He waited, eyes half-closed with pleasure, as Ransom sat back and laughed at the intended irony of this. Ransom was one of the few people to appreciate his Fabergé style without any kind of moral reservation—everyone else was faintly shocked, for which Lomax despised them (‘mankind’s besetting sin, Charles,’ he once complained, ‘is to sit in judgment on its fellows’), or viewed him uneasily from a distance. In part this reaction was based on an instinctive revulsion from Lomax’s ambiguous physical make-up, and the sense that his whole personality was based on, and even exploited, precisely these areas.
Yet Ransom felt that this was to misjudge him. Just as his own stratified personality reflected his preoccupation with the vacuums and drained years of his memory, so Lomax’s had been formed by his intense focus upon the immediate present, his crystallization on the razor’s edge of the momentary impulse. In a sense, he was a super-saturation of himself, the elegant cartouches of his nostrils and the waves of his pomaded hair like the decoration on a baroque pavilion, containing a greater ambient time than defined by its own space. Suitably pricked, he would probably begin to deliquesce, fizzing out in a brilliant sparkle of contained light.
Ransom opened his valise. ‘All right, let’s have a look. Perhaps I’ll find a pearl.’
When Lomax settled himself, he examined the ear and syringed it, then pronounced it sound.
‘I’m so relieved, Charles, it’s your neutral touch. Hippocrates would have been proud of you.’ Lomax eyed Ransom for a moment, and then continued, his voice more pointed: ‘While you’re here there’s another little matter I wanted to raise with you. I’ve been so busy recently with one thing and another. I haven’t had a chance until now.’ Steadying himself with the cane, he lowered his short legs to the floor, accepting Ransom’s hand with a flourish of thanks.
Despite Lomax’s pose as an elderly invalid, Ransom could feel the hard muscles beneath the smooth silk suiting, and noted the supple ease with which he moved off across the floor. What exactly had kept him busy Ransom could only guess. The dapper white shoes and spotless suit indicated a fairly insulated existence during the previous weeks. Perhaps Lomax saw an opportunity to settle some old scores. Although responsible for a concert hall and part of the university in Mount Royal—examples of his Japanese, pagoda-ridden phase some years earlier—Lomax had long been persona non grata with the local authorities. No doubt he had been brooding over his revenge for the way they had allowed a firm of commercial builders to complete the university project after local conservative opinion, outraged by the glass minarets and tiled domes rising over their heads, had marched on the city hall. But the officials concerned would by now be safely at the coast, well out of Lomax’s reach.
‘What’s on your mind?’ Ransom asked, as Lomax sprayed the air with a few puffs of scent from a gilt plunger on his dressing table.
‘Well, Charles . . .’ Lomax gazed out at the obscured skyline of the city, from which the smoke rose more and more thickly. To his right the bleached white bed of the river wound its way between the riverside villas. ‘What’s going on out there? You know more about these things than I do.’
Ransom gestured at the windows. ‘It’s plain enough. You really must have been busy if you haven’t noticed. The entire balance of nature has—’
Lomax snapped his fingers irritably. ‘Don’t talk to me about the balance of nature! If it wasn’t for people like myself we’d all be living in mud huts.’ He peered darkly at the city. ‘A good thing too, judging by that—I mean what’s happening over there, in Mount Royal? I take it most people have left?’
‘Nine out of ten of them. Probably more. There can’t be much future for them there.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. There’s a great deal of future there, believe me.’ He walked towards Ransom, his head on one side, like a couturier inspecting a suspect mannequin, about to remove a single pin and expose the whole shabby pretence. ‘And what about you, Charles? I can’t understand why you haven’t set off for the coast with everyone else?’
‘Can’t you, Richard? I think you probably can. Perhaps we both have some unfinished business to clear up.’
Lomax nodded sagely. ‘Well put, with your usual tact. I hate to pry, but I care for you in a strange sort of way. You began with so many advantages in life—advantages of character, I mean—and you’ve deliberately ignored them. There’s a true nobility, the Roman virtue. Unlike myself, I haven’t a moral notion in my head.’ Thoughtfully, he added: ‘Until now, that is. I feel I may at last be coming into my own. Still, what are you actually going to do? You can’t just sit on the mud in your little houseboat.’
