The Map of Time

Chapter XXVIII

Two days had gone by since their meeting and, to his surprise, Tom was still alive. No one had shot him in the head as he sat up with a start in his bed, or followed him through the streets waiting to thrust a thirsty blade into his side, or tried to run him down in a carriage or push him in front of a train. Tom could only presume that this agonising calm, this excruciating slowness in finishing him off, was either their way of tormenting him or that no one was going to make him pay for what he had done. More than once, unable to bear the strain, he had been on the point of ending it all himself, slitting his throat or throwing himself off a bridge into the Thames, in the family tradition. Either method seemed a good way of escaping from the apprehension that had even infiltrated his dreams, transforming them into nightmares in which Solomon roamed the streets of London with his metal-insect gait, making his way through the crowds thronging the pavements, and clambering with difficulty up the stairs to his room.

Tom awoke when the automaton broke down his door and, for a few bewildered moments, believed he really was the brave Captain Shackleton, who had escaped from the year 2000 and was hiding in 1896. He was powerless to dispel those dreams, but if at night he was at the mercy of his fears, in daytime he was able to overcome them; by keeping a level head, he had managed to compose himself and was even prepared to accept his fate with calm resignation. He would not take his own life. It was far more dignified to die looking his killers straight in the eye, whether they were made of flesh and blood or of cast iron.

Convinced he had not long to live, Tom saw no point in going to the docks to look for work: he could just as well die with empty pockets. He spent his days wandering aimlessly around London, like a leaf blown by the wind. Occasionally he would stretch out in some park, like a drunk or a vagrant, while in his mind he went over every detail of his encounter with the girl, her ardent caresses, her intoxicating kisses, the passion and ease with which she had given herself to him. He told himself again that it had all been worth it, and that he had no intention of putting up any resistance when they came to make him pay for those moments of happiness. Part of him could not help considering the bullet that was so long in coming as just punishment for his despicable behaviour.

On the third day, his wanderings took him to Harrow-on-the-Hill, the place he usually went to in search of peace. He could think of no better place to wait for his killers, as he tried to understand the random sequence of events that made up his life, to try to give it some meaning. There, he satin the shade of the old oak and breathed in deeply as he cast a dispassionate eye over the city. Seen from the hill, the capital of empire always looked disappointing to him, like a sinister barge with pointed spires and smoking factory chimneys for masts. He exhaled slowly, trying to forget how famished he was. He hoped they would come for him today, or he would have to steal some food before nightfall to stop his stomach rumbling.

Where were Murray’s thugs? he wondered, for the hundredth time. If they came now he would see them from his vantage-point, greet them with his most dazzling smile, unbutton his shirt and point to his heart to make it easier for them. ‘Go ahead and kill me,’ he would say. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t really kill you later. I’m no hero. I’m just Tom, the despicable wretch Tom Blunt. You can bury me here, next to my friend John Peachey, another wretch like me.’

It was at this point that, looking towards the headstone, he noticed the letter tucked under a stone beside it. For a moment he thought he was imagining things. Intrigued, he picked it up and, with an odd sensation of remembering a dream, he saw it was addressed to Captain Derek Shackleton. He hesitated for a moment, not knowing what to do – but, of course, there was only one thing he could do. As he opened the envelope he could not help feeling he was trespassing, reading someone else’s correspondence.

He unfolded the sheet of paper inside and discovered Claire Haggerty’s neat, elegant handwriting. He began to read slowly, straining to recall the meaning of each letter, declaiming aloud, as though he wanted to explain to the squirrels the travails of men.

From Claire Haggerty to Captain Shackleton

Dear Derek,

I was obliged to start writing this letter at least a dozen times before realising there was only one possible way to begin, and that is to avoid all preliminary explanations and obey the dictates of my heart: I love you, Derek. I love you as I have never loved anyone. I love you now and I will love you for ever. And my love for you is the only thing that keeps me alive.

I can see the surprise on your face as you read these words written to you by an unknown woman, because I assure you I know that face well. But believe me, my sweet: I love you. Or, rather, we love each other. For, although it might seem even stranger to you, as you do not know who I am, you love me too – or you will do in a few hours, or possibly a few moments, from now. However reluctant you are, however incredible all this seems, you will love me. You simply have no choice. You will love me because you already do.

If I allow myself to address you so affectionately it is because of what we have already shared, and because you must know that I can still feel the warmth of your touch on my skin, the taste of you on my lips. I can feel you inside me. Despite my initial doubts, despite my young girl’s foolish fears, I am overwhelmed by the love you foresaw, or maybe it is an even greater love than that, a love so great nothing will contain it.

Shake your head as much as you like as you try to understand these ravings, but the explanation is quite simple. It boils down to this: what has not yet happened to you has already happened to me. It is one of the strange anomalies that occur in time travel, when journeying back and forth across the centuries. But you know all about that, don’t you? For, if I am not mistaken, you found this letter next to the big oak tree when you stepped out of a time tunnel, so you will not find it so difficult to believe everything I am telling you.

Yes, I know the place where you come out and your reason for travelling to my time, and my knowing this can mean only one thing: that what I am saying is true, it is not a hoax. Trust me, then, without reservation. And trust me above all when I tell you we love each other. Start loving me now by replying to this letter and reciprocating my feelings, please.

Write me a letter and leave it beside John Peachey’s headstone on your next visit: that will be our way of communicating from now on, my love, for we still have six more letters to write to each other. Are your eyes wide with surprise? I do not blame you, and yet I am only repeating what you told me yesterday. Please write to me, my love, for your letters are all I have left of you.

Yes, that is the bad news: I will never see you again, Derek, which is why I cherish your letters. I shall go directly to the point: the love we are going to profess to one another is the result of a single encounter, for we shall meet only once. Well, twice actually, but the first time (or the last time if we follow the chronology our love has turned on its head) will last only a few minutes. Our second meeting, in my time, will last longer and be more meaningful, for it will feed the love that will rage in our hearts for ever, a love our letters will keep alive for me and will initiate for you. And yet, if we respect time, I will never see you again. You, on the other hand, do not yet know me, even though we made love together less than a few hours ago.

Now I understand your nervousness yesterday when we met at the tea room: I had already stirred you with my words.

We will meet on 20 May in the year 2000, but I will tell you all about that first meeting in my last letter. Everything will begin with that meeting, although, now I think about it, I realise that cannot be true because you will already know me through my letters. Where does our love story begin, then? Here, with this letter? No, this is not the beginning either. We are trapped in a circle, Derek, and no one knows where a circle begins. We can only follow the circle until it closes, as I am doing now, trying to stop my hand trembling. This is my role, the only thing I have to do, because I already know what you will do: I know you will reply to my letter, I know you will fall in love with me, I know you will look for me when the time comes. Only the details will come as a surprise to me.

I suppose I should end this letter by telling you what I look like, my way of thinking and seeing the world, as during our meeting in the tea room when I asked you how you could possibly love me without knowing me, and you assured me you knew me better than I could ever imagine. And you knew me, of course, through my letters, so let us begin. I was born on 15 March 1875 in West London. I am slim, of medium height, I have blue eyes and black shoulder-length hair, which, contrary to the norm, I wear loose.

Forgive my brevity, but describing myself physically feels like an undignified exercise in vanity. Besides, I would rather tell you more about my inner soul. I have two older sisters, Rebecca and Evelyn. They are both married and live in Chelsea, and it is by comparing myself to them that I can best give you an idea of what I am like. I have always felt different. Unlike them, I have found it impossible to adapt to the time I live in. I do not know how to explain this to you, Derek, but my time bores me. I feel as though I am watching a comedy at the theatre and everybody else is laughing. Only I am impervious to the supposed hilarity of the characters’ remarks. And this dissatisfaction has turned me into a problem child, someone it is best not to invite to parties, and who must be kept an eye on during family get-togethers, for I have ruined more than one by breaking the norms that dictate the behaviour of the society I live in, to the astonishment of the guests.

Something else that makes me feel very different from the other young women I know is my lack of interest in getting married. I loathe the role women are supposed to fulfil in marriage, and for which my mother tries so hard to groom me. I can think of no better way to destroy my free spirit than to become a sensible housewife who spends her days drilling the moral values she has learned into her children and ordering servants around, while her husband goes out into the world of work, that dangerous arena from which women, universally deemed too sensitive and delicate, have been quietly banished.

As you can see, I am independent and adventurous and, although this might strike you as incongruous, I do not fall easily in love. To be honest, I never thought I would be able to fall in love with anyone the way I have fallen in love with you. I had honestly begun to feel like a dusty bottle in a wine cellar waiting to be uncorked at a special occasion that never arrived. And yet I suppose it is owing to my very nature that this is happening.

I will come here to fetch your letter the day after tomorrow, my love, just as you told me I would. I am longing to hear from you, to read your words of love, to know you are mine even though we are separated by an ocean of time.

Yours ever more,

C

Despite the effort involved in reading, Tom re-read Claire’s letter three times, with the exact look of surprise the girl had predicted, though for quite different reasons, of course. After the third reading, he replaced it carefully in the envelope and leaned back against the tree, trying to understand the contradictory feelings the pages stirred in him. The girl had swallowed every word, and had come all that way to leave him a letter! He realised that while for him it was all over, for her it was just beginning.

He saw now how far his adventure had gone. He had played with the girl without stopping to think of the consequences, and now he ‘knew’ what they were. Yes, this letter unintentionally revealed to him the effect his misbehaviour had had on his victim, and he would rather not have known. Not only had Claire believed his cock-and-bull story to the point of obediently following the next step in the sequence of events, but their physical encounter had been the breath of life her nascent love had needed to catch fire, apparently taking on the proportions of an inferno. And now the blaze was consuming her. Tom marvelled not only that one brief encounter could produce so much love but that the girl was prepared to devote her life to keeping it alive, like someone stoking a fire in the forest to keep wolves at bay. What amazed him most of all, though, was that Claire was doing this for him because she loved him. No one had ever expressed such love for him before, he thought uneasily, and it no longer mattered that it was directed towards Captain Shackleton: the man who had bedded her, undressed her tenderly, taken her gently was Tom Blunt. Shackleton was a mere act, an idea, but Claire had fallen in love with Tom’s way of acting him.

And how did that make him feel? he asked himself. Should being loved so unreservedly and passionately produce the same feelings in him, just as his reflection appeared when he leaned over a pond? He was unable to answer that question. And, besides, there was little point in speculating about it – he would probably be dead by the end of the day.

He glanced again at the letter he was holding. What was he supposed to do with it? Suddenly he realised there was only one thing he could do: he must reply to it, not because he intended to take on the role of star-crossed lover in the story he had unthinkingly set in motion, but because the girl had insinuated she would be unable to live without his letters. Tom imagined her travelling there in her carriage, walking to the top of the little hill and finding no reply from Captain Shackleton. He was convinced Claire would be unable to cope with this sudden twist in the plot, his unexpected, mysterious silence. After weeks of going to Harrow and leaving empty-handed, he could imagine her taking her own life in the same passionate way she had decided to love him, perhaps by plunging a sharp dagger through her heart, or downing a flask of laudanum.

Tom could not let that happen. Whether he liked it or not, as a result of his little game Claire Haggerty’s life was in his hands. He had no choice.

As he walked back to London across country, keeping away from the roads, tensing at the slightest sound, he realised something had changed: he no longer wanted to die. And not because his life seemed more worth living than before but because he had to reply to the girl’s letter. He had to keep himself alive in order to keep Claire alive.

Once in the city, he stole some writing paper from a stationer’s shop and, satisfied that Gilliam Murray’s thugs had not followed him nor were posted round his lodgings, he locked himself into his room in Buckeridge Street. Everything seemed quiet. The usual afternoon noises wafted up to his window, a harmonious melody in which no discordant notes were struck. He pushed the chair up to the bed to make an improvised desk, and spread the paper out on the seat, with the pen and ink he had also purloined. He took a deep breath.

After half an hour of grappling with the page, deeply frustrated, he had discovered that writing was not as easy as he had imagined. It was far more arduous than reading. He was appalled to find it was impossible for him to transfer to paper the thoughts in his head. He knew what he wanted to say, but each time he started a sentence his original idea seemed to drift away and become something entirely different. He still remembered the rudiments of writing that Megan had taught him, but he did not know enough grammar to be able to form proper sentences and, more importantly, he did not know how to express his ideas with the clarity Claire had.

He gazed down at the indecipherable jumble of letters and crossings-out that defiled the pristine page. The only legible words were ‘Dear Claire’, with which he had so optimistically begun his missive. The rest was a pitiful demonstration of a semi-illiterate man’s first attempt at writing a letter. He screwed up the sheet of paper, bowing to the inevitable. If Claire received a letter like this she would take her own life anyway, incapable of understanding why the saviour of mankind wrote like a chimpanzee. He wanted to reply, yet was unable to. But Claire had to find a letter at the foot of the oak tree in two days’ time or . . .

Tom lay back on the bed, trying to gather his thoughts. Clearly he needed help. He needed someone to write the letter for him – but who? He did not know anyone who could write. And it couldn’t be just anyone – for example, a schoolteacher whose fingers he would threaten to break if he refused. The chosen person not only had to be able to write properly, he had to have enough imagination to play a spirited part in the charade. On top of that, he needed to be capable of corresponding with the girl in the same passionate tone. Who could he find who possessed all those qualities?

It came to him in a flash. He leaped to his feet, thrust aside the chair and pulled open the bottom drawer of his chest. There it was, like a fish gasping out of water: the novel. He had purchased it when he first started working for Murray, because his boss had told him it was thanks to this book that his business had been such a success. And Tom, who had never owned a book in his life, had gone out and bought it straight away. Actually reading it, however, had been too exacting a task for him, and he had given up after the third page, yet he had held on to it, not wanting to resell it because in some sense he owed who he was now to that author.

He opened the book and studied the photograph of the writer on the inside flap. The caption below said he lived in Woking, Surrey. Yes, if anyone could help him it had to be the fellow in the photograph, a young man with bird-like features named H. G. Wells.

***

With no money to hire a carriage and reluctant to risk hiding on a train bound for Surrey, Tom concluded that the only way for him to reach the author’s house was on foot. The three-hour coach ride to Woking would take him three times as long on foot, so if he left straight away, he would reach his destination in the early hours of the morning. Obviously this was not the best time to arrive unexpectedly at someone’s house – unless in case of an emergency, which this was. He put Claire’s letter into his pocket, pulled on his cap and left the boarding-house for Woking without a second thought. He had no choice, and was not in the least daunted by the walk. He knew he could count on his sturdy legs and stamina to complete the marathon journey without weakening.

During his long trudge to the author’s house, while he watched night spread itself lazily over the landscape, and glanced over his shoulder every now and then to make sure neither Murray’s thugs nor Solomon were following him, Tom Blunt toyed with different ways of introducing himself to Wells. In the end, the one he decided was the cleverest also sounded the most far-fetched: he would introduce himself as Captain Derek Shackleton. He was sure the saviour of mankind would be far better received at any time of day than plain old Tom Blunt, and there was nothing to stop him successfully playing the role offstage as he had already done with Claire.

As Shackleton, he could tell the author the same tale he had told the girl, and show him the letter he had found when he came through the time hole on his first visit to their time. How could this Wells fellow not be taken in if he himself had written a novel about time travel? If, though, he were to make his story believable, Tom would need to think up a good reason why neither he nor anyone else from the future was able to write the letter. Perhaps he could explain that by the year 2000 man had fallen out of the habit of writing, because the task had been given to automaton scribes. In any event, introducing himself as Captain Shackleton still seemed like the best plan: it seemed preferable for the famous hero of the future, rather than a nobody, to beg the famous author’s help in getting out of the predicament into which lust had got him.

When he arrived in Woking in the early hours, the place was immersed in an idyllic calm. It was a cold but beautiful night. Tom spent almost an hour reading letterboxes before he came to the one marked ‘Wells’. He was standing in front of a darkened three-storey house enclosed by a not-too-high fence. He took a deep breath and climbed over it. There was no point in waiting.

He crossed the garden reverentially, as though he were walking into a chapel, climbed the steps to the front door, and was about to ring when his hand stopped short of the bell. The echo of a horse’s hoofs, shattering the nocturnal silence, made him freeze. He turned slowly as he heard the animal draw near, and almost immediately saw it stop outside the fence. A shiver ran down his spine as he watched the rider, barely more than a shadow, dismount and open the gate. Was it one of Murray’s thugs?

The fellow made a swift gesture that left him in no doubt: he pulled a gun from his pocket and pointed it straight at him. Tom instantly dived to one side, rolling across the lawn and disappearing into the darkness. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the stranger try to follow his sudden movement with the gun. Tom had no intention of making himself an easy target. He leaped to his feet and, in two strides, had reached the fence. He was convinced he would feel the warm sting of the bullet entering his back at any moment, but apparently he was moving too quickly, and it did not happen. He clambered over the fence and pelted down the street until he reached the fields. He ran for at least five minutes.

Only then, panting, did he allow himself to stop and look behind him to see whether Murray’s thug was following him. All he could see was black night enfolding everything. He had managed to lose the man. He was safe, at least for the moment, for he doubted that his killer would bother looking for him in that pitch blackness. He would go back to London to report to Murray. Feeling calmer,

Tom found a place behind some bushes and settled down for the night. The next morning, after making sure the thug had really gone, he would return to the author’s house and ask for his help, as planned.

Chapter XXIX

‘You saved a man’s life using your imagination,’ Jane had said to him, only a few hours earlier, and her words were still echoing in his head as he watched the dawn light flood in through the tiny attic window, revealing the contours of the furniture and their two figures intertwined on the seat of the time machine. When he had suggested to his wife they might find a use for the seat, this was not exactly what he had had in mind, but he had thought it best not to upset her, and especially not now.

Wells gazed at her tenderly. Jane was breathing evenly, asleep in his arms, having given herself to him with renewed enthusiasm, reviving the almost violent fervour of their first months together. Wells had watched this passion ebb with the resigned sorrow of one who knows only too well that passionate love does not last for ever, merely transfers to other bodies. But there was no law, apparently, against its embers being rekindled by a timely breeze. This discovery had left a rather foolish grin on the author’s face, which he had not seen reflected in his mirror for a long time. And it was all due to the words floating in his head – ‘You saved a man’s life using your imagination’ – words that had made him shine once more in Jane’s eyes, and which I trust you have also remembered, because they link this scene and Wells’s first appearance in our tale, which I informed you would not be his last.

