Ripples on a Pond (5 page)

‘Home?' Trudy asked. She'd spent the last hour sorting through old photographs and came out to the hall, her hands full. ‘Here?'

‘Just for the funeral, then they'll take her back.'

‘She's an escapologist,' Jim said.

‘They know what she is.' Jenny looked at her watch. ‘You pair will need to put those photos away and round up something for dinner tonight. I have to finish Maisy's outfit. They're leaving for Box Hill sometime tomorrow.'

‘Is the boy in this one Jimmy?' Trudy said.

Jenny reached for the offered three-by-four-inch image of the house she called home, squinting to see the tiny boy, playing with a toy truck on the veranda.

It was him, and a photograph she hadn't previously seen. A tiny boy, the baby still in his limbs. It would have been taken shortly after she'd brought him home from Sydney, newborn Cara left at Amberley. She handed it back. ‘Get some fish and chips, Jim,' she said and returned to Maisy's purple brocade.

T
HE
F
LIGHT
F
ROM
H
ELL

B
ernard had never grown big enough to fight for his rights, and thus had gone along with the crowd for most of his life. He'd lost his fear along with his mind and inhibitions, long before he'd lost his wife. For six months, he'd been packing his bags daily to return home, only to unpack them when a moment of clarity convinced him that they were not yet going home. When Morrie finally did pack his bags for the flight home, Bernard, who had no intention of going anywhere without Maggie, fought to stay.

Margaret was with them, in Morrie's hand luggage, beside Bernard's tranquillisers.
One tablet
,
four-hourly
, the bottle said. Gerry, the prescribing doctor, had advised one when necessary. Cathy, who never minced words, had translated her husband's instructions. ‘Keep him zapped to the eyeballs,' she'd translated.

On board the plane, Morrie found the bottle, removed the lid and two pills. Difficult to administer them in the close confines of an aircraft seat with Bernard attempting to crawl across him and a hostess suggesting it may be necessary to offload him.

‘The pills will settle him,' Morrie said.

The pills settled in an arc, raining down on nearby passengers, along with the bottle and its lid.

‘I'm so sorry,' a second hostess said. ‘You'll have to take a later flight. It's policy.'

She wasn't as sorry as Morrie, who'd had trouble enough getting Bernard on the plane.

‘My mother died recently,' he said. ‘We need to get home for the funeral. The pills will settle him.'

Men aren't usually described as beautiful. Cathy had once described Morrie as ‘fabulous looking'; Chris Marino had described him as one of the ‘pretty' boys. Jenny had been a beauty, and as a three year old little Jimmy Morrison had looked a lot like Jenny. He had her eyes, not so blue but similarly set. He had her brow, a male version of her nose, her cheekbones too – and in combination with the Hooper mouth and strong jaw, their dark hair and height, he fitted the tall, dark and handsome template.

Since the wedding he'd dropped half a stone in weight and the last of the boy had left his face, but to the young hostess he was a beautiful-looking man who had to get his grief-stricken father home to England. She offered water to wash the two pills down, while the second hostess collected the rest from travellers with expressions that suggested they feed the lot to the noisy old bugger.

A middle-aged passenger returned a pill with a roll of caramel-centred chocolates and a suggestion that may have saved Morrie's sanity. He inserted pills into the soft centres of two chocolates and Bernard ate them. He liked chocolates. The pill bottle was returned, as were most of the pills, before the plane took to the skies.

Bernard was sleeping like a baby when a hostess offered tea or coffee.

‘Limit his liquid,' Gerry had advised.

‘Don't let him drink anything,' Cathy had instructed.

Morrie didn't wake Bernard.

The elderly nursing sister had provided half a dozen adult napkins. They were in Morrie's hand luggage, but with no desire to take them out of his luggage, six hours into the flight he carried Bernard down the narrow aisle to a toilet that was hard-pressed to hold one.

Sometime later, they landed somewhere. A hostess supplied a wheelchair, her expression suggesting she'd be delighted to hand over to the next crew.

And thus the flight from hell continued.

It didn't end when they landed at Heathrow, Bernard smelling like a public toilet. It didn't end when Morrie wrestled him into a London cab. It almost ended at the hotel. Bernard escaped while Morrie was checking in. Morrie ran after him, aware he'd made a bad decision, that he should have ridden that cab the forty-odd miles home to Letty. Hadn't wanted Letty to see her baby brother until he'd been cleaned up, dressed up. She'd argued against Margaret moving her family back to a land populated by the descendants of convicts and would blame Australia for Bernard's disintegration. Not Australia's fault. Morrie and Margaret had noticed his deterioration before they'd left England. Not Letty. Perhaps she'd refused to admit it.

Morrie sighed. With luck, once back in familiar surroundings, Bernard would improve. He still had moments of clarity. He'd had one in the bath while Morrie was attempting to shave his chubby face. He'd known the bathroom wasn't his own. A second funeral amongst familiar faces, ashes and a gravestone in the Langdon plot, may convince him that Margaret was gone.