‘I haven’t been there for three or four days,’ Ransom said. ‘The roads are crowded, I felt I could better come to terms with certain problems here. I’ll have to leave eventually.’
‘Perhaps. Certainly everything is going to be very changed here, Charles.’
Ransom lifted his valise off the floor. ‘I’ve grasped that much.’ He pointed to the dusty villas along the river. ‘They look like mud huts already. We’re moving straight back into the past.’
Lomax shook his head. ‘You’ve got your sense of direction wrong, my boy. It’s the future each of us has to come to terms with now.’ He straightened up. ‘Why don’t you come and live here?’
‘Thank you, Richard, no.’
‘Why not?’ Lomax pressed. ‘Let’s be honest, you don’t intend to leave—I can see that in your face a mile off. The servants will be back soon, for one damn good reason, if no other—’ his eyes flashed knowingly at Ransom ‘—they’re going to find the sea isn’t quite so full of water as they think. Back to old Father Neptune, yes. They’ll look after you, and Quilter’s a willing lad, full of strange notions, though a bit tiresome at times. You’ll be able to moon around, come to terms with Judith—’
Ransom walked to the door. ‘Richard, I have already. A long time ago. It’s you who’s missing the point now.’
‘Wait!’ Lomax scurried after him. ‘Those of us staying behind have got to rally together, Charles. I’m damned if I’m going to the sea. All that water a mineral I despise, utterly unmalleable, fit only for fountains. Also, you’ll be able to help me with a little project of mine.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well . . .’ Lomax glanced slyly in the direction of the city. ‘A slight divertissement I’ve been toying with. Rather spectacular, as a matter of fact. I’d tell you, Charles, but it’s probably best to wait until we’re more committed to each other.’
‘Very wise of you.’ Ransom watched Lomax pivoting on his white shoes, obviously delighted with the idea and only just managing to keep it to himself. The billows of red smoke rose from the city, reflected in Lomax’s suit and puckish face, and for a moment transforming him into a plump, grinning Mephistopheles.
‘What are you planning to do?’ Ransom asked. ‘Burn the city down?’
‘Charles . . .’ A smile crossed Lomax’s face like a slow crack around a vase. ‘That’s a suggestion worth bearing in mind. What a pity Quilter isn’t here, he adores ideas like that.’
‘I dare say.’ Ransom went over to the door.
This time Lomax made no attempt to stop him. ‘You know, your idea touches my imagination! Great fires have always been the prelude to even greater futures.’ He gazed out at the city. ‘What a phoenix!’
10
MIRANDA
RANSOM LEFT HIM rhapsodizing on this notion. As he crossed the hall the last sounds of the tanker’s pump came from the swimming pool.
‘Quilty! Is that you, Quilty?’ A woman’s voice called sleepily from the veranda overlooking the swimming pool.
Ransom stopped, recognizing the sharp, child-like tone. Trying to disguise his footsteps, he walked on towards the door.
‘Quilty! What are you creeping around for—oh! Who the hell are you?’
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Miranda Lomax, the architect’s sister, her white hair falling like a shawl around her robe, stood barefoot in the entrance to the hall, scrutinizing Ransom with her small eyes. Although twenty years younger than Lomax—but was she really his sister, Ransom sometimes speculated, or a distant cousin, the cast-off partner in an ambiguous ménage à deux—her face was a perfect replica of Lomax’s, with its puckish cheeks, hard eyes and the mouth of a corrupt Cupid. Her long hair, white as the ash now settling on the lawn outside, made her look prematurely aged, and she was in fact like a wise, evil child. On their occasional meetings, when she arrived, chauffeur-driven, at the hospital on some unspecified errand, Ransom always felt a sharp sense of unease, although superficially she was attractive enough. Perhaps this physical appeal, the gilding of the diseased lily, was what warned him away from her. Lomax’s eccentricities were predictable in their way, but Miranda was less self-immersed, casting her eye on the world like a witch waiting for the casual chance.