When his wife went down to make breakfast, he decided to remain sitting on the machine a while longer. He took a deep breath, contented and extraordinarily at ease with himself. There were times in his life when Wells considered himself an exceptionally ridiculous human being, but he seemed now to be going through a phase where he was able to see himself in a different, more charitable and – why not say it? – a more admiring light. He had enjoyed saving a life, as much because of Jane’s unexpected offering as for the fantastic gift he had been given as a result: this machine that had arisen from his imagination, the ornate sleigh that could travel through time – or that was what they had made Andrew Harrington believe. Contemplating it now by daylight, Wells had to admit that when he had given it that cursory description in his novel, he never imagined it might turn out to be such a beautiful object if someone decided to build it.

Feeling like a naughty child, he sat up ceremoniously, placed his hand with exaggerated solemnity on the glass lever to the right of the control panel and smiled wistfully. If only the thing worked. If only he could hop from era to era, travel through time at his whim until he reached its furthest frontier – if such a thing existed – go to the place where time began or ended. But the machine could not be used for that. In fact, the machine had no use at all. And now he had removed the gadget that lit the magnesium, it could not even blind its occupant.

‘Bertie,’ Jane called from downstairs.

Wells started. He stood up, straightened his clothes, rumpled from their earlier passionate embraces, and hurried downstairs.

‘There’s a young man to see you,’ she said, a little uneasily. ‘He says his name is Captain Derek Shackleton.’

Wells paused at the foot of the stairs. Derek Shackleton? Why did that name ring a bell?

‘He’s waiting in the sitting room. But he said something else, Bertie . . .’ Jane went on hesitantly, unsure what tone she should adopt to express what she was about to say. ‘He says he’s from .. . the year 2000.’

From the year 2000? Now Wells knew where he had heard that name before.

‘Ah, in that case it must be very urgent,’ he said, grinning mysteriously. ‘Let’s hurry and find out what the gentleman wants.’

With these words, he strode towards the tiny sitting room. Next to the chimneypiece, too nervous to sit down, Wells discovered a young man dressed in modest clothing. Before saying anything he looked him up and down, amazed. He was a magnificent specimen of the human race, with his statuesque muscles, noble face and eyes brimming with ferocity, like those of a cornered panther.

‘I’m George Wells,’ he introduced himself, once he had finished his examination. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘How do you do, Mr Wells?’ the man from the future greeted him. ‘Forgive me for barging in so early in the morning, but it’s a matter of life or death.’

Wells smiled inwardly at the rehearsed introduction.

‘I’m Captain Derek Shackleton and I’ve come from the future. From the year 2000, to be precise.’ The young man stared at him expectantly, waiting for him to respond. ‘Does my name mean something to you?’ he asked, on seeing the author was not overly surprised.

‘Naturally Captain,’ Wells replied, as he rifled through a waste-paper basket next to a set of book-lined shelves. A moment later, he extracted a ball of scrunched-up paper, which he unfolded and handed to his visitor, who cautiously took it from him. ‘How could it not? I receive one of these leaflets every week without fail. You are the saviour of the human race, the man who in the year 2000 will free our planet from the yoke of the evil automatons.’

‘That’s right,’ the young man ventured, unnerved by the author’s mocking tone.

A tense silence followed, during which Wells stood with his hands in his pockets contemplating his visitor with a disdainful air.

‘You must be wondering how I travelled to your time,’ the young man said finally, like an actor obliged to prompt himself in order to carry on with his performance.

‘Now you mention it, yes,’ said Wells, without curiosity.

‘Then I’ll explain,’ said the young man, trying to ignore Wells’s manifest indifference. ‘When the war started, our scientists invented a machine capable of making holes in time, with the aim of tunnelling from the year 2000 to your era. They wanted to send someone to kill the man who made automatons and prevent the war happening. That someone is me.’

Wells let out a guffaw that took his visitor aback. Til grant you have an impressive imagination, young man,’ he said.

‘You don’t believe me?’ the other man asked, although the tinge of regret in his voice gave his question the air of bitter acknowledgement.

‘Of course not,’ the author declared cheerily. ‘But don’t be alarmed. It’s not because you failed to make your ingenious lie sound convincing.’

‘B-but, then . . .’ the youth stammered, bewildered.

‘I don’t believe it’s possible to travel to the year 2000, or that man will be at war with automatons then. The whole thing is just a silly invention. Gilliam Murray may be able to fool the whole of England, but he can’t fool me.’

‘So . . . you know the whole thing is a fraud?’ murmured the young man, clearly flabbergasted.

Wells nodded solemnly, glancing at Jane, who looked bewildered.

‘And you’re not going to denounce him?’ the lad asked finally.

‘No, I haven’t the slightest intention of doing so,’ he replied. ‘If people are prepared to part with good money to watch you defeat a lot of fake automatons, then maybe they deserve to be swindled. And, besides, who am I to deprive them of the illusion of having travelled to the future? Must I destroy their fantasy because someone is getting rich from it?’

‘I see,’ murmured the visitor, still mystified, and then, with a hint of admiration, he added: ‘You’re the only person I know who thinks it’s a hoax.’

‘Well, I suppose I have a certain advantage over the rest of humanity’ replied Wells.

He smiled at the youth’s increasing bemusement. Jane was also giving him puzzled looks. The author heaved a sigh. It was time he shared his bread with the apostles. Then they might help him bear his cross.

‘A little over a year ago,’ Wells explained, addressing them both, ‘shortly after The Time Machine was published, a man came here wanting to show me a novel he had just written. Like The Time Machine, it was a piece of science fiction. He asked me to read it and, if I liked it, to recommend it to my editor, Henley, for possible publication.’

The young man nodded slowly, as though he had not understood yet what this had to do with him. Wells turned and began to scour the books and files lining the sitting room shelves. Finally he found what he had been looking for – a bulky manuscript, which he tossed on to the table.

‘The man’s name was Gilliam Murray, and this is the novel he gave me that October afternoon in 1895.’

With a wave of his hand he invited the lad to read the title page. The young man moved closer to it and read aloud clumsily, as though he were chewing each word: “’Captain Derek Shackleton: The True Story of a Brave Hero of the Future, by Gilliam F. Murray”.’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Wells. ‘And do you want to know what it’s about? The novel takes place in the year 2000, and tells the story of a battle between evil automatons and a human army led by the brave Captain Derek Shackleton. Does the plot sound familiar?’

The visitor nodded, but Wells deduced from his confused expression that he still did not fully understand what he was getting at.

‘Had Gilliam written this novel after he had set up his business, I would have had no reason, besides my natural scepticism, to question the authenticity of his year 2000,’ he explained. ‘But he brought it to me a whole year before! Do you understand what I’m saying? Gilliam has staged his novel, and you are its main protagonist.’

He picked up the manuscript, searched for a specific page and, to the young man’s dismay, started to read aloud: ‘“Captain Derek Shackleton was a magnificent specimen of the human race, with his statuesque muscles, noble face and eyes brimming with ferocity, like those of a cornered panther.”’

The lad blushed at the description. Was that what he looked like? Did he really have the eyes of a cornered animal? It was quite possible, for he had been cornered since birth – by his father, by life, by misfortune, and lately by Murray’s thugs. He stared at Wells, not knowing what to say.

‘It’s a ghastly description by a talentless writer, but I have to confess you fit the part perfectly,’ said Wells, hurling the manuscript back on to the table with a gesture of utter contempt.

A few moments passed in which no one spoke.

‘Even so, Bertie,’ Jane finally stepped in, ‘this young man needs your help.’

‘Oh, yes. So he does,’ responded a reluctant Wells, who assumed that with his masterful exposure of Murray he had resolved the reason for the visit.

‘What’s your real name?’ Jane asked him.

‘Tom Blunt, ma’am,’ replied Tom, bowing politely.

‘Tom Blunt,’ Wells echoed mockingly. ‘It doesn’t sound quite so heroic, of course.’

Jane shot him a reproachful look. She hated it when her husband resorted to sarcasm to compensate for the terrible sense of physical inferiority that usually assailed him when he was in the presence of someone bigger than himself.

‘Tell me, then, Tom,’ Wells went on, after clearing his throat, ‘what can I do for you?’

Tom sighed. No longer a brave hero from the future, just a miserable wretch, he stared at his feet, ceaselessly wringing his hat, as though he were trying to squeeze it dry, and attempted to tell the couple everything that had happened since his pressing need to empty his bladder on the set of the year 2000. Trying not to gabble, he told them about the girl named Claire Haggerty, who had appeared out of nowhere just after he had taken off his helmet and armour, how she had seen his face, and the problems that that would cause him. He was obliged to tell them about the unpleasant ways Murray had of assuring his cast of actors did not give away the hoax, and about what had happened to poor Perkins. His speculations caused the author’s wife to gasp in horror, while Wells simply shook his head, as if he had expected as much of Gilliam Murray.

Tom then told them how he had bumped into Claire Haggerty at the market, and had made her agree to meet him, driven, he confessed shamefully, by his male instinct. He described how he was then forced to make up the story about the letters so that she would agree to go with him to the boarding-house. He knew he had done wrong, he told them, not daring to raise his eyes from the floor, and he regretted it, but they should not waste time judging his behaviour because his actions had given rise to unforeseen consequences.

The girl had fallen in love with him and, believing every word he had said to her to be true, had duly written the first letter, which she had left at Harrow-on-the-Hill. He fished it out of his pocket and handed it to Wells, who took it from him, stunned by everything he had heard. He unfolded the letter and read it aloud so that his intrigued wife could also know what it contained. He tried to speak in a modulated voice, like a priest reciting the lesson, but it caught when he read out certain passages. The emotions expressed were so beautiful he could not help feeling a pang of resentment towards the young man in front of him, who had undeservingly become the object of a love so absolute it forced Wells to question his own emotions, to reconsider his whole way of experiencing love. The look of compassion that had overtaken Jane’s face confirmed that his wife was feeling something similar.

‘I tried writing to her,’ said Tom, ‘but I can barely read. I’m afraid if there’s no letter waiting for her on the hill tomorrow, Miss Haggerty might do something foolish.’

Wells had to admit it was most likely, given the feverish tone of her missive.

‘The reason I came here was to ask you to write to her on my behalf,’ the young man confessed.

‘What did you say?’ Wells asked, incredulous.

‘Three letters, that’s all, Mr Wells. It’s nothing for you,’ pleaded the youth, and then, after a moment’s thought, he added: ‘I can’t pay you, but if you ever have a problem that can’t be dealt with in a civilised way, just call on me.’

Wells could scarcely believe his ears. He was about to say he had no intention of getting involved in this mess, when he felt Jane’s hand pressing his firmly. He turned to his wife, who smiled at him with the same dreamy expression she wore when she finished one of her beloved romantic novels. Then he looked back at Tom, who was gazing at him expectantly. He realised he had no choice: he must once more save a life using his imagination.

He stared for a long time at the pages he was holding, covered with Claire Haggerty’s neat, elegant script. Deep down, he found it tempting to carry on this fantastic story, to pretend to be a brave hero from the future caught up in a bloody war against the evil automatons, and even to tell another woman he loved her passionately – with the approval of his wife. It was as though the world had suddenly decided to nurture man’s deepest feelings instead of keeping them in check, resulting in a harmonious cohabitation on a planet cleansed of jealousy and prejudice, where licentious behaviour had been sublimated into tender, respectful friendship. The challenge excited him, it was true, and as he had no choice but to accept it, he cheered himself with the notion that he might find corresponding with the unknown young woman at once amusing and exciting.

‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘Come back tomorrow morning and you’ll have your letter.’

Chapter XXX

The first thing Wells did when he was left alone in the sitting room, Jane having accompanied the young man to the door, was to place Gilliam Murray’s manuscript once more out of his field of vision. Although he had not let it show, he was deeply disturbed by the appalling manner in which Murray kept his masquerade going. Naturally he had to surround himself with people who could keep their mouths shut, and although he could have achieved this with incentives, threats seemed to work much better. The discovery that Murray resorted so casually to such gruesome methods sent a shiver down his spine. Not for nothing was the man his adversary – or, at least, that was what his behaviour seemed to indicate.

He picked up the leaflet Murray sent him religiously every week and looked at it with distaste. Sickening though it was, Wells had to accept that it was his fault. Yes, Murray’s Time Travel existed thanks to him, thanks to the decision he had made.

He had had only two meetings with Gilliam Murray, but for some men that was enough to establish an enmity. And Murray was one of those, as Wells had soon discovered. Their first meeting had taken place in that very room one April afternoon, he recalled, glancing with horror at the wing chair into which Murray had squeezed his bulky frame.

From the moment the man had appeared in the doorway with his visiting card and his unctuous smile, Wells had been in awe of his huge, ox-like body, although even more astonishing was the extraordinary weightlessness of his movements, as though his bones were hollow. Wells had sat down in the chair facing him, and while Jane served the tea, the two men had studied one another with polite discretion. When his wife had left the room, the stranger had given him an even broader smile, thanked him for agreeing to see him at such short notice and, without pausing for breath, showered him with rapturous adulation for his novel The Time Machine.

However, there are those who only admire a thing in order to blow their own trumpet, to show off their own understanding and intelligence, and Gilliam Murray belonged to that group of men. He launched into a furious eulogy of the novel, extolling with lofty speech the symmetry of its structure, the power of its imagery, even the colour of the suit Wells had chosen for his main character. Wells listened courteously and wondered why anyone would choose to waste their morning inundating him with praise when they could put it all in a polite letter, as the rest of his admirers did. He weathered the glowing tributes, nodding uneasily, as one caught in an irksome shower, praying that the tedious panegyric would soon end and he could go back to his work.

However, he soon discovered it had been no more than a preamble aimed at smoothing the man’s way before he revealed the real reason for his visit. After finishing his fulsome speech, Murray plucked a voluminous manuscript from his briefcase and placed it delicately in Wells’s hands, as though he were handing over a sacred relic or a new-born infant. Captain Derek Shackleton: The True Story of a Brave Hero of the Future, Wells read, dumbfounded. He could no longer recall how they had agreed to meet again a week later, after the giant wheedled him into reading his novel.

Wells had embarked upon the task of ploughing through the manuscript, like someone undergoing torture. He had no desire to read anything issuing from the imagination of the self-important braggart he considered incapable of interesting him, and he was not mistaken. The more he read of the pretentious prose, the more his mind fogged with boredom, and he quickly decided never again to meet any of his admirers. Murray had given him an overwritten, monotonous piece of tripe; a novel that, in common with many that were swamping bookshop windows, had copied the one he had written and targeted the fashion for speculating about the future. Such novels were veritable paper depositories of junk, which, drawing inspiration from the growing impact of science, exhibited every type of outlandish machine aimed at satisfying man’s most secret longings.

Wells had read none of them, but Henley had related many of their hilarious plots to him over a meal; such as those of the New Yorker Luis Senarens, whose main characters explored the planet’s far-flung territories in airships, abducting any indigenous tribe they happen across on the way. The one that had stuck in his mind was about a Jewish inventor who built a machine that made things grow bigger. The vision of London attacked by an army of giant woodlice, which Henley had described to him with contempt, had terrified Wells.

The plot of Gilliam Murray’s novel was equally painful. The pompous title concealed the madcap visions of an unhinged mind. Murray argued that, as the years went by, the automatons – the mechanical dolls sold in some central London toyshops – would eventually come to life. Yes, incredible though it might seem, beneath their wooden skulls an almost human form of awareness would begin to stir, so human, in fact, that the astonished reader would soon discover that the automatons harboured a deep resentment towards man for the humiliating treatment they had endured as his slaves. Finally, under the leadership of Solomon, a steam-powered automaton soldier, they swiftly and mercilessly decided the fate of the human race: extermination. Within a few decades the automatons had reduced the planet to a mound of rubble and mankind to a handful of frightened rats, from among whose ranks, however, arose the brave Captain Shackleton. After years of futile combat, Shackleton finally put an end to the automaton Solomon’s evil plans, defeating him in a ridiculous sword fight.

In the final mind-boggling pages of his already preposterous tale, Murray had the temerity to draw an embarrassing moral from his story, with which he hoped to give the whole of England – or, at any rate, the toy manufacturers – something to think about: God would punish man if he went on emulating Him by creating life – if indeed these mechanical creations could be described as possessing such a thing, Wells reflected.

It was possible a story like this might work as satire, but Murray took it terribly seriously, which only made the plot seem even more ludicrous. His view of the year 2000 was utterly implausible. In all other respects, his writing was infantile and verbose in equal measure, the characters were poorly drawn and the dialogue dull as dishwater. It was the novel of someone who believed anyone could be a writer. It was not that he strung words together willy-nilly without any aesthetic pretensions; if he had, it would have made for dull but palatable reading. No, Murray was one of those avid readers who believed good writing was akin to icing a cake – which resulted in overblown, horribly flowery prose that was full of ridiculous wordy displays, indigestible to the reader.

When Wells reached the final page he felt aesthetically nauseated. The only fate the novel deserved was to be flung on the fire; furthermore, if time travel were to become the order of the day, Wells would be honour-bound to journey into the past and beat the fellow to a pulp before he was able to disgrace future literature with his creation. However, telling the truth to Gilliam Murray was an experience he had no wish to undergo, especially since he could get out of it by handing the novel to Henley, who would certainly reject it but with none of the recriminations that would fall upon Wells.

When the day came for his next appointment with Murray, Wells still had not decided what to do. The man arrived at the house with enviable punctuality, wearing a triumphant smile, but Wells sensed barely controlled anxiety beneath the cloying politeness. Murray was plainly desperate to hear his verdict, but both men were obliged to follow the rules of etiquette. Wells made small-talk as he guided him into the sitting room, and they sat down while Jane served tea.

