At Home with the Templetons

by Monica McInerney

  The sobs stopped. ‘Forget it. I’ll find my own way.’

  Hope reached for the door handle as Nina was starting the engine. Just as quickly, Nina reached across and pulled it shut. To her relief, Hope didn’t fight her, just began crying again, covering her face with her hands.

  Nina hesitated again. If she took Hope to the police station now, word would be all around the area within hours. But then, when weren’t people in the local area talking about the Templetons? And what was the alternative? If she did start driving her home, there was every chance Hope would leap out while the car was moving. If they did make it safely, Nina wasn’t sure she wanted to be witness to the homecoming scene either.

  ‘The police station it is, then,’ she said, more cheerfully than she felt.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Why am I coming too?’ Gracie said, a week later, as she, Henry and Spencer walked down the driveway towards the farmhouse several paddocks away.

  ‘To make a good impression,’ Henry said. ‘That face of yours could melt icebergs.’

  ‘But I only met Tom once.’

  ‘And now you’ll have met him twice. Remember to smile, Gracie. You too, Spencer. Use every drop of family charm and before the end of the day, we’ll have a friend for you, Spencer, or my name isn’t Henry Charles Templeton.’

  ‘The third,’ Gracie said.

  ‘The third,’ Henry agreed.

  In her house, Nina was panicking. There was no other word for it. Answering the phone to Henry Templeton was one thing, but before she’d got over that shock, he’d invited himself over. There was something he needed to discuss, he said to her, in the deep, cultured tone she remembered from the day of the fete. Realising it was about Hope, she agreed to a visit.

  ‘Thank you, Nina,’ he said. ‘These things are much better face to face. We’ll see you shortly.’

  She didn’t have time to ask who he meant by ‘we’ before he hung up. Himself and Eleanor? Henry and Eleanor and Hope, dragged along to apologise? How was Nina going to be able to sit with all three of them and act as if everything was normal? Pretend she heard stories of affairs like theirs every week and they didn’t bother her in the slightest?

  There wasn’t time to ring Hilary to ask her advice. She was too busy tidying the house, sweeping the kitchen floor and cursing the fact she worked from home, which meant the living room was taken up with her easels and canvases and paints.

  She called Tom three times from the front verandah but he didn’t answer. She went to the very bottom of their garden and called again. He was building a tree house, he’d told her that morning. She just didn’t know in which tree. There were hundreds of them in the paddocks around their house. He finally heard her the fourth time.

  ‘Tom, come home. Quick!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘The Templetons are coming. The father and some others.’

  A minute passed before Tom came into sight. He looked like he’d been rolling in dust. ‘So what? They’re just people.’

  ‘No, they’re not.’

  ‘They are. I’ve met them.’

  He ambled towards her. She had to stop herself from shouting at him to hurry up. ‘Quick. Go inside and comb your hair.’

  He ran his hands through his hair, sending up spikes. ‘No. And I’m not changing either.’ He grinned. ‘Mum, calm down.’

  ‘I am calm.’

  In her room, Nina caught sight of herself in the wardrobe mirror. She wasn’t in the least bit calm. She was a cross between over-excited and wild-eyed. What had got into her? Why was she in such a state? She stopped, told herself to breathe deeply and relax. It was just her neighbours calling by. The neighbours she’d done her best to avoid. The neighbours she’d rung and shouted at just a month before when Tom went missing. The neighbours she’d learnt far too much about from a drunken Hope just a few days earlier … She heard the sound of footsteps on the verandah.

  The neighbours who were now at her front door.

  Tom got to them first. He was very relaxed. ‘Hi, Spencer. Hi, Gracie. Hi, Henry.’

  ‘Mr Templeton, Tom, not Henry,’ Nina said behind him, trying to hide her surprise that he’d brought his children with him to discuss a subject like Hope.

  ‘Oh no, Henry is fine,’ Henry Templeton said, extending a hand, smiling broadly. He introduced his two children. ‘And you must be Nina. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  ‘Again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘We met at your first fete. In the dining room with Tom and your sister-in-law.’

  ‘With Hope?’

  ‘Yes, Hope.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Spencer said.

