Something for the Birds

by Fahey, Jacqueline

  Now remember I was still suffering from the insult to my pride, but I was surely working on it. If Christchurch had placed that chip on my shoulder, I was nurturing it. I tended it. I tended its transition into a splendid shoulder spray – a shoulder spray of blood-red roses, perhaps, or purple-spotted orchids. With time this growth became an integral part of my presentation, but it didn’t start with that private dance in Fendalton. Oh no, not really.

  Bishop Julius was the hostel for Anglican women attending university in Christchurch. Miss Hendricks or The Hen was in charge, and at the start of my first year she accepted me into her flock. How did this happen? I imagine my mother and The Hen recognised each other. An intelligent disregard for bigotry motivated both of them, but it was simpler than that. The Hen liked us. After I had been installed at Bishop Julius, word got about that I was Irish Catholic. I myself continued in the illusion that I was a New Zealander and an atheist. The Hen countered by getting me to do the readings in the chapel – a great honour usually reserved for seniors. From my years at Teschemakers I was used to going through religious motions, and anyway I was eager to please. I read with fervour and enjoyment.

  Years later, after I had graduated, a young woman came into Harry Seresin’s Wellington coffee bar where I was working. I recognised her as my first friend at Bishop Julius. We had walked to art school together – until she was obliged to tell me our friendship was now over. Her father had forbidden her to have anything more to do with me. He knew that people of my sort could not be trusted. What sort was that? I asked. She told me everybody knew I was Irish Catholic. Now, seeing me all these years later, she told me how embarrassed she was by her own bigotry, and how she’d been behind the movement to have me removed from Anglicans-only Bishop Julius. As I had suppressed that period in my life, only allowing little bits to filter through to my consciousness, I was more upset for her than I was for myself. That her betrayal should have so haunted her, that her father in his turn had betrayed her. I kept saying things like, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ or ‘For God’s sake, forget about it. I have.’ And I had forgotten. I haven’t ever found revenge is sweet. When it comes around, I don’t seem to care any more. It had taken too long to come around anyhow. Besides, the pure decency of The Hen had muted the whole thing, even at the time. She was pretty mad when she had to toss me out, and complained to the university Council. I said to this young woman, ‘You did me a favour. Connon Hall was the place to be, and without you I would never have got in.’

  Helen Connon Hall was supposedly inter-denominational and yet there were only two Catholics of English background and no Jews. Jacqueline Fahey and Ruth Mandal were hurried into Connon Hall overnight. Ruth’s mother, Lili Kraus, was a concert pianist and a famous one, and my mother had studied piano at the Melbourne Conservatoire: an interesting coincidence. They had met on numerous occasions. Ruth and I also shared an unselfconscious approach to clothes. Ruth wore a mink coat and sandshoes. I wore a gabardine raincoat, black polo-neck, corduroy trousers and leather sandals, as well as thick white make-up and flaming red lipstick. My clothing was the result of sharing an already limited wardrobe with three sisters; my make-up showed the influence of three high-living aunts influenced by the glamour girls of the thirties. Ruth’s style was based on her mother’s cast-offs.

  Despite the messages my clothes were signalling, I was desperate to fit in. The two truly divergent parts of my nature had a very long way to go before there was to be any cohesion. It didn’t help that the rumour that took hold at Connon Hall was so far from being the truth. Ruth and I apparently came from very rich families and that was why we were hurried into Connon Hall. However, my old friend from Bishop Julius didn’t want to know anything about all that. She needed me to know her compulsive faults: her love affair with, wouldn’t you know it, an Irish Catholic boy. She had tarnished her father’s reputation. She was meant to prove his theories about child rearing, not hold them up to ridicule in the community. It was, she realised, all about him – her father’s image. How old were we then? Twenty-seven? And already damaged by original sin. What happened to her after that meeting? I really don’t know, and I never saw her again.

  I was still into pleasing while I was at Connon. Despite my Bishop Julius experience, I didn’t have much of a chip on my shoulder, so I had nothing of importance to cultivate – no shoulder spray as yet. I just wanted to be like everybody else. I didn’t have a clue. I needed some more harsh lessons before that chip got imbedded.