The author took advantage of this moment of silence to study his nervous guest, who was pressing his fleshy lips into a serene smile. All of a sudden, he was filled with a sense of his own power. He, more than anyone, knew of the hope involved in writing a novel, and the insignificance of that illusion in the eyes of others, who judged the work on its merits, not on how many sleepless nights had gone into its creation. As Wells saw it, negative criticism, however constructive, was invariably painful for a writer. It always came as a blow, whether he responded to it like a brave wounded soldier or was cast into the abyss, his fragile ego in shreds. Now, as if by magic, Wells held this stranger’s dreams in his hand. He had the power to shatter them or let them live. In the end, this was the choice before him. The novel’s wretched quality was irrelevant, and in any case that decision could be left to Henley. The question was whether he wanted to use his authority for good or not, whether he wanted to witness this arrogant creature’s response to what was in essence the truth, or whether he preferred to fob him off with a pious lie so he could carry on believing he had produced a worthwhile piece of writing – at least until Henley’s diagnosis.

‘Well, sir?’ Murray asked, as soon as Jane had left the room. ‘What did you think of my novel?’

Wells could almost feel the air in the room tremble, as though reality itself had reached a crossroads and the universe awaited his decision to know. His silence was like a dam, holding back events.

Today Wells was not sure why he had taken the decision he had. He could have chosen either way. He was sure of one thing, though: he had not made up his mind out of cruelty. If anything, he was simply curious to see how the man sitting opposite him would react to such a brutal blow. Would he conceal his wounded pride, politely accept Wells’s opinion, or break down in front of him, like a man condemned to death? Perhaps he would fly into a rage and hurl himself at Wells with the intention of strangling him, a distinct possibility Wells could not rule out. Whichever way he dressed it up, it was an empirical exercise, an experiment on the soul of that wretched man. Like the scientist who must sacrifice the rat in pursuit of his discovery, Wells wanted to measure the capacity for reaction in this stranger who, by asking him to read his manuscript, had given Wells immense power over him – the power to act like the executioner of the despicable society in which they lived.

Wells cleared his throat and replied in a courteous, almost cold voice, as though he were indifferent to the harmful effect his words might have on his visitor: ‘I read your work with great care, Mr Murray, and I confess I did not enjoy any part of it. I found nothing in it to praise, nothing to admire. I have taken the liberty to speak to you in this way because I consider you a colleague and I believe that lying to you would do you no good whatsoever.’

Murray’s smile vanished, and his huge paws gripped the arms of the chair. Wells studied his shifting expression even as he carried on wounding him, extremely courteously: ‘In my opinion, not only have you started out with a rather naïve premise, but you have developed it in a most unfortunate way, stifling its few possibilities. The structure of your narrative is inconsistent and muddled, the episodes are linked only tenuously, and in the end one has the impression that events occur higgledy-piggledy, without any inner cohesion, simply because it suits you. This tiresome randomness of the plot, added to your writing style – worthy of some legal clerk who admires Jane Austen’s romantic novels – inevitably produces boredom in the reader, or if not, a profound aversion to what he is reading.’

At this point, Wells paused to study his guest’s contortions with scientific interest. He must be a block of ice not to have exploded with rage at such remarks. Was Murray a block of ice? He watched the man’s attempts to overcome his bewilderment -chewing his lip, opening then clenching his fists, as though he were milking an invisible udder – and predicted that he was about to find out.

‘What are you talking about?’ Murray finally burst out, seized by a rage that made the tendons on his neck bulge. ‘What kind of reading have you given my work?’

No, he was not a block of ice. He was pure fire, and Wells instantly realised he would not fall apart. His visitor was one of those people whose pride was so monumental that in the long run they were morally invincible: they were so full of themselves they believed they could achieve anything through simple pig-headedness, whether this was building a bird box or writing a science-fiction novel. Unfortunately for Wells, Murray had not been content to build a bird box. He had decided to employ his efforts in showing the world what an extraordinary imagination he had, how easily he was able to juggle with the words accumulated in a dictionary, or that he had been endowed with some, if not all, of the writerly characteristics that appealed to him.

Wells tried hard to remain poised while his guest, shaking with rage, labelled his remarks foolish. Watching him wave his arms about wildly, Wells regretted the choice he had made. Clearly if he carried on in that vein, demolishing the novel with scathing remarks, the situation could only get worse. But what else could he do? Must he retract everything he had said for fear the fellow might tear his head off in a fit of rage?

Luckily for Wells, Murray suddenly appeared to calm down. He took a few breaths, twisted his head from side to side and rested his hands in his lap, in a stubborn attempt to regain his composure. His painstaking effort at controlling himself felt to Wells like a caricature of the actor Richard Mansfield’s amazing transformation at the Lyceum Theatre during the performance of the play Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde a few years earlier. He let him go on without interruption, secretly relieved.

Murray seemed ashamed at having lost his temper, and the author realised that he was an intelligent man burdened with a passionate temperament, a fiery nature that drove him to those accesses of rage he had undoubtedly learned to control over the years, achieving a level of restraint of which he should feel proud. But Wells had touched his sore point, wounded his vanity, reminding him his self-control was by no means infallible.

‘You may have been lucky enough to write a nice novel everybody likes,’ Murray said when he had calmed himself, although his tone was still belligerent, ‘but clearly you are incapable of judging the work of others. And I wonder whether this might not be because of envy. Is the king afraid the jester might usurp his throne and do a better job as ruler than he?’

Wells smiled to himself: after the outpouring of rage came a false serenity and a change in strategy. Murray had just reduced Wells’s novel – praised to the skies days before – to the category of popular fiction, and had found an explanation for Wells’s opinions that bore no relation to his own lack of literary talent. However, this was preferable than having to put up with his angry outbursts. They were now entering the domain of verbal sparring and Wells felt a rush of excitement: this was an area in which he felt particularly at ease. He decided to speak even more plainly.

‘You are perfectly at liberty to think what you like about your own work, Mr Murray’ he said. ‘But I imagine that if you came to my house to ask my opinion it is because you deemed me sufficiently knowledgeable in such matters to value my judgement. I regret not having told you what you wanted to hear, but those are my thoughts. For the reasons I already mentioned, I doubt that your novel would appeal to anyone, although in my view the main problem with it is the implausibility of your idea. Nobody would believe in the future you have described.’

Murray tilted his head to one side, as though he had not heard properly. ‘Are you saying the future I describe is implausible?’ he asked.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying, and for various reasons,’ Wells coolly replied. ‘The notion that a mechanical toy, however sophisticated, could come to life is unimaginable, not to say ludicrous. Equally implausible is the suggestion that a world war could take place in the coming century. It will never happen. Not to mention other details you have overlooked – for example, that the inhabitants of the year 2000 are still using oil lamps, when anybody can see that it is only a matter of time before electricity takes over. Even fantasy must be plausible, Mr Murray. Allow me to take my own novel as an example. In order to describe the year 802,701 all I did was to think logically. The division of the human race into two species, the Eloi, languishing in their mindless hedonism, and the Morlocks, the monsters living below ground, is an example of one possible outcome of our rigid capitalist society. By the same token, the future demise of the planet, however demoralising, is based on complex predictions made by astronomers and geologists and published daily in journals. This constitutes true speculation, Mr Murray. Nobody could accuse my 802,701 of being implausible. Things may turn out quite differently, of course, especially if other, as yet unforeseeable, factors come into play, but nobody can rule out my vision. Yours, on the other hand, does not bear up under scrutiny’

Gilliam Murray looked at him in silence for a long time, until finally he said: ‘Perhaps you are right, Mr Wells, and my novel does need a thorough overhaul in terms of style and structure. It is a first attempt, and naturally I couldn’t possibly expect the result to be excellent or even passable. But what I cannot tolerate is that you cast doubt on my speculations about the year 2000. Because in that case you are no longer judging my literary abilities, you are simply insulting my intelligence. Admit it, my vision of the future is as plausible as any other.’

‘Permit me to disagree,’ Wells replied coldly, judging that at this point in the conversation the time for mercy had passed.

Gilliam Murray had to repress another access of rage. He twisted in his seat, as though he were suffering from convulsions, but in a matter of seconds he had recovered his relaxed, almost blasé demeanour. He studied Wells with amused curiosity for a few moments, as though he were a strange species of insect he had never seen before, then let out a thunderous guffaw. ‘Do you know what the difference is between you and I, Mr Wells?’

The author saw no reason to reply, and simply shrugged.

‘Our outlook,’ Murray told him. ‘You are a conformist and I am not. You are content to deceive your readers, with their agreement, by writing about things that might happen in the hope that they will believe them. But you never lose sight of the fact that what you are writing is a novel and therefore pure make-believe. I, however, am not content with that, Mr Wells. The fact that my speculations took the form of a novel is purely circumstantial, because all it requires is a stack of paper and a strong wrist. And to be honest, it matters very little to me whether my book is published or not, because I suspect I would not be satisfied with a handful of readers who enjoy debating whether the future I describe is plausible or not, because they will always consider it an invention of mine. No, I aspire to much more than being recognised as an imaginative writer. I want people to believe in my invention without realising it’s an invention, to believe the year 2000 will be exactly as I have described it. And I will prove to you I can make them believe it, however implausible it might seem to you. Only I shan’t present it to them in a novel, Mr Wells. I shall leave such childish things to you. You carry on writing your fantasies in books. I will make mine a reality.’

‘A reality?’ asked Wells, not quite grasping what his guest was driving at. ‘What do you mean?’

You’ll see, Mr Wells. And when you do, if you are a true gentleman, you will perhaps offer me an apology.’

With that, Murray rose from his chair and smoothed down his jacket with one of the graceful gestures that startled everyone in such a bulky man.

‘Good day to you, Mr Wells. Don’t forget me, or Captain Shackleton. You’ll be hearing from us soon,’ he said, as he picked up his hat from the table and placed it nimbly on his head. ‘There’s no need to see me to the door. I can find my own way out.’

His departure was so sudden that Wells was left sitting in his chair, at a loss, unable to stand up even after Murray’s footsteps had died away and he had heard him shut the front gate. He remained seated for a long time, pondering Murray’s words, until he told himself that this egomaniac did not deserve another moment of consideration. And the fact that he heard nothing from him in the ensuing months made him forget the disagreeable encounter. Until the day he received the leaflet from Murray’s Time Travel. Then Wells realised what he had meant by ‘I will make mine a reality’. And, apart from a few scientists and doctors who kicked up a fuss in the newspapers, the whole of England had fallen for his ‘implausible’ invention, thanks in part to Wells himself having raised people’s expectations with The Time Machine, an added irony that irritated him all the more.

From then on, every week without fail he received a leaflet inviting him to take part in one of the bogus expeditions to the year 2000. That crook would have liked nothing more than to have the very man who had unleashed the current obsession for time travel to endorse his company by sanctioning the elaborate hoax, which, naturally, Wells had not the slightest intention of doing.

The worst of it, though, was the message underlying the polite invitations. Wells knew Murray was certain he would never accept, and this turned the invitations into a mockery, a taunt on paper that was also a threat: the leaflets were delivered by hand, which suggested Murray himself, or one of his men, placed them in Wells’s letterbox. In any event, it made no difference, since the objective was the same: to show Wells how easy it was to loiter around his house unseen, to make sure he knew he had not been forgotten, to remind him he was being watched.

But what most infuriated Wells in this whole affair was that, however much he wanted to, he could not denounce Murray, as Tom had suggested, for the simple reason that the man had won. Yes, he had proved that his future was plausible and, rather than sweep the pieces off the board in a fit of rage, Wells must sportingly accept defeat. His integrity prevented him doing anything while Murray made a fortune. And the situation appeared to amuse Murray enormously, for by placing the leaflets religiously in his letterbox, not only was he reminding Wells of his victory, he was also defying the author to unmask him.

‘I will make it a reality’ he had said. And, to Wells’s astonishment, he had done so.

Chapter XXXI

That afternoon Wells went for a longer bicycle ride than usual, and without Jane. He needed to think while he pedalled, he told her. Dressed in his favourite Norfolk jacket, he rode slowly along the Surrey byways while his mind, oblivious to the action of his legs, reflected on how to reply to the letter penned by Claire Haggerty. According to the imaginative tale Tom had concocted in the tea room, their correspondence would consist of seven letters, of which he would write three and Claire four. In the last she would ask him to travel through time to return her parasol. Otherwise, Wells was free to write whatever he liked, provided it did not contradict Tom’s story. He had to admit, the more he thought about it, the more intriguing he found the lad’s tale. It was evocative, beautiful, but above all plausible – assuming, of course, the existence of a machine capable of digging holes through the fabric of time and linking eras, and also, of course, if Murray’s view of the future were true.

This was the part Wells liked least: that Gilliam Murray was somehow mixed up in this, as he had been in saving the wretched Andrew Harrington’s soul. Were their lives destined to carry on entwining, like creeping ivy? Wells felt distinctly odd now he was stepping into the role of Captain Derek Shackleton, the character his adversary had invented. Would he be the one responsible for breathing life into that empty shell, like the God of the Old Testament?

Wells arrived home after his ride pleasantly exhausted, and with a rough idea of what he was going to write. He scrupulously set out his pen, an inkwell and a sheaf of paper on the kitchen table, and asked Jane not to disturb him for the next hour. He sat at the table, drew a deep breath, and began penning his first ever love letter.

Dear Claire,

I, too, have been obliged to compose this letter several times over before realising that, however strange it might seem to me, I can only start by declaring my love to you, exactly as you requested – although I have to confess that to begin with I did not believe myself capable, and I used up several sheets trying to explain that what you were asking me to do in your letter was to make a leap of faith. I even wrote: How can 1 fall in love with you if I have never even seen you, Miss Haggerty? Yet, despite my understandable wariness, I had to face the facts: you insisted I had fallen in love with you. And why should I doubt you, since I did indeed discover your letter beside the big oak tree when I came out of the time tunnel from the year 2000. I need no further evidence, as you rightly say, to see that in seven months we will meet and love will blossom between us. And if my future self- which is still me -falls in love with you as soon as he sets eyes on you, why shouldn’t I? Otherwise I would be doubting my own judgement. Why waste time postponing feelings I am inevitably going to experience?

Then again, you are only asking me to make the same leap of faith you yourself made. During our meeting in the tea room you were obliged to have faith in me: you were obliged to believe you would fall in love with the man sitting opposite you. And you did. My future self is grateful to you for that, Claire. And the self who is writing these lines, who has yet to savour the softness of your skin, can only reciprocate that trust, believe that everything you say is true, that everything you say in your letter will happen because in some way it has already happened. That is why I can only begin by telling you, Claire Haggerty, whoever you are, that I love you. I love you from this very moment until the end of time.

Tom’s hand trembled as he read the author’s words. Wells had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the enterprise: not only had he respected Tom’s improvised tale and the history of the character he was playing but, to judge from his words, he seemed as much in love with the girl as she was with him – with Tom, that was, or, more precisely, with the brave Captain Shackleton. He knew it was only pretence, but the author’s skill at deception went far beyond Tom’s own impoverished feelings, even though these should have been more intense since he, not Wells, had lain with the girl.

If, the day before, Tom had wondered whether the fluttering feeling in his chest was love, now he was certain of it because he had the yardstick of the author’s words to measure it by. Did Tom feel the emotions Wells attributed to Shackleton? After a few moments’ reflection, Tom concluded the only answer to that tortuous question was no, he did not. He could not keep a love like that alive for someone he was never going to see again.

He placed the letter next to John Peachey’s headstone and began the walk back into London. He was pleased with how it had turned out, although a little disconcerted by Wells’s request to Claire near the end, which Tom considered worthy of a degenerate. He recalled the final paragraphs with deep displeasure.

I am longing as I have never longed for anything before for time to speed up, counting the seconds between now and our first meeting in seven months’ time. Although I must confess that as well as being anxious to meet you, Claire, I am also fascinated to know how you will travel to my era. Is such a thing really possible? For my part, I can only wait and do what I have to do, that is to say, reply to your letters, complete my part of the circle.

I hope this first letter does not disappoint you. Tomorrow I will leave it beside the oak tree when I arrive in your time. My next visit will be two days later, and I know that by then another letter from you will await me. You may find this request impertinent, my love, but could I ask you to describe our amorous encounter to me? Remember, I must wait many months before I experience it, and although I assure you I will be patient, I cannot imagine a more wonderful way to endure that wait than to read over and over again the things I will experience with you in the future. I want to know everything, Claire, so please, spare me no detail. Describe to me the first and only time we make love, because from now I will experience it through your words, my darling Claire.

Things here are hard to bear. Our brothers perish by the thousand under the superior power of the automatons, who raze our cities as though they wanted to destroy everything we have built, every trace of our civilisation. I do not know what will happen if my mission fails, if I am unable to stop this war happening. In spite of all this, my love, I can only smile as the world crumbles around me because your undying love has made me the happiest person on earth.

D

Claire clasped the letter to her pounding heart. She had so yearned for someone to write such words to her, words that took her breath away and made her pulse quicken. Now her wish had come true. Someone was telling her their love for her transcended time itself. Dizzy with happiness, she took a sheet of paper, placed it on her writing desk, and began to describe to Tom all the things that, out of respect for their privacy, I drew a veil over:

Oh, Derek, my darling Derek: you have no idea how much it meant to me finding your letter where it was supposed to ‘be’, and to find it filled with such love. It was the final incentive I needed in order to accept my fate without demur. And the very first thing I will do, my love, is to comply with your request, even though I shall no doubt blush with shame. How could I refuse to share intimacies with you that are ultimately yours? Yes, I shall tell you how everything happens, even though in doing so I will be dictating your actions, the way you will behave, such is the strangeness of all this.

We will make love in a room in Pickard’s boarding-house, directly opposite the tea room. I will agree to go with you there after deciding to trust you. In spite of this, you will notice how terrified I am as we walk down the corridor to the room. And this is something I would like to explain to you, my love, now that I have the opportunity. What I am about to say may surprise you, but in my own time, girls are brought up to repress their instincts, especially in well-to-do families like mine. Unfortunately, it is widely believed that the sole purpose of the sexual act should be procreation, and while men are allowed to express the pleasure they derive from physical contact, provided they do so respectfully and with moderation, we women must show perfect indifference, as our enjoyment is considered immoral. My mother has upheld this narrow-minded attitude all her life, and the same can be said of most of my married women friends.

However, I am different, Derek. I have always hated this absurd inhibition in the same way I detest crochet and needlework. I believe we women have as much right as you men to experience pleasure and express it freely as individuals. Moreover, I do not believe a woman needs to be married to a man in order to engage in intimate relations with him: in my view it is enough for her to be in love with him. These are my beliefs, Derek, and as I walked down the corridor in the boarding-house I suddenly realised the time had come for me to find out whether I was capable of putting them into practice or had merely been lying to myself, and whether my fear was only a sign of my complete ignorance of such matters.

