The Map of Time

Accordingly, they decided to carry on exploring, and set out for the opening where the battle was going on between the two tribes because it was closest to the mountains. The journey was gruelling, hampered by freak sandstorms that forced them to erect their tent and take refuge inside if they did not want to be scoured like cooking pots. Thankfully, they did not meet any of the giant creatures. Of course, when they finally reached the hole, they had no idea how long it had taken them to get there, only that the journey had been exhausting.

Its size and appearance were identical to the one they had first stepped through into that murky world. The only difference was that, instead of crude huts, inside this one there was a ruined city. Scarcely a single building remained standing, yet there was something oddly familiar about the structures. They stood for a few moments, surveying the ruins from the other side of the hole, as one would peer into a shop window, but no sign of life broke the calm. What kind of war could have wrought such terrible devastation?

Depressed by the dreadful scene, Kaufman and Austin restored their courage with a few slugs of whisky, then donned their pith helmets and leaped valiantly through the opening. Their senses were immediately assailed by an intense familiar odour. Smiling with bewilderment, it dawned on them that they were simply smelling their own world again: they had been unaware of it during their journey across the pink plain.

Rifles at the ready, they scoured their surroundings, moving cautiously through the rubble-filled streets, shocked at the sight of so much devastation, until they stumbled across another obstacle, which stopped them dead in their tracks. Kaufmann and Austin gazed incredulously at the object blocking their path: it was none other than the clock tower of Big Ben. It lay in the middle of the street like a severed fish head, the vast clock face a great eye staring at them with mournful resignation.

The discovery made them glance uneasily about them. Strangely moved, they cast an affectionate eye over each toppled edifice, the desolate ruined landscape where a few plumes of black smoke darkened the sky over a London razed to the ground. Neither could contain their tears. In fact, the two men would have stood there for ever, weeping over the remains of their beloved city, had it not been for a peculiar clanking sound that came from nearby.

Rifles at the ready again, they followed the clatter until they came to a small mound of rubble. They clambered up it noiselessly, crouching low. Unseen in their improvised lookout, they saw what was causing the racket. It was coming from strange, vaguely humanoid metal creatures, powered by what looked like tiny steam engines attached to their backs. The loud clanging noise they had heard was the sound of clumsy iron feet knocking against the metal debris strewn on the ground. The bemused explorers had no idea what these creatures might be, until Austin plucked from the rubble what looked like the crumpled page of a newspaper.

With trembling fingers, he opened it and discovered a photograph of the same creatures as the ones they could see below them. The headline announced the unstoppable advance of the automatons, and went on to encourage readers to rally to the support of the human army led by the brave Captain Derek Shackleton. What most surprised them, however, was the date: this loose page was from a newspaper printed 3 April 2000. As one, Kaufmann and Austin shook their heads, very slowly from left to right, but before they had time to express their amazement in a more sophisticated way, the remains of a rafter in the mound of rubble fell into the street with a loud crash, alerting the automatons.

Kaufmann and Austin exchanged terrified glances, and took to their heels, running full pelt towards the hole they had come through without looking back. They easily slipped through it again, but did not stop running until their legs would carry them no further.

They erected their tent and cowered inside, trying to collect their thoughts, to absorb what they had seen – with the obligatory help of some whisky, of course. It was clearly time for them to return to the village and report back to London everything they had seen. They were certain that Gilliam Murray would be able to explain it.

However, their problems did not end there. On the way back to the village, they were attacked by a gigantic beast with spikes on its back, whose potential existence they had forgotten about. They had great difficulty in killing it. They used up nearly all their ammunition trying to scare it away, because the bullets kept bouncing off the spiked armour without injuring it. Finally, they managed to chase it away by shooting at its eyes, its only weak point as far as they could determine.

Having successfully fought off the beast, they arrived back at the hole without further incident, and immediately sent a message to London relating all their discoveries.

As soon as he received their news, Gilliam Murray set sail for Africa. He joined the two explorers in the Reed People’s village where, like doubting Thomas plunging his fingers into Christ’s wounds after he had risen from the dead, he made his way to the razed city of London in the year 2000. He spent many months with the Reed People, although he could not be sure exactly how many as he spent extensive periods exploring the pink plain in order to verify Kaufmann and Austin’s claims.

Just as they had described in their telegrams, in that sunless world watches stopped ticking, razors became superfluous, and nothing appeared to mark the passage of time. Consequently he concluded that, incredible though it might seem, the moments he spent there were a hiatus in his life, a temporary suspension of his inexorable journey towards death. He realised his imagination had not been playing tricks on him when he returned to the village and the puppy he had taken with him ran to join its siblings: they had all come from the same litter but now the others were grown dogs. Gilliam had not needed to take a single shave during his exploration of the plain, but Eternal, the puppy, was a far more spectacular manifestation of the absence of time in the other world.

He also deduced that the holes did not lead to other universes, as he had first believed, but to different times in a world that was none other than his own. The pink plain was outside the time continuum, outside time, the arena in which man’s life took place alongside that of plants and other animals. And the beings inhabiting that world, Tremanquai’s Reed People, knew how to break out of the time continuum by creating holes in it that enabled man to travel in time, to cross from one era to another.

This realisation filled Murray with excitement and dread. He had made the greatest discovery in the history of mankind: he had discovered what lay underneath the world, what lay behind reality. He had discovered the fourth dimension.

How strange life was, he thought. He had started out trying to find the source of the Nile, and ended up discovering a secret passage that led to the year 2000. But that was how all the greatest discoveries were made. Had not the voyage of the Beagle been prompted by spurious financial and strategic interests? The discoveries resulting from it would have been far less interesting had a young naturalist perceptive enough to notice the variations between finches’ beaks not been on board. And yet the story of natural selection would revolutionise the world. His discovery of the fourth dimension had happened in a similarly random way.

But what use was there in discovering something if you could not share it with the rest of the world? Gilliam wanted to take Londoners to the year 2000 so that they could see with their own eyes what the future held for them. The question was: how? He could not possibly take boatloads of city-dwellers to a native village in the heart of Africa, where the Reed People were living. The only answer was to move the hole to London. Was that possible? He did not know, but he would lose nothing by trying.

Leaving Kaufmann and Austin to guard the Reed People, Murray returned to London, where he built a cast-iron box the size of a room. He took it, with a thousand bottles of whisky, to the village, where he planned to strike a bargain that would change people’s perception of the known world. Drunk as lords, the Reed People consented to his whim of singing their magic chants inside the sinister box. Once the hole had materialised, he herded them out and closed the heavy doors behind them. The three men waited until the last of the Reed People had succumbed to the effects of the whisky before setting off for home.

It was an arduous journey, and only when the enormous box was on the ship at Zanzibar did Murray begin to breathe more easily. Even so, he barely slept a wink during the passage. He spent almost the entire time on deck, gazing lovingly at the fateful box and wondering whether it was not in fact empty. Could one really steal a hole? His eagerness to know the answer to that question gnawed at him, making the return journey seem interminable. He could hardly believe it when at last they docked at Liverpool.

As soon as he reached his offices, he opened the box in complete secret. The hole was still there! They had successfully stolen it! The next step was to show it to his father.

‘What the devil is this?’ exclaimed Sebastian Murray, when he saw the hole shimmering inside the box.

‘This is what drove Oliver Tremanquai mad, Father,’ Gilliam replied, pronouncing the explorer’s name with affection. ‘So, take care.’

His father turned pale. Nevertheless, he accompanied his son through the hole and travelled into the future, to a demolished London where humans hid in the ruins like rats. Once he had got over the shock, father and son agreed they must make this discovery known to the world. And what better way to do this than to turn the hole into a business? Taking people to see the year 2000 would bring in enough money to cover the cost of the journeys and to fund further exploration of the fourth dimension.

They proceeded to map out a secure route to the hole into the future, eliminating any dangers, setting up lookout posts and smoothing the road so that a tramcar with thirty seats could cross it easily. Sadly, his father did not live long enough to see Murray’s Time Travel open its doors to the public, but Murray consoled himself with the thought that at least he had seen the future beyond his own death.

Chapter IX

Once he had finished telling his story, Murray fell silent and looked expectantly at his two visitors. Andrew assumed he was hoping for some kind of response, but had no idea what to say. He felt embarrassed. Everything his host had told them was no more believable than an adventure story. That pink plain seemed about as real to him as Lilliput, the South Sea Island inhabited by little people where Lemuel Gulliver had been shipwrecked. From the stupefied smile on Charles’s face, however, he assumed his cousin did believe it. After all, he had travelled to the year 2000: what did it matter whether he had got there by crossing a pink plain where time had stopped?

‘And now, gentlemen, if you would kindly follow me, I’ll show you something only a few trusted people are allowed to see,’ Murray declared, resuming the guided tour of his commodious office.

With Eternal continually running round his master, the three men walked across to another wall, where a small collection of photographs awaited them with what was probably another map, although this was concealed behind a red silk curtain. Andrew was surprised to discover that the photographs had been taken in the fourth dimension, although they might easily have depicted any desert, since cameras were unable to record the colour of this or any other world. He had to use his imagination, then, to see the white smear of sand as pink. The majority documented routine moments during the expedition: Murray and two other men, presumably Kaufmann and Austin, putting up tents; drinking coffee during a pause; lighting a fire; posing in front of the phantom mountains, almost entirely obscured by thick fog. It all looked too normal.

Only one of the images made Andrew feel he was contemplating an alien world. In it Kaufmann (who was short and fat) and Austin (who was tall and thin) stood smiling exaggeratedly, hats tilted to the side of their heads, rifles hanging from their shoulders, and one boot resting on the massive head of a fairy-tale dragon, which lay dead on the sand like a hunting trophy. Andrew was about to lean towards it and take a closer look at the amorphous lump, when an awful screeching noise made him start. Beside him, Murray was pulling a gold cord, which drew back the silk curtain, revealing what was behind it.

‘Rest assured, gentlemen, you will find no other map like it anywhere in England,’ he declared, swelling with pride. ‘It is an exact replica of the drawing in the Reed People’s cave, expanded, naturally, after our subsequent explorations.’

What the puppet-theatre curtain had uncovered looked more like a drawing by a child with an active imagination than a map. The colour pink predominated, of course, representing the plain, with the mountains in the middle. But the shadowy peaks were not the only geological feature on the map: in the right-hand corner, for example, there was a squiggly line, presumably a river, and close by it a light-green patch, possibly a forest or meadow. Andrew could not help feeling that these everyday symbols, used in maps that charted the world he lived in, were incongruous in what was supposed to be a map of the fourth dimension. But the most striking thing about the drawing was the gold dots peppering the plain, evidently meant to symbolise the holes. Two – the entrance to the year 2000, and the one now in Murray’s possession – were linked by a thin red line, which must represent the route taken by the time-travelling tramcar.

‘As you can see, there are many holes, but we still have no idea where they lead. Does one of them go back to the autumn of 1888? Who knows? It is certainly possible,’ said Murray, staring significantly at Andrew. ‘Kaufmann and Austin are trying to reach the one nearest the entrance to the year 2000, but they still haven’t found a way to circumnavigate the herd of beasts grazing in the valley right in front of it.’

While Andrew and Charles studied the map, Murray knelt down to stroke the dog. ‘Ah, the fourth dimension. What mysteries it holds,’ he mused. ‘All I know is that our candle never burns out there, to use a poetic turn of phrase. Eternal only looks one, but he was born four years ago. And I suppose that must be his actual age – unless the long periods he has spent on the plain, where time seems to leave no mark, are of no matter. Eternal was with me while I carried out my studies in Africa, and since we came back to London, he sleeps next to me every night inside the hole. I did not name him “Eternal” for nothing, gentlemen, and while I can, I’ll do everything in my power to honour his name.’

Andrew felt a shiver run down his spine when his and the dog’s eyes met.

‘What is that building supposed to be?’ asked Charles, pointing to an image of a castle close to the mountains.

‘Ah . . . that,’ Gilliam said uneasily. ‘That’s Her Majesty’s palace.’

‘The Queen has a palace in the fourth dimension?’ asked Charles, astonished.

‘That’s right, Mr Winslow Let us call it a thank-you present for her generous contribution to our expeditions,’ Gilliam paused, unsure whether he should go on. At last he added, ‘Ever since we organised a private journey to the year 2000 for the Queen and her entourage, she has shown great interest in the laws governing the fourth dimension and, well . . . She made it known to us that she would like a private residence to be put at her disposal on the plain, where she could spend time when her duties allow, as one does at a spa. She has been going there for some months now, which makes me think her reign will be a long one . . .’ he said, with no attempt to conceal his irritation at having been forced to make this concession. He, no doubt, had to be content to spend his nights in a wretched tent with Eternal. ‘But that doesn’t concern me. All I want is to be left alone. The Empire wishes to conquer the moon. Let it . . . But the future is mine!’

He closed the little curtain and led them back to his desk. He invited them to take a seat, and himself sat in his armchair, while Eternal – the dog who would outlive mankind, excepting Murray, the Queen and the lucky employees at her palace outside the time continuum – slumped at his feet.

‘Well, gentlemen, I hope I’ve answered your question about why we are only able to take you to May the twentieth in the year 2000, where all you will see is the result of the most decisive battle in human history,’ he said ironically.

Andrew snorted. None of that interested him in the slightest, at least while he was unable to experience anything other than pain. He was back at square one, it seemed. He would have to go ahead with his suicide plan as soon as Charles’s back was turned. The man had to sleep some time.

‘So, there’s no way of travelling back to the year 1888?’ said his cousin, apparently unwilling to give up.

‘Not without a time machine,’ replied Murray, shrugging his shoulders.

‘We’ll just have to hope science invents one soon,’ Charles said ruefully, patting his cousin’s knee and rising from his chair.

‘It’s just possible that one has already been invented, gentlemen,’ Murray blurted out.

Charles swivelled to face him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Hm, it’s just a suspicion . . . but when our company first started, there was someone who vehemently opposed it. He insisted time travel was too dangerous, that it had to be taken slowly. I always suspected he said this because he had a time machine, and wanted to experiment with it before making it public. Or perhaps he wanted to keep it to himself, to become the only master of time.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ asked Andrew.

Murray sat back in his chair, a smug grin on his face. ‘Why, Mr Wells, of course,’ he replied.

‘But, whatever gave you that idea?’ asked Charles. ‘In his novel Wells only writes about journeying into the future. He doesn’t even envisage the possibility of going back in time.’

‘That’s exactly my point, Mr Winslow. Just imagine, gentlemen, if somebody were to build a time machine, the most important invention in the history of humanity. Given its incredible potential, they would have no choice but to keep it secret, to prevent it falling into the hands of some unscrupulous individual who might use it for their own ends. But would they be able to resist the temptation to divulge their secret to the world? A novel would be the perfect way of making their invention known without anyone ever suspecting it was anything but pure fiction. Don’t you agree? Or if vanity doesn’t convince you as a motive, then what if they weren’t trying to satisfy their ego at all? What if The Time Machine were merely a decoy, a message in a bottle cast into the sea, a cry for help to somebody who might know how to interpret it? Who knows? Anyway, gentlemen, Wells did contemplate the possibility of going back in time, and with the aim of changing it, moreover, which I imagine is what motivates you, Mr Harrington.’

Andrew jumped, as if he had been discovered committing a crime. Murray smiled at him wryly, then rifled through one of his desk drawers. He pulled out a copy of Science Schools Journal dating from 1888 and threw it on to the table. The title on the cover of the dog-eared periodical was The Chronic Argonauts, by H. G. Wells. He handed it to Andrew, asking him to take good care of it as it was a rare copy.

‘Exactly eight years ago, as a young man having recently arrived in London and ready to conquer the world, Wells published a serial novel entitled The Chronic Argonauts. The main character was a scientist called Moses Nebogipfel, who travelled back in time to commit a murder. Perhaps Wells considered he had overreached himself, and when he recycled the idea for his novel, he eliminated the journeys into the past, perhaps so as not to give his readers ideas. In any case, he decided to concentrate solely on travelling into the future. He made his protagonist a far more upright character than Nebogipfel, as you know, and never actually mentions his name in the novel. Perhaps Wells could not resist this gesture.’ Andrew and Charles stared at one another, then at Murray, who was scribbling something in a notebook. ‘Here is Wells’s address,’ he said, holding out a scrap of paper to Andrew. ‘You have nothing to lose by seeing whether my suspicions are well founded or not.’

Chapter X

Drifting through the scent of roses suffusing the lobby, the cousins left the offices of Murray’s Time Travel. In the street, they hailed the first hansom cab they saw and gave the driver the address in Woking, Surrey, where the author H. G. Wells lived. The meeting with Gilliam Murray had plunged Andrew into a profound silence where God only knew what dark thoughts he was grappling with. But the journey would take at least three hours, and therefore Charles was in no hurry to draw his cousin into conversation. He preferred to leave him to gather his thoughts. They had experienced enough excitement for one day, and there was still more to come. In any case, he had learned to sit back and enjoy the frequent unexpected bouts of silence that punctuated his relationship with Andrew, so he closed his eyes and let himself be rocked by the cab as it sped out of the city.

Although they were not troubled by the silence, I imagine that you, who are in a sense sharing their journey, might find it a little tiresome. Therefore, rather than lecture you on the nature and quality of this inviolate calm, scarcely broken by the cab’s creaks and groans, or describe to you the view of the horses’ hindquarters upon which Andrew’s gaze was firmly fixed, and, since I am unable even to relate in any exciting way what was going on in Andrew’s head (where the prospect of saving Marie Kelly was slowly fading because, although a method of travelling through time had apparently been discovered, it was still impossible to do so with any accuracy), I propose to make use of this lull in proceedings to tell you about something still pending in this story. I alone can narrate this, as it is an episode about which the cab’s occupants are completely unaware.

I refer to the spectacular ascent up the social ladder of their respective fathers, William Harrington and Sydney Winslow. William Harrington presided over it, with his typical mixture of good fortune and rough-and-ready abilities, and although both men resolved to keep it secret, they cannot do so from me, as I see everything whether I wish to or not.

I could give you my honest opinion of William Harrington, but what I think is of no consequence. Let us rather stick with Andrew’s idea of his father, which is not far from the truth. Andrew saw his father as a warrior of commerce, capable, as you will discover, of the most heroic exploits in the field of business. However, when it came to everyday hand-to-hand combat, in which the struggles that make us human take place, allowing us to show kindness or generosity, he was apparently incapable of anything but the meanest acts, as you have already seen. William Harrington was of the class of person who possesses a self-assurance that is both their strength and their downfall, a cast-iron confidence that can easily turn into excessive, blind arrogance. In the end, he was like someone who stands on his head, then complains that the world is upside down, or, if you prefer, like someone who believes God created the Earth for him to walk upon, with which I have said enough.

