At Home with the Templetons

by Monica McInerney

  Gracie turned back towards her. ‘You can’t. You’re supposed to be dressed and ready by now too. I checked the roster. It’s you and me on today. I’m downstairs, you’re upstairs.’

  ‘Check the roster again. It’s you and Spencer on today, not me. I did a deal with him.’

  Gracie felt a sudden rush of anger again, secretly enjoying the feeling. It gave her the courage to stand up to Charlotte and Audrey. She borrowed one of her Aunt Hope’s phrases: ‘You two are absolutely and completely bloody incorrigible.’ She headed downstairs, muttering to herself but loudly enough so they could hear her, borrowing another one of Hope’s favourite sayings. ‘If this was my house, I’d throw you all out.’

  She did her best to ignore their laughter as she tramped back down the polished stairs to the entrance hall. Audrey was probably right, none of the visitors would notice the lack of flowers. They were usually so busy noticing everything else about Templeton Hall, as well as whispering to each other about the age of their tour guide and the whole unusual set-up. But this kind of fine detail mattered to Gracie. Unlike her two sisters and brother, she longed for her turn as head guide. She didn’t do it purely for the pocket money on offer, either. She loved sharing everything she knew about the Hall: its history, its beautiful contents, all it meant to her whole family, stretching back for generations …

  ‘We’re just a tourist attraction, Gracie. You have to understand that. People don’t care if we’re descended from English aristocracy, Australian squattocracy or a pack of werewolves,’ Charlotte had said once. ‘We’re just one more stop before they drive on to their hotel or caravan park. Something to fill up the day. A place to take a photo or go to the loo. Don’t take it so seriously.’

  But Gracie did take it seriously. She couldn’t help it. She checked the time now on the large grandfather clock ticking beside her in the hallway. Nearly nine a.m. A glint of metal on the side table caught her eye. Charlotte’s car keys. They shouldn’t have been there, for two reasons. One, all signs of their ‘modern’ life were supposed to be hidden on the weekends when the Hall was open to the public. And two, their parents had asked each of them repeatedly to please hang any keys on the hook behind the pantry door. The house was so big that a few rules and regulations had to be made. The alternative was many wasted hours searching through eighteen rooms.

  Gracie did some quick mental arithmetic. Templeton Hall was out in the countryside, a long way from a shop. It would take her twenty minutes to drive into Castlemaine, their nearest big town. Ten minutes, if she was quick, to buy flowers from the grocery store where the family had an account. Twenty minutes back. It was possible. If there were no delays, she’d be back with ten minutes to spare before the Hall opened to the public.

  There was the minor matter of it being illegal for her to drive. But she’d been driving Charlotte’s car, a little automatic, since she was ten years old, over a year now. So far, only in the paddocks around Templeton Hall, but Charlotte had always expressed amazement at how quickly she’d caught on. Her lack of height was the main problem, but a couple of folded wheat sacks from the stables had always given her the inches she needed before. A coat or jumper or two would do the same now, surely?

  Five minutes later, she was at the wheel, turning from the Hall’s long dirt driveway onto the main road to Castlemaine. Her heart was beating so fast she could almost hear it. She was up a little high in the driver’s seat (she’d decided on three coats rather than two, and regretted it slightly now). Her steering was good, her braking impeccable and the roads were thankfully quiet. As she passed the ‘Welcome to Castlemaine’ sign twenty minutes later and drove into the wide main street, she started to breathe more easily. She could see the greengrocer ahead, setting up his outside display of fruit and vegetables. Yes, he had roses there. And she could see carnations too, and chrysanthemums.

  She was so busy looking at the flowers that she didn’t see the car pulling out in front of her. There was, however, no missing the bang that sounded as the front of Charlotte’s car hit the back of the other vehicle, or the sound of her car horn as she fell forward against it, for ten long seconds that later would re-sound in her ears as lasting for hours.

  Afterwards, she wondered where all the people had come from and so quickly. The street had been quite empty. But within seconds of the collision people came rushing from shops, from other cars, from side streets. She heard snatches of sentences.

