‘Dr Ransom?’ She dropped the pistol and concentrated on the starter. ‘What are you doing here? This damn thing won’t go.’
Ransom leaned on the windshield, recovering his breath, and watched her efforts to start the engine. In the back of the car were two large suitcases and a canvas hold-all. She seemed tired and distracted, streaks of dust in her red hair.
‘Are you going to the coast?’ Ransom held the window open before she could wind it up. ‘You know that Quilter has one of the cheetahs?’
‘What?’ The news surprised her. ‘What do you mean—Where is it?’
‘At Lomax’s house. You’re a little late in the day.’
‘I couldn’t sleep. There was all that shooting.’ She looked up at him. ‘Doctor, I must get to the zoo. After last night the animals will be out of their minds.’
‘If they’re still there. By now Quilter and Whitman are probably running around with the entire menagerie. Catherine, it’s time to leave.’
‘I know, but . . .’ She drummed at the wheel, glancing up at Ransom as if hopefully half-recognizing a forgotten friend, trying to find her compass in his drawn face with its ragged beard.
Leaving her, Ransom ran down the road to the next house. A car was parked in the open garage. He lifted the bonnet, and loosened the terminals of the battery. He slid the heavy unit out of its rack and carried it back to Catherine’s car. After he had exchanged the batteries he gestured her along the seat. ‘Let me try.’
She made room for him at the wheel. The fresh battery started the engine after a few turns. Without speaking, Ransom set off towards the motor-bridge. As they reached the junction he hesitated, wondering whether to accelerate southwards down the highway. Then he felt Catherine’s hand on his arm. She was looking out over the bleached bed of the river, and at the brittle trees along the banks, ciphers suspended in the warm air. Ransom began to speak, but this cryptic alphabet seemed to overrule anything he might say.
He crossed the bridge and turned left into a side-road. Sooner or later he would have to leave Catherine. Her barely conscious determination to stay on reminded him of his own first hopes of isolating himself among the wastes of the new desert, putting an end to time and its erosions. But now a very different kind of time was being imposed upon them.
‘Catherine, I know what you—’
Thirty yards ahead a driverless car rolled across the road. Ransom pressed hard on the brakes, pulling the car to a halt and throwing Catherine forward against the windshield.
He rolled her back on to the seat and searched for the wound on her forehead. A swarm of dark-suited men filled the street around them. Ransom picked up the revolver, and then saw the hard plump face of the bo’sun Saul peering at him through the window.
‘Get them out! Clear the road!’ A dozen hands seized the bonnet and jerked it into the air. A knife flashed in the bo’sun’s brightly scarred hand and cut through the top hose of the radiator. Behind him the tall figure of Jonas hove into view, long arms raised as if feeling his way through darkness.
Ransom restarted the engine and slipped the gear lever into reverse. Flooring the accelerator, he flung the car backwards. The bonnet slammed down on the fingers tearing at the engine leads, sending up bellows of pain.
Steering over his shoulder, Ransom reversed along the street, hitting the parked vehicles as he swerved from left to right. Catherine leaned against the door, nursing her bruised head with one hand.
Ransom misjudged the corner, and the car jolted to a halt against the side of a truck. Steadying Catherine with one hand, he watched the gang setting off after them. Jonas stood on the roof of a car, one arm pointing towards them.
Ransom opened his door and pulled Catherine out into the road. She pushed her hair back with a feeble hand.
‘Come on!’ Taking her hand, he set off along a gravel-covered lane that ran down to the embankment. Helped by the sloping ground, they reached the slip road. Ransom pointed up to the motor-bridge. Two men moved along the balustrade. ‘We’ll have to wade across the river.’
As the dust clouds rose into the air behind them there was a shout from the bridge.
Catherine took Ransom’s arm. ‘Over there! Who’s that boy?’
‘Philip!’ Ransom waved with both hands. Philip Jordan was standing near the houseboat on the other side of the river, looking down at the outboard motor Ransom had abandoned. His skiff, secured by the pole, was propped against the shore. With a quick glance at the men signalling from the motor-bridge, he side-stepped down the bank. Freeing his pole, he jumped aboard. The craft’s momentum carried it across the channel.
