Page 28 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘At least he wasn’t trying to be Shane Warne,’ Dennis mutters.
Patricia laughs. ‘Fair point. And thanks for volunteering to do this with me. When I thought it would be a good idea to bring them here to write compositions about animals, I forgot how much testosterone Year Nine boys can have. I don’t want to lose anyone in a lion enclosure just because they decided to be brave.’
‘No worries.’ Dennis looks at her curiously. ‘Although I’m pretty sure you could’ve handled it.’
She smiles and shrugs. ‘I don’t know. My brothers are a few years older than me so I wasn’t really aware of what they were like as teenagers. I was in those blissful years when little girls are still talking to dolls.’
He nods. ‘I remember them.’
Patricia gives him a quizzical look. ‘Really?’
‘Two sisters,’ he says.
Before Patricia can respond she hears music coming from the cluster of girls walking ahead of them. The unmistakable sound of Whitney Houston singing ‘I Will Always Love You’, as she has been on every radio station at every hour of the day for, it seems, most of the year. Patricia has tried to be sick of the song, but she finds something intriguing within it: the idea of giving up someone you love not just for their sake but your own. Not that she’s ever been in a position to do that. But it doesn’t stop her wondering what it would be like.
‘Girls, turn that off!’ she calls.
‘Great song,’ Dennis murmurs.
‘I know, but I don’t think the animals would agree.’ She glances at him and is surprised to find him looking at her meaningfully before he quickly glances away.
The music stops and Patricia appreciates the fact that her female students rarely try to bargain with her the way the boys do. She’d spend her whole day negotiating if they did.
‘All right, everyone, time to find your animal!’ she calls more loudly to the rapidly dispersing students. ‘You have one hour. Write a poem or a short piece of prose. ONE HOUR! MEET BACK AT THIS SPOT!’
Most of them are too far away to hear and she throws her hands in the air.
‘We’re going to lose some of them, aren’t we,’ she says to Dennis.
He laughs. ‘It’s not that big a place. We’ll be right. So did you see the movie?’
‘Hmm?’ She looks around, trying to count how many students are within eyesight.
‘The Bodyguard– did you see it?’
‘Oh.’ She turns back towards him. ‘Yes.’
She saw it on her own – not that she’ll tell him that – because she didn’t manage to reconnect with any of her old friends in Cairns when she returned two years ago after a quarter-century away. They have their own lives now; it was naive of her to expect that some of them would want to pick up where they’d left off. She’d only been in touch with a couple of them in all that time, and only then by way of Christmas cards. Now it’s her Sydney friends who receive Christmas cards.
‘Did you?’ she asks, figuring Dennis probably only asked her so she would reciprocate. That seems to be the reason most people ask personal questions. ‘What are you doing on the weekend?’ is code for ‘Please ask me whatI’mdoing on the weekend.’
‘Yep,’ Dennis says. ‘It was pretty good. Bit dramatic with the shooting and whatnot. Do you like movies?’
‘I don’t mind them,’ she says vaguely, moving towards a seat and gesturing for him to sit beside her.
‘I suppose you prefer books,’ he says, sitting and angling his body towards her.
‘I suppose I do,’ she says with a small laugh. ‘Although a great movie is a wonderful thing.’
‘I sawSleepless in Seattle. I thought it was pretty good. Interesting story.’ He smiles at her. ‘Romantic.’
She blinks in surprise, then thinks that he probably saw it with a lady friend. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Not your speed?’ He looks genuinely interested in what she might say.
It’s not the sort of conversation they usually have. Up until now they’ve mainly talked about how to avoid Gordon, whether or not the stingers have arrived at the Cairns beaches, and when they think the wet season will start.
‘Too schmaltzy,’ she murmurs. ‘Top Gunis more my thing. I like to be entertained.’
