The Secrets of Bridgewater Bay
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Synopsis
Two women set sail for Australia, bound by a terrible truth. But only one will make it off the ship.
The Secrets of Bridgewater Bay is a darkly gripping dual-time novel, with a wealth of twists, turns and secrets, and an absolute book club treat, perfect for fans of Lucinda Riley, Rachel Rhys and Hannah Richell.
'A sweeping tale of family secrets, betrayal, jealousy, ambition and forbidden romance . . . Fans of The Thorn Birds and Downton Abbey will love the epic scope of this novel' ALI MERCER
'I thoroughly enjoyed this immersive story which spans both generations and continents. The evocative details and impeccable research make for a delightful reading experience and I can pay it no greater compliment other than to say, I wish I'd written it' KATHRYN HUGHES
'This is an epic dual-time novel which draws the reader in right from the start and keeps you in thrall until the very last page. The writing is superb, the descriptions detailed, lush and evocative' CHRISTINA COURTENAY
'A gripping story full of family secrets: the price of love and loss within two generations . . . convincing and poignant' LEAH FLEMING
'Rich in evocative detail - the complex mystery kept me guessing right up to the last page' MUNA SHEHADI
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England, 1919: Rose and Ivy board a ship bound for Australia.
One is travelling there to marry a man she has never met.
One is destined never to arrive.
Australia, 2016: Amongst her late-grandmother's possessions, Molly uncovers a photograph of two girls dressed in First World War nurses' uniforms, labelled 'Rose and Ivy 1917', and a letter from her grandmother, asking her to find out what happened to her own mother, Rose, who disappeared in the 1960s.
Compelled to carry out her grandmother's last wish, Molly embarks on a journey to England to unravel the mystery of the two girls whose photograph promised they'd be 'together forever'...
(P) 2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd.
Release date: September 16, 2021
Publisher: Headline
Print pages: 400
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The Secrets of Bridgewater Bay
Julie Brooks
They turned off the main road soon after, heading for the house where Rose had once lived and where Nan and her brothers had been born. As the Volvo clattered over the second cattle grid, Molly glimpsed the homestead peeping between two century-old bunya pines. Then the track rounded a gentle rise and Wuurnong came into full view, its dark stone facade rising from the volcanic plain, with the ancient crater – named Budj Bim by the Gunditjmara people and Mount Eccles by her ancestors – crouched in the distance. Two Blue Heelers greeted their arrival, nipping at the wheels as Wendy manoeuvred the station wagon to one side of the circular drive.
‘Get out of it, Sukie! Get down, Bob!’ Wendy’s cousin Brian shouted to the dogs as he appeared around the side of the house.
‘Hi, Brian,’ Molly said as she opened the car door, trying to avoid being knocked down by the dogs, who were enthusiastically frisking her legs. ‘They’re very friendly.’
‘You’re not wrong there. When you’ve got friends like these two you don’t need enemies. Get out of it, Sukie!’ he growled at the bitch, who had corralled Wendy between door and car. The two dogs, realising he meant business, slunk away to settle themselves on the veranda.
‘Are they Minna’s pups?’ asked Wendy.
‘Poor old Minna, I reckon she’s been gone three years. These two scamps are from her last litter.’
‘Is that how long since I’ve been here?’
‘About that. Anyway, how are you, Wendy? Joanie was so pleased you called.’ Brian enfolded his cousin in a bear hug, a huge grin splitting his face.
‘We missed you at the funeral.’
‘Yeah, I was sorry to miss it, love, but we had a bit of an emergency with the flood warning. I would have liked to say farewell to Aunt Queenie, though. And look at you, young Molly, the fellas must be beating down your door.’
‘You always were an optimist,’ Molly laughed.
‘And I hear you’ve found some letters amongst Queenie’s things?’
‘Love letters. Great-grandfather Jim’s letters to Rose,’ said Molly.
‘Well, that’s a surprise. Love letters, eh? Wasn’t much love lost between those two, you ask your Uncle Ted.’
