Marilyn Duckworth

Marilyn Duckworth’s first memories of Mt Victoria are from 1951 when she was 15 and her family moved here.  “We bought a derelict little cottage that had been owned by an old lady who died and so my father cannabilised some of the timber from the house – good timber – to put into the new house.  It was being built in 1951 and we were living in there, actually  – we moved in – before it was finished, so I had to be lifted up into the first floor to go to bed at night and had to be lifted down again in the morning for a while.  And it was being built partly by my father and also by two wharfies.  It was 1951 and wharfies were on strike, but they were also builders.”

“And when we moved into the house in ’51, my grandparents bought the house next door – 43 Queen Street, and also 41 Queen Street, which is where I’m living now.  And they had rented this out to a couple called the Gembitskys and their two children. . . .  They occupied this tiny little house, with bunks in what is now just the entrance porch, where I live.  Karen – she used to come and lend my boyfriend and me her mother’s books for sixpence, I remember.  Her mother didn’t know that she did this.  We paid her sixpence and read her books.”

Marilyn went overseas when she was 18 but came back to 45 Queen Street briefly again in 1969.  Then there was another parting, and she returned to Mt Victoria in 1984.  “We found this house at 46 Roxburgh Street.  Big, old brick house that we fell in love with. . . .  From the outside it’s rather ornate; it’s got arches and stained glass and it was a pretty extraordinary-looking house.  It wasn’t quite so extraordinary inside, although it had a wonderful staircase that I loved.”

She and her partner lived there for ten years, then bought 43 Queen Street and the Gembitsky’s old house at 41 Queen Street, on one title.

“I’d had my eyes open waiting for it to happen, you see.  And one of my daughters was actually living in the flat below my mother, after she’d had a heart attack, and she was helping to look after her while I had a fellowship in Auckland.  And the daughter rang up, in Auckland, and said ‘The house is going to go on to the market.  It’s not on the market yet, but if you’re interested you’d better come and sort it out.’  So I came rushing down from Auckland.”

Mt Victoria has featured in her writing.  “Well, I suppose it’s certainly there in Swallowing Diamonds, which is the novel before my last one.  I set that in Mt Victoria, in an imagined house . . .  But it was mainly the streets of Mt Victoria that I needed to put into the novel. Rather than the actual house itself; it’s the whole territory of Mt Victoria.  And the top of Mt Victoria; I even went to the top of Mt Victoria in the novel.  Parked a car there, as one used to do.”

But she does not always work at home.  “Funnily enough, I usually run away to write.  I go somewhere else.  Not because there’s anything wrong with Mt Victoria, but there’s a lot of life going on and it’s too – you know – my daily life keeps coming in and interrupting what I’m doing with my characters, and so I need to run away.  I’ve done a lot of work on first drafts, once I’ve done the first draft; but to do the first draft I normally run away.   Sometimes her “escapes” are simply to another part of Mt Victoria.  “I wrote Leather Wings in Rachel McAlpine’s little flat in what she called the ‘Sugarcube’ when she was away in Japan.”

The former food and cultural hubs of Art Attack and the Mt Victoria Café were once ‘locals’.  Her mother had an art exhibition at Mt Victoria Café, when she started painting.

Crossways, too, has played an important part in the lives of Marilyn’s family.  Her mother “started the Poetry Society.  They used to have Poetry Society meetings in Crossways.”  Also, “One of my daughters had her wedding party there – in fact, my only daughter who officially got married – the others did it ‘unofficially’.  She had a party there.  And my nephew, Greg Campbell, he also had his wedding party there . . . Oh, and then I had my seventieth birthday in Crossways.”

What has kept Marilyn coming back to Mt Victoria?  “I love the sun.  I like to be where there’s sun.  I like the feeling of the place; and I like the old houses.  Although we began by pulling one down, of course.  And I love being close to the city.  I like to be able to walk everywhere.  I love being able to walk – although I don’t now – but up to the park and Mt Victoria and over the tunnel.”

“It feels as though I’ve come full circle and that’s where I want to be.”

 

Caption: Marilyn in the hallway of 46 Roxburgh Street

 Caption: Marilyn’s mother, Irene Adcock