Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.co.nz
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065, Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
EGGHEAD
HATCHES
TO START AT THE BEGINNING, my first memory is of being
pink and naked. So is my twin sister, Sue. We are Rubens
cherubs without the wings. We are screaming in terror, which
none of his cherubs ever appeared to be doing. Our screams
are echoing off white tiles wet with steam. We are clawing at
the walls, scrambling over one another to escape a piping hot
bath. Amid the thrashing and wailing I am transfixed by steam
settling on a metal tap and blistering off again. I can see it still.
It is mysterious and oddly beautiful. For a brief moment, this
strange transformation blanks out the frenzy and muffles the
screaming. Sue and I are not yet eighteen months old...
Sue has no memory of this. I remember only because it
became the recurring nightmare of my childhood. I returned to
the white-tiled bathroom many nights and woke heart racing,
gasping for air. Too frightened to go back to sleep, I lay perfectly
2 DRAWN OUT
Egghead Hatches 3
4 DRAWN OUT
Egghead Hatches 5
6 DRAWN OUT
IRISH
WHAKAPAPA
I DI DN T GET TO I RELAND, the land of my parents, until I was
30 years old. Apart from my Aunt Catherine, who helped Mum
with Sue and me in London when we were very small, growing
up in New Zealand, none of the Scott children ever met a single
relative. It was as if our family had arrived in the Manawat
from another galaxy. We had no cousins, no aunties, no uncles,
no sisters-in-law, no brothers-in-law and no grandmothers
or grandfathers. It was just usa small microclimate of Irish
lunacy set in the dull and sober Manawat landscape.
The only evidence of a wider family came from Mums side
fuzzy photographs smaller than postcards, with a pinking-shear
trim. People not much more than white dots for faces and black
and grey splotches for clothes pose en masse on a mailmans
dray or stand singly with a favourite dairy cow. Very Borat. A
tall, gaunt man, splay-footed like Charlie Chaplin, with high
8 DRAWN OUT
Irish Whakapapa 9
10 DRAWN OUT
Irish Whakapapa 11
12 DRAWN OUT
14 DRAWN OUT
Irish Whakapapa 15
16 DRAWN OUT
WHEN WE WERE BIG ENOUGH she got digs of her own opposite a
Jewish primary school. They advertised for a cleaner and Mum
knocked tentatively on their door. Seeing twins gurgling in a
pram they took pity and employed her on the spot. She claims
she didnt do much cleaning beyond pushing a sodden mop
back and forth while Jewish women, some Holocaust survivors,
played with Sue and me and made her cups of tea. Mum never
forgot their kindness and wouldnt let us forget it either. When
the movie Exodus came out she made Sue and me cycle four
miles into Feilding with her to watch it. Starring Paul Newman,
it was about Jewish boat people, refugees from civilisations
darkest chapter seeking a new homeland and being denied
entry into Palestine by the Royal Navy.
Meanwhile, back in London, the streets teemed with maimed
and crippled war veterans whod helped defeat Nazi Germany.
Mums heart filled with dread whenever one hobbled towards
us, because I would imitate their mannerisms and gait with an
uncanny accuracy no less hurtful for being entirely innocent.
The seeds of future caricature skills were being sown long
before I could hold a pen.
It was around this time that my mothers brothers managed
to track down my father. He had enlisted in the Royal New
Zealand Air Force and was on the verge of boarding a boat for
New Zealand on a single mans assisted passage. His friends
Irish Whakapapa 17
18 DRAWN OUT
Irish Whakapapa 19