Now you know, and I imagine that is why you treated me so gently and tenderly, but let us not get ahead of ourselves. Let me reveal everything step by step in an orderly fashion and, out of respect for you, I shall do so using the future tense as, from your point of view, none of this has as yet happened. Well, I will not put it off any longer.

The room in the boarding-house will be very small, but cosy. The winter evening will almost have set in, which is why you will first hurry to light the table lamp. I shall watch you from the doorway, unable to move a muscle. Then you will look at me warmly for a few moments, before walking towards me very slowly with a calming smile, like someone afraid of scaring off a nervous cat. When you are near me, you will gaze into my eyes, whether to read what is in them or for me to read what is in yours I do not know. Then you will lean very slowly towards my mouth, so slowly I will be able to perceive your warm breath, the warmth of the air inside you, before feeling your lips firmly and at the same time gently pressing against mine. This subtle contact will unsettle me for a few moments, and then it will be transformed into my first kiss, Derek. And although I will have spent many nights anticipating what it will feel like, I will only have imagined the spiritual side, the supposed floating feeling it gives you, but it will never have occurred to me to consider the physical side, the soft, pulsating warmth of someone else’s lips on mine. But little by little I will give myself over to this sensual touch, and I will respond to you with the same tenderness, sensing that we are communicating in a much deeper, more sincere way than with words, that we are putting all of ourselves into that tiny physical space. Now I know nothing brings two souls together more than the act of kissing, of awakening desire for one another.

Then a pleasant tickling sensation will ripple over my flesh, penetrating my skin and overwhelming me inside. Is this rush of sensations what my mother and my most prudish friends try so hard to suppress? I will experience it, Derek. I will taste it, delight in it, and cherish it, my love, in the knowledge that I will be experiencing it for the first and last time, for I will know that after you there will be no other men and I must live off these feelings for the rest of my life. Then the floor will give way beneath my feet and, except for the pressure of your hands around my waist, I will almost believe I am floating.

Then you will take away your lips, leaving the imprint of your mouth on mine, and you will look at me with tender curiosity while I try to regain my breath and my composure. And then? It will be time for us to undress and lie down together on the bed, only you will seem as hesitant as I, unable to take the first step, perhaps because you think I will be afraid. And you will not be mistaken, my love, because I have never undressed in front of a man before, and all at once I will feel nervous and bashful and wonder whether taking off our clothes is really necessary. According to my aunts, my mother kept her marriage vows without my father ever having seen her naked. In keeping with the customs of her generation, Mrs Haggerty lay down in her petticoats with a hole in her undergarments revealing the scented opening where my father was permitted entry.

But it will not be enough for me simply to lift my skirts, Derek. I will want to enjoy our physical contact to the full, and therefore I will overcome my shame and begin to undress, fixing you with a gentle, solemn look. I will begin by taking off my feather hat, which I will hang on the stand. Then I will slip off my jacket, my blouse with its high-necked collar, my over-corset, my corset, my over-skirt, my skirt, my bustle and my petticoats, until all I am left wearing is my slip. Still gazing at you tenderly, I will pull down the shoulder straps so the garment slides off my body, like snow slipping from a fir tree, and lies in a furl at my feet. Then, like a final act of a long drawn-out ritual, I will slip out of my drawers, offering myself to you utterly naked, placing my body at your disposal, surrendering myself to the touch of your hands and your lips, giving myself completely, knowing it is to the right man, to Captain Derek Shackleton, the liberator of the human race, the only man with whom I could ever have fallen in love.

And you, my love, will watch the elaborate process, like someone waiting for a beautiful figure to emerge from a block of marble as it is teased out by the artists chisel. You will see me walking towards you, and will quickly take off your shirt and trousers, as if a gust had torn them from a washing line. Then we will embrace, the warmth of our bodies mingling in a happy union, and I will feel your fingers, so accustomed to touching hard metal and weapons, exploring my body, sensitive to its delicacy, with exhilarating slowness and respectful tenderness. Then we will lie on the bed gazing into one another’s eyes, and my hands will search your stomach for the scar from the bullet with which Solomon tried to kill you, and which you survived as one recovers from a fever, only I will be so nervous I won’t be able to find it.

Then your mouth, moist and eager, will cover me with kisses, leaving a trail of saliva, and once you have thoroughly charted my body, you will enter it slowly, and I will feel you moving inside me with such gentleness. But despite the care you take, your intrusion will cause me to feel a sudden sharp pain inside, and I will cry out softly and even pull your hair, although immediately it will turn into a bearable, almost sweet ache, and I will become aware of something dormant inside me beginning to stir. How can I describe to you what I will feel at that moment? Imagine a harp marvelling at the notes it produces when a pair of hands plucks it for the first time. Imagine a burning candle, whose melted wax trickles down the candlestick, oblivious to the flame above, and forms a beautiful latticed pattern at the base. What I am trying to say to you, my love, is that until that moment, I will not have known it is possible to feel such exquisite rapture, the ecstatic pleasure that will radiate through my whole body from a place somewhere inside me, and although at first my bashfulness will force me to grit my teeth, to attempt to stifle the gasps that will rise from my throat, I will end up abandoning myself to that overpowering joy. I will let myself be swept away by that torrent of icy fire, and will proclaim my pleasure with passionate cries, announcing the awakening of my flesh. And I will be insatiable. I will clutch you to me, trapping you with my legs, because I want you to stay inside me for ever, because I will be unable to understand how I could have lived all that time without feeling you thrusting sweetly into me.

And when, after the final ecstasy, you slip out of me, leaving a crimson trail across the sheets, I will suddenly feel incomplete, bereft, lost. With my eyes closed, I will savour the echo of joy you have left inside me, the delicious memory of your presence, and when this has slowly faded, I will be overwhelmed by a feeling of extraordinary loneliness, but also of infinite gratitude at having discovered in myself a creature perfectly adapted to bliss, capable of enjoying the loftiest and most earthly pleasures. Then I will reach out, searching for the feel of your skin bathed in my sweat, your skin that still quivers and burns, like the strings of a violin after a concerto, and I will gaze at you with a radiant smile of gratitude for having revealed to me who I am, everything I did not yet know about myself.

Tom was so moved and surprised, he had to stop reading. Had he really unleashed all those feelings in her? Leaning back against the tree, almost out of breath, he let his gaze wander over the surrounding fields. For him, the carnal act with her had been a pleasant experience he would always remember, but Claire spoke of it as though it had been sublime and unforgettable, like the foundation stone that, as the years passed, would hold up the cathedral of her love. Feeling even more of a savage than he really was, Tom sighed and went on reading:

I was going to tell you now how I travelled to your time, Derek, but when I remember that during our meeting at the tea room you still did not know how we do it, I feel compelled to keep it secret in order not to change things that have already happened. What I can tell you is that last year an author called H. G. Wells published a wonderful novel, The Time Machine, which made us all dream about the future. And then someone showed the machine to us. I can tell you no more than that. But I will make it up to you by saying that, although your mission in my time will fail, and the machine in which you travel here will be prohibited, the human race will win the war against the automatons, and it will be thanks to you. Yes, my love, you will defeat the evil Solomon in an exciting sword fight. Trust me, for I saw it with my own eyes.

Your loving,

C

Wells placed the letter on the table, trying not to show how it had aroused him. He glanced at Tom silently, gesturing almost imperceptibly with his head that he could leave. Once he was alone, he picked up the letter to which he had to reply, and flushed with excitement as he re-read the detailed account of their meeting at the boarding-house. Thanks to this girl, he finally understood women’s experience of pleasure, the sensation that crept over them with intriguing slowness, overwhelming them completely or scarcely touching them. How sublime, resplendent and infinite their enjoyment was compared to that of men, so vulgar and crude, little more than a spurt of joy between their legs.

But was this the same for all women or was she special? Had the Creator fine-tuned this particular girl’s sensitivity to such an astonishing degree? No, doubtless she was a perfectly ordinary creature who simply enjoyed her sexuality in a way other women would consider brazen. Her simple decision to undress in front of Tom already showed an audacious spirit, a determination to experience to the full every possible sensation arising from the sexual act.

Upon realising this, Wells felt saddened, annoyed even, by the chaste manner in which the women in his life had given themselves to him. His cousin Isabel was one of those who had resorted to the hole in the undergarment, presenting him with only her sex, which to Wells seemed like some terrifying entity, a sort of sucking orifice that appeared to have come from some other planet. Even Jane, who was less inhibited in such matters, had never allowed him to see her completely naked. No, he had never been lucky enough to meet a woman blessed with Claire’s delightful nature.

There were no limits to what he could have done with a girl as easy to win over as she. It would have been enough to extol the therapeutic virtues of sex for women in order to convert her into an eager adept of carnal pleasure, a modern-day priestess ready to give and receive pleasure freely. She would have become a champion of copulation, preaching door to door that regular sexual activity improved women’s physiques, gave them a mysterious glow, softened their expressions, and even rounded off any unsightly angularities. With a woman like that, he would certainly be a contented man, his appetites sated, a man who could put his mind to other things, throw himself into his interests, freed from the relentless male itch that had begun in adolescence and would stay with him until senility finally rendered his body useless.

It was no surprise, then, that Wells immediately envisaged the girl named Claire Haggerty in his bed, without any clothes veiling her slender form, allowing him to stroke her with feline abandon, intensely enjoying the same caresses that scarcely elicited a polite sigh from Jane. It seemed incongruous to him that he should understand this unknown woman’s pleasure, while that of his wife remained a mystery to him. Suddenly he remembered she was waiting somewhere in the house for him to give her the next letter to read. He left the kitchen to go and look for her, taking deep breaths on the way to calm his excitement.

When he found her in the sitting room reading a book, he put the sheet of paper on the table without a word, like a poisoned chalice, then waited to see the effect it had on her. For there was no doubt the letter would affect Jane, as it had affected him, forcing her to question her approach to the physical side of love in the same way that the last letter had made her question the way she experienced its spiritual side.

He walked out into the garden to breathe in the night air, and gazed up at the pale full moon laying claim to the sky. In addition to the insignificance he always felt beneath the heavens, he was aware of his own clumsiness in comparison to the far more direct, spontaneous way others had of relating to the world, in this case the girl named Claire Haggerty. He remained in the garden for a long while, until he thought it was time to see the effect the letter had produced in his wife.

He walked slowly through the house, with almost ghost-like footsteps and, unable to find her in the sitting room or in the kitchen, he went upstairs to the bedroom. There was Jane, standing by the window, waiting for him. The moonlight framed her naked, tempting body. With a mixture of astonishment and lust, Wells examined its elements, its proportions, the supple wisdom with which her womanly parts, always glimpsed separately or divined through fabric, formed a greater landscape, creating a liberated, otherworldly being that looked as though it might fly away at any moment. He admired her soft, malleable breasts, her painfully narrow waist, the placid haven of her hips, the dark woolliness of her pubis, her feet like small, appealing animals. Jane was beaming at him, delighted to feel herself the object of her husband’s astonished gaze.

Then the writer knew what he must do. As though obeying an invisible prompter, he tore off his clothes, also exposing his nakedness to the light of the moon, which instantly outlined his skinny, sickly-looking frame. Husband and wife embraced in the middle of their bedroom, experiencing the touch of each other’s skin in a way they never had before. And the sensations that followed also seemed magnified, for Claire’s words etched in their memories redoubled the dizzying effect of each caress, each kiss. Real or imagined, they abandoned themselves hungrily, passionately, to explore each other, to venture outside the boundaries of their familiar garden of delights.

Later on, while Jane slept, Wells slipped out of their bed, tiptoed into the kitchen, took up his pen and began rapidly to fill the paper, prey to an uncontrollable sensation of euphoria.

My love,

How I long for the day when at last I shall be able to experience all the things you have described to me. What can I say except that I love you and I shall make love to you exactly as you describe? I shall kiss you tenderly, caress you softly and reverently, enter you as gently as I can and, knowing as I do everything you are feeling, my pleasure will be even more intense, Claire.

Tom read Wells’s passionate letter with suspicion. Even though he knew the author was pretending to be him, he could not help thinking those words might just as well come from both of them. Wells was evidently enjoying all this. What did his wife think of it? Tom folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and hid it under the stone next to the mysterious Peachey’s grave.

On the way back, he went on mulling over the author’s words, unable to help feeling as if he had been left out of a game he himself had invented, relegated to the mere role of messenger.

I love you already, Claire, I love you already. Seeing you will simply be the next phase. And knowing we will win this bloody war gives me renewed joy. Solomon and I locked in a sword fight? Until a few days ago, I would have wondered whether you were quite sane, my love: I could never have imagined we would settle our differences with such a prehistoric weapon. But this morning, picking through the ruins of the History Museum, one of my men came across a sword. He deemed the noble relic worthy of a captain and, as though obeying your command, solemnly presented me with it. Now I know I must practise with it in preparation for a future duel, a duel from which I shall emerge victorious, for knowing that your beautiful eyes are watching me will give me strength.

All my love from the future,

D

Claire felt her knees go weak and, lying down on her bed, she luxuriated in the wave of sensations the brave Captain Shackleton’s words had unleashed in her heart. While he had been duelling with Solomon he had known she was watching him, then ... The thought made her slightly dizzy again, and she took a moment to recover.

Suddenly it dawned on her that she would receive only one more letter from her beloved. How would she survive without them?

She tried to put it out of her mind. She still had to write two more. As she had promised, she would only tell him about their encounter in the year 2000 in her last letter, but what about the one she had to write now? She realised, somewhat uneasily, that for the first time she was free to write what she liked. What could she say to her beloved that she had not already said, especially considering that everything she wrote must be carefully examined in case it conveyed information that might jeopardise the fabric of time, apparently as fragile as glass?

After some thought, she decided to tell him how she spent her time now, as a woman in love without a lover. She sat at her desk and took up her pen.

My darling,

You cannot know how much your letters mean to me. Knowing I shall receive only one more makes me feel dreadfully sad. However, I promise I will be strong. I will never falter, never stop thinking of you, feeling you near me every second of each long day. It goes without saying that I will never allow another man to tarnish our love, even though I will never see you again. I prefer to live from my memories of you, despite the best efforts of my mother to marry me off to the wealthiest bachelors in the neighbourhood – naturally I have told her nothing of you (my love would seem like a waste of time to her, for she would see you as no more than a pointless illusion). She invites them to our house and I receive them courteously, of course, then amuse myself by inventing the most outrageous reasons for rejecting them that leave my mother speechless. My reputation is growing worse by the day: I am doomed to be a spinster and a disgrace to my family.

But why should I care a fig for what others think? I am your beloved. The brave Captain Derek Shackletons beloved, although I have to hide my feelings for you.

Apart from these tedious meetings, I devote the rest of my time to you, my love, for I know how to sense your presence swirling around me like a fragrance even though you are many years away from me. 1 feel you near me always, watching me with your gentle eyes, although at times it saddens me not to he able to touch you, that you are no more than an ethereal memory, that you cannot share anything with me. You cannot slip your arm through mine in Green Park, or hold my hand as we watch the sun go down over the Serpentine, or smell the narcissi I grow in my garden, whose scent, my neighbours say, fills the whole of St James’s Street.

Wells was waiting in the kitchen, as before. Tom silently handed him the letter and left before the writer could ask him to. What was there to say? Although in the end he knew it was untrue, he could not help feeling as though Claire were writing to Wells instead of to him. He felt like the intruder in this love story, the fly in the soup.

When he was alone, Wells opened the letter and began to devour the girl’s neat handwriting.

In spite of all this, Derek, I shall love you until my dying day, and no one will be able to deny that I have been happy. And yet I have to confess it is not always easy. According to you I will never see you again, and the thought is so unbearable that, despite my resolve, I try to make myself feel better by imagining you may be mistaken. That does not mean I doubt your words, my love, of course not. But the Derek who uttered them in the tea room was only guided by what I am saying now, and it is possible the Derek who hurried back to his own time after making love to me in the boarding-house, the Derek who is not yet you, will be unable to bear not seeing me again and will find a way of coming back to me. What that Derek will do, neither you nor I can know, for he is outside the circle. This is my only hope, my love – a naïve one, perhaps, but necessary all the same.

I dearly hope I will see you once more, that the scent of my narcissi will lead you to me.

Wells folded the letter, put it back in its envelope and laid it on the table, where he stared at it for a long time. Then he stood up, walked round the kitchen in circles, sat down, stood up again and walked round in circles some more. Then he made up his mind. Tm going to London to settle some business,’ he told Jane, who was working in the garden. He left the house and went to the station, where he hired a cab.

During the journey, he tried to calm his wildly beating heart.

At that hour of the afternoon, St James’s Street seemed lulled by a peaceful silence. Wells ordered the cab driver to stop at the entrance to the street, and asked him to wait for him there. He straightened his hat and adjusted his bow tie, then sniffed the air, like a bloodhound. He concluded from his inhalations that the faint, slightly heady odour reminiscent of jasmine, which he detected through the smell of horse dung, must be narcissi. The flower added a symbolic touch to the scene, which pleased him, for he had read that, contrary to popular belief, the name ‘narcissus’ derived not from the beautiful Greek god but from the plant’s narcotic properties. The narcissus bulb contained hallucinogenic opiates, and this oddity struck Wells as terribly appropriate: were not all three of them – the girl, Tom and himself – caught up in a hallucination?

He studied the long, shady street, and set off down the pavement with the leisurely air of one out for a stroll, although as he approached the apparent source of the aroma, he noticed that his mouth had dried. Why had he come there? What did he hope to gain? He was not sure. All he knew was that he needed to see the girl to give the recipient of his passionate letters a face or, failing that, to glimpse the house where she penned her beautiful letters. Perhaps that would be enough.

Before he knew it, Wells found himself standing in front of an undeniably well-tended garden with a tiny fountain on one side, and enclosed by a railing at the foot of which lay a carpet of pale yellow flowers with large petals. Since the street boasted no other garden that could rival its beauty, Wells deduced that the narcissi before him, and the elegant town house beyond, must be those of Claire Haggerty, the unknown woman he was pretending to love with a fervour he did not show the woman he truly loved. Not wishing to give too much thought to this paradox, which was nonetheless in keeping with his contradictory nature, Wells approached the railings, almost thrusting his nose through the bars in an attempt to glimpse something behind the leaded window-panes that made sense of his urgent presence there.