William Harrington returned from the Crimea to a world dominated by machines. He realised straight away that this would not supersede the old way of doing things since even the glass in the Crystal Palace, that transparent whale then marooned in Hyde Park, had been made by hand. That was evidently not the way to grow rich, a goal he had set himself, with the typical insouciance of a twenty-year-old, as he lay in bed at night with his new wife, the rather timid daughter of the match manufacturer for whom he worked. The thought of being trapped in the dreary life already mapped out for him kept him awake, and he wondered whether he ought not to rebel against such a common fate. Why had his mother gone to the trouble of bringing him into the world if the most exciting moment in his life was having been lamed by a bayonet? Was he doomed to be just another anonymous cipher, or would he pass into the annals of history?

His lamentable performance in the Crimea would appear to suggest the former, yet William Harrington had too voracious a nature to be content with that. ‘As far as I can tell, I only have one life,’ he said to himself, ‘and what I don’t achieve in this one I won’t achieve in the next.’

The following day he called on his brother-in-law Sydney, a bright, capable young man who was wasting his life as an accountant in the family match firm, and assured him that he, too, was destined for greater things. However, in order to achieve the rapid social ascent William envisaged, they must forget the match business and start up their own enterprise, easily done if they made use of Sydney’s savings. During the course of a long drinking session, William convinced his brother-in-law to let him play with his money, declaring that a small amount of entrepreneurial risk would inject some excitement into his dull life. They had little to lose and much to gain. It was essential they find a business that would bring in large profits quickly, he concluded.

To his amazement, Sydney agreed, and soon put his imaginative mind to work. He arrived at their next meeting with the plans for what he was convinced would be a revolutionary invention. The Bachelor’s Helpmate, as he had called it, consisted of a chair designed for lovers of erotic literature, and was equipped with a lectern that automatically turned the pages, allowing the reader to keep both hands free. William could see from Sydney’s detailed drawings that the device came with accessories, such as a small washbasin, and even a sponge, so that the client did not have to interrupt his reading to get up from the chair. Sydney was convinced his product would make their fortune, but William was not so sure: his brother-in-law had clearly confused his own necessities with those of others. However, once William had succeeded in the difficult task of convincing him that his sophisticated seat was not as essential to the Empire as he had imagined, they found themselves without a decent idea to their names.

Desperate, they concentrated on the flow of merchandise coming in from the colonies. What products had not yet been imported? What unfulfilled needs did the British have? They looked around carefully, but it seemed nothing was wanting. Her Majesty, with her tentacular grasp, was already divesting the world of everything her subjects required. Of course, there was one thing they lacked, but this was a necessity no one dared to mention.

They discovered it one day while strolling through the commercial district of New York, where they had gone in search of inspiration. They were preparing to return to the hotel and soak their aching feet in a basin of salt water, when their eye fell on a product displayed in a shop window. Behind the glass was a stack of strange packets containing fifty sheets of moisturised paper. Printed on the back were the words ‘Gayetty’s Medicated Paper’. What the devil was this for? They soon discovered the answer from the instructions pasted in the window, which, without a hint of embarrassment, depicted a hand applying the product to the most intimate area of a posterior. This fellow Gayetty had obviously decided that corncobs and parish newsletters were a thing of the past.

Once they had recovered from their surprise, William and Sydney looked at each other meaningfully. This was it! It did not take a genius to imagine the warm reception thousands of British backsides, raw from being rubbed with rough newspaper, would give this heaven-sent gift. At fifty cents a packet, they would soon make their fortune. They purchased enough stock to furnish a small shop they acquired in one of London’s busiest streets, filled the window with their product, put up a poster illustrating its correct usage, and waited behind the counter for customers to flock in. But not a single soul walked through the door on the day the shop opened, or in the days that followed, which soon turned into weeks.

It took William and Sydney three months to admit defeat. Their dreams of wealth had been cruelly dashed at the outset, although they had enough medicated paper never to need worry about procuring another Sears catalogue. However, at times society obeys its own twisted logic, and the moment they closed their disastrous shop, their business suddenly took off. In the dark corners of inns, in alleyway entrances, in their own homes during the early hours, William and Sydney were assailed by a variety of individuals who, in hushed tones and glancing furtively about them, ordered packets of their miraculous paper before disappearing back into the gloom.

Surprised at first by the cloak-and-dagger aspect they were obliged to adopt, the two young entrepreneurs soon became accustomed to tramping the streets at dead of night, one limping along, the other puffing and panting, to make their clandestine deliveries far from prying eyes. They soon grew used to depositing their embarrassing product in house doorways, or signalling with a tap of their cane on window-panes, or tossing packets off bridges on to barges passing noiselessly below, slipping into deserted parks and retrieving wads of pound notes stashed under a bench, whistling like a couple of songbirds through mansion railings. Everyone in London wanted to use Gayetty’s wonderful paper without their neighbour finding out, a fact of which William slyly took advantage, increasing the price of his product to what would eventually become an outrageous sum – which most customers were nevertheless willing to pay.

Within a couple of years they were able to purchase two luxurious dwellings in the Brompton Road area, from where they soon upped sticks for Kensington. In addition to his collection of expensive canes, William measured his success by the ability to acquire ever larger houses.

Amazed that the reckless act of placing his entire savings at his brother-in-law’s disposal had provided him with a fine mansion in Queen’s Gate from whose balcony he could survey the most elegant side of London, Sydney resolved to enjoy what he had, giving himself to the pleasures of family life, so extolled by the clergy. He filled his house with children, books, paintings by promising artists, took on a couple of servants and, at a safe distance from them now, cultivated the disdain he claimed he had always felt towards the lower classes to the extent that it became contempt. In brief, he quietly adapted to his new affluence even though it was based on the ignoble business of selling toilet paper.

William was different. His proud, inquisitive nature made it impossible for him to be satisfied with that. He needed public recognition, to be respected by society. In other words, he wanted the great and the good of London to invite him foxhunting, to treat him as an equal. But, much as he paraded through London’s smoking rooms doling out his card, this did not happen. Faced with a situation he was powerless to change, he built up a bitter resentment of the wealthy élite, who subjected him to the most abysmal ostracism while wiping their distinguished backsides with the paper he provided. During one of the rare gatherings to which the two men were invited, his anger boiled over when some wag bestowed on them the title ‘Official Wipers to the Queen’. Before anyone could laugh, William Harrington hurled himself on the insolent dandy, breaking his nose with the pommel of his cane before Sydney managed to drag him away.

The gathering proved a turning point in their lives. William Harrington learned from it a harsh but valuable lesson: the medicinal paper to which he owed everything, and which had generated so much wealth, was a disgrace that would stain his life for ever unless he did something about it. He began to invest part of his earnings in less disreputable businesses, such as the burgeoning railway industry. In a matter of months he had become the majority shareholder in several locomotive repair shops. His next step was to buy a failing shipping company called Fellowship, inject new blood into it, and turn it into the most profitable of ocean-going concerns. Through his tiny empire of successful businesses, which Sydney managed with the easy elegance of an orchestra conductor, in less than two years William had dissociated his name from medicinal paper, cancelling the final shipment and leaving London plunged in silent despair.

In the spring of 1872, Annesley Hall invited him to his first hunt gathering on his Newstead estate, which was attended by all of London society, who eagerly applauded William’s extraordinary achievements. It was there that the witty young man who had made a joke at his expense regrettably perished. According to the newspaper account, the ill-fated youth accidentally shot himself in the foot.

It was around that time when William Harrington dusted off his old uniform and commissioned a portrait of himself bursting out of it, smiling as though his unadorned chest were plastered with medals, and greeting all who entered his mansion with the masterful gaze of sole owner of that corner opposite Hyde Park.

This, and no other, was the secret their fathers so jealously guarded and whose air of light entertainment I considered appropriate for this rather wearisome journey. But I am afraid we have reached the end of our story too soon. Total silence still reigns in the cab and is likely to do so for some time because, when he is in the mood, Andrew is capable of daydreaming for hours, unless prodded with a red-hot poker or doused in boiling oil – neither of which Charles is in the habit of carrying around with him. Therefore I have no other choice but to take flight again so that we reach their destination, Mr Wells’s house, more quickly than they do. Not only, as you will have gathered from some of my commentaries, am I not subject to the cab’s tortuous pace but I can travel at the speed of light, so that – voilà! - in the blink of an eye, or faster still, we find ourselves in Woking, floating above the roof of a modest three-storey house with a garden overrun by brambles and silver birch, whose frail façade trembles slightly as the trains to Lynton roar past.

Chapter XI

I immediately discover I have picked an inopportune moment to intrude upon Herbert George Wells’s life. In order to inconvenience him as little as possible, I could quickly pass over the description of his physical appearance by saying no more than that the celebrated author was a pale, skinny young man who had seen better days. However, of all the characters swimming like fish in this story, Wells is the one who appears most frequently, no doubt to his regret, which compels me to be a little more precise in my depiction of him.

Besides being painfully thin, with a deathly pallor, Wells sported a fashionable moustache, straight with downward-pointed ends that seemed too big and bushy for his childish face. It hung like a dark cloud over an exquisite, rather feminine mouth, which, with his blue eyes, would have lent him an almost angelic air were it not for the roguish smile playing on his lips. In brief, Wells looked like a porcelain doll with twinkling eyes, behind which roamed a lively, penetrating intellect. For lovers of detail, or those lacking in imagination, I shall go on to say that he weighed little more than eight stone, wore a size eight and a half shoe and his hair neatly parted on the left. That day he smelt slightly of stale sweat – his body odour was usually pleasant – as some hours earlier he had been for a ride with his new wife through the surrounding Surrey roads astride their tandem bicycle, the latest invention that had won the couple over because it needed no food or shelter and never strayed from where you left it. There is little more I can add, short of dissecting the man or going into intimate details such as the modest proportions and slight south-easterly curvature of his manhood.

At that very moment, he was seated at the kitchen table, where he usually did his writing, a magazine in his hands. His stiff body, bolt upright in his chair, betrayed his inner turmoil. For while it might have seemed as though Wells were simply letting himself be enveloped by the rippling shadows cast by the afternoon sun shining on the tree in the garden; he was in fact trying to contain his simmering rage. He took a deep breath, then another and another, in a desperate effort to summon a soothing calm. Evidently this did not work, for he ended up hurling the magazine against the kitchen door. It fluttered through the air like a wounded pigeon and landed a yard or two from his feet.

Wells gazed at it with slight regret, then sighed and stood up to retrieve it, scolding himself for this outburst of rage unworthy of a civilised person. He put the magazine back on the table and sat in front of it again, with the resigned expression of one who knows that accepting reversals of fortune with good grace is a sign of courage and intelligence.

The magazine in question was an edition of the Speaker, which had published a devastating review of his most recent novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau, another popular work of science fiction. Beneath the surface lurked one of his pet themes: the visionary destroyed by his own dreams. The protagonist is a man called Prendick, who is shipwrecked and has the misfortune to be washed up on an uncharted island that turns out to be the domain of a mad scientist exiled from England because of his brutal experiments on animals. On that remote island, the eponymous doctor has become like a primitive god to a tribe made up of the freakish creations of his unhinged imagination, the monstrous spawn of his efforts to turn wild animals into men.

The work was Wells’s attempt to go one step further than Darwin by having his deranged doctor attempt to modify life by speeding up the naturally slow process of evolution. It was also a tribute to Jonathan Swift, his favourite author: the scene in which Prendick returns to England to tell the world about the phantasmagorical Eden he has escaped from is almost identical to the chapter in which Gulliver describes the land of the Houyhnhnm. And although Wells had not been satisfied with his book, which had evolved almost in fits and starts from the rather haphazard juxtaposition of more or less powerful images, and had been prepared for a possible slating by the critics, it stung all the same.

The first blow had taken him by surprise, as it had come from his wife, who considered the killing of the doctor by a deformed puma he had tried to transform into a woman a jibe at the women’s movement. How could Jane possibly have thought that? The next jab came from the Saturday Review, a journal he had hitherto found favourable in its judgements. To his further annoyance, the objectionable article was written by Peter Chalmers Mitchell, a young, talented zoologist who had been Wells’s fellow pupil at the Normal School of Science, and who, betraying their once friendly relations, now declared bluntly that Wells’s intention was simply to shock. The critic in the Speaker went still further, accusing the author of being morally corrupt for insinuating that anyone succeeding through experimentation in giving animals a human appearance would logically go on to engage in sexual relations with them. ‘Mr Wells uses his undoubted talent to shameless effect,’ declared the reviewer. Wells asked himself whether his or the critic’s mind was polluted by immoral thoughts.

Wells was only too aware that unfavourable reviews, while tiresome and bad for morale, were like storms in a teacup that would scarcely affect the book’s fortunes. The one before him now, glibly referring to his novel as a depraved fantasy, might even boost sales, smoothing the way for his subsequent books. However, the wounds inflicted on an author’s self-esteem could have fatal consequences in the long-term: a writer’s most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition and, regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit it, he would be reduced to a fearful creature who took a mistakenly guarded approach to his work that would eventually stifle his latent genius. Before cruelly vilifying them, mud slingers at newspapers and journals should bear in mind that all artistic endeavours were a mixture of effort and imagination, the embodiment of a solitary endeavour, of a sometimes long-nurtured dream, when they were not a desperate bid to give life meaning.

But they would not get the better of Wells. Certainly not. They would not confound him, for he had the basket.

He contemplated the wicker basket sitting on one of the kitchen shelves, and his spirits lifted, rebellious and defiant. The basket’s effect on him was instantaneous. As a result, he was never parted from it, lugging it around from pillar to post, despite the suspicions this aroused in his nearest and dearest. Wells had never believed in lucky charms or magical objects, but the curious way in which it had come into his life, and the string of positive events that had occurred since then, compelled him to make an exception in the case of the basket. He noticed that Jane had filled it with vegetables. Far from irritating him, this amused him. In allocating it that dull domestic function, his wife had at once disguised its magical nature and rendered it doubly useful: not only did the basket bring good fortune and boost his self-confidence, not only did it embody the spirit of personal triumph by evoking the extraordinary person who had made it, it was also just a basket.

Calmer now, Wells closed the magazine. He would not allow anyone to put down his achievements, of which he had reason to feel proud. He was thirty years old and, after a long, painful period of battling against the elements, his life had taken shape. The sword had been tempered and, of all the forms it might have taken, had acquired the appearance it would have for life. All that was needed now was to keep it honed, to learn how to wield it and, if necessary, allow it to taste blood occasionally. Of all the things he could have been, it seemed clear he would be a writer – he was one already. His three published novels testified to this. A writer. It had a pleasant ring to it. And it was an occupation that he was not averse to: since childhood it had been his second choice, after that of becoming a teacher – he had always wanted to stand on a podium and stir people’s consciences, but he could do that from a shop window, and perhaps in a simpler and more far-reaching way.

A writer. Yes, it had a pleasant ring. A very pleasant ring indeed.

Wells cast a satisfied eye over his surroundings, the home with which literature had provided him. It was a modest dwelling, but one that would have been far beyond his means a few years before, when he was barely scraping a living from the articles he managed to publish in local newspapers and the exhausting classes he gave, when only the basket kept him going in the face of despair.

He could not help comparing it with the house in Bromley where he had grown up, that miserable hovel reeking of the paraffin with which his father had doused the wooden floors to kill the armies of cockroaches. He recalled with revulsion the dreadful kitchen in the basement, with its awkwardly placed coal stove, and the back garden with the shed containing the foul-smelling outside privy, a hole in the ground at the bottom of a trodden-earth path that his mother was embarrassed to use – she imagined the employees of Mr Cooper, the tailor next door, watched her comings and goings. He remembered the creeper on the back wall, which he used to climb to spy on Mr Covell, the butcher, who was in the habit of strolling around his garden, like an assassin, forearms covered with blood, holding a dripping knife fresh from the slaughter. And in the distance, above the rooftops, the parish church and its graveyard crammed with decaying moss-covered headstones, below one of which lay the tiny body of his baby sister Frances, who, his mother maintained, had been poisoned by their evil neighbour Mr Munday during a macabre tea party.

No one, not even he, would have imagined that the necessary components could come together in that revolting hovel to produce a writer, and yet they had – although the delivery had been long drawn-out and fraught. It had taken him precisely twenty-one years and three months to turn his dreams into reality. According to his calculations, that was, for – as though he were addressing future biographers – Wells usually identified 5 June 1874 as the day upon which his vocation was revealed to him in what was perhaps an unnecessarily brutal fashion. That day he suffered a spectacular accident, and this experience, the enormous significance of which would be revealed over time, also convinced him that it was the whims of Fate and not our own will that shaped our future.

Like someone unfolding an origami bird in order to find out how it is made, Wells was able to dissect his present life and discover the elements that had gone into making it up. In fact, tracing the origins of each moment was a frequent pastime of his. This exercise in metaphysical classification was as comforting to him as reciting the twelve times table to steady the world each time it became a swirling mass. Thus, he had determined that the fateful spark to ignite the events that had turned him into a writer was something that might initially appear puzzling: his father’s lethal spin bowling on the cricket pitch. But when he pulled on that thread the carpet quickly unravelled: without his talent for spin bowling his father would not have been invited to join the county cricket team; had he not joined the county cricket team he would not have spent the afternoons drinking with his team-mates in the Bell, the pub near their house; had he not frittered away his afternoons in the Bell, neglecting the tiny china shop he ran with his wife on the ground floor of their dwelling, he would not have become acquainted with the pub landlord’s son; had he not forged those friendly ties with the strapping youth, when he and his sons bumped into him at the cricket match they were attending one afternoon, the lad would not have taken the liberty of picking young Bertie up by the arms and tossing him into the air; had he not tossed Bertie into the air, Bertie would not have slipped out of his hands; had he not slipped out of the lad’s hands, the eight-year-old Wells would not have fractured his tibia when he fell against one of the pegs holding down the beer tent; had he not fractured his tibia and been forced to spend the entire summer in bed, he would not have had the perfect excuse to devote himself to the only form of entertainment available to him in that situation – reading, a harmful activity, which, under any other circumstances, would have aroused his parents’ suspicions, which would have prevented him discovering Dickens, Swift and Washington Irving, the writers who planted the seed inside him that, regardless of the scant nourishment and care he could give it, would eventually come into bloom.

Sometimes, in order to appreciate the value of what he had even more, lest it lose its sparkle, Wells wondered what might have become of him if the miraculous sequence of events that had thrust him into the arms of literature had never occurred. And the answer was always the same. If the curious accident had never taken place, Wells was certain he would now be working in some pharmacy, bored witless and unable to believe that his contribution to life was to be of such little import. What would life be like without any purpose? He could imagine no greater misery than to drift through it aimlessly, frustrated, building an existence interchangeable with that of his neighbour, aspiring only to the brief, fragile and elusive happiness of simple folk. Fortunately, his father’s lethal bowling had saved him from mediocrity, turning him into someone with a purpose – turning him into a writer.

The journey had by no means been an easy one. It was as if just as he glimpsed his vocation, just as he knew which path to take, the wind destined to hamper his progress had risen, like an unavoidable accompaniment, a fierce, persistent wind in the form of his mother. For it seemed that, besides being one of the most wretched creatures on the planet, Sarah Wells’s sole mission in life was to bring up her sons, Bertie, Fred and Frank, to be hard-working members of society, which for her meant becoming a shop assistant, a baker or some other selfless soul, who, like Atlas, proudly but discreetly carried the world on their shoulders. Wells’s determination to amount to more was a disappointment to her, although one should not attach too much importance to that: it had merely added insult to injury.

