At Home With The Templetons (25 page)

‘That’s a great idea,’ Gracie said brightly. ‘I’ll suggest it to Dad.’

‘If he likes it, it was my idea.’

When they reached Nina and Tom’s house five minutes later, Spencer became uncharacteristically shy, hesitating at the front door. Gracie savoured the great feeling of being more at home here than Spencer.

‘Oh, we don’t knock, Spencer. We just go straight in.’ She gave her brother an encouraging smile and opened the door with a flourish. ‘Hi, Nina. It’s us!’

Nina looked very happy, Gracie thought, though she barely had time to smile a welcome and say hello before her phone rang.

‘Excuse me a moment,’ Nina said.

Spencer made a dive for the couch, disappearing in one smooth movement up and over the back. ‘If it’s Mum and Dad, I’m not here,’ he said in a muffled voice.

It wasn’t their mum and dad. Gracie watched as Nina answered in a cheery voice, which changed as quickly as her expression. She listened for what Gracie thought was a very long time, just murmuring, ‘Oh, Hilary. Oh, darling. Oh, Hilary,’ over and again. Then she started talking in a rush. ‘Of course I will. I’ll get the first flight. Don’t worry about that. Of course I can sort out something. I’ll be there as soon as I can, I promise.’

She hung up and Gracie was taken aback by her expression. This wasn’t the smiling Nina any more. Her face was tense and it was as if she’d forgotten they were there. She picked up the phone, rang another number, murmuring under her breath. ‘Come on, Jenny, answer.’ After a minute, she hung up, took out a phone book, checked it, then dialled another number. No answer again. ‘Come on, please,’ she said urgently. ‘Come on.’

Gracie dared to speak. ‘Nina, is everything all right?’ She saw Spencer pop up from behind the couch too.

Nina seemed surprised to hear her voice, and turned, distracted. ‘Gracie, Spencer, I’m sorry. That was my sister in Queensland. Something’s happened and her husband’s away. I need to get to her as soon as I can.’

‘Is she hurt?’ Gracie asked. ‘Was it an accident?’ ‘No. Yes. I can’t really explain now. But I need to go to her and I need someone to pick up Tom and have him for a few days. I don’t know how long I’ll be away.’ She reached for the phone book again.

Gracie had the feeling Nina was thinking aloud rather than talking to them but she answered her anyway. ‘No, Nina, don’t, please. What about us? We can take Tom.’

Nina kept dialling. ‘No, Gracie. Thanks but no.’ ‘Why not?’

‘Why not?’ Spencer asked from the couch.

Nina stopped mid-dial. ‘It’s too much to ask. He needs to be taken to school, picked up again, driven to cricket practice. I’ll ask one of the other school mums. They’re used to ‘

Gracie moved over to her. ‘But you can’t get hold of the other school mums. And we’re here. Ask us.’ She noticed Nina hesitate. ‘Please, Nina, ask us. We’ll say yes and you can go straight to the airport.’

Nina glanced up at the clock on the wall, back at Gracie, then ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Gracie, it’s too much -‘ ‘It’s not, I promise. Mum and Dad are both home now. We can ring them this minute.’ Was this the time to tell Nina all about the fight they’d had that morning? About Hope and Audrey’s inroom protests? No, perhaps not. Gracie moved swiftly, taking the phone from Nina and dialling the number of the Hall. After a long wait her mother answered.

Gracie spoke in a rush. ‘Mum, it’s me. I’m at Nina’s. She needs our help. Urgently. And we have to give it to her, okay?’ She handed the phone to Nina.

Five hours later Gracie was happily sitting in the back seat of her father’s car as they drove into Castlemaine to collect Tom from school. Spencer had insisted on coming along for the ride too. Gracie would never admit it to Nina, but it had turned into such an exciting day. And all because of her! If she hadn’t chosen that moment to visit Nina, none of this would have happened.

‘It’s as if it was all meant to be, isn’t it, Mum?’ she’d said after Nina called to the Hall to hurriedly confirm all the arrangements and drop off a suitcase of Tom’s clothes. Gracie had stayed close by, standing very still as her mother and Nina spoke, telling herself it wasn’t eavesdropping. She was being

the backup, taking in all the information so she could remind her parents later if needs be. She’d heard all sorts of words she’d never heard before, including ‘miscarriage’, and seen the sad sight of Nina crying, as she’d told Gracie’s mother that she hadn’t even known her sister was pregnant, her sister hadn’t even known she was pregnant, and it had been a shock to learn about the baby and a heartbreak to lose it, all at once, and even worse because Hilary’s husband was away overseas and she was in the hospital on her own.

