Margaret Mahy

by Tessa Duder

  Kaitangata Twitch, rather oddly published in Australia, marked a new direction in Margaret’s work. Maori themes had been notably absent from her work, but in both the book and the associated 13-part TV series directed by her long-time collaborator Yvonne Mackay and aired on Maori Television, the integrity of the story, with its references to a Maori mythology around the angry, twitching land of earthquakes in Lyttelton Harbour (somewhat prophetic!), was apparent to all. Reviewers and children were enthusiastic: ‘From the first frame of a stunning red dawn over Governors Bay, Kaitangata Twitch looks like a winner … proudly Maori but also thoroughly contemporary.’

  With suitably atmospheric music by Gareth Farr and Richard Nunns, and actors of the calibre of George Henare and Charles Mesure, the series drew a devoted family audience and won Best Dramatic Presentation at the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, and later, the top prize, the Platinum Award, in the Children’s/Family Television Series category at the WorldFest in Houston, Texas. This was a huge achievement at one of the world’s oldest and largest film festivals, attracting more than 4500 category entries from 37 countries.

  In 2006, on 21 March, Margaret turned 70. In Auckland, the lively Storylines Children’s Literature Trust was not about to let this occasion pass, and a large team of volunteers organised a banquet for 300 people at the Heritage Hotel. Emceed by leading Shakespearean actor Michael Hurst, and attended by the former Governor-General Dame Catherine Tizard, and her daughter Judith as Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, it was without doubt the literary occasion of the year. Fanfares, readings, songs, a purple lion birthday cake and contributions from student actors and her grandson Harry (son of Bridget) comprised a programme that left the guest of honour for once almost, but not quite, lost for words.

  A week later, the Storylines Trust woke to the momentous news that Margaret Mahy of New Zealand had won the world’s most coveted prize for children’s writing, the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for 2006. Usually known as literature’s ‘Little Nobel’, it is judged by a jury of international experts, each speaking at least two and often up to six languages.

  It was the fairy-tale third attempt. Back in 2000, Storylines (then known as the Children’s Book Foundation) had been quietly persuaded to become the New Zealand section of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, based in Basel, Switzerland. Only IBBY’s 70-odd member countries could put forward nominations. The cost to the trust had been up to that time prohibitive, NZ$3500 annually (and another $1000 at least to put forward a nomination and fly hefty packages of books to 10 jurists all round the world), but such was the confidence in Margaret’s reputation and chances that a consortium of publishers and the New Zealand Book Council was put together to share the cost. Her New Zealand publisher, HarperCollins, assisted in preparing the 40-page nomination dossier for 2006 (which IBBY officials would later describe as one of the best submissions put forward by any country).

  The 2002 award went to Britain’s Aidan Chambers and the 2004 to Martin Waddell of Ireland, but 2006 was to be Margaret’s year of triumph. Come early September and her scheduled departure to Macau for the IBBY World Congress, Margaret was not in great shape. A hacking chesty cough and concern expressed by her family and by the Storylines Trust minders who were to accompany her were no match for her steely determination to travel to Macau and accept the gold medal in person (in marked contrast to the German winner of the Award for Illustration, Wolf Erlbruch, who did not agree to attend but sent a video).

  In the ballroom where the presentation was held, the occasion could not pass without a waiata, no matter how slim the resources. As Margaret accepted the handsome medal from the convenor of the International Jury, American academic Dr Jeffrey Garrett, ‘Pokarekare ana’ rang out a capella across the vast space, the two minders joined by Christchurch author Vicky Jones, who was receiving an IBBY Honour Book award, and the New Zealand Consul-General in Hong Kong, Julian Ludbrook.

