At Home With The Templetons (36 page)

Gracie and Tom were waiting at the end of the platform when Spencer’s train came in. The sun was shining, the two of them hand in hand, as Spencer stepped out of his carriage and came striding and smiling towards them, oblivious to the fact he was about to ruin both their lives.

On the other side of the world, Nina was sitting opposite Hilary at the kitchen table of the Templeton Hall apartment. Hilary had arrived that day for a brief holiday while her husband took their two-year-old daughter, Lucy, to stay with his parents. The table was covered in lunch leftovers as well as a pile of the postcards sent by Gracie and Tom over the previous six weeks: brightly coloured images of London landmarks, Scottish mountains, Irish pubs and sunlit French and Italian villages.

Putting down the last of them, a card from Florence that had arrived the previous day, Hilary sighed. ‘Well, I think it’s absolutely gorgeous. Gracie and Tom a couple, imagine.’ She noticed her sister’s expression. ‘Why are you looking so unhappy?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Nina, I know you. What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy for them?’

‘It’s not about me being happy. It’s none of my business. It’s his life. He’s an adult. It’s up to him who he goes out with, what he does.’

Hilary laughed. ‘I’m sure that’s how you think you should feel, but I can also see that’s not how you really feel. Nina, it’s Tom and Gracie. Your Gracie. Don’t you think there’s something, I don’t know, perfect, about the two of them getting together? Fated?’ She picked up the postcards again. ‘She sounds over the moon, he’s so carefree, the two of them zipping around Europe together. I’m sick with jealousy. I know you

must miss him, but ‘

‘I miss him when he’s in Adelaide, let alone the other side of the world.’

‘He’s coming back, Nina. He won’t travel the globe for the rest of his life.’

‘No? What if he decides he wants to live in England with Gracie? You know he asked for an extra month’s leave from the academy? What if he gives up playing cricket permanently?’

‘Then I guess that’s what he’ll do. Or maybe she’ll come out here instead and they’ll spend the rest of their lives fruit-picking.’ Hilary laughed again. ‘Nina, he’s nearly twenty-one years old. A grown man. You can’t expect him never to have a girlfriend. And at least you know Gracie. It’s not like he’s met some complete stranger over there. Gracie’s one of the Templetons. Your Templetons.’

Nina abruptly

stood up and started clearing the table. ‘They’re not my Templetons.’

‘Well, pardon me for stating the obvious, but short of being adopted by them yourself, you couldn’t get any closer, could you? You live in their apartment, you caretake their Hall, you and Eleanor are practically pen-pals ‘

‘Hilary, I had an affair with Henry Templeton.’ Hilary’s mouth fell open. ‘I beg your pardon?’ Nina repeated it.

‘But how? When? Where?’

‘Here.’

‘Here? Here?’ Nina nodded.

Hilary was shocked. ‘But how could you do that to Eleanor?’ ‘I didn’t do anything to Eleanor. They’d separated by then.’ ‘Hold on a minute. This wasn’t when they were living in Templeton Hall?’

Nina shook her head. ‘It was last year. When he came back

to ,

‘He came back last year?’ Hilary looked around as if she expected him to appear again. ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

‘I couldn’t at the time. I’m sorry, Hilary, but I just couldn’t.’ ‘Tell me now,’ Hilary said.

It had been a warm Thursday afternoon. Nina was in her studio, tidying up, not painting, feeling restless and unsettled. Her contract teaching position at one of the local schools had finished for the year. What was left of her freelance work had slowed again too. She’d delivered her latest commission three days before deadline and waited to hear about her next project. And waited. Eventually, she’d rung the company’s office. It took three tries before her call was returned. We’ll keep you in mind if anything else comes up. It’s just… economic realities … computer technology … changing markets …

She got the message. Since then, the days had stretched out long and lonely. The nights felt even lonelier. It wasn’t that she was unused to being on her own. It had been that way since Tom had won his scholarship to his Melbourne school, coming home only some weekends and in the holidays. His visits had been even less frequent since he’d moved to the cricket academy in Adelaide. Lately she’d begun to wonder if it was good for her to be on her own this much. Would she be better living in town with neighbours to smile at, the main street a five-minute walk rather than a twenty-minute drive away?

