At Home with the Templetons

by Monica McInerney

  Charlotte ignored it. ‘So you haven’t heard Hope’s voicemail yet? She said on her message to me that she was ringing everyone today. I haven’t tried Audrey or Spencer yet, mind you. Spencer’s probably propping up the bar in some Irish pub and I can never work out what time it is for Audrey in New Zealand. You’re sure Hope hasn’t left a message on your phone?’

  ‘I’m not home, I told you, and she hasn’t got my new mobile number yet. Charlotte, I have to go. Wish me luck, would you?’

  ‘With what? Oh, that job. No, I don’t want you to get some stupid job with Captain Cook. I want to you to come and work for me. I hope you make a mess of the interview.’ At Gracie’s anguished wail, she laughed. ‘Of course I wish you luck. You’ll be brilliant. And ring me back as soon as you get out. We have to get to the bottom of this Hope business. United we stand, divided we fall, remember.’

  Gracie pushed the mobile into the bottom of her bag. It was three minutes to ten. She hesitated, then reached into her bag again, searching for the silver whistle, holding it for just a few seconds, trying to calm her nerves. It worked. It always did. Straightening her shoulders, she walked across to the museum.

  Fifteen minutes later, in front of the panel of three, she knew the interview wasn’t going well. She hadn’t even got to her presentation yet.

  ‘You don’t seem to stay long in any job, Ms Templeton, do you?’ one of the interviewers asked, glancing down at her CV. ‘You’ve had what, twelve jobs in the past eight years? Stayed at each of them for an average of six months? How can we be sure this position would be any different?’

  ‘Because I really want this job,’ she said passionately.

  ‘So you didn’t really want the job as …’ the man looked at her CV again, ‘a theatre administrator in Brighton? Community festival organiser in Stoke Newington? Nursing assistant in Reading?’

  It was an awful kind of This is Your Life, hearing him list her failures like that. She made a last-ditch effort, racing through her laptop presentation about Captain Cook’s life, ending on the highlight that her great-great-great uncle on her grandmother’s side had actually sailed with Cook.

  ‘Really?’ one of the interviewers said, looking interested for the first time. ‘What was his name?’

  Gracie’s mind went blank. Had she ever known his name? Had her father ever known his name? She felt the colour rising in her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t remember.’

  ‘We’ve got records of the names of Cook’s fellow sailors on those early ships if you’d like to look through them?’

  Gracie suddenly had a horrible feeling her father had made that story up. She started to talk, to try to cover her embarrassment. ‘I might have it wrong. It might have been on my grandfather’s side. My great-great-grandfather. He was from Yorkshire, I think. Or Scotland, perhaps. I haven’t really studied my family tree lately. It was my father’s great interest. He told me all the stories when I was a child. We used to live in Australia, you see, which was founded by Captain Cook —’

  ‘Oh, really?’ one of the interviewers said drily.

  She couldn’t seem to stop talking now. ‘My father inherited a beautiful colonial house. We lived there for three years, running it as a kind of museum. That’s when I first got interested in history, and so I thought this job could be perfect. History and Cook together.’ Her voice trailed off. She knew from their expressions that they either didn’t believe her or weren’t really listening any more.

  The woman who showed her out from the museum ten minutes later was kind. ‘I’m sorry you weren’t successful today, Gracie,’ she said. ‘It’s just that we’ve had a few too many people coming and going lately and we need to be sure the new person stays for a few years. And I’m afraid your track record just doesn’t give us that confidence.’

  ‘But I would have stayed, I’m sure of it.’

  The woman didn’t seem convinced. ‘Have you ever thought about counselling?’

  Gracie nodded. ‘I tried it for five months, but that didn’t work out either.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you be a counsellor, Gracie. I think it might help you to see one.’

  On the train back to London, Gracie thought about the woman’s words. It wasn’t the first time counselling had been mentioned to her. Her mother, her sisters, even short-lived work colleagues had made everything from gentle to blunt suggestions that she could benefit from what her mother called ‘professional help’.