Little Bertie had been a disappointment to his mother from the very moment he was born: he had had the gall to emerge from her womb a fully equipped male when, nine months earlier, she had only consented to cross the threshold of her despicable husband’s bedroom on condition he gave her a little girl to replace the one she had lost.

It was hardly surprising that, after such inauspicious beginnings, Wells’s relationship with his mother should continue in the same vein. Once the pleasant respite afforded by his broken leg had ended – after the village doctor had kindly prolonged it by setting the bone badly and being obliged to break it again to correct his mistake – little Bertie was sent to a commercial academy in Bromley, where his two brothers had gone before him. Their teacher, Mr Morley, had been unable to make anything of them. The youngest boy, however, soon proved that all the peas in a pod are not necessarily the same. Mr Morley was so astonished by Wells’s dazzling intelligence that he even turned a blind eye to the non-payment of his registration fee. However, such preferential treatment did not stop the mother uprooting her son from the milieu of blackboards and desks where he felt so at home, and sending him to train as an apprentice at the Rodgers and Denyer bakery in Windsor.

After three months of toiling from seven thirty in the morning until eight at night, with a short break for lunch in a windowless cellar, Wells feared his youthful optimism would begin to fade, as it had with his elder brothers – he barely recognised them as the cheerful, determined fellows they had once been. He did everything in his power to prove to all and sundry that he did not have the makings of a baker’s assistant, abandoning himself to frequent bouts of daydreaming, to the point at which the owners had no choice but to dismiss the young man who mixed up the orders and spent most of his time wool-gathering in a corner.

Thanks to the intervention of one of his mother’s second cousins, he was then sent to assist a relative in running a school in Wookey where he would also be able to complete his teacher-training. Unfortunately, this employment, far more in keeping with his aspirations, ended almost as soon as it had begun when it was discovered that the headmaster was an impostor: he had obtained his post by falsifying his academic qualifications.

The by-now-not-so-little Bertie once again fell prey to his mother’s obsessions. She deflected him from his true destiny by sending him off on another mistaken path. Aged just fourteen, Wells began work in the pharmacy run by Mr Cowap, who was instructed to train him as a chemist. However, the pharmacist soon realised the boy was far too gifted to be wasted on such an occupation, and placed him in the hands of Horace Byatt, headmaster at Midhurst Grammar School, who was on the lookout for exceptional students to imbue his establishment with the academic respectability it needed.

Wells easily excelled over the other boys, who were, on the whole, mediocre students, and was instantly noticed by Byatt, who contrived with the pharmacist to provide the talented boy with the best education they could. Wells’s mother soon frustrated the plot hatched by the pair of idle philanthropists, whose intention it had been to lead little Bertie astray, by sending her son to another bakery, this time in Southsea. Wells spent two years there in a state of intense confusion, trying to understand why that fierce wind insisted on blowing him off course each time he found himself on the right path.

Life at Edwin Hyde’s Bread Emporium was suspiciously similar to a sojourn in hell. It consisted of thirteen hours’ hard work, followed by a night spent shut in the airless hut that passed for a dormitory, where the apprentices slept so close together that even their dreams got muddled up. A few years earlier, convinced that her husband’s fecklessness would end by bankrupting the china-shop business, his mother had accepted the post of housekeeper at Uppark Manor, a rundown estate on Harting Down where, as a girl, she had worked as a maid. It was to here that Wells wrote her a series of despairing, accusatory letters – which, out of respect, I will not reproduce here – alternating childish demands with sophisticated arguments in a vain attempt to persuade her to set him free.

As he watched his longed-for future slip through his fingers, Wells did his utmost to weaken his mother’s resolve. He asked her how she expected him to help her in her old age on a shop assistant’s meagre wage: with the studies he intended to pursue he would obtain a wonderful position. He accused her of being intolerant, stupid, even threatened to commit suicide or other dreadful acts that would stain the family name for ever. None of this had any effect on his mother’s resolve to turn him into a respectable baker’s boy.

It took his former champion Horace Byatt, overwhelmed by growing numbers of pupils, to come to the rescue: he offered Wells a post at twenty pounds for the first year, and forty thereafter. Wells was quick to wave the figures in front of his mother, who reluctantly allowed him to leave the bakery. Relieved, the grateful Wells placed himself under the orders of his saviour, to whose expectations he was anxious to live up. During the day he taught the younger boys, and at night he studied to finish his teacher-training, eagerly devouring everything he could find about biology, physics, astronomy and other science subjects. The reward for his titanic efforts was a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, where he would study under none other than Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, the famous biologist who had been Darwin’s lieutenant during his debates with Bishop Wilberforce.

Despite all this, it could not be said that Wells left for London in high spirits. He did so more with deep unhappiness at not receiving his parents’ support in this huge adventure. He was convinced his mother hoped he would fail in his studies, confirming her belief that the Wells boys were only fit to be bakers, that no genius could possibly be produced from a substance as dubious as her husband’s seed. For his part, his father was the living proof that failure could be enjoyed as much as prosperity. During the summer they had spent together, Wells had looked on with dismay as his father, whom age had deprived of his sole refuge, cricket, clung to the one thing that had given his life meaning. He wandered around the cricket pitches like a restless ghost, carrying a bag stuffed with batting gloves, pads and cricket balls, while his china shop foundered like a captainless ship, holed in the middle of the ocean. Things being as they were, Wells did not mind having to stay in a rooming house where the guests appeared to compete in producing the most original noises.

He was so accustomed to life revealing its most unpleasant side to him that when his aunt Marie Wells proposed he lodge at her home on Euston Road, his natural response was suspicion, for the house was warm, cosy, suffused with a peaceful, harmonious atmosphere, and bore no resemblance to the squalid dwellings he had lived in up until then. He was so grateful to his aunt for providing him with this long-awaited reprieve in the interminable battle that was his life that he considered it almost his duty to ask for the hand of her daughter Isabel, a gentle, kind girl, who wafted silently around the house.

But Wells soon realised the rashness of his decision: after the wedding, which was settled with the prompt matter-of-factness of a tedious formality, he confirmed what he had already suspected, that his cousin had nothing in common with him. He also discovered that Isabel had been brought up to be a perfect wife, that is to say, to satisfy her husband’s every need except, of course, in the marriage bed, where she behaved with the coldness ideal for a procreating machine but entirely unsuited to pleasure. In spite of all this, his wife’s frigidity proved a minor problem, easily resolved by visiting other beds. Wells soon discovered an abundance of delightful alternatives to which his hypnotic grandiloquence gained him entry, and dedicated himself to enjoying life now that it seemed to be going his way.

Immersed in the modest pursuit of pleasure that his guinea-a-week scholarship allowed, Wells gave himself over to the joys of the flesh, to making forays into hitherto unexplored subjects, such as literature and art, and to enjoying every second of his hard-earned stay at South Kensington. He also decided the time had come to reveal his innermost dreams to the world by publishing a short story in the Science Schools Journal.

He called it The Chronic Argonauts and its main character was a mad scientist, Dr Nebogipfel, who had invented a machine he used to travel back in time to commit a murder. Time travel was not an original concept: Dickens had already written about it in A Christmas Carol and Edgar Allan Poe in ‘A Tale of the Ragged Mountains’, but in both of those stories the journeys always took place during a dream or state of trance. By contrast, Wells’s scientist travelled of his own free will and by means of a mechanical device. In brief, his idea was brimming with originality. However, this first tentative trial at being a writer did not change his life, which, to his disappointment, carried on exactly as before.

All the same, his first story brought him the most remarkable reader he had ever had, and probably would ever have. A few days after its publication, Wells received a card from an admirer who asked if he would accept to take tea with him. The name on the card sent a shiver down his spine: Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man.

Chapter XII

Wells began to hear about Merrick the moment he set foot in the biology classrooms at South Kensington. For those studying the workings of the human body, Merrick was something akin to Nature’s most amazing achievement, its finest-cut diamond, living proof of the scope of its inventiveness. The so-called Elephant Man suffered from a disease that had horribly deformed his body, turning him into a shapeless, almost monstrous creature. This strange affliction, which had the medical profession scratching its heads, had caused the limbs, bones and organs on his right side to grow uncontrollably, leaving his left side practically unaffected. An enormous swelling on the right side of his skull, for example, distorted the shape of his head, squashing his face into a mass of folds and bony protuberances, and even dislodging his ear. Because of this, Merrick was unable to express anything more than the frozen ferocity of a totem. Owing to this lopsidedness, his spinal column curved to the right, where his organs were markedly heavier, lending all his movements a grotesque air. As if this were not enough, the disease had also turned his skin into a coarse, leathery crust, like dried cardboard, covered with hollows and swellings and wart-like growths.

To begin with Wells could scarcely believe that such a creature existed, but the photographs secretly circulating in the classroom soon revealed to him the truth of the rumours. The photographs had been stolen or purchased from staff at the London Hospital, where Merrick now resided, having spent half his life being displayed in side-shows at third-rate fairs and travelling circuses. As they passed from hand to hand, the blurred, shadowy images in which Merrick was scarcely more than a blotch caused a similar thrill to the photographs of scantily clad women they became mixed up with, although for different reasons.

The idea of having been invited to tea with this creature filled Wells with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Even so, he arrived on time at the London Hospital, a solid, forbidding structure located in Whitechapel. In the entrance a steady stream of doctors and nurses went about their mysterious business. Wells looked for a place where he would not be in the way, his head spinning with the synchronised activity in which everyone seemed to be engaged, like dancers in a ballet. Perhaps one of the nurses he saw carrying bandages had just left an operating theatre where some patient was hovering between life and death. If so, she did not quicken her step beyond the brisk but measured pace evolved over years of dealing with emergencies. Amazed, Wells had been watching the non-stop bustle from his vantage-point for some time when Dr Trêves, the surgeon responsible for Merrick, finally arrived.

Trêves was a small, excitable man of about thirty-five who masked his childlike features behind a bushy beard, clipped neatly like a hedge. ‘Mr Wells?’ he enquired, trying unsuccessfully to hide the evident dismay he felt at the author’s offensive youthfulness.

Wells nodded, and gave an involuntary shrug as if apologising that he did not demonstrate the venerable old age Trêves apparently required of those visiting his patient. He instantly regretted his gesture, for he had not requested an audience with the hospital’s famous guest.

‘Thank you for accepting Mr Merrick’s invitation,’ said Trêves. The surgeon had quickly recovered from his initial shock and reverted to the role of intermediary.

With extreme respect, Wells shook his capable, agile hand, which was accustomed to venturing into places out of bounds to most other mortals. ‘How could I refuse to meet the only person who has read my story?’ he retorted.

Trêves nodded vaguely, as though the vanity of authors and their jokes were of no consequence to him. He had more important things to worry about. Each day, new and ingenious diseases emerged that required his attention, the extraordinary dexterity of his hands, and his vigorous resolve in the operating theatre. He gestured to Wells with an almost military nod that he should follow him up a staircase to the upper floors of the hospital. A relentless throng of nurses descending in the opposite direction hampered their ascent, nearly causing Wells to lose his footing on more than one occasion.

‘Not everybody accepts Joseph’s invitations, for obvious reasons,’ Trêves said, raising his voice almost to a shout, ‘although, strangely, this does not sadden him. Sometimes I think he is more than satisfied with the little he gets out of life. Deep down, he knows his bizarre deformities are what enable him to meet any bigwig he wishes to in London, something unthinkable for your average commoner from Leicester.’

Wells thought Treves’s observation in rather poor taste, but refrained from making any comment because he had immediately realised he was right: Merrick’s appearance, which had hitherto condemned him to a life of ostracism and misery, now permitted him to hobnob with the cream of London society, although it remained to be seen whether or not he considered his various deformities too high a price to pay for rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy.

The same hustle and bustle reigned on the upper floor, but with a few sudden turns down dimly lit corridors, Trêves had guided his guest away from the persistent clamour. Wells followed as he strode along a series of never-ending, increasingly deserted passageways. As they penetrated the furthest reaches of the hospital, the diminishing numbers of patients and nurses clearly related to the wards and surgeries becoming progressively more specialised. However, Wells could not help comparing this gradual extinction of life to the terrible desolation surrounding the monsters’ lairs in children’s fables. All that was needed were a few dead birds and some gnawed bones.

While they walked, Trêves used the opportunity to tell Wells how he had become acquainted with his extraordinary patient. In a detached, even tone that betrayed the tedium he felt at having to repeat the story yet again, Trêves explained he had met Merrick four years earlier, shortly after being appointed head surgeon at the hospital. A circus had pitched its tent on a nearby piece of wasteland, and its main attraction, the Elephant Man, was the talk of all London. If what people said about him was true, he was the most deformed creature on the planet. Trêves knew that circus owners were in the habit of creating freaks with the aid of fake limbs and makeup that were impossible to spot in the gloom, but he also acknowledged that this sort of show was the last refuge for those unfortunate enough to be born with a defect that earned them society’s contempt.

The surgeon had had few expectations when he visited the fair, motivated purely by unavoidable professional curiosity. But there was nothing fake about the Elephant Man. After a rather sorry excuse for a trapeze act, the lights dimmed and the percussion launched into a poor imitation of tribal drumming in an overlong introduction that nevertheless succeeded in giving the audience a sense of trepidation. Trêves watched, astonished, as the fair’s main attraction entered, and saw with his own eyes that the rumours circulating fell far short of reality. The appalling deformities afflicting the creature who dragged himself across the ring had transformed him into a misshapen figure resembling a gargoyle. When the performance was over, Trêves convinced the circus owner to let him meet the creature in private. Once inside his modest wagon, the surgeon thought he was in the presence of an imbecile, convinced the swellings on his head must inevitably have damaged his brain.

But he was mistaken. A few words with Merrick were enough to show Trêves that the hideous exterior concealed a courteous, educated, sensitive being. He explained to the surgeon that he was called the Elephant Man because he had had a fleshy protuberance between his nose and upper lip, a tiny trunk measuring about eight inches. It had made it hard for him to eat and had been unceremoniously removed a few years before. Trêves was moved by his gentleness, and because, despite the hardship and humiliation he had suffered, he apparently bore no resentment towards the humanity Trêves was so quick to despise when he could not get a cab or a box at the theatre.

When the surgeon left the circus an hour later, he had firmly resolved to do everything in his power to take Merrick away from there and offer him a decent life. His reasons were clear: in no other hospital records in the world was there any evidence of a human being with such severe deformities as Merrick’s. Whatever this strange disease was, of all the people in the world, it had chosen to reside in his body alone, transforming the wretched creature into a unique individual, a rare species of butterfly that had to be kept behind glass. Clearly, Merrick must leave the circus in which he was languishing at the earliest opportunity. Little did Trêves know that in order to accomplish the admirable goal he had set himself, he would have to begin a long, arduous campaign that would leave him drained.

He started by presenting Merrick to the Pathology Society, but this led only to its distinguished members subjecting the patient to a series of probing examinations and ended in them becoming embroiled in fruitless, heated debates about the nature of the mysterious illness, which invariably turned into slanging matches where someone would always take the opportunity to try to settle old scores. However, his colleagues’ disarray, far from discouraging Trêves, heartened him: ultimately it underlined the importance of Merrick’s life, making it all the more imperative to remove him from the precarious world of show-business.

His next step had been to try to get him admitted to the hospital where he worked so that he could be easily examined. Unfortunately, hospitals did not provide beds for chronic patients, and consequently, although the management applauded Treves’s idea, their hands were tied. Faced with the hopelessness of the situation, Merrick himself suggested Trêves find him a job as a lighthouse keeper, or some other occupation that would cut him off from the rest of the world.

But Trêves would not admit defeat. Out of desperation, he went to the newspapers and, in a few weeks, managed to move the whole country with the wretched predicament of the fellow they called the Elephant Man. Donations poured in, but Trêves did not only require money: he wanted to give Merrick a decent home. He decided to turn to the only people who were above society’s absurd, hidebound rules: the royal family. He persuaded the Duke of Cambridge and the Princess of Wales to agree to meet the creature. Merrick’s refined manners and extraordinarily gentle nature did the rest. That was how Merrick had come to be a permanent guest in the hospital wing where Trêves and Wells now found themselves.

‘Joseph is happy here,’ declared Trêves, in a suddenly thoughtful voice. ‘The examinations we carry out on him from time to time are fruitless, but that does not seem to worry him. He is convinced his illness was caused by an elephant knocking down his heavily pregnant mother while she was watching a parade. Sadly, Mr Wells, this is a pyrrhic victory. I have found Merrick a home but I am unable to cure his illness. His skull is growing bigger by the day, and I’m afraid that soon his neck will be unable to support the incredible weight of his head.’

Treves’s blunt evocation of Merrick’s death, with the bleak desolation that seemed to permeate that wing of the hospital, plunged Wells into a state of extreme anxiety.

‘I would like his last days to be as peaceful as possible,’ the surgeon went on, oblivious to the pallor spreading over his companion’s face. ‘But apparently this is asking too much. Every night, the locals gather under his window shouting insults at him and calling him names. They even think he is to blame for killing the whores who have been found mutilated in the neighbourhood. Have people gone mad? Merrick couldn’t hurt a fly. I have already mentioned his extraordinary sensibility. Do you know that he devours Jane Austen’s novels? And, on occasion, I’ve even surprised him writing poems. Like you, Mr Wells.’

‘I don’t write poems, I write stories,’ Wells murmured hesitantly, his increasing unease apparently making him doubt everything.

Trêves scowled at him, annoyed that he would want to split hairs over what he considered such an inconsequential subject as literature.

‘That’s why I allow these visits,’ he said, shaking his head regretfully, before resuming where he had left off, ‘because I know they do him a great deal of good. I imagine people come to see him because his appearance makes even the unhappiest souls realise they should thank God. Joseph, on the other hand, views the matter differently. Sometimes I think he derives a sort of twisted amusement from these visits. Every Saturday, he scours the newspapers, then hands me a list of people he would like to invite to tea, and I obligingly forward them his card. They are usually members of the aristocracy, wealthy businessmen, public figures, painters, actors and other more or less well-known artists . . . People who have achieved a measure of social success and who in his estimation have one last test to pass: confronting him in the flesh. Joseph’s deformities are so hideous they invariably evoke either pity or disgust in those who see him. I imagine he can judge from his guests’ reaction whether they are the kind-hearted type or riddled with fears and anxieties.’

They came to a door at the far end of a long passageway.

‘Here we are,’ said Trêves, plunging for a few moments into a respectful silence. Then he looked Wells in the eye, and added, in a sombre, almost threatening tone: ‘Behind this door waits the most horrific-looking creature you have probably ever seen or will ever see; it is up to you whether you consider him a monster or an unfortunate wretch.’

Wells felt a little faint.

‘It is not too late to turn back. You may not like what you discover about yourself

‘You n-need not w-worry about me,’ stammered Wells.

