Polly watched as Nora went to the large window that overlooked the garden. There, she stood for what felt like an eternity, her arms crossed, her head bowed. Polly waited, daring to hope that her mother was on the verge of accepting the inevitability of her news. But when Nora finally turned, her expression was troubled. “Come,” she said, gesturing with her hand as she returned to the sofa. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“What is it?”
Nora reached for the silver box on the drinks table, took out a cigarette and lit it. This was of grave concern. Her mother did not smoke—she hated the habit, calling it a weak, self-loathing impulse. The match fizzed as Nora shook out the surplus flame. Her hands, Polly noticed, were quivering.
“What I am going to tell you,” Nora began, “is a shameful family secret. I would have preferred to spare you from it—God knows I’ve tried—but I see no choice now. I know you’re very keen on this young man; I’ve seen you together and I was young once myself. But when you talk about marriage... Well, before you make a decision like that, you should know the truth.” She drew on her cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke, and then she began to speak, about her brother, Thomas, and the sister-in-law, Isabel, whom she had adored, and a brood of happy children in a big country house in the hills of South Australia. All of it was news to Polly, and she listened with great surprise and interest, until at length the story took a sharp turn. Her mother was talking about a picnic and the police and the stormthat followed, and Polly wanted to press her hands against her ears to stop from hearing any more.
When at last Nora finished, she seemed spent. It was as if reliving the events by putting them into words and speaking them into the familiar room had wrung every last bit of energy from her. Polly also sat in silence. The things she’d heard had stunned her. The story was impossible to comprehend.
Mrs. Robinson appeared then, carrying the tray of tea. “Sorry to take so long,” she said. “We had a delivery at the front door and a possum in the kitchen, if you can believe it. Cheeky thing.”
“Never mind, Jane, we’ve been busy here,” Nora said. “We’ll pour for ourselves.”
It was impossible not to pick up on the atmosphere in the room, and Mrs. Robinson gave a polite, serious nod, setting down the tray and telling Nora to call out if she needed anything further.
Nora turned to Polly. “So you see,” she said, “why you can’t possibly marry a man like him, a family like his.”
Polly was shaking her head, still trying to understand what she’d heard, to grasp all of the ways in which it affected things. “He won’t care,” she said eventually, but even she could hear the hint of doubt that had crept into her voice.
“Not at first, perhaps, but in time.”
“He loves me.”
“How will he feel when your secret ruins his father? Blood is thicker than water, you know.” When Polly didn’t answer—couldn’t answer—Nora continued. “I don’t doubt that he loves you, Polly. The question is whether you love him enough to spare him from having to make that choice. One thing is certain: if you marry into a family like that, you will become a target. The press will dig into your history, and they’ll find out. What do you think it would do to his father politically to have a daughter-in-law—the mother of his grandchildren, potentially—whose aunt was a”—she lowered her voice, and the word came out as a hiss—“amurderer? It would ruin him. It would ruin all of you.”
20
Amurderer.Even now, forty years later, sitting on the edge of the bed she’d made up for Jess, Polly felt the same kick of physical shock she’d experienced when her mother spoke the word that day.Murderer.It rolled around the room, echoing against the skirting boards, pooling in the corners.
“Maybe they won’t find out?” she’d said. “It was almost twenty years ago. I can’t imagine the American media pay much attention to events over here.”
“I wish that were true,” Nora had answered, “and perhaps it is generally. But in this case, news traveled. There was a book, you see. A very successful book, written by a journalist who happened to be visiting Australia at the time. It was aNew York Timesbestseller, all about the police investigation, the inquest, the crime itself.”
Polly had been defiant at first. She told her mother—she told herself—that she could hardly be held responsible for the actions of a woman who’d died before she was born, to whom she was related only by marriage. But that word changed things.
Murderer.
She’d broken things off with Jon. She’d said all the things her mother had suggested—that she wasn’t ready, that she was too young, that she’d made a mistake—and then she’d given him back the ring.
She had never forgotten the look on his face. “Tell me you don’t love me,” he’d said.
She hadn’t answered.
“Tell me you don’t love me,” he’d said again, his voice a little less certain.
Polly closed her eyes tightly. It had been awful.
It took a moment for the colors of the room to normalize when she opened them again. The wooden boards ran horizontally in here;it had been a verandah once, enclosed some decades before. She’d painted the walls with glossy turquoise paint that had faded over time to a powdery hue. Outside, the morning magpies were caroling to one another across the valley. Polly loved that sound. Through the bank of louvre windows she could see the garden estate of Government House with its army of tall gums, the view partially blocked by the foliage of a large jacaranda that she’d been advised on more than one occasion to cut down to allow more light but had stubbornly retained. Once a year, like clockwork, the scene appeared: a mass of purple crepe against the crystal blue sky, the dark summer storm clouds, confetti on the gravel.Full beautiful—a faery’s child. Have mercy on me.
Polly glanced away. On the wall directly in front of her was one of her own paintings. She was not a great painter, but she loved the process and had become friendly with the small class she’d joined ten years before. She liked to paint pictures of rooms. Rooms through open doors. Beneath the painting was a Victorian high chair she’d bought when Jess was small and never been able to bring herself to give away. Polly liked the way old things looked. She found their small signs of damage reassuring: the scratches, the imprints from long-ago pens, the flaking paint. They understood that everybody had their bruised edges and private pasts.
She had seen Jon in the news occasionally over the years that followed. In relation to his father at first, and then, as his writing career took off, whenever he was promoting a new book. There’d been a photo spread in one of the women’s magazines at some point; she’d pored over it, drinking in every detail. His wife and his children, all of them so good-looking. Polly had been alone by then, up in Brisbane, Jess back in Sydney with Nora, and she’d allowed herself the indulgence of despair. Nora had always taken a dim view of wallowing, but Polly had surrendered to it.
Her fingers went unthinkingly to the pendant on her chain, even as she reminded herself not to be melodramatic, that she had been the one to break it off with him. She could have told him the truth; maybeshe should have. There was every chance he’d have taken her hands and said it didn’t matter to him one whit, that he loved her anyway and they’d find a way through. Nora had anticipated as much. “He’ll tell you that Isabel’s actions don’t have any bearing on you,” she’d said the night before Polly was due to speak with him, as they sat together at the table in the kitchen of Darling House. Polly had found herself looking up at the portrait of her mother when she was young and wondering what it must have felt like to be so self-possessed. “And for a time that might be true. But he’ll carry the knowledge with him. You’ll think everything’s fine, and then one day you’ll have a baby—trust me, having a baby changes things—and he’ll look at you and it will be there in his eyes.”
Murderer.
Polly stood. The morning sun was high in the sky now and the roofing iron was expanding. A breath of warm muggy air came through the open window, laced with the ripe fragrance of star jasmine. Every summer, the humidity of Brisbane was a shock. “Welcome to the subtropics,” her neighbor Angie had said back when she first remarked upon it, chatting across the paling fence that ran between their houses, and then, gesturing toward her own swollen belly, “Be grateful you’re not pregnant with it.”