  ‘I didn’t see her. She just appeared.’ ‘What the hell is a kid doing driving a car?’ ‘Why is she dressed in that weird gear?’ ‘She’s one of those mad bloody Templetons, that’s why. They think they own the bloody place.’

  The greengrocer’s concerned face was replaced by a fiercer face attached to a body dressed in a policeman’s uniform. ‘What do you think you’re doing? You could have killed yourself or someone else.’

  ‘I was getting flowers. We’re about to open.’

  The policeman looked away from her, around the crowd, as if hoping they might be able to make sense of Gracie’s words. It was clear he couldn’t.

  A bystander stepped in. ‘You’re new here, aren’t you? She’s one of the Templetons.’

  ‘The mad bloody Templetons,’ someone added.

  ‘Up to another publicity stunt.’

  ‘From Templeton Hall.’

  ‘Tembledinall?’ the policeman misheard. ‘What is it, a religious cult?’

  More murmurs as locals hurried to offer explanations. Gracie didn’t have time to listen, or to worry about her family being called the mad bloody Templetons twice in five minutes. The town hall clock was striking nine thirty. She had to hurry. She struggled out of the seatbelt. One large brown arm pushed her back in her seat.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere, kiddo.’

  Much later that night, Gracie’s father, Henry, announced that he found it very funny. Hilarious, he said. Her mother, Eleanor, was still in a shocked rather than amused state and also angry – Gracie’s arrival at Templeton Hall in a police car just as a bus filled with tourists pulled up had caused such a fuss that Hope, Eleanor’s younger sister who stayed with the family on and off, had taken a ‘turn’, as Eleanor usually put it. ‘Threw a wobbly,’ Audrey preferred to describe it. ‘Went psycho,’ Spencer would say. ‘Exhibited pure attention-seeking behaviour, more like it,’ Charlotte would insist.

  Charlotte, as the oldest, had plenty of opinions on the relationship between her mother and Hope. ‘It’s Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret all over again,’ she’d announced once. ‘The youngest is jealous of the older sister’s standing and marriage, so she goes wild and hits the bottle, resulting in the older sister having to take care of her for the rest of her days – the ultimate revenge.’

  ‘Hope got upset at the sight of the police, nothing more and nothing less. Stop talking about her like that, please,’ Eleanor had said, in the voice they’d all learned to obey.

  ‘On the bright side, at least Gracie can’t lose her driver’s licence,’ Henry said, as the family sat around the kitchen table that evening. ‘Unfortunately it’s because she doesn’t have a licence.’

  Gracie’s arrival in the police car had set off a domino effect of arrivals, with cars following buses following caravans and camper vans, all filled with tourists, as well as more than a few people from the nearby area. Usually, the locals avoided Templeton Hall but word had obviously spread quickly about Gracie’s accident, and curiosity had overcome their usual aversion to the family.

  ‘On the extra bright side, at least they all got the full “At Home with the Templetons” experience,’ Charlotte said cheerfully. ‘ “Welcome to our world, where chaos reigns —” ’

  ‘Flowers are missing,’ Audrey added.

  ‘And where the souvenir biscuits are always stale,’ Charlotte finished.

  ‘It wasn’t the full experience,’ Gracie said, sulky now that the excitement had passed and she just felt achy and cross. ‘I was the only one dressed up, even though I begged yo
u to go and put your proper clothes on.’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘I’d forgotten that bit. You, draped over the policeman’s shoulder, shouting at us all to go and get dressed. You should have seen his face. I’m sure he thought you were hallucinating, that we were greeting you in the nude.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone asked for refunds, Gracie,’ Audrey added, in a kind voice. ‘It was all quite festive, actually. Until Spencer let off that stink bomb, at least.’

  ‘That was Spencer?’ Eleanor wasn’t happy to hear it. ‘I told everyone it was the drains.’

  Ten-year-old Spencer said nothing, just smiled secretly to himself from his hiding place under the table.

  ‘I think we pulled together beautifully in what were very trying circumstances, actually,’ Henry said, leaning back in his chair and beaming at his family. ‘Triumph over adversity, as our ancestors might have said.’

