The Bat Tattoo (9 page)

‘What about your expenses so far — air fare, hotel, and the rest of it?’ When he was feeling expansive he tended to brush details aside.

‘I’ll put the travel expenses on the invoice for the starting payment of five thousand pounds. I get five thousand more at the halfway point and the balance when the house is finished.’ I could hear the pride in his voice; I was touched by it and happy for him but the size and complexity of the project made me anxious.

‘You get the first five thousand before you start the work,’ I said, ‘right?’ It was difficult for me to believe that someone
called Peggy Sue was going to pay Giles any part of fifteen thousand pounds.

‘Yes, I’m actually going to get five thousand pounds before I do anything. I am now on a par with roofers and builders and other guys who drive around in white vans with ladders on top.’

‘When are you invoicing her?’

‘As soon as I get proper business stationery.’ So that was the first part of the job and it took two weeks and a couple of hundred pounds which resulted in reams of costly laid A4 headed
The Small World of Giles Varley
. A little twee, I thought. Maybe even unlucky.

The invoice did at length go out, the cheque came in; Giles went to Moss & Co in Hammersmith for the oak and walnut and got started. From then on he spent most of his time in his workshop. He intended to do the base with the barley-twist legs first; for this he needed complete accuracy in his calculations for the lathe work and he hadn’t much time for conversation.

I went down there every now and then to see how it was going; I liked the smells of paint and glue remaining from the last doll’s house and the smell of new wood from this one; I liked the work-bench with its vice and its jumble of tools and wood scraps and the green-shaded light bulb that made an island of warmth where he worked. Until now the basement had been a cosy place for me to visit but the atmosphere had changed and I could feel that this project was weighing heavily on Giles. ‘There’s a lot more to this one than there’s been to the others you’ve done,’ I said.

‘You think it’s too much for me?’

‘No, I don’t,’ I lied. ‘It’s just that you don’t seem to be having fun with it the way you did with the others.’

‘Work can’t always be fun — it’s only a doll’s house but we’re talking museum quality here.’ He had in his right hand a jointed folding rule, boxwood with brass hinges and pivot. It was marked in inches and centimetres; when the four parts of it were folded together it was nine inches long, and it opened out to a yard. The markings on it were clear and sharp; it was a device of exactitude, a reassuring thing to hold in the hand. He had been tapping his thigh with it as we talked.

It was obvious that he didn’t want me watching him and I began to understand that he knew very well that he’d taken on too much; whether he’d done it to challenge himself or defeat himself I didn’t know, but he wasn’t the Giles I was used to and a distance grew between us.

The work seemed to require more meetings in Bristol than I’d have thought necessary and — inevitably, I suppose — I found a note in a pair of trousers I was taking to the cleaner’s and there it was: fidelity was one more thing Giles had failed in. Love does not exclude arithmetic; I’d invested a lot of time and hard work in Giles and this was my return. Not good enough.

Giles swore that he’d got into Peggy Sue’s knickers under duress, that he was afraid of losing the commission if he didn’t let her have her way with him. His adultery had made me angry but his defence made me embarrassed for him, which was worse. What I resented most was the violation of my privacy: this woman had come into my life, she’d had the use of my husband, and although as far as I knew she hadn’t been in the house I imagined her in our bedroom going through my underthings.

I relegated Giles to the guest room but I didn’t ask him to leave; I hadn’t ever defined a point at which it was no longer worthwhile to continue with him, so we continued. I carried
on with the cooking and we had our meals together although with less conversation than before. It was a strange time for me because Giles’s unfaithfulness bothered me less than the thought that he might not finish the doll’s house with all its people and pots and pans and the rest of it. He kept out of my way as much as possible; when I was home I’d hear him down in the workshop and I wondered how the doll’s house was coming along; he no longer talked about it.

Then the basement went quiet and he didn’t turn up for dinner. I went down to the workshop to see what was what; he’d done the base of the cabinet with the barley-twist legs and he’d measured and cut the wood for the house and that was all. He left a note on the work-bench under his folding rule; all it said was:

Goodbye from the one-inch to one-foot man.

I stood there with the rule in my right hand, tapping the palm of my left. Nine inches; I opened it out to thirty-six inches and folded it up again.

