As the steamer passed, Quilter stepped down into the water, and with an agile leap swung himself on to the hand-rail, feet in the scuppers.
‘Full ahead there!’ With a cry, Captain Tulloch hopped from his perch. He seized a boat-hook and hobbled down the deck towards Quilter, who grimaced at him from his hand-hold on the stern rail. Bellowing at the youth, who scuttled like a chimpanzee on its bars, Tulloch rattled the boat-hook up and down between the rails. They passed below the bridge and approached the Quilters' barge. Mrs Quilter, still fanning herself, sat up and hurled a series of vigorous epithets at the captain. Ignoring her, Tulloch drove Quilter along the rail, lunging at him like a perspiring pikeman. The helmsman swung the steamer hard by the barge, trying to rock it from its mooring. As it passed, Mrs Quilter jerked loose the line of the coracle. It bounced off the bows of the steamer, then raced like a frantic wheel between the hulls. Quilter leapt nimbly into it from the rail and was spreadeagled on the barge's deck as Captain Tulloch swung the boat-hook at his head, knocking Mrs Quilter's fan from her hand into the water.
The hot sunlight spangled in the steamer's wake as Mrs Quilter's laughter faded across it. Glad to see the old woman in such good spirits, Ransom waved to her from the deck of the houseboat, but she had followed Quilter through the hatchway. Settling itself, the river stirred slowly, now and then breaking into oily swells. Its white banks were beginning to crack like dry cement, and the shadows of the dead trees formed brittle ciphers on the slopes. Overhead a car moved along the deserted motor-bridge, heading towards the coast.
Ransom stepped out on to the jetty to inspect his rain-gauge. As he emptied the dust from the cylinder, a woman in a white beach-robe made her way down the bank fifty yards from him. She walked with the unhurried step of someone who has recovered from a long malady and feels that all the time in the world lies before her. The crumbling surface of the bank rose into the air like clouds of bone-meal. She looked down with preoccupied eyes at the thin stream of water. As she lifted her head to the sky her solitary figure seemed to Ransom like the spectre of the renascent dust.
Her strong face turned its level gaze upon Ransom, unsurprised to find him standing on the bed of the empty river. Although he had not seen her for some weeks, Ransom, conversely, knew that she would be among the last people to remain in the abandoned town. Since the death of her father, the former curator of the zoo at Mount Royal, Catherine Austen had lived alone in the house by the river. Often Ransom saw her walking along the bank in the evening, remote sister of the lions, her long red hair reflected in the liquid colours of the water at sunset. Sometimes he called to her as he sailed past in the houseboat, but she never bothered to reply.
She knelt down by the water's edge, frowning at the dead fish and birds that drifted past. She stood up and walked across to Ransom's jetty.
She pointed to an old bucket hanging from the wooden housing of the rain-gauge. ‘May I borrow that?’
Ransom handed it to her, then watched as she tried to fill it from the edge of the gangway. ‘Haven't you any water left?’
‘A little to drink. It's so hot, I wanted to bathe.’ She lifted the bucket from the water, then decanted the dark fluid carefully into the river. The inside of the bucket was cloaked by an oily veil. Without turning, she said, ‘I thought you'd gone, doctor, with everyone else, to the coast.’
Ransom shook his head. ‘I've just spent a week sailing on the lake.’ He pointed to the mud-flats that stretched away beyond the entrance to the river, the moisture beading on their wet slopes. ‘You'll be able to walk across it soon. Are you going to stay on here?’
‘Perhaps.’ She watched a fishing boat enter the river and approach them, its motor beating slowly. Two men stood in the bows, scanning the deserted wharfs. A crude black awning covered the stern of the boat, where three more men sat around the tiller, their pinched faces looking across the water at Ransom, and Catherine Austen. The craft's empty nets lay amidships, but the sides of the boat had been ornamented in a way Ransom had not seen before. A large carp, slit down its belly, had been fastened to each of the rowlocks, and then turned outwards to face the water. The silver bodies of the six fish stood upright on both sides of the boat like sentinels. Ransom assumed that the boat and its crew came from one of the settlements among the marshes, and that with the drought and the end of the lake the small colonies were being drawn towards the river and Mount Royal.
Yet the significance of the mounted fish eluded him. Most of the fishermen from the marshes lived close to nature, and the carp were probably some kind of rudimentary totem, expressing the fishermen's faith in their own existence.
Catherine Austen touched his arm. ‘Look at their faces.’ With a smile she whispered: ‘They think you're to blame.’
‘For the lake?’ Ransom shrugged. ‘I dare say.’ He watched the boat disappear below the bridge. ‘Poor devils, I hope they find better catches at sea.’
‘They won't leave here. Didn't you see the fish?’ Catherine strolled to the end of the jetty, the white gown sweeping from her hips to the dusty boards. ‘It's an interesting period – nothing moves, but so much is happening.’
‘Too much. There's barely enough time to hunt for water.’
‘Don't be prosaic. Water is the least of our problems.’ She added: ‘I take it you'll be here?’
‘Why do you say that?’ Ransom waited as a truck towing a large trailer crossed the bridge. ‘As a matter of fact, I intend to leave in a day or two.’
Catherine gazed out at the exposed lake-bed. ‘It's almost dry. Don't you feel, doctor, that everything is being drained away, all the memories and stale sentiments?’
For some reason this question, with its ironic emphasis, surprised Ransom. He looked down at the sharp eyes that watched his own. Catherine's banter seemed to conceal a complete understanding of his own thoughts. With a laugh, he raised his hands as if to fend her off. ‘Do I take that as a warning? Perhaps I should change my mooring?’
‘Not at all, doctor,’ Catherine said blandly. ‘I need you here.’ She handed him the bucket. ‘Have you any water to spare?’
Ransom slipped his hands into his trousers. The endless obsession with water during the previous months had forged powerful reflexes. Glad to be able to rely on them for once, he shook his head. ‘I haven't. Or is that an appeal to sentiment?’
Catherine waited, and then turned away. Fastening her robe, she bent down and filled the bucket.
Ransom took her arm. He pointed to the slip road leading down from the embankment. Directly below the bridge the trailer had parked, and the families of four or five adults and half a dozen children were setting up a small camp. Two of the men carried a chemical closet out of the trailer. Followed by the children, they walked down the bank, sinking up to their knees in the white dust. When they reached the water they emptied the closet and washed it out.
‘For God's sake … !’ Catherine Austen searched the sky. ‘Doctor, people are filthy.’
Ransom took the half-filled bucket from her and lowered it into the water. Catherine watched it glide away on the oily current, her face pale and expressionless. Professor Austen's wife, a noted zoologist in her own right, had died in Africa while Catherine was a child. Watching her, Ransom reflected that however isolated a man might be, women at least remained his companions, but an isolated woman was isolated absolutely.
Gathering her robe, Catherine began to make her way up the bank.
‘Wait,’ Ransom called. ‘I'll lend you some water.’ With forced humour, he added: ‘You can repay me when the pressure comes on again.’
He guided her on board the houseboat and went off into the galley. As long as the river flowed Catherine Austen remained one of its community. Besides, there were too many correspondences of character between them, more perhaps