At Home With The Templetons (31 page)

Can you please thank Tom for his latest photograph? No, don’t. I will write and thank him myself. If he ever decides to stop being a cricket champion or an academic genius, he could be a champion photographer, don’t you think? The latest photos of the Hall and the trees in that misty autumn light were so beautiful. If/when the Hall ever opens to the public again, I am going to ask Tom to be our official photographer and make souvenir postcards of all his beautiful photographs.

More soon and love til then. Gracie

PS Spencer’s got a girlfriend. It’s quite funny. She pretends to be a punk, swearing all the time, but I heard her on the phone talking to her mother and she was very upper-class. Audrey’s still not completely cured yet, though Mum must have taken her to every clinic and psychologist in London so far, but nothing has worked. She’s now decided to go down the alternative therapy route, so perhaps there’ll be a change there one day soon. I’d never tell Mum but I’d quite miss Audrey’s note-writing if she started talking fulltime again. As for Charlotte - she’s still trying to take over the world, starting with Chicago. We spoke last week and she started dropping hints about the next stage of what she is calling her ‘ground-breaking career in childcare’- I’ll let you know what she’s talking about as soon as I find out myself …

FAX TO: Nina Donovan

FROM: Eleanor Templeton

DATE: October 1998

Dear Nina

This is a brief note just to confirm our phone conversation that yes, we are happy to agree to lease the bottom rooms of the Hall for the purposes of a meditation retreat. We can’t thank you enough again for your part in this, not just in minding the Hall for us (can you believe it is now nearly five years since we left?) but for somehow engineering this excellent solution to our current situation and ongoing financial difficulties. I promise I will fill you in on everything, one day, when we are face to face, but it’s not something I feel comfortable writing about.

On the plus side, yes, Gracie is doing wonderfully at school. I am so proud of how hard she works at her studies, and she deserves every one of her good marks. She also seems to have taken over the old folks’ home up the road as well. I don’t know if she told you, but for the past year she’s spent nearly every afternoon up there, reading to them or chatting away or organising book discussion groups and concerts apparently! I was talking to the matron last week, who said all the residents love her and think she’s a breath of fresh air. Hopefully it’s a breath, and not a hurricane …

Not so brief after all! I will try to call soon. Thank you again, for everything.

Eleanor

FAX TO: Nina Donovan

FROM: Gracie Templeton

DATE: July 1999

Dear Nina

I’m so sorry it didn’t work out with the host family the cricket association arranged, but of course Tom can stay with us instead. We’d love to have him! Please excuse me using the fax instead of our usual letters, but Mum thought you’d both like to know straight away. We’re all just sorry you can’t come with him. But that is so exciting that you have started teaching too. You don’t need any advice from Mum. I bet your students are already in love with you. I always thought you were the most fantastic artist and now all those lucky children will get to learn to paint like you too.

Mum is working two jobs at the moment, teaching in the day and tutoring at night, but she’s also happy that Tom is coming over. Thanks too for sending over the newspaper cutting of Tom with the rest of his team. He’s got so tall, hasn’t he? Please tell him not to expect another Templeton Hall when he comes to stay, but I’ll make sure our spare room is really comfortable and I’ll be sure to meet him at the airport or the tube station too, whatever is easiest for him.

Spencer has moved back home again. (I never did find out exactly why he left in the first place, but I heard Mum and Hope have a rather tempestuous conversation about it the evening before he turned up. Hope is still sober, but there’s still quite a lot of tension between her and Mum at times.) As for Spencer, he’s got very good at blaming everyone else for anything that goes wrong for him. His latest excuse is that his misbehaviour and bad marks at school are all due to Dad’s absence, that he missed the steadying influence of a father figure, or some nonsense like that. As I pointed out to him, he managed to ignore Dad’s steady hand for the first ten years of his life, so why he would have started paying him any more attention now, I don’t know. He’s smoking all the time, in his room too, unfortunately. It stinks but he doesn’t care, he says.

