Tom had also started asking questions. He’d always known his father was dead, but it was only when he started school that it became a constant talking point. ‘The other kids have all got dads and I haven’t. Why not? Why did he die? Did the vet put him down?’
Nina related that particular conversation to Hilary one night after Tom had gone to bed. At least she knew what had sparked Tom’s question. One of the teachers had told her the news that day of the school cat’s untimely death.
‘It’s healthy that he’s asking questions, Nina. It’s a good thing. So did you tell him everything, at last?’
Nina hesitated before answering.
‘Nina?’
‘I changed the subject.’
‘You changed the subject? The subject being the truth about his own father’s death? Nina, you have to stop lying to him.’
But she’d had to lie to him, from the very beginning, for both their sakes. Not that everything she said had been a lie. Since the day he was old enough to understand, she’d told him the true things too, over and over again: how wanted he was, how much she and Nick had loved him from the moment they knew she was pregnant. What a punctual baby he had been, arriving right on time. But she hadn’t been able to stop there.
She’d told Tom how excited Nick had been that day in the delivery room. That his father had helped cut the umbilical cord, that Nick had been the one to shout – yes, shout – at the top of his voice, ‘It’s a boy!’ the moment Tom was born. Shout so loudly that her parents outside had been able to hear it! She’d told Tom how much Nick had loved holding him, playing with him, bathing him, dressing him. How Nick used to sing him to sleep. How good he had been at changing Tom’s nappies. How he used to get up two or three times a night just to check his little son was sleeping well. How his favourite thing to do after work was sit out on the verandah of their small house, put his feet up on the rail and nestle his baby son against his chest, telling him in the most serious of voices everything that had happened at work that day. ‘You were a great listener even back then, Tom,’ she’d tell her son.
She told him it was Nick who bought him his first football the year he turned one; his miniature cricket bat and ball set for his second birthday; the little bike with trainer wheels for his third. The child-size football jumper with his name on the back for Christmas that same year. Nick who first took him swimming at the local beach – ‘He told me you roared like a lion when your toes first touched the water.’ She’d painted every possible detail of the first three years of a father–son relationship, given Tom every memory she could, to spare him the knowledge that his father had never even seen him, let alone held him.
‘You told Tom he was three years old when his father died?’ Hilary said when Nina finally confessed. ‘Oh, Nina. Why?’
She tried to explain, to let Hilary know that she was fully aware of the mess she’d got herself into. Hilary, to her great credit, kept asking questions until she understood it all.
‘But hasn’t he ever asked to see pictures of himself with his dad?’ she asked.
Nina hesitated. ‘I told him there was a flood in one of our houses. That all the photos of them together were destroyed.’
‘Oh, Nina,’ Hilary said again.
Hilary had made her promise to tell Tom soon. Each year as his birthday approached she’d vowed to herself she’d do it. Each year the date had passed without it happening.
The year Tom turned nine, their annual move felt like any of the others. She was back working part-time by then, not as a graphic designer but as a secretary in real estate offices, hardware firms, council offices, wherever a job was on offer. As usual, on the day before the birthday-anniversary, she and Tom set off in her car, the boot and the back seat crammed with their belongings. Tom rode in the front passenger seat these days, apparently as accepting as he’d always been about this nomadic life they led. She wondered how much longer that would last. She’d already seen signs of independence from him. Until now, he’d always cheerfully accepted her reasons for moving. She’d tell him work had dried up where they were. Or that she’d heard about a great town she wanted to show him. Or sometimes she’d simply turned it into a kind of story, describing them as two characters from a book, off having adventures.
‘I’ll miss this place,’ he’d said the previous day as she was packing what little they’d gathered around them in the latest rental apartment.
She’d looked up in surprise. ‘This place? What’s special about this place?’
‘I like my room. And my friends at school.’
‘Oh, Tom, you’ll get a new room even better than this one. And new friends.’
