Page 85 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
WINTER 1994
HRH The Prince of Wales reveals in a televised interview that he was unfaithful to his wife; that same night Diana wears a black ‘revenge dress’ to the Serpentine Gallery in London.
The band Wet Wet Wet has chart success in Australia with ‘Love is All Around’.
The movieSpeed, starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, is released.
Kylie Minogue releases the single ‘Confide in Me’.
The Sum of Us, starring Russell Crowe and Jack Thompson, is released.
American singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley releases his debut album,Grace.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Patricia feels more frantic this time than last time. Because it was never meant to happen again. Her mother is meant to be in a home. She’s meant to be watched by professionals whose job it is to make sure she doesn’t wander. But Patricia’s father still hasn’t told Peter and John that he’s going to take out a mortgage to pay for the care, and until he does that he won’t let Patricia start looking for a place for his wife. So he’s still in charge during the day while Patricia’s at work, and today he got chatting to the next-door neighbour over the back fence and didn’t realise that his wife had walked out the front door. Which was open, because he likes to get some air through the house.
There’s no point Patricia castigating her father. He feels guilty – she heard that in his voice when he reached her in the staffroom. Luckily, this time classes were finished for the day. And it’s Friday, so the staffroom was almost empty.
Patricia was trying to catch up on some marking because the weekend would be taken up with housework. When the phone rang she knew it would be for her. It was an instinct, or a foreboding. There’s no way to tell which.
Dennis picked it up. He was the only other person there, poking around in the fridge in what seemed to be an exercise in delaying his departure.
‘Yes, she’s here. Whom may I say is calling?’
She was impressed he said ‘whom’. It made him seem old-fashioned in a good way. In the sort of way that an English teacher like her appreciates.
‘Patricia, it’s your father.’ Dennis didn’t smile, which was uncharacteristic. But she was already concerned anyway – by now, concern is her regular state of being.
It was concern that made her not pay attention in yoga class last night. Sandrine came over while they were in a standing pose and put her hands on Patricia’s shoulders.
‘These have been getting higher each time,’ she said. ‘Soon they will reach the ceiling. You are worrying. Trying to carry a weight. These shoulders, they’re bracing against it. Try to relax them for me.’
Patricia tried. She failed.
But Sandrine – who never makes anyone feel bad for something they can’t do – simply patted her and said, ‘This is your homework.’
As Patricia took the phone from Dennis, she felt like her shoulders were so high they were around her ears.
‘She’s gone,’ her father said, and Patricia felt her breathing become shallow and rapid.
‘How long ago?’
‘I, ah …’
‘Dad – where were you?’
‘Out the back.’
She wanted to yell. To scream, actually. She wanted to scream at her father and ask him how he could be so careless. Remind him that they’d talked about this, over and over. He just kept saying, ‘I’ll look after her.’ But he didn’t. He forgot. Or never thought of it in the first place. The other day Patricia came home and the front door was open, her father was in the kitchen and her mother could have been anywhere. Luckily she was in the back garden. But he wasn’t watching her.
‘I’m coming home now,’ she said and hung up without saying goodbye because she was too furious.
‘What’s going on?’ Dennis asked.
‘I can’t – I have to go,’ she said, flustered, picking up her work, dropping it. The essays slid onto the floor. She wanted to be two years old again and entitled to sit down and have a tantrum.
‘I’ll get those,’ Dennis said, collecting the papers and stacking them neatly before handing them to her. ‘How about I come with you?’