Lorna had fought for a Woody Creek funeral; had sworn on the Bible that her sister had written to her begging her to see that she was buried beside her mother. Morrie knew his mother had written a dozen letters to Lorna; he'd posted every one of them. And seen every one of them returned, unopened.

Before the wedding, he may have considered a Woody Creek funeral. Now . . . now he wouldn't trust himself within a hundred miles of that town.

The struggle of the past thirty hours had kept his mind away from weddings and Cara, and he couldn't afford to think of her yet. He forced his mind to his mother's ashes, aware she would have wanted him to do what was best for Bernard.

‘Look after your father,' she'd said. ‘Promise me you'll look after your father.'

Margaret had been his mother, and a good mother. Bernard had never been his father.

Neither one had possessed an ounce of business sense. For years, they'd left the management of Vern Hooper's estate in the hands of Roland Atkinson, an elderly Melbourne accountant. He'd been Vern's accountant. Now semi-retired, Roland would serve a third generation.

On the morning before the flight with Bernard, Morrie'd had lunch with Roland Atkinson, who had given him more papers. Too much needed looking into. He had a briefcase full of documents his eight-hour marriage had given him access to – his very conveniently timed marriage.

And it had to be undone. Cara wanted it annulled, erased, forgotten. And that would set Lorna buzzing like a nest of hornets. She'd have no difficulty proving Bernard incompetent, which, according to Vern Hooper's will, would give her power over the estate until Morrie's thirtieth birthday – still too far away.

The solicitor who had drawn up Vern Hooper's will in '51 long dead, Vern's affairs had been passed on to a younger man. Morrie had spoken to him at length before he'd flown to England, and had left his office with a wad of papers. He had his own copy of Vern Hooper's last will and testament, which left very specific instructions as to the future of his grandson, James Morrison Hooper. Vern had left specific instructions for his own burial, and for the original Hooper property:
NEVER TO BE SOLD
.
Capitalised, underlined.

The Three Pines land was gone but a manager farmed the original Hooper acres. Four rental properties in Woody Creek and Willama had been sold years ago. Not the Melbourne properties. Morrie hadn't been aware that the estate paid the land rates on Lorna's house in Kew or that it belonged to the estate. He knew she'd been 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 certificate, disbelieving that a girl of seventeen could have had three kids. Georgie's birthday in March, Margot's soon after, then he'd had to wait forever for his cake with coloured icing and candles.

His sisters.

He remembered Ray; not the man, but the giant who had ridden a motorbike, had worn a giant leather jacket. He remembered a red racing trike, remembered riding it up and down a veranda – at Ray's house. Remembered its wheel spinning in circles on the back of a dray the day they'd left that house to go home to Granny – who'd had lots of eggs and milk.

That's when his world had changed. No more sisters and Jenny; only Aunty Maggie and Grandpa and scary Aunty Lorna who had liked tripe and onions.

‘Awful,' he mouthed, then corrected: ‘Offal.'

Margaret had cooked tripe and onions at Balwyn and he'd run outside and vomited in the garden. And tonight he knew why! Remembered the stink of it, the stink of milk burning, and Jenny scraping
awful
from her saucepan into a hole in her garden . . .

Memories spilling, one on top of the other.

‘Ashes to ashes,' he whispered. ‘Dust to dust. If . . . if he buys . . . if he buys another liver, I think I'll bust. We like macaroni and a rhubarb pie . . . so I'm sorry, Mrs Cow's Liver, if we don't cry,' he recited louder, faster, as the words rushed back.

How had he remembered that? He hadn't known he'd remembered it. What else might come if he allowed it to come?

Had spent too much time denying little Jimmy. He'd known Cara's school and denied knowing it. Not tonight. He remembered Billy . . . Billy someone. He'd sat next to Billy at Armadale Primary when he'd been Jimmy King. He'd sat next to Michael in Balwyn when he'd been James Hooper. He'd liked Michael – because he'd had the same coloured hair as Georgie.

‘Graham,' he whispered. ‘Kevin, Alan.'

Names, names, names. Left them all behind. Left them in Armadale, Balwyn, Cheltenham, Bendigo.

Always moving. That's what he remembered, always packing up to go, as Margaret and Bernard had attempted to escape Lorna. Moving from one school to the next, new names to learn, new faces, new teachers. After a time, they'd blended into the great blur of his life.

Fingers pressed to closed and aching eyes, he attempted to see their faces. Nothing there, nothing clear, just shapes – like the photograph of his daddy with the big teeth, the tickle of Jenny's hair when she'd kissed him goodnight.

Was it her hair that had drawn him to Cara the night they'd danced in Ballarat, the night she'd fallen against him in the garden? Had he smelt the scent of an older love in her hair? He had loved Jenny once. He knew that. And she'd sold him like so much livestock.

She hadn't liked his grandfather. Didn't know how he knew, but he knew. He'd liked his grandpa. Could still see him clearly, sitting in the sun on the Balwyn porch, looking out over the garden. Just another snapshot in the misty album of his early life.