Free Trust by Kate Veitch Page B

in domestic activities would be perfect for them.’
    ‘I see,’ said Susanna.
    ‘So, my advice is, use your idea for that. Voila – you’ve got a theme. Great!’ Belinda handed the proposal back, and Susanna understood that their meeting was over. This is a life raft; why do I feel disappointed? She was at the door when Belinda said, ‘Oh, did I see you carrying an armload of jacaranda blossom in from your car? It looked beautiful.’
    Susanna nodded. ‘For my second-years. I want to get them thinking about recording seasonal ephemera: tie it in with cherry blossom viewing and Japanese woodblocks, for instance, and Monet’s waterlilies.’ I’m blathering . ‘It’s about seeing their journals as more than a place to stick pictures out of magazines.’
    ‘Wonderful,’ said Belinda warmly. ‘This is why students love this course, Susanna. You’re a terrific teacher, you really are.’
    Susanna smiled wanly, and left.
    If I was a terrific teacher, these kids’ journals would have reflected that , she thought as she walked around the room, dropping a sprig of jacaranda before each student’s place. I’m not. I’m dull. A fraud, a failure. The students had collected their journals from her table at the front and were flipping through them, some just checking the mark she’d given them, a few also reading her comments.
    She launched into her planned speech about the seasons and their fleeting moments, about tapping into a sensibility shared both with other people experiencing that seasonal moment, and with a whole art tradition. ‘Smell it, feel it, imagine it,’ she urged, but was aware that her voice lacked the spark of inspiration she’d felt this morning, when she’d seen the branches of jacaranda hanging over the fence from their neighbour’s tree, dripping blossom, and had this idea. ‘Above all, draw it!’
    Some polite nods, as they eyed the mauve bells cautiously.
    She talked about Monet: one flower, one artist, and a series of sublime paintings that had enriched art lovers around the world, and about how even the Impressionists, for all their radical espousal of painting en plein air , had treasured getting permission to copy the work of the great masters in the Louvre. Artists had spent months and years in there, just drawing.
    What am I squawking about? Her stream of words slowed down, and then dried up. She sat at the front leaning her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. What was really occupying these young people’s minds? Not her rabbitting on, that was plain. I might as well walk out of this room right now.
    ‘Are you okay, Susanna?’ asked hijab-wearing Noor.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Angelo. ‘Whassup, miss?’
    ‘I’m just wondering what the point of all this is,’ she said.
    Her students looked sideways at each other. ‘The point?’ asked one boldly. ‘Of – of the journals?’
    Susanna agreed, lifting her shoulders. Yes, why not the journals? ‘I feel like we’re just not on the same page here, so to speak.’
    A little silence. ‘You said it, miss,’ said Angelo. ‘ Page .’
    ‘Page?’ She raised her head from the support of her hands, frowning.
    ‘As in, paper,’ said Bianca, cool and acerbic. ‘We don’t really do paper.’ She stood up, raising her right hand, and Susanna noticed that she’d capped each fingertip with the bell of a jacaranda blossom. It looked magical. ‘Pre-digital,’ Bianca said, pointing at Susanna, then, turning, drew a big circle in the air around her classmates. ‘Post-digital.’ She sat down.
    ‘That’s right,’ said Tom, a photography major, not unkindly. He leaned over and tugged his laptop from his bag, on the floor beside him. Holding it one-handed above his head, he said, ‘See: these are our journals.’
    ‘And our art galleries, for that matter,’ said Bianca.
    ‘Like deviantArt,’ said Emily, a pre-Raphaelite swan of a girl. ‘DeviantArt is huge. ’
    ‘A bit emo, in my opinion,’ Bianca said, adding, in a