There were still the advantages of her rent-free accommodation. She also still loved her surroundings: the gentle hills, the wide paddocks, that big sky, the Hall like a natural structure itself, the sandstone shifting between colours depending on the time of the day. But there was no mistaking the change in her thinking. A negative change. She wasn’t just physically lonely these days. It was an emotional loneliness. A deep, hidden, sad feeling that life had passed her by. That there was no longer the chance of something good, exciting or surprising happening to her.

She hadn’t talked about it with Hilary, or even with jenny, her closest friend in Castlemaine. She didn’t have the right words for it yet. It had been creeping up on her since her fortieth birth day three years before, so slowly, so determinedly that she was reluctant to bring it out in the open in case it overwhelmed her completely. But it was there every day, when she looked at herself in the mirror and saw lines where there had been none, a softening of her jaw line, less sparkle in her eyes. She felt it when she got dressed each day and reached for clothes that she knew didn’t flatter her, but were comfortable. It was beyond the physical, too. It was as if her spirit had left her. As if she could no longer see the point of anything - of her work, of herself, of her life. She wasn’t suicidal, she knew that. She was … bored. Bored with herself, of what her life had become.

If her mother was there, if Hilary was there, more to the point, Nina knew what both of them would say. ‘It’s just a phase, a reaction to Tom growing up. Empty-nest syndrome. You just need to change your attitude, not your life. Come on. Spruce yourself up before you’ve nothing left to spruce.’

For the past week, she’d been trying that approach, starting from the outside, making herself wear make-up even if there was no one to see it but her. She put her sagging skirt and the old T-shirt with the tear under the left arm into the bin and started to wear the bright summer dresses, the expensive jeans, the silk tops she’d bought on a shopping trip to Melbourne with Hilary several years earlier. She even shaved her legs, gave herself face masks, plucked her eyebrows, did her nails. She felt ridiculous at first, like a teenager playing with her mother’s make-up, all dressed up with nowhere to go. What was the point? Who was looking at her? It wasn’t working, anyway, was it? That sad abandoned feeling was still there, under the bright clothes, beneath the make-up, as if that feeling of loneliness, that weariness, was part of her body now, had seeped into her skin. But she wouldn’t give into it. She couldn’t let herself give into it. Not yet.

When she heard the sound of a car that Thursday afternoon she wasn’t surprised. Despite the ‘Closed’ sign at the main highway turn-off, despite a second sign halfway up the driveway and

a third sign where the car park used to be, determined visitors still sometimes made their way to Templeton

Hall, lured by longout-of-date entries in guidebooks. ‘When will it be open to the public again?’ she’d been asked countless times. ‘We heard it was hilarious back then. Whatever happened to that family anyway?’

She had a stock answer. ‘The Templetons had to go back to the UK for family reasons but they’re still hopeful to return one day.’ She’d said it so many times she didn’t know whether she believed it or not herself any more. As she heard a car door closing, Nina hurriedly checked her reflection in the mirror, wiped off a smudge of dust from her forehead and made her way down the side path.

A man was standing, eyes shaded, staring up

at the Hall. ‘Good afternoon,’ Nina called in a friendly tone. ‘Sorry, but we’re closed to the public.’

He turned, smiled and spoke. ‘I know. Hello, Nina.’

It took a second for her brain to take in his appearance, his use of her name. ‘Henry? Henry Templeton?’ She knew her mouth was open. ‘What on earth -‘ She stopped and laughed. ‘I’m sorry. Did I miss a message? Did you tell me you were coming back?’

He came across to her, all smiles, kissing her on both cheeks, his manner as relaxed as if they’d seen each other a month before, not seven years before. He barely looked any older, though she knew he must now be in his midfifties at least. Tall, still lean, his face and figure as elegant as it had been the first time she saw him. His hair was greyer, perhaps, but his eyes were still as blue, his expression as intelligent and alive. ‘I’m afraid not. I didn’t know myself that I’d be coming back. A trip to Melbourne came up out of the blue, I had a spare afternoon and it seemed the car had a mind of its own and brought me here before I quite knew what was happening.’

‘You’re back for good? I mean, it’s great. It’s great to see you. It’s just a surprise.’ Nina switched into hostess mode. Awkward, surprised hostess, but a hostess nevertheless. ‘Come in. Come and have a drink, a tea, a coffee. But you’d want to look inside the Hall before anything else, wouldn’t you? If I’d known you were coming ‘

‘You’d have baked a cake? Nina, relax, please. I’m not here to check up on you. Did you say would I like a drink? Do you know what I’d love? A dry, sharp, citrusy glass of local riesling, if you by any chance happened to have one to hand.’