‘As you wish,’ said Trêves, with the detachment of one washing his hands of the matter. He took a key from his pocket, opened the door and, gently but resolutely, propelled Wells over the threshold.

Wells held his breath as he ventured inside the room. He had taken a couple of faltering steps when he heard the surgeon close the door behind him. He gulped, glancing about the place Trêves had practically hurled him into once he had fulfilled his minor role in the disturbing ceremony. He found himself in a spacious suite of rooms containing various normal pieces of furniture. The ordinariness of the furnishings combined with the soft afternoon light filtering in through the window to create a prosaic, unexpectedly cosy atmosphere that clashed with the image of a monster’s lair. Wells stood transfixed for a few seconds, thinking his host would appear at any moment. When this did not happen, and not knowing what was expected of him, he wandered hesitantly through the rooms. He was immediately overcome by the unsettling feeling that Merrick was spying on him from behind one of the screens, but continued weaving in and out of the furniture, sensing this was another part of the ritual. But nothing he saw gave away the uniqueness of the rooms’ occupant: there were no half-eaten rats strewn about, or the remains of some brave knight’s armour.

In one of the rooms, however, he came across two chairs and a small table laid out for tea. He found this innocent scene still more unsettling, for he could not help comparing it to the gallows awaiting the condemned man in the town square, its joists creaking balefully in the spring breeze.

Then he noticed an intriguing object on a table next to the wall, beneath one of the windows. It was a cardboard model of a church. Wells walked over to marvel at the exquisite craftsmanship. Fascinated by the wealth of detail in the model, he did not at first notice the crooked shadow appearing on the wall: a stiff figure, bent over to the right crowned by an enormous head.

‘It’s the church opposite. I had to make up the parts I can’t see from the window’

The voice had a laboured, slurred quality.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Wells breathed, addressing the lopsided silhouette projected on the wall.

The shadow shook its head with great difficulty, unintentionally revealing to Wells what a struggle it was for Merrick to produce even this simple gesture to play down the importance of his own work. Having completed the arduous movement, he remained silent, stooped over his cane, and Wells realised he could not go on standing there with his back to him. The moment had arrived when he must turn and look his host in the face. Trêves had warned him that Merrick paid special attention to his guests’ initial reaction – the one that arose automatically, almost involuntarily, and which he therefore considered more genuine, more revealing than the faces people hurriedly composed to dissimulate their feelings once they had recovered from the shock. For those few brief moments, Merrick was afforded a rare glimpse into his guests’ souls, and it made no difference how they pretended to act during the subsequent meeting, since their initial reaction had already condemned or redeemed them. Wells was unsure whether Merrick’s appearance would fill him with pity or disgust. Fearing the latter, he clenched his jaw as tightly as he could, tensing his face to prevent it registering any emotion. He did not even want to show surprise, but merely to gain time before his brain could process what he was seeing and reach a logical conclusion about the feelings a creature as apparently deformed as Merrick produced in a person like him. In the end, if he experienced repulsion, he would willingly acknowledge this and reflect on it later, after he had left.

Wells drew a deep breath, planted his feet firmly on the ground, which had dissolved into a soft, quaking mass, and slowly turned to face his host. What he saw made him gasp. Just as Trêves had warned, Merrick’s deformities gave him a terrifying appearance. The photographs Wells had seen of him at the university which mercifully veiled his hideousness behind a blurred gauze, had not prepared him for this. He wore a dark grey suit and was propping himself up with a cane. Ironically, these accoutrements, which were intended to humanise him, only made him look more grotesque.

Teeth firmly clenched, Wells stood stiffly before him, struggling to suppress a physical urge to shudder. He felt as if his heart was about to burst out of his chest and beads of cold sweat trickled down his back, but he could not make out whether these symptoms were caused by horror or pity. Despite the unnatural tension of his facial muscles, he could feel his lips quivering, perhaps as they tried to form a grimace of horror, yet at the same time he noticed tears welling in his eyes so did not know what to think. Their mutual scrutiny went on for ever, and Wells wished he could shed at least one tear that would encapsulate his pain and prove to Merrick, and to himself, that he was a sensitive, compassionate being, but those pricking his eyes refused to brim over.

‘Would you prefer me to wear my hood, Mr Wells?’ asked Merrick, softly.

The strange voice, which gave his words a liquid quality as if they were floating in a muddy brook, struck renewed fear into Wells. Had the time limit Merrick usually put on his guests’ response expired? ‘No . . . that won’t be necessary’ he murmured.

His host moved his gigantic head laboriously in what Wells assumed was a nod of agreement.

‘Then let us have our tea before it goes cold,’ he said, shuffling to the table in the centre of the room.

Wells did not respond immediately, horrified by the way Merrick was obliged to walk. Everything was an effort for him, he realised, observing the complicated manoeuvres he had to make to sit down. Wells had to suppress an urge to rush over and help him, afraid this gesture usually reserved for the elderly or infirm might upset him. Hoping he was doing the right thing, he sat down as casually as possible in the chair opposite his host. Again, he had to force himself to sit still as he watched Merrick serve the tea. He mostly tried to fulfil this role using his left hand, which was unaffected by the disease, although he still employed the right to carry out minor tasks within the ceremony. Wells could not help but silently admire the extraordinary dexterity with which Merrick was able to take the lid off the sugar bowl or offer him a biscuit with a hand as big and rough as a lump of rock.

‘I’m so glad you were able to come, Mr Wells,’ said Merrick, after he had succeeded in the arduous task of serving the tea without spilling a single drop, ‘because it allows me to tell you in person how much I enjoyed your story.’

‘You are very kind, Mr Merrick,’ replied Wells.

Once it had been published, curious about how little impact it had made, Wells had read and reread it at least a dozen times to try to discover why it had been so completely overlooked. Imbued with a spirit of uncompromising criticism, he had weighed up the plot’s solidity, appraised its dramatic pace, considered the order, appropriateness, and even the number of words he had used, only to regard his first and quite possibly his last work of fiction with the unforgiving, almost contemptuous, eye with which the Almighty might contemplate the tiresome antics of a capuchin monkey. It was clear to him now that the story was a worthless piece of excrement: his writing a shameless imitation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s pseudo-Germanic style, and his main character, Dr Nebogipfel, a poor, unrealistic copy of the exaggerated depictions of mad scientists already to be found in Gothic novels. Nevertheless, he thanked Merrick for his words of praise, smiling with false modesty and fearing they would be the only ones his writings ever received.

‘A time machine . . .’ said Merrick, delighting in the juxtaposition of words he found so evocative. ‘You have a prophetic imagination, Mr Wells.’

Wells thanked him again for this new and rather embarrassing compliment. How many more eulogies would he have to endure before he asked him to change the subject?

‘If I had a time machine like Dr Nebogipfel’s,’ Merrick went on dreamily, ‘I would travel back to ancient Egypt.’

Wells found the remark touching. Like any other person, this creature had a favourite period in history, as he must have a favourite fruit, season or song. ‘Why is that?’ he asked, with a friendly smile, providing his host with the opportunity to expound on his tastes.

‘Because the Egyptians worshipped gods with animals’ heads,’ replied Merrick, slightly shamefaced.

Wells stared at him stupidly. He was unsure what surprised him more: the naïve yearning in Merrick’s reply or the awkward bashfulness that accompanied it, as though he were chiding himself for wanting such a thing, for preferring to be a god worshipped by men instead of the despised monster he was. If anyone had a right to feel hatred and bitterness towards the world, surely he did. And yet Merrick reproached himself for his sorrow, as though the sunlight through the window-pane warming his back or the clouds scudding across the sky ought to supply reason enough for him to be happy. Lost for words, Wells took a biscuit from the plate and nibbled it with intense concentration, as though he were making sure his teeth still worked.

‘Why do you think Dr Nebogipfel didn’t use his machine to travel into the future as well?’ Merrick then asked, in that unguent voice, which sounded as if it were smeared with butter. ‘Wasn’t he curious? I sometimes wonder what the world will be like in a hundred years.’

‘Indeed . . .’ murmured Wells, at a loss to respond to this remark, too.

Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of a novel. As a child Wells had also been able to read in that way. But one day he had decided he would be a writer, and from that moment on he had found it impossible to immerse himself in stories with the same innocent abandon: he was aware that characters’ thoughts and actions were not his. They answered to the dictates of a higher being, to someone who, alone in his room, moved the pieces he himself had placed on the board, more often than not with an overwhelming feeling of indifference that bore no relation to the emotions he intended to arouse in his readers. Novels were not slices of life but more or less controlled creations reproducing slices of imaginary, polished lives, where boredom and the futile, useless acts that make up any existence were replaced with exciting, meaningful episodes. At times, Wells longed to be able to read in that carefree, childlike way again but, having glimpsed behind the scenes, he could only do this with an enormous leap of his imagination. Once you had written your first story there was no turning back. You were a deceiver and you could not help treating other deceivers with suspicion.

It occurred to Wells briefly to suggest that Merrick ask Nebogipfel himself, but he changed his mind, unsure whether his host would take his riposte as the gentle mockery he intended. What if Merrick really was too naïve to tell the difference between reality and a simple work of fiction? What if this sad inability and not his sensitivity allowed him to experience the stories he read so intensely? If so, Well’s rejoinder would sound like a cruel jibe, aimed at wounding his ingenuousness. Fortunately, Merrick fired another question at him, which was easier to answer: ‘Do you think somebody will one day invent a time machine?’

‘I doubt such a thing could exist,’ replied Wells, bluntly.

‘And yet you’ve written about it!’ his host exclaimed, horrified.

‘That’s precisely why, Mr Merrick,’ he explained, trying to think of a simple way to bring together the various ideas underlying his conception of literature. ‘I assure you that if it were possible to build a time machine I would never have written about it. I am only interested in writing about what is impossible.’

At this, he recalled a quote from Lucian of Samosata’s True Histories, which he could not help memorising because it perfectly summed up his thoughts on literature: ‘I write about things I have neither seen nor verified nor heard about from others and, in addition, about things that have never existed and could have no possible basis for existing.’ Yes, as he had told his host, he was only interested in writing about things that were impossible. Dickens was there to take care of the rest, he thought of adding, but did not. Trêves had told him Merrick was an avid reader. He did not want to risk offending him if Dickens happened to be one of his favourite authors.

‘Then I’m sorry that because of me you’ll never be able to write about a man who is half human, half elephant,’ murmured Merrick.

Once more, Wells was disarmed. After he had spoken, Merrick’s gaze wandered to the window. Wells was unsure whether the gesture was meant to express regret or to give him the opportunity to study Merrick’s appearance as freely as he wished. In any case, Wells’s eyes were unconsciously, irresistibly, almost hypnotically drawn to him, confirming what he already knew full well – that Merrick was right: if he had not seen him with his own eyes, he would never have believed such a creature could exist. Except, perhaps, in the fictional world of books.

‘You will be a great writer, Mr Wells,’ his host declared, continuing to stare out of the window.

‘I wish I could agree,’ replied Wells, who, following his first failed attempt, was entertaining serious doubts about his abilities.

Merrick turned to face him. ‘Look at my hands, Mr Wells,’ he said, holding them out. ‘Would you believe that these hands could make a church out of cardboard?’

Wells gazed at his host’s mismatched hands. The right was enormous and grotesque while the left looked like that of a ten-year-old girl. ‘I suppose not,’ he admitted.

Merrick nodded slowly. ‘It is a question of will, Mr Wells,’ he said, striving for a tone of authority. ‘That’s all.’

Coming from anyone else’s mouth these words might have struck Wells as trite, but uttered by the man in front of him they became an irrefutable truth. This creature was living proof that man’s will could move mountains and part seas. In that hospital wing, a refuge from the world, the distance between the attainable and the unattainable was more than ever a question of will. If Merrick had built that cardboard church with his deformed hands, what might not he, Wells, be capable of? He was only prevented from doing whatever he wanted by his lack of self-belief

He could not help agreeing, which seemed to please Merrick, judging from the way he fidgeted in his seat. In an embarrassed voice, Merrick went on to confess that the model was to be a gift for a stage actress with whom he had been corresponding for several months. He referred to her as Mrs Kendall, and from what Wells could gather she was one of his most generous benefactors. He had no difficulty in picturing her as woman of good social standing, sympathetic to the suffering of the world, so long as they were not on her doorstep. She had discovered in the Elephant Man a novel way of spending the money she usually donated to charily. When Merrick explained that he was looking forward to meeting her in person when she returned from her tour in America, Wells could not help smiling, touched by the amorous note that, consciously or not, had slipped into his voice. But at the same time he felt a pang of sorrow, and hoped Mrs Kendall’s work would delay her in America so that Merrick could go on believing in the illusion of her letters and not be faced with the discovery that impossible love was only possible in books.

After they had finished their tea, Merrick offered Wells a cigarette, which he courteously accepted. They rose from their seats and went to the window to watch the sunset. For a few moments, the two men stood staring down at the street and at the façade of the church opposite, every inch of which Merrick must have been familiar with. People came and went, a pedlar with a handcart hawked his wares, and carriages trundled over the uneven cobblestones strewn with foul-smelling dung from the hundreds of horses going by each day. Wells watched Merrick gazing at the frantic bustle with almost reverential awe. He appeared to be lost in thought.

‘You know something, Mr Wells?’ he said finally. ‘I can’t help feeling sometimes that life is like a play in which I’ve been given no part. If you only knew how much I envy all those people . . .’

‘I can assure you, you have no reason to envy them, Mr Merrick,’ Wells replied abruptly. ‘Those people you see are specks of dust. Nobody will remember who they were or what they did after they die. You, however, will go down in history.’

Merrick appeared to mull over his words, as he studied his misshapen reflection in the window-pane.

‘Do you think that gives me any comfort?’ he asked mournfully.

‘It ought to,’ replied Wells, ‘for the time of the ancient Egyptians has long since passed, Mr Merrick.’

His host did not reply. He continued staring down at the street, but Wells found it impossible to judge from his expression, frozen by the disease into a look of permanent rage, what effect his words, a little blunt perhaps but necessary, had had on him. He could not stand by while the other wallowed in his own tragedy. He was convinced Merrick’s only comfort could come from his deformity, which, although it had marginalised him, had also made him a singular being.

‘No doubt you are right, Mr Wells,’ Merrick said, continuing to gaze at his reflection. ‘One should probably resign oneself to not expecting too much of this world we live in, where people fear anyone who is different. Sometimes I think that if an angel were to appear before a priest he would probably shoot it.’

‘I suppose that is true,’ observed Wells, the writer in him excited by the image his host had just evoked. And, seeing Merrick still caught up in his reflections, he decided to take his leave. ‘Thank you so much for the tea, Mr Merrick.’

‘Wait,’ replied Merrick. ‘There’s something I want to give you.’ He shuffled over to a small cupboard and rummaged around inside it for a few moments until he found what he had been looking for. Wells was puzzled to see him pull out a wicker basket. ‘When I told Mrs Kendall I had always dreamed of being a basket-maker, she employed a man to come and teach me,’ Merrick explained, cradling the object in his hands as though it were a new-born infant, or a bird’s nest. ‘He was a kindly, mild-mannered fellow, who had a workshop on Pennington Street, near the London docks. From the very beginning he treated me as though my looks were no different from his. But when he saw my hands, he told me I could never manage delicate work like basket-weaving. He was very sorry, but we would evidently be wasting our time. Yet striving to achieve a dream is never a waste of time, is it, Mr Wells? “Show me,” I told him. “Only then will we know whether you are right or not.”’

Wells contemplated the perfect piece of wickerwork Merrick was cupping in his deformed hands.

‘I’ve made many more since then, and have given some away to my guests. But this one is special, because it is the first I ever made. I would like you to have it, Mr Wells,’ he said, presenting him with the basket, ‘to remind you that everything is a question of will.’

‘Thank you,’ stammered Wells, touched. ‘I am honoured, Mr Merrick, truly honoured.’

He smiled warmly as he said goodbye, and walked towards the door.

‘One more question, Mr Wells,’ he heard Merrick say behind him.

Wells turned to look at him, hoping he was not going to ask for the accursed Nebogipfel’s address so that he could send him a basket, too.

‘Do you believe that the same God made us both?’ Merrick asked, with more frustration than regret.

Wells repressed a sigh of despair. What could he say to this? He was weighing up various possible replies when, all of a sudden, Merrick emitted a strange sound, as if a cough or grunt had convulsed his body from head to foot, threatening to shake him apart at the seams. Wells listened, alarmed, as the loud, hacking sound continued to rise uncontrollably from his throat, until he realised what was happening. There was nothing seriously wrong with Merrick: he was laughing.

‘It was a joke, Mr Wells, only a joke,’ he explained, cutting short his rasping chortle as he became aware of his guest’s startled response. ‘Whatever would become of me if I was unable to laugh at my own appearance?’

Without waiting for Wells to reply, he walked towards his work table, and sat in front of the model of the church.

‘Whatever would become of me?’ Wells heard him mutter, in a tone of profound melancholy. ‘Whatever would become of me?’

Wells watched him concentrate on his clumsy hands sculpting the cardboard and was seized by a feeling of deep sympathy. He found it impossible to believe Treves’s theory that this remarkably innocent, gentle creature invited public figures to tea to submit them to some sinister test. On the contrary, he was convinced that all Merrick wanted from this limited intimacy was a few meagre crumbs of warmth and sympathy. It was far more likely that Trêves had attributed him with those motives to unnerve guests to whom he took a dislike, or possibly to make allowances for Merrick’s extreme naivety by crediting him with a guile he did not possess. Or perhaps, thought Wells, who had no illusions about the sincerity of man’s motives, the surgeon’s intentions were still more selfish and ambitious: perhaps he wanted to show people that he was the only one who understood the soul of the creature to whom he clung desperately in the knowledge that he would be guaranteed a place beside him in history.

Wells was irritated by the idea of Trêves taking advantage of Merrick’s face being a terrifying mask he could never take off, a mask that could never express his true emotions, in order to attribute to him whatever motives he wished, in the knowledge that no one but Merrick could ever refute them. And now that Wells had heard him laugh, he wondered whether the so-called Elephant Man had not in fact been smiling at him from the moment he stepped into the room, a warm, friendly smile intended to soothe the discomfort his appearance produced in his guests, a smile no one would ever see.

As he left the room, he felt a tear roll down his cheek.

Chapter XIII

That was how the wicker basket had come into Wells’s life, and with it he found that the winds of good fortune soon began to blow off the years of accumulated dust. Shortly after the basket’s arrival, he obtained his degree in zoology with distinction, began giving courses in biology for the University of London External Programme, took up the post of editor-in-chief of the University Correspondent and began writing the odd short article for the Educational Times. Thus, in a relatively short period of time, he earned a large sum of money, which helped him recover from his disappointment over the lack of interest in his story, and boosted his self-confidence. He got into the habit of venerating the basket every night, giving it long, loving looks, running his fingers over the tightly woven wicker. He carried out this simple ritual behind Jane’s back, and found it encouraged him so much he felt invincible, strong enough to swim the Atlantic or wrestle a tiger to the ground with his bare hands.