‘Doctor! I thought you’d gone!’
He helped Ransom and Catherine Austen into the craft and pushed off. A shot rang out in warning. Four or five men, led by Jonas, crossed the slip road, and made their way down the embankment. The bo’sun brought up the rear, a long-barrelled rifle in his hands.
Jonas’s stiff figure strode down the slope, black boots sending up clouds of dust. His men stumbled behind him, Saul cursing as he slipped and fell on his hands, but Jonas pressed on ahead of them.
The skiff stopped short of the bank as Philip Jordan scanned the river and approaches, uncertain which direction to take. Ransom leaned from the prow across the short interval of water. Blowing the dust from the breech of the rifle, the bo’sun levelled it at them. A bullet sang over their heads like a demented insect. ‘Philip, forget the boat! We’ve got to leave now!’
Philip crouched behind his pole as Saul reloaded the rifle. ‘Doctor, I can’t . . . Quilter is—’
‘Damn Quilter!’ Ransom waved the pistol at Catherine, who was on her knees, holding tightly to the sides of the craft. ‘Paddle with your hands! Philip, listen to me—!’
Jonas and his men had reached the water’s edge, little more than a few boat-lengths away. Saul levelled the rifle at Philip, but Jonas stepped forward and knocked the weapon from his hands. His dark eyes gazed at the occupants of the skiff. He stepped on to a spur of rock, and for fully half a minute, oblivious of the pistol in Ransom’s hand, stared down at the boat.
‘Philip!’ he shouted. ‘Boy, come here!’
As his name echoed away across the drained river Philip Jordan turned, his hands clenching the pole for support. He looked up at the hawk-faced man glaring down at him.
‘Philip . . . come!’ Jonas’s voice tolled like a harsh bell over the oily water.
Philip Jordan shook his head, hands grasping at the pole. Above him, like a hostile jury, a line of faces looked down from the bridge. Philip seized the pole and lifted it horizontally from the water, as if to bar the way to Jonas.
‘Doctor . . . ?’ he called over his shoulder.
‘The bank, Philip!’
‘No!’ With a cry, looking back for the last time at the dark figure of Jonas, Philip leaned on the pole and punted the boat upstream towards the drained lake. The men on the bank surged forward around the bo’sun, shouting for the rifle, but the skiff darted behind the bulk of a lighter, then swung away again, its prow lifting like an arrow. Philip whipped the pole in and out, the water racing between his hands off the wet shaft.
‘I’ll go with you, doctor. But first . . .’ He released the pole, then crouched down as the skiff surged across a patch of open water ‘. . . First I must bring my father.’
Ransom reached forward to take Catherine’s hand. He watched the youth as he manoeuvred them swiftly around the bend towards the lake, seeing in his face the arrow-like features of the black-garbed man standing on the shore while his men fought around him in the dust.
19
MR JORDAN
FOR AN HOUR they followed the residue of the river as it wound across the lake. The channel narrowed, sometimes to little more than fifteen feet in width, at others dividing into thin streams that disappeared among the dunes and
mud-banks. Stranded yachts lay on the slopes, streaked with the scum-lines of the receding water. The bed of the lake, almost drained, was now an inland beach of white dunes covered with pieces of blanched timber and driftwood. Along the bank the dried marsh-grass formed a burnt palisade.
They left the main channel and followed one of the small tributaries. They passed the remains of an old shack. Beside it a pier jutted out above the remains of grass that had seeded itself the previous summer when the water level had already fallen several feet. Working his pole tirelessly, Philip turned the craft like a key through the nexus of creeks, his face hidden behind his shoulder as he avoided Ransom’s gaze. Once they stopped and he ordered them out, then ported the craft across a narrow saddle to the next stream. They passed the cylinder of a rusting distillation unit built out on the bed, its leaning towers like the barrels of some eccentric artillery in mutiny against the sky. Everywhere the bodies of voles and waterfowl lay among the weeds.