  Henry frowned. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t remember that occasion. We’ve had quite a few people through the house since then.’

  ‘Was Hope dressed? Drunk? Throwing herself down the stairs?’ Spencer asked in a bored voice.

  Henry placed a hand on his son’s shoulder but didn’t seem too concerned. ‘That’s enough, Spencer. I’m sorry, Nina. Can you remind me what happened? It clearly upset you if you can remember it more than two years later.’

  ‘Your sister-in-law made some racist comments. You came in and spoke to me then.’

  ‘Was I masterful? Did I deal promptly with the awkward situation?’

  She stood up straighter. ‘It wasn’t a laughing matter, actually.’

  ‘I can see that now. I do apologise again.’ He paused. ‘May we come in, all the same?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  As she led them inside, Nina could see all three Templetons taking in every detail of her living room, from the non-matching furniture to the second-hand curtains to her painting paraphernalia in one corner. The whole room suddenly looked too small, too crowded, too colourful, lacking in any real style. She was embarrassed for herself and Tom.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Gracie said, gazing around. ‘I’d love to live here.’

  Nina couldn’t stop a laugh. ‘I’m sure. Swap your house for this one?’

  ‘But it feels so warm and it looks so inviting. Doesn’t it, Dad?’

  Inviting? Where had a child of that age learnt a word like that? Calling her father ‘Dad’ surprised Nina too. What had she expected, though? Your Majesty?

  ‘You’re an artist?’ Henry Templeton said. ‘Well, of course you are. Unless this is all your work, Tom, is it?’

  ‘I taught her everything she knows,’ Tom said.

  They all laughed.

  ‘Please, sit down,’ Nina said, hoping to distract them from her paintings. ‘Can I get you a cold drink? Coffee? Tea?’

  ‘Tea would be lovely for all three of us.’

  Of course, Nina thought, kicking herself for offering. What did she have? Six chipped mugs, teabags and a packet of yo-yo biscuits. What were they used to? Fine china, imported tea, wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches?

  ‘Can I help?’ Gracie asked. ‘I love making tea.’

  ‘Thanks, but no, I’m fine,’ Nina said. The living room was chaotic enough. She didn’t need the Templetons seeing her kitchen as well.

  ‘She’s a very good helper,’ Henry said. ‘She’s also not good at taking no for an answer. Are you, Gracie?’

  ‘Only when I really want to do something. And I do love making tea.’

  Nina gave in. Gracie followed her into the kitchen, then stopped, looking around at the brightly painted walls, the open shelves of coloured plates and mugs, the large window overlooking the back paddock. As Nina put the kettle on to boil, the little girl turned in a full circle, gazing at the opposite wall covered in small framed landscape paintings, before sighing softly. ‘Your kitchen is lovely too. Did you really do all these paintings? How long have you lived here, Nina? Do you have a husband?’

  Nina’s surprise at the sudden rush of questions must have showed.

  Gracie blushed. ‘I’m sorry. Mum always tells me off for being too curious. You don’t have to answer me. That was just to give you an idea of the sorts of th
ings I would ask if it wasn’t so rude.’

  Nina smiled then. ‘You weren’t being rude. It’s good to be curious. Let me ask you a question first, though. How old are you?’

  ‘I’m eleven,’ Gracie said, beaming. ‘Spencer is ten. Audrey is sixteen. Charlotte is seventeen, nearly eighteen. Mum is thirty-nine. Dad’s about to turn fifty. We’ve lived here at Templeton Hall for two years. Before that we moved all over England because of Dad’s job. Is Tom your only child?’

  As the kettle boiled with a loud whistle, Nina nodded, glad of the interruption. She watched as Gracie expertly warmed the teapot, put in the teabags and poured in the water, talking all the while. ‘I hope you don’t mind us arriving out of the blue like this. We’ve been discussing it for the past few days. We need your help, you see.’

  ‘With Hope?’

  ‘Hope?’ Gracie looked puzzled. ‘No. Why would we need your help with her? She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  Gracie nodded. ‘Back to England, last week. It was the best for everybody. Mum’s gone with her, just to get her settled. Hope has problems with her moods. And her nerves. And drink. And tablets. Lots of problems, really. Charlotte and Audrey, my sisters – have you met them yet? No. Well, they call her Hopeless, which is funny but mean, Dad says. Mum says we have to be understanding, that Hope isn’t well. Do you have a sister?’

