At Home With The Templetons (35 page)

‘Nor have I. We’ll stay in hostels. Busk together. Eat scraps together.’ He hesitated. ‘So you’ll come?’

She scrambled across the bed, down onto the floor too, beside him. ‘I’d love to,’ she said.

”. hey started with ten days in Scotland, taking buses, trains, even hitchhiking one day. They fell for the grandeur and graciousness of Edinburgh and stayed there for four nights, talking so casually about returning for the Festival one year, perhaps even living there one day. That’s how far it had gone between them, Gracie realised. They’d somehow skipped over the angst-ridden ‘does he/she love me?’ questions Gracie always assumed would happen in a relationship. It felt so comfortable being with him but also so … thrilling, was the only word she could use. Tom thrilled her. She loved talking to him, laughing with him, sleeping with him, making love with him, being with him. It was all so good she started to worry about it. Surely love wasn’t supposed to be this easy?

She raised it with him one evening, as they sat in a bar in a village on the west coast of Scotland. They’d planned to stay there one night. The wild beauty of the area and the promise of a boat trip to the Isle of Skye had turned it into a three-night stay. Tom listened as she explained her concerns, then nodded, very seriously. ‘You’re right. It’s going too well. Let’s break up. I’m too happy. You’re too happy. It will never last.’

She frowned. ‘Shouldn’t it be harder, though? Shouldn’t we be fighting?’

‘Of course. What’s your stand on the nature v nurture debate? Roe v Wade? Should Churchill have moved against Hitler sooner?’

‘I don’t mean fight like that, about issues, about politics.’ ‘We can fight about sport, then. Did Maradona touch the ball or was it the Hand of God?’

‘You’re not taking me seriously.’

‘No, I’m not. Let’s fight about that instead. Should I or should I not take you more seriously?’

She started to laugh. ‘You should. You should take me seriously. You should also adore me, listen in amazement to everything I say and think I am the most beautiful girl in the world despite my unfortunate hair.’

He reached across and tweaked a lock of her still fly-away white-blonde hair. ‘I do adore you, you do amaze me and your hair is what I love most about you.’

The uncertain feeling wouldn’t go away, though. That this was temporary. That it was somehow too good to last.

After Scotland, she and Tom travelled to Ireland by ferry, catching buses and spending a week touring the country: Two nights in Dublin, a day in Cork, two nights in Galway, a boat trip to the Aran Islands, across to Dublin again, then back to London. Tom’s ticket back to Australia was already booked. They were just coming into Euston station after the overnight journey when Tom spoke.

‘Have you ever been to France, Gracie? To Italy?’

‘No.’ She was getting embarrassed about how little she’d travelled. ‘One day, I hope.’

‘Let’s go next week. For a few weeks. A month, even. We could hire a car, take the ferry from Dover to Calais, just drive when and wherever we felt like.’

‘But we can’t. You have to be back at the academy next week.’ He shook his head. ‘I rang them last night.’

‘You did?’ She remembered him saying he needed to make a couple of phone calls, that he’d promised to call home at least once a month. When he came back she asked if everything was okay and he just nodded and said that Nina sent her love.

‘I’ve asked my coach for extended leave.’ ‘But how? Why?’

He looked a little sheepish. ‘I said I was having a few personal issues, that I needed a few more weeks away -‘ ‘Personal issues?’

‘I was going to tell them I’d fallen in love and that being with you over here was more fun than playing cricket, but I decided that was too much information.’

‘But you love playing cricket.’

‘And I love travelling with you as well. So I was telling the truth. I am having a crisis. You or cricket? Cricket or you?’ ‘You don’t have to decide between us, Tom. I know what cricket means to you.’

They’d talked about it as they travelled. He’d spoken of the discipline of being a sportsman, the physical pleasure of being so fit, so focused, knowing that he was special - one in a thousand, he finally, shyly admitted to her. In the fifteen key matches he’d played so far, each of them leading towards a possible place one day in the national team, he’d taken a record number of wickets. He told her he didn’t just love the matches, either. He loved the training too. The camaraderie with his team-mates. Gracie had heard talk of wild team antics, heavy drinking and misbehaviour. Tom shrugged. Yes, it happened, but it wasn’t compulsory. He kept himself to himself, pretty much. And there were other people around too, experienced people to talk to and work with, mentors really. He had two: his coach, and another man called Stuart Phillips, a well-known cricket journalist who’d swapped sides to work as an advisor at the cricket academy. In his midfifties, Stuart had three daughters, none of them sporty. He saw Tom as the son he didn’t have, he’d told him.