  ‘The accident was a traumatic experience, Gracie,’ Eleanor said. ‘There’s no reason why you should bounce back from it or be ashamed that it is still impacting on you. Look what a difference it made to Audrey to get professional advice.’

  Gracie tried to make light of it. ‘You’re trying to marry me off as well?’

  Her mother smiled. ‘No, darling, I’m not. I’m trying to make life better for you.’

  ‘My problems finding a job aren’t connected with the accident.’

  They both knew she wasn’t telling the truth. In the eight years since that night in Italy, she’d found it hard to settle to anything for very long. She hadn’t just tried many different jobs, she’d moved from flat to flat in different parts of London, living on her own, living in share houses, moving back home, out again. She’d even tried to return to university again, without success. No matter how hard she tried, each new venture didn’t last long. Something had changed inside her. Everything had changed.

  If she’d ever been stopped in the street and asked why, she knew the accident was the answer. Everything before then had seemed light-hearted, fun, promising, optimistic. Not bathed in a constant happy glow, of course. She’d been a witness to the slow disintegration of her parents’ marriage, after all. But before Italy, she’d felt optimistic about so many things. She’d believed that the world was a good, fair place, full of possibilities and adventure.

  Most of all, she’d known that what she felt for Tom, and he felt for her, wasn’t just the flush of first love. It mattered. It was serious. The fact their relationship had developed so quickly, so naturally, was fate, not luck, wasn’t it?

  Yet that was where her thinking came unstuck each time. If she believed fate had brought them together, she also had to believe fate had torn them apart. Or could she have somehow avoided it happening? What if she and Tom had picked a different place in Europe to meet Spencer, if she had chosen a different restaurant that night, somehow changed all the steps it took for the three of them to be exactly where they were that night, in that exact spot when Spencer pulled at her plait, at the exact moment that the truck appeared over the hill? Would everything be different now? Or had fate decided from the moment she and Tom met as children at Templeton Hall that it would end in disaster, physically for him, emotionally for her?

  Gracie bit down on her lip to try and stop her thoughts going any further. She’d learnt by experience that the only way to do that was by distracting herself. She tried now, turning up her iPod, taking out a magazine, staring out the train window at the passing scenery when the magazine didn’t help. None of it worked. Too many memories of that night, of the days afterward, the years afterward, were now in the carriage with her. They were always with her.

  ‘You need to work through it,’ people kept telling her. ‘Talk about it.’

  She knew she did. But there were only two people in the world who could understand how she was feeling. Tom, most of all. Yet despite every possible approach, every wish and hope, he had never contacted her again. That’s what hurt so much, as much as the guilt she still felt about the accident, every single day. His silence.

  As for Spencer … Since that night in Italy, she and Spencer had spoken about the accident only once, two years afterwards. They’d fought, not talked.

  They’d been at their mother’s for dinner. Spencer had just returned from his latest jaunt, once again funded by Hope. After Victor had died suddenly six months previously, Spencer had moved back in with his aunt. ‘She needs my company and support,’ he
’d said in one of his rare emails to his sisters. ‘You need a free place to live now you’ve lost that courier job, more like it,’ Charlotte had emailed back. Charlotte also had plenty to say when Spencer emailed to gloat about the big backpacking trip through South America he was about to take, again at Hope’s expense. ‘It’s a thank you gift,’ he’d said. ‘Hope said she couldn’t have coped with her grief for Victor if I hadn’t been around.’ ‘She’s had enough and is paying to get you out of her sight for a few months, you mean,’ Charlotte replied.

  Spencer had seemed so carefree, Gracie recalled, his blond curls long and tousled, his skin tanned. He looked sixteen, not nearly twenty. He greeted her cheerily, asked only in passing if she was working yet – she wasn’t – before going to the fridge, helping himself to a beer, flicking through the latest batch of postcards that had arrived from his father, and then taking a seat at the dining table, sure of his place again, sure of his charm.

  Reluctantly, wanting to keep her distance, Gracie had sat back a little. Before long, though, she’d found herself smiling as story after story spilled from him. Calamity-filled trips on decrepit public transport. Nights spent sleeping on beaches, being woken by urinating dogs. Surfing lessons in Mexico, where two weeks later he’d ended up running the classes.