Those love letters had kept Molly awake reading half the night, so much so that she had suggested this detour to Wuurnong to speak to Nan’s brother Uncle Ted.
‘According to the letters, Granny Rose nursed Jim’s younger brother, Henry, during the war,’ she said.
‘Did Henry introduce them?’ asked Brian.
‘No, apparently Henry died from his wounds and they began corresponding after his death.’ Rose had fallen so hard for the man behind the words that she sailed across the world. For a second Molly felt a flicker of shame that her love had been too meagre to get her to Fiji. ‘I think Rose was the last thread that connected Jim to his brother,’ she said. ‘He seemed to feel a lot of guilt about letting Henry go to war without him.’
Wendy flicked a glance at her daughter, saying, ‘Perhaps Rose helped him to forgive himself.’
I carry your letter in my pocket, worrying that tomorrow I’ll wake and realise I’ve been spun a yarn and you’re not coming, after all, Jim had written in his last letter to Rose. Mum says a rough chap like me doesn’t deserve a fine girl like Miss Rose Luscombe, but knowing you’re to be my wife is the one thing that keeps me going. You helped me climb out from my trench of despair and take my gruel like a man.
‘Maybe,’ said Molly.
‘Anyhow, let’s get on in, or Joanie will be wondering where we’ve got to.’
As they climbed the stairs to the veranda, Molly noticed that the boards were splintering at the edges, with patches where the decking had rotted altogether.
‘The old girl needs a bit of work,’ Brian nodded, ‘but she’s held up these past hundred and sixty years so she’s got a few good years left in her, I reckon.’
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘She’s a money pit! You’d keel over if you knew what the architect quoted me to do her up properly. You can’t replace a downpipe without getting the National Trust involved.’
‘Did I hear my name mentioned?’ asked Joan, wiping her hands on her apron as she emerged from the house, a shorter, cuddlier version of her husband. She had the same shaggy salt-and-pepper hair and sun-worn face, but in Joan the wrinkles were softened to a mesh of fine lines. She kissed both women on the cheek, then threw her arm around Wendy’s waist. ‘It’s so good to see you! You’ll need a cup of tea after dealing with Aunt Queenie’s place.’
The dogs escorted Brian and Molly across the paddocks to inspect the bluestone woolshed in all its utilitarian grandeur, barking at a couple of wood ducks on the dam, before the little party headed back to the homestead for the promised afternoon tea. Brian guided Molly across the gravel yard at the rear of the house and in through the kitchen door. They had already toured the interior of the house, Molly admiring the lofty ceilings and marble fireplaces that contrasted sharply with the slope-roofed bedrooms in the older Georgian farmhouse. The front section of the house had been built from Victorian basalt in the 1870s, in the Italianate style, while the rear dated from the 1850s and was built from local freestone rubble. She had always found the rear, with its jumble of small, whitewashed rooms, more homely, as if formed from the soil.
‘Thanks for giving me the tour.’ Molly smiled as Brian opened the door for her. ‘It’s so long since I was here, I’d forgotten a lot of the detail. Reading Jim’s letters made me curious, I suppose.’
Brian ushered her through to the parlour, where Joan and Wendy lounged on a sagging Victorian sofa catching up on family news over a second cup of tea. Uncle Ted appeared to be snoozing in his favourite recliner. The room was a time capsule of furniture styles from the previous two centuries. Molly loved the nineteenth-century landscapes painted with varying degrees of talent and the early sepia photographs of Wuurnong that Joanie had enlarged. Her favourite showed the house in the 1850s, with the family posed in a line out front, the little girls with their centre-parted hair and the father with his mutton-chop whiskers. She found it incongruous that the first settlers brought their Georgian architecture with them all the way from Britain, with not an eave or veranda in sight to protect pale skin from the ravages of the Australian summers. The house and its occupants could have stepped straight from the pages of a Brontë novel, except they were in western Victoria and not the moors of northern England.
Accepting a cup of tea from Joanie, she sat back in an old leather squatter’s chair. ‘Brian, what did you mean earlier when you said that there wasn’t much love lost between Jim and Rose?’ she asked.