‘And you?’ Gracie asked.

‘The father I never had. Pretty obvious, isn’t it?’

He shared the details of his conversation with Stuart and his coach with her now. He’d told them that he knew once he returned home, cricket would take over his life for the next few years, beyond that if he made the national team. He wanted these final, extra weeks of freedom and then his life was theirs again. ‘Stuart gave me the third degree, checked I wasn’t going off

on wild drink or drug benders. When I just happened to mention you, he made me assure him you were of sound mind and flawless beauty. I told him you were both and then he gave me his blessing.’ Tom smiled. ‘He told me he was jealous, actually. He loves France and Italy. He also told me if I wasn’t back at the academy in a month’s time exactly, he’d, well, I don’t need to tell you his threat.’ His expression changed. ‘Gracie, I’m sorry. I should have asked first, been sure you wanted to come with me.’

‘Go to France and Italy with you for a month? It sounds horrible. Hateful. The very last thing I want to do.’

‘So you’ll come with me?’ Her smile was her answer.

Eleanor was surprised with this latest development, she didn’t tell Gracie. As far as Gracie knew, Nina hadn’t said anything to Tom either. Gracie hadn’t written to Nina since Tom’s arrival, but she was sure Nina would be as happy for them as Eleanor had been. There was the minor matter of Gracie having to loan some money from her mother to supplement her savings - she’d insisted to Tom that she’d pay her share of the car hire and trip costs. After a short lecture, Eleanor gave Gracie not just the money, not just her blessing, but also the loan of her own small Volkswagen for the month too. She rarely used it, she told them. Two days later, there was another welcome surprise. A motorcycle courier arrived at their front door bearing a large envelope from Hope. Inside the expensive-looking bon voyage card was a bank cheque for two thousand pounds. The note was brief and to the point. This is a gift, not a loan. Spend it unwisely. Love, Hope xx

The only hitch was Spencer. He surprised them both with his insistence on joining them.

‘I need a break. I’ve collected more than three thousand glasses in the past month. My hands are like claws. They’ll never open properly again. When I’m not battling drunks and glasses I’m hammering against every bloody door in any strand of media I can and all I’ve got in return are bleeding knuckles. It’s not me that needs a holiday in la belle France and bella Italia, it’s my poor tendons. I need it, I deserve it. Anyway, if it wasn’t for me, you’d never have got together. I’m the one who found Tom for you, Gracie. I’ll leave you alone to live love’s young French and Italian dream for three weeks and then join you for the last one. So where will we meet? Rome? All roads lead there, don’t they?’

From the moment she and Tom arrived on the ferry in Calais it was a special trip. Gracie had schoolgirl French and Tom had learnt it for two years at school in Melbourne. Between them they managed to get directions from one village to another, to negotiate nights in small hotels or pensions, order cheap and beautiful meals in little cafes and restaurants. They spent two days in Paris, and did everything tourists should: going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, on a cruise along the Seine, taking a walk up the Champs-Elysees, sipping champagne in the Latin Quarter. The rest of their time in France they stayed in rural villages, sitting in sunny squares, living on cheap wine, crusty bread, cheese, fruit. Two days in the glamorous south of France were enough for them both, the excess too much after their gentle meanderings. In Italy they were both without the language, but it didn’t matter. They pointed, tried in English or even French, so relaxed and at ease now that language seemed secondary to their needs. The weather was perfect, warm days, balmy nights. The Italian scenery bewitched them both. Golden yellow fields dotted with straight green cypress trees. Hilltop villages. Bustling cities. Sunlit piazzas. Noisy bars, enthusiastic conversations, friendly people. The sight of clothes drying on lines strung from balcony to balcony across cobblestoned alleys. Red geraniums on sunny stone steps. Gracie had never imagined a country could be so beautiful.

As they sat outside a cafe in Florence one afternoon drinking coffee in the sunshine, Tom surprised her by asking if she was still carrying the silver whistle he’d given her. Of course, she said. She took it from her handbag.