‘Of course you have to go,’ Gracie’s mother had kept saying. ‘Don’t worry about anything here. We’ll take care of Tom for as long as you need.’

Gracie hadn’t understood all of what Nina had said. She’d also been a bit disappointed when Nina only gave her a distracted thank you and a quick wave goodbye.

At the school, she leapt out of the car as soon as she saw Tom coming through the doors, reaching him before Spencer was even out of the car. He’d had trouble undoing the faulty seatbelt in the front seat, which was one of the reasons she’d let him travel in the front, even though it was actually her turn.

She ignored Tom’s surprised expression as she ran up to him. ‘Tom, you’re coming to stay with us! Isn’t that great! Your mum had to go to Cairns for a few days urgently because her sister was going to have a baby but then she didn’t, and she’s very, very upset and her husband is away and she needs your mother so your mother has just gone straight to the airport, but she wrote this note before she left, explaining everything.’ Gracie thrust an envelope at him. ‘So you’re going to stay with us until she gets back. Isn’t that brilliant?’

‘ By five o’clock the next day, Gracie had changed her mind. It wasn’t brilliant that Tom had come to stay. It was awful. She’d thought she, Tom and Spencer would have great fun together, making up plays or playing cricket like that time at Nina’s house - maybe even having midnight feasts together like the children in her favourite books. Spencer, however, had made it clear within moments of Tom arriving at the Hall the previous day that it was all about the two of them, not the three of them.

‘He’s staying here because he’s my friend, not yours, Gracie, okay?’ he’d hissed when she followed them out to the stables apartment.

‘But it was my idea. I suggested it to Nina.’ ‘So what? We want to do boy stuff.’

‘I can do boy stuff.’

‘You can’t, Gracie. You’re a girl.’ With that, Spencer shut the apartment door and she heard him turn the key. She could have knocked and knocked until he opened it again but she suddenly felt too sad. She’d pictured Tom all upset with his mother away, and her - her, not Spencer - making him feel at home, showing him his room, showing him the flowers she’d picked herself to put on his dressing table. But it had been Spencer who carried his case up for him, Spencer who threw it on to the bed and - even worse - Spencer who mocked her flowers and insisted she take them out of Tom’s room immediately. ‘Flowers are for girls, Gracie.’

The two boys had then gone out into the garden, Tom showing Spencer over and over how to bowl a cricket ball as fast as he could, then they’d disappeared out to that dam they loved so much that she just found so boring, and they hadn’t even come back for the sausages and mashed potato she’d cooked for dinner. She’d had to just serve it up and watch unhappily as they ate it an hour later, cold, when they finally came back in. They hadn’t even sat down to eat it, just ate off their plates, standing up.

Her mother at least noticed she was unhappy. ‘Gracie, don’t be hurt. Let Tom settle in. This has all been a bit sudden for him, and he might not be used to sitting down to eat dinner like we do.’

‘Of course he is. Nina’s taught him lovely manners. It’s Spencer leading him astray.’

It was true. On his own, Tom was so lovely. Hadn’t he spent that whole afternoon at Nina’s playing cricket with her, and hadn’t he even said that she was nearly as much fun as Spencer? Now, here she was, on her own, while the two of them were having all sorts of adventures without her.

Cross at the injustice of it, she contemplated for the moment the possibility of getting her own back on Spencer. She had the information to do it, after all, enough to get him into heaps of trouble, not just with their dad but with their mum too. He’d get punished for it, for sure. Sent to his room, definitely. And then Tom would have to play with her.

It had happened earlier that week. Gracie had heard her father give Spencer a big talking-to, making him promise not to deliver any more bottles to Hope, no matter how much money she offered. Spencer nodded and looked serious and said, of course he wouldn’t, but Gracie didn’t believe him. She knew he and Tom were planning something big, a motor-powered raft they would float on the dam as soon as it had enough water. Spencer would definitely need more than his pocket money to pay his share of it. So she hadn’t been surprised to catch him in their father’s study looking for the keys to the wine cellar.

‘Spencer! What are you doing?’ ‘Nothing.’