But Wells scarcely had time to enjoy his achievements before the members of his tattered family discovered that little Bertie was on his way to becoming a man of means, and entrusted him with the task of maintaining their fragile and threatened cohesion. Without protest, Wells resigned himself to taking on the mantle of clan defender, knowing that none of its other members was up to the task. His father, having finally freed himself from the burden of the china shop, had moved to a cottage in Nyewood, a tiny village south of Rogate, where he had a view of Harting Down and the elms at Uppark. Life had gradually washed up the rest of the family in the tiny house.

The first to arrive was Frank. He had left the bakery a few years earlier to become a travelling watch salesman, an occupation in which he had not been very successful – a fact borne out by the two enormous trunks of unsold watches he brought with him. They gave off a loud, incessant whirring sound and rattled like a colony of mechanical spiders. Then came Fred, his trusting brother, who had been unceremoniously dismissed from the company where he worked as soon as the boss’s son was old enough to occupy the seat he had unknowingly kept warm for him. Finding themselves together again, and with a roof over their heads, Bertie’s brothers devoted themselves to licking each other’s wounds and, infected by their father’s relaxed attitude to life, soon accepted this latest downturn with good cheer.

The last to arrive was their mother, dismissed from her beloved paradise at Uppark because the onset of deafness had rendered her useless and irritable. The only one who did not return to the fold was Frances, perhaps because she felt there would not be enough room for her infant coffin. Even so, there were too many of them, and Wells had to make a superhuman effort to keep up his endless hours of teaching to protect that nest, buzzing with the sound of Frank’s watches, that pesthouse of happy walking-wounded reeking of snuff and stale beer, to the point at which he ended up vomiting blood and collapsing on the steps of Charing Cross station.

The diagnosis was clear: tuberculosis. And although he made a swift recovery, this attack was a warning to Wells to stop burning the midnight oil or the next onslaught would be more serious. He accepted this in a practical spirit. He knew that, when the wind was favourable, he had plenty of ways to make a living, so had no difficulty in drawing up a new life plan. He abandoned teaching and resolved to live solely from his writings. This would allow him to work at home, with no timetables and pressures than those he chose to impose on himself. He would finally be able to live the peaceful life his fragile health required.

Thus he set about swamping the local newspapers with articles, penning the odd essay for the Fortnightly Review and, after much persistence, managed to persuade the Pall Mall Gazette to offer him a column. Overjoyed by his success, and seeking the fresh air indispensable to his sick lungs, the whole family moved to a country house in Sutton, near the North Downs, one of the few areas that had as yet escaped becoming a suburb of London. For a while, Wells believed his quiet seclusion was to be his life, but once again he was mistaken: this was an imaginary truce. Apparently chance considered him a most amusing toy, for it decided to change the course of his life again, although this time the twist involved the pleasant, popular veneer of fated love.

In the classroom Wells had established friendly relations with a pupil of his, Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he nicknamed Jane, and during the walk they happened to share to Charing Cross station to catch their respective trains, he could not help mesmerising the girl with his eloquent banter. He indulged in it with no other purpose than to allow himself to swell with pride at being able to impress such a beautiful, adorable girl with his words. However, those innocent conversations bore unexpected fruit. His wife, Isabel, alerted him to it on their return from a weekend in Putney, where they had been invited by Jane and her mother. She it was who assured him that, whether or not he had intended it, the girl had fallen head over heels in love with him. Wells could only raise an eyebrow when his wife demanded he stop seeing his former pupil if he wished their marriage to survive.

It was not difficult to choose between the woman who refused his caresses and the cheerful, apparently uninhibited Jane. Wells packed up his books, his furniture and the wicker basket, and moved into a miserable hovel in Mornington Place in a rundown area of north London between Euston and Camden Town. He wished he could have abandoned the marital home spurred on by a violent passion, but he had to leave that to Jane. His real reasons for leaving were the playful curiosity he felt when he glimpsed her little body beneath her dress and, above all, the chance to escape monotony and discover a new life, given that he could predict how the old one would turn out.

However, his first impression was that love had caused him to make a serious mistake: not only had he moved to the worst possible place for his tormented lungs – a neighbourhood in which the air was polluted by soot borne on the wind and mixed with smoke from the locomotives passing through on their way north – but Jane’s mother, convinced her poor daughter had fallen into the clutches of a degenerate because Wells was still married to Isabel, had moved in with the couple. She seemed determined to undermine their patience with her endless, vociferous reproaches.

These unforeseen events, with the additional worrying certainty that it would be impossible for him to run no less than three homes on the proceeds of his articles, compelled Wells to take the basket and shut himself into a cupboard, the only place safe from Mrs Robbins’s intrusive presence. Hidden among the coats and hats, he stroked the wicker for hours on end, like Aladdin trying to bring back the power of his magic lamp.

This may have seemed an absurd, desperate, or even pathetic strategy, but the day after he performed this rubbing of the basket, Lewis Hind, the literary editor of the Gazette’s weekly supplement sent for him. He needed someone capable of writing stories with a scientific slant, short stories reflecting on and even predicting where the relentless onslaught of inventions bent on changing the face of that century would lead. Hind was convinced Wells was the ideal man for the job. What he was proposing, in fact, was that he resurrect his childhood dream, and have another stab at becoming a writer.

Wells accepted, and in a few days drafted a story entitled ‘The Stolen Bacillus’, which delighted Hind and earned Wells five guineas. The story also drew the attention of William Ernest Henley, editor of the National Observer, who promptly invited him to contribute to the pages of his journal, convinced the young man would produce far more ambitious stories if he had room to experiment. Wells was delighted and terrified in equal measure at being given the chance to write for such a prestigious magazine, which at that time was publishing a serialised version of The Nigger of the Narcissus by his idol Joseph Conrad. This was no longer writing news items, articles or short stories. He was being offered the space for his imagination to run wild, the freedom to be a real writer of fiction.

Wells awaited his meeting with Henley in a state of nervous tension bordering on collapse. Since the editor of the National Observer had asked to see him, Wells had been rummaging through his large mental stockpile of ideas in search of a story original and striking enough to impress the veteran publisher. None seemed to live up to his offer. The rendezvous was drawing near, and Wells still did not have a good story to show Henley. It was then that he turned to the basket and saw that, although it looked empty, it was actually brimming with novels, a cornucopia that needed only a gentle nudge to pour forth its torrent of ideas. This extravagant image was, of course, Wells’s way of expressing in poetic language what really happened when he saw the basket: inevitably he remembered his conversation with Merrick and, to his amazement, each time he recalled it he discovered, like a nugget of gold hidden on the bed of a stream, another idea that could be made into a novel. Whether deliberately or by accident, it was as though Merrick had supplied him with enough plots to last several years while he and Wells had pretended they were having tea. He recalled Merrick’s disappointment at Dr Nebogipfel being so uninterested in venturing into the unknown world of tomorrow, and this omission appeared worth rectifying now that he had the experience of writing all those articles.

Without a second thought, he got rid of the unsavoury Nebogipfel, replacing him with a respectable, anonymous scientist in whom any inventor could see himself portrayed, and who even embodied the archetypal scientist of the dawning new century. Endeavouring to create something more than just a naïve fantasy from his idea of time travel, Wells gave it the same scientific veneer he had given the stories he wrote for Hind, making use of a theory he had developed in his earlier essays published in the Fortnightly Review: the idea that time was the fourth dimension in a universe that appeared to be three-dimensional. The idea would be far more impressive if he used it to explain the workings of the contraption his character would use to travel through the time continuum.

A few years earlier, an American medium called Henry Slade had been tried for criminal deception. Besides bragging of his ability to communicate with the spirits of the dead, he would drop knots, conches and snails’ shells into his magician’s hat, then pull out identical versions, but with the spirals going in the other direction. Slade maintained that a secret passageway to the fourth dimension was hidden in his hat, which explained the reversal the objects underwent. To many people’s astonishment, the magician was defended by a handful of eminent physicists, including Johann Zöllner, professor of physics and astronomy, all of whom argued that what might appear to be a fraud from a three-dimensional point of view was perfectly feasible in a four-dimensional universe. The whole of London was on tenterhooks during the trial.

This, with the work of Charles Hinton, a mathematician who had come up with the hypercube, a cube out of phase with time that contained every single instant of its existence, all occurring at the same time – which man’s current three-dimensional vision prevented him seeing – made Wells realise that the idea of the fourth dimension was in the air. No one was sure what it involved, but the words sounded so mysterious and evocative that society longed for, positively demanded it to be real.

For most people, the known world was a tiresome, hostile place, but that was because they could see only part of it. Now they were consoled by the notion that, just as bland roast meat is made tastier with seasoning, the universe improved if they imagined it was no longer reduced to what they could see, but contained a hidden component that could somehow make it bigger. The fourth dimension gave their dull planet a magical feel; it conjured up the existence of a different world in which desires that were impossible in the three-dimensional one might be realised. These suspicions were backed up by concrete actions, such as the recent founding of the Society for Psychic Research in London.

Wells was also forced to endure becoming embroiled almost every day in tiresome debates on the nature of time with his colleagues at the Faculty of Science. One thing led to another, as they say, and as every thinker was turning the fourth dimension into his private playground, Wells had no difficulty combining both ideas to develop his theory of time as another spatial dimension through which it was possible to travel in exactly the same way as it was through the other three.

By the time he entered Henley’s office he could visualise his novel with startling clarity, enabling him to relay it with a preacher’s conviction and zeal. The time traveller’s story would be divided into two parts. In the first he would explain the workings of his machine to a gathering of sceptical guests, to whom he had chosen to present his invention and whom he must try to convince. This group would consist of a doctor, a mayor, a psychologist and some other representative of the middle classes. Unlike Jules Verne, who took up whole chapters with detailed explanations of how his contraptions worked – as though he himself doubted their credibility – Wells’s explanations would be straightforward and concise, using simple examples that would enable the reader to assimilate an idea that might otherwise seem too abstract. ‘As you are aware,’ his inventor would observe, ‘the three spatial dimensions (length, breadth, and thickness) are defined in reference to three planes, each of which is at right angles to the other.’

However, under normal circumstances, man’s movement through his three-dimensional universe was incomplete. He had no difficulty in moving along its length and breadth, but was unable to overcome the laws of gravity in order to move up and down freely, except by using a hot-air balloon. Man was similarly trapped in the time line, and could only move in time mentally – summoning up the past through memory, or visualising the future by means of his imagination. He could free himself from this constraint if he had a machine that, like the hot-air balloon, enabled him to triumph over the impossible, that is to say, to project himself physically into the future by speeding up time, or going back into the past by slowing it down. In order to help his guests understand the idea of this fourth dimension, the inventor referred to the mercury in a barometer: it moved up and down over a period of days, yet the line represented by its movement was drawn not in any recognised spatial dimension but in that of time.

The second part of the novel would describe the journey that his main character would undertake to put his machine to the test once his guests had left. As a tribute to Merrick’s memory, he would set off towards the unfathomable oceans of the future, a future that Wells outlined briefly but eloquently to the editor of the National Observer.

Henley, an enormous fellow, virtually a giant, condemned to walk with a crutch because of a botched childhood operation, and on whom Stevenson claimed to have based his idea for Long John Silver, pulled an incredulous face. Talking about the future was dangerous. It was rumoured in literary circles that Verne had portrayed tomorrow’s world in a novel called Paris in the Twentieth Century, but that his editor, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, had refused to publish it, considering naïve and pessimistic his vision of 1960, when criminals were executed by electric shock, and a system of ‘photographic telegraphs’ made it possible to send copies of documents anywhere in the world. And it seemed Verne had not been the only author to envisage the future. Many others had tried and failed in the same way.

But Wells did not let Henley’s words discourage him. Leaning forwards in his seat, he stood up for himself, assuring Henley that people were eager to read about the future, and that someone should take the risk and publish the first novel about it.

And so it was that, in 1893, The Time Machine came out in serial form in the prestigious National Observer. However, to Wells’s understandable despair, before the novel could be published in its entirety the owners of the magazine sold it. The new board of directors carried out the usual purges, putting an end to Henley and his publishing projects. Happily, Wells scarcely had time to wallow in his misfortune for Henley, like his Stevensonian alter ego, was a hard nut to crack. He immediately took over at the helm of the New Review, where he offered to continue serialising the story of the time traveller, and even convinced the stubborn William Heinemann to publish the novel.

Encouraged by Henley’s doggedness, Wells resolved to complete his unfinished novel. However, as was becoming the custom, this turned out to be a difficult undertaking, hampered by the usual impediments, although this time of a far more humiliating nature. At the insistence of his doctors, Wells had once again moved to the country with Jane, to a modest boarding-house in Sevenoaks. But along with the wicker basket and a stream of boxes and trunks came Mrs Robbins, like a piece of junk no one dared throw out. By this time, Jane’s mother had gone to unspeakable lengths in her role of leech, reducing her daughter to little more than a pale, worn-out shell with her constant complaints. Mrs Robbins had no need of reinforcements in her war of attrition against Wells. She found an ally in the boarding-house landlady, once she had discovered that it was not a marriage being consummated each night in her house but the sinful cohabitation of a shy young girl and a depraved defendant in a divorce suit.

Battling on two fronts, Wells was scarcely able to concentrate sufficiently to make any headway with his novel. His only consolation was that the section of the plot – the time traveller’s journey – to which he was giving shape interested him far more than the part he had already written: it enabled him to steer the novel towards the domain of social allegory, where he could deal with the political questions simmering inside him.

Convinced that in the distant future mankind would have succeeded in evolving fully on a scientific as well as a spiritual level, the time traveller rode across the plains of time on his machine until he reached the year 802,701, a date chosen at random, and sufficiently far off in the future for Wells to be able to verify his predictions in situ. By the flickering light of a paraffin lamp, terrorised by the landlady’s threats, Wells related, in fits and starts, his inventor’s foray into a world that resembled a huge enchanted garden. To complete the enchantment, this Garden of Eden was inhabited by the beautiful slender Eloi, the exquisite result of a human evolution that had not only corrected the weaknesses of the species, but had rid it of ugliness, coarseness and other unprepossessing features. From what the traveller was able to observe, the delicate Eloi lived a peaceful life, in harmony with nature, without laws or government, free from ill-health, financial troubles, or any other kind of difficulty that would make survival a struggle. Neither did they appear to have any notion of private property: everything was shared in that almost Utopian society, which personified the Enlightenment’s most hopeful predictions about the future of civilisation.

Like a benevolent, somewhat romantic creator, Wells even had his inventor establish a friendly relationship with a female Eloi named Weena, who insisted on following him around after he had saved her from drowning in a river, captivated like a child by the charm the stranger exuded. Whenever the inventor’s back was turned Weena, fragile and slender as a porcelain doll, would garland him with flowers or fill his pockets with blossoms, gestures that conveyed the gratitude she was unable to express through her language, which, although mellow and sweet, remained dishearteningly impenetrable to his ear.

Once Wells had painted this idyllic picture, he proceeded to destroy it with merciless, satirical precision. A couple of hours with the Eloi was enough for the traveller to understand that things were not as perfect as they seemed: these were indolent creatures, with no cultural interests or any drive towards self-improvement, incapable of higher feelings, a bunch of idlers imbued with a hedonism bordering on simple-mindedness. Freed from the dangers that stir courage in men’s hearts, the human race had culminated in these lazy, sensual creatures, because intelligence could not thrive where there was no change, and no necessity for it. As if that were not enough, the sudden disappearance of his time machine aroused the inventor’s suspicions that the Eloi were not alone in that world. Clearly they shared it with other inhabitants who had the strength to move the machine from where he had left it and hide it inside a gigantic sphinx dominating the landscape.

He was not mistaken: beneath the make-believe paradise dwelled the Morlocks, a simian race afraid of daylight, who, he would soon discover to his horror, had regressed to a state of savage cannibalism. It was the Morlocks who fed the Eloi, fattening their neighbours who lived above ground before gorging on them in their subterranean world.

Their reprehensible eating habits notwithstanding, the traveller was forced to acknowledge that the last vestiges of human intelligence and reason survived in that brutal race, which their need to operate the network of machinery in their underground tunnels had helped preserve.

Afraid of remaining trapped in the future, with no means of travelling back to his own time, the inventor had no alternative but to follow in the footsteps of Aeneas, Orpheus and Hercules and descend into the underworld, into the realm of the Morlocks, to retrieve his machine. Having done so, he made a frenzied escape through time, travelling deep into the future, until he arrived at a strange beach stretching out beneath a shadowy sky. He could see from a swift glance at this new future, whose rarefied air made his lungs smart, that life had divided into two species: a variety of giant screeching white butterfly, and a terrifying crab with enormous pincers, which he was glad to get away from.

No longer curious about what had befallen mankind, which had apparently become extinct, but about the Earth itself, the inventor continued his journey in great strides of a thousand years. At his next stop, more than thirty million years from his own time, he discovered a desolate planet, an orb that had almost stopped rotating, feebly illuminated by a dying sun. A scant snowfall struggled to spread its white veil over a place where there was no sound. The twitter of birds, the bleating of sheep, the buzz of insects and the barking of dogs that made up the music of life were no more than a nicker in the traveller’s memory.

Then he noticed a bizarre creature with tentacles splashing around in the reddish sea before him, and his profound grief gave way to a nameless dread that compelled him to clamber back onto his machine. Back in the seat, at the helm of time, he felt a dreadful emptiness. He felt no curiosity about the ominous landscapes awaiting him further into the future. Neither did he wish to go back in time, now he knew that all men’s achievements had been futile. He decided the moment had come for him to go back to his own time, to where he truly belonged. On the way back he ended by closing his eyes, for now that the journey in reverse made extinction into a false resurrection, he could not bear to see the world around him grow verdant, the sun recover its stifled splendour, the houses and buildings spring up again, testaments to the progress and trends in human architecture. He only opened his eyes when he felt himself surrounded by the familiar four walls of his laboratory. Then he pulled the lever and the world stopped being a nebulous cloud and took on its old consistency.

Once he had arrived back in his own time, he heard voices and the noise of plates in the dining room, and discovered he had stopped his machine on the Thursday after his departure. After pausing for a few moments to catch his breath, the inventor appeared before his guests, not so much out of a desire to share his experiences with them but because he was attracted by the delicious smell of roast meat, which, after the diet of fruit he had been forced to live on in the future, was an irresistible temptation. After sating his appetite voraciously – in front of his astonished guests, who gaped in awe at his ghastly pallor, his scratched face and the peculiar stains on his jacket – the traveller finally recounted his adventure. Naturally, no one believed in his fantastic voyage, even though he showed them the strange blossoms from his pockets and the sorry state of his time machine.

In the novel’s epilogue, Wells had the narrator, who was one of the traveller’s guests, finger the exotic flowers, reflecting with optimism that even when physical strength and intelligence has died out, gratitude will live on in men’s hearts.