It was then he noticed a girl looking at him, apparently perplexed, from a corner of the garden. Realising he had been caught red-handed, Wells tried to act naturally, although his response was anything but natural, especially since he realised straight away that the girl staring at him could be none other than Claire Haggerty. He tried to gather himself even as he gave her an absurdly affable grin. ‘Magnificent narcissi, miss,’ he declared, in a reedy voice. ‘One can smell their aroma from the end of the street.’ She smiled, and came a little closer, enough for the author to see her beautiful face and delicate frame. Here she was at last, before his eyes, albeit fully clothed. And she was indeed a vision of loveliness, despite the slightly upturned nose – it marred the serene beauty, which was otherwise reminiscent of a Greek sculpture – or perhaps because of it. This girl was the recipient of his letters, his make-believe lover.

‘Thank you, sir, you’re very kind,’ she said, returning the compliment.

Wells opened his mouth as if to speak, but hurriedly closed it again. Everything he wanted to tell her went against the rules of the game he had consented to play. He could not say that, although he might appear an insignificant little man, he was the author of those words without which she claimed she could not live. Neither could he tell her he knew in precise detail her experience of sexual pleasure. Still less could he reveal that it was all a sham, urge her not to sacrifice herself to a love that only existed in her imagination, for there was no such thing as time travel, no Captain Shackleton waging war on the automatons in the year 2000. Telling her it was an elaborate lie that she would pay for with her life would be tantamount to handing her a gun to shoot herself through the heart.

Then he noticed she had begun giving him quizzical looks, as if his face seemed familiar. Afraid she might recognise him, Wells hurriedly doffed his hat, bowed politely and continued on his way, trying not to quicken his pace.

Intrigued, Claire watched for a few moments as he vanished into the distance, then shrugged and went inside the house.

Crouched behind a wall on the opposite pavement, Tom Blunt watched her go in. Then he emerged from his hiding-place. Seeing Wells had surprised him, although not excessively. The author would likewise not have been surprised to find him there. Apparently neither of them had been able to resist the temptation to look for the girl’s house, the location of which she had subtly revealed in the hope that if Shackleton came back he could find her.

Tom returned to his lair in Buckeridge Street, unsure what to think of Wells. Had the author fallen in love with her? He did not think so. Maybe he had gone there out of simple curiosity. If he were in Wells’s shoes, would he not also have wanted to put a face to the girl whom he addressed using words he would probably never utter to his own wife?

Tom fell back on the bed feeling completely exhausted, but his anxiety and permanent state of tension prevented him sleeping more than a couple of hours, and before dawn he set off once more on the long journey to the writer’s house. These walks were keeping him fitter than the training sessions they were put through by Murray, whose hired assassin had still not appeared to punish his flagrant breaking of the rules. Even so, Tom had no intention of lowering his guard.

Wells was waiting for him on the doorstep. He did not look rested either. His face was crumpled and his eyes had dark shadows under them, although they were twinkling mysteriously. Doubtless he had been awake all night, writing the letter he now had in his hand. When he saw Tom, he greeted him with a slow nod and held out the missive, avoiding looking him in the eye. Tom took it from him, and, similarly unwilling to break the silence, which was charged with tacit understanding, turned to go back the way he had come.

Then he heard Wells say: ‘Will you bring her last letter even though it needs no reply?’

Tom turned to him with a profound sense of pity, although he did not know whether he felt sorry for Wells or himself, or possibly for Claire. At length he nodded glumly and left. Only when he was at a comfortable distance did he open the envelope and begin to read.

My love,

There are no narcissi in my world, nor the least trace of any flower, and yet I swear that when I read your letter I can almost smell their fragrance. Yes, I can envisage myself standing beside you in the garden you speak of, which I imagine carefully tended by your lily-white hands and perhaps lulled by a babbling fountain. In some way, my love, thanks to you, I can smell them from here, from time’s distant shore.

Tom hung his head, imagining how moved the girl would be by these words. He felt pity for her again – and, in the final analysis, an overwhelming sense of self-disgust. She did not deserve to be deceived like this. The letters might save her life, but in the end they were only repairing the harm he had so selfishly caused, merely to quench the fire between his legs. He felt unable simply to congratulate himself for preventing her suicide and forget the whole thing, while Claire was ruining her life because of a lie, burying herself alive due to an illusion.

The long walk to Harrow helped him gather his thoughts, and he concluded that the only reparation he could make that would ease his conscience would be actually to love her, to make into a reality the love for which she was willing to sacrifice herself, to bring Shackleton back from the year 2000, to make him risk life and limb for her, exactly as Claire was hoping. That was the only thing that would completely atone for his wrongdoing. But it was also the one thing he was powerless to do.

He was reflecting about this when, to his astonishment, he caught sight of her under the oak tree. He stopped in his tracks, stunned. Incredible as it seemed, Claire was there, at the foot of the tree, shielding herself from the sun with the parasol he had travelled through time to bring her. He also glimpsed the coach at the bottom of the hill, the coachman nodding off on the box. He quickly hid behind some bushes before one or other of them sensed his presence. He wondered what Claire was doing there, but the answer was obvious. She was waiting for him – or, rather, she was waiting for Shackleton to step through a hole in the air from the year 2000. Unable to resign herself to living without him, the girl had decided to act, to defy fate, and what simpler way of doing so than by going to the place where the captain emerged to collect her letters? Desperation had compelled Claire to make a move that infringed the rules of the game. And, watching her from behind the bushes, Tom kicked himself for not having foreseen this possibility, especially as she had given him ample proof of her courage and intelligence.

He remained in hiding almost the entire morning, watching gloomily as she circled the oak tree, until finally she grew tired, climbed into her carriage and went back to London. Then Tom emerged from his hiding-place, left the letter under the stone and made his own way back to the city. As he walked, he remembered the tormented words Wells had used to end his final letter:

A terrible sorrow overwhelms me when I realise this is the last letter I am going to write you, my love. You yourself told me it was, and I believe you are right about that, too. I would love nothing more than for us to go on writing to one another until we meet next May. However, if there is one thing I have learned from all this, it is that the future is predestined, and you have already experienced it. And so I can only suppose something will happen to stop me sending you more letters; possibly use of the machine will be banned and my hitherto unsuccessful mission called off.

I feel torn, as I am sure you can imagine: on the one hand, I am happy to know that for me this is not a last farewell, for I shall see you again very soon; on the other, my heart breaks when I think that you will never hear from me again. But this does not mean my love for you will die. It will live, Claire, I promise you, for one thing I am sure of is my love for you. I shall carry on loving you from my flowerless world.

D

Tears rolling down her cheeks, Claire sat at her desk, took a deep breath and dipped her pen into the inkwell.

This, too, is my last letter, my love, and although I would like to begin by telling you how much I love you, I must be honest with myself and confess to you shamefacedly that a few days ago I did a reckless thing. Yes, Derek, apparently I am not as strong as I thought, and I went to the oak tree to wait for you to appear. Living without you is too painful. I needed to see you, even if it altered the fabric of time. I waited all morning, but you did not come, and I could not escape my mother’s watchful eye any longer. It is difficult enough not to arouse Peter the coachman’s suspicions. He already looks at me strangely each time I ask him to take me there, but has so far kept my secret from my mother. How do you suppose he would have reacted if he had seen you step out of the oak tree as if by magic? I expect they would have discovered everything and it would have caused some sort of disaster in time.

I realise now it was foolish and irresponsible of me. Yes, for even if Peter had seen nothing, our impromptu meeting would still have changed the fabric of time. You would not see me for the first time on 20 May in the year 2000, and everything would instantly turn upside down, and nothing would happen as it is meant to. But luckily, although I would have liked nothing more, you did not appear, and so there is nothing to regret. I imagine you arrived in the afternoon, for the next day your beautiful, final letter was there.

I hope you can forgive my foolishness, Derek, which I am confessing to you because I do not wish to hide any of my faults from you. And in the hope of moving you to forgive me still further, I am sending you a gift from the bottom of my heart, so that you will know what a flower is.

After writing this, she stood up, took her copy of The Time Machine from the bookshelf, opened it and removed the narcissus she had pressed between its pages. When she had finished the letter, she touched the delicate petals to her lips and carefully slid the flower into the envelope.

Peter asked no questions this time either. Without waiting for her to tell him, he set off for Harrow-on-the-Hill. When they arrived, Claire walked up to the oak tree and discreetly hid the letter under the stone. Then she glanced around at the landscape, aware of saying goodbye to the place that had been the setting for her happiness those past few days, to those peaceful meadows, vibrantly green in the morning sun, to the distant cornfields, a streak of gold marking the horizon. She gazed at John Peachey’s headstone, and wondered what sort of life this stranger had lived, whether he had known true love or died without experiencing it.

She took a deep breath, and almost thought she could perceive her beloved Derek’s scent, as though his numerous appearances had left a trace behind in that sacred place. It was all in her imagination, she said to herself, the result of her desperate longing to see him. And she must accept reality. She must prepare to spend the rest of her life without him, to be content to listen out for the echo of his love resonating from the other side of time, for possibly she would never see him again. That afternoon, or tomorrow, or the next day, an invisible hand would seize her last letter, and after that there would be no others, only solitude unfurling at her feet like a carpet stretching to infinity.

She returned to the carriage and climbed in without giving Peter any order. With a resigned look, the coachman set off for London as soon as she was comfortably seated.

Once the carriage had vanished into the distance, Tom lowered himself from the branch he had clambered on to and dropped to the ground. From there he had been able to see her for the last time; he could even have touched her just by stretching out his hand, but he had not allowed himself to do so. And now, having indulged his whim, he must never go near her again. He took the letter from under the stone, leaned against the tree and began reading, a pained expression on his face.

As you rightly imagined, Derek, they will soon prohibit the use of the machine. There will be no more journeys through time for you until you defeat the evil Solomon. After that, you will decide to risk your life by secretly using the machine to travel to my time. But let us not get ahead of ourselves: let me at last tell you about our first meeting and what you must do afterwards.

As I told you, it will take place on 20 May in the year 2000. That morning, you and your men will mount a surprise attack on Solomon. At first glance, and despite the astute positioning of your men, you will not come out of the skirmish with the upper hand, but have no fear, for at the end of it Solomon will suggest resolving the conflict with a sword fight. Accept his offer without hesitation, for you will win the duel. You will be a hero, and this combat, which puts an end to the automatons’ supremacy over the human race, will be hailed as the dawn of a new era, so much so that it will be regarded as a perfect tourist destination for time travellers from my era, who will eagerly flock there to witness it.

I will go on one of those trips and, concealed behind a pile of rubble, I will watch you fight Solomon, but when the duel is over, instead of going back with the others, I will hide among the ruins, intending to stay in your world because, as you know, my own holds no attraction for me. Yes, thanks to the dissatisfaction that has dogged me all my life, and which I never suspected would lead to anything, you and I will meet.

I must warn you, though, that our meeting will not be as romantic as it ought to have been; on the contrary, it will be rather embarrassing, particularly for you, Derek, and recalling it still brings a smile to my lips. But I suppose I should say no more about your indecorous behaviour, as I can only assume it would influence your actions. All you need to know is that, during our brief encounter, I will drop my parasol, and although you will travel across time in order to meet me and make love to me, returning it will be the excuse you give so that I agree to meet you at the tea room.

Naturally, in order for all this to happen as it is supposed to, in order to complete the circle in which we are trapped, you must appear in my time before we begin writing to each other — there would be no point in your doing so afterwards for, as you know, it is you who will encourage me to write to you. You must appear on exactly 6 November 1896 and look for me at Covent Garden Market at twelve o’clock in order to ask me to meet you that same afternoon. The rest you know. If you do as I say, you will preserve the circle, and everything that has happened already will happen once more.

That is all, my love. In a few months’ time, our love story will begin for you. But for me it ends here, when I put the last full stop on this page. However, I will not say a final farewell and so deny all hope of our seeing one another again because, as I told you before, I live in the hope of you coming back to find me. All you have to do is follow the scent of the flower in the envelope.

With all my love,

C

Wells let out a sigh of dismay as he folded the letter Tom had brought him and placed it on the table. Then he took the envelope and tipped it over his open palm, but there was nothing inside. What had he expected? The flower was not for him. And, sitting in the kitchen, touched by the rays of the evening sun, he realised his expectations had been too high. Although he appeared to be, he was not the protagonist of the romance that spanned time. He saw himself, empty hand absurdly outstretched, as though checking to see if it was raining inside the house, and could not help feeling like an intruder in the story.

Chapter XXXII

Very carefully, Tom slipped the delicate flower between the pages of the only book he owned, his battered copy of The Time Machine. He had decided to let Wells keep Claire’s letters, as a sort of thank-you gift for services rendered, but mainly because in the end he considered they belonged to the writer. In the same way, he had held on to the narcissus he found in the final envelope because he believed it was meant for him. And, after all, its perfume conveyed more meaning to him than her words.

He lay back on his bed, and wondered what Claire Haggerty would do now that the letter-writing was over and she was officially in love with a man from the future. He imagined her thinking of him each day, as she had predicted in her letters, from dawn to dusk, year in, year out, indifferent to the fact that real life, the one she ought to have been living, was slipping away from her. This cruel fate, to which he had contributed – or, rather, which he had orchestrated – made him deeply unhappy, but he could think of no way to put things right without making them worse.

His only consolation was that in her letters Claire had assured him she would die happy. And perhaps, in the end, nothing else mattered. She probably would be happier in this impossible love affair than if she married one of her insipid suitors. If so, why did it matter if her happiness was based on a lie, provided that she died without knowing she had been deceived, ended her days believing she had been loved by Captain Derek Shackleton?

He stopped thinking about the girl’s fate and focused on his own. He had sworn to himself he would stay alive until he had saved Claire’s life, and he had succeeded by staying hidden and sleeping outside in the fields. But now he was ready for death – he was even looking forward to it. There was nothing left for him to do in life, except struggle to survive, which felt like a terribly exhausting and, in the end, pointless exercise, and far harder to achieve with the memory of Claire piercing his heart like a painful splinter.

Twelve days had passed since his meeting with the girl in the tea room, in full view of the whole of London, and Gilliam Murray’s hired assassin had still not managed to find him. He could not count on Solomon either, who apparently preferred to haunt his dreams. But someone had to kill him, or he would end up dying of hunger. Perhaps he ought to make things easier for his killer. Added to this was another consideration: rehearsals would soon begin for the third expedition to the year 2000, which was in less than a fortnight. Was Murray waiting for him to appear at Greek Street so that he could kill him in his lair with his own bare hands? Attending the first rehearsal was as good as placing his head voluntarily in the lion’s mouth, but despite everything, Tom knew that that was what he would do, if only to solve once and for all the riddle of his existence.

Just then someone hammered on his door. Tom sprang to his feet, but made no move to open it. He stood waiting, every muscle in his body tensed, ready for anything. Had his time come? A few moments later, the barrage of thuds resumed.

‘Tom? Are you there, you miserable scoundrel?’ someone outside roared. ‘Open up or I’ll have to knock down the door.’

He recognised Jeff Wayne’s voice. He put Wells’s book into his pocket and somewhat reluctantly opened the door. Jeff burst into the room and gave him a bear hug. Bradley and Mike greeted him from the landing.

‘Where have you been hiding the last few days, Tom? The boys and I have been looking everywhere for you . . . Woman trouble, was it? Well, that doesn’t matter now, we’ve found you – and just in time. We’re going to celebrate in style tonight, thanks to our good old friend Mike,’ he said, pointing to the giant, who was looking as gormless as ever.

As far as Tom could gather from Jeff’s muddled explanation, some days earlier Murray had paid Mike to do a special job for him. He had played the role of the infamous Jack the Ripper, the monster who had murdered five prostitutes in Whitechapel in the autumn of 1888.

‘Some are born to play heroes, while others . . .’ Jeff jeered. ‘In any case he got the lead role and that calls for a proper splurge, wouldn’t you say?’

Tom nodded. What else could he do? This was clearly not Mike’s idea, but had been cooked up by Jeff, who was always ready to spend other people’s money. Tom had no desire to go with them, but he knew he lacked the strength to resist. His companions all but dragged him downstairs to one of the adjoining taverns, where the trays of sausages and roast meat spread out on the table in the private room finally overcame his feeble resistance. Tom might not care for their company, but his stomach would never forgive him if he walked away from all that food. Laughing loudly, the four men sat at the table and gorged themselves, while making fun of Mike’s assignment.

‘It was a difficult job, Tom,’ the big man groaned. ‘I had to wear a metal plate over my chest to stop the bullet. It’s not easy pretending to be dead trussed up like that!’

His companions burst out laughing again. They ate and drank until most of the food was gone, and the beer had begun to take effect.

Then Bradley stood up, turned his chair around and, placing his hands on the back as though leaning on a pulpit, gazed at his companions with exaggerated solemnity. There always came a time during their drunken sprees when he displayed his talent for mimicry. Tom sat back in his chair, resigned to watching the performance, thinking that at least he had satisfied his hunger.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, all I wish to say is that you are about to participate in the most astonishing event of the century: today you are going to travel through time!’ the lad declared in pompous tones. ‘Don’t look so astonished. Murray’s Time Travel is not satisfied simply to take you to the future. No! Thanks to our efforts, you will also have the opportunity to witness possibly the most important moment in the history of mankind: the battle between the brave Captain Derek Shackleton and the evil automaton Solomon, whose dreams of conquest you will see perish beneath the captain’s sword.’

His companions clapped and roared with laughter. Encouraged by their response to his performance, Bradley threw back his head and put on a grotesquely wistful face. ‘Do you know what Solomon’s great mistake was? I shall tell you, ladies and gentlemen. His mistake was that he picked the wrong lad to perpetuate the species. Yes, the automaton made a bad choice, a very bad choice. And his mistake changed the course of history,’ he said, with a smirk. ‘Can you imagine a more terrible fate than having to fornicate all day long? Of course you can’t. Well, that was the poor lad’s fate.’ He spread his arms and nodded in a mock gesture of regret. ‘But not only did he carry it off, he also managed to grow stronger, to study the enemy, who watched him copulating every night with great interest, before going to the city to approve the newly fabricated automaton whores. But the day the woman gave birth, the lad knew he would never see his son grow up – his son who had been brought into the world to fornicate with his own mother, thus initiating a vicious circle that would perpetuate itself through the seed of his seed. However, the lad survived his execution, brought us together and gave us hope . . .’ He paused for effect, then added: ‘. . . only he still hasn’t taught us how to fuck properly!’