The next thing was a call from Peggy Sue telling me that he was dead at her place in Bristol and there weren’t going to be any more payments because he hadn’t finished the job. That was seven years ago. I was more shocked than grief-stricken — not only had he left the job unfinished, he himself was unfinished and there was a great deal of work still to be done on him. Shortly after that, of course, the aloneness that had been growing inside me stepped out, stood in front of me, and said, ‘Here I am.’

I see now that when Giles was alive I didn’t really know what he was to me; now I do. The Yeats poem comes to mind with the lines about the mountain grass retaining the
form where the mountain hare has lain; in the shape of Giles’s absence I see what his presence was to me: there was love, there was romance, there was passion but the main thing about Giles was that he was like a house that has potential but needs a lot of work. That excited me at the beginning, less as time went on.

I was sorry he hadn’t at least finished the doll’s house. When I think about him now I wish I could have done better with him; I wish he could have done better with himself too. But I guess life is what you wish you’d done better with.

Still, for good or ill, life goes on. There’s nothing to be done about the past; today is all there is to work with.

At Covent Garden things were middling along — as always I went around to see what was on offer before setting up but I made no brilliant acquisitions and nothing much happened when I was ready for customers. In the road between the Jubilee and Apple Markets the pigeons were routinely inspecting the cobbles in the presence of a sweeper and his cart. From Peter’s snack bar came the aroma of frying bacon. The Punch-and-Judy man who performs between the tube station and the Apple Market probably hadn’t set up yet; Punch and his wife and the baby, the crocodile and Jack Ketch and the Devil would be lying silent in their bag, waiting to erupt into violent life.

As the place filled up with tourists the buskers in the Apple Market were belting out the overture to
Carmen
which seemed to promise a lot of action but it wasn’t happening where I was. As I made little adjustments to the display on my table I found myself, not for the first time, shaking my head over the business of buying and selling bits of other people’s lives. All around me were objects clamorous with silent voices: grandfather clocks with pendulums grown dull;
rusted crampons; medals with faded ribbons; postcards of piers long since fallen into the sea; sightless stereopticons; dolls and toy soldiers owned by children now old or dead; and jewels no longer warm with the life of their wearers. Minute by minute the market was filling up with the gabble of voices and thronging of footsteps of people hungry for those morsels of other lives, eager to wake the silent voices of objects long unused and feel the touch of garments and jewellery long unworn.

The morning started out cool but quickly got hot and the heat seemed to make the punters haggle worse than usual; they’d pick up a necklace priced at fifteen pounds that had cost me ten, offer five, and be outraged when I held out for fifteen. Alison and Linda at the table next to mine were having the same kind of day.

I’d taken off my jacket and cardigan and was standing there in a sleeveless top when there appeared in front of me the man I’d seen at the V & A. ‘You!’ I said.

He was wearing a blue T-shirt and he pushed back the sleeve to show me the bat tattoo on his left shoulder. I felt a little flush of irritation when I saw it. ‘Am I supposed to applaud?’ I said.

‘You’ve got one too,’ he said, pointing to my exposed left shoulder.

‘I’ve had this about seven years now,’ I said. I suppose I needed to make the point that I wasn’t nouveau tattoo.

He nodded acknowledgement of my seniority. ‘Can I ask what made you do it?’

‘You can ask.’

‘Sorry.’ He seemed about to say more, then decided not to.

I felt bad about discouraging him when he wanted to talk. ‘What brings you here today?’ I said.

‘I come here every now and then — I’m always cruising for something that will turn out to be something I’ve been looking for without knowing it.’

‘See anything here this time?’

‘Not so far.’

‘What do you do?’ It seemed impolite not to show some minimal interest.

He looked away for a moment, then back at me, gave a little cough, and said, ‘I’m a woodcarver.’

‘Can you make a living doing that?’ In the Jubilee Market we talk very openly about the facts of life.

‘I designed a successful toy a while back and money kept coming in from that for a long time. Lately I’ve been doing private commissions.’

‘I’ve never met a toy designer before. What kind of toy?’

‘A crash-dummy in a radio-controlled crash-test car. The car springs back into shape after it’s been crumpled and you can put it and the dummy back together and do the crash again.’