‘I’ll be right back,’ he said. She watched as he traced their steps back to a small side street lined with jewellery shops. He returned fifteen minutes later, with the whistle now nestling in

a small velvet box. She took it out. He’d had it engraved. For Gracie with love from Tom. She’d already treasured it. Now it was even more perfect.

They talked constantly, about all they saw, where they were going, and increasingly about their future together. Could she come to Australia again soon? Tom asked. She could get work there, study, do whatever she wanted, he was sure of it.

Gracie had thought about it already. Thought a lot. It was the next big step in their relationship. Yet she hesitated before answering.

He noticed. ‘You don’t want to go to Australia again? You don’t like our animals? Our insects? I’ll kill them all. Just let me know which species to start with.’ She laughed. ‘I love your wildlife. I was thinking about visas, grown-up things like that.’

‘You won’t need a visa.’ ‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ll marry you.’

He was joking, she knew, but she went along with it. ‘Why, thank you, how kind. But I’m much too young to get married.’ ‘We’ll just get engaged to begin with, then. We can get married on your fiftieth birthday.’

‘That was your proposal?’

‘Wasn’t it romantic enough?’ He smiled. ‘Sorry, Gracie. I’ll make up for it next time.’

From that day, whenever they found themselves in front of a landmark sight or looking at a beautiful view in any of the Italian towns or cities they visited, he asked her the same question. ‘Gracie Templeton, will you marry me?’

‘Of course, Tom,’ she said each time.

By the tenth proposal, she barely acknowledged it. ‘Sure. Do

you feel like a coffee?’

As they’d arranged three weeks earlier in London, she checked her emails the day before Spencer was due to arrive. Sitting in a small internet cafe off the Piazza Navona in Rome, waiting for

a computer to become free, she looked out at Tom, sitting on a stone bench, his face tilted up to the sun, his long legs stretched out in front of him. She smiled. She seemed to smile constantly these days. Tom had proposed to her again that morning, as they stood in front of the Trevi Fountain. She’d accepted with great enthusiasm for once, throwing her arms around him as though it was the first time, not the eleventh. A group of people behind them overheard and applauded.

Sitting down on some sunny steps a few streets on, he’d taken her hand, leaned back and said in a casual way, ‘I mean it, you know. I do want to marry you.’

About to joke back, she saw the expression on his face. He was serious. She bit her lip, her heart suddenly racing.

His expression changed. ‘But if you don’t want to, that’s fine. Honestly. Forget I even mentioned it.’

She laughed, unable to help herself. ‘Forget which proposal? All of them or just that last one?’

‘All of them. Forget I said anything.’ He smiled then. ‘No, don’t forget the third one, the one in the square in Siena. That was really something special. I want you to remember that one when you are old and grey in your nursing home, looking back on your youth and wondering whatever happened to that nice young cricketer you knew once.’

‘That nice young cricketer I hope will be sitting beside me in my nursing home?’

‘I’ll be there beside you? So you will have married me?’

‘No. I’m hoping you’ll have retrained as a nurse and be looking after me.’

He’d kissed her hand, then stood up in the graceful, easy motion he had, pulling her up beside him. ‘You will marry me one day, Gracie Templeton. You wait and see. Protest as much as you like, but it’s written in the stars.’

Looking out at him now from the Internet cafe, she smiled at the memory. Once Spencer had gone, when they were on their own again, she would talk about it with him, seriously. Talk about the two of them, seriously. Because she realised something that made her feel strange and excited and scared, all at once. The next time he proposed to her, she would say yes and she would mean it. She did want to marry him. She would move to Australia to be with him. Have children with him. All of it.

As her turn at the computer came up, she crossed her fingers, hoping Spencer had changed his mind, that his email would say he couldn’t make it after all. Her heart gave a lift when she read his subject line - Bad news - and then fell as she read on.

Don’t collapse with disappointment but can only join you for four nights not seven. I HAVE GOT A JOB IN THE MEDIA. An honest-to-God, no-nonsense paying job that doesn’t involve late nights or intoxicated wankers (myself excluded). Job is courier driver for a film production company.

I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a start, the first of my stepping stones to media mogul-ness. My own van - all right, their own van - and all. It’s small, it’s white, it’s beautiful. I am in love with my van. Anyway, will fill you and Tom in over a Campari or twenty. Arriving Roma Termini 2pm Saturday. Be there or else. My last days of freedom. Will be in celebratory mood!