‘Well, I was ten when Gran died, and the way I remember it is she and Granddad hadn’t spoken for a year. They lived in the same house, slept in the same bed but only spoke through intermediaries. Rose would say, “Ted, ask your father if he wants mashed potatoes for tea,” and Jim would grunt or say, “Tell your mother I’ll leave it up to her.” Don’t know how they got on in the bedroom. Beggars belief really.’
‘Do you know what went wrong between them?’
‘Not a clue, and Dad doesn’t know either. One day they were talking and the next they weren’t. Apparently it had happened before, but they eventually got tired of it. I suppose Rose disappeared before they could start talking again.’
Wasn’t that the truth of any long relationship? If you caught it at any given moment the protagonists might be lovers or fighters. ‘We found a scrapbook Nan kept about Rose’s disappearance,’ Molly said.
‘A scrapbook?’ Brian repeated with a frown.
‘Apparently Mum didn’t believe that Rose drowned,’ Wendy explained with a shake of the head. ‘She searched for twenty years, hoping that her mother might one day return.’
‘Poor Aunt Queenie, not much chance of that, I reckon. One way or another, Rose was gone for good. But it’s hard to let a parent go, no matter how old you are,’ Brian said, with a sideways glance at Uncle Ted who appeared to be sound asleep in his recliner.
Molly bit back her own memories. ‘Do you think Jim and Rose’s spat had anything to do with her disappearance?’ she asked.
‘I wouldn’t like to say, love,’ said Brian. ‘She was a strange one, your great-grandmother. She could get in these moods where she’d go off on her own. She had an old EJ Holden, though I suppose it was new then, and she’d drive down to the coast alone. These days the doctors would probably diagnose depression and medicate her, but I reckon she just got sad sometimes and went away to lick her wounds. And then one day she never came back.’
‘My gran would have recommended a Bex and a lie-down,’ said Joan. ‘Bex was her remedy for everything.’
‘Anyway, before you knew it, Granddad’s friends were leaving casseroles and cakes at the front door and no one would mention her name.’
Nobody spoke for a few moments, as if Rose was finally getting her two minutes of silence, fifty years after the fact. And then Ted’s cracked old voice croaked from the comfort of his La-Z-Boy.
‘He turned up, you know, a few days after Mum disappeared.’
‘Who turned up, Dad?’
‘All the way from England, with never a word of him coming.’
‘Who, Dad?’ Brian repeated with a lift of one eyebrow in Joan and Wendy’s direction. Ted was becoming known for his mental meanderings. When you’d lived as long as he had, the past was a many-branched road map, whereas the future didn’t lead very far at all.
‘Rolled down the drive in his big black car. Chauffeur in a peaked cap.’
‘Who rolled up, Dad?’ Brian asked, with good-humoured patience.
‘The brother. Never heard a peep out of him, all those years. And he turns up when she’s gone.’
‘Whose brother?’
‘Mum’s brother. Uncle Robert Luscombe.’
Rose led the way up the narrow stairs at the rear of the house, hushing Ivy with a soft hiss whenever she stepped too heavily on a creaking floorboard. They had timed Ivy’s arrival to coincide with Miss Sarah’s afternoon nap. Rose’s mother was rarely seen beyond her boudoir before dinner, while the servants were busy cleaning silver, sewing on buttons and ironing Mrs Luscombe’s intricate blouses and petticoats. It was the quiet hour upstairs.
‘You’d better take off your boots or Greep will hear you. He has better hearing than a bat.’
‘He looks like one too,’ Ivy giggled, for the butler did have rather large ears and beady black eyes. But she dutifully removed her boots, hoping Rose wouldn’t notice the hole in her stockings that was yet to be mended.