Audrey is doing so much better since Mum found the new therapist for her, and between you and me, I think he is

becoming more than her therapist. His name is Greg and he’s from New Zealand and he’s started taking Audrey out on what she calls ‘excursions’ and I would call ‘dates’ most weekends. He’s shorter than Audrey but has a nice kind face and he really does seem to know what he’s doing. It’s amazing to see (or should I say hear?) Audrey talking to people besides us. Charlotte (of course!) is still sceptical. She thinks that Audrey has just switched her attention seeking behaviour from Mum to this Greg but I don’t know if she’s right. Mostly I think it’s good for Mum to have one less of us to worry about.

Speaking of Charlotte - she’s decided to go into business with Ethan’s dad, setting up a nanny-training business of all things. I’m glad for her but sad for us. I really thought that now Ethan was getting too old to need a nanny she’d come back to London permanently, but not yet it seems.

Congratulations again on Hilary’s news. You must be so excited to be about to become an aunty. (No chance of that for me yet - Charlotte says she’s a career woman, not mother material, though I’m getting hopeful it might be serious between Audrey and Greg … ) I told some of my friends at the old folks’ home and they’ve started knitting furiously so I will have quite a parcel of matinee jackets to send Hilary by the time the baby arrives! We’ll ring you closer to the date to make the arrangements about meeting Tom but for now, please tell him we can’t wait to see him again. I wish you were coming too. I miss you very much.

Lots of love, Gracie xx

FAX TO: Nina Donovan

FROM: Eleanor Templeton

DATE: August 1999

Dear Nina

This fax is just to confirm that we will ALL be at Heathrow on Tuesday next to meet Tom. No banners, though, we promise. I only wish he could stay with us for longer than five nights.

Congratulations again on the wonderful news of your sister’s baby daughter. It has obviously been a long, difficult road for her and her husband (it hardly seems possible that it is six years since we had Tom to stay at the Hall when you went to Cairns to be with her) but I can imagine the joy they are now feeling. Please give her our warmest congratulations (and I will also pop something in the post to her, care of you).

All our best wishes for now, Eleanor To: Nina

From: Eleanor Templeton Date: September 1999

Dear Nina

Thank heavens for school computers and my apologies if this seems brief. I am always terrified I am going to press the wrong button and the whole email message will be erased before I’ve sent it.

We’ll talk soon I hope, but I just wanted to let you know that Tom has arrived safe and sound. What a fine young man he’s become, and he is so tall for an eighteen-year-old (or perhaps it is that Spencer is so small for a sixteen-year-old??) And I still can’t believe all that is happening to him with his cricket - to think we were there the day it all began!

I’ll get him to call or email you as soon as he is settled in. (I do like that he calls you Nina now. How grown-up of him! Spencer announced this morning that he now wants to call me Eleanor. I wonder where he got that idea from?)

Love from all of us until next time, Eleanor

To: Nina

From: Tom

Date: September 1999

Dear Nina

Hello from London!

Everything’s going well. We’ve already done a tour of the Lord’s Cricket Ground and met Test umpires and coaches and even some of the Australian players based here in England.

Things are great with the Templetons too, but very different. I thought Gracie was joking at first when she brought me to the house. I suppose I expected it would be another big mansion, even bigger than Templeton Hall, but it’s an ordinary London terrace house. Spencer hasn’t been around much. Eleanor (yes, she asked me to call her Eleanor) told me he lives with Hope (yes, she is still sober) and her boyfriend most of the time. It’s strange Henry not being around either. He’s in France or America working, Gracie said. She also told me I had to tell you her hair isn’t like a dandelion any more. It’s not. She looks great.

It’s cold here, though. Not what I’d call summer! See you soon.

Love Tom

London, October 1999

Dear Nina

I’m so glad we decided to keep writing to each other the oldfashioned way, rather than faxing or emailing, aren’t you? I love hearing the post land on the mat and wondering if there will be one there from you.

Now I not only miss you but I miss Tom as well. I loved having him here to stay. I don’t know if he told you anything, but Spencer went off the rails again while he was here and went back to live with Hope again, so poor Tom had only me for company most of the nights. He was so nice about it and it was great to be able to show him a little bit of London. I’ll write and tell him myself, but I wanted you to know as well that he’s welcome to come and stay with us any time he feels like visiting England again, cricket trip or no cricket trip.