  The story can now be told that following her triumph in Macau, Margaret arrived in Beijing — where she and her two minders were to be guests of New Zealand Ambassador Tony Browne and his wife, Susan — suffering from pneumonia. The ambassadorial car took the party straight to a private medical clinic where Margaret was given oxygen and put onto a bed with intravenous antibiotics. After discussion (and a certain amount of repartee and flirting with a hearty Australian doctor), Margaret agreed to lie low in the New Zealand Embassy rather than be admitted to a hospital. Her idea of lying low in the next four days included walking a short stretch of the Great Wall of China, visiting the silk and pearl markets, and being fêted with dance, music and speeches at several schools. At a formal dinner in her honour at the embassy, she captivated the invited Chinese authors and other luminaries of the children’s publishing scene, as well as the embassy’s Chinese cook out in the kitchen. The evening ended well after midnight in the ambassador’s private drawing room with Margaret gamely attempting Tom Lehrer’s tongue-twister ‘The Elements’ (the Periodic Table sung to ‘I am the very model of a modern major-general’), accompanied by the ambassador’s wife, an accomplished pianist. But next morning, Margaret came up against airline and medical insistence that she could not return to New Zealand that day as planned, but would need several days’ rest before she travelled with a nurse who would be flown up from New Zealand to accompany her back. This was not at all to her liking — Margaret hated fuss — but her minders left, albeit very reluctantly, as scheduled and for the next few days she was lovingly nursed by the ambassador and his wife back to a sufficient level of travel fitness.

  The journey to Macau took its toll, but Margaret undoubtedly saw it as keeping her side of the bargain, fronting up come what may to acknowledge the hard work and no little money she knew had been invested in her nomination and her success. Her Storylines supporters saw it as worth every hour and every cent.

  Perhaps now, the pace could start to slacken off. Margaret was visiting fewer schools, enjoying more time for reading and family, though in regular touch with HarperCollins editor Lorain Day in Auckland working on shaping her late-career blockbuster, The Magician of Hoad. This manuscript of more than 800 pages was the fantasy novel begun back in the early 1980s, which her English agent Vanessa Hamilton had suggested she put aside as being far too long and fantastical for modern young readers. Maybe, but by 2005, with J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, things had changed.

  In a meeting with Lorain Day, Margaret mentioned she had something in a bottom drawer she was very fond of, and more than a little sad it hadn’t yet been published. ‘Speaking diffidently,’ says Lorain, ‘which I later learned was Mahy code for something she actually cared a great deal about, she described how she had originally conceived of the book as a slightly more adult-oriented extended fantasy, about the nature of magic and identity. Margaret felt quite strongly that it shouldn’t be the trilogy that Vanessa had felt would only have appeal to publishers, if at all; it was one story, and needed to be read as one story. This was a heady moment indeed — realising that here was a significant, unpublished Margaret Mahy novel tantalisingly close to home.’

  Some time passed, and it took a visit to New Zealand by Margaret’s new agent, Mandy Little, to get the editing under way. A three-country publishing deal was struck: first would be HarperCollins New Zealand, followed by Faber & Faber in the UK and McElderry Books in the US. Lorain would be the lead editor, with the other countries making only small tweaks for their markets. ‘The only issue I can recall that arose from this process was when the Americans objected to the strong language and sexual relationships in the novel and wanted them either removed or watered down. Margaret and I strongly disagreed, and when Julia from Faber agreed with us that they were integral to the story, the Americans graciously conceded the point.’

  HarperCollins and many others were dismayed when the book was not shortlisted for the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards nor for other awards and notable booklists. Authors were heard to say that Margaret at (arguably
) less than her very best was still streets ahead of anyone else currently writing in New Zealand. Lorain muses that perhaps she had become a victim of her own longevity and was now being judged not against other contenders for shortlists but by her own best work of 30 years earlier. Perhaps there was a feeling abroad that it was time for fresh new faces along with an assumption that no author could conceivably maintain their creativity and freshness for so long. ‘In the era of “the next big thing” with marketing becoming more important than content, Margaret was presenting something outside her previous range. The wider reviewing/marketing/bookselling machine wasn’t prepared for The Magician of Hoad, and didn’t know how to deal with it.’