At length the stream flowed through a series of scrub-covered dunes, and they emerged into a small drained lagoon. In the centre, touched briefly by the stream as it disappeared beyond, was an ancient sailing barge, sitting squarely on the caked mud. All the craft they had passed had been stained and streaked with dirt, but the barge was immaculate, its hull shining in the sunlight in a brilliant patchwork of colours. The brass portholes were freshly polished. A white landing-stage stood by the barge, a roped gangway leading to the deck. The mast, stripped of its rigging and fitted with a cross-tree, had been varnished to the brass annulus at its peak.
‘Philip, what on earth—?’ Ransom began. He felt Catherine’s hand warningly on his arm. Philip beached the craft ten feet from the landing-stage and beckoned them aboard. He hesitated at the companion-head. ‘I’ll need your help, doctor,’ he said, in an uncertain voice that reminded Ransom of his gruff waif’s croak. He pointed to the cabin and deckwork, and added with a note of pride: ‘It’s an old wreck, you understand. Put together from any scraps I could find.’
He led the way down into the dark cabin. Sitting upright in a rocking chair in the centre of the spartan chamber was a grey-haired negro. He wore a faded khaki shirt and corduroy trousers, darned with a patchwork of laborious stitching. At first Ransom assumed from his broad shoulders and domed head that he was in late middle age, but as the light cleared he saw from his stick-like shoulders and legs that he was at least seventy-five years old. Despite his advanced age he held himself erect, his lined patrician head turning as Philip came towards him. The faint light through the shuttered port-holes was reflected in his opaque, blind eyes.
Philip bent down beside him. ‘Father, it’s time for us to leave. We must go south to the coast.’
The old negro nodded. ‘I understand, Philip. Perhaps you would introduce me to your friends?’
‘They will come with us to help. This is Dr Ransom and Miss—’
‘Austen. Catherine Austen.’ She stepped forward and touched the negro’s claw-like hand. ‘It’s a pleasure, Mr. Jordan.’
Ransom glanced around the cabin. Obviously there was no blood-link between Philip and the elderly negro, but he assumed that this blind old man was the youth’s foster-father, the invisible presence he had felt behind Philip for so many years. A thousand puzzles were solved—this was why Philip always took his food away to eat, and why, despite Ransom’s generous gifts during the winter, he was often close to starvation.
‘Philip has told me of you a great deal, doctor,’ the old man said in his soft voice. ‘I have always known you to be a good friend to him.’
Ransom took the old man’s hand, which held his own with a kind of gentle nervousness, its finger tips moving quickly as if reading a huge Braille character.
‘That’s why I want us to leave now, Mr Jordan,’ Ransom said, ‘before the drought begins to break up the land. Are you well enough to travel?’
The hint of an implied negative made Philip Jordan bridle. ‘Of course he is!’ He stepped between Ransom and the old man. ‘Don’t worry, Father, I won’t leave you.’
‘Thank you, Philip.’ The old man’s voice was still soft. ‘Perhaps you would get ready. Take only what water and food you can carry conveniently.’ As Philip moved away to the galley the old negro said: ‘Dr Ransom, may I speak with you?’
When they were alone, he raised his sightless eyes towards Ransom. ‘It will be a long journey, doctor, perhaps longer for you than for me. You will understand me when I say it will really begin when we get to the beach.’
‘I agree,’ Ransom said. ‘It should be clear until we reach the coast.’
‘Of course.’ The negro smiled, his great domed head veined like a teak globe of the earth. ‘I shall be a great burden to you, doctor, I would rather stay here than be left by the roadside later. May I ask you to be honest with yourself?’
Ransom stood up. Over his shoulder he could see Catherine Austen resting on the tiller in the sunlight, her hair lifting in the air like the fleece of some Homeric ram. The negro’s question irritated him. Partly he resented the old man for having taken advantage of him for so many years, but even more for his assumption that Ransom could still make a simple choice between helping him on the one hand and abandoning him on the other. After the events of the previous days, he already felt that in the new landscape around them humanitarian considerations were becoming irrelevant.
‘Doctor?’
‘Mr Jordan, I daren’t be honest with myself. Most known motives are so suspect these days that I doubt whether the hidden ones are any better. All the same, I’ll try to get you to the beach.’
