At Home with the Templetons

by Monica McInerney

  Once upon a time she might have been more cautious. She might have thought it best to wait to actually be asked, before leaping in and possibly making a fool of herself. But she wasn’t getting any younger. She had a lot of ground to make up. She told herself this new approach had nothing, nothing to do with the fact that she had heard the day before that Henry was getting married again. To his much, much, much younger girlfriend, Adele. Henry himself had phoned from San Francisco and told her. Not only that, he’d invited her to the ceremony. It was taking place in what he called ‘a special place to us both’. For an awful moment Eleanor thought he meant he was having the wedding at Templeton Hall, that he actually thought she’d want to go back there, until she realised he meant a place special to himself and Adele. She hadn’t asked where that might be. It could be the prison on Alcatraz Island, for all she cared. It had taken her some self-restraint to keep her voice calm and say that much as she appreciated the kind thought, and his continuing – now year-long – attempts to forge a closer, more cordial relationship between them, she really didn’t think she would accept.

  ‘As long as you know you’d be welcome. You know I only ever want you to be happy too, Eleanor, don’t you?’

  She’d thanked him nicely and finished the call as soon as she could. She hadn’t told any of the children yet. She’d decided to leave it to Henry to break the news.

  Eleanor realised now that Timothy Drayson was still talking about a possible range of courses. She interrupted. ‘Timothy, may I ask one question before we go any further?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  He blinked. ‘I was. We’re divorced, amicably. Two children, both grown up.’

  Eleanor nodded. ‘Did you ever cheat on your wife?’

  He blinked again, twice. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Are you lying?’

  ‘No, I assure you.’

  ‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow evening?’

  He smiled that smile again. She was oddly relieved to see his teeth weren’t very good. Henry had beautiful teeth. ‘I’d love to have dinner with you, Eleanor. Thank you.’

  She smiled too. ‘Good. Now, I’m sorry, you were talking about a lecture series?’

  In Melbourne, Nina was doing her best to quieten down a classroom full of overexcited eight-year-olds. ‘Right, everyone. Listen to me, please. Put your listening ears on. Our special guest is here, he’s outside, so have you all got your questions ready?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Donovan,’ all twenty-four children chorused.

  ‘Is the welcome banner ready?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Donovan,’ the trio charged with the honour of waving the banner shouted.

  Nina gave the room a last-minute check. Not that there was time to fix anything, but it did look fantastic, if she said so herself. Every desk, every chair and every window was decorated in shades of green and gold: balloons, streamers, even little handmade flags bearing maps of Australia, all of them in the national colours too. The children’s excitement had gone straight to fever pitch when she first told them that a famous sports star had grown up just three streets from this very primary school and in fact had sat in this same classroom for three years before his family moved away, though his grandparents still lived in the area. They’d all got even more excited when she told them that her son, Tom, who’d once been a fast bowler and was now a cricket writer who travelled all over the world, had actually played several matches with him when they were younger and that they were still good friends. She’d even shown pictures of them together in their cricket whites, as well as other photos of her son as a little boy, not much older than them, beside the rainwater tank where he’d learnt to bowl. Their shrieks had reached hysteria levels when two weeks after that she told them that Tom had rung her the night before and confirmed that yes, that famous sports star would be very happy to drop in to the school and say hello next time he was in the area visiting his grandparents, as long as there was no media and not much of a fuss made.

  Did this count as a fuss? Nina wondered, taking in the sight of the fourteen girls and ten boys all dressed as mini cricketers in white shirts and white trousers, zinc cream on their noses, all of them holding either toy bats or plastic cricket balls. She hoped not. She did one last check of the balloons, the bottles of drink, the biscuits, all ready for their morning tea. A sudden image flashed into her mind, a memory from a night many years earlier – the kitchen at Templeton Hall decorated with balloons, the table covered with party food, all of it in celebration of Tom’s first great bowling success. It was a relief, an unexpected and beautiful relief, to realise the memory made her happy.

  She turned towards the door, got the thumbs up from the school principal and a slightly nervous smile from the young man standing beside him. She quickly reached for her camera, ready to take all the shots she’d promised to email not just to Tom and Gracie, but to Hilary as well, before turning to the wriggling children.