Apart from missing Tom and missing you still, of course, all is well here. I spend all day and what feels like all night studying. (Everyone tells me that A Levels are harder than university, but surely that can’t be true?) If you need to know anything about Greek mythology, ancient Rome, the division of plant cells or the irony to be found in Shakespeare’s sub-plots, please just ask!

Lots of love, Gracie xxxx

November 1999

Dear Nina

Hi from Charlotte-in-Chicago!! Thank you SO much for sending all the Australian bits and pieces over. My now not-so-little charge Ethan’s presentation at his high school was fantastic. He went straight to the top of the class. Yes, I can hardly believe I’m still here myself. When I took the job I thought it would be for a couple of years before I got sick of him and he got sick

of me, but we’re great friends still. Not that he needs me looking after him as much these days. He’s growing up so fast. (He’s fourteen now, a teenager. I can hardly believe it.) I don’t know if Mum told you, but I’ve branched out a bit in the past year. I had lots of spare time when Ethan was at school and so I started to think what would be the best way to fill it. Nothing like having an internationally successful businessman as your boss! The long and the short of it is, Mr Giles and I have gone into business together. Well, I’m doing the work and he’s funding it, but it’s still a partnership. I told Mum it’s all her and Dad’s fault. They’re the ones who gave me this English accent and it turns out an English-accented nanny is quite the thing here in Chicago. Very posh and lah-di-dah, it seems. I’m no expert, I made it up as I went along with Ethan but we spent so much time with other nannies I found out all the horror stories as well as all the best things. So I’ve started training nannies myself! I’m going to take it slowly, just do it via word-of-mouth to begin with, but then that seems to be the way the nanny network operates.

You’ll have heard all the rest of the Templeton news from Gracie, I’m sure. You do realise you are her surrogate mother and big sister and best friend rolled into one?? I should be grateful to you, and I am. Sorry if this sounds sour. I always felt a bit guilty leaving Gracie back then, especially after they went back to London and things, well, fell apart with Mum and Dad. But she sounds so happy at the moment. Her school results have been so brilliant and she can’t wait to go to university next year. She hasn’t stopped talking about your Tom either, by the way. The local London boys don’t stand a chance with her compared to him. (I keep asking her about her love life and she tells me all the boys she meets seem too immature and anyway, there’ll be plenty of time for that when she’s finished her studies! Gracie really does amuse me sometimes.) She sent me over a bunch of photographs she took when Tom was staying with them - you’ve produced quite a hunk, haven’t you, if you’ll excuse my American slang! The female attendances at cricket matches will skyrocket the second they put him on the national team.

Mum tells me you still refuse to move into the Hall. Unbelievable. If it was me, I’d have been in there like a shot. But she also told me you’ve managed to rent some of the rooms out. That will help matters, I’m sure. Every little bit helps.

I’m getting worse than Gracie now, divulging family secrets. Better shut up while the going is good!

Thanks again for all the koala and kangaroo toys, and especially the didgeridoo. You should have seen the postman’s face when he delivered that!

Love from Chicago, Charlotte xx

To: Nina

From: Eleanor Templeton Date: February 2000

Dear Nina

I could feel your pride bursting off the computer screen! What incredible news for Tom, and for you too, for him to be offered a placement at the national cricket academy - many, many congratulations from us all! And I think it is a fantastic idea of his to do some travelling at the end of his eight months there, and how wonderful that he plans to head in our direction again. I do hope he makes it to London and please tell him there is always a bed here with us. Lots of the sons and daughters of my fellow teachers at school have done the solo-backpacking-around-the-world thing, and survived to tell amazing tales, so please don’t worry too much.

We spoke about it on the phone, I know, but I also wanted to say again how grateful I am for the way you handled the situation with the meditation clinic people. How ironic that people concerned with peace and clarity in modern life should turn out to be sneaky businesspeople. Henry assured me via his lawyer (sadly that is the only way we communicate at present) that he has deposited another sum of money in the Hall account this week, so please be sure to use that to pay for any cleaning or maintenance work you feel needs doing to set the ground floor rooms to rights again.