20
THE BURNING CITY
SHORTLY BEFORE DUSK they began their return journey down the river. Ransom and Philip Jordan stood at bow and stern, each working a punt-pole, while Catherine and the old man sat amidships under a makeshift awning.
Around them the baked white surface of the lake stretched from horizon to horizon. Half a mile from the town, where they joined the main channel, a siren sounded into the hot afternoon air. Philip Jordan pointed two hundred yards to starboard, where Captain Tulloch’s river steamer sat in a land-locked pool of water. Pennants flying and deck canvas trim over the rows of polished seats, the steamer’s engines worked at full ahead, its high prow nudging the curve of a huge sand-flat. The screws turned tirelessly, churning the black water into a thick foam. Deserted by his helmsman, Captain Tulloch stood behind the wheel, sounding his siren at the dead flank of the dune as he nudged away at it, as if trying to wake a sleeping whale.
‘Doctor . . . ?’ Philip called out, but Ransom shook his head. They swept past, the sounds of the siren receding behind them in the haze.
They reached Hamilton at dusk, and rested behind the rusting hull of a dredger moored among the mud-floats at the entrance to the lake. In the fading light the old negro slept peacefully, sitting upright in the boat with his head against the metal posts of the awning. Beside him Catherine Austen leaned her elbows on the two jerricans of water Philip had saved, head forward on her wrists.
As darkness settled over the river Ransom went up on to the bridge of the dredger, where Philip Jordan pointed towards the distant city. Huge fires were burning along the skyline; the flames swept off the roof-tops as the canopies of smoke lifted into the air over their heads.
‘They’re burning Mount Royal,’ Ransom said. ‘Lomax and Quilter.’ As the light flickered in Philip Jordan’s face Ransom saw again the beaked profile of Jonas. He turned back to the fires and began to count them.
An hour later they left the skiff and walked forward down the drained bed. The heat of the waterfront fires drove across the river like a burning sirocco. The entire horizon was ablaze, enormous fires raging on the outskirts of the city. Hamilton burned along the northern bank of the river, the flames sweeping down the streets. The boat-houses by the quays were on fire, the hundreds of fish illuminated in the
dancing light. Overhead, myriads of glowing cinders sailed past like fireflies, and lay in the fields to the south as if the soil itself was beginning to burn.
‘The lions!’ Catherine shouted. ‘Doctor, I can hear them!’ She ran forward to the edge of the water, her face lit by the flames.
‘Miss Austen!’ Philip Jordan took her arm. Above the embankment of the motor-bridge, illuminated like an immense screen, stood one of the maned lions. It climbed on to the balustrade and looked down at the inferno below, then leapt away into the darkness. They heard a shout from the slip road, and one of the fishermen raced past the burning quays, the lion hunting him through the shadows.
They climbed up the bank to the shelter of the houses on the south shore of the river. A figure moved behind one of the stranded launches. A crone swathed in a bundle of rags clutched at Ransom before he could push her away.
‘Doctor, you wouldn’t be leaving an old body like Ma Quilter? To the taggers and the terrible flames, for pity’s sake?’
‘Mrs Quilter!’ Ransom steadied her, half-afraid that the fumes of whisky that enveloped her might ignite them both. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for my boy, doctor . . .’ She gestured like a distraught witch at the opposite bank, her face beaked and fearful in the pulsing light. ‘It’s that Lomax and his filthy Miranda, they’ve stolen my boy!’
Ransom propelled her up the slope. Catherine and Philip, the old negro carried between them, had scaled the bank and were crouching behind the wall in one of the gardens. The falling cinders flickered around them. As if set off by some pre-arranged signal, the whole of the lakeside town was burning simultaneously. Only Lomax’s house, at the eye of this hurricane, was immune. Searching for his own home among the collapsing roofs, Ransom heard more shouts carried above the roaring timbers, and saw the two cheetahs racing in pursuit down the burning corridors.
‘Philip!’
The cry came to them in a familiar demented voice across the river. Mrs Quilter turned, peering blindly into the flames, and shouted hoarsely: ‘That’s my boy! That’s my old Quilty come for his Ma!’
The Drought Page 9