Page 11 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
She gestures to a gap close to the front of the class, and Grace Maud feels immediately self-conscious. She won’t know how to do this yoga thing and she doesn’t want other people to see. She has her pride. It’s one of the few things she has left since old age has taken away her straight spine and moderately uplifted bosom. But the back of the room won’t be easy to wedge into.
When Cecilia told Grace Maud about the class she’d imagined it being in a hall of some kind, not in a house. Admittedly a quite large house – low-roofed, and made of stone and boards. They’re in what looks to have once been a combined living and dining room surrounded by garden.
Orange Blossom Housethe sign out the front read, next to a path that curled between crowded banana bushes – which will look and smell lovely when their small white flowers bloom in spring – with the odd fern and some other plants that Grace Maud should know from years of living on the land but doesn’t. She did, however, recognise the orange blossom orchids that form a small, almost devotional cluster nearer to the house, and the Atherton palms that flank the front door, which is actually at the side.
It opens into a short hallway hung with paintings of local scenes; maidenhair ferns sit on a low table next to an area where shoes are discarded.
‘Am I meant to leave my shoes here too?’ Grace Maud had asked. She always wore shoes in her own home, and was a firm advocate of wearing them in other people’s.
Cecilia nodded. ‘No shoes in the studio.’
‘Why not?’
‘You can’t do yoga in shoes, or socks. And it’s a sacred space.’
‘A what?’
Cecilia rolled her eyes. ‘Asacred space. You’ll see.’
The studio itself – the old living/dining room – is painted white and has polished floorboards and large windows that let in the light and the greenery outside. And Cecilia was right: it does feel sacred. Everyone is quiet, and the space just inside the door is decorated with small statues and candles. But it isn’t a large room, and feels smaller the longer they stand here and hesitate.
‘Yes, let’s go by the window,’ Grace Maud says.
Cecilia pitter-patters quickly to the spot and drops the two foam camping mats she’s brought with them.
The woman sitting on a mat at the front of the class, whom Grace Maud presumes is the teacher, frowns.
‘’Allo,’ she says, then gestures to the mats. ‘Is that all you have?’
Grace Maud recognises straightaway that her accent is French.
‘Yes – this is what my mother brings,’ Cecilia says, looking like a scolded child.
‘Who is your mother?’
‘Eva. She comes on Tuesday mornings.’
‘Ah yes.’ The woman nods vigorously, her tightly cropped curls bobbing.
Grace Maud thinks she looks like a soignée version of Shirley Temple with her curls and that upturned nose. But Shirley is frozen in time, and this woman, Grace Maud sees now, isn’t as young as she’d feared and exudes the sort of self-confidence that comes from weathering hard, long experience.
The teacher smiles at Cecilia, her eyes almost disappearing. ‘But probably Eva did not tell you that she really just uses the floor and forgets about the mat. No matter, they will do for now.’ Her eyes turn to Grace Maud. ‘Who is your friend?’
‘This is Mrs Clifford,’ Cecilia says, looking quite pleased with herself – as she should, given that this morning Grace Maud decided she was too old and too inflexible after all. But Cecilia wasn’t having any of it.
‘Does Mrs Clifford have a first name?’
The teacher’s eyebrow arches and Grace Maud sees mischief in it. She’s half impressed. She was expecting this woman to be more like Felicity and Edwina’s ballet teacher – a Soviet with no discernible sense of humour and a work ethic she might have learnt in a gulag.
‘Grace Maud,’ says the owner of that name clearly.
‘How … un-us-u-al. Are you very attached to both names?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fine.’ A tight smile. ‘I shall use them both. My name is Sandrine. And I know you are Cecilia. Your mother has told me about you.’
Cecilia looks surprised, and Grace Maud knows why: her relationship with Eva isn’t that warm.
