The Bat Tattoo

4 Sarah Varley

You can do it either way, really: Monet defined his forms with light; Chardin with darkness. Monet’s figures, his flowers, his rocks, his boats and his sea all partake of the light; they mingle with it; one can’t say exactly where the light leaves off and they begin. Chardin’s people, his animals alive and dead, his still lifes all husband carefully the light allotted to them in the darkness that defines them. Chardin died in 1779, Monet in 1926. Certainly Monet’s is the more modern approach but I am a Chardin sort of person. At the exhibition at the Royal Academy I stood in front of his paintings caught by the lucent mystery of a glass of water, the quiet crucifixion of a hare. No, I am not modern.

In my buying and selling I’m closer to the modern era; I’ve got Clarice Cliff and Susy Cooper china, Kosta and Orrefors glass. In costume jewellery I’ve got two Schiaparelli, three Trifari and one Kramer at present, a few things that go back to the twenties and earlier but mostly they’re from the forties and fifties: coloured glass, marcasite, paste. I like cheerful things that sparkle and I like to see women smiling as they put them on.

Saturday went well at Chelsea Town Hall. I bought almost as much as I sold but they were things I expect to do all right with. I had the usual timewasters who blocked the stall without buying anything but nothing was stolen and there was a really nice Japanese woman who appreciated what I had on display and bought two of my most expensive necklaces. It isn’t just the money, it’s the recognition I crave — the little smile and nod and the look that says, ‘Ah yes, you know what’s good.’

On Mondays I do Covent Garden, the Jubilee Market, so on Sunday I look at my stock and decide what to take; it’s the sort of thing that tends to fill the time available for it. I was luxuriating in indecision when the doorbell rang and I knew it would be Jehovah’s Witnesses. I hadn’t seen any for a long time and I’d begun to wonder whether they were an endangered species. These two looked diffident but daring, like animals returning to an old habitat but taking nothing for granted. One was a white man, slight and bespectacled, who looked like a stamp collector. He was wearing a suit and a tie. The other was a black woman, tall and delicate, soberly dressed, who seemed remote but committed. They stood on the doorstep, prepared for rejection but modestly hopeful.

‘Good morning,’ I said.

‘Good morning,’ said the man, looking slightly more confident. ‘We’re going round encouraging people to read the Word of God and take comfort and guidance from it.’

‘I’ve read the Old Testament and the New Testament and the Apocrypha,’ I said. ‘I made notes at the time but I can’t give you chapter and verse.’

‘So you don’t turn to the Word of God regularly?’ said the woman, gently but with a little edge to it.

‘No. What’s your message for the present time?’

‘This is a time of adversity, isn’t it?’ said the man. ‘I mean, look around you — is this what you’d call a good time?’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘It isn’t; it’s a time of adversity and this is God’s answer to a world that has turned away from Him. Do you remember Daniel 2. 44?’

‘No.’ The sun was doing its Sunday-afternoon thing: five hundred million years left to live. Peter Rabbit on Mars?

‘… kingdoms,’ said the man. The woman nodded.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Daniel 2.1,’ said the man. ‘“His spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him.”’

‘I remember Belshazzar’s feast but not Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.’

‘Nebuchadnezzar,’ said the man, ‘had a dream in which he saw a great image. “This image’s head was of fine gold …”’

‘That’s the one with feet of clay,’ I said. ‘Right?’

‘Right,’ said the man. He took out his little Bible in which the passage was underlined. ‘Daniel 2.42,’ he said triumphantly. ‘“And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.” And in the next verse: “And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.”’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I don’t remember what’s next.’

‘Now we come to it,’ he said, ‘Daniel 2.44: “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” That’s God’s Kingdom, and Jesus is its King.’

‘Not Jehovah?’

‘No, Jehovah appointed Jesus King in 1914.’

‘And he’s been King ever since,’ said the woman.

‘He’s doing a lot better than Prince Charles, isn’t he,’ I said.

Both of them looked at me with their heads at a slight angle. ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Can we leave this brochure with you?’ There was a tri-ethnic group of faces on the cover. What Does God Require of Us? was the title, correctly spelled.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘The blood is the life, isn’t it?’

‘Sorry?’ said the man.

‘The blood is the life, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what God says.’

‘Dracula said the same thing. That’s why Renfield ate flies. What about the Jehovah’s Witness who lost five pints of blood in a machete attack? Did you see it in The Times?’

‘We heard about it.’

‘Why don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses accept blood transfusions?’

‘It says right here,’ said the man, opening the brochure to the appropriate page, ‘“We must not take into our bodies in any way other people’s blood or even our own blood that has been stored (Acts 21.25).”’

‘Hang on,’ I said. I went and got my King James version off the shelf and looked up Acts 21.25. Returning to my visitors I read aloud: ‘“As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication.” That isn’t what I’d call a clear-cut prohibition of transfusions,’ I said.

‘Jehovah’s requirement is in those words,’ said the man, ‘and Jehovah’s Witnesses obey it.’

‘But this bloke,’ I said, ‘renounced his Jehovah’s Witnesshood because the blood is the life and he wanted a transfusion so he could go on living.’

‘Not everyone has the faith to uphold God’s laws,’ said the man smoothly. ‘Thank you for your time and your interest. We must be going.’ And they went, still with their heads at an angle. The brochure had a back-of-a-cereal-box quality but obviously it works for the people who go around ringing doorbells to share their enlightenment with the rest of us. If there were a Jehovah, it’s just the sort of thing he might do as an audience warm-up for Armageddon. I am actually a believer: I have faith that there’s nothing that cares about us one way or the other.