When the novel finally came out under the title The Time Machine, it caused a sensation. By August, Heinemann had already printed six thousand paperbacks and fifteen hundred hardbacks. Everyone was talking about it, though not because of its shocking content. Wells had been at pains to present a metaphorical but devastating vision of the ultimate price of a rigidly capitalistic society. Who would not see in the Morlocks the evolutionary result of the working class, brutalised by appalling conditions and exhausting hours, working from dawn until dusk, a class that society had slowly and discreetly begun to move below ground, while the surface of the Earth was reserved for the wealthy classes? With the aim of stirring his readers’ consciences, Wells had even inverted the social roles: the Eloi – futile and decorative as the Carolingian kings – were fodder for the Morlocks, who, despite their ugliness and barbarism, were at the top of the food chain.

However, to Wells’s astonishment, all his attempts to raise society’s awareness paled before the excitement his notion of time travel stirred. One thing was clear: whatever the reasons, this novel, written under such adverse conditions, and which, at little more than forty thousand words, had even required padding with a publicity booklet, had secured him a place in the hall of fame, or had at least brought him to its threshold. And this was far more than he had ever expected when he had penned the first of those forty thousand words.

Like a murderer removing all trace of his crime, the first thing Wells did on becoming a successful author was to burn as many copies as he could find of that childish drivel The Chronic Argonauts. He did not want anyone to discover that the excellence they attributed to The Time Machine was the end result of such lengthy fumbling and had not emerged in its finished state from his apparently brilliant mind. After that, he tried to enjoy his fame, although this did not prove easy.

There was no doubting he was a successful author, but one with an extended family to support. And while Jane and he had married and moved to a house with a garden in Woking (the basket sticking out like a sore thumb among Jane’s hat boxes), Wells had to take care not to let down his guard. There was no question of him stopping for a rest. He must carry on writing – it did not matter what: anything to take advantage of his popularity in the bookshops.

This was not a problem for Wells, of course. He had only to turn to the basket. Like a magician rummaging in his hat, Wells pulled out another novel called The Wonderful Visit. This told the story of how one balmy August night an angel fell out of the sky and landed in the marshes of a little village called Sidderford. When the local vicar, an amateur ornithologist, heard about the arrival of this exotic bird, he went out to hunt it with his shotgun and succeeded in destroying the angel’s beautiful plumage before taking pity on it and carrying it to the vicarage where he nursed it back to health. Through this close contact, the vicar realised that, although different, the angel was an admirable and gentle creature from which he had much to learn.

The idea for the novel, like the plot of The Island of Doctor Moreau, which he would write some months later, was not his, but Wells tried not to see this as stealing, rather as his own special tribute to the memory of a remarkable man, Joseph Merrick, who had died in the horrible way Trêves had predicted two years after the unforgettable invitation to tea. And as tributes went, he considered his far more respectful than the surgeon’s own: according to what he had heard, Trêves was exhibiting Merrick’s deformed skeleton in a museum he had opened in the London Hospital. As Wells had said to Merrick, he had gone down in history.

And – who could say? – perhaps that convoluted tale The Time Machine, which owed so much to Merrick, would do the same for Wells. In the meantime, it had brought him more than one surprise, he said to himself, remembering the time machine, identical to the one he had written about in his novel, that was hidden in his attic.

Dusk had begun to submerge the world in a coppery light that lent an air of distinction to everything, including Wells who, silting quietly in his kitchen, looked like a sculpture of himself in flour. He shook his head, banishing the doubts stirred up by the harsh review in the Speaker, and picked up the envelope that had appeared in his letterbox that afternoon. He hoped it was not from yet another newspaper asking him to predict the future. Ever since The Time Machine had been published, the press had held him up as an official oracle, and kept encouraging him to display his supposed powers of divination in their pages.

But when he tore the envelope open he discovered he was not being asked to predict anything. Instead, he found himself holding a publicity leaflet from Murray’s Time Travel, with a card in which Gilliam Murray invited him to take part in the third expedition to the year 2000. Wells clenched his teeth to stop himself unleashing a stream of oaths, crumpled the leaflet and hurled it across the room, as he had the magazine moments before.

The ball of paper flew precariously through the air until it hit the face of a young man who should not have been there. Wells stared with alarm at the intruder who had just walked into his kitchen. He was a well-dressed young man, now rubbing his cheek where the ball of paper had made a direct hit, and shaking his head with a sigh, as though chastising a mischievous child. Just behind him was a second man, whose features so resembled those of the first that they must be related. The author studied the man nearest to him, unable to decide whether he ought to apologise for having hit him with the ball of paper or ask what the devil he was doing in his kitchen. But he had no time to do either, for the man spoke first.

‘Mr Wells, I presume,’ he said, raising his arm and pointing a gun at him.

Chapter XIV

A young man with a bird-like face. This was what Andrew thought when he saw the author of The Time Machine, the book that had transformed all England while he was wandering like a ghost amid the trees in Hyde Park. On finding the front door locked, Charles had led him silently round the back of the house. After crossing a rather overgrown garden, they had burst into the small, narrow kitchen whose cramped space the two of them seemed to fill.

‘Who are you and what are you doing in my house?’ the author demanded, remaining seated at the table, perhaps because in that way less of his body was exposed to the pistol aimed at him – which was also undoubtedly the reason why he had asked the question in such an incongruously polite manner.

Without lowering the gun, Charles turned to his cousin and nodded. It was Andrew’s turn to take part in the performance. He suppressed a sigh of displeasure. He deemed it unnecessary to have burst into the author’s house brandishing a gun, and he regretted not having given some thought during the journey to what they would do once they reached the house. Instead he had left everything up to his cousin, whose impetuosity had put them in a very awkward situation. But there was no turning back now, so Andrew approached Wells, determined also to improvise. He had no idea how to do so, only that he must mimic his cousin’s severe, resolute manner. He reached into his jacket pocket for the cutting and, with the abrupt gesture appropriate to the situation, placed it on the table between the author’s hands.

‘I want you to stop this happening,’ he said, trying his best to sound commanding.

Wells stared blankly at the cutting, then contemplated the intruders, his eyes moving from one to the other like a pendulum. Finally he consented to read it. As he did so, his face remained impassive.

‘I regret to tell you that this tragic event has already occurred, and as such belongs to the past. And as you are fully aware, the past is unchangeable,’ he concluded disdainfully, returning the cutting to Andrew.

Andrew paused for a moment. Then, a little flustered, he took the yellowing piece of paper and put it back into his pocket. Clearly uncomfortable at being forced into such close proximity – the kitchen did not seem big enough to accommodate another person – the three men gawped at one another, like actors who have suddenly forgotten their lines. However, there was room for another slim person, and even for one of those new-fangled bicycles that were all the rage, with their aluminium spokes, tubular frames and modern pneumatic tyres.

‘You’re wrong,’ said Charles, brightening. ‘The past isn’t unalterable, not if we have a machine capable of travelling in time.’

Wells gazed at him with a mixture of pity and weariness. ‘I see,’ he murmured, as though it had suddenly dawned on him what this business was all about. ‘But you’re mistaken if you imagine I have one at my disposal. I’m only a writer, gentlemen.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I have no time machine. I simply made one up.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ replied Charles.

‘It’s the truth.’ Wells sighed.

Charles tried to catch Andrew’s eye, as though his cousin would know what to do next in their madcap adventure. But they had come to a dead end. Andrew was about to tell him to lower the gun, when a young woman walked into the kitchen. She was a slim, small, amazingly beautiful creature, who looked as though she had been delicately wrought by a god tired of churning out inferior specimens. But what really grabbed Andrew’s attention was the contraption she had with her, one of those so-called bicycles that were replacing horses because they allowed people to ride peacefully on country roads without exerting themselves too much. Charles, on the other hand, did not let himself be distracted by it and, having instantly identified the girl as Wells’s wife, he swiftly grabbed her arm and placed the barrel of the gun against her temple. Andrew was amazed by his speed and agility, as though he had spent his whole life making this kind of movement.

‘I’ll give you one more chance,’ Charles said to the author, who had turned pale.

The exchange that followed was as inconsequential as it was idiotic, but I will reproduce it word for word, even though it is scarcely worth mentioning, simply because I am not trying to make any one episode in this story stand out.

‘Jane,’ said Wells, in a faint, almost inaudible voice.

‘Bertie,’ replied Jane, alarmed.

‘Charles—‘ Andrew began.

‘Andrew,’ Charles interrupted him.

Then there was silence. The afternoon light threw their shadows into relief. The curtain at the window billowed slightly. Out in the garden, the branches of the tree that rose from the ground like a crooked pikestaff rustled eerily as they shook in the breeze. A group of pale shadows nodded, embarrassed by the clumsy melodrama of the scene, as if this were a novel by Henry James (who, incidentally, will also make an appearance in this story).

‘Very well, gentlemen,’ declared Wells at last, in a good-natured voice, rising from his chair. ‘I think we can solve this in a civilised way without anyone getting hurt.’

Andrew looked beseechingly at his cousin.

‘It’s up to you, Bertie.’ Charles gave a sardonic smile.

‘Let go of her and I’ll show you my time machine.’

Andrew stared at him in amazement. Were Gilliam Murray’s suspicions true? Did Wells really have a time machine?

Obviously pleased, Charles released Jane, who crossed the very short distance separating her from her beloved Bertie and threw her arms around him.

‘Don’t worry, Jane,’ the author calmed her. ‘Everything will be all right.’

‘Well, then,’ said Charles, impatiently.

Wells gently extricated himself from Jane’s embrace and contemplated Charles with visible distaste. ‘Follow me to the attic’

Forming a sort of funeral procession, with Wells leading the way, they climbed a creaking staircase that seemed as though it might give way beneath their feet at any moment. The attic had been built in the roof space above the second floor, and had an unpleasantly claustrophobic feel to it, due to the low, sloping ceiling and the extravagant collection of assorted bric-à-brac. In a corner under the window, through which the last rays of sunlight were filtering, stood the strange contraption. Judging from his cousin’s awed expression and the way he practically bowed before it, Andrew assumed this must be the time machine. He approached the object, examining it with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.

At first sight, the machine capable of breaking down the barriers confining man to the present looked like some sort of sophisticated sleigh. However, the rectangular wooden pedestal to which it was fixed suggested it was not designed to travel through space, but would need to be dragged along, which would be difficult owing to its size. The apparatus was surrounded by a waist-high brass rail, a flimsy barrier that had to be stepped over to gain access to the sturdy seat in the middle. The seat vaguely resembled a barber’s chair, to which had been attached two exquisitely carved wooden arms, and was upholstered in rather lurid red velvet. In front of it, supported by two elegant bars, also made of brass, was a medium-sized dial, the control panel with three monitors showing the day, the month and the year. A delicate glass lever protruded from a wheel to the right of the dial. The machine seemed to have no other handles, and Andrew deduced that the whole thing worked by pulling on this single lever.

Behind the seat there was a complicated mechanism resembling a spirit still. A shaft stuck out of it, supporting a huge round disc covered with strange symbols. It looked as if it might spin round. Apparently designed to protect the machine, it was bigger than a Spartan shield, and was undoubtedly the most spectacular part of the contraption. Finally, a little plaque screwed to the control panel read: ‘Made by H. G. Wells’.

‘Are you an inventor, too?’ Andrew asked, taken aback.

‘Of course not – don’t be absurd,’ replied Wells, pretending to be annoyed. ‘As I already told you, I’m only a writer.’

‘Well, if you didn’t build it, where did you get it from?’

Wells sighed, apparently annoyed at having to explain himself to these strangers. Charles pressed the revolver into Jane’s temple once more, harder this time. ‘My cousin asked you a question, Mr Wells.’

The author shot him a black look. ‘Soon after my novel was published,’ he said, realising he had no choice but to comply with the intruders, ‘I received a letter from a scientist who told me that for years he had been secretly working on a time machine very similar to the one I described in my book. He said it was almost finished, and he wanted to show it to somebody, but he didn’t know whom. He considered, not without good reason, that it was a dangerous invention, capable of arousing unhealthy interest. My novel had convinced him I was the right man to confide in. We met a couple of times, with the aim of getting to know one another, of finding out whether we could really trust each other. We realised we could, not least because we had very similar ideas about the many inherent dangers of time travel. He built the machine here in this very attic. And the little plaque was his affectionate way of showing his gratitude for my collaboration. I don’t know if you remember my book, but this amazing machine is nothing like the hulking great thing illustrated on the cover. It doesn’t work in the same way, either, of course, but don’t ask me how it does, because I’m not a man of science.

‘When the time came to try it out, we decided he should have the honour. I would oversee the operation from the present. As we had no way of knowing whether the machine would withstand more than one journey, we decided to travel far into the past, but to a time that was peaceful. We chose a period prior to the Roman invasion, when this area was inhabited by witches and druids, a period that should not have entailed much danger, unless the druids wanted to sacrifice us to some deity. My friend boarded the machine, set it to the agreed date and pulled on the lever. I watched him disappear before my very eyes. Two hours later, the machine came back without him. It was perfectly intact, although there were a few worrying fresh bloodstains on the seat. I haven’t seen him since.’

There was a deathly silence.

Charles lowered his pistol and asked: ‘Have you tried it?’

‘Yes,’ confessed Wells, a little shamefaced. ‘But only a few brief exploratory journeys into the past, no more than four or five years. And I was careful to change nothing, because I was afraid of the consequences that that might have on the fabric of time. I didn’t have the courage to venture into the future. I don’t share the same spirit of adventure as the inventor in my novel. This is all too much for me. In fact, I was thinking of destroying the thing.’

‘Destroying it?’ Charles exclaimed in horror. ‘But why?’

Wells shrugged, giving them to understand he was not quite sure of the answer to that question.

‘I don’t know what became of my friend,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps there is a guardian of time, who fires indiscriminately at anyone trying to change events in the past to their own advantage. In any case, I don’t know what to do with his extraordinary legacy’

He frowned at the machine, as though he were contemplating a cross he had to bear every time he went for a walk. ‘I dare not tell anyone about it, because I cannot even begin to imagine how it would change the world, for better or worse. Have you ever wondered what makes men act responsibly? I’ll tell you: they only have one go at things. If we had machines that allowed us to correct all our mistakes, even the most foolish ones, we would live in a world of irresponsible people. Given its potential, all I can really use it for is my own rather futile purposes. But what if one day I yield to temptation and decide to use it for personal gain – for example, to change something in my past, or to travel into the future in order to steal some incredible invention with which I could improve my present circumstances? I would be betraying my friend’s dream . . .’ He gave a despondent sigh. ‘As you can see, this amazing machine has become a burden to me.’

With these words, he looked Andrew up and down intimidatingly as though he were sizing him up for an imaginary coffin.

‘However, you wish to use it to save a life,’ he almost whispered. ‘What nobler cause could there be? If I let you do it and you succeed, it will justify the machine’s existence.’

‘Quite so. What nobler cause could there be than to save a life?’ Charles reaffirmed hurriedly – Wells’s unexpected consent had apparently left his cousin speechless. ‘And I assure you Andrew will succeed,’ he said, going over to his cousin and clapping him heartily on the shoulder. ‘My cousin will kill the Ripper and save Marie Kelly’

Wells glanced at his wife, seeking her approval.

‘Oh, Bertie, you must help him,’ declared Jane, full of excitement. ‘It’s so romantic’

Wells looked again at Andrew, trying to conceal the flash of envy his wife’s remark had triggered in him. But deep down he knew Jane had used the right adjective to describe what the young man intended to do. There was no place in his own ordered life for love like that, the sort that caused tragedies, or started wars requiring the construction of giant wooden horses: love that could easily end in death. No, he would never know what that kind of love was. He would never know what it meant to lose control, to be consumed, to give in to his instincts. And yet, despite his inability to abandon himself to these passions, as ardent as they were destructive, despite his pragmatic, cautious nature, which only allowed him to pursue harmless amorous liaisons that could not possibly degenerate into unhealthy obsessions, Jane loved him. All of a sudden this seemed an inexplicable miracle for which he ought to be thankful.

‘All right,’ he declared, now in good spirits. ‘Let’s do it. Let’s kill the monster and save the girl!’

Infected by his burst of enthusiasm, Charles took the cutting about Marie Kelly’s murder out of his bemused cousin’s pocket, and approached Wells so that they could study it together.

‘The crime took place on the seventh of November 1888, at about five in the morning,’ he pointed out. ‘Andrew needs to arrive a few minutes earlier, lie in wait for the Ripper near Marie Kelly’s room, then shoot the ogre when he appears.’

‘It sounds like a good plan,’ Wells agreed. ‘But we must bear in mind that the machine only travels through time, not space, which means it won’t move from here. Your cousin will need several hours’ leeway to reach London.’

Like an excited child, Wells leaped over to the machine and began adjusting the monitors on the control panel. ‘There we are,’ he declared. ‘I’ve programmed it to take your cousin back to that date. Now all we have to do is wait until two in the morning to begin the journey. That way he’ll arrive in Whitechapel in time to prevent the crime being committed.’

‘Perfect,’ exclaimed Charles.

The four looked at one another in silence, not knowing how to fill the time before the journey began. Luckily, one of them was a woman.

‘Have you had supper yet, gentlemen?’ asked Jane, showing the practical nature of her sex.

Less than an hour later, Charles and Andrew discovered that Wells had married an excellent cook. They were squeezed around the table in the narrow kitchen, tucking into one of the most delicious roasts they had ever eaten, a most agreeable way of passing the time until the early hours. During supper, Wells showed an interest in the voyages to the year 2000, and Charles spared no detail. Feeling as if he were recounting the plot of one of the fantasy novels he was so fond of, Charles described how he and the other tourists had travelled across the fourth dimension in a tramcar called the Cronotilus, until they reached the ruined London of the future. There, hidden behind a pile of rocks, they had witnessed the final battle between the evil Solomon and the brave Captain Derek Shackleton.

Wells bombarded him with so many questions that after he had finished his story, Charles asked the author why he had not gone on one of the expeditions, if he was so interested in the outcome of that future war. Wells went quiet, and Charles realised during the ensuing silence that he had unwittingly offended the author.

‘Forgive my inquisitiveness, Mr Wells,’ he apologised hurriedly. ‘Of course not everyone can afford a hundred pounds.’

‘Oh, it isn’t the money’ Jane broke in. ‘Mr Murray has invited Bertie to take part in his voyages on several occasions, but he always refuses.’

As she said this, she glanced at her husband, perhaps in the hope that he might feel encouraged to explain himself. But Wells stared at the joint of lamb with a mournful smile.

‘Who would want to travel in a crowded tramcar when they can make the same journey in a luxurious carriage?’ Andrew interposed.

The three others looked at the young man, exchanged puzzled glances, then nodded slowly in agreement.

Wells wiped the grease from his lips with a napkin. ‘But let’s get back to the matter in hand,’ he declared, with renewed enthusiasm. ‘On one of my exploratory trips in the machine, I travelled back six years, arriving in the same attic when the house was occupied by the previous tenants. If I remember correctly, they had a horse tethered in the garden. I propose that you climb down the creeper quietly, so as not to wake them, then jump on the horse and ride to London as fast as you can. Once you have killed the Ripper, come straight back here. Climb onto the machine, set the date for today and pull the lever. Do you understand?’

