The Drought. J. G. Ballard

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       7 The Face

      A police car approached along the avenue and stopped fifty yards away. After a discreet interval, stemming more from custom than any sense of propriety, Judith Ransom stepped out. She leaned through the window, talking to Captain Hendry. After checking her watch against his, she hurried up the drive. She failed to notice Ransom sitting in the dust-covered car, and went on into the house.

      Ransom waited until she had gone upstairs. He stepped from the car and strolled down towards Hendry. Ransom had always liked the police captain, and during the past two years their relationship had become the most stable side of the triangle – indeed, Ransom sometimes guessed, its main bond. How long Judith and Hendry would survive the rigours of the beach alone remained to be seen.

      As Ransom reached the car Hendry put down the map he was studying.

      ‘Still here, Charles? Don't you feel like a few days at the beach?’

      ‘I can't swim.’ Ransom pointed to the camping equipment in the back seat. ‘All that looks impressive. A side of Judith's character I never managed to explore.’

      ‘I haven't either – yet. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking. Do I have your blessing?’

      ‘Of course. And Judith too, you know that.’

      Hendry gazed up at Ransom. ‘You sound completely detached, Charles. What are you planning to do – wait here until the place turns into a desert?’

      Ransom drew his initials in the dust behind the windscreen wiper. ‘It seems to be a desert already. Perhaps I'm more at home here. I want to stay on a few days and find out.’

      ‘Rather you than me. Do you think you really will leave?’

      ‘Certainly. It's just a whim of mine, you know.’

      But something about Hendry's changed tone, the note of condescension, reminded Ransom that Hendry might resent his sense of detachment more than he imagined. He talked to the captain for a few minutes, then said goodbye and went indoors.

      He found Judith in the kitchen, rooting in the refrigerator. A small stack of cans stood in a carton on the table.

      ‘Charles—’ She straightened up, brushing her blonde hair off her angular face. ‘That beard – I thought you were down at the river.’

      ‘I was,’ Ransom said. ‘I came back to see if I could do anything for us. It's rather late in the day.’

      Judith watched him with a neutral expression. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said matter-of-factly. She bent down to the refrigerator again, flicking at the greasy cans with her well-tended nails.

      ‘I've been dividing things up,’ she explained. ‘I've left you most of the stuff. And you can have all the water.’

      Ransom watched her seal the carton, then search for string in the cupboard, sweeping the tail of her linen coat off the floor. Her departure, like his own from the house, involved no personal component whatsoever. Their relationship was now completely functional, like that of two technicians who had successfully tried to install a complex domestic appliance.

      ‘I'll get your suitcase.’ She said nothing, but her grey eyes followed him to the stairs.

      When he came down she was waiting in the hall. She picked up the carton. ‘Charles, what are you going to do?’

      Despite himself, Ransom laughed. In a sense the question had been prompted by his beachcomber-like appearance and beard, but the frequency with which he had been asked it by so many different people made him realize that his continued presence in the deserted town, his apparent acceptance of the silence and emptiness, in some way exposed the vacuum in their lives.

      He wondered whether to try to convey to Judith his involvement with the changing role of the landscape and river, their metamorphosis in time and memory. Catherine Austen would have understood his preoccupations, and accepted that for Ransom the only final rest from the persistence of memory would come from his absolution in time. But Judith, as he knew, hated all mention of the subject, and for good reason. Woman's role in time was always tenuous and uncertain.

      Her pale face regarded his shadow on the wall, as if searching for some last clue in this map-like image. Then he saw that she was watching herself in the mirror. He noticed again the marked lack of symmetry in her face, the dented left temple that she tried to disguise with a fold of hair. It was as if her face already carried the injuries of an appalling motor-car accident that would happen somewhere in the future. Sometimes Ransom felt that Judith was aware of this herself, and moved through life with this grim promise always before her.

      She opened the door on to the dusty drive. ‘Good luck, Charles. Look after that Jordan boy.’

      ‘He'll be looking after me.’

      ‘I know. You need him, Charles.’

      As they went out into the drive enormous black clouds were crossing the sky from the direction of Mount Royal.

      ‘Good God!’ Judith started to run down the drive, dropping her bag. ‘Is that rain?’

      Ransom caught up with her. He peered at the billows of smoke rising from the dark skyline of the city. ‘Don't worry. It's the city. It's on fire.’

      After she and Hendry had gone he went back to the house, the image of Judith's face still in his eyes. She had looked back at him with an expression of horror, as if frightened that she was about to lose everything she had gained.