  ‘You can’t surf, can you?’ Eleanor asked. ‘You can barely swim.’

  ‘Neither could the students. That’s why we got on so well.’

  As Eleanor laughed, a jealous feeling flashed through Gracie. Her mother had been so low lately, after more fights with Henry over outstanding bills via their lawyers. Gracie knew she hadn’t been any fun to have around either. Yet here was Spencer, waltzing in, throwing his charm around, clearly telling lie after lie, not only managing to make their mother smile again, but to laugh – laugh so much in fact she was actually crying.

  ‘It’s as well I don’t know half of what you get up to, Spencer,’ Eleanor said, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘I’d never sleep at night.’

  ‘I actually decided it was time you knew exactly what I got up to while I was away,’ he grinned. ‘So I’ve brought back documentary proof.’

  He rummaged in the battered backpack on the floor beside him, finally taking out a large envelope which he passed to his mother.

  As Gracie saw her mother’s eyes grow wide as she read whatever was inside it, she couldn’t resist going across too. It was a newspaper article, with a large headline: SHARK BOY! Underneath was a photo of Spencer grinning into the camera, giving a thumbs up and holding up his shirt to show a large white bandage on the left side of his chest. A large, dead shark lay on the sand beside him. It was a short article.

  Lucky to be alive: Pictured on Saturday, Spencer Templeton, 19, originally from the UK, beside the shark that nearly took his life. ‘If I’d known it was as big as this, I’d have swum twice as fast,’ the lucky youngster said. Templeton, in the middle of a backpacking trip through the region, was attacked by the shark on Thursday while surfing with friends. He says he still doesn’t know how he managed to fight the shark off, attributing it to a combination of ‘blind fear and adrenaline – and a strong desire not to end up as shark food’.

  ‘It’s fake, isn’t it?’ Gracie said. ‘One of those dummy newspapers.’

  Spencer lifted his shirt. There was a long scar down the left side of his chest.

  ‘Spencer!’ Eleanor gasped. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘One mercy mission in a lifetime is enough, don’t you think?’

  ‘What on earth happened?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just as it said in the paper. I was surfing with some mates and my board suddenly tilted up. I thought it was one of them messing around, then it happened again. Next thing I knew I felt this God-almighty pain in my chest and I don’t know what happened next, whether it was instinct or blind fear, but I used the board and pushed it away and then it came at me again. I pushed again, and then a wave took me, just swept me up and away from it. I landed on the beach, blood everywhere, people screaming, me screaming. Everyone saw it happen.’

  Eleanor’s hand was at her mouth. ‘You swam away from a shark?’

  He nodded proudly.

  ‘You’re like a cat with nine lives, Spencer,’ Gracie said.

  ‘Cheers, Gracie.’ He laughed then. Sniggered, she’d thought afterwards. Like a schoolboy in a comic. ‘Except it’s not true, of course.’

  ‘The photo’s a fake?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘Oh, no, that’s real. And there was a shark. It’s the story that’s made up. It was a local English-language paper. No one reads it but a few tourists. They needed a story to go with the pic, so my mate and I hatched it up between us.’

  ‘But what about your scar?’ Gracie asked.

  A grin. ‘Dad’s number-one rule. Base a lie on the truth. I’d ripped my chest open a couple of days before when I was trying to surf. Some bastard ship-owner had thrown a box out. I fell off my board onto it, bled like mad. It looked like a shark bite, it bled like a shark bite, so the next day when someone caught an actual shark …’ He shrugged. ‘The paper took loads of photos of people beside the shark. How was I to know they’d use mine?’

  ‘Let me see the scar again, Spencer,’ Eleanor said, worried now. She frowned as he lifted his shirt. ‘I want you to go and see the doctor here, in case it’s infected.’

  ‘Too late for that. It’s long-healed,’ he said, kissing his mother. ‘Eleanor, stop worrying that pretty little head of yours. I’m fine. It’s the poor shark you should feel sorry for.’

  Later, Gracie was in the kitchen washing up when he came in, whistling.