‘Do I always have to keep making new friends? Can’t I start keeping some old ones?’
As they drove away the next morning, his words echoed in her head. For a moment she considered staying on in that town, pretending her pretend job in a still-to-be-chosen new place had fallen through, re-enrolling Tom in the small primary school. But something urged her to keep going. That town hadn’t been the right place for them, she told herself. Perhaps the next one would be. Wherever that next place was. She still hadn’t decided.
‘I’ve got a great idea,’ she said, pulling over to the side of the road. They’d passed the last of the houses and buildings and there was now nothing around them but empty paddocks and gum trees, the highway stretching out in front of them. ‘You’re the soon-to-be birthday boy. You choose where we’re going to live next.’
She handed him the map of Australia, silently hoping he wouldn’t choose Perth, nearly four thousand kilometres to the west, or Tasmania, not just a long drive but a ferry journey away. He considered the map closely, and then pointed to the middle of Victoria, the neighbouring state. She gently lifted his finger and read the name of the town he’d chosen.
‘Castlemaine. Why Castlemaine, Tom?’
‘I like castles,’ he said.
‘Me too.’ Not that she’d ever seen one in real life and not that there’d be any in Castlemaine, she thought. ‘Castlemaine it is, birthday boy.’
She’d never been to Castlemaine or the goldfields area before. She’d never even been to Victoria. But something happened as she and Tom drove in to the town late the following afternoon. The light was beautiful, soft and golden, warming the old stone buildings that lined the wide main street. Following Tom’s directions to turn left here, turn right there, go in this or that direction, the more she saw, the more she liked. The architecture was so varied, everything from a large market building with columns and statues that looked like it had been transplanted from Italy to an Art Deco theatre, even several extraordinary gabled and Gothic churches. They drove down tree-lined side roads, past a cheerful-looking primary school, plenty of shops, a swimming pool, even an impressive art gallery.
After booking into a small hotel, they bought fish and chips from a shop on the main street and sat eating it out of the paper on a nearby bench. Two people smiled and said hello to them as they walked by. A small dog came running up, accepted a chip and then ran away again. In a big tree across from them a flock of bright-pink galahs suddenly took flight, turning the air into a whirlpool of pink and grey to a soundtrack of harsh but vibrant squawks.
Tom watched it all, saying nothing, before eating his last chip and turning to her. ‘I like it here.’
‘Me too,’ she said.
They spent the next week touring the area in search of a rental property. She wanted space, privacy. After looking at dozens of places, they found a small, simply furnished farmhouse out in the countryside, twenty minutes from Castlemaine itself. It was perfect. She’d never have imagined herself settling thousands of kilometres from the tropical landscape she knew best, but from that first day she saw beauty in the wide paddocks, the big sky, the gentle lines of the surrounding hills. It was a small brick cottage, with a red door, a front and back garden and nothing but space and clear views for miles around. They moved in that week. Two days after, Tom started at the loc
al school.
The first weeks in the farmhouse were lonely, but she didn’t let anyone, least of all Tom or her family, know it. With her Sydney-based landlord’s permission, she painted every room a different colour, choosing bright yellows, vibrant blues, warm reds. She drove to Castlemaine and the other nearby towns of Bendigo and Ballarat, trawling through second-hand shops for extra furniture, vases, curtain material. She visited markets for plant cuttings. She bought new linen, her one luxury.
She started drawing again. She hadn’t expected that, either. She’d been painting the living-room wall, Tom beside her, doing a small section of his own. Bored, he drew what he insisted was a dog.
‘Very good,’ she said. ‘Does your dog need a friend?’ At his nod, she surprised him and herself by painting a quick, expert sketch of a cartoon dog, his mouth open and a bubble coming out in which she wrote ‘Woof!’
Tom’s eyes opened wide. ‘Do another one,’ he said.
