Les Grands Chantiers (Wattys 2022)

21. On The Beach (I)

Brendan was standing in the park by the lake. It was a freezing cold winter's day, and after standing still for a little while he was starting to feel the chill. The few willows by the lake were yellow, sickly. The grey grass looked thin. The murky lake waters betrayed little. A few sad lampposts dotted the landscape. A small bridge that had seen better days. A weeping willow bereft of leaves, looking worse for wear, its roots straddling the lakeshore.

There had once been a beach here, and there was still a little crescent moon of dirty sand, with a bathtub ring of plastic bottles and dead reeds left by the gently lapping water. Once upon a time people had swum here and sailed boats and fished. Several decades of sewer overflows and eutrophication had put paid to that. The last time trout had been stocked here had been around 1990. Now there were only carp and eels in the murky depths.

It was a tableau Brendan was achingly used to. Just dreary and grey and very typical of the outer suburbs of Corviston.

A few hundred metres away his parents knelt on the grass, filling a plastic bag with foraged greens. It had been a rainy winter. The shepherd's purse was growing well. In drier years it would have bolted already, and the park would be filled with stalks of white flowers bobbing in the breeze. Over here where Brendan was standing the cape dandelions, which looked quite similar to the shepherd's purse if you squinted a little bit, dominated, but in between he could spot some decent-sized rosettes of shepherd's purse, ready to be picked.

He was too old for it. Picking was the satisfying part, even if it was a bit dirty. The washing was the nightmare part. Squatting on the ground in the backyard, picking the soiled leaves off each rosette, then snipping the roots out and scrubbing the caked-on dirt off the butts, then washing them over and over again in ice-cold water- it wasn't for everyone. His parents were getting old, though, so he felt he had to step up to the task. Regardless of whether he liked it or not.

Soon dusk would be falling. The shadows were getting gradually longer. It was getting to the winter solstice. Soon that would pass and everything would slowly warm up.

The wake in the water came. The breaking of the fin, in a straight line towards Brendan. Four-thirty on the dot. He had kept his word.

"Long trip?" Brendan said, as the fin broke the surface of the water.

"Not that bad. A lot more straightforward than I thought," Rin said, as his head broke the surface. "Nice place you got here."

"Are you kidding me? It's a hole. A guy pulled a knife on a pappou feeding the ducks just last week."

"It doesn't look that dodgy." He peered around. "Compared to some of the places I stay in."

"That's because the council just renovated the place," Brendan replied. "You should have seen it a year ago. Water quality's alright?"

"The water's not too bad, actually. A bit of suspended organic matter, but I saw some nice carp on the bottom." His eyes twinkled in a way that made Brendan slightly uneasy. "A few eels, too. Could do with a bit of a feed later."

"Don't come here when it rains."

"Why?"

"Combined sewer overflow."

"Never been a problem. Some of my mates get hung up over it."

"Really?"

"Bah. Me? Never. I just stay in my hole until the rain goes away." He smiled. There were no teeth, just bony plates.

"So what you got for me?"

"Got in touch with my friend in Wythaven, and he scouted it out. Went all the way up the pipe, it's sealed. Big metal sliding door. Solid steel. You couldn't get through it without anything below several kilos of C4."

"But it has to open, right?" Brendan said. "If it's a pipe. That's what pipes are supposed to do."

"Precisely. So my guy stayed outside and staked it out. He's smart like that."

"For the entire day?"

"Look, this isn't the first time he's done this, you know. Anyway, he stakes this place out. He stays in a drain that feeds into the creek, opposite, watching the pipe. Stuff has to come out, you know. It's like a factory. Got trucks coming in and out at all times. There's gotta be stuff coming out. You know what I mean?"

Brendan nodded.

"So he waits. And waits. And then just as night is falling, it opens. It's boiling hot, he can see the steam rising from the stuff as it pours into the drain, and the smell is horrible. It flows for about ten minutes, then it dries up. By the time it's cooled down and it's safe enough for him to go back up and take another look, it's closed up again."

"What's the time? Did he get the exact time?"

"7:40," Rin said. "Give or take. He said his watch is a little slow."

Did he see anything? Anyone?"

"Look, this is just what he told me. I don't know what it's like up there, I've never been! I've never even been to the ocean. Just shuttling around the lakes around here all my life."

Brendan thought for a moment. "So there's no way for him to get up into the place."

"Not without some serious protection. We're very sensitive to heat and all that, you know."

"What if I have a suit for them?"

"Look, he's not going up the pipe. His job is to watch stuff. He doesn't do that kind of risky stuff anymore."

"Do you know anyone else who does that kind of stuff?"

"Not any who owe favours to me. You'd have to pay. Big money. These are professionals. Ten thousand or they don't get out of bed."

Brendan thought of notifying Adrian. He could probably cough up something. But part of him realised that sending someone up there on their behalf was only pushing the problem further up the pipeline. He decided to stick to the earlier plan. He would have to go down there himself with Adrian and climb up the pipe.

Was that a good idea? Brendan thought for awhile. There was clearly no other way into the factory, at least none that he could make a fair judgment about beforehand. That would be too risky. He could find out where the trucks came from but there was not enough time for that. Beidzner was up to something, and he needed to be fast. He knew from the site visit that construction would be starting any day now, so they would have to break the spell before that.

He had already started packing for the trip. He still wasn't sure if his parents entirely understood what he was doing, but that was fine. As long as they supported him. "Actually, scratch that. We're going up ourselves."

"OK. Suit yourselves. I mean that literally. You're going to need some serious protection if you want to get up there alive."

"And what about your marine cousins? Did you get through to them well enough?"

"Look, I sent my message and everything, okay? I even chose the express delivery option, because I like you. Now whether or not they've received the damn thing, I don't know. But I've done my best."

"OK. Take care. Don't get caught in a crayfish pot."

"I won't," Rin retorted. "Don't get nuked by the outflow. I want to see you again. You owe me quite a few favours."

Brendan watched the wake slowly dissipated into the shallows of the lake. There was a ripple further down as Rin briefly resurfaced, then disappeared into the deep.