Traces by Patricia Wiltshire & Patricia Wiltshire

Author:Patricia Wiltshire & Patricia Wiltshire [Wiltshire, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Blink Publishing
Published: 2019-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

8.

BEAUTY IN DEATH

For some years, I lived with my grandmother and her elderly cousins in their grand home in Rhyl, in North Wales. There were large eaves formed by the roof overhang, and these were a haven for wildlife. I was used to the chittering and fluttering sounds of bats roosting under them and, on one warm, balmy night, I had my first close encounter with one. It was a particularly hot summer, and the bedroom window was wide open, with the curtains drawn partly back. I was startled awake by my grandmother flapping around the bedroom with a rolled-up magazine in her hand, seemingly hitting out at nothing. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and was startled to see that she was chasing a bat. The poor little thing had unwittingly come through the window but was now soaring in blind arcs around the bedroom, skimming at incredible speed between and around obstacles, the most potent one being the weapon in my grandmother’s hand. In her diminutive grasp, the rolled-up paper was as strong as any wooden truncheon. She took a fatal swing and the bat dropped out of the air above my bed. Stunned or dead, I did not know. In a flash, she picked it up and tossed it out of the window.

Relieved, she came back to the warmth of the huge double bed we shared and was soon asleep. As I lay awake beside her, I was upset. Why did she kill anything she didn’t like? Nowadays I know that, being born and bred in Australia – where anything and everything might kill you – she could never take the risk of leaving something as alien as a bat flying around our bedroom. She was probably convinced it would suck our blood as we slept.

Immediately after breakfast, and as quickly as I could, I ran around the house to just below our bedroom window. There lay the bat, still – dead. I knelt down to touch it, slightly fearful for I had never been close to one before. Its fur was a wonder of softness. I lifted its wing and its little clawed foot hooked on to the end of my finger. I was fascinated to learn, just by looking, that the bat’s wing was actually a ‘hand’. Instead of feathers, the wings were of very fine, thin, dark leather stretched between its long, slender fingers. This animal was very beautiful, and its death made me cry. But I cradled it inside, wrapped my clean socks around it, and hid it in the drawer by the side of the bed. I had spent the past weeks studiously teaching myself to knit, so I ran to my wool bag, unpicked a knitted square that had taken me an age to make, and carefully wound the pale blue wool round and round the little corpse until it was cocooned like a mummy. There followed a solitary cortege to a quiet part of the Fuchsia hedge, where I buried

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