  My best friend made me the most beautiful strapless midnight-blue evening gown. Hers was deep gold to show off her golden skin and rich brown eyes. My dress was to go, supposedly, with my blue eyes, my painted white skin and my black eyebrows and hair. With it I wore chandelier earrings. I was, like Cinderella, off to the ball. This ball, At Home, whatever, was organised in the usual way. A group of establishment mothers who had grown up together decided, at a series of committee meetings, how it was to happen. A house in Fendalton that boasted a ballroom was usually the venue. They also chose the time of year – when the most suitable young men were available: not exam time, or the lambing or shearing seasons. Then there was the invitation list. I imagine names were submitted by sons and daughters. Now it stands to reason that the ball’s function was to find husbands for daughters, wives for sons. Stray girlfriends were uncalled for, and could cause a dangerous distraction. But there was something else too. In my naivety I had imagined that most of these people were descendants of well-born English. Some were, but not many. Most came from that same desperate country my people came from: Ireland. Not Catholic Ireland or even Ascendancy Ireland but Protestant Ireland. My name rang ancient, sinister bells. Fahey was bad enough, but Jacqueline was still unheard of in 1948. Those top women had their agenda, and I was not part of it.

  The whole occasion was carried out with style but a degree of intimidation. The line-up of matrons at the door was designed to instil fear in any badly bred yobbos with disruptive ideas. But what was going on here? Surely they must have known their sons were wild boys? To get drunk and try to kill yourself in a car was routine. To boast about violating virgins was proof of manhood; to wreck a country pub a display of high spirits. The debs, trusting and romantic, were in contrast to the boys. They believed in true love, the caste system and happy families. They were in denial. They did need protection – but from the very guys their mothers were setting them up with.

  I arrived at the front door on a motorbike, escorted by two guys keen to insult their mothers. One of those mothers who was on the committee lost it: ‘Jezebel, scarlet woman, whore of Babylon!’ She had got to be kidding. At that point I didn’t have the guts or the desperation to mess about with my virginity. But what with the strapless ball gown and the free advertising from the crazy non-conformist mother, there were queues of hopeful guys lining up to dance with me that night. I don’t remember much else about it.

  I was, after all, still lumbered with the wish to please, complicated by low self-esteem. The only way I was going to learn was, quite obviously, the hard way. But I was on the scent. If I could unravel my own history I would also allow myself the opportunity to understand a lot more than just my own conflicts. That is why I say that the insult to my ancestors that I suffered in 1948 in Christchurch was a key to my creativity. That recognition of my original sin activated me. My original sin became my most precious self, an entrance into the past and a way to go forward.

  When it came to the past, I began to learn to let my father just come out with it. He often evaded direct questions, and I understood that this was to protect us. We were not to be burdened with too much baggage from the past. We were to move on into an enlightened universal society, even if I was rapidly discovering that no such place existed. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. After the At Home debacle, Russell Clark, my painting lecturer, picked up on my changing attitudes and he attempted to broaden my education. He included in his courses discussion of recent issues in New Zealand art – philosophical atti
tudes, for example, and the bigotry of the local art scene and the local population. But with Dad it could be quite tricky. I remember once, after he had been talking about the O’Flahertys, I read that Oscar Wilde’s name was Oscar O’Flahertie Wilde; and then I found in one of his stories that he was recounting a legend. This was a legend about the Fay, the Fey, the Fahy in Galway, and it was all about a lake and on the lake there was an island. When the O’Flaherties first came to Ireland and they were struggling for domination in Galway with another Celt tribe, the Fahy, the Fey, the Fairy promised they could make them the victors in the coming battle for that island, that piece of land. I doubt they did this for nothing, they must have made a deal. Enchantment was the business of the Fey, and the enemy just could not see that island, let alone take it. So lakes featured large with our lot. There was the Lady in the Lake, and then there was Morgan Le Fay who was born on the island in the middle of the lake, so she was one of us too. But that was the gene I wanted. The gene that could make things disappear.