  ‘I still think you should all have got dressed up,’ Gracie said. ‘It’s false advertising otherwise. It wasn’t the full colonic experience.’

  No one pointed out her error. Gracie often confused colonic with colonial. It had been Henry’s idea not to put her right. ‘It makes a funny story, which leads to word of mouth,’ he’d said. ‘We’ll get more visitors out of that story than any advertising we do.’

  Now, though, Henry took pity on his youngest daughter. ‘Poor Gracie,’ he said, pulling her onto his lap in one easy motion. He was nearly six foot and very fit from all the outdoor work he did in the grounds. ‘My poor lawbreaking Gracie. How can I make it better?’

  Gracie wriggled out of his arms and sat up straight. ‘Put me in charge again tomorrow,’ she said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  That night Gracie could barely sleep with the excitement. It was possibly turning out to be the best weekend of her life. Not only had she been the centre of attention for the whole day, not only had she survived a car crash (it was getting more spectacular every time she thought about it), and not only had her father agreed that she could be head guide again on Sunday – ‘As long as you’re okay, Gracie. Any dizziness or headache at all and you’ll have to stay in bed’ – but best of all, she’d just had a whole hour of her mother to herself. All to herself, no sign of Charlotte or Audrey or Spencer or, especially, Aunt Hope, who seemed to take up more and more of their mother’s time these days. Just Gracie, in her bed, the room made cosy by the lamplight, the rose-patterned curtains drawn against the cool night air, and her mother lying beside her, stroking her hair and talking in that low voice she only used when she was especially worried.

  ‘Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again, Gracie, please. It was so dangerous. Anything could have happened.’

  ‘But the flowers —’

  ‘You’re a good girl to be so meticulous – that means concerned with details,’ Eleanor added without a pause. She was always very good at explaining the meaning of any long words she used, whether they were in the middle of home lessons or not. ‘But sometimes you have to be a little more relaxed about things. Think of the consequences. Be careful not to put either yourself or others in danger.’

  ‘But I wasn’t hurt when I hit the other car.’ Eleanor winced at her words and Gracie immediately felt guilty.

  ‘No, you weren’t, but you could have been. And other people might have been hurt as well.’

  ‘Sorry, Mummy.’ Now she was eleven she tried to call her mother Mum like Audrey and Charlotte did, but sometimes it felt so comforting to call her Mummy.

  Eleanor pulled her in close and kissed the top of her head. They lay there in silence for a few moments. Gracie relived the accident in her mind again, in slow motion this time, relishing and exaggerating the sound of the impact, the blare of the horn, the rushing feet as crowds gathered, all the comments. The comments! She sat upright and told her mother all she’d heard people say about the ‘mad bloody Templetons’ and ‘another publicity stunt’. She paused. ‘What’s a publicity stunt?’

  ‘It’s a way of getting people to notice you and talk about you.’

  ‘People thought I did that crash to make people notice me? I didn’t!’

  ‘I know, Gracie. It was just an accident.’

  ‘So what other publici— …What other stunts did they mean?’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ Eleanor said, but in the voice Gracie knew she used when she was pretending she didn’t know something.

  ‘And why would they call us the “mad bloody Templetons”,’ she asked. ‘Don’t people in town like us?’

  ‘Gracie, please don’t swear. It’s not nice, even if you’re just repeating what other people have said. Don’t worry about what you heard.’

  ‘But that wasn’t all. Another man kept saying that we carry on as if we own the whole bloody place. We do own it, don’t we? The Hall and the gardens and everything? Or whose is it if we don’t own it?’ Gracie turned as her mother made a sudden odd noise. ‘Are you laughing at me? Is what I said funny?’

  ‘Not in the least bit funny, darling. And you’re to ignore that as well. Some people just don’t like other people and it sounds like unfortunately you met a few of them today.’

  ‘Maybe I should have run those people over?’

  Eleanor laughed out loud. ‘You could have, but all round I think it’s best you didn’t.’

  ‘So we’re not the mad bloody Templetons?’

  ‘No, Gracie, we’re not. We’re not mad or bloody. We’re just the very ordinary Templetons.’

  Ordinary? Gracie wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that, either.