After the Jehovah’s Witnesses left I went out to the garden where I grazed safely on the Sunday Times and the Observer and drank many cups of lemon tea. The usual blackbird, the husband, was standing on the fence and zicking to his wife and children. I think they may be nesting in the camellia bush which is too low to be safe but I haven’t wanted to disturb them by getting close enough to see. It’s such a peaceful sound, that zicking; it reminds me that the seasons still arrive at their appointed times, more or less.

I was much impressed by the daring of a forty-four-year-old woman (my age exactly) of whom there were several photographs in the Sunday Times. Her boyfriend had spent two years and three thousand pounds building a medieval siege engine, a trebuchet — a big one with a one-tonne lead counterweight. The idea was to use it for hurling people one hundred and twenty feet through the air into a safety net. The thing had been tested with crash dummies and by the boyfriend whose trajectory went as planned. Both the woman and the boyfriend (fifteen years younger) are members of the Dangerous Sports Club. A portrait photo showed her before the slinging looking about as worried as I’d look in that situation. Not that I’d ever allow such a thing to happen.

In the event she flew through the air as planned but when she landed in the safety net she bounced out, fell thirty feet to the ground, and broke her pelvis. I kept going back to the photo of her before she became a human missile. Dread was the only word for the expression on her face as she weighed one thing against another. ‘She was shaking with fear,’ the boyfriend was quoted as saying. She was in a stable condition in hospital, according to the Sunday Times report. I imagined her watching when the crash-dummy did what she was planning to do. I saw it hurtling through the air in a graceful parabola, its yellow-and-black discs making its flight easy for the eye to follow. I imagined the conversation with her boyfriend:

BOYFRIEND:

See, it hits the net every time. Same weight as you, approximately same body mass — can’t miss.

WOMAN:

Your calculations worked out all right, I can see that. And it worked perfectly when you did it.

BOYFRIEND:

You don’t look comfortable with it. Look, you don’t have to do this. We needn’t do every single thing the same.

WOMAN:

No, I want to do it, I really do. It’s one of those things I have to do.

BOYFRIEND:

But you look scared and you’re shaking.

WOMAN:

You know how I am — I shook before all of our bungee jumps too.

BOYFRIEND:

OK, if you’re sure.

WOMAN:

I’m sure.

Her face haunts me. I wonder if she and the boyfriend are still together.

At 4.30 Monday morning it’s still really Sunday night. I woke up from a dream in which I arrived at the platform just as the train was pulling out. I ran as fast as I could but I wasn’t fast enough. So I was awake before the alarm went off; it was only ten minutes to four. I tried without success to get back to sleep, finally rolled out of bed at half-past feeling hard done by, had breakfast, did my nervous trips to the loo, put on my rucksack that almost drives me into the ground every time, slung a shoulder bag almost as heavy, and trundled my bursting trolley bag out into the foredawn.

It had rained Sunday night, so there was a little freshness in the air. As I came out of Doria Road into the New Kings Road the birds were pretending that the world was new and the sky held that very delicate innocent blue that only early risers see. The Green Café and Delicatessen showed no signs of life except the rubbish bags heaped on the pavement. Phase 8’s window was an exercise in boredom — all beige skirts and tops, hardly a strong start for the week. Jenesis was better, all mauve and vigorously so. The Candles shop, offering picnic hampers and other things in wickerwork, also displayed candles of various kinds and maintained its identity in a world of change. Shopkeepers have an obligation, I think, to display their wares in a way that will give the early and late passersby something to go on with.

Starbuck’s Coffee had a cosy night light going but was still not open; the Fulham E-Bar with its nocturnal blue neon was obviously not awake at 5.00. At the corner of Parsons Green Lane I nodded to the two telephone boxes that stood like a pair of lanterns and paused to acknowledge the trees which were still embracing the night. I admire those trees; fashions come and go but the trees still maintain their original identity, their unfashionable mystery. They hold last night’s darkness like lovers reluctant to let go.

As I walked, the sky lost its innocent blue and paled towards the reality of Monday morning. St Dionis Church and Mission Hall, Headquarters of the Second Fulham Parsons Green Scout Troop and the Second Fulham St Dionis Girl Guide Company, approached and receded. Sometimes I am astonished that there should be buildings built and institutions maintained to string out the brevity of human life over successive generations; trees don’t do that, they just hold on to the darkness and accept the light night after night and day after day without pretensions to permanence.

The Freedom Brewing Company, the Chairs place, Wurtford Solicitors … Very good: one downs a pint, sits in a chair, draws up a will, and proceeds to Co-operative Funeral Services, where a man in Bermuda shorts was co-operating with two bulging and heavy dustbin bags. And the day hadn’t even begun. The Civilised Car-Hire Company probably offered transport to and from funerals but I trundled on to the tube station, took a deep breath, negotiated the turnstile and heaved self and impedimenta step by step up the stairs to the platform which commanded a view of Parsons Green, St Dionis Church, and the hunting grounds of Harrington Lowndes Estate Agents: ANY OTHER CHOICE COULD BE DISAPPOINTING. Oh dear. Every day is so full of large and small choices and I make so many wrong ones.