Page 113 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘I couldn’t either,’ Grace Maud says. ‘But I learnt. You will too.’
‘I’ll see if Luca wants to come.’
‘Why would he want to come?’
She tries to picture her lanky great-nephew in that room with a mixed bag of women – then realises it’s not her place to stop him trying something just because no other man is doing it.
‘He gets sore muscles from work. He says you think it works really well for sore muscles. Plus he used to learn ballet. Did you know that?’
Grace Maud did not. But she thinks of Luca’s embodied grace – which she noticed the first time she saw him walking around the farm – and now realises its source.
‘He stopped when he started getting tall,’ Cecilia continues. ‘They told him he’d be too big to be a professional. How unfair is that?’
‘He won’t have that problem in Sandrine’s class,’ Grace Maud says. ‘I’d love to have you both come with me. If Luca is allowed Saturday mornings off, that is.’
Cecilia frowns. ‘That’s true. Oh well, I’ll ask.’
They smile at each other and Grace Maud realises she has a hard question to ask.
‘So when are you planning to move home?’
Cecilia looks hesitant, then bites her lip, then smiles awkwardly. ‘This weekend. I don’t have much to move.’
That’s true: she only brought a small amount of clothes and two pairs of shoes. In all the time she’s been here she’s rotated them like uniforms.
‘I’ll be frank,’ Grace Maud says. ‘This is sad news for me.’
Cecilia nods. ‘I’m going to miss seeing you every day. But I won’t be far away. And I’ll see you twice a week here and on Saturdays at yoga.’
Grace Maud takes a sip of her tea, unsure what to say next.
‘Thank you,’ Cecilia adds. ‘That’s really inadequate, but thank you. You helped me so much.’
‘No,’ says Grace Maud, ‘it’s you who helped me.’
Cecilia makes a face which suggests she doesn’t believe her.
‘I’ll go and pack,’ she says, then turns away, leaving Grace Maud alone with the sunshine and the garden.
If Grace Maud thought that two imminent departures were a blow, she feels less assailed than she expected she would. Cecilia will still be around, and Patricia will eventually return. Life, for all its changes, will keep some of its structure.
She puts her teacup on the grass, sits back and closes her eyes, and lets the sun warm her face.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
‘Shh-shh-shh, it’s all right,’ Dorothy croons as she picks her son up and walks softly into the sitting room.
She loves this room because the glass doors let her see out to the garden – especially appealing now that she’s breastfeeding. It’s nice to have something to look at while Nicholas sucks away.
‘I feel like a cow,’ she told Patricia on one of their phone calls. Patricia and Grace Maud have both taken to phoning every day to see how she is, how the baby is, if there’s anything they can do. ‘I exist just to feed the baby.’
‘If you were a cow you’d have extra udders,’ Patricia replied. ‘Maybe that would be useful.’
‘Mine are getting a bit tired,’ Dorothy said. ‘But I don’t really have a choice.’
No choice, but she doesn’t mind. In between the curtailed sleep and the dead-of-night feedings and the occasional tear when she’s at home alone with the baby while Frederick is at work, she doesn’t mind. She could never mind. Her life has changed irrevocably and this is exactly what she wanted. She hasn’t gone through years of loss, not to mention medical procedures, to worry about missed sleep and sore nipples. She can be desperate for a nap and still think her son is the highlight of her life.
Nicholas is just latching on when she hears the front door open and footsteps coming towards her.