  I understood very early that Christianity didn’t inspire me. Well, to be precise, Catholicism didn’t inspire me, because until I went to art school that was the only Christianity I’d had any contact with. Christchurch and the university didn’t make me more receptive to any other forms of Christianity. I believe mystical experiences can happen and are related to the earth, the sea and the sky and all the creatures who swarm over and around it. To my mind, painting, like music, emerges out of that powerful consciousness. I know of only one religious experience in my own life – what you could call, in the Catholic Church, an Ecstasy. It happened at Teschemakers. I was being punished. I had to get up at 5, go down to the music rooms at the very bottom of the estate and practise until Mass at 6.30. It must have been early spring, and I was walking up through that immense garden when I heard, away in the distance, down the island – and that’s another thing: Teschemakers was on an island in the middle of a river – the dawn chorus coming, swelling towards me, and then I was in it: it was surrounding me, lifting me up, and I was a part of it, Nirvana, eternal life. Total innocent acceptance. I was out of myself. I don’t know how long I was away, but I do know that collecting my missal, gloves and veil for Mass afterwards I had no urge to tell anybody about what had happened to me. I certainly never looked for that experience again, as I recognised it had been purely random. Like standing in the right place at the right time.

  There was a sweet, mad nun who worked all alone in a section of the garden. I think her name was Sister Pius. She grew black lilies and great orchids in a pond with big fat frogs. I didn’t notice her being mad, although the other children said she was. She told me a story about a young monk who, on his way to Mass, paused to hear a blackbird sing in a cherry tree. That was when he was transported into eternity or bliss or whatever you call it. He believed it was only for a few minutes but he had to know that, when the experience passed and he was a very old man, he must have been away for a lifetime. You might think that I would have told her about my time with the birds, but I didn’t need or want to tell anybody, not even her. Suddenly that saying comes into my head: ‘Away with the fairies.’ Is that where I was, away with the fairies?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Timaru in the Forties

  There are just small illuminations in my memory that contribute to my understanding of Timaru – Timaru in the second half of the forties, that is. Does it matter much what it was like? Well, in so far as we believed it was all going to last forever I think it does. I mean it’s bad enough that I can only remember bits of it. The Bay, long, lovely, peaceful; small regular waves, not too big, not too small. Great expanses of golden sand, and above the sand the railway lines curving round over the viaduct from the railway station, then over, through and out of Caroline Bay. Above the beach were fine Victorian buildings that were straight out of Bournemouth, England. On the other side, cheek by jowl with Caroline Bay, was Shingle Bay. We would go round there when the tide was out, round by the rocks, and suck mussels out of their shells. ‘Don’t go round to Shingle Bay,’ we were told, but we did. And after Shingle Bay were the Dashing Rocks, where the sharks thrashed about in the furious surf. Here the effluent from the freezing works poured into the sea, bloody guts for the sharks to eat. A place of death. Up on top of those soaring cliffs Deirdre was assaulted. Not Deirdre of the Sorrows but fat, plain, Deirdre, the blind piano tuner’s daughter. She wore a voluminous cotton dress, short-sleeved cardy, imitation pearls and a bad perm. Why ever was she staggering around in high heels on the cliffs? Mum said, ‘Why ever did they call her Deirdre? It’s embarrassing, poor little thing.’ Dad said, ‘She’s beautiful to him. He can’t see her, remember?’ Mum said, ‘The poor man is quite distraught.’ And I said, ‘He should be proud of her.’ She hit her assailant on the head with her high-heeled shoe, and then he fell off the cliff and was eaten by the sharks. That will teach him to go about assaulting young women. The surf on Dashing Rocks is total noise, all furious sound. I suppose he thought no one would hear her screams up there. As it turned out, no one heard his.

  The sun was already sinking into its pink bed in the Alps when we ran out of milk and my sister Barbara went round the corner to the main street to get some. There was just one joint open, a milk bar-cum-grill. Timaru was always so nice to the Fahey girls; now, the girl behind the counter wasn’t. She said to Barbara, ‘What makes you stuck-up bitches think you are better than anyone else in Timaru?’