The laughter grew louder. When it had subsided, Jeff raised his tankard. ‘To Tom, the best captain we could ever have!’

They all toasted him. Surprised by his companions’ gesture, Tom could scarcely conceal his emotion.

‘Well, Tom, I suppose you know what happens now, don’t you?’ Jeff said, clapping his shoulder once the cheers had died down. ‘We heard a rumour about some new merchandise at our favourite whorehouse. And they’ve got almond-shaped eyes – do you hear me? Almond-shaped eyes!’

‘Have you ever slept with an Asian woman, Tom?’ asked Bradley.

Tom shook his head.

‘Well, no man should die without trying one, my friend!’ Jeff guffawed as he rose from the table. ‘Those Chinese girls can give pleasure in a hundred ways our women know nothing about.’

They made an almighty din as they left the tavern. Bradley led the procession, vaunting the Chinese prostitutes’ numerous virtues, much to the delight of Mike, who smacked his lips in anticipation. According to Bradley, Asian women were not only obliging and affectionate but had supple bodies they could contort into all sorts of positions without injuring themselves.

Tom had to suppress a groan. If he wanted any woman to make love to him just then it was Claire, even if she did not have almond-shaped eyes or an unnaturally flexible body. He remembered the intensity of her response when he had taken her, and wondered what his companions, those coarse ruffians, would think if he told them there was another way of feeling that was more sublime and exquisite than the primitive pleasure they knew.

They hailed a cab and clambered aboard, still laughing. Mike squeezed his large frame in next to Tom, almost pinning him against the door, while the other two men faced them. Jeff, who was behaving in an overexcited, rowdy manner, gave the order for the cab to set off. Reluctant to join in the general gaiety, Tom gazed out of the window at the succession of streets, alarmingly deserted at that time of night. He noticed the driver had taken a wrong turning: they were going towards the docks, not the brothel.

‘Hey Jeff, we’re going the wrong way!’ he cried out, trying to make himself heard above the racket.

Jeff Wayne turned and looked at him sternly, letting his laughter die menacingly in his throat. Bradley and Mike also stopped laughing. A strange, intense silence enveloped them, as though someone had dredged it up from the ocean floor and poured it into the carriage.

‘No, Tom, we’re not going the wrong way,’ Jeff finally said, contemplating him with a sinister smile.

‘But we are!’ insisted Tom. ‘This isn’t the way to . . .’

Then he understood. How had he not seen it before? Their exaggerated high spirits, the toast that had felt more like a farewell, their tense demeanour in the cab . . . Yes, what more proof did he need? In the funereal silence that had descended, the three men looked at him with an air of false calm, waiting for him to digest the situation. And, to his surprise, Tom discovered that now the time had arrived for him to die, he no longer wanted to. Not like this. Not at the hands of these casual assassins, who were simply demonstrating Gilliam Murray’s unlimited power to turn anyone into a murderer with a handful of banknotes.

He was glad at least that Martin Tucker, whom he had always considered the most decent among them, was not there, that he had been incapable of turning his back on his friend and perpetrating this cheerful collective crime.

Tom heaved a sigh, disillusioned by the fickleness of the human spirit, and gazed at Jeff with an air of disappointment. His companion shrugged, refusing any responsibility for what was about to happen. He was opening his mouth, perhaps to remark that such was life or some other cliché, when a blow to his throat from Tom’s boot stopped him, crushing him against the seat. Taken aback, Jeff let out a loud grunt of pain, which in turned into a high-pitched whistle. Tom knew this would not put him out of action, but the attack had been sudden enough to take them all by surprise.

Before the other two could react, he elbowed the bewildered Mike in the face as hard as he could. The blow dislocated the other man’s jaw, and a spurt of blood from his split lip hit the window.

Undaunted by Tom’s violent response, Bradley pulled a knife from his pocket and pounced on him. Although supple and quick, fortunately he was the weakest of the three. Tom grabbed his arm and twisted it violently until he dropped the weapon. Then, since the move had placed Bradley’s head only a few inches from his leg, Tom kneed him brutally in the face, hurling him back against his seat, where he lay slumped, blood streaming from his nose.

In a matter of seconds he had overpowered all three men, but he scarcely had time to congratulate himself on his swift, punishing action because Jeff, who had by then recovered, flew at him with a savage roar. The force of the attack flung Tom against the cab door, the handle digging into his right side like a blade. They wrestled awkwardly in the reduced space, until Tom felt something crack behind him. The door had given way. Seconds later he found himself dangling in mid-air, clutching Jeff as the cab raced on. Tom hit the ground with Jeff, the breath knocked out of him. The impact caused the two men to carry on rolling for a few moments, until they disentangled themselves from their grotesque lovers’ embrace.

When everything stopped spinning Tom, whose whole body ached terribly, tried to heave himself to his feet. A few yards off Jeff, alternately cursing and howling, was trying to do the same. Tom realised it would be one against one until the others arrived, and that he must take advantage of this.

But Jeff was too quick for him. Before he was fully on his feet, Jeff charged at him, propelling him back to the ground. He felt his spine crack in several places, but even so, as his assailant’s hands grappled for his throat, Tom managed to place his foot on Jeff’s chest and push him off. Jeff flew backwards, but Tom felt a searing pain as his thigh muscle ripped under the strain. He ignored it and struggled to his feet, before the other man this time.

In the distance, the cab had stopped, one door hanging like a broken wing. Bradley and Mike were already rushing towards them. Quickly calculating the odds, Tom decided his best bet was to run away from a fight he could only lose. He dashed towards the busier streets, away from the deserted docks.

He had no idea where his sudden urge to live had sprung from, when only hours before he had longed for eternal oblivion. In any event, he ran as fast as his racing heart and throbbing thigh would permit, struggling to find his bearings in the pitch-black night. Hearing his pursuers close behind him, Tom dived into the first side street he came to, which, unhappily for him, proved to be a dead end. He swore at the wall standing in his way and turned slowly, resigned to his fate.

His companions stood waiting for him at the entrance to the alleyway. Now the real fight would begin, he said to himself, and strolled casually towards his executioners, trying hard not to limp and clenching his fists at his sides. He knew he stood no chance against three of them, but that did not mean he was going to throw in the towel. Would his desire to stay alive prove stronger than their desire to kill him?

Tom walked up to them and gave an ironical bow. He did not have Captain Shackleton’s sword, but he felt as though the man’s spirit was beating in his breast. It’s better than nothing, he thought. The dim light from the nearest streetlamp barely illuminated the scene, and their faces remained in shadow. No one said a word, for there was nothing more to say, until Jeff gave the order. The men slowly fanned out, like prize fighters sizing up their opponent.

Since none of them took the initiative, Tom assumed they were giving him the chance to initiate the one-sided combat. Who would he go for first, he wondered, as his companions circled him? He stepped towards Mike, fists raised but, at the last moment, he made a feint and threw the punch at an unsuspecting Jeff. The blow hit him full in the face, knocking him to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Bradley’s attack coming. He dodged the punch and, when Bradley was squarely in front of him, plunged his fist into the lad’s stomach, doubling him up in pain.

He was not so lucky with Mike, whose hammer blow was deadly. The world went fuzzy Tom’s mouth filled with blood, and he had to make a superhuman effort to stay on his feet. But the giant showed him no mercy. Before Tom had time to recover, he threw another punch, this time right on the chin. There was an ominous crack and Tom went spinning to the ground. Almost immediately, he felt the toe of a boot sink ruthlessly into his side, threatening to shatter his ribs. Tom realised they had him. The fight was over. From the hail of blows raining down on him, he deduced that Bradley and Jeff had joined in the beating.

On the ground beside him, through the dense fog of his pain, he could make out Wells’s book, which must have fallen out of his pocket during the brawl. Claire’s flower had escaped from its pages and lay incongruously on the filthy ground, a pale yellow brightness that looked as though it would be snuffed out at any moment, like his life.

Chapter XXXIII

When at last the beating stopped, Tom clenched his teeth and, ignoring the pain, reached out to grasp Claire’s flower, but failed: at that moment someone grabbed his hair and tried to pull him up. ‘Nice try, Tom, nice try’ Jeff Wayne whispered in his ear, accompanying his words with what sounded like a snigger, or perhaps a groan. ‘Unfortunately your efforts were wasted. You’re going to die anyway’

He ordered Mike to take hold of Tom’s feet, and he felt himself borne aloft by his executioners to a place that, on the brink of losing consciousness, scarcely mattered to him. After a few minutes of being bumped and jolted, his companions tossed him on the ground as if he were a bundle of rags.

When Tom heard lapping water and boats knocking together, his worst fears were confirmed: they had brought him back to the docks, probably because they planned to throw him into the river. But for the moment no one did or said anything. Tom was trying to slip into oblivion, but the sensation of something soft, warm and not unpleasant touching his swollen cheeks prevented it. It felt as if one of his companions had decided to prepare him for death by wiping the blood from his wounds with a cloth dipped in tar.

‘Eternal, come here at once!’ he heard someone shout.

The sensation stopped, and Tom felt vibrations in the ground and heard the heavy yet delicate tread of footsteps slowly approaching the scene.

‘Stand him up,’ the voice commanded.

His companions yanked him roughly to his feet, but Tom’s legs would not support him, causing him to slump to his knees with the almost sensual limpness of a puppet whose strings have been cut. A hand grasped his collar to prevent him keeling over completely. Once he had overcome his dizziness and could focus, Tom watched impassively from his kneeling position as Gilliam Murray made his way slowly towards him, his dog circling at his feet. He wore the slightly irritated expression of someone who has been dragged from his bed in the middle of the night for no good reason, as though it had escaped his memory that he was the one behind the ambush. He stopped a few yards in front of Tom and looked at him, smirking disdainfully, taking pleasure in his pathetic state.

‘Tom, Tom, Tom,’ he said at last, in the tone of someone scolding a child. ‘How has it come to this unpleasant situation? Was it really so difficult to follow my instructions?’

Tom remained silent, not so much because the question was rhetorical but because he doubted he could utter a word, his lips swollen, his mouth full of blood and broken tooth. Now that he could focus, he glanced around and saw that they were indeed at the docks, only a few yards from the quayside. Besides Murray, who was standing in front of him, and his companions waiting for their orders, there seemed not another soul in sight. It would all take place in the strictest intimacy. That was how nobodies met their end, discreetly, without any fuss, like refuse tossed into the river in the middle of the night while the world is sleeping. And no one would notice his absence the next day. No one would say: ‘Hold on, where’s Tom Blunt?’ No, the orchestra of life would play on without him, because his part had never been important to the score.

‘Do you know what’s so amusing about this whole thing, Tom?’ said Murray, calmly, moving closer to the edge of the quay and gazing absently into the murky river. ‘It was your lover who gave you away’

Again, Tom said nothing. He simply stared at his boss, whose eyes were still contemplating the Thames, that bottomless coffer where he stored anything that posed a problem. A moment later, Murray smirked at him once more, with a mixture of pity and amusement.

‘Yes. If she hadn’t come to my office the day after the expedition asking for the address of one of Captain Shackleton’s ancestors I would never have found out about your affair.’

He paused again to give Tom time to digest what he had told him. As Murray had suspected, the girl had never mentioned this to him. And why should she? From Tom’s point of view it was unimportant, of course. For Murray it had been a fortuitous blunder.

‘I had no idea what the girl’s game was,’ he said, walking to Tom with mincing, almost balletic, steps. ‘I gave her an evasive reply and sent her packing, but I was curious so I had one of my men follow her – just to be on the safe side. You know how much I dislike people poking their noses into my affairs. But Miss Haggerty didn’t seem interested in snooping – quite the contrary. Isn’t that so? I confess to being astonished when my informant told me she had arranged to meet you at a tea room, and afterwards . . . Well, I don’t need to tell you what happened afterwards at the Pickard boarding-house.’

Tom lowered his head in a gesture that could equally have been embarrassment or vertigo.

‘My suspicions were justified,’ Murray went on, amused by Tom’s awkwardness, ‘but not in the way I had imagined. I thought of killing you there and then, despite my admiration for the way you had used the situation to your advantage. But then you did something completely unexpected: you visited Wells’s house, and that aroused my curiosity even more. I wondered what you were up to. If you intended telling the writer it was a hoax you had gone to the wrong person. As you immediately discovered, Wells is the only person in the whole of London who is aware of the truth. But, no, you had a far nobler purpose.’

As Murray spoke, he paced back and forth in front of Tom, hands behind his back. His movement made the boards on the quayside squeak unpleasantly. Eternal sat a few feet away, fixing him with a vaguely curious look.

‘After leaving Wells’s house, you went to Harrow-on-the-Hill. There you hid a letter under a stone, which my spy brought to me immediately. And when I had read it I understood everything.’ He gazed at Tom with mock compassion. ‘I have to confess I was most amused by your letters, which my informant put back before whoever was to collect them arrived. Except for the last one, of course, which you whisked away so fast I had to steal it off Wells while he was out on that ludicrous machine known as a bicycle he likes to ride around on.’

He stopped pacing and studied the river again.

‘Herbert George Wells ...’ he whispered, scarcely able to contain his contempt. ‘The poor fool. I can’t deny I was tempted to tear up all his letters and rewrite them myself. I only refrained from doing so because Wells would never have found out, which would have been the same as if I had done nothing. But let’s not talk about that any more,’ he declared, suddenly brightening and turning once more to face his victim. ‘You couldn’t care less about petty rivalries between writers, could you, Tom? Yes, I greatly enjoyed reading your letters, one passage in particular, as I’m sure you can imagine. I believe it was very instructive to us all. However, now the final instalment has been written, the little old ladies will shed bitter tears over the lovers’ tragic fate, and I am free to kill you.’

He crouched before Tom and lifted his head with almost maternal tenderness. The blood streaming from Tom’s split lip soiled his fingers and he pulled out a handkerchief to clean it off, still gazing intently at Tom.

‘Do you know something, Tom?’ he said. ‘In the end, I’m deeply grateful for all your efforts not to reveal my hoax. I realise you’re partially blameless. But only partially. True, that foolish girl started everything. Yet you could have let it go, and you didn’t, did you? I sympathise, believe me: I’m sure the girl was worth taking all those risks for. However, you see why I can’t let you go on living. We each have our role to play in this tale. And, sadly for you, mine consists of killing you. And how could I resist the perfect irony of giving the job to your faithful soldiers of the future?’

With these words, he gave a twisted smile at the men looming behind Tom. He studied Tom again for a long time, as though giving one last thought to what he was about to do, perhaps mulling over another possible course of action.

‘I have no choice, Tom,’ he said finally, shrugging his shoulders. ‘If I don’t kill you, sooner or later you’ll look for her again. I know you will. You’ll look for her because you’re in love with her.’

On hearing this, Tom could not help gazing at Murray in surprise. Was it true? Was he really in love with Claire? This was a question to which he had never given much thought because, whether or not he loved her or she had just been a passing fancy, an opportunity he was loath to pass up, he still had to keep away from her. However, now he had to admit that if Murray were to let him live, the first thing he would do was look for her, and that could only mean his boss was right: he was in love with her.

Yes, he realised with astonishment, he loved her. He loved Claire Haggerty. He had loved her from the moment he had first seen her. He loved the way she looked at him, the touch of her skin, the way she had of loving him. It felt so good to let himself be enveloped by the protective mantle of that immense love, the magic cape that shielded him from life’s coldness, the icy indifference of every day that made his soul tremble, the incessant wind filtering through the shutters and seeping into his innermost depths. And he wanted nothing more than to be able to love her with the same intensity, to feel he was fulfilling man’s highest, most noble achievement, the one he had been born for, the one that satisfied him and made him happy: to love, to love truly, to love for no other reason than the joy of being able to do so. That was what drove him on. That was his reason for living, because although he might be unable to leave his mark on the world, he could make someone else happy, and that was the most important thing. The most important thing was to leave his mark on another person’s heart.

Yes, Murray was right: he would look for her because he wanted her to be with him, because he needed her by his side in order to become someone else, to escape from who he was. Yes, he would look for her, whether to delight in the joys of spring together or to plunge into the abyss. He would look for her because he loved her. And somehow this lessened the lie Claire was living. For, in the end, the girl’s love was reciprocated, and Tom’s love, like Shackleton’s, was also unattainable, lost in the ether, unable to find its way to her. What did it matter if they lived in the same time or even in the same city, that festering turn-of-the-century London, if they were to remain as far apart as if they were separated by an ocean of time?

‘But why drag things out?’ he heard Murray say. ‘It would make for a worse, far less exciting ending to the story, don’t you think? It’s best if you disappear, Tom, for the story to end as it’s supposed to. The girl will be far happier in any case.’

Gilliam Murray lifted his huge body to its full height and gazed down at Tom once more with scientific interest, as though he were something floating in a bottle of formaldehyde.

‘Don’t harm her,’ Tom stammered.

Murray shook his head, pretending to be shocked. ‘Of course I won’t, Tom! Don’t you see? With you out of the way the girl is no threat to me. And, believe it or not, I have my scruples. I don’t murder people just for the fun of it, Tom.’

‘My name is Shackleton,’ said Tom, between gritted teeth. ‘Captain Derek Shackleton.’

Murray burst out laughing. ‘Then you needn’t be afraid, for I guarantee you will rise from the dead.’

With these words, he gave Tom one last smile and gestured to his companions. ‘All right, gentlemen. Let’s get this over with and go to bed.’

Following Murray’s command, Jeff and Bradley scooped Tom off the ground, while Mike brought over a huge block of stone with a piece of rope tied round it, which they fastened to Tom’s feet. Then they bound his hands behind his back. Murray watched the proceedings with a satisfied smile.

‘Ready, boys,’ said Jeff, after making sure the knots were secure. ‘Let’s do it.’

