Mrs. Robinson glanced away, watching as the toddler squealed past, plane-wing arms out wide. Jess waited. This, she knew, was the moment of decision. Often the reluctant subjects had the most to say, once you got them started. And then, “They were very good friends,” said her grandmother’s housekeeper, and Jess knew they were away.
16
“Your grandmother was only sixteen when they met,” Mrs. Robinson began. “Her brother had come back from the war and told her he was bringing a surprise with him. She used to joke that she’d expected a dress from Liberty, not a new sister-in-law. She told me once that she was all set to hate this other woman who’d stolen her brother’s heart, but then she met Isabel and lost her own heart in the process. She was devastated when they told her they were moving to South Australia, taking baby Matilda away. It was even harder when the other children started arriving. She had to take two suitcases whenever she went to visit, one filled only with the toys and gifts she’d been collecting for them. She adored those children. ‘Such little Turners,’ she used to say.”
Jess smiled, recognizing this as Nora’s highest praise.
“They were good kids,” said Mrs. Robinson. “Very spirited. Country kids, you know, but they scrubbed up nicely.”
“I saw a photo.”
Mrs. Robinson looked surprised before raising her eyes skyward. “Let me guess: the internet?”
“They must have used it in the press at the time. It was taken here in Sydney.”
“I remember. It was in all the papers back then. They came on holiday. Stayed at Darling House with your grandmother.”
“They looked a lot like Nora. The young girl especially—Evelyn—was a dead ringer.”
Mrs. Robinson nodded agreement. “That was one of the saddest things about the whole sorry affair. Among the terrible losses was the death of your grandmother’s dreams of a big, bustling, extended family. She’d been so excited that your mother was going to be born into a ready-made clan with an aunt and uncle and cousins. But in onefell swoop, it was gone. By the time your mother was born, they were dead, all of those beautiful children. Then her husband left her, and her brother—her very favorite person in the world—disappeared out of her life.”
The mention of Mr. Bridges’s absence reminded Jess that she’d wondered about the custody arrangement. “Do you know why Nora’s husband disappeared so entirely out of Polly’s life? Was that unusual for the time?”
Mrs. Robinson sighed. “You know what Nora’s like. She’s stubborn. Once she’s made a commitment, she doesn’t easily let it go. When things started going awry in their marriage, she was determined to make it work. Not just make it work: to be in love, to be a happy family. But men can be vain creatures. Needy. He was jealous of the time she was spending with your mum, but Nora was devoted to her baby. I think, ultimately, it was too much for him. It was easier to leave altogether. He married again soon after they parted—a young girl from the office. Someone Nora had hired.”
A picture of Matt and his new wife and their baby came into Jess’s head. She pushed it aside. “Did he go on to have other kids?”
“I believe they had three or four. With indecent haste, I might add.”
So: a new family and an ex-wife unwilling to share her precious baby. Jess supposed that explained why he hadn’t bothered fighting Nora for custody. Not, though, why Nora would be worrying about the whole thing now.
“The end of a marriage is sad, of course,” Mrs. Robinson continued, “but even worse for Nora was losing her brother. It hurt her terribly when he didn’t come home from London. She hardly spoke of him after that. I imagine she felt betrayed. She’d loved his children so much, and he didn’t even bother to travel back to meet your mother.”
Husband and brother gone; sister-in-law, nieces, and nephew dead. No wonder Nora had held on so tightly. “Polly was all she had left.”
“That’s certainly how your grandmother saw it,” Mrs. Robinson agreed. “More than once she referred to the two of them as anunbreakable pair. She felt they’d been bonded, above and beyond the usual, through their shared trauma.”
Jess raised her eyebrows; she’d heard this before. One of Nora’s evergreen adages was that a child born of trauma bore the scars forever. She’d said it often during conversations about Jess’s mother, usually when she was trying to explain her daughter’s nervousness, her thoughtlessness, the incident when Jess was just a baby. Whenever her grandmother made such comments, they’d seemed to be colored with a tinge of guilt—personal responsibility, at the very least. Jess had taken the explanation at face value when she was young; as she’d got older, though, it had struck her as an overly dramatic way to describe a relatively common experience. Melodrama was not usually Nora’s style. “But Polly wouldn’t have remembered much of the divorce, would she? She was tiny at the time.”
“Not the divorce,” said Mrs. Robinson, meeting Jess’s gaze, surprised. “Your grandmother was talking about the tragedy in South Australia.”
“Why would that be a trauma for Polly? She wasn’t even born when it happened.”
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s what started Nora’s labor. It was unexpected. She wasn’t due until the new year, but hearing what happened by that water hole brought it on.”
“Nora went into labor after she took the phone call?”
It was Mrs. Robinson’s turn to frown in confusion until suddenly realization dawned. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you didn’t know—your grandmother was there. She went down to South Australia for Christmas that year. She’d suffered badly with morning sickness throughout her pregnancy, and she wanted to be with family. There was no phone call. She was at the house when the policemen came to tell her the news. She’d stayed behind when the others went on their picnic.”
Jess’s thoughts were spinning. She couldn’t sort through them quickly enough to figure out what to ask next. As it happened, shedidn’t have to say anything. For all that Mrs. Robinson had been reluctant to meet, she’d warmed to the telling of her story.
“I think there was a part of her that felt at fault,” she continued. “That her dearest friend—her sister, that’s how she thought of Isabel—could do such a terrible thing, that she planned it and carried it out, all while Nora was there... I think she spent a lot of time reproaching herself for failing to see the signs, wondering what she could or should have done. She couldn’t have done anything, of course. Most women are familiar with the baby blues, but what happened in that house was a different kettle of fish.”
“Is that what it was? Postpartum depression?”
“What else could explain a mother doing such a thing? She was all alone in that big house on that big property, three children and a new baby, no family to speak of nearby. Strange things happen in the human mind.”
Jess, trying to remember what she’d read: “Was that the coroner’s official finding?”
