Page 43 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘I’ll sort it out,’ Grace Maud replies. ‘But not tonight.’
She can tell that answer doesn’t satisfy Patricia at all, but sensibly the other woman doesn’t mention the subject again as they head to their cars.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The drive to John’s house is only going to take them an hour or so, but Patricia wishes she hadn’t agreed to do it. It should really be John coming to them from Innisfail.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he’d said when he called yesterday. ‘Footy match in the morning.’
‘You don’t play football,’ Patricia said, the trip-wire on her temper starting to hum.
‘I train a local team. Kids.’ She heard him drag on his cigarette.
Patricia has been dreading her brother’s visit because of this habit. The only thing that weaned her mother off the smokes was the fact that she couldn’t remember she had a nicotine addiction, but if she sees John with them she might remember. Patricia has spied her with a longing look on her face whenever they’re in the garden and the neighbour’s smoke wafts across the back fence.
The problem has been avoided thus far because John so rarely visits. Except a week ago he’d called and said he was going to come north and wouldn’t that be ace? They could have a family barbecue, he said. No prizes for guessing who’d be making the coleslaw, the salad and handing him the tongs to turn the snags.
‘Presumably you were aware of that when you arranged to visit this weekend,’ Patricia says flatly.
She knows not to use emotion on John: he’ll say she’s being irrational, and that will be thesine qua nonfor him to declare himself the victor of every argument. He’s been doing it to her since she was a child.
The worst part of it is that she doesn’t even think he’s a bad bloke – just a product of hanging out with friends who called their mothers, sisters and assorted other women in their lives ‘hysterical’ on a regular basis. Small-child Patricia wasn’t immune from this assessment, even though it was also John who met her after school when her mother was otherwise occupied, and watched her while she climbed the monkey bars in the local park, picking her up if she fell. She misses that John; she hasn’t seen him for a while.
‘Forgot, mate. I’ve been flat out here.’ Another drag.
Patricia doesn’t know how his secretary stands it. As a sol icitor in a small town John is mainly confined to his desk doing conveyancing and wills, which means anyone else in the office has to put up with his smoking. When they finally get to see him, he’ll reek of Marlboros and the smell will give Patricia a headache.
So she has that to look forward to as she tries to keep her eyes on the road and not glance around at scenery she hasn’t sighted for years. It’s hard to resist these surroundings, though: thick with cane, the plants thriving in the rainfall – more rain than in most parts of Australia – along with the banana palms. It’s lush in a way that parts further north may not be.
Not that Patricia has seen much of what lies beyond Port Douglas. She’s only been to Cooktown once, since the unsealed road forms a barrier to all those who don’t have an appropriately outfitted vehicle. When she was in her twenties, she and a friend and the friend’s boyfriend borrowed a Land Rover Discovery with bench seats in the back and enough room to transport a platoon. They took their time driving north, absorbing the scenes of red dirt and epic vistas, before the wet season started early and forced them south to Cairns.
Now that Patricia has no friends with Land Rovers, Innisfail is as far as she’s likely to travel. But the desire to leave Cairns doesn’t take hold of her any more – although it’s taken hold of Marjorie.
‘I want to go to Japan!’ she’d announced as they left the assembly hall on Tuesday morning. ‘They have all those direct flights now.’
‘That’s nice,’ Patricia said absent-mindedly, thinking of the load of washing she’d forgotten to hang out before she left the house.
‘Don’t you think it would be great? So much fun!’
‘Do you speak Japanese?’
‘No,’ Marjorie said. ‘Should I?’
‘I guess not. I’m sure a lot of Japanese people can speak a little bit of English.’
Patricia has no idea if that’s true but it seemed like the kindest thing to say. Marjorie can be known to fret if she thinks she’s misstepped.
They turned for the staffroom and Marjorie glanced over her shoulder. ‘Don’t look now,’ she said quietly, ‘but Dennis is following us.’
‘We’re going to the staffroom, Marj,’ Patricia said, amused. ‘I thinkeveryoneis following us.’
‘But noteveryonewas looking over at you all the time in assembly!’
Patricia laughed and shook her head, mainly to hide the fact that she was pleased by this news if it was true.
‘Do you have a thing going on?’ Marjorie asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘No. We have no things.’