  Nina was trying to keep up. ‘Yes, one. Her name’s Hilary.’

  ‘Is she sane?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly.’

  ‘Good,’ Gracie said solemnly.

  ‘But if you’re not here about Hope, why are you here?’

  Gracie lowered her voice. ‘It’s about Spencer. He’s getting out of hand again.’

  ‘Your parents want my help with Spencer?’

  ‘Not yours, your son’s,’ Gracie said, speaking at a normal volume again. ‘Mum and Dad think Spencer is bored on his own so much, so they’ve decided it might be a good idea if your son comes and plays with him sometimes. Especially over the next week or two while we’re unofficially on school holidays, with Mum being away. She home-schools us, you see. In the drawing room. But we’re on a break and Spencer is at a loose end. That’s why we’re here. To ask your permission about your son. Will you let him?’

  Nina was again having trouble keeping up. ‘Let who?’

  ‘Let Tom play with Spencer. Though I’d say it will be Spencer playing with Tom here, with that dam you have. Spencer took me there to catch yabbies but I didn’t want to. It’s more of a boy thing to do, don’t you think? Shall we take the tea in now?’

  When they came in, Henry was alone in the living room, looking at Nina’s paintings. He turned, came across and took the tray from her. ‘Lovely, thank you so much. I can’t pretend it was an arduous journey over. What is it, ten minutes walk at the most? So I’m hardly dying of thirst but I could drink tea all day long.’

  ‘You don’t, though,’ Gracie said, reaching for the teapot and beginning to pour. ‘You drink it in the day and then you have wine at night. Or whisky.’

  ‘That’s right, Gracie. So I do.’ He nodded towards the paintings. ‘Your work is charming, Nina. So evocative. You capture the mood of the landscape perfectly.’

  Thrown by the praise, Nina thanked him, then changed the subject. ‘Where are the boys?’

  ‘Tom said something about a cubbyhouse,’ Henry said. ‘Spencer said something like “Cool.” Then they were gone, faster than the speed of light. Never mind. It might be easier to talk about them while they’re not here.’

  Nina was wondering if she could feign ignorance about what she’d just been told in the kitchen, when Gracie made the decision for her.

  ‘I was just telling Nina the reason we’re here, Dad,’ Gracie said in a composed voice. ‘I hope I didn’t make Spencer sound too wild or out of control, did I, Nina?’

  ‘No, no, you didn’t.’

  ‘He is, though, isn’t he, Dad?’ She turned back to Nina. ‘We gave him a chemistry set for his birthday and it was a big mistake. Stink bombs. Explosions. He mixed up some powders once and put them in all the toilets – sorry, the lavatories – and you’ve never seen such a mess. You see, it reacted with —’

  ‘That’s probably enough detail, Gracie, thank you. We’re here to make a good impression, not scare Nina.’

  ‘I just thought it was best to be as candid as possible.’

  ‘Candid?’ Nina said.

  Gracie gave her a sympathetic look. ‘It means truthful, straightforward. Nina thought we were here to talk about Hope, Dad. So I informed her that Hope and Mum were in England —’

  Henry put his mug back on the tray. ‘Gracie, would you like to go and find the boys?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Gracie, would you like to go and find the boys?’

  ‘You mean you want me to leave so you and Nina can talk in private?’ At Henry’s nod, she stood up. ‘How long will I give you?’

  ‘Five minutes should be fine. I don’t want to take up any more of Nina’s time. I’m sure we’ve interrupted her work as it is.’

  ‘Five minutes. Good, see you then.’ At the door, Gracie turned back. ‘Do I have to play with the boys? Have you any pets, Nina?’

  Nina was now finding it hard not to smile. ‘We have hens, a lizard that lives under the tank and a fairly wild cat. He’s called Tiger.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances with Tiger. See you in five minutes.’

  They could hear her calling the cat’s name even before they heard the back door open.