She followed Rose along the corridor, hurrying past the grand central staircase, while trying to avoid the accusing stares from a wall of Luscombe ancestors. Her friend’s bedchamber was situated at the rear of the house, overlooking the park, its walls papered in candy-striped green with billowing lace curtains draping the windows. Rose wanted to show her the doll’s house that her brother had ordered to celebrate her twelfth birthday, and Ivy was a willing collaborator. In the few times she had been invited to visit, she’d been mesmerised by the wonder of Rose’s room, like the tower of a fairy-tale princess.
She noticed the doll’s house as soon as Rose opened the door, for it took pride of place in the centre of the room, perched upon an ebony stand on the rug. She saw at a glance that the doll’s house had more rooms than the Toms cottage. There was a proper bathroom with a claw-foot tub and copper geezer. There was a kitchen, a dining room, a morning room and a drawing room. Why, there was even a billiard room with a rack of cues the size of toothpicks. And at the top of the little house, complete with a fireplace, a four-poster bed and a rocking horse, was a room with exactly the same wallpaper as Rose’s bedchamber.
She stepped closer so that her eyes were on the same level as the miniature room, peering inside to find that it also had the same curtains at the window. She felt something stir inside her, like a pain or a burning that had not been there a moment before.
‘Robert sent a drawing and samples to London and they copied the wallpaper and curtains,’ said Rose, clapping her hands with pleasure. ‘Look, Ivy, it even has my rug upon the floor.’
Ivy looked down to find that, indeed, the rug was the exact shade of gold splashed with pink peonies as the one upon which they now stood. ‘It’s very pretty,’ she said in a small voice.
‘And there are dolls to go in every room.’
The doll occupying Rose’s room had curling gold locks and painted blue eyes and wore a familiar blue floral dress. There was a grown-up lady doll with tightly cinched waist and feathers in her hair; a young man in a hunting costume; a pipe-smoking older gentleman; a little boy in short pants; plus a footman, a cook, a butler in a black suit, and a maid in a smart black dress with frilled white apron and cap.
‘Let’s play “Getting ready for dinner”,’ said Rose, plucking her twin from the doll’s house. ‘I’ll be me and you will be . . .’
‘Maman!’ said Ivy, reaching for the grown-up doll dressed in a lilac silk evening gown with silvery feathers in her nest of faded blond hair – the doll that resembled Rose’s mother in all her finery.
‘But Ivy, if you’re Maman,’ said Rose, her pale forehead marred by an unaccustomed frown, ‘who will help me dress for dinner?’
‘Can’t we help each other?’
‘Ladies don’t help each other dress. Well, perhaps they may if they’re sisters, but certainly not Maman and I. Ladies have a maid to dress them,’ explained Rose in the voice she used for speaking to the gardener’s lad.
‘Then who shall I be?’
‘You shall be my maid.’
Ivy wasn’t sure that she wanted to be the maid, for although the maid’s black skirt and neat white apron were prettier than her own – which had been cut down from one of her mother’s worn and faded garments – the Rose doll wore a dress cut from pink silk and tied with a white satin bow. ‘Well, if I can’t be Maman, I shall be you,’ she said, challenging her friend with a determined look.
Rose prised the grown-up doll from her hand, saying, ‘But you don’t know a thing about living in a big house. I bet you don’t even dress for dinner at your house.’
In truth, Ivy’s mother struggled to get her father and brothers to wash their hands and faces before meals. And how could they dress for dinner when they had but two sets of ordinary clothes and one set for Sunday best? But she wasn’t about to admit this fact to Rose, who was the original owner of her single Sunday dress, worn but twice and bequeathed to Ivy for being too itchy. The more she thought about it, the more Ivy was determined to wear that silk dress, even if only as a doll.
‘Of course we dress for dinner,’ she said, punctuating her statement with a jutting chin.
‘Why Ivy Toms, I do believe you are a fibber!’
‘I am not!’ said Ivy, snatching the Maman doll back so swiftly that Rose did not have time to release it. They both looked on in horror as the silvery feathers were torn from the little doll’s head and fluttered to the floor.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said Rose, her voice rising in pitch and volume until it was almost, but not quite, a screech. Rose never screeched. Not even the time a wasp got stuck in her hair and Ivy had to fetch the groom to extract it. So Ivy knew that she had ruffled her friend’s usual composure. ‘You’ve ruined her!’