  ‘All right, everyone. Let’s invite him in, will we? All together now, a big Brunswick welcome to the captain of the Australian cricket team!’

  The streets of Edinburgh were filled with performers, spruikers, musicians and jugglers. If it wasn’t for the strewn paper from fast-food restaurants everywhere, you could almost mistake it for medieval times, Gracie thought, as if they had time-travelled back to carnival days. The atmosphere was wonderful: people calling out about comedy shows, theatre performances, poetry readings, experimental plays, urging the public to take a chance, see a star on the rise. She and Tom had somehow managed to get the last outside table at a café midway down the cobblestoned Royal Mile and had been watching the passing parade for the past hour. Even if they’d wanted to have a conversation, the noise around them made it too difficult. There was so much to watch and listen to.

  They’d been here for five days now. It was their honeymoon. Not that they’d told their families yet that they were married. They hadn’t quite got around to telling anyone about their six-week-long engagement either.

  It had happened in Liverpool. They’d been there for a weekend, having a short break before Tom returned to London to cover a match at the Lord’s Cricket Ground. Walking hand in hand down a busy shopping street in search of a restaurant for lunch, they passed a travel agent advertising city breaks to European capitals: Paris, Prague, Vienna, Rome. A big poster in the window featured a striking photograph of the Colosseum at sunset, its stonework a warm, radiant shade of gold against a vivid, red-streaked sky. They’d walked on a few steps before Tom stopped, then pulled Gracie backwards until they were standing right in front of the poster. Before she had a chance to ask what was going on, Tom went down on one knee. At first she thought he was just doing up his shoe, until there, on the crowded footpath, he took her hands, told her how much he loved her and asked her to marry him. ‘I’m serious this time, Gracie. I was every other time too, but I’m really, really serious now.’ She was crying and laughing as she said yes.

  They’d decided they’d tell their families soon. Just as soon as they found exactly the right words to also explain why they’d eloped to Gretna Green in Scotland. They’d talked about a family wedding at first, either in Australia or England, before slowly coming to the conclusion that it would be too difficult, for too many reasons. Gracie wasn’t sure whether it would be possible or a good idea to get her mother and father under one roof again, not to mention Charlotte and Hope … And while they both had carefully, gently, slowly rebuilt their separate relationships with Nina, they also felt the time wasn’t right – if it ever would be – for Nina and the Templetons to all be together again.

  As it turned out, their wedding ceremony couldn’t have been more perfect. They’d both worn their favourite clothes – not the ones they liked best themselves, but the ones they liked to see each other in the most. Tom wore his dark jeans and reefer jacket. Gracie had a
lways loved that jacket. She wore her red coat. Fortunately the weather was cool enough for coats. They’d asked the couple who ran their Gretna Green B&B to be the witnesses. They’d agreed immediately. They did it a lot, they said. They were even thinking about adding ‘Happy to be Witnesses at Your Wedding’ to their sign. The ceremony was quick, matter-of-fact, and all Tom and Gracie needed to make their feelings official. They drove north straight after the ceremony and spent their first night as a married couple on the Isle of Skye, in the same small hotel they’d stayed in years earlier. They didn’t tell anyone it was their honeymoon. They didn’t want any fuss. Perhaps they’d have a small party when they got back to London or when they were in Melbourne next. Perhaps they could hold it in what Gracie and Tom had dubbed The Building Formerly Known As Templeton Hall. They couldn’t quite bring themselves to call it the Hope Clinic. Perhaps not. They’d both said their goodbyes to the Hall, after all.

  In the year since they’d been reunited, they’d lived as nomads, in Australia, in England, even in India briefly, wherever Tom had needed to be for his work. They were still undecided about where they’d base themselves eventually. Gracie had decided to return to university to do a history degree, but she didn’t know yet which university. London had looked the most likely. The previous day, though, they’d taken a walk around the grounds of the University of Edinburgh. She’d picked up course information. They’d also looked at ads for flats to rent. It was a serious possibility. Tom could travel from here for his work as easily as he could travel from Melbourne, or London. So much of his work was done via the internet these days in any case. She’d travel with him when it was possible, stay at home studying when it wasn’t. They’d managed to survive eight years of separation, a month now and again was nothing to them.