  Lorain Day believes that time will tell, that the quality and power of the book will be appreciated when the whole of Margaret’s life’s work is considered and appreciated in its entirety, and her special and unique talents are evaluated as one of the few able to write for every age group, whose work transcended genre and formula with deceptive ease.

  ‘Was The Magician of Hoad, actually, an adult book?’ author Kate De Goldi asked Margaret during an interview for the Listener in 2006. ‘Perhaps it’s getting near it,’ says Mahy, as ever resisting an emphatic statement. ‘I think the language is more heightened.’

  Certainly, wrote De Goldi, ‘The Magician of Hoad is writing at full stretch — rhapsodic, impassioned; it has a kind of operatic intensity about it, a full-throated cast, their voices raised in passionate discussion about love, birthright, hegemony, moral choices, and the tricky nature of truth. The big stuff.’

  A respected reviewer, Trevor Agnes, writing in the Australian magazine for children’s literature Magpies, agreed: ‘This is Mahy writing at her best … a richly detailed epic … there are dramatic tales of violence, self-sacrifice, betrayal and the greed for power. Yet it is the lively, sharply drawn characters that remain in the memory.’ Again in the Listener, David Larsen described it as a ‘flawed’ book, ‘one of the strangest things she’s ever written’, but added, ‘Dryly intellectual for much of its length, it still has an epic sweep and fascinating characters, and when, in several extended passages, Mahy slips the leash on her descriptive powers, the effect of the sudden soaring lyricism is overpowering.’

  If The Magician of Hoad was to be Margaret’s last major novel and one that still needs a proper assessment in her body of work, she was to continue exerting a powerful pull on the public imagination. The Ashburton Art Gallery curated an exhibition called ‘The Making of The Word Witch: the poetic and illustrative magic of Margaret Mahy and David Elliot’, which featured a large selection from David’s working drawings and finished artwork. Following Ashburton, it was toured to four other South Island centres and five cities in the North Island. An indication of how well known Down the Back of the Chair had become was the decision of the Ministry of Education to use the phrase for its catalogue of teaching and learning resources for schools. Its website proclaims, ‘Just like the back of your favourite chair, this is a place where you can rummage around and always come away with a treasure or two.’ In 2007 her home town of Whakatane, perhaps stung by a visiting author’s suggestions that they had done not very much to acknowledge their most famous ‘daughter’ in some public way, formed a trust and admirably soon unveiled a bronze lion in the small courtyard outside their public library. Sculptured by Lower Hutt artist Jonathan Campbell, the lion couchant bears a wonderful resemblance to the lions that Margaret has drawn on innumerable title pages; it’s also the perfect size for small people to climb on his smooth shiny back.

  A second bronze tribute was unveiled in March 2009 in Christchurch, one of 12 busts placed by the Local Heroes Trust on a grassy lawn just outside the Arts Centre to acknowledge famous Cantabrians: cricketer, architect, doctor, artist, philanthropist, business leaders and two writers — Margaret Mahy and Elsie Locke. Public reaction to the gallery by sculptor Mark Whyte has been mixed, and evidently, Margaret’s portrait is the least admired. It is undeniably stern and the features are heavily mannish, capturing none of her humour or warmth. Following the February 2012 quakes, the beautiful stone Arts Centre and the Local Heroes are for now closed off to the public, ‘red-stickered’ as unsafe.

  There were to be an anthology and two more original picture books, each vintage Mahy and all three superbly illustrated. In 2005, soon after the publication of this book, one of Margaret’s oldest friends had contacted me. She wrote that Margaret Mahy: A writer’s life had unlocked some wonderful memories for her, adding, ‘I do hope you can persuade someone that Margaret’s collected poems would be a good thing …’

  Indeed, and how amazing that no one had thought of this before! The result was a handsome volume of 66 poems, all the verses that I knew of from her many picture books, School Journals and other publications. The first choice of illustrator, David Elliot, put aside other work to focus for six or more months on the illustrations, while Lorain Day committed HarperCollins to a large hardback production, with costly silver on its jacket. The Word Witch: The magical verse of Margaret Mahy was Honour Book in the 2009 New Zealand Post Awards, and soon a bestseller, with the addition a CD of Margaret reciting 12 of the poems for the late 2012 paperback reprint.

