Page 3 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘Dennis!’ Gordon bellows now across the staffroom. ‘Where’s the bloody sugar?’
Patricia mouthssorryin Dennis’s direction, but she knows he understands. The female teachers regularly use him as a means of deflecting Gordon’s attention because Dennis is half a foot taller than Gordon, which seems to keep the older man in line.
Dennis nods in a resigned fashion and stands up to his full height. ‘Dunno, Gordon,’ he booms. ‘Let’s look together.’
Patricia exhales, then jumps as she feels a tap on her shoulder.
‘Sorry!’ squeaks Marjorie, the science teacher who joined them at the start of the year. ‘Didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘That’s okay,’ Patricia says, but as she turns her head to talk to Marjorie she feels a twinge running down the side of her neck and towards her shoulder. That same twinge she’s had for a few weeks now. It started after she helped her father into the car and he had suddenly gripped her shoulder, pulling her into a twist.
‘What is it?’ Marjorie says, looking concerned.
‘Nothing. Just a … It’s nothing.’ Patricia doesn’t need to share her woes. Maybe because if she started, she might not stop.
Marjorie nods. ‘Aches and pains,’ she says knowingly. ‘It’s all that marking. Bending over the papers.’ She makes a claw out of her right hand. ‘My hand getsso tight! I feel like my fingers will never straighten!’
Her high-pitched laugh makes Patricia jump again, although she should be used to it by now. Marjorie can often be heard before she’s seen, no matter where she is in the school. Patricia wonders if the laugh is covering for something. No one can be that genuinely ebullient all the time.
Now Marjorie is poking her in the arm and nodding again. ‘I went to this class.Amazingstretches. Yoga. You should try it! We could go together!’
‘Yoga?’ Patricia has heard the term but thought it was something to do with The Beatles visiting India.
‘There’s a teacher – Sandrine. She’s French. She has a class on Saturday mornings. It used to be in the Presbo church hall.’
Patricia blinks, wondering what her Presbyterian mother would think of that particular nickname. Probably nothing, actually, given that her mother’s fine brain is starting to disintegrate at the edges, and sometimes in the middle.
‘But now it’s in thisamazinglittle house,’ Marjorie continues. ‘Orange Blossom House. She likes orange blossom orchids. That’s what she told us. She’s really lovely!’ Marjorie frowns. ‘And sometimes a bit mean. But yoga’sreallygood for you. The stretches arereallydeep. And there’s breathing.’
‘Breathing?’ Why would anyone need to learn breathing when we’re all breathing all the time anyway?
‘I know, it sounds funny! But it’s great.Trust me.’ Marjorie sighs. ‘It really helps me cope, you know?’
Patricia knows she should ask Marjorie what she’s coping with – in her experience no one drops a word like that into conversation without wanting to be asked about it – but Gordon reappears, triumphantly bearing the sugar.
‘Found it!’ he says redundantly.
‘Wonderful,’ Patricia offers. ‘We’ll give Dennis a medal.’
She glances in Dennis’s direction and he gives her a half salute and a friendly smile as he walks out the door.
‘I’ll leave you to your hot beverage, Gordon,’ Patricia says. She’s confident that Marjorie will also leave him to it, because she knows not to be alone with him.
‘You don’t want one?’ He looks slightly wounded.
‘I have atonneof marking,’ Patricia says, hoping her uncharacteristic use of emphasis will convince him that she’s far too busy to stay. The truth is that she has no marking today, but Gordon wouldn’t know that because he doesn’t care about the teachers’ workloads.
‘Me too!’ Marjorie says, almost sprinting to her handbag and hoisting it onto her shoulder.
They trot out the door and along the long corridor, only slowing their pace when they reach the street. Patricia’s red Ford station wagon is parked under a pathetic tree that offers hardly any shade against the clear blue Queensland sky. Even in winter it’s best to avoid leaving your car in sunlight all day if you don’t want your fingers burnt on the steering wheel, but she was running late this morning and it was the best she could get.
‘Oh,’ Marjorie says, making a face. ‘You got the bad spot.’ Her olive-green Toyota is parked beside abundant foliage.
‘Someone has to,’ Patricia says cheerfully. She doesn’t want to tell Marjorie why she was late. None of her colleagues knows that she lives in her parents’ home – the house she grew up in – because those parents need looking after, and of course the unmarried daughter was the obvious choice.
Patricia’s two brothers have wives and children, which means their roles are now husband, father and provider. Son is no longer on the list. Not in the way it counts when their parents need it to count. Patricia’s sister also has her own family and obligations that make her too busy to visit much, and she lives in another state anyway.
Patricia isn’t bitter about it. Just slightly resentful. And weary. Between her father’s physical ailments – of the sort that ageing people usually have, but which require regular attention nonetheless – and her mother’s fading mental capacity, she feels like she’s on alert the whole time. Which is probably how her sister, Annette, feels with her children. Patricia wouldn’t know. She doesn’t have children, and there’s never been a glimmer of a chance of them.