  A lull in the noise of the crowd gave them an opportunity for a quick conversation. They’d been trying to decide which shows to go to that evening.

  ‘Why don’t I see if there are tickets left for the condensed Shakespeare?’ Tom suggested. ‘That might make the decision for us.’

  She agreed, then watched as he walked down the Royal Mile, dodging two jugglers, a harpist, three mime artists and a man dressed as an Egyptian mummy. She glanced down at the program again, noticing there were two performances for the Shakespeare, one at seven, the other at nine. If there were still tickets, maybe they could go to the early one, and see some comedy later. Maybe even go to a third show after the comedy.

  ‘Tom!’ she called. He didn’t hear her. ‘Tom!’

  He was almost out of sight. She reached into her bag, pulled out the silver whistle and blew hard into it, producing a loud, sure, strong note. Somehow her timing was perfect, the sound finding a path through the conversations and crowds between them.

  Tom stopped and turned around.

  Gracie blew it again, not so surely and loudly this time. It was more of a squawk. He heard that as well, laughing and shaking his head as he walked back towards her.

  As he came closer, she smiled. ‘I was just checking it still works.’

  He smiled too, then leaned down and kissed her.

  ‘It still works,’ he said.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many people helped me with this book in many different ways. My thanks to Max Fatchen; Domhnall Drislane; Clare Forster; Jolyon Blazey; Penny Blazey; Paul Toner; Nick McInerney; Paul McInerney; Grant Wyman of the South Australian Cricket Association; Josh K Stevens, Chelsea Stevens, Dorothy Rawlins of Alexandria House B&B and Arlene Lynes and all at Read Between the Lynes bookstore in Woodstock, Illinois; Dr James Cashman; Ursula Brooks; Suzi Clarke; Noelene Turner; Paul Buchanan; Jeannie and Richard Vallence; Maria Dickenson; Stephanie Dickenson; Sarah Conroy; Brona, Ashley and Ethan Miller; Melanie Scaife; Sinead Moriarty; Noëlle Harrison; Catherine Foley; Kristan Higgins; Carol George; Kristin Gill; Felicity O’Connor; Sister Margaret Mary Murphy; Sister Mary Mercer; Karen O’Connor; Bart Meldau; Milly Meldau; Karen Wilson; Peter Ritchie; Susan Owens; Rachel Leamy; Jean Grimes; John Neville; Una Collins and Triona Collins.

  My special thanks to Austin O’Neill, Lee O’Neill and their cousin Dylan Smith.

  Big thanks to my publishers: everyone at Penguin Australia, especially Ali Watts, Saskia Adams, Gabrielle Coyne, Louise Ryan, Peter Blake, Daniel Ruffino, Sally Bateman, Felicity Vallence, Andre Sawenko, Rachel Tys, Deb Billson, Tony Palmer and Cathy Larsen; the Pan Macmillan team in the UK and Ireland, especially Trisha Jackson, Jeremy Trevathan, Helen Guthrie, Thalia Suzuma, David Adamson, Michelle Taylor, Ellen Wood, Alex Martin-Verdinos and Rebecca Ikin; and all at Ballantine and Random House in the USA, with particular thanks to Jennifer Smith, Jane von Mehren, Lisa Barnes and Kathleen McAuliffe.

  Warmest thanks to my agents: Jonathan Lloyd and Kate Cooper at Curtis Brown in London; Fiona Inglis, Grace Heifetz and all at Curtis Brown Australia; Christy Fletcher, Grainne Fox and Mink Choi at Fletcher & Co in New York; and Anoukh Foerg in Germany.

  Once again, huge thanks to my sister Maura for her speed-reading, eagle eye, insights and encouragement; to my two families: the Drislanes in Ireland and the McInerneys in Australia; and to my husband John, for everything.

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2010

  Copyright © Monica McInerney 2010

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  ISBN: 978-1-74-253138-0