‘What in the world gave you that idea?’

‘My father was in the crash-dummy business.’ He was examining a silver bangle in the shape of a snake. ‘You have nice things here. Have you been doing this long?’

‘Fourteen years.’ As I said that a gypsy-looking woman picked up a garnet necklace, fixed me with a hard stare, and said very aggressively, ‘How much?’

‘Fifteen,’ I said.

She expelled her breath scornfully and shook her head. ‘Best price?’

‘Fifteen.’ I didn’t like her manner.

I noticed then that my new acquaintance was holding the arm of a small dark man who looked as if he might be the
woman’s partner. ‘He was walking away with this,’ he said, holding up an opal ring ticketed at fifty pounds.

‘You’re crazy,’ said the man. ‘I just had it in my hand while I was looking at something at the other end of the table.’ He tried unsuccessfully to pull away.

Suzy from two tables down the line came over for a look. ‘These two were at my table last week,’ she said, ‘and after they left I was missing a brooch. Did you catch them in the act?’

‘Not proveably,’ I said. ‘Let him go,’ I said to my vigilant friend. ‘It’s your word against his and I’ve still got the ring.’ To the woman and the man I said, ‘I’d rather not see the two of you again and I’ll pass the word to my colleagues.’

‘Pfft,’ said the woman. ‘You got nothing we want.’ She gave me a finger and strode off with her consort.

‘Thanks,’ I said to my security man of the moment. ‘I always expect a certain amount of thievery but I’m glad not to lose that ring. I’m Sarah Varley, by the way.’

‘Roswell Clark,’ he said, and as we shook hands he noticed that my eyebrows had lifted at his name. ‘I’m a little strange,’ he said, ‘but I’m not actually an alien life form.’

‘Anyone in the family in the UFO business?’

‘No.’ He seemed a little embarrassed, and began to whistle a tune very quietly, almost under his breath, as he looked at the things on my table. Giles suddenly came to mind; he used to whistle in that introspective kind of way as he worked on his first dolls’ houses. Even the tune seemed familiar. Was it one that Giles had whistled? Yes, because I was able to anticipate where it was going next.

‘What’s that you’re whistling?’ I said to Roswell Clark.

‘“Is That All There Is?”,’ he responded with a half-smile.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have no further questions at this time.’

‘That’s the title of the song.’

‘Oh. Do you know the words?’

‘“Is that all there is?’” he sang very quietly. ‘“Is that all there is?/If that’s all there is, my friends,/Then let’s keep dancing,/Let’s break out the booze and have a ball/If that’s all there is.”’

‘Is that all there is?’ I said. ‘To the song, I mean.’

‘That’s just the refrain but it pretty well says it all. The recording I have is by Peggy Lee. In the song she tells in successive verses how her house burnt down, how her father took her to the circus, how she fell in love with a wonderful boy who went away and she thought she’d die but she didn’t, and after each verse she asks, “Is that all there is?” to a fire or to a circus or to love. Then she sings, “I know what you must be saying to yourselves — If that’s the way she feels about it, why doesn’t she just end it all?” But she says no, she’s not ready for that final disappointment because she knows that when she’s breathing her last breath she’ll be saying, “Is that all there is,” and so on. Are you all right? You’ve gone pale all of a sudden.’

‘Funny thing about songs,’ I said, ‘what they’ll bring back.’

He was looking at me as if I’d blurted out my whole history with Giles. ‘Do you think that’s all there is?’ he said.

I don’t open up for strangers and not all that much for friends but he seemed so much in need of a straight answer that I said, ‘Not until you’re dead. As long as you’re alive there’s still a chance for more than there’s been so far.’

His face brightened, he really had quite a nice smile.

‘I’m glad you said that. Let me buy a coffee for you and your neighbours.’

‘Thanks.’ I introduced him to Alison and Linda. ‘Small
black coffee for me, with sugar,’ said Alison. ‘Large milky tea with sugar for me,’ said Linda. ‘I’ll have a white coffee, not much milk, no sugar,’ I said.

As Roswell left, the buskers in the Apple Market were doing the
habanera
with a rather good contralto. Her voice rose above the hubbub of the market, drifted on the sunlight and the heat of the day.