‘I didn’t do nothing!’ spat Ivy.
‘What is all this noise, Rose?’ said a tinkling voice behind them.
Startled from her indignation, Ivy turned towards the doorway where Rose’s mother leaned against the door jamb, a horrified expression upon her face. She had the same blond hair as her daughter, but Rose once divulged that her mother’s fading locks were aided by a secret recipe from France, known only to the most talented of maids. And although it was long past noon, Mrs Luscombe’s hair hung loose about her shoulders and she wore a robe of silver velvet lined with pink satin, wrapped about her thin frame.
‘And who is that?’ The words were spoken softly and tinged with a faint sniff of disgust.
A cat seemed to have caught Ivy’s tongue but Rose had no trouble answering. ‘This is my friend, Ivy, who lives in the village,’ she said, as Ivy backed towards the window, her path to the door blocked by Mrs Luscombe. In the terror of the moment she forgot that she was on the second floor.
‘And what is she doing here?’
‘She has come to play with my new doll’s house that Robert gave me for my birthday.’
‘Has she now? And has she also come to ruin my floors with her dirty boots?’
Ivy’s back nudged the windowsill as her eyes followed Mrs Luscombe’s gaze to where she had left the dirty boots at the top of the stairs. Without her mother to remind her, she had forgotten to wipe her boots before entering the house. She felt her cheeks flush at the thought of her trail of muddy prints tramping across the gleaming floors of Luscombe Park, like the spoor of a fox or a rabbit.
‘What have you to say for yourself, girl?’
Ivy opened her mouth to speak but no sound emerged. Not a squeak or a bark in her own defence.
‘Oh, Maman, it’s only a little mud,’ said Rose, flashing a kindly smile in her friend’s direction, now that Ivy had been put in her place. Only a moment before, she had forgotten herself enough to screech her displeasure.
‘What’s “only a little mud”?’
A man appeared at Mrs Luscombe’s side, resting his chin momentarily upon her shoulder before pecking her on the cheek. Ivy’s eyes widened at this surprising familiarity. Had Mrs Luscombe got herself a new husband? Yet the man looked significantly younger than Rose’s mother, with a full head of dark blond hair, an unlined forehead, and no hint of a paunch beneath his waistcoat. He too smiled kindly at Ivy, his blue eyes dancing with good humour.
‘We didn’t expect you down from Eton until tomorrow,’ said Mrs Luscombe, her expression of disgust giving way to pleasure. She took one of his hands in hers and raised it to her lips. ‘And looking so handsome too.’
‘You’ve grown whiskers,’ said Rose, in mild approval, and Ivy realised that the man was in fact a boy, most probably Rose’s brother, Robert. She had not seen him at close quarters for at least a year and he had changed beyond all recognition. He was almost a man now.
‘Hello. Who’s this?’
Ivy looked away, not wanting him to witness her distress, giving her time to school her face to blankness.
‘This is Rose’s little friend Ivy, from the village, who has tramped mud all through the house. Really, these village children have no idea how to behave like civilised beings.’ Mrs Luscombe waved a hand in Ivy’s direction as if to shoo her from the room.
‘She looks civilised enough to me. And it is only a little mud, Mother. Muriel will have it cleaned up in a trice,’ said Robert, ‘while I see Ivy safely home.’
‘But Robert, it’s almost teatime,’ said Rose.
‘Don’t worry, Chicken, I’ll run all the way home.’
With that he crossed to the window, crooking his elbow in invitation. In the face of her son’s blithe disregard for propriety, Mrs Luscombe could do little but stand aside as he marched Ivy towards the door, arm in arm. No one noticed that she still clutched the silk-clad doll in one sweaty palm.