‘Y-yes,’ Andrew stammered.

Charles leaned back in his seat and gazed at him affectionately. ‘You’re about to change the past, cousin,’ he mused. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

Jane brought in a bottle of port and poured a glass for the guests. They sipped slowly, glancing at their watches occasionally, visibly impatient, until the author said, ‘Well, the time has come to make history.’

He set down his glass on the table and solemnly steered them once more to the attic.

‘Here, cousin,’ Charles said, handing Andrew the pistol. ‘It’s already loaded. When you shoot the swine, make sure you aim at his chest.’

‘At his chest,’ echoed Andrew, his hand shaking as he took it, quickly slipping it into his pocket so that neither Wells nor his cousin would see how terrified he was.

Both men took an arm and guided him ceremoniously towards the machine. Andrew climbed over the brass rail and sat in the seat. Despite his feeling of unreality, he could not help noticing the dark splatter of blood on the upholstery.

‘Now listen to me,’ said Wells, in a commanding tone. ‘Try to avoid making contact with anyone, even with your beloved, no matter how much you want to see her alive again. Just shoot the Ripper and come straight back the same way you went before you meet your past self. I don’t know what the consequences of such an unnatural encounter might be, but I suspect it would wreak havoc in the fabric of time, and bring about a catastrophe that might destroy the world. Now, tell me, have I made myself clear?’

‘Yes, don’t worry,’ murmured Andrew, more intimidated by the harshness in Wells’s voice than by the possibly fatal consequences of his desire to save Marie Kelly if he made a mistake.

‘Another thing,’ said Wells, returning to the fray, although this time in a less menacing voice, ‘your journey won’t be anything like you read in my novel. You won’t see any snails walking backwards. I confess to having used a certain amount of poetic licence. The effects of time travel are far less exhilarating. The moment you pull on the lever, you’ll notice a surge of energy, followed almost immediately by a blinding flash. That’s all. Then, quite simply, you’ll be in 1888. You might feel dizzy or sick after the journey – I hope that won’t affect your aim,’ he added sarcastically.

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Andrew muttered, absolutely terrified.

Wells nodded, reassured. Apparently, he had no other advice to give because he began to hunt for something on a shelf full of knick-knacks. The others watched him without saying a word.

When at last Wells found what he had been looking for, he declared: ‘If you don’t mind, we’ll keep the cutting in this little box. When you come back we’ll open it and find out whether you managed to change the past. I imagine that if your mission has been successful, the headline will announce the death of Jack the Ripper.’

Andrew nodded feebly, and handed Wells the cutting. Then Charles went to his cousin, placed a hand solemnly on his shoulder and gave him an encouraging smile, in which Andrew thought he glimpsed a hint of anxiety. When his cousin stepped aside, Jane approached the machine, wished Andrew good luck, and gave him a little peck on the cheek. Wells beamed as he watched the ritual.

‘Andrew, you’re a pioneer,’ he observed, once these displays of encouragement were over, as though he felt he must close the ceremony with a lofty remark of the sort carved in stone. ‘Enjoy the journey. If in the next few decades time travel becomes commonplace, changing the past will doubtless be considered a crime.’

Then, adding to Andrew’s unease, he asked the others to take a few steps back to avoid being singed by the burst of energy the machine would give off when its occupant pulled the lever. Andrew watched them step back, trying to conceal his anxiety. He took a deep breath, struggling to control the panic and confusion that were almost overwhelming him. He was going to save Marie, he told himself. He was travelling back in time, to the night of her death, to shoot her killer before he had a chance to rip her guts out, thus changing history and erasing the eight years of suffering he had endured. He looked at the date on the panel – the accursed date that had ruined his life. He could not believe it was in his power to save her, yet all he had to do to overcome his disbelief was to pull that lever. Nothing more. Then whether or not he believed in time travel would become irrelevant.

His trembling hand glistened with sweat as he grasped the lever. The coolness of the glass in his palm seemed absurd because it was such a commonplace sensation. He glanced at the three figures waiting expectantly by the attic door.

‘Go on, cousin,’ prompted Charles.

Andrew pulled the lever.

To begin with, nothing happened. Then he became aware of a faint persistent purring, and the air seemed to quiver, as though he were hearing the world’s insides rumble. All of a sudden, the hypnotic drone was broken by an eerie crack, and a bright flash of blue light pierced the attic’s gloom. A second deafening crack was followed by another flash of light, then another, with sparks flying in all directions as though they were trying to light up every corner of the room. Suddenly Andrew found himself at the centre of a continuous burst of blue lightning bolts. On the far side stood Charles, Jane and Wells, who had stretched his arms out in front of the other two, whether to protect them from the shower of sparks or to prevent them rushing to his aid, Andrew could not tell. The air, perhaps the world, possibly time, or everything at once, disintegrated before his eyes. Reality fragmented.

Then, just as the author had described, an intense light blinded him and the attic disappeared. He gritted his teeth to stifle a scream, as he felt himself fall through the air.

Chapter XV

Andrew had to blink at least a dozen times before he could see properly again. As the attic went back to apparent normality, his wildly racing heart began to slow down. He was relieved not to feel dizzy or sick. Even his panic had begun to subside once he realised he had not been burned to a crisp by the lightning, which had left a smell of singed butterflies in the air. His only discomfort was that his whole body felt tense as a result of his anxiety, but in the end he was even glad of that. This was no picnic he was going on. He was about to change the past, to alter events that had already taken place. He, Andrew Harrington, was going to shake up time. Was it not better to be on the alert, to be on his guard?

When the effects of the flash had finally died away and he was able to see properly, he plucked up the courage to step down off the machine, as quietly as possible. The solidity of the floor surprised him, as if he had been expecting the past to be made of mist or fog or some other equally ethereal or malleable substance, simply because the time that corresponded to it had already been used up.

However, as he discovered when he placed his foot tentatively on the ground, that reality was as solid and real as the one he had left. But was he in 1888? He glanced suspiciously around the attic, still plunged into darkness, even savouring a few mouthfuls of air, looking for some detail to prove he was in the past, that he had indeed travelled in time. He discovered it when he peered out of the window: the road looked the same as he remembered it, but there was no sign of the cab that had brought them, and in the garden he saw a horse that had not been there before. Was a simple nag tied to a fence enough to distinguish one year from another? As evidence it seemed rather flimsy and unromantic.

Disappointed, he carefully surveyed the peaceful backdrop of the night sky studded with stars, like rice grains randomly scattered. He saw nothing strange there either. After a few moments of fruitless search, he told himself there was no reason why he should notice any significant differences since he had only travelled back eight years.

Then he shook his head. He could not waste time collecting evidence like an entomologist. He had a mission to fulfil, in which time was very much of the essence. He opened the window and, after testing the creeper’s resistance, followed Wells’s instructions and began to climb down it as quietly as possible so as not to alert the occupants of the house. This proved easy, and once he reached the ground, he crept towards the horse, which had been watching him impassively, and stroked its mane. The horse had no saddle, but Andrew found one hanging on the fence. He could not believe his luck. He put it on the horse’s back and secured the girth, avoiding any sudden gestures that might make the animal nervous, keeping an eye on the darkened house. Then he took the reins, and coaxed it out into the road with affectionate whispers. He was amazed at his own calm. He mounted, glanced back one last time to ensure that everything was still as disappointingly quiet, then set off towards London.

Only when he was on his way, a fast-moving splodge in the darkness, did it dawn on Andrew that soon he was going to see Marie Kelly. He felt a pang, and became tense again. Yes, incredible though it might seem to him, in the year he was in now, at this time in the morning, she was still alive: she had not been murdered. She would probably be in the Britannia at that very moment, drinking to forget her spineless lover before stumbling home into the arms of death.

But then he remembered he was not allowed to see her, not allowed to embrace her, to nestle his head on her shoulder and breathe in her longed-for odour. No, Wells had forbidden it, because that simple gesture could alter the fabric of time, bring about the end of the world. He must limit himself to killing the Ripper and returning the way he had come, as the author had ordered. His action must be swift and precise, like a surgical intervention whose consequences would only be visible when the patient came to – that was to say, once he had travelled back to his own time.

Whitechapel was immersed in a deathly silence. He was surprised at the absence of the usual hurly-burly, until he remembered that during those weeks Whitechapel was a feared neighbourhood in whose alleyways the monster known as Jack the Ripper roamed, doling out death with his knife. He slowed his mount as he entered Dorset Street, aware that, in the intense silence, its hoofs on the cobblestones must produce a din like that of a smithy in his forge.

He dismounted a few yards from the entrance to Miller’s Court, and tethered the animal to an iron railing, away from any streetlamps so that it was less likely to be noticed. Then, after making sure the street was empty, he darted through the stone archway leading to the flats. The tenants were all asleep, so he had no light to guide him through the pitch darkness, but Andrew could have found his way blindfold. The further he ventured into that powerfully familiar place, the more overwhelmed he was by a sadness that culminated when he reached Marie Kelly’s room, which was also in darkness.

Nostalgia gave way to profound shock when he remembered that while he was standing before the modest abode that had been both heaven and hell to him his father was slapping his face in the Harrington mansion. That night, thanks to a miracle of science, there were two Andrews in the world. He wondered whether his other self might be aware of his existence, too, in the form of goose pimples or a sharp pain in his stomach, as he had heard sometimes happened with twins.

The echo of footsteps interrupted his reverie. His heart beat faster and he ran to hide round the corner of one of the neighbouring dwellings. He had thought of hiding there from the very beginning because, besides seeming to be the safest place, it was scarcely a dozen yards from Marie’s door, the perfect distance to be able to see clearly enough to shoot the Ripper, in case he was too afraid to get any closer to him.

Once safely out of sight, back against the wall, Andrew drew the pistol out of his pocket, listening to the footsteps as they drew nearer. The steps that had alerted him had an uncontrolled, irregular quality, typical of a drunk or wounded person. He instantly understood that they could only be those of his beloved, and his heart now fluttered like a leaf in a sudden gust of wind. That night, as on so many others, Marie Kelly was staggering home from the Britannia, but this time his other self was not there to undress her, put her to bed, tuck in her alcoholic dreams.

He poked his head slowly round the corner. His eyes were accustomed enough to the dark for him to be able to make out the reeling figure of Marie pausing outside the door to her tiny room. He had to stop himself running towards her. He felt his eyes moisten as he watched her straighten in a drunken effort to regain her balance, adjust her hat, which was in danger of toppling off with the swaying of her body. She thrust her arm through the hole in the window, forcing the lock for what seemed like an eternity, until finally she managed to open the door. Then she disappeared inside the room, slamming the door behind her. A moment later the faint glow from a lamp cleared part of the swirling gloom in front of her door.

Andrew leaned back against the wall. He had scarcely dried his tears when the sound of more footsteps startled him. Someone else was coming through the entrance into the yard. It took him a few moments to realise this must be the Ripper. His heart froze as he heard the man’s boots crossing the cobblestones with cold deliberation. These were the movements of a practised, ruthless predator, who knew there was no escape for his quarry.

Andrew poked his head out again and, with a shudder of terror, saw a huge man calmly approaching Marie’s room, surveying the place with a penetrating gaze. He felt strangely queasy: he had already read in the newspapers what was happening now before his eyes. It was like watching a play he knew by heart, and all that remained was for him to judge the quality of the performance. The man paused in front of the door, peering surreptitiously through the hole in the window, as though he intended to reproduce faithfully every detail of the article Andrew had carried in his pocket for eight years – even though it had not yet been written. Now, because of his leapfrogging through time, it seemed more a prediction than a description of events. Except that, unlike then, he was there, ready to change it. Viewed in this light, what he was about to do felt like touching up an already completed painting, like adding a brushstroke to The Three Graces or The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

After gleefully establishing that his victim was alone, the Ripper cast a final glance around him. He seemed pleased, overjoyed even, at the entrenched calm of the place that would allow him to commit his crime in unexpected seclusion. His attitude incensed Andrew, and he stepped out of his hiding place without considering the possibility of shooting him from there. Suddenly the prospect of finishing off the Ripper from a distance, thanks to the sanitised intervention of a weapon, seemed too cold, impersonal and unsatisfying. His intense rage required him to take the man’s life in a more intimate way – possibly by strangling him with his bare hands, smashing his skull with the butt of his pistol – that would allow him to feel the Ripper’s contemptible life ebbing away at a rhythm he himself imposed. But as he strode resolutely towards the monster, Andrew realised that, however keen he was to engage in hand-to-hand combat, his opponent’s colossal stature and his own inexperience of that kind of fighting made inadvisable any strategy that did not involve the weapon he was clutching.

In front of the door to the little room, the Ripper watched him approach with calm curiosity, wondering perhaps where on earth this fellow had sprung from. Andrew stopped prudently about five yards away from him, like a child who fears being mauled by the lion if he gets too close to the cage. He was unable to make out the man’s face in the dark, but perhaps that was as well. He raised the revolver, and, as Charles had suggested, aimed at the man’s chest. Had he fired straight away, in cold blood, giving no thought to what he was doing – as if it were just another step in the wild sequence of events he appeared to be caught up in – everything would have gone according to plan. His action would have been as swift and precise as a surgical intervention. But, unfortunately, he did stop to think about what he was doing: it dawned on him that he was about to shoot a man, not a deer or even a bottle. His finger froze on the trigger.

The Ripper tilted his head to one side, half surprised, half mocking, and Andrew watched as his hand clutching the revolver started to shake. This weakened his already feeble resolve, while the Ripper, emboldened by his hesitation, swiftly pulled a knife from inside his coat and hurled himself at Andrew in search of his jugular. Ironically, his frenzied charge released Andrew’s trigger finger. A sudden, quick, almost abrupt explosion pierced the silence of the night. The bullet hit the man right in the middle of the chest. Still aiming at him, Andrew watched him stagger backwards. He lowered the warm, smoking gun, no less astonished at having used it than he was to find himself in one piece having fended off that surprise attack. This, though, was not strictly true, as he soon discovered from the sharp pain in his left shoulder.

Without taking his eyes off the Ripper, who was swaying before him like a bear on its hind legs, he felt for the source of the pain, and discovered that the knife, although it had missed his main artery, had ripped through the shoulder of his jacket and sliced into his flesh. Although blood was flowing merrily from the wound, it did not appear very deep. Meanwhile, the Ripper was taking his time to prove whether or not Andrew’s shot had been fatal. After bobbing around clumsily, he doubled over, letting go of the knife, which ricocheted over the cobblestones and disappeared into the shadows. Then, with a hoarse bellow, he bent down on one knee, as though to acknowledge in his murderer the traits of nobility, and moaned. Finally, when Andrew was beginning to tire of the display of dying and was toying with the idea of kicking the man to the ground, he collapsed in a heap on to the cobblestones and lay there, stretched out at his feet.

Andrew was about to kneel down and check the man’s pulse when Marie Kelly, no doubt alarmed by the skirmish, opened the door to her little room. Before she could recognise him, and resisting the temptation to look at her after eight years of her being dead, Andrew turned on his heel. No longer worried about the corpse, he ran towards the exit as he heard her scream: ‘Murder, murder!’ Only when he had reached the stone archway did he glance back over his shoulder. He saw his beloved kneeling in a shimmering halo of light, closing the eyes of the man who, in a far-off time, in a world that had taken on the consistency of a dream, had mutilated her to the point at which she was unrecognisable.

The horse was standing where he had left it. Out of breath from running, Andrew mounted and rode off as fast as he could. Despite his agitation, he managed to find his way out of the maze of alleyways and on to the main road that would take him back to Woking. It was only when he had left London that he could acknowledge what he had done. He had killed a man, but at least he had done so in self-defence. And, besides, it had not been any man. He had killed Jack the Ripper, saved Marie Kelly, changed events that had already taken place. He urged the horse on violently, anxious to travel back to his own time and discover the results of his action. If things had gone well, Marie would not only be alive but would probably be his wife. Would they have had a child, possibly two or three?

He drove the horse to the limit, as though afraid the idyllic present would dissolve like a mirage if he took too long to reach it.

Woking was still bathed in the serenity that had aroused suspicion in him a few hours earlier. Now, though, he was grateful for the tranquillity that would allow him to end his mission without further incident. He leaped off the horse and opened the gate. He stopped dead in his tracks: a figure was waiting for him beside the door to the house. Andrew remembered what had happened to Wells’s friend: this must be some guardian of time with orders to kill him for having meddled with the past. Trying hard not to give way to panic, he pulled the gun from his pocket as fast as he could and aimed it at the man’s chest, just as his cousin had suggested he do with the Ripper.

The figure dived to one side and rolled across the lawn until he was swallowed up by darkness. Andrew tried to follow the man’s cat-like movements with his revolver, not knowing what else to do, until he saw him nimbly scale the fence and jump into the road.

Only when he heard feet running away did he lower his weapon, calming himself with slow, deep breaths. Could that man have killed Wells’s friend? He did not know, but now that he had escaped it did not matter very much. Andrew gave him no more thought and began to climb back up the creeper. This he was obliged to do using only one arm, as his wounded left shoulder throbbed painfully at the slightest effort. Even so, he managed to reach the attic, where the time machine stood waiting for him.

Exhausted and a little faint from loss of blood, he collapsed on to the seat, set the return date on the contraption’s control panel and, after bidding 1888 farewell with a longing gaze, pulled on the glass lever without delay.

This time he felt no fear when the flashing lights engulfed him, only the pleasant sensation of going home.

Chapter XVI

Once the sparks had stopped flying, leaving wisps of smoke swirling in the air like feathers after a pillow fight, Andrew was surprised to see Charles, Wells and his wife huddled by the door exactly as he had left them. He attempted a triumphant smile but only managed a weak grimace due to light-headedness and his increasingly painful wound. As he prepared to climb down from the machine, the others glimpsed his blood-soaked sleeve.

‘Good God, Andrew!’ shouted his cousin, leaping towards him. ‘What happened to you?’

‘It’s nothing,’ replied Andrew, leaning on Charles to steady himself. ‘Only a scratch.’

Wells took his other arm, and between them the two men helped him down the stairs. Andrew tried to walk on his own, but they ignored his efforts so he meekly allowed himself to be guided into a small sitting room – at that moment he would have let himself be carried off by a horde of demons to the depths of hell itself. There was nothing else he could do: the build-up of nervous tension, the loss of blood and the arduous ride had drained his energy. They sat him down on the armchair nearest the hearth, where a roaring fire was blazing.

After examining his wound with what looked to Andrew like an annoyed twist of the lips, Wells ordered his wife to fetch bandages and everything else necessary to stem the bleeding. He all but told her to hurry up before the gushing flow permanently ruined the carpet. Almost at once the fire’s healing warmth calmed Andrew’s shivering, but it also threatened to send him to sleep. Luckily it occurred to Charles to give him a glass of brandy, which took the edge off his giddiness and the crushing fatigue he felt.

Jane soon returned and saw to his wound with the neat competence of a war nurse. She cut away his jacket sleeve with a pair of scissors, then applied a series of stinging potions and dressings to the torn flesh. To finish off she bandaged it tightly, then stepped back to contemplate her handiwork.

