move out, others in reserve. There was an Egberto Gismonti guit
ar track going, a warm sound for a winter evening.

  ‘What do you think of this?’ said Sarah, holding up a tall narrow vase, in section an ellipse with squared-off ends. It was white porcelain with three Prussian-blue splotches descending from small to large down the front and back.

  ‘It’s quite nice; I like it.’

  ‘Sixties, Furstenberg. I paid fifteen for it, might get forty from someone who goes for this kind of thing.’

  ‘I guess it’s a matter of finding a punter whose taste is the same as yours.’

  ‘Not always; sometimes I buy things that don’t appeal to me but might to somebody else.’

  We were sitting in kitchen chairs. She moved hers closer to me and rubbed her shoulder against mine. ‘Hi,’ I said, and kissed her.

  ‘Hi. How are you feeling about the competition today?’

  ‘As you said, it made sense to finish this thing before going on to the next thing. I have no expectations one way or the other.’

  ‘Any idea what the next thing will be?’

  ‘No. I’m at kind of a funny place in my life.’

  ‘That makes two of us.’

  ‘You’re at a funny place in your life?’

  ‘It’s the same one where you are. I think we’re in it together, yes?’

  ‘Yes. I feel better already.’ We hugged and kissed and drank more Minervois. By now the potatoes and beans were boiling, the lamb was almost ready, and the kitchen windows were all steamed up.

  ‘Now that we’re both in the same funny place,’ said Sarah, ‘what can you tell me about The One for the Many? I know you said that you don’t understand it but you must have some idea where it’s coming from.’

  ‘I’ve told you about my wife’s death and my father’s and how he became a crash-dummy. I’ve told you about my Crash Test toy. I haven’t told you about my private commissions, which were also of a crash-dummy nature.’ I seemed to have too much breath in me so I let some out, then I felt breathless so I breathed in deeply.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Sarah.