‘Dr Ransom . . .’ Visibly let down, she turned to go back to the veranda. Then, out of boredom, she beckoned him across the hall. ‘You look tired, doctor.’ She slouched off, the soiled beach-wrap trailing behind her.
The double windows were sealed to keep out the dust, and obscured the green hull of the tanker at the far end of the pool. Despite its length the veranda was claustrophobic, the air dead and unoccupied. A peculiar scent hung about, coming from the half-dead tropical plants suspended from the wall, the limp foliage outstretched as if trying to reach Miranda on their last gasp.
Miranda slumped back on one of the wicker divans. Fruit spilled from a basket across a glass-topped table. She munched half a grape, peered critically at the pip, then waved Ransom in.
‘Come on, doctor, don’t stand there trying to look enigmatic. I won’t compromise you or anything. Have you seen Quilter?’
‘He’s hunting your house-boy with a couple of dogs,’ Ransom said. ‘You may need me later. I’ll be at home.’ Miranda flicked the grape-skin across the floor. He tapped his valise. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Where?’ She waved at him contemptuously. ‘Don’t be damn silly, there’s nowhere to go. Tell me, doctor, what exactly are you up to in Hamilton?’
‘Up to?’ Ransom echoed. ‘I’m trying to hold what’s left of my practice together.’
As she poked among the half-eaten fruit Ransom looked down at the dirty cuffs and collar of the beach-robe, and at the soiled top of the slip she wore loosely around her breasts. Already she was beginning to look as derelict and faded as her plants—once she ceased to serve Lomax’s purposes he would lose interest in her. Yet her skin was of an almost albino whiteness, unmarked by any freckle or blemish.
Miranda gave him an evil smirk, pushing back her hair with one wrist in a comically arch gesture. ‘What’s the matter, doctor? Do you want to examine me or something?’
‘Most definitely not,’ Ransom said evenly. He pointed to the tanker by the pool. The mechanic was winding the hose on to its winch. ‘Is Lomax selling his water?’
‘Like hell. I wanted him to pour it into the ground near the highway. Has Lomax told you about his plan? I suppose he couldn’t contain himself with laughing like a small boy?’
‘Do you mean his bonfire party? He invited me to take part.’
‘Doctor, you should.’ Miranda looked around with a flourish, the white hair veiling her face like a Medusa’s crown. ‘Let me tell you, though, I have a little plan of my own.’
‘I’m sure you have,’ Ransom said. ‘But I’ll be leaving for the coast soon.’
With a weary shake of the head, Miranda dismissed him. ‘There isn’t any coast now. There’s only here, you’d better face that.’ When he reached the door she called after him: ‘Doctor, have you ever seen an army of ants try to cross a stream?’
From the steps Ransom looked out across the dusty roof-tops. The smoke pall hung over the distant city, but the air was brighter, reflected off the white ash that covered the river bed. The brief meeting with Miranda had unsettled him. At first he had felt sorry for the girl, but now he realized that, in her brother’s phrase, she was coming into her own.
The mechanic opened the door of the tanker and climbed up into the cabin. He pulled a rifle from the locker behind the seat and propped it in the window. A small, stooped man with a patch over one eye, he glanced suspiciously at Ransom.
Ransom walked over to him ‘Are the army requisitioning water now?’
‘This is a private gift.’ The driver pointed up at Lomax’s suite, as if unsure of his motives. ‘For Mount Royal zoo.’
Ransom recognized the green overalls. ‘Who’s in charge now? Dr Barnes?’
‘He’s gone, flown like a bird. Only two of us left. Me and the Austen girl. That one’s a worker.’
‘Catherine Austen?’ Ransom asked. ‘Do you mean that some of the animals are still alive? I thought they’d all been destroyed.’
‘What?’ The driver rounded on him. ‘Destroyed? Why?’
Surprised by his aggressive tone, Ransom said: ‘Well, for their sake, if not for ours. This water won’t last for ever.’
The driver leaned on the sill, pointing a reproving finger at Ransom. Although obviously not a man given to argument, he seemed to have been irritated by Ransom’s remarks.