  Capturing Margaret on video and audio a year or so earlier, reciting her famous party pieces Bubble Trouble and Down the Back of the Chair to her grand-daughters and for the camera, had been the initiative of the indefatigable Yvonne Mackay, director of Margaret’s 1980s TV scripts. Several people in the literary world, myself among them, had realised more or less simultaneously that no record of Margaret as ‘performance poet’ existed. The idea spread and Yvonne had acted quickly, flying to Governors Bay with a small crew for several days’ leisurely filming. The finished result gives lie to any suggestion of lack of energy or the frailty which was beginning to concern her family and friends.

  Typically, for what was to be her last appearance at book awards, Margaret would go out with a bang, as it were. The Moon and Farmer McPhee was a further collaboration with David Elliot following the success of The Word Witch. In a year of notably fine publishing, it scooped the pool, winning the Picture Book award and going on to take the Book of the Year prize. The book’s ‘high-end’ production was as imaginative as the content. Convenor of the judging panel, Ruth McIntyre, spoke of how ‘The sheer poetry of the language and the gorgeous luminous illustrations each magnificently complements the other. Thoughtful details such as the artfully placed cut-outs and fold-out pages, the joyful expressions on the animals’ faces, the lovely word-play and the positive message all add to the complete package.’

  The Moon and Farmer McGhee may not be the last original Mahy story to appear in book awards. Those who’ve visited the Governors Bay home would not be at all surprised to hear of unpublished work being unearthed, in time, from drawers and bookshelves and perhaps stranger places, just as Helen Hoke Watts had done back in 1968.

  But for now the last book is Mister Whistler, her first collaboration with long-time friend Gavin Bishop. It’s an energetic tale of Mister Whistler getting dressed to go on a train journey; now at the station, where is his ticket? He undresses in a panic down to underpants; finding ticket, dresses garment by garment; and then … Suffice to say it’s a variant of children at the pantomime yelling to the unsuspecting hero, ‘He’s behind you! Behind you!!’ The warm and witty illustrations are, to my mind, as good as anything Gavin Bishop has ever done, and the production, by Julia Marshall at the small Wellington publishing house Gecko, is impeccable.

  How long the illness which proved terminal had been developing, no one can know. Possibly many months, even years. Friends outside Christchurch during 2011 inquired from other friends about her health and learned that she was increasingly frail, and tired, but well enough for someone of 75 who had worked so prodigiously and given so much time and energy to others all her life. She had earned her precious reading and family time.

  Two funerals were held for Margaret in the days following her deat
h. The first, for family and her closest Christchurch friends, was at Governors Bay. Handwritten letters sent by children were much in evidence. The second, public and televised funeral was held a week later at the Geo Dome in Hagley Park, drawing people from all corners of New Zealand. It was a day of remembrance, music, tears and laughter, superbly choreographed with tributes from writers, editor Lorain Day, a Governors Bay neighbour, library colleagues, Environment and Communications and Information Technology Minister Amy Adams representing the Government, and Margaret’s adult grand-daughters, Alice aged 20 and Poppy aged 18. Their grandma, they told the audience, danced through life, literally, once doing ‘the can-can in the school carpark’. The biggest sustained laugh of the day was Gavin Bishop’s energetic reading of an extract from her 1983 book for younger readers, The Pirates’ Mixed-up Voyage. It was probably unfamiliar for most of the audience and all the funnier for the contemporary aptness of tale of a bunch of no-hoper pirates who wanted to learn to read, specifically to read a map so they could find buried treasure. But, he said, put aside all the pirates, the robbers, the witches, the crocodiles, the naughtiness and the silliness, underneath it all, Margaret’s themes and ideas were ‘as profound and mysterious as anything you would find in Shakespeare’.