Ripples on a Pond by Joy Dettman Page A

receiving a quarterly payment for years, as had Margaret.
    He glanced at and discarded half a dozen pages, seeking the date of Lorna’s first instalment. And found it – some months after Vern’s death, after the sale of the Balwyn house.
    Once he got Bernard settled, he’d need to do something permanent about getting Lorna off his back. If the worst came to the worst, he’d fight her in court, and keep on fighting until December of ’71, his thirtieth birthday. Speak to Letty’s trio of solicitors, Willis, Willis & Willis. Maybe a lump-sum payout would get rid of her. She’d been the dominant presence through his childhood and it was well past time he put all childish things away.
    There was a copy of his original birth certificate amongst those papers.
    Date of birth: 3 December 1941.
    Mother: Jennifer Carolyn Morrison.
    Age: Seventeen years and eleven months.
    Three kids before her eighteenth birthday! The Morrison trollop, Lorna had named her. She must have been.
    Briefcase open on the bed, papers surrounding it, Morrie read on, placing pages according to their importance – to his left face down, or to the right face up. He owned shares, some old, some very old. Nothing new. No spare money in recent years with which to purchase the new. Margaret’s and Lorna’s quarterly instalments had increased along with the cost of living. Accountants had to be paid each month.
    He’d been eighteen the year Leticia had let the cat out of the bag as to why Bernard had gone to Australia; how she and Henry, desperate for a Langdon heir, had pushed for a match between him and Lorna. The day she’d told him, he’d been reduced to near hysteria by the image of Bernard and Lorna begetting anything. Letty had laughed too.
    He liked little Letty. She’d loved his mother. Hard not to love her – and she’d lied to him.
    Should have been young enough to breed her own Grenville-Langdon when she’d married Bernard in ’51. She’d loved him, had shared his bed until a few months before her death, but had given him no child – other than Morrie.
    He placed his papers down and closed his eyes, weary eyes, and thought of the man in the picture frame, the man who had painted the rainbows in the sky, the man with the big teeth who Jenny had said was his daddy. And tonight, behind his weary eyes, he could almost see that photograph. A male in army uniform, woman with short tickly hair, their baby. As a ten year old, he’d remembered that photograph more clearly, remembered it well enough to know that he couldn’t have two fathers. He’d named Bernard ‘Pops’, then and now.
    Promise me you’ll look after your father.
    He’d look after him. He’d got him this far, and tomorrow morning, he’d get him home to Letty. Eighteen years Bernard’s senior, more his mother than sister, she’d look after him.
    She’d know how to organise a funeral. She’d had plenty of practice. She’d buried Henry, eight of her own babies and half a dozen of her siblings.
    Maybe a funeral in this land would allow Morrie to feel what he should have been feeling. Couldn’t feel anything right now. His trust in Margaret had been total.
    Jenny has gone to live with the angels. He could hear her words now. He could feel little Jimmy’s desolation. They were very sick, my darling boy.
    She’d lied, and not a thing he could do about it. Could neither ask why she’d lied nor accuse her. And tonight he felt that same desolation, that same aching loss – though not for Jenny. For Georgie maybe; Georgie of the red hair, Margot of the white. Georgie always the biggest, the one holding his hand when they crossed the road, holding Margot’s skirt. He could see them tonight, three little kids always together, and he wanted to howl for those three little kids.
    Shrugged off the image and searched back through his papers for his birth