His next move was to the deck at the back of the house. That’s where I feed the birds and consequently the birds bring cats. There are cats that kill birds, and there was a particular family of ginger cats who stalked the deck now and then when I didn’t catch them at it. They were indeed bird killers. Other cats were rat killers, like my recent dead Spider and the next-door Siamese. Hello was something else again. He didn’t quite kill other cats, but not for want of trying. He would propel himself like an unstoppable tank at any cat intruding on what had apparently become his place. He possessed an ear-splitting scream and a truly scary stare. We became a no-go zone for other cats. My birds were now safe.
That was six years ago; he went on to become my most loving and devoted companion before I had to have him put down. His death punctuated the birth of my book, rather as the birth of my grandchildren Demeter and Maggie punctuated Fraser’s death. By dedicating my book to Hello, I am dedicating it to the continuation of life.
REFERENCES
EPIGRAPH Lines from ‘Achasán’ by Mártín Ó Direáin, in Sáan Mac Réamoinn (ed.), The Pleasures of Gaelic Poetry, Penguin, London, 1982. The poem was written first in Gaelic and then in English. Ó Diráain was born in the Aran Islands, in Galway Bay, where many of the gravestones bear the name Fahey.
PAGES 12-13 ‘That only God, my dear, / Could love you for yourself alone / And not your yellow hair’, from William Butler Yeats, ‘For Anne Gregory’, in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, Wordsworth Editions, Hertfordshire, 1994
PAGE 58 Keith Sinclair comment on Eric McCormick, from James Ross, Linda Gill and Stuart McRae (eds), Writing, A New Country: A Collection of Essays Presented to E. H. McCormick in his 88th Year, J. Ross, Auckland, 1993
PAGE 136 ‘We are riding an aimless explosion to nowhere’, from John Updike, ‘The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe’, in My Father’s Tears and Other Stories, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009
First published 2012
This ebook edition 2012
Auckland University Press
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland 1142
New Zealand
www.press.auckland.ac.nz
© Jacqueline Fahey, 2012
eISBN 978 1 86940 582 3
National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Fahey, Jacqueline.
Before I forget / Jacqueline Fahey.
1. Fahey, Jacqueline. 2. Painters—New Zealand—Biography.
i. Fahey, Jacqueline—Something for the birds. ii. Title.
759.993—dc 23
Publication is assisted by
This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design: Athena Sommerfeld
* Fraser and I had met Frank socially a few times in the ’70s. I was flattered that he seemed to really like my paintings.
Front cover: Don’t Ask, 2008. Here I am today, interrogating the younger me — obviously one of those good-time girls. At our feet my darling dog Olga looks for scraps from my daughter’s high chair.
The younger me doesn’t believe that I will get it; she thinks that I am too old. She is busy kicking up her legs and enjoying a gin, and calls back over the years, ‘Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask.’ The words grow fainter and fainter as they approach me.
Back cover: Effervescence, 2009. ‘I can hardly remember what I was on about,’ I proclaim in this painting — it is not possible for the person I am now to pass judgement on the young woman I was in the 1950s and ’60s. I am a result of that young woman, but have developed into a very different person.
This is our home but it also is a mental hospital, Porirua Hospital. The colour of the hydrangeas blazes forth against the brilliant green of late spring, and Olga’s puppies tussle over a meaty bone.
Before I Forget Page 18