  ‘So, what have you been up to here, Gracie, while I’ve been channelling Jules Verne or whoever it is that did battles with scary creatures of the deep?’

  ‘Scary creatures? Boxes, you mean?’

  ‘It could have been a shark.’

  ‘It wasn’t a shark.’

  ‘It might have been.’

  ‘It wasn’t, Spencer. It wasn’t a shark.’

  ‘Jesus, Gracie, calm down. What’s your problem?’

  You, Spencer, she thought. You’re my problem. ‘Nothing,’ she said aloud. Then she changed her mind. She turned, crossed her arms, leaned against the sink, trying to choose her words carefully. ‘Do you know what annoys me the most?’

  ‘About me?’ He grinned. ‘I can’t possibly imagine but I really can’t wait to hear.’

  ‘Everything is so easy for you, isn’t it? Nothing bad ever happens to you. You never worry about anything. You lose your job – too bad, Hope bails you out again – off you go travelling, doing what you like, conning people —’

  ‘Conning who?’

  ‘That newspaper, for starters.’

  ‘It was a crappy tourist rag, Gracie, for God’s sake. Chill out, would you?’

  ‘Like you? Like you do constantly? One day, Spencer, you’ll have to face up to real life. Stop living life as if it is one big joke, as if everyone and everything is here just for your amusement, while the rest of us try our best, try to get over things, get work …’ She was starting to cry. Damn it. She was starting to cry.

  He didn’t go across to her. He stayed where he was, his arms crossed now too. ‘This is about Italy still, isn’t it? Not about me.’ He sighed. ‘Gracie, you have to move on. It was an accident, a lapse of judgement on your part. You got distracted —’

  ‘By you pulling my plait, Spencer. By you! Don’t you feel any guilt at all?’

  ‘Look, I’m as sorry about Tom as you are. But it could have been worse.’

  ‘Worse? How could it have been worse than it was?’

  Spencer shrugged. ‘Tom could have died, I guess. Or you could have lost your licence.’

  Her tears disappeared. Anger returned. ‘Tom nearly did die, Spencer. And who cares about my stupid licence?’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  It was all she could do not to scream at her brother, shout at him, throw something at him, make him
admit he was as much to blame as she was. Only the thought of upsetting her mother in the next room stopped her. She kept her voice calm with great difficulty. ‘Everything is the problem, Spencer. Have you blocked it all out? Don’t you ever even think about Tom?’

  ‘See what I mean? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You and Tom. It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Tom can’t walk any more, Spencer. Because of what we did to him, you and me, both of us. Don’t you feel even the slightest bit guilty about it? Feel any responsibility at all?’

  He shifted position then, the first sign of awkwardness she’d seen from him. ‘Of course I wish it hadn’t happened. And I feel sorry for Tom, sure. But it was an accident, Gracie. Accidents happen. Don’t turn your guilt on to me, just because Tom and Nina wanted nothing to do with you, with any of us, after it happened.’

  In the train seat now, Gracie realised her breathing had quickened again, her fists were clenched, at the memory alone. Six years after that conversation, eight years after the accident itself, and it was as if she’d made no progress at all. Spencer had completely moved on, living in Ireland with his latest girlfriend, running his own business – under completely false pretences but so far he’d got away with that too, hadn’t he? Her two sisters had made something of their lives as well. Charlotte was a high-flying businesswoman in Chicago. Audrey was not only deliriously happy in New Zealand with Greg, but even had a successful performing career these days. Gracie was the only one who hadn’t found her way.

  She’d tried, again and again. She’d done everything she could think of in the years since the accident to make up for it in some kind of karmic way. She’d volunteered for charities. Applied for jobs that meant something to people, that weren’t only about earning money. It didn’t seem to matter. The jobs didn’t last. Her fault each time. She didn’t seem to have a proper attention span any more. The longest she’d stayed in any of them was six months. If it hadn’t been for her waitressing skills, she’d have been in serious trouble financially. She tried going back to study – not university, at a local college – but dropped out after the first semester. She tried travelling again, with two classmates from college. She spent the whole time wishing she was with Tom, wishing she was somewhere else, and she knew the two girls wished she was as well.