‘They’re all right,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have to last for ever.’ He gestured at the dusty landscape around them. ‘This is what they like. A few weeks from now and maybe we’ll be able to let them out!’
He smiled at Ransom; his one eye gleamed in his twisted face with a wild misanthropic hope.
11
THE LAMIA
FOR HALF AN HOUR they drove on towards Mount Royal zoo, winding in and out of the deserted streets, making detours across the gardens and tennis courts when their way was blocked. Ransom sat forward on the seat beside Whitman, trying to remember the maze of turnings. The zoo was three miles from the centre of the city, in what had once been a neighbourhood of pleasant, well-tended homes, but the area now had the appearance of a derelict shanty-town. The husks of trees and box hedges divided the houses from one another, and in the gardens the smouldering incinerators added their smoke to the ash-filled air. Abandoned cars lay by the roadside, or had been jerked out of the way on to the pavements, their doors open. They passed an empty shopping centre. The store fronts had been boarded up or sealed with steel grilles, and a few lean dogs with arched backs picked among the burst cartons.
The abrupt transition from Hamilton, which still carried a faint memory of normal life, surprised Ransom. Here, within the perimeter of the city, the exodus had been violent and sudden. Now and then a solitary figure hurried head down between the lines of cars. Once an ancient truck crammed with an entire family’s furniture and possessions, parents crowded into the driving cabin with three or four children, jerked across an intersection a hundred yards in front of them and disappeared into the limbo of side-streets.
Half a mile from the zoo the main avenue was blocked by a dozen cars jammed around a large articulated truck that had tried to reverse into a narrow drive. Whitman swore and glanced briefly to left and right. Without hestitating he swung the tanker off the road into the drive of a small, single-storey house. They roared past the kitchen windows, crushing a dustbin with the fender, and Ransom saw the faces of a grey-haired old couple, a man and his wife, watching them with startled eyes.
‘Did you see them?’ Ransom shouted, casting his mind two or three weeks ahead, when the couple would be alone in the abandoned city. ‘Is no one helping them?’
Whitman ignored the question. Ransom had persuaded the one-eyed driver, against his better judgment, to take him to the zoo on the pretext that he would be able to add an anti-rabies vaccine to the water. After his meeting with Lomax and Miranda the mention of Catherine Austen had cut across everything like a shaft of cl
ear light, a small focus of sanity.
A white picket fence separated the end of the alley from the drive of the house on the parallel street. A car had stalled between the gates at the edge of the pavement. Barely reducing speed, Whitman drove on and flattened the fence. Carrying a section on the bumper, they moved past the house, then accelerated fractionally before the impact with the car. Doors slamming, it was catapulted out into the road, denting the grille of a small truck, then rolled across the camber and buried its bonnet in the side of an empty convertible. The windscreens frosted and windows splintered and fell into the roadway.
Somewhere a dog barked plaintively. His nostrils flicking at the sound, Whitman swung the tanker out on to the road, shedding the remains of the fence from the bumper. ‘Can you see it? We can stop.’
‘Not here—look out!’ Ransom warned.
Fifty yards to their left two figures watched them from behind the corner of a house. Their black shawls, streaked with ash, covered their broad-cheeked faces, like the hoods of a primitive monastic order.
‘Fishermen’s wives,’ Ransom said. ‘They’re coming down from the lake.’
‘Forget them,’ Whitman said. ‘You can worry when they start moving in packs.’
Ransom sat back, knowing that even if this grim prospect were ever to materialize he himself would not be there. This change of heart had occurred after his visit to Lomax. There he had realized that the role of the recluse and solitary, meditating on his past sins of omission like a hermit on the fringes of an abandoned city, would not be viable. The blighted landscape and its empty violence, its loss of time, would provide its own motives.
These latent elements in Lomax and Miranda were already appearing. Curiously, Lomax was less frightening than Miranda. Her white hair and utter lack of pity reminded him of the spectre that appeared at all times of extreme exhaustion—the yellow-locked, leprous-skinned lamia who had pursued the Ancient Mariner. Perhaps this phantom embodied archaic memories of a time, whether past or future, when fear and pain were the most valuable emotions, and their exploitation into the most perverse forms the sole imperative.