  Nina turned to Henry Templeton, once again fighting a feeling of unreality. Henry Templeton of Templeton Hall was here in her living room, drinking tea out of her mug and looking like there was nowhere he’d rather be. He also seemed to be in no hurry to begin the conversation about Spencer.

  Nina was quick to fill the silence. ‘She’s quite something, that daughter of yours.’

  He smiled. ‘She is, isn’t she? Precocious, really, though I’m sure she’d give us four other words with a similar meaning. Our own fault, of course. She is constantly stimulated and constantly curious, which we thought was marvellous until we realised there’s no off button. You don’t have to answer all her questions. I find it works well to tell her she needs to be patient. That she can’t learn everything all at once or her brain might explode. But then of course she asked me were there any documented examples of a brain exploding due to too much information.’

  Nina laughed, about to share a similar story about Tom, when she stopped herself. ‘So, you wanted to talk to me about Spencer?’

  ‘I did, yes. Let me explain, Nina. The two children are usually home-schooled, but with their mother away at the moment, I’ve realised Spencer is lacking any structure to his day. Gracie’s happy to keep studying but Spencer definitely needs company. He has so much energy, you see. And the other problem is he’s fearless. If you tell him something’s dangerous, he wants to try it then and there.’

  ‘He sounds like most boys.’

  ‘Does he? After three daughters, we still don’t know what’s hit us. That’s why we’re here to ask your help. Or your son’s help, at least. We are wondering if we could come to some sort of arrangement regarding Tom spending time with Spencer?’

  ‘Arrangement? As in a timetable?’

  ‘We can have a timetable, of course. What I meant was a financial arrangement.’

  ‘You want to pay Tom to play with your son?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We got off to such a bad start with you when Tom went missing that day. We can’t just march in here and say, “Our son needs company. Can we borrow your son for a few hours a week to try and run some of the energy out of ours?” ’

  ‘Why can’t you? Isn’t that how friendships are made the world over?’

  ‘But we didn’t want to seem presumptuous. If you’d been at all interested in your son becoming friends with our son, you’d have visited us long before now. Long before Tom and Spencer came across each other them
selves.’

  Nina was wavering between being taken aback and annoyed. She decided on annoyed. ‘How do you think Spencer would feel if he heard his father had to buy friends for him?’

  ‘Spencer already knows. It was his idea.’

  Nina blinked. ‘Is he really that bad? He can’t make friends on his own?’

  ‘I’m not sure if bad is the right word. A little dangerous to be around, but he’s great company. You just have to keep your wits about you. He hides. Climbs. Makes things. Then destroys them. He was active enough in the UK. He moves at twice the speed here. All this space, I suppose.’

  ‘Moving countries when he was so young was probably disruptive for him.’ Nina couldn’t believe she was calmly offering her opinion.

  ‘It was disruptive for us all, yes. But exciting too. You’ve never been back to the Hall since the fete, have you? And all because of Hope. Nina, I do apologise again. She’s – let me think how best to put it – a very fragile person. A difficult person in many ways. But what a shame that she turned you against us.’

  Nina couldn’t stop herself. ‘It wasn’t just that.’

  ‘Oh, dear. There was more?’

  She wanted to tell him, she realised. After being so private for so long, she suddenly wanted to tell someone – to tell him – everything. About Nick’s death, about running away, time after time, until she found this place, thinking it was a sanctuary of sorts. Until the Templetons arrived and somehow began to unsettle her. Henry Templeton was watching her. Giving her his full attention. It made her feel … good. Yes, good. Interesting. Worthy of attention. She would tell him. It was only fair. She had judged him, it seemed, from afar and too quickly. She could almost hear Hilary urging her on. ‘Clear the air, Nina. It’ll do you good.’ She took a breath, about to speak —

  ‘Has that been five minutes?’ It was Gracie, back in the doorway, holding an annoyed-looking ginger cat. ‘He was sleeping in the sun,’ she said. ‘Is he a house cat or an outside cat?’

  ‘He’s an indoor and an outdoor cat,’ Nina said, glad and sorry for the interruption.

  ‘Test that, Gracie, would you?’ Henry said. ‘Take him outside for five more minutes and see if he’s happier there.’