‘Why are you in here, then?’ ‘Tidying up.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re looking for the keys.’ ‘Stop being such a goodie-goodie, Gracie.’

That hurt. She didn’t try to be a goodie-goodie. She just thought it was better for everyone if they told the truth, if they were all nice to each other and everyone tried to be happy. The problem was she seemed to be the only happy one in the house these days.

She gave it some more thought now before deciding she couldn’t tell on Spencer. He’d only get even more furious with her, and probably get Tom to call her a goodie-goodie too. Instead, she took up position on one of her favourite spots of the staircase, five stairs from the bottom, ten from the top,

rested her chin on her hands and sighed.

Her quiet time didn’t last very long. Within minutes she was conscious of voices coming from the kitchen. Raised voices. It sounded like her parents were fighting. Again. She carefully shifted down four stairs, pressing herself up against the wall, to the spot that she knew provided the best hiding and listening position.

They’d been cross with each other all morning. She’d noticed it when their father came in during their lessons and spoke to their mother in a strange polite voice, and they’d both used each other’s names too much.

‘I’m just going into town for an hour or so, Eleanor. Is there anything you need?’

‘Thank you for letting me know, Henry. No, I’m fine, thank you.’

Gracie usually only heard her mother use that voice when she was asking someone on their tours to please put the front door key back where they’d found it. People were always trying to steal that key, because it was so big and magical-looking, Gracie supposed. Her father had had several copies made, just in case. She leaned forward as far as she could now, as a door opened and their voices suddenly became audible.

‘You’re pandering to their dramas,’ her father was saying. ‘Charlotte’s right. Audrey’s seen all the attention Hope gets when she locks herself away and she’s trying to copy her.’

There was the clatter of another dish being put down roughly. ‘What do you care, anyway? It’s not as if you’re the one who’s doing any of the work around here. What is it you’re actually doing around here lately, Henry? Because it seems to involve nothing but reading your magazines and drinking as much whisky as you can, night after night, as far as I can see.’

‘I do apologise. I’d be happy to help out if I could fight my way through the Martyrs Anonymous camp that has taken root in the kitchen.’

‘Oh, fuck off, Henry.’

On the stairs, Gracie gasped. She’d never heard her mother use that word before.

‘That’s helpful, Eleanor. Here I am trying to have some semblance of a discussion with you, and that’s your contribution.’ “‘Some semblance of a discussion”? I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks, before everything crumbles to dust around us, but you’ve done everything you can to avoid talking to me, to avoid facing up to what’s happening here, what’s happened again and again, what somehow keeps happening no matter what bloody brainnwave or new idea you come up with.’ ‘Eleanor, you’re sounding frighteningly close to fishwife-ish. You’re overreacting. I told you. It’s just a rough patch, businesses ebb and flow.’

A shout from Eleanor. ‘Henry, stay here.’

Gracie held her breath as she heard her mother go into her father’s study, heard the rattle of the filing cabinet before she returned to the kitchen. There was the slam of something onto the table, a folder or a book, Gracie thought.

‘What are these, Henry?’ Her mother’s voice was ice cold again. ‘These are what you call a “rough patch”?’

Gracie held her breath, wishing she could see what her mother had just given her father, at the same time wishing she wasn’t hearing this at all.

Her father didn’t answer. It was her mother who broke the silence again. ‘Will I give you a hint, Henry? They are bills. Dozens of bills. Dating back from the renovations. Not just bills, but also solicitors’ letters about the bills. And where did I find them? Down the back of your filing cabinet. Hidden -‘ she shouted the word, ‘hidden down the back of your filing cabinet. After

you promised me you’d dealt with them. After you promised me we had paid them.’

‘Would you calm down, Eleanor, for heaven’s sake. They must have slipped. Fallen somehow. I told you I thought I felt an earth tremor here the other night.’

‘No!’ Another shout. ‘No, you won’t do that to me this time, lie and joke your way out of this. Henry, even if these bills are just the half of it, and God knows what else you’ve hidden away somewhere, we owe nearly two hundred thousand dollars. On top of everything we still owe back home.’

‘I’m sure it’s not that much. Anyway, it doesn’t look like Audrey’s in any hurry to go back to school, so we’ll save on her fees at least.’

‘It’s not funny, Henry. It’s not funny. Why can’t I get through to you?’

‘Eleanor ‘