  Across the hall, Charlotte lay in bed, disgruntled and not just because of the damage to her car. Usually she liked action-packed dramatic days, but she’d had other plans today involving a leisurely bath and a new paperback, all cancelled when it became clear it was going to be one of those all-hands-on-deck Saturdays at Templeton Hall. She’d put up a feeble kind of resistance when her father insisted she do the guiding upstairs instead of Spencer.

  ‘That’s not fair! I’d swapped with him. Why do I get stuck with it again?’

  ‘Because you’re my daughter, because I’m asking you, because today is an unusual day, and because if you don’t, I’m pulling you out of boarding school and you can start going to the local high school again.’

  That clinched it, really. She’d suffered through one term at the local school before announcing to her parents that if they made her go back there again she would set her bedroom on fire. It was a bad threat to choose. Her aunt Hope had recently tried to do something similar, stopped only by Spencer coming into the bedroom to investigate the smell of kerosene as Hope was trying to get her lighter to work. Charlotte had swiftly apologised for her lack of tact, while just as swiftly insisting that she was serious, that after years of being home-schooled by Eleanor, having her intelligence taken for granted, her brain nurtured and encouraged – she’d laid it on thick, if she did say so herself – it felt like a personal insult to be lumped with the local kids who treated her like she’d arrived from another planet, and taught by teachers who didn’t know even half as much as she did …

  She was prepared to argue her point for days if necessary, but to her amazement her parents gave in that night. She’d started researching the best boarding schools herself and quickly decided on one in Melbourne, far enough away from Castlemaine for independence yet not too far to prevent her coming home on the train at weekends. It was only later she discovered that while she’d been complaining about the local school, the local school had been complaining about her. She was ‘a disruptive influence’, according to the letter from the principal she happened to find in the desk in her father’s study. ‘Her arrogance prevents her from easily making friends, and the teachers find her lack of regard for their methods off-putting and unacceptable.’

  Charlotte took great pleasure in tearing the letter up into pieces and mixing them in with the kitchen scraps. Her father wouldn’t miss it, she knew. His filing system was a mess.

 
At least she’d spared Audrey the horrors of that principal and her half-witted cronies. When the time came for Audrey to move from home-schooling to secondary classes, there was no question of the local school. She was enrolled in the same boarding school as Charlotte, and the two of them had been students there since. Charlotte preferred not to let Audrey forget it, either. ‘If it wasn’t for me …’ she liked to say, until Audrey turned on her one day.

  ‘If it wasn’t for you, I’d be happily living at home with friends from my own area rather than exiled with girls from miles away. But if banging on about it makes you feel less guilty about your own bad behaviour, you go right ahead.’

  Charlotte just laughed. She knew they both liked being away from the family for weeks of the year, far from the Hall, far from being tarred with the ‘one of the Templetons’ brush and, best of all, far from the tedium of trying to maintain a property as large as theirs without the help of an army of servants or a tribe of gardeners.

  Charlotte argued with her father about that too. ‘It’s ridiculous. Here we are recreating the authentic colonial experience, giving visitors a glimpse into yesteryear, yet we’re doing it without the most basic element of life in that era: maids. How can I act the part of an aristocratic miss if twenty minutes earlier I was cleaning the toilet?’

  ‘We call it a lavatory, Charlotte. And you know why we don’t have servants. Because unlike your esteemed ancestors, we don’t have a gold fortune to pay them.’

  That was the most annoying thing of all, really. There she was, not just snatched from her happy life in London and forced to leave all her friends behind, but locked in this strange historical bubble that was Templeton Hall, gaily spouting detail after detail about life in the goldrush days, wearing the clothes, pretending – pretending, for God’s sake, the humiliation of it – that they were living in that era, and yet it all seemed to be built on such flimsy financial foundations.

  Oh, she knew her father was still dealing in antiques, heading away from the Hall now and again on buying and selling trips. Selling with some success too, from what she’d occasionally overheard him say to her mother. Not that Charlotte cared much for old glassware or furniture, but she’d always known her father had a very good eye for spotting valuable pieces and selling them on just as quickly. But was the antique trade as lucrative a business in Australia as it had been back home in England?