‘It’s my own favourite wine. Of course I do.’

Ten minutes later she and Henry were sitting at the small table she’d set up underneath an apple tree on the edge of the apartment’s garden. The harsh afternoon sun had given way to a balmy soft evening. The birds filled the trees with their calls.

Henry raised his glass. ‘Cheers, Nina. To you, to Templeton Hall, to weather like this for the rest of my life.’

‘How are you? How are things?’ She laughed self-consciously as they clinked their glasses. ‘I’m sorry. I still can’t quite believe you’re here.’

‘You thought you’d really never see us again? Nina, so little faith. It’s only been five years, hasn’t it?’

‘Closer to eight,’ she said.

‘Good heavens.’ He laughed. ‘We didn’t leave you too much in the lurch, though? Please tell me that and assuage my guilt.’ ‘If anything, I got the better end of the deal. To have lived rent-free all these years. It doesn’t seem quite right.’

‘Nina, it’s not rent-free. You’re our caretaker. Eleanor and I are the ones in your debt.’

‘Does Eleanor know you’re here?’

‘She doesn’t, no.’ His expression was neutral. ‘I’m afraid Eleanor and I haven’t spoken in nearly four years.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘It’s been a difficult time, for us all.’ He suddenly changed the subject. ‘And how is your wonderful son, Nina? Is he still playing cricket?’

She told him about Tom, living in Adelaide now, attending the national cricket academy, planning an overseas backpacking trip.

‘I won’t meet him this time, then?’ Henry said. ‘Shame. I’d like to have taken the opportunity to nobble him somehow, for the sake of England’s future Ashes campaigns.’

‘You might be sorry you didn’t. His coach thinks he’ll definitely make the national team one day.’ It sounded like she was boasting. She was boasting.

‘Well, I’ll be,’ Henry said. ‘I still think of him as that small boy.’ ‘Not so small. He’s six foot three now.’

‘Skill and height. We don’t stand a chance.’

As they both took a sip of their wine, there was a moment’s silence.

Nina hurried to fill it. ‘And you, Henry? What brought you to Australia?’

‘The sunshine? The fresh fruit?’ He smiled. ‘Work, I’m afraid. All I do now is travel for work.’

‘Antiques, still?’

‘Sometimes, yes, but I’ve branched out in recent years.’ ‘Vintage cars?’

‘You know?’

‘I think it was Charlotte who mentioned it. Or maybe Gracie.’ ‘You’ve quite a Templeton information network going? Yes, it started with buying and selling vintage cars, and has moved on since then, into luxury cars, chauffeur-hire businesses, that type of thing. Nina, I don’t think we were ever completely candid with you when we left, but there were financial reasons. You’re nodding. You knew?’

‘I didn’t know for sure. I guessed, I suppose.’

‘We were in a huge mess, to put it bluntly. My fault. My guilt. And therefore, it was up to me to fix it. I hoped it would be something we would face together, as a family. Unfortunately, Eleanor felt differently. She saw it as my mess entirely and my responsibility entirely to turn the situation around.’

‘Money matters are always difficult,’ she said, feeling uncomfortable, remembering faxes from Eleanor. She hadn’t gone into detail, but Nina had been under the impression that Eleanor had been very involved in everything. His next question surprised her. ‘Nina, do you ever wonder what your marriage would have been like, what your life would have been like, if your husband hadn’t died so young?’

Nina didn’t have to think about it. ‘Everything would have been different. The person I am. Where I lived. My work.’

He poured more wine into her glass, then into his. ‘Tell

me what you’d have loved to have been doing. If life could have worked out perfectly to plan.’

Nina smiled. She’d played this imaginary-life game on her own many times over the years, sometimes to console herself on lonely nights, other times to prove to herself that she’d still man aged to make a good life for herself and Tom. She felt flattered, charmed even, to be asked the question now. Everything about this whole situation felt charmed, she realised. As if she’d found herself playing a role in a film, the Hall the perfect

backdrop. She took a sip from her wine and started to talk.

By seven o’clock that night, they were still outside, still deep in conversation, still slowly drinking the wine, savouring each mouthful. By nine o’clock, they were in her kitchen, eating a pasta dish she’d prepared. They’d opened a second bottle of wine to drink with it. That bottle was nearly empty.