Joan set the table in the dining room, in honour of her guests, and they ate watched by ancestors in ornate golden frames staring from the walls. The room glowed in the dying light that filtered in through west-facing windows, catching the crystal wine glasses and glinting off the family silver. Nothing was kept for best at Wuurnong, and in the soft light, no one noticed the fraying silk cords tying the curtains or the water stains marring the faded Victorian wallpaper.
‘I love the salad,’ Molly said appreciatively, wiping her mouth with the damask napkin. ‘Niçoise is one of my favourites, and everything’s home-grown.’
‘Well, I can’t take credit for the tuna,’ said Joan.
‘Maybe we could look into that,’ said Brian with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I’ve been thinking about what we could do with the lower dam.’
‘Yabbies,’ mused Ted, ‘used to be a ton of yabbies in that dam when I was a kid. You ask your nan.’
No one ventured to correct Ted. He didn’t need reminding that his sister was gone.
‘We used to sit down there with a string, a piece of meat and a bucket and wait for them to take the bait.’
‘Did you catch many, Uncle Ted?’ asked Wendy.
‘Nah, the yabbies were too smart for us. Your grandfather had the knack, though, knew just when to pull in the string with the yabby holding on to that meat for dear life.’
‘I remember him taking us yabbying once,’ Brian commented.
‘Mum hated yabbies. Wouldn’t eat them. And rabbits. During the Depression, Dad and Harry and me would go out shooting and come back with a brace of rabbits and Mum would refuse to cook them. Said we weren’t so poor that we had to eat coney and bottom feeders.’
‘Was Rose a bit posh, then?’ asked Molly.
‘Not that I recall, no, she would roll up her sleeves and get on with it, but she did get a bee in her bonnet about some things. She wouldn’t let us get away with coming to dinner in our work clothes. She’d meet us at the back door, hands on hips and us boys all towering over her. Oh no, it was faces washed, hair combed and a clean shirt or we didn’t get fed. Didn’t matter if we’d been down at the shearing shed all day and too tired to lift a saltshaker, or fighting a grass fire or digging out stumps, we had to change for dinner. That was Mum, a stickler for manners,’ Uncle Ted said, looking through Molly to a lost country somewhere in his past.
‘We have something to show you. Two things actually,’ Molly said, pushing back her chair to fetch a plastic bag she had left on the sideboard.
‘What is it, love?’ asked Ted.
She slipped back into her seat beside Ted and slid the battered grey box from the bag. Opening the box, she placed a photograph on the table and picked up the necklace nestled beneath. Holding it high, she slipped the pearl strands over her head so that the necklace rested against her body, the long pearl tassels dangling almost to her waist.
‘Do you recognise it?’
‘Mum used to wear it on her birthday. The rest of the year she only ever wore her wedding ring. I haven’t seen it since she was alive. Where did you find it?’ he asked, reaching out an age-spotted hand to touch the flaking pearls.
‘At Nan’s place.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know she had it. Mum must have given it to her sometime before she disappeared. A bit too grand for our Queenie.’
‘She would have rattled like a train in that thing,’ said Wendy.
‘There’s something else. A photograph.’ Molly turned the photo face up and passed it to her great-uncle, who studied it with a look of deep concentration. She watched him for a minute or two, giving him time to take himself back to that other country, the country of his childhood.
‘I’ve never seen a photo of Mum as a young woman. If you tried to take one she’d say, “Why would anyone want a picture of an old chook like me?”’
‘It reads “Rose and Ivy” on the back, with the words “Together forever”. Do you know who Ivy was?’ Molly prompted.
Brian and Joan had come to stand behind Ted’s chair, looking over his shoulder. He sighed and wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand. Molly didn’t know whether he was wiping away a tear, a memory or merely clearing his vision.
‘I don’t even know which of these girls is Mum. It’s been a long time since she died, and these girls are so young. I could pick Dad out of a line-up because we’ve got photos of him, but Mum . . .’
‘What colour was her hair, Dad? I can only remember it being grey.’
‘A light colour, and wavy, but all the women had perms then. Ah, it could be either of them. You wait until you’re my age and you’ll have trouble recognising yourself in a school photo.’ Ted sighed again and held out the photo towards Molly.
