Below Ransom, in a small niche off the edge of the sidewalk, a middle-aged man in shirtsleeves was working a primus stove below the awning of his trailer, a miniature vehicle little larger than a sedan chair. Sitting inside the doorway was his wife, a sedate roundfaced woman in a floral dress. The primus flared in the heat, warming a metal teapot.
Ransom climbed down and approached the man. He had the intelligent, sensitive eyes of a watchmaker. As Ransom came up, he quietly poured the tea into two cups on a tray.
"Herbert," his wife called warningly.
"It's all right, dear."
Ransom bent down beside him, nodding to the woman. "Do you mind if I talk to you?"
"Go ahead," the man said. "But I've no water to spare."
"That's all right. I've just arrived with some friends," Ransom said. "We intended to reach the beach, but it looks as if we're too late."
The man nodded thoughtfully. "You probably are," he agreed. "Still, I wouldn't worry, we're not much better off." He added: "We've been here two days."
"We were on the road three," his wife interjected. "Tell him about that, Herbert."
"He's been on the road too, dear."
"What chance is there of getting onto the shore?" Ransom asked. "We're going to need some water soon. Aren't there any police around?"
"Let me explain." The man finished sipping his tea. "Perhaps you couldn't see from up there, but all along the beach there's a double wire fence. The army and police are behind there. Every day they let a few people through. Inside those sheds there are some big distillation units; they say there'll be plenty of water soon and everyone should stay where they are." He smiled faintly. "Boiling and condensing water is a long job; you need cooling towers a hundred feet high."
"What happens if you climb through the wire onto the beach?"
"_If_ you climb through. The army are all right; but last night the militia units were shooting at the people trying to cross between the fences. Machine-gunned them down in the spotlights."
Ransom noticed Philip Jordan and Catherine standing on the sidewalk. From their faces he could see that they were frightened he might leave them when they were still a few hundred yards short of the beach.
"But what about the government evacuation plans?" he asked. "Those beach cards and so on…" He stood up when the other made no reply. "What do you plan to do?"
The man gazed evenly at Ransom. "Sit here and wait." He gestured around at the camp. "This won't last forever. It can't. Already most of these people have only a day's water left. Sooner or later they'll break out. My guess is that by the time they reach the water they'll be thinned out enough for Ethel and me to have all we want."
His wife nodded in agreement, sipping her tea.
They set off along the road again. Gradually the hills began to recede, the road turning until it moved almost directly inland. They reached the margins of the river estuary. The funnel-shaped area had once been bordered by marshes and sandflats, and the low-lying ground still seemed damp and gloomy, despite the hot sunlight breaking across the dry grass. The hundreds of vehicles parked among the dunes and hillocks had sunk up to their axles in the soft sand, their roofs tilting in all directions. Ransom stopped by the edge of the road, the presence of the riverbed offering him a fleeting security. Three hundred yards away were the stout fencing posts of the perimeter wire, the barbed coils staked to the ground between them. A narrow strip of dunes and drained creeks separated this line from the inner fence. A quarter of a mile beyond they could see a small section of the shore, the waves foaming peacefully on the washed sand. On either side of the empty channel dozens of huts were being erected, and bare-cheated men worked quickly in the sunlight. Their energy, and the close proximity of the water behind their backs, contrasted painfully with the thousands of listless people watching from the dunes on the other side of the barbed wire.
Ransom stepped from the car. "We'll try here. We're further from the shore, but there are fewer people. Perhaps they dislike the river for some reason."
"What about the car?" Philip asked.
"Leave it. These people have brought everything with them; they're not going to abandon their cars now that they've got them parked on the sand." He waited for the others to climb out but they sat inertly, reluctant to move. "Come on, Catherine. Mrs. Quilter, you can sleep on the dunes tonight."
"I don't know for sure, doctor." Screwing up her face, she stepped slowly from the car.
"What about you, Mr. Jordan?" Ransom asked.
"Of course, doctor." The old Negro still sat upright. "Just settle me on the sand."
"We're not on the sand." Controlling his impatience, Ransom said: "Philip, perhaps Mr. Jordan could wait in the car. When we've set up some sort of post by the wire, we'll come back and get him."
"No, doctor." Philip watched Ransom carefully. "If we can't take him in the litter, I'll carry him myself." Before Ransom could remonstrate with him, he bent down and lifted the elderly Negro from the car. His strong arms carried him like a child.
Ransom led the way, followed by Catherine and Mrs. Quilter, who fussed along, muttering at the people sitting in the hollows by their cars and trailers. Philip Jordan followed fifty yards behind them, watching his footing in the churned sand, the old Negro in his arms. Soon the road was lost to sight, and the stench of the encampment filled their lungs. A maze of pathways turned between the vehicles and among the dry, grasstopped dunes. Seeing the jerrican partly hidden inside his jacket, children wheedled at Ransom with empty cups. Small groups of men, unshaven and stained with dust, argued hotly with each other, pointing toward the fence. The nearer to this obstacle, the higher tempers seemed to flare, as if the earlier arrivals-many of whom, to judge by their camping equipment, had been there for a week or more-realized that the great concourse pressing behind them meant that they themselves would never reach the sea.
Fortunately the extension of the perimeter fence into the mouth of the river allowed Ransom to approach the wire without having to advance directly toward the sea. Once or twice he found their way barred by a silent man with a shotgun in his hands, waving them away from some private encampment.
An hour later, Ransom reached a point some twenty yards from the outer fence, in a narrow hollow between two groups of trailers. Partly sheltered from the sunlight by the sticks of coarse grass on the crests of the surrounding hillocks, Catherine and Mrs. Quilter sat down and rested, waiting for Philip Jordan to appear. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed around them, the stench from the once marshy ground thickening the air. The trailers nearby belonged to two circus families, who had moved down to the coast with part of their traveling fair. The gilt-painted canopies of two merry-go-rounds rose above the dunes, the antique horses on their spiral pinions lending a carnival air to the scene. The dark-eyed womenfolk and their daughters sat like a covey of witches around the ornamental traction engine in the center, watching the distant shore as if expecting some monstrous fish to be cast up out of the water.
"What about Philip and Mr. Jordan?" Catherine asked when they had not appeared. Shouldn't we go back and look for them?"
Lamely, Ransom said: "They'll probably get here later. We can't risk leaving here, Catherine."
Mrs. Quilter sat back against the broken earth, shaking the flies off her dusty silks, muttering vaguely to herself as if unable to comprehend what they were doing in this flyinfested hollow.
Ransom climbed onto the crest of the dune. However depressing, the lack of loyalty toward Philip Jordan did not surprise him. With their return to the drained river, he felt again the sense of isolation in time that he had known when he stood on the deck of his houseboat, looking out at the stranded objects on the dry bed around him. Here, where the estuary widened, the distances separating him from the others had become even greater. In time, the sand drifting across the dunes would reunite them on its own terms, but for the present each of them formed a self-contained and discrete world of his own.