Something for the Birds by Fahey Jacqueline

Author:Fahey, Jacqueline [Fahey, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781869405106
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Margaret Fahey lying in the bath, dribbling in the hot water, dribbling in more hot water and enveloped in steam, dreams of the past: ‘Oh, why did I come back to live in a state of exile? The girl with the brilliant career coming home to marry her childhood sweetheart. But there’s no going back to where my mother and my grandmother are exiled in past time. That Timaru is lost now forever. No returning either to Melbourne, Uncle Dennis and the Conservatoire of Music. That escape hatch snapped shut some time ago.’

Oh, the anguish of tearing up roots only to return to find that the foreign soil had been the home soil all the time, that home is the foreign soil now. She could inhabit the life of music, though, couldn’t she? Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, the way her own sisters breathed sustenance from the Mass so naturally they didn’t even think about it. Just like the past Mass on Sunday – friends in for a drink, roast lamb, new potatoes, peas from the garden, rich gravy. Mint sauce served on heavy Aran plates amidst roars of laughter, time honoured.

But tonight she strolls arm in arm with Cecil Fahey down the main drag in Timaru. She is a lovely woman, and being a lovely woman is how she presents herself. You could be a good woman in Timaru. This meant you were plain, earnest and tried very hard. You could be a character. Usually this meant you talked too much, clothes were getting a bit loud, and house or children or husband or the whole lot running amok. A lovely woman, however, smiles serenely so that all right-thinking men get the message. They know that smile comes from fulfilment. Fulfilment from her man who protects her from the real world. She has her children, her sewing, cooking, baking and cleaning. In Margaret Fahey’s case, she does only one of the above – cooking. However, her large calm brow, warm brown eyes and her own big white teeth make up for her lack of domestic skills. She projects an eager innocence which comes from being brought up on the classics. With this lifestyle, virtue has always triumphed. No glimpse of that nasty soft underbelly where rude bums lurk, crude gestures are signalled. These are not to intrude into Margaret Fahey’s world.

This evening Margaret will perform at the Women’s Club. With much puffing and heaving she presses her surplus fat into her boned corset. Her boned corset is old pink in colour, studded with great eyelets, and festooned with what look like long pink shoelaces. These shoelaces have sturdy metal ends. The bony strong whalebone insets slip easily in and out of their grooves. Long, amazingly complicated metal suspenders, four of them, dangle at the bottom. Then the black silk petticoat and then, over that, her superb black silk evening dress. Subtle jet embossing and a cunning cut to the skirt make this dress exclusive. This is a present from her sister-in-law, designed by Worth, bought in London before the war.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.