Peter Corris - Deep Water

Margaret and I chatted about these sorts of things on the drive. I played an Edith Piaf CD and one of the best of Cold Chisel and we pledged to find out about ‘Sweethearts’. The Falcon, recently tuned up, performed well and I enjoyed the first decent stint I’d had at the wheel since the heart episode. We had a rest stop just north of Newcastle-light beers and salad sandwiches. Time was when a country salad sandwich was white bread with a thick layer of butter, a slice of tomato, a slice of beetroot and some limp lettuce; mayonnaise if you were lucky. These were California style-wholemeal rolls with your choice of almost everything. There are things we should thank America for.

Margaret took over the driving. ‘I haven’t driven a stick shift in years,’ she said.

‘We call it a manual.’

‘Whatever. Be a challenge not to stall it.’

She didn’t. The secondary road was good and we followed it to a bridge across the Myall River, skirted the towns on either side and followed the road, not as good now, west beside the river for a couple of kilometres. The guide books described Myall as a ‘village’ and that’s what it was, if not a hamlet. It consisted of about twenty houses that all seemed to be hiding from each other, a general store and a boat and fishing gear hire establishment beside the jetty. Not my idea of a holiday destination but I don’t fish. The river had muddy banks and mangroves.

The house was up a gravel stretch bearing an amateurish sign reading ‘Mosquito Track’.

‘Great,’ Margaret said, ‘just what we need-a dose of Ross River fever. I can’t see Dad up here, there’s nowhere to cycle.’

He wasn’t here to cycle , I thought, but said nothing as she pulled up in front of a weatherboard cottage mostly hidden by thickets of lantana.

We went up an overgrown path to the front porch. From there I could see a couple of boats downriver but no other sign of activity. If privacy was what you wanted, this was it. The key worked and we stepped into a short hallway leading to a living room. The house had the musty smell of being closed up for a long while, plus touches of damp, dust and dead flies. The living room was comfortable with armchairs, a coffee table, well-stocked bookshelves and a television and CD player.

There were two bedrooms off the living room. I took the one on the right, Margaret took the other. The room I entered held a queen-sized bed with a black satin cover. There were mirrors attached to the walls adjacent to the bed. A TV with DVD player stood at the end of the bed. A wardrobe held a variety of fetishist clothing-silk, satin, leather, latex items in sizes from very small to fairly large. The top drawers in the bedside chest contained an array of sex toys-dildos, masks, gags, restraints-and a variety of lubricants and condoms. The lower drawers held neat stacks of pornographic DVDs.

I switched on the bedside lamp and got what I expected-a red glow. I left the room and found Margaret sitting on a chair staring into space.

‘Fun and games,’ she said. ‘A cross between what I imagine a brothel and a dominatrix dungeon would be like. I wonder where they keep the coke and the herb? I could do with a joint.’

I nodded. ‘Same in the other room. Nothing really cruel though, and signs of care being taken. No harm done with everyone willing.’

‘You’re right. It’s just a bit hard to take in, when it’s your parent.’

‘Mine would’ve got along a lot better with a bit of the same,’ I said. ‘Well, Josephine Dart was telling the truth.’

Margaret smiled. ‘I wonder how she’s going to deal with all the accoutrements when the lease runs out.’

‘She might renew.’

‘You say she said she loved my dad. I’d like to meet her, I think.’

‘She’s impressive in a brittle kind of way.’

Margaret jumped up. ‘Give me a kiss.’

We kissed close and hard.

‘Have you ever been into stuff like this?’ she asked.

‘Skirted the edges once or twice. It didn’t do a lot for me.’

‘Mm, I had a brief dyke phase after my husband split but it didn’t take.’

We broke apart and went out to the kitchen. It was mid-twentieth century style with lino, laminex and formica, and a hot water tank over the sink. But it had the right modern fittings-a microwave, dishwasher and gas stove. Margaret opened a few cupboards and found them well stocked with tinned and packet food and jars containing rice, sugar and flour. She pointed to the jars.

‘Dad was a great one for that,’ she said. ‘We lived in this old house at first and had to watch out for rats.’

I opened a cupboard and found bottles of whisky, brandy and rum. The fridge held bottles of soda and tonic along with gin and vodka and vermouth. There was tomato and orange juice and a jar of olives.

‘They did themselves proud,’ I said.

Margaret sniffed at the opened carton of milk and made a face. She leaned against the sink, suddenly looking tired. ‘Why’re we here, Cliff? With all this sex and jollity, I kind of forget.’

‘To see if your father left anything to suggest. .’

‘What killed him. Right. Where d’you you think we should look? Maybe under the beds-or in them? Come on, Cliff, they did nothing here but screw in various combinations.’

I pointed to the cup, glass and spoon on the draining rack. ‘Mrs Dart said your father sometimes came here on his own,’ I said. ‘These’re probably his.’

She shrugged. ‘I want to get away from here. Let’s go look at the bloody quarry.’

‘Bear with me.’ It seemed unlikely that McKinley would put anything of professional importance in the boudoirs or the kitchen. I took a quick look at the bathroom-neat, tidy, no hiding places. That left the living room. I worked through the bookshelves while Margaret sat, sceptically fiddling with a strand of hair. Nothing.

How do you store data? I thought, trying to put myself in the scientist’s shoes. I wasn’t sure. How do you best hide something? I knew the answer to that-where everyone can see it. There was a rack of DVDs under the player-movies, documentaries. I finger-picked my way through them and in the middle found an unlabelled disc.

‘What’s that?’ Margaret said. ‘Their home movies? I don’t think I want to see it. Maybe I do.’

‘I don’t know.’ I turned on the TV, put the disk into the DVD player and pressed PLAY.

McKinley appeared on screen and Margaret gave a gasp.

‘He looks so old and sick,’ she murmured.

He was in his study, swivelled around in his chair to face the camera. A sheaf of notes sat on his desk. He spoke in a strong, clear voice, at odds with his eroded, almost fragile appearance. ‘I want to place on record something of my recent researches and some of the problems that have been thrown up. I was commissioned by Edward Tarelton to investigate the possibility of tapping into the vast aquifer that lies beneath the Sydney basin. This contains an incalculable volume of pure water, access to which could solve urban Sydney’s water problem long into the future.

‘The existence of this water has been known for a very long time and many geologists and other scientists have attempted to find a method of utilising it. Parts of the deposit have been tapped apparently successfully but problems of subsidence have arisen as a result. Buildings have cracked and require stabilisation. This will continue. However, my investigations reveal that the greater part of the aquifer is sealed off from the portions that have been tapped and remain intact and undisturbed. A heavy, apparently impenetrable layer of sandstone overlays the main body of the aquifer. Any attempt to blast through this layer, even in the event of its highly unlikely success given the density and thickness of the layer, would result in the release of the water under such pressure that no monitoring device could control it.