Green’s Dictionary of Slang

tetchy, ill-tempered.

1946		(con. 1912) B. Marshall George Brown’s Schooldays 66: You’ll make me batey if you say rotten caddish things like that.
1999		Indep. Rev. 3 Aug. 2: Think of Jeanette Winterson, stamping her feet with rage [...] or John Le Carre and his various batey attacks on Salman Rushdie.