It was only when the most pressing issue had been resolved that the motley rescue team gathered eagerly around the chair where Andrew lay in a state of semi-collapse. They waited for him to recount what had happened. As though he had dreamed it, Andrew remembered the Ripper lying on the ground, and Marie closing his eyes. That could only mean he had succeeded.

‘I did it,’ he announced, trying to sound enthusiastic despite his fatigue. ‘I killed Jack the Ripper.’

His words triggered an outburst of joy, which he observed with amused surprise. After pelting him with pats on his back, they flung their arms around one another, crying out their praise and abandoning themselves to wild excitement more suited to New Year celebrations or pagan rituals. On realising how unrestrained their reaction was, the three calmed themselves, and gazed at him with a mixture of tenderness and curiosity. Andrew grinned back at them, slightly embarrassed, and when it seemed no one had anything else to say, he looked around for any telltale signs that his brushstroke had altered the present. His gaze fell on the cigar box lying on the table, which contained the cutting. Their eyes followed his.

‘So,’ said Wells, reading his thoughts, ‘you threw a pebble into a still pond and now you are itching to see the ripples it made. Let’s not put it off any longer. It’s time to see whether you really have changed the past’

Adopting the role of master of ceremonies once more, he walked over to the table, solemnly picked up the box and presented it to Andrew with the lid open, like one of the Three Wise Men. Andrew took the cutting, trying to stop his hand shaking, and felt his heart miss several beats as he began to unfold it. No sooner had he done so than he found himself contemplating the exact headline he had been reading for years. Scanning the article, he realised the contents were also unchanged: as if nothing had happened, the news item related the brutal murder of Marie Kelly at the hands of Jack the Ripper, and his subsequent capture by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Andrew looked at Wells, bewildered. How could this be?

‘But I killed him,’ he protested feebly. ‘This can’t be right . . .’

Wells examined the cutting thoughtfully. Everyone in the room gazed at him, waiting for his verdict. After a few moments, he gave a murmur of comprehension. He straightened and, without looking at anyone, began to pace silently around the room. Owing to its narrow dimensions, he had to be content to circle the table a few times, hands thrust in his pockets, nodding now and then as if to reassure the others that his grasp of the matter was growing. Finally, he paused before Andrew, and smiled at him dolefully.

‘You saved the girl, Mr Harrington,’ he observed, with quiet conviction, ‘there is no doubt in my mind about that.’

‘B-but in that c-case,’ stammered Andrew, ‘why is she still dead?’

‘Because she must continue being dead in order for you to travel back in time to save her,’ the author declared, as though stating the obvious.

Andrew blinked, unable to fathom what Wells was trying to say.

‘Think about it: if she had still been alive would you have come to my house? Don’t you see that by killing her murderer and preventing her being ripped to shreds you have eliminated your reason for travelling back in time? And if there’s no journey, there’s no change. As you can see, the two events are inseparable,’ explained Wells, nourishing the cutting, which, with its original heading, corroborated his theory.

Andrew nodded slowly, glancing at the others, who looked as bewildered as he.

‘It isn’t all that complicated,’ scoffed Wells, amused by his audience’s confusion. ‘I’ll explain it in a different way. Imagine what must have happened after Andrew travelled back to this spot in the time machine: his other self must have arrived at Marie Kelly’s room, but instead of finding his beloved with her entrails exposed to the elements, he found her alive, kneeling by the body of the man whom police would soon identify as Jack the Ripper. An unforeseen avenger had stepped out of nowhere and murdered the Ripper before he could add Marie Kelly to his list of victims. And, thanks to this stranger, Andrew will be able to live with her happily ever after, although the irony is that he will never know he has you – I mean himself – to thank for it,’ the author concluded, gazing at him excitedly, with the eagerness of a child expecting to see a tree spring up moments after he has planted a seed. As Andrew was clearly still nonplussed, he added: ‘It is as though your action has caused a split in time, created a sort of alternative universe, a parallel world, if you like. And in that world Marie Kelly is alive and happy with your other self. Unfortunately you are in the wrong universe.’

Charles nodded, increasingly persuaded by Wells’s explanation, then turned to Andrew, hoping to find his cousin equally convinced. But Andrew needed a few more moments to mull over the writer’s words. He lowered his head, trying to ignore the others’ enquiring faces in order to consider the matter calmly. Given that nothing in his reality seemed to have changed, his journey in the time machine could not only be considered useless, but it was debatable whether it had even taken place. Yet he knew it had. He could not forget the image of Marie, the gun going off, the jolt it had sent up his arm and, above all, the nasty gash to his shoulder – irrefutable proof that his experience had not been a dream. Yes, those events had really occurred, and the fact that he could not see their effects did not mean there weren’t any, as Wells had quickly grasped. Just as a tree’s roots grow around a rock, so the consequences of his action, which could not simply vanish into thin air, had created another reality, a parallel world in which he and Marie Kelly were living happily together, a world that would not have existed if he had not travelled back in time.

This meant he had saved his beloved, even though he was not able to enjoy her. All he had was the comforting satisfaction of knowing that he had prevented her death, that he had done everything in his power to make amends. At least his other self would have her, he thought, with a degree of resignation. That other Andrew – who, after all, was him, his own flesh and blood – would be able to fulfil all his dreams. He would be able to make her his wife, to love her regardless of his father’s opposition and their neighbours’ malicious gossip. He only wished the other Andrew could know what a miracle that was, how during the past eight years while he had been tormenting himself, his luckier self had never stopped loving her, populating the world with the fruit of that love.

‘I understand,’ he murmured, smiling wanly at his friends.

Wells was unable to suppress a cry of triumph. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he exclaimed, while Charles and Jane resumed patting Andrew on the back.

‘Do you know why during my journeys into the past I always avoided seeing myself?’ Wells asked, without caring whether anyone was listening. ‘Because if I had, it would mean that at some point in my life I would have been obliged to walk through the door and greet myself, which – thankfully for my sanity – has never happened.’

After embracing his cousin repeatedly in a renewed display of euphoria, Charles helped him up out of his chair, while Jane straightened his jacket in a motherly gesture.

‘Perhaps those troubling sounds we hear in the night, the creaking noises we assume are the furniture, are simply the footsteps of a future self watching over us as we sleep, without daring to disturb us,’ Wells mused, oblivious to the general rejoicing.

It was only when Charles went to shake his hand that he appeared to emerge from his reverie.

‘Thanks awfully for everything, Mr Wells,’ said Charles. ‘I apologise for having burst into your house like that. I hope you can forgive me.’

‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. All is forgotten,’ replied the writer, with a vague wave, as though he had discovered something salutary, even revivifying, in having a gun aimed at him.

‘What will you do with the machine? Will you destroy it? ‘ Andrew ventured timidly.

Wells gazed at him, smiling benevolently. ‘I suppose so,’ he replied, ‘now it has fulfilled the mission for which it was quite possibly invented.’

Andrew was moved by his solemn words. He did not consider his personal tragedy the only one that warranted the use of the machine, but was grateful that the author, who scarcely knew him, had sympathised enough with his misfortune to consider it a good enough reason to flout the laws of time and perhaps endanger the world.

‘I also think it’s for the best, Mr Wells,’ said Andrew, having recovered from his emotion, ‘because you were right. There is a guardian of time, someone who watches over the past. I bumped into him when I came back, in the doorway to your house.’

‘Really?’ said Wells, taken aback.

‘Yes. Luckily I managed to frighten him off,’ replied Andrew. With this, he clasped the author in a heartfelt embrace. Beaming, Charles and Jane contemplated the scene, which would have been touching, were it not for the awkward stiffness with which Wells greeted Andrew’s affectionate gesture. When Andrew had finally let go of him, Charles said goodbye to the couple, steering his cousin out of the house lest he throw himself once more at the alarmed author.

Andrew crossed the garden vigilantly, right hand in his pocket on the pistol, afraid the guardian of time might have followed him back to the present and be lying in wait for him. But there was no sign of him. Outside the gate they found the cab that had brought them there only a few hours before, a few hours that to Andrew seemed like centuries.

‘Blast, I’ve forgotten my hat,’ said Charles, after Andrew had clambered in. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy, cousin.’

Andrew nodded absently, and settled into his seat, utterly exhausted. Through the tiny window he surveyed the encircling darkness as day began to dawn. Like a coat wearing thin at the elbows, night was unravelling at one of the furthest edges of the sky, its opaqueness gradually diluting into an ever paler blue, until a hazy light slowly began to reveal the contours of the world. With the exception of the driver, apparently asleep on his seat, it was as if this stunning display of golden and purple hues was being performed solely for his benefit. Many times over the past few years when Andrew had witnessed the majestic unveiling of dawn he had wondered whether that day he would die, whether that day his increasing torment would compel him to shoot himself with a pistol like the one he was now carrying in his pocket, the one he had removed from its glass cabinet the previous evening without knowing he would use it to kill Jack the Ripper. But now he could not watch the dawn and wonder whether he would be alive to see it tomorrow because he knew the answer: he would see the dawn tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because he had no reason to kill himself now that he had saved Marie. Should he go ahead with his plan out of sheer inertia, or simply because, as Wells had pointed out, he was in the wrong universe? This did not seem to justify the deed. In any event it felt less noble – and might even imply a fundamentally absurd jealousy of his time twin. After all, he was the other Andrew, and he ought to rejoice in his good fortune as he would his own or, failing that, that of his brother or his cousin Charles. Besides, if the grass in next door’s garden was always greener, how much more luxuriantly verdant must it be in the neighbouring universe? He should feel pleased to be happy in another world, to have achieved bliss in it.

Reaching this conclusion threw up another unexpected question: did knowing that you had achieved the life you wanted in another world absolve you from having to try to achieve it in this one? At first, Andrew did not know how to answer this question, but after a few moments’ thought he decided it did: he was absolved from being happy; he could be content to lead a peaceful life, enjoying its small pleasures without the slightest feeling of inner frustration. For, however trite it might seem, he could always console himself with the happy thought that he was living a full life in another place, which was both nearby and far away, a place that was inaccessible, uncharted, because it was on the reverse of any map.

Suddenly, he experienced an incredible sense of relief, as though a burden he had been carrying since birth had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt unfettered, reckless and wild. He had an overwhelming desire to reconnect with the world, to tread the common path of life with the rest of humanity, to send a note to Victoria Keller, or to her sister Madeleine, if Victoria was the one Charles had married, inviting her to dinner or to the theatre or for a walk in a park where he could ambush her, brush his lips against hers – simply because he was aware that at the same time he would also not be doing that. It seemed that this was the way the universe worked: excluding nothing, allowing everything to happen that could happen. Even if he did decide to kiss her, another Andrew would refrain from doing so, and would carry on rolling down the hill of time until he came to another pair of lips and split into another twin who, after dividing a few more times, would finally plunge over a cliff into the abyss of solitude.

Andrew leaned back in his seat, amazed that each of life’s twists and turns should give rise to a new existence vying with the old one to discover which was most authentic, instead of falling like sawdust and being swept away by the carpenter’s broom. It made him giddy to think that at each crossroads, clutches of other Andrews were born, and their lives went on at the same time as his, beyond the moment when his own ended, without him being aware of it. Ultimately it was man’s limited senses that established the boundaries of the world. But what if, like a magician’s box, the world had a false bottom and continued beyond the point where his senses told him it stopped? This was the same as asking whether roses kept their colour when no one was there to admire them. Was he right or was he losing his mind?

This was obviously a rhetorical question, yet the world took the trouble to respond. A soft breeze sprang up, lifting a leaf from among the many carpeting the pavement and making it dance on the surface of a puddle, like a magic trick performed for a single onlooker. Mesmerised, Andrew watched it spin until his cousin’s shoe halted its delicate movement.

‘All right, we can go now,’ said Charles, waving his hat triumphantly, like a hunter showing off a bloodstained duck.

Inside the cab, he raised an eyebrow, surprised at the dreamy smile on his cousin’s face. ‘Are you feeling all right, Andrew?’

Andrew gazed at his cousin fondly. Charles had moved heaven and earth to help him save Marie Kelly, and he was going to repay him in the best way he could: by staying alive, at least until his moment arrived. He would pay Charles back three-fold for all the affection he had shown him over these past years, years he now felt ashamed to have wasted out of apathy and indifference. He would embrace life – yes, embrace it as he would a wondrous gift, and devote himself to living it to the best of his ability, the way everyone else did, the way Charles did. He would transform life into a long, peaceful Sunday afternoon in which he would wile away the time until nightfall. It could not be that difficult: he might even learn to enjoy the simple miracle of being alive.

‘Better than ever, Charles,’ he replied, perking up. ‘So good, in fact, that I would gladly accept an invitation to dine at your house, provided your charming wife also invites her equally charming sister.’

Chapter XVII

This part of the story could end here, and for Andrew it does, except that this is not only Andrew’s story. If it were, there would be no need for my involvement: he could have told his own story, as each man recounts the tale of his own life to himself on his deathbed. Yet that tale is always incomplete, for only a man shipwrecked on a desert island from birth, growing up and dying there with no more than a few monkeys for company, can claim without a shadow of doubt that his life is exactly what he thinks it has been – provided, of course, that the macaques have not stashed away in some cave his trunk of books, clothes and photographs, washed up by the tide.

However – with the exception of shipwrecked babies and other extreme cases – each man’s life forms part of a vast tapestry, woven together with those of countless other souls keen to judge his actions not only to his face but behind his back. Only if he considers the world around him a backdrop, with puppets that stop moving when he goes to sleep, can he accept that his life has been exactly as he tells it. Otherwise, moments before he breathes his last, he will have to accept that the idea he has of his own life must of necessity be vague, fanciful and uncertain, that there were things that affected him, for good or bad, that he will never know about. They may range from his wife having had an affair with the pastry cook, to his neighbours’ dog urinating on his azaleas every time he went out.

So, just as Charles did not witness the charming dance the leaf performed on the puddle, Andrew did not witness what happened when Charles got his beloved hat back. He could have pictured him entering Wells’s house, apologising for the fresh intrusion, joking about not being armed this time, and the three of them crawling about on their hands and knees hunting for the elusive hat, except that we know he had no time to wonder about what his cousin was doing because he was too busy with his heart-warming deliberations about other worlds and magicians’ boxes.

I, on the other hand, see and hear everything whether I want to or not, and it is my task to separate the seed from the chaff, to decide which events I consider most important in the tale I have chosen to tell. I must therefore go back to the point at which Charles realises he has forgotten his hat and returns to the author’s house. You may be wondering what bearing such an insignificant act as the fetching of a hat could possibly have on this story. None whatsoever, I would say, if Charles really had forgotten his hat by accident. But things are not always as they seem, which saves me the trouble of burdening you with a list of examples you could easily find by rummaging around a little in your own life, regardless of whether you live near a pastry shop or have a garden full of azaleas. Let us return to Charles without further ado.

‘Blast, I’ve forgotten my hat,’ said Charles, after Andrew had clambered into the cab. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy, cousin.’

Charles strode hurriedly across the tiny front garden, and entered the author’s house, looking for the tiny sitting room where they had taken Andrew. There was his hat, waiting for him on a peg on the coat-stand exactly where he had left it. He seized it, smiling, and went out into the passageway, but instead of going back the way he had come, as would appear logical, he turned round and mounted the stairs to the attic. There he found the author and his wife hovering around the time machine in the dim glow of a candle placed on the floor. Charles made his presence known, clearing his throat loudly before declaring triumphantly: ‘Everything turned out perfectly. My cousin was completely taken in!’

Wells and Jane were collecting the Ruhmkorff coils they had hidden earlier among the shelves of knick-knacks. Charles took care to avoid treading on the switch that activated them from the door, setting off the series of deafening electrical charges that had so terrified his cousin. After asking for Wells’s help and telling him about his plan, Charles had been sceptical when the author had come up with the idea of using those diabolical coils; he had confessed rather sheepishly to being one of the many spectators who had fled like frightened rabbits from the museum where their inventor, a pale, lanky Croat named Nikola Tesla, had introduced to the public his devilish device and the hair-raising blue flashes that caused the air in the room to quiver.

However, Wells had assured him that these harmless contraptions would be the least of his worries. Besides, he ought to start getting used to the invention that would revolutionise the world. He went on to tell him, with a tremor of respect in his voice, how Tesla had set up a hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls, which had bathed the town of Buffalo in electric light. It was the first step in a project that signalled the end of night on Earth, Wells had affirmed. Evidently, the author considered the Croat a genius, and was eager for him to invent a voice-activated typewriter that would free him from the burden of tapping the keys with his fingers while his imagination raced ahead.

In view of the plan’s success, Charles had to agree in hindsight that Wells had been brilliant: the journey back in time would never have been as believable without the lightning flashes, which in the end had provided the perfect build-up, before the magnesium powder concealed behind the false control panel blinded whoever pulled the lever.

‘Magnificently’ Wells rejoiced, getting rid of the coils he was holding and going to greet Charles. ‘I confess I had my doubts: there were too many things that might have gone wrong.’

‘True,’ admitted Charles, ‘but we had nothing to lose and much to gain. I already told you that if we succeeded my cousin might give up the idea of killing himself He looked at Wells with genuine admiration. ‘And I must say that your theory about parallel universes to explain why the Ripper’s death did not change anything in the present was so convincing even I believed it.’

Tm so glad. But I don’t deserve all the credit. You had the most difficult task of hiring the actors, replacing the bullets with blanks, and most of all getting this thing built,’ said Wells, pointing to the time machine.

The two men gazed at it fondly for a few moments.

‘Yes, and the end result is truly splendid,’ Charles agreed. Then he joked: ‘What a pity it doesn’t work.’

After a brief pause, Wells hastened to chortle politely, emitting a sound like a walnut being cracked.

‘What do you intend doing with it?’ Wells asked abruptly, as though he wanted to smother the sickly laugh that had shown the world he possessed a sense of humour.

‘Nothing, really’ the other man replied. ‘I’d like you to keep it’

‘Me?’

‘Of course. Where better than at your house? Consider it a thank-you present for your invaluable help.’

You needn’t thank me for anything,’ protested Wells. ‘I found the whole thing hugely enjoyable.’

Charles smiled to himself: how fortunate that the author had agreed to help him. Also that Gilliam Murray had been willing to join in the charade – which he had even helped to plan – after he had seen how devastated Charles was when he informed him the company did not provide journeys into the past. The wealthy entrepreneur’s agreement to play a role had made everything that much easier. Taking Andrew straight to the author’s house without calling in at Murray’s offices first, in the hope that he would believe Charles’s suspicion that Wells had a time machine, would not have been nearly as convincing.

‘I’d like to thank you again from the bottom of my heart,’ said Charles, genuinely moved. ‘You, too, Jane, for persuading the cab driver to hide down a side street and to tether the horse to the gate while we pretended to intimidate your husband.’

‘You’ve nothing to thank me for either, Mr Winslow It was a pleasure. Although I’ll never forgive you for having instructed the actor to stab your cousin . . .’ she chided, with the amused smile of someone gently scolding a naughty child.