  Barbie was appalled by this strutting little tart. A scrubber, that’s what she would have been called. Really bad make-up, awful dye job and the perm worse, and clothes that were plain tarty. She was decked out like that because, well, she liked it and anyone who didn’t was either a snob or religious. Barbie was so hurt. She’d had long sessions at university about politics and how everyone was equal just like in Bernard Shaw. She felt a fool, unfairly sheltered from the grim events that had shaped this girl’s desperate, stunted maturity. She watched this alien chewing her gum, the dyed blonde job that was, to Barbara’s eyes, simply catastrophic. Did she have false teeth? Yet the girl somehow had a grip on reality, a knowledge that justified her contempt for Barbara, and for the whole family for that matter. For what it was worth, she was in charge of her own life. Would Daddy’s little princess ever be in charge of hers? When Barbie got home she wailed, ‘What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we be like other people?’

  Ian Donnelly, editor of the Timaru Herald and confidant of Margaret and Cecil Fahey, implied that he himself could talk jovially to those two serving wenches. (That there were two of them was no comfort to Barbara.) Later, my mother said, ‘That’s where Ianie gets his late-night snack, steak and eggs, bread and butter. Ferreting out the news in dives like that – the job does it to them, you know. It’s part of the work. After all, he is a newspaper man. Probing for the facts, slipping around that old Horse O’Hanlan. You know O’Hanlan was a bad policeman, thrown out, runs that joint as a front. He’s a bookie. God knows what goes on with those poor girls.’

  Cecil Fahey, it being Saturday night, having a second drink, irritated, says, ‘They are nothing to do with us, nothing to do with you girls. Keep away. Why do you think we got you out of here? Boarding school, university? The only value is what men don’t know, can’t get their paws on. Remember that: that’s men. They want the car that’s never been driven before. Remember that. That’s what men are like. I should know. They want to own something they can show off. Don’t let them in too close. You’re a bloody fool if you do. Nothing’s changed, I know. I got your foot out of the bog, you keep it out!’

  Margaret Fahey, exasperated, says, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cecil. What next?’ And stands to clear the dishes away from the table.

  Mum had her own free-association episodes. After dinner round the table she says, ‘But I don’t know about being accepted, Cecil. I can’t see us doing too much mixing with those sort of people. They don’t know how to live, no idea. Ghastly food – all those overcooked vegetables and hide
ous cakes. No real music. They read like professionals for information or they read plain trash. No compulsion to explore, no reading as a vice.’

  ‘Margaret!’ Cecil is irritated again. ‘They won’t accept us except on their own terms. They are where the power lies.’

  I say, ‘That’s just being called a token gesture, Dad. Do we want to be the token gesture? What about all the others who don’t measure up? Can’t we just be good at something? Do it that way. Not join anything.’

  Dad says, ‘We live in a small town. Joining the Canterbury Club is an honour. They have only two members from an Irish Catholic background. It’s good for my practice.’

  ‘How about Jews?’ says Barbara. ‘Can they join this gentlemen’s club?’

  Cecil is indignant. ‘Don’t’, he says, ‘ever call it that. Gentlemen’s club is what non-members call it. The Men’s Club, please, or the South Canterbury Club. Remember that.’

  And so I do. At the Men’s Club Dad had a standing arrangement with the barman. The barman had an Irish name so the members called him an Irishman. Well, this guy gave Dad two decent whiskies, then after that it was only ginger ale. It was their little secret. How curious of him – a wish to deceive? No, I think more a fooling-thine-enemy strategy, a counter-tactic. If Irishmen were all drunks, had a soft head for liquor, then Dad must be prepared. Dad as new member must shout drinks, slugs of whisky and ginger ale. ‘Down the hatch! Have another. No, no, my shout, my shout. Can’t fly, can’t fly on one wing! How about one for the road?’

  O’Brien, the barman, says, ‘Another, Mr Fahey?’

  ‘Why not, why not. You also, Mr Fairhaven?’

  ‘Why not, Fahey, why not?’

  Thinks Cecil, sensitive to a fault, who calls who what?