Once more, Jeff and Bradley carried Tom shoulder high to the edge of the quay, while Mike held on to the stone that would anchor him to the riverbed. Tom gazed blankly at the murky water. He was filled with the strange calm of someone who knows his life is no longer in his own hands. Murray walked over to him and squeezed his shoulder hard. ‘Goodbye, Tom. You were the best Shackleton I could hope to find, but such is life,’ he said. ‘Give my regards to Perkins.’

Tom’s companions swung his body, and at the count of three tossed him and the stone into the Thames. Tom had time to fill his lungs with air before he hit the surface of the water. The cold came as a shock, dispelling the lethargy pervading his body. He was struck by fate’s final irony: what good was it to feel so awake now that he was about to drown? He sank in a horizontal position to begin with, but the weight of the stone soon pulled him upright, and he plummeted with astonishing speed to the bottom of the Thames. He blinked several times, trying to glimpse something through the greeny-brown water, but there was not much to see, besides the bottoms of the boats floating above, and a flickering halo of light cast by the quay’s only streetlamp.

The stone quickly hit the riverbed and Tom remained floating above it, suspended by ten inches of rope, like a child’s kite, buffeted by the current. How long could he go without breathing? he wondered. What did it matter? Was it not absurd to struggle against the inevitable? Even though he knew it would only postpone death, he pressed his lips tightly together. Again that painful instinct to survive, but now he had understood his sudden will to live: he had discovered that the worst thing about dying was not being able to change what he had been, that when he died others would see only the repulsive tableau into which his life would solidify. He remained hanging upright for what felt like an excruciating eternity lungs burning, temples throbbing deafeningly, until the urgent need to breathe compelled him against his will to open his mouth.

Water began to fill his throat, streaming merrily into his lungs, and everything around him became even fuzzier. Then Tom realised this was it: in a few seconds he would lose consciousness.

In spite of this, he had time to see the figure appear. He watched him emerge from the swirling fog in his brain and walk towards him along the riverbed with his heavy metal footsteps, oblivious to the water all around him. He assumed that the lack of oxygen to his brain had allowed the automaton to escape from his dreams and move around in the real world. He was too late, though. Tom had no need of him: he was quite capable of drowning without his help. Or perhaps he had come for the pleasure of watching him die, face to face in the river’s murky depths.

But, to his surprise, when the automaton reached his side, he gripped Tom’s waist with one of his metal arms, as if to lead him in a dance, while with the other he tugged at the rope around his feet until he loosened it. Then he heaved Tom towards the surface. Tom, still semi-conscious, saw the bottoms of the boats and the shimmering streetlamp gradually looming larger. Before he knew it, his head emerged above the water.

The night air coursed into his lungs, and Tom knew this was the true taste of life. He breathed in greedily, spluttering like a hungry infant choking on its food. He allowed his enemy to hoist his near-lifeless body on to the quayside, where he lay on his back, dizzy and numb with cold. He felt the automaton’s hands pressing repeatedly down on his chest. The pumping helped him spew out the water he had swallowed. When there seemed to be no more, he coughed a few times, bringing up some congealed blood, and could feel life seeping back into his limp form. He was overjoyed to discover he was alive again, to feel life’s soft pulse flowing through him, filling him voluptuously, like the river water had done only moments before. For a split second, he even felt the illusion of immortality, as though such a close brush with death, having felt the Grim Reaper’s chill fingers closing around him, had in some way acquainted him with it so that its rules no longer applied to him.

Somewhat recovered, Tom forced himself to smile at his saviour, whose metallic head was floating above him, a dark spherical object lit by the single streetlamp on the quay. ‘Thank you, Solomon,’ he managed to splutter.

The automaton unscrewed his head. ‘Solomon?’ he laughed. ‘It’s a diving suit, Tom.’

Although his face remained in the shadow, Tom recognised Martin Tucker’s voice, and was overwhelmed with happiness.

‘Have you never seen one before? It lets you walk underwater, just like strolling in a park, while someone pumps air through a tube from the surface. We have Bob to thank for that and for winching us both up on to the quay,’ explained his companion, pointing towards a figure out of Tom’s field of vision. Then, after putting the helmet to one side, Martin lifted Tom’s head and examined it with the carefulness of a nurse. ‘’Struth, the boys did a good job. You’re in a right state. Don’t be angry with them, though. They had to make it look realistic to dupe Murray. I think it worked. As far as he’s concerned, they’ve done the job and are no doubt receiving their dues right this minute.’

Despite his swollen lips, Tom grimaced. So, it had been a charade? Apparently so. As Murray had explained to him before he had been thrown into the Thames, he had hired Tom’s companions to kill him. But they were not as heartless as Tom had thought, even though they couldn’t afford to refuse Murray’s money. Martin must have suggested that, if they were clever, they could put on another performance – the burly fellow was now brushing back Tom’s hair from his bloodied brow and gazing at him with fatherly affection.

‘Well, Tom, the performance is over,’ he said. ‘Now that you’re officially dead, you’re free. Your new life begins tonight, my friend. Make the most of it, as I am sure you will.’

He patted Tom’s shoulder in a gesture of farewell, smiled at him one last time and vanished from the quay, leaving an echo of metallic footsteps lingering behind him.

After he had gone, Tom lay still, in no hurry to get up, trying to assimilate everything that had happened. He took a deep breath, testing his sore lungs, and gazed at the heavens arching above him. A beautiful pale yellow full moon lit the night sky, grinning down at him, like a death’s head that had threatened to swallow him only to breathe new life into him. Incredible though it might seem, everything had been resolved without him having to die. His body was racked with pain and he felt weak as a kitten, but he was alive – alive! Wild delight overwhelmed him, compelling him to get up off the cold ground – if he lay there much longer in his wet clothes he would catch pneumonia.

He struggled to his feet and limped away from the docks. His bones were bruised but not broken, and his companions must have taken care not to injure his internal organs. The place was deserted. At the entrance to the cul-de-sac where the fight had started, lying next to Wells’s novel, he saw the flower Claire had given him. He picked it up and held it in the palm of his hand. The sweet, fragrant scent of narcissus, faintly reminiscent of jasmine, guided him slowly through the labyrinth of the night, pulling him, like the sea’s undertow, drawing him towards an elegant house immersed in silence.

The fence around it was not too high, and a creeper seemed to adorn its façade for the sole purpose of making it easier for a daring man to climb to the window of a sleeping girl.

Tom gazed with infinite tenderness at the girl who loved him as no one had ever loved him before. From her lips came short, soft sighs as though a summer breeze were wafting through her. He noticed her right hand clutched a piece of paper on which he could make out Wells’s minuscule handwriting. He was about to wake her with a caress, when she opened her eyelids slowly, as though he had roused her simply by gazing at her. She did not appear in the least surprised to see him standing beside her bed, as if she had known that, sooner or later, he would appear, guided by the scent of her narcissi.

‘You’ve come back,’ she whispered sweetly.

‘Yes, Claire, I’ve come back,’ he replied. ‘I’ve come back for good.’

She smiled serenely at him, pushed back the bedclothes, stood up and walked into his open arms. And as they kissed, Tom understood that, regardless of what Gilliam Murray thought, this was a far more beautiful ending than the one where they never met again.

PART THREE

Chapter XXXIV

Inspector Colin Garrett of Scotland Yard would have been glad if the sight of blood did not make him feel so queasy that each time his job obliged him to look at a dead body he had to leave the scene to be sick – especially if the cadaver in question had been subjected to a particularly dreadful attack. However, sadly for him, this was such a regular occurrence that the inspector had even considered the possibility of forgoing breakfast, in view of how little time the meal remained in his stomach. Perhaps it was to compensate for this squeamishness that he had been blessed with such a brilliant mind. At any rate, that was what his uncle had always told him – his uncle being the legendary Inspector Frederick Abberline who, some years previously, had been in charge of hunting down the vicious murderer, Jack the Ripper.

Such was Abberline’s belief in his nephew’s superior brainpower that he had practically delivered the boy himself to Scotland Yard’s headquarters with an impassioned letter of recommendation addressed to Chief Superintendent Arnold, the austere, arrogant man in charge of the detective squad. And, during his first year there, Garrett had to acknowledge that, to his surprise, his uncle’s trust in him had not proved unfounded. He had solved a great many cases since moving into his office overlooking Great George Street, apparently with very little effort. He had achieved this without leaving his lair.

Garrett would spend long nights in his cosy refuge, collecting and fitting together the pieces of evidence his subordinates brought to him, like a child absorbed in a jigsaw puzzle, avoiding contact with the raw, bloody reality that pulsated behind the data he handled. A sensitive soul like his was unsuited to fieldwork.

Perhaps the morgue was the place that showed off the grittier side of crime to its most flamboyant effect – its tangible side, its unpleasantly real physical side, which Garrett tried so hard to ignore. Each time he was forced to view a body, the inspector would give a resigned sigh, pull on his hat and set off for the loathsome building concerned, praying he would have time to flee the autopsy room before his stomach heaved, and avoid bespattering the pathologist’s shoes.

The corpse he was meant to examine that morning had been discovered in Marylebone by the local police, who had handed the case to Scotland Yard when they had found it impossible to identify what kind of weapon had inflicted the wound on the victim -apparently a tramp. Garrett imagined the bobbies doing this with a wry smile, content to give the brainboxes in Great George Street a sufficiently puzzling case to make them earn their salary.

Dr Terence Alcock had been waiting for him at the entrance to the York Street morgue, wearing a blood-stained apron, and had confessed that they were faced with a mystery he for one found completely baffling. And when a man as well versed as the pathologist, who was fond of airing his knowledge at every opportunity, admitted defeat so openly, Garrett decided he was confronted with a truly interesting case, the sort you might expect to find in a novel featuring his hero Sherlock Holmes. In real life, more often than not, criminals showed a distinct lack of imagination.

To Garrett’s astonishment, the pathologist greeted him with a grim expression and guided him in solemn silence down the corridor to the autopsy room. He immediately understood that the inexplicable wound had vexed him to the point of clouding his usually excellent humour. Despite the rather alarming appearance that having only eyebrow gave him, Dr Alcock was a cheerful, garrulous fellow. Whenever Garrett appeared at the morgue, he always greeted him jovially, reciting in a sing-song voice the order in which he considered it most appropriate to examine the abdominal cavity: peritoneum, spleen, left kidney, suprarenal gland, urinary tract, prostate gland, seminal vesicles, penis, sperm cord ... a litany of names ending with the intestines – he them left until last, he explained, for reasons of hygiene: handling their contents was a revolting job.

And I, who see everything whether I want to or not, as I have repeatedly reminded you throughout this tale, can confirm that, notwithstanding his propensity for bluster, in this instance the doctor was not exaggerating. Thanks to my supernatural ability to be in all places at once, I have seen him in this unpleasant situation, covering himself, the corpse, the dissecting table and even the floor of the autopsy room with excrement. Out of concern for your sensibilities I shall refrain from any closer description.

This time, however, as he walked down the long corridor, the pathologist had a melancholy air, and did not reel off his usual list, which Garrett, thanks to his prodigious memory, had often caught himself singing under his breath, usually when he was in a good mood. At the end of the corridor, they reached a large room where the unmistakable odour of decaying flesh lingered in the air. It was lit by several four-branched gas lamps hanging from the ceiling, although Garrett thought these were not enough for such a large room, and only made it seem even grimmer. In the semi-darkness, he could scarcely see more than two yards in front of him.

Rows of cabinets filled with surgical instruments lined the brick walls, with shelves of bottles containing mysterious opaque liquids. On the far wall was a huge basin, where on more than one occasion he had seen Dr Alcock rinsing blood off his hands, like someone practising a macabre ritual ablution. In the centre of the room, a figure with a sheet draped over it lay on a sturdy table, lit by a single lamp. The pathologist, who always wore his sleeves rolled up, which Garrett found disturbing, gestured to him to approach the table. On a stand next to the body, like a sinister still-life, lay an assortment of dissecting knives, blades for slicing through cartilage, a cut-throat razor, various scalpels, a few hacksaws, a fine chisel and accompanying hammer for boring into the cranium, a dozen needles threaded with catgut suture, a few soiled rags, some scales, an optical lens, and a bucket of pinkish water, which Garrett tried not to look at.

Just then, one of the pathologist’s assistants opened the door hesitantly, but the doctor shooed him away angrily. Garrett remembered hearing him rail against the foppish youngsters they sent fresh out of university, who wielded an autopsy knife as though it were a pen, moving only their hand and wrist rather than their whole arm, and making timid little cuts as if they were preparing a meal. ‘They should leave that type of slicing to the people who give public demonstrations in the amphitheatres,’ Dr Alcock declared. He was a believer in bold incisions, long, deep cuts that tested the resilience of an arm or a shoulder’s musculature. After heading off the interruption, the doctor drew back the sheet covering the body on the slab. He did so without ceremony, like a magician wearily performing a trick for the thousandth time.

‘The subject is a male aged between forty and fifty,’ he said, in a flat monotone. ‘Height five foot seven, fragile-boned, with reduced amounts of subcutaneous fat and muscle tissue. The body is pale in colour. As for the teeth, the incisors are present, but several molars are missing. Most of those remaining contain cavities and are covered with a darkish layer.’

After presenting his report, he paused, waiting for the inspector to stop staring at the ceiling and to look at the corpse.

‘And this is the wound,’ he declared enthusiastically, attempting to coax Garrett out of his passivity.

Garrett gulped air and allowed his eyes to descend slowly towards the cadaver, until his eyes came to rest on the enormous hole in the middle of the chest.

‘It is a circular opening, twelve inches in diameter,’ explained the pathologist, ‘which you can look straight through as if it were a window – as you will see if you lean over.’

Reluctantly, Garrett bent over the huge hole and, indeed, was able to glimpse beneath it the table the body was stretched out on.

‘Whatever caused the wound, besides badly scorching the skin around the edges, pulverised everything in its path, including part of the sternum, the ribcage, the mediastinum, the lungs, the right ventricle of the heart and the corresponding section of the spinal cord. What little survived, like some pieces of lung, fused with the thoracic wall. I have yet to carry out the post-mortem, but this hole was clearly the cause of death,’ the pathologist pronounced, ‘only I’ll be hanged if I know what made it. The poor wretch looks as if he’s been pierced by a tongue of flame or, if you prefer, by some sort of heat ray. But I don’t know any weapon capable of doing this, except perhaps the Archangel Michael’s flaming sword.’

Garrett nodded, struggling with his rebellious stomach. ‘Does the body present any other anomalies?’ he asked, by way of saying something, feeling the sweat begin to pearl on his forehead.

‘His foreskin is shorter than average, barely covering the base of the glans, but without any sign of scarring,’ the pathologist replied, flaunting his professional knowledge. ‘Apart from that, the only anomaly is this accursed hole, big enough for a poodle to jump through.’

Garrett was disgusted by the image the pathologist had conjured up. He felt as though he knew more about the poor wretch now than was necessary for his investigation. ‘Much obliged to you, Dr Alcock. Let me know if you discover anything new or if you think of anything that may have caused this hole,’ he said.

Hurriedly he took his leave of the pathologist and walked out of the morgue, as upright as he could. Once he reached the street, he dived into the nearest alleyway and brought up his breakfast between two piles of refuse. He emerged, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, pale but recovered. He paused, gulped air, then breathed out slowly, smiling. The singed flesh. The grisly hole. He was not surprised the pathologist was unable to identify the weapon responsible for that ghastly wound. But he knew exactly what it was.

Yes, he had seen brave Captain Shackleton wielding it in the year 2000.

It took him almost two hours to persuade his superior to sign an arrest warrant for a man who had not yet been born. As he stood outside the door to his office, swallowing hard, he knew it was not going to be easy. Chief Superintendent Thomas Arnold was a close friend of his uncle, and had accepted him with good grace into his team of detectives, although he had never shown him anything other than distant politeness, with an occasional outburst of fatherly affection whenever Garrett solved a difficult case. When his superior walked past his office and saw him with his head down, the young inspector had the feeling he was looking at him with the same discreet satisfaction as if he were a coal stove in good working order.

The only time his affable smile faded had been the day Garrett went into his office following his trip to the year 2000 to recommend an urgent ban on the production of automatons and the confiscation of those already in circulation; he had said they should be stored where they could be watched, in a pen surrounded by barbed wire, if necessary. Chief Superintendent Arnold thought the idea was completely ludicrous. He was only a year away from retirement, and the last thing he wanted was to make life difficult for himself by advocating preventive measures against some far-fetched threat he himself had not foreseen. But because the new recruit had more than proved his astuteness, he reluctantly agreed to ask for a meeting with the commissioner and the prime minister to discuss the matter.

On that occasion, the command that had come down to Garrett from the hierarchy was a clear refusal: there would be no halt to the production of automatons or any attempt to prevent them infiltrating people’s homes under the guise of their innocent appearance, regardless of whether, a century later, they were going to conquer the planet. Garrett pictured the meeting between those three unimaginative men incapable of seeing further than the end of their noses. He was sure they had dismissed his request amid scathing remarks and guffaws. This time however, things would be different. This time they could not look the other way. They could not wash their hands of the matter, arguing that by the time the automatons rebelled against man they would be resting peacefully in their graves, for the simple reason that on this occasion the future had come to them: it was acting in the present, in their own time, that very part of time they were supposed to be protecting.

Even so, Chief Superintendent Arnold put on a sceptical face the moment Garrett began to explain the affair. Garrett considered it a privilege to have been born in an era when science made new advances every day, offering him things his grandparents had never even conceived of. He was thinking not so much of the gramophone or the telephone as of time travel. Who would have been able to explain to his grandfather that in his grandson’s time people would be able to journey to the future, beyond their own lifetimes, or to the past, back through the pages of history? Garrett had been excited about travelling to the year 2000 not so much because he was going to witness a crucial moment in the history of the human race – the end of the long war against the automatons – but because he was more conscious than ever that he lived in a world where, thanks to science, anything seemed possible. He was going to travel to the year 2000, yes, but who could say how many more epochs he might visit before he died?

According to Gilliam Murray, it was only a matter of time before new routes opened up. Perhaps he would have the opportunity to glimpse a better future, after the world had been rebuilt, or to travel back to the time of the pharaohs or to Shakespeare’s London, where he could see the playwright penning his legendary works by candlelight. All this made his youthful spirit rejoice, and he felt continually grateful to God, in whom, despite Darwin’s policy of vilification, he preferred to continue to believe. Each night, before he went to bed, he beamed up at the stars, where he imagined God resided, to indicate that he was ready to marvel at whatever He deigned to show him.