‘You keep it, Uncle Ted. Molly and I took copies,’ said Wendy.
‘Sorry, love, I don’t remember any Ivy. We didn’t find out about the brother until he turned up after she died. But Uncle Robert didn’t mention anyone named Ivy. He . . .’
‘Yes, Dad?’
‘He just seemed . . . sort of lost when he found out she’d drowned. As if he didn’t know what he was doing here. He stayed for the afternoon, more out of politeness than anything, I think, and then he was gone. Could Ivy have been another sister?’ asked Ted, his eyes glued to the photograph.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Molly, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. ‘I did a bit of online digging last night after reading the letters. I found Rose listed in the parish records in Devon, along with her brother Robert, and I cross-checked with the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and the UK census for 1911, but as far as I can see she didn’t have a sister.’
‘She might have been a friend,’ suggested Wendy.
‘They’re both in uniform, so she was probably local if they volunteered together,’ Brian added.
‘Yes, I thought so too. I checked the parish records for any Ivy of a similar age, and I found two. One was born two years before Rose and the other a year after. Ivy Jones and Ivy Toms. Then I followed up their parents’ occupations in the 1911 census and Ivy Jones was listed as the daughter of a doctor – her father was a widower – and Ivy Toms’ father was an agricultural labourer, her mother a laundress.’
‘If Granny Rose came from a well-to-do family, it’s more likely she was friends with the doctor’s daughter,’ said Wendy.
‘Mum didn’t have a lot of friends,’ Ted mused. ‘She wasn’t an easy person to get close to.’
‘Well, Ivy was definitely close. Jim mentions her in his letters, and apparently she intended to accompany Rose to Australia.’
Yet Ivy disappeared from Rose’s life once they arrived. ‘Forever’ hadn’t lasted very long.
‘I scoured the passenger lists for ships arriving in Melbourne in 1919,’ said Molly, ‘and I found Rose listed as an incoming passenger on the SS Oracle.’
‘And Ivy?’ asked Ted.
‘There was no mention of Ivy at all.’
Molly stood across the road from the beachfront apartment block, yellow plastic carrier bag clutched in her hand. For six weeks the bag had sat on the coffee table in her flat, mocking her with its cheerfulness. Her grandfather’s ancient football jumper lay inside, wreathed in the smell of mothballs and oily old wool. She had discovered it while cleaning out Nan’s house. Pop had worn that jumper for twenty years, huddled under a raincoat and wrapped in a scarf, cheering for his footy team, the mighty Cats. It boasted the faded remnants of Gary Ablett Senior’s signature scrawled across its blue and white bands and a vague smudge of tomato sauce that Nan never managed to remove.
The beach road was logjammed with beachgoers at this time of the day, the sun shimmering on car rooftops in a long line along the bay, the avenue of palms giving little shade. People came from all over the city to find a place on the sand here, from teenagers in boardies and bikinis to African mothers in hijab, giggling children in tow. The sand stretched in a wide ribbon from St Kilda to Port Melbourne, seething with sunbathers, castle builders and volleyball players.
She spotted Matt’s battered Land Cruiser parked across the road, separated from her by four lanes of traffic and a grassy plantation dotted with wind-sculpted ti trees. Through its tinted windows she noticed that the rear was piled high with bundles. Pressing her body up against the side of her car, she waited for a break in the traffic. Then, clutching the yellow bag, she took a deep breath and waded out into the traffic, making it to the centre plantation with a quick jog over the last few metres. She had only been out of her car’s air-conditioned interior for a couple of minutes and already the afternoon heat prickled the back of her neck. The grass was mere metres wide, a small oasis in the middle of the shimmering, heat-soaked tarmac.
Taking a moment to steady herself, she tried not to think about her motives in coming here. She was delivering a memento, that’s all, something Nan would have wanted Matt to have. He would likely put it behind glass with his other sporting memorabilia but she liked to imagine him squeezing his broad shoulders into it when he watched the big men fly. Any other ideas were merely tryin
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