She drew another dog. Tom asked for a cat. A giraffe. A monkey. A kangaroo. She’d have kept drawing all night if Tom had his way. That night after he went to bed she painted over the drawings, finishing the room. The next morning he was sad to see they were gone. ‘I loved those animals.’
She started again the moment she got back from the school run, mixing colours, preparing the background, in a kind of creative frenzy, almost dizzy with the joy of it. She didn’t stop until it was time to collect him. She led him in that afternoon, insisting he keep his eyes shut until she gave the word. The ache in her arms faded the instant she saw the look on his face.
She’d covered the main wall in his bedroom with a mural of cartoon Australian animals: kangaroos, koalas, dingos, echidnas, even a platypus. Not childish ones: cheeky ones, filled with personality. They were swimming in blue-hued creeks, playing on dark-red soil, climbing spiky-leafed trees, peeking from behind lush green bushes and shrubs. She’d even painted native birds on the ceiling: dusky-pink and grey galahs; red, yellow and green parrots; plump kookaburras.
‘About time,’ Hilary said, when Nina mentioned it. Two days later the postman delivered a large box filled with canvases, brushes and fine-quality oil paints. There was no note inside. There didn’t need to be one. Nina knew exactly what Hilary was telling her.
Her mother said what happened next was divine intervention, but Nina had long since given up on God. She knew it was just coincidence and good timing. Two months after she and Tom moved to Victoria, before she’d managed to find a secretarial job and just as her financial situation was getting worrying, one of her old classmates from the Brisbane college tracked her down. He was now working for a commercial products company in Melbourne. They were launching a range of biscuits and needed a gimmick. He’d remembered a little cartoon kid she used to draw in class, to amuse herself and her classmates. Would she be interested? He couldn’t promise anything, the company were looking at lots of other graphic artists’ work as well …
She faxed through a dozen sketches that same day. Her classmate rang with the good news that she’d got the contract, more excited about it than she was.
If the company loved them, the general public didn’t. All the hope and relief she felt when she got the contract evaporated six months later when the company discontinued the line.
Those were her lowest days and nights. She and Tom alone in an isolated farmhouse, miles from anyone. She turned her fear and anger on to Nick again, forcing herself to forget how much she’d loved him, to forget his kindness, his gentleness, cursing him for crashing, for leaving her, for leaving them both. This wasn’t what she’d imagined her life would be. She’d wanted a happy life. What had she done to deserve this?
She didn’t tell her parents or her sister about her situation. They would have urged her to come home and that would have been even worse. Despite everything, her financial worries, her loneliness, she felt somehow she was right to be where she was, in that landscape. Slowly, tentatively, she started painting the views around her house. Her early efforts were too formal, too neat, her graphic art training taking over too strongly. While Tom slept, she kept painting, reusing canvases. Her hours sitting on the verandah gazing out across the paddocks began to reap rewards, as she slowly captured the muted colours, the glow of light on eucalypt trunks, the subtle colour changes in the grasses, the earth, the stones.
Her friend from college came to her rescue again. Visiting one afternoon with his wife, he noticed the canvases, the paints, the jars of brushes and asked to see the paintings. They were good, he told her. Very good. He felt guilty that the last deal hadn’t worked out. Maybe she wouldn’t trust him again, but he was doing some work for a company that produced generic souvenirs for tourists. Tins of biscuits, rulers, playing cards, anything that could be decorated with an Australian image. Could he show them her work?
They signed her up immediately. Her classmate negotiated it all. The money wasn’t great, there would be no public recognition – she’d be handing over all the rights to the souvenir company. But the income would be steady and she could do it all from home.
She’d supported herself and Tom that way ever since. Her paintings had appeared on postcards, tea towels, on guide book covers, on biscuit tins. She painted whatever they asked her, from real life if they needed bush scenes, from photographs if they wanted wildlife. She never complained, never asked for more work than they offered. She wasn’t ambitious. What she wanted was security.
