Page 59 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
Grace Maud’s heart speeds up – she can hear the strange, dull thud of it in her ears. Her brain races through the reasons why Tom might call and Cecilia might say she has to speak to him. She swallows and puts her hand out for the phone.
‘Yes?’ she says curtly, because she still doesn’t want to cede any ground.
‘Mum?’ Tom’s voice is fractured, almost as if he’s crying. She can’t help that tug towards him – her boy is in pain – yet also can’t help wondering if this is a manipulation.
‘Yes, Tom,’ she says with less ice.
‘It’s— ’ Now he’s definitely crying.
‘Tom, take a breath,’ she says, and she feels Cecilia’s hand holding her other wrist. It doesn’t calm her because now she is sure someone has died.
She can hear his breathing, which sounds like long hiccups.
‘The farm, Mum,’ he says with more control. ‘It’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
She wants to sayWhere has it gone to?as it’s such an improbable concept. How can it be gone?
‘There was a fire. The wind came up. We … we— ’ More long hiccups.
Grace Maud remembers her father standing on the edge of the cane fields, sweeping his hand in a semicircle and telling her that burning was an art and not for amateurs. You had to know all the conditions. He’d stopped short of saying you had to read the runes too, but it wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d had superstitions.
Only once did a fire get out of control, but it was near the road and it stopped there. That seems like yesterday, and like forever ago. Time has its own logic, and its own lessons. She has been standing here saying nothing for probably five seconds, but she has travelled decades into the past, and into the future, and she knows that recriminations can last far longer than the words it takes to utter them.
She’s still the head of this family and she has a job to do – and that is to do what her father would have done in this circumstance.
‘Is everyone all right?’ she says.
‘Wh-what?’
‘Are you and Viv and Luca and the workers safe?’
At the mention of Luca’s name Cecilia’s grip tightens.
‘Yes. Yes, Mum, we’re safe.’ She can hear relief in his voice – the relief of that little boy whose punishment isn’t as bad as he feared. ‘But the house,’ he goes on. ‘It’s burnt. There’s nothing— ’
Now he sobs, and she can hear a voice in the background. Not Viv’s. Perhaps Luca’s. The boy whose own heritage is in that place.
Grace Maud thinks of the photos of her brothers on the mantelpiece, and is grateful for the photo albums she brought with her to town. She thinks of her brothers’ graves, and their parents’, in a nearby paddock. Perhaps their headstones are burnt too.
Sandrine has told them a little bit about Hinduism during class. Not that yoga is Hinduism, she stresses, but from time to time she talks about the gods and the goddesses. Grace Maud likes the idea of a religion that has so many goddesses. Imagine being able to choose which one you’d like to worship, and being able to change your mind? She remembers Sandrine talking about Shiva: the destroyer; the creator. She talked about the fire that burns everything which is not authentic. How this is the fire – thetapas, she called it – of the yoga practice, burning off what isn’t needed, and how we shouldn’t be afraid of it. It’s an appealing, if dramatic, thought. But Grace Maud needed that farmhouse. She needed the fields around it. She’s not sure that this destruction will lead to the creation of anything but pain and grief and remorse. There is no solace for her there.
But she has to be able to offer solace to others. There’s no point living this long if you can’t learn to be good in a crisis.
‘It will be all right,’ she says to her weeping son. ‘We can rebuild.’
‘But the crop – it’s gone. The money, Mum.’
She considers what to say next; how much to reveal. Tom knows that when Ellie Maud died she left Grace Maud the money she’d inherited from their mother, which their mother had inherited from her parents. Grace Maud hadn’t inherited any of that money because she had the benefit of living on the farm – their mother had made it clear. It turned out that Ellie Maud had used the money to buy a house – with her husband’s cooperation, since she couldn’t buy it in her own name – hung onto it for years, then sold it once she knew she was dying. She’d put the money into an account and made Bela the executor of the will, and he had ensured that Grace Maud received every cent. She’d bought her house in town, and she has money left over. Money she’s living on, frugally, because even though Tom has been insisting on paying for Cecilia and the gardener, she doesn’t want to rely on him for everything. That’s not fair – the last thing she wants to be is a burden. But the farm is still her responsibility, and there is no point worrying about future financial burdens if they can’t take care of their most pressing problem now.
‘I have some money,’ she says. ‘We’ll sort it out.’
He’s silent, and she can hear that voice again in the background of his call but still can’t work out who it is.
‘Where are you?’ she asks.
‘At the place next door.’