She knew her parents still worried about her. So did her sister. But they’d also slowly realised Nina was, not happy – perhaps that wasn’t the right word – but content. Settled. That living down south suited her, even if it definitely wasn’t for them. They visited often, picking the season carefully, finding the Victorian weather very cold after warm, tropical Queensland.
It was Hilary’s visits Nina most looked forward to. Hilary always seemed so calm, so unfazed by life’s tribulations. Her most recent visit had been the week after Tom was grounded. Nina was glad of a third person in the house. She’d had to force herself to stick to the rules of the grounding, putting up with Tom’s silences and the angry bowling of his cricket ball against the rainwater tank, over and again, day after day, when he knew the sound of it drove Nina crazy when she was trying to paint.
Over dinner on Hilary’s first night, Tom talked non-stop about Spencer and Templeton Hall.
‘It sounds like it’s a great place, Tom,’ Hilary said, shooting a glance across at her sister. ‘It’s just a shame you went missing on your mum like that, and worried her sick.’
After Tom had gone to bed, Nina and Hilary sat by the fire, sharing a bottle of local red.
‘Thanks for backing me up,’ Nina said. ‘I was starting to wish I hadn’t grounded him.’
‘He’s just punishing you for punishing him. He’ll get over it. Lesson learnt.’ She turned to check that Tom’s bedroom door was completely closed and then spoke in a lower voice. ‘But what exactly’s the problem with this Spencer Templeton? Is he a devil worshipper? Or do you just not want your son to have a friend?’
‘He’s got plenty of friends.’
‘Not friends who live a couple of paddocks away. Nina, Tom’s a great, well-behaved kid. Don’t let one mistake spoil what could be a good friendship for him.’
‘I just don’t think he should spend too much time at Templeton Hall.’
‘Why not? I’d have loved a place like that to visit when I was Tom’s age. What are you going to do, keep him in a cage until he’s eighteen?’
‘I don’t want his head turned. And don’t laugh, you know what I mean.’ She tried to make light of it. ‘Come on, Hilary. It’s not as if the Templetons are a normal family living in a normal house. They couldn’t be any more different. Me, the single mother, struggling to make ends meet, while the people in the big house throw parties and take baths in champagne —’
‘Single mother? You’re a widow, Nina, and I still don’t understand why you feel the need to keep it a secret. And don’t
give me that “don’t want anyone’s pity” excuse.’
‘It’s not an excuse. It’s a simple truth. And we’re talking about the Templetons, not me. They’re a much more fascinating subject than I am.’
‘You really are obsessed with them, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not obsessed with them. I’m mildly curious about them. That’s different.’
‘So go and visit the Hall again. Get to know them. See if they’re suitable for Tom.’
‘I can’t. You made me promise after the fete to have nothing more to do with them.’
‘Two years ago, it was. But I didn’t realise you’re still fretting about them. Go and lance the boil, Nina. Face your fears. You’ve come a long way since then. So have they, by the sound of things. Did you hear they won a big award?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that they held a wedding there a month ago?’
Hilary had obviously been talking to people in Castlemaine. Local gossip was the Templetons had spray-painted the garden hedges green to look better in the photographs. The bride was now apparently suing for damage after discovering green streaks all over her dress.
Hilary smiled. ‘It could get tricky avoiding them if Tom becomes best friends with their son. They’ll be dropping by for cups of tea and nice chats before you know it.’
‘Tom won’t become best friends with their son and they won’t start dropping by for cups of tea or even glasses of water.’
‘Want to bet on it?’
‘No, I do not. Now, shut up and pass me the wine.’
For the rest of Hilary’s visit, Nina managed to avoid any more conversation about the Templetons.
Now, though, as she walked out to her car to go and collect Tom, she regretted not making that bet after all. She’d have definitely won it. In the days since Hilary’s visit, Tom had stopped even mentioning Spencer Templeton. The Templetons certainly hadn’t been beating a path to her front door to try to make friends, either.
At Home with the Templetons Page 9