It will come as no surprise to you, then, that Garrett paid no heed to people who mistrusted the discoveries of science, still less to those who showed no interest in Gilliam Murray’s extraordinary discovery, as was the case with his superior, who had not even bothered to take time off to visit the year 2000.

‘Let me see if I’ve understood you correctly. Are you telling me this is the only lead you have in this case, Inspector?’ Chief Superintendent Arnold said, waving the advertisement for Murray’s Time Travel Garrett had given him. He jabbed his finger at the little illustration showing the brave Captain Shackleton shooting a hole in an automaton with a ray gun.

Garrett sighed. The fact that Chief Superintendent Arnold had not been on any of the expeditions to the future meant he was forced to fill him in on the subject. He wasted several minutes explaining in general terms what was happening in the year 2000 and how they had travelled there, until he reached the part that really interested him: the weaponry used by the human soldiers. Those guns were capable of cutting through metal, so it was not impossible to imagine that, on a human, the effect might be very similar to what he had seen on the body in the Marylebone morgue. As far as he was aware, no weapons in their own time could cause such a horrific wound, a fact he could see was borne out by Dr Alcock in his autopsy report.

At this point, Garrett presented his theory to Arnold: one of these men from the future, possibly the one named Shackleton, had stowed away on the Cronotilus when he and the others had travelled back to their time, and was now on the loose in the year 1896, armed with a lethal weapon. If he was right, they had two choices: they could search the whole of London for Shackleton, which might take several weeks, with no guarantee of success, or they could save themselves the trouble by arresting him where they knew he would be on 20 May in the year 2000. Garrett had only to go there with two police officers, and arrest him before Shackleton could travel back to their own day.

‘What’s more,’ he added, in a last-ditch attempt to convince his superior, who was shaking his head, visibly perplexed, ‘if you give me permission to arrest Captain Shackleton in the future, your department will be in line for all kinds of plaudit, because we will have achieved something truly ground-breaking: arresting a murderer before he is able to commit a crime, thus preventing it happening.’

Chief Superintendent Arnold gazed at him in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me that if you travel to the year 2000 and arrest this murderer his crime will be . . . rubbed out?’

Garrett understood how difficult it was for a man like Chief Superintendent Arnold to grasp something like this. No one would find it easy to understand the implications of what he was saying, unless they stayed awake all night as he did, mulling over the paradoxes to which time travel might give rise. ‘I’m convinced of it, Chief Superintendent. If I arrest him before he commits the crime, it will inevitably change the present. Not only will we be arresting a murderer, we’ll be saving a life because, I assure you, the tramp’s corpse will vanish from the morgue in a flash,’ Garrett declared, unsure himself of exactly how this would happen.

Thomas Arnold pondered for a few moments the praise Scotland Yard would earn from such temporal acrobatics. Luckily, his limited imagination was unable to comprehend that, once the murderer was arrested, not only would the corpse disappear, but so would everything relating to the crime, including the interview taking place at that very moment. There would be no murder to solve. In short, they would earn no plaudits because they would have done nothing.

The consequences of arresting Shackleton in the future, before he travelled into the past to commit his crime, were so unpredictable that Garrett himself, as soon as he paused to analyse them, found them dizzying. What would they do with a murderer whose crime no one remembered because he had been arrested before he committed it? What the devil would they accuse him of? Or perhaps Garrett’s journey into the future would also be flushed away down the giant cosmic drain where everything that had been prevented from happening disappeared? He did not know, but he was certain he was the instrument to set everything in motion.

After two hours of discussion, the dazed Chief Superintendent Arnold had ended the interview with a promise to Garrett that he would meet the commissioner and the prime minister that very afternoon and explain the situation to them as best he could. Garrett thanked him. This meant that the following day, if no problems arose, he would receive the warrant to arrest Shackleton in the year 2000. Then he would go to Murray’s Time Travel to see Murray and demand three seats on the next voyage of his Cronotilus.

As one might expect, while Garrett waited he mulled over the case. On this occasion, however, rather than attempt to solve it by analysing the various elements, which was pointless as he had already found the murderer, he simply marvelled at its extraordinary ramifications, as if he were examining a web spun by a new species of spider. And for once Garrett was not sitting in his office thinking these thoughts, but on a bench on the pavement opposite a luxurious house on Sloane Street.

This was the abode of Nathan Ferguson, the pianola manufacturer, whom, unfortunately – owing to his friendship with Garrett’s father – Garrett had known all his life. He had his doubts as to whether the odious fellow was in fact largely responsible for the devastating war of the future as the foul-mouthed young Winslow had suggested in jest, but he had nothing against spending the evening enjoying a bunch of grapes while he watched his house to see whether anyone suspicious came prowling around. If they did, it would no doubt save him a trip to the future. But it was quite possible, too, that Ferguson’s only function in the vast scheme of the universe was as a manufacturer of pianolas, and that Captain Shackleton was at that very moment stalking someone else’s house. Why else would he have killed the tramp? What could that poor wretch’s life have meant to the captain? Had he been an unfortunate casualty, an accident, or was there more to the cadaver lying in the morgue than met the eye? Was it, perhaps, a key piece in the puzzle of the future?

Garret was absorbed in his thoughts, but was forced to end them when he saw the door to the house open and Ferguson step out. The inspector rose from his bench and ducked behind a tree from where he had a clear view of what happened on the pavement opposite. Ferguson paused to put on his top hat and survey the night with a triumphant expression. Garrett saw that he was elegantly turned out, and assumed he must be on his way to some dinner or other. After pulling on his gloves, Ferguson closed the door behind him, descended the flight of steps, and strolled down the street in a leisurely way. Wherever he was going must be near enough for him not to summon his carriage.

Garrett wondered whether to follow him or not. Before he had a chance to decide what action to take, just as Ferguson was passing the flowerbeds bordering the lawn in front of his house, a shadow emerged silently from among the bushes. It was wearing a long coat and a cap pulled down over its face. Garrett did not need to see who it was: he knew. He was the first to be astonished that his theory had proved correct.

With a determined gesture, the figure pulled a pistol out of its coat pocket and aimed it at Ferguson as he strolled along, oblivious of what was going on behind his back. Garrett responded with alacrity. He leaped out from behind the tree and raced across the street. He was aware that surprise was his strongest weapon against Shackleton, who was twice his size and strength. The sound of Garrett’s footsteps alerted the shadow, who watched his swift approach with visible alarm, while still training the gun on Ferguson.

Garrett hurled himself at Shackleton with all his might, grabbing him round the waist. The two men fell through the bushes into the garden. The inspector was surprised by how easily he was able to pin down Shackleton, but quickly realised that this was because he was lying on top of a beautiful young woman, whose mouth was within kissing distance of his own.

‘Miss Nelson?’ he stammered, at a loss.

‘Inspector Garrett!’ she exclaimed, equally nonplussed.

Garrett’s face flushed bright red. He leaped up, disentangling himself from their unseemly embrace, then helped her to her feet. The revolver lay on the ground, but neither hurried to pick it up.

‘Are you all right?’ asked the inspector.

‘Yes,’ the girl replied, gasping with annoyance. ‘I don’t think I’ve broken any bones, at any rate.’

Lucy brushed the mud off her clothes, and let down her hair from the bun it had been wound up in – it had come loose during the fall.

‘Forgive me for charging at you like that, Miss Nelson,’ Garrett apologised, entranced by the lovely golden cascade resting on her shoulders like honey spilling from a jar. ‘I’m truly sorry, but ... if I’m not mistaken you were going to shoot Mr Ferguson.’

‘Of course I was going to shoot Mr Ferguson, Inspector! I haven’t been hiding in the bushes all evening for nothing,’ the girl replied sulkily.

She bent down to retrieve the pistol, but Garrett was quicker. ‘I think I’d better keep this,’ he said, grinning apologetically. ‘But tell me, why kill Mr Ferguson?’

Lucy stared distractedly at the ground for a few moments. ‘I’m not the shallow girl everyone thinks I am, you know,’ she said, sounding wounded. ‘I care about the world just as much as anyone else. And I intended to prove it by stopping the man responsible for the war of the future.’

‘I don’t think you’re shallow,’ said Garrett. ‘And anyone who does is an ass.’

Lucy beamed, flattered. ‘Do you really mean that?’ she said demurely.

‘Of course, Mss Nelson,’ said the inspector, smiling shyly at her. ‘But don’t you think there are better ways of proving it than by staining those lovely hands of yours with blood?’

‘I suppose you’re right, Mr Garrett,’ Lucy admitted, gazing at him admiringly.

‘I’m so glad you agree,’ said Garrett, genuinely relieved.

They stood in silence looking at each other awkwardly.

‘What now, Inspector?’ she said at length, her face a picture of innocence. ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

Garrett sighed. ‘I suppose I should, Miss Nelson,’ he acknowledged reluctantly. ‘However . . .’ He paused to weigh up the situation.

‘Yes?’ said Lucy.

‘I’m prepared to forget all about it if you promise not to try to shoot anyone again.’

‘Oh, I promise, Inspector!’ she said, overjoyed. ‘Now, kindly give me the pistol so I can put it back in my father’s drawer before he notices it’s missing.’

Garrett hesitated, but in the end he handed it to her. When she took it, their fingers touched; they lingered for a moment sharing a sense of delight. Garrett cleared his throat as Lucy slipped the gun into her coat pocket.

‘Will you allow me to walk you home, Miss Nelson?’ he asked, not daring to look her in the eye. ‘It is unwise for a young lady to be out alone at this hour, even if she does have a gun in her pocket.’

Lucy smiled, charmed by Garrett’s offer. ‘Of course I will,’ she said. ‘You’re very kind, Inspector. What’s more, I don’t live far from here and it’s a lovely evening. It’ll make a pleasant walk.’

‘I’m sure it will,’ Garrett replied.

Chapter XXXV

The next morning, in the privacy of his office, Inspector Colin Garrett ate his breakfast dreamily. Naturally, he was thinking of Lucy Nelson, her lovely eyes, her golden tresses, the way she had smiled at him when she asked whether she could write him a letter. At that moment, a constable barged in with a warrant signed by the prime minister, requesting he set off for the future to arrest a man who had not yet been born. Suffering from the effects of being in love, which, as you know, more often than not puts one in a daze, the inspector did not realise the letter’s significance until he found himself in the cab being driven to Murray’s Time Travel.

His legs had turned to jelly the first time he had crossed the threshold of Murray’s headquarters, clutching the money his father had left him, which was to be transformed into something straight out of a dream: a ticket to the future, to the year 2000. This time he did so with a resolute stride, even though he had something just as incredible in his jacket pocket: a warrant that seemed all the more extraordinary considering it was for the arrest of a phantom. And Garrett was convinced that, if time travel were to become routine, this would be the first in a long line of similar warrants enabling police officers to make arrests in different eras, provided that the crimes were committed in the same place: London.

When he had scrawled his signature on the slip of paper Garrett was carrying now in his inside pocket, the prime minister, doubtless unawares, had taken an epoch-making step – he had blazed a new trail. As Garrett had predicted, science and its amazing creations would beat the rhythm to which humanity would dance.

But this warrant would also allow Garrett certain liberties in space. Like not being forced to languish in some waiting room until that busiest of men, Gilliam Murray, deigned to see him. Invested with the power conferred on him by the paper in his inside pocket, Garrett marched straight past the secretaries guarding Murray’s privacy and, ignoring their objections, went up the stairs to the first floor, then along the corridor lined with clocks and breezed into Murray’s office, a bevy of breathless assistants in his wake.

Gilliam Murray was lying on the carpet playing with a huge dog. He frowned slightly when he saw Garrett come in without knocking, but the inspector did not allow himself to be intimidated. He knew his behaviour was more than justified.

‘Good morning, Mr Murray. Inspector Colin Garrett of Scotland Yard,’ he introduced himself. ‘Forgive me for barging in like this, but there’s an urgent matter I need to discuss with you.’

Murray rose to his feet very slowly, eyeing the inspector suspiciously before dismissing his assistants with a wave. ‘You needn’t apologise, Inspector. Any matter you deal with must by definition be urgent,’ he said, offering him an armchair as he crammed his huge frame into one opposite.

Once they were seated, Murray picked up a small wooden box from the table between their two chairs, opened it and, in a brisk, friendly manner that contrasted with his initial aloofness, offered Garrett a cigar. The inspector refused politely, smiling to himself at Murray’s change of attitude, reflecting how swiftly he must have concluded that playing up to an inspector from the Yard was a far better strategy than getting on his wrong side. It was thanks to this that Garrett was sitting in a comfortable armchair and not on the footstool next to it.

‘So, you don’t like to smoke?’ remarked Murray, putting the box back on the table and picking up a cut-glass decanter containing a peculiar blackish substance, which he poured into two glasses. ‘Perhaps I can tempt you to a drink.’

Garrett baulked at the dark liquid Murray was holding out to him. But Murray grinned amiably, encouraging him to try it as he took a swig of his. Garrett did the same, and felt the strange beverage sting his throat as it went down, tears starting to his eyes.

‘What is it, Mr Murray?’ he asked, perplexed, unable to refrain from letting out a loud belch. ‘A drink from the future?’

‘Oh, no, Inspector. It’s a tonic made from coca leaves and cola seeds invented by a chemist in Atlanta. It’s all the rage in the United States. Some people prefer taking it with a little soda, like me. I expect they’ll soon be importing it over here.’

Garrett put down his glass on the table, disinclined to take another sip. ‘It has a peculiar flavour. I don’t imagine people will take to it very easily’ he predicted, for the sake of saying something.

Murray smiled his assent, emptied his glass and, visibly eager to ingratiate himself, asked: ‘Tell me, Inspector, did you enjoy your trip to the year 2000?’

‘Very much, Mr Murray’ replied Garrett, in earnest. ‘What’s more, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I fully endorse your project, regardless of what some newspapers say about the impropriety of visiting a time that doesn’t belong to us. I have an open mind, and I find the idea of time travel enormously appealing. I eagerly await the opening of new routes to other eras.’

Murray thanked Garrett for his comments with a timid smile, then sat expectantly in his chair, no doubt inviting the inspector to reveal the reason for his visit.

Garrett cleared his throat and came straight to the point. ‘We live in fascinating but tremendously volatile times, Mr Murray’ he said, reeling off the little preamble he had prepared. ‘Science drives events, and mankind must adapt. Above all, if our laws are to remain effective, we must update them to suit the changing face of the world. Even more so when it comes to time travel. We are at the dawn of an extraordinary era of discovery that will doubtless redefine the world as we know it, and whose inherent dangers are impossible, or extremely difficult, to judge. It is precisely these dangers I came here to speak to you about, Mr Murray.’

‘I couldn’t agree with you more, Inspector,’ Murray conceded. ‘Science will change the face of the world, and oblige us to modify our laws, and even many of our principles, the way that time travel is already doing. But, tell me, what are these dangers you wish to speak to me about? I confess you’ve aroused my curiosity.’

Garrett sat up in his chair and cleared his throat once more. ‘Two days ago,’ he said, ‘the police discovered a man’s body in Manchester Street, Marylebone. He was a tramp, but the injury that killed him was so extraordinary they handed the case over to us. The wound consists of an enormous hole twelve inches wide that goes straight through his chest and is singed at the edges. Our pathologists are baffled. They claim no weapon exists that is capable of inflicting such an injury.’

Garrett made a dramatic pause before fixing Murray with a solemn stare, and adding: ‘At least, not here, not in the present.’

‘What are you suggesting, Inspector?’ asked Murray, in a casual manner that did not correspond with the way he was fidgeting in his chair.

‘That the pathologists are right,’ replied Garrett. ‘Such a weapon hasn’t yet been invented. Only I’ve seen it, Mr Murray. Guess where?’

Gilliam did not reply, but looked at him askance.

‘In the year 2000.’

‘Really?’ murmured Murray.

‘Yes, Mr Murray. I’m convinced this wound can only have been inflicted by the weapon I saw the brave Captain Shackleton and his men using. The heat ray that can pierce armour.’

‘I see . . .’ Murray muttered, as if to himself, staring into space. ‘The weapon used by the soldiers of the future, of course.’

‘Precisely. I believe one of them, possibly Shackleton, travelled back on the Cronotilus without being noticed, and is roaming our streets at this very moment. I’ve no idea why he killed the tramp, or where he is hiding now, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t intend to waste time searching the whole of London for him when I know exactly where he is.’ He pulled a piece of paper from his inside pocket and handed it to Murray. ‘This is a warrant signed by the prime minister authorising me to arrest the murderer on 20 May in the year 2000, before he can even commit his crime. It means I’ll need to travel with two of my officers on the expedition leaving in a week’s time. Once we arrive in the future, we’ll separate from the others so that we can spy on the passengers from the second expedition and discreetly detain anyone who attempts to stow away on the Cronotilus.’

As he spoke, it dawned on the inspector that if he lay in wait for the passengers of the second expedition he would unavoidably see himself. He only hoped it would not repulse him as much as the sight of blood. He glanced at Murray, who was carefully studying the warrant. He was silent for so long it occurred to Garrett he might even be examining the consistency of the paper.

‘But have no fear, Mr Murray’ he felt obliged to add, ‘if Shackleton does turn out to be the murderer, my arresting him after his duel with Solomon won’t affect the outcome of the war. It will still end in victory for the human race, and it won’t affect your enterprise either.’

‘I understand,’ murmured Murray, without looking up from the document.

‘May I count on your co-operation, Mr Murray?’

Murray slowly raised his head and looked at Garrett with what, for a moment, the inspector imagined was contempt, but he soon realised his mistake when Murray quickly beamed at him, and replied: ‘Certainly, Inspector, certainly. I shall reserve three seats for you on the next expedition.’

‘I’m most grateful to you, Mr Murray’

‘And now, if you’ll excuse me,’ said Murray, standing up and handing him back the document, ‘I’m extremely busy’

‘Of course, Mr Murray’

Taken aback by the way in which Murray had abruptly ended the interview, Garrett rose from his armchair, thanked him once more for his co-operation, and left his office. A smile played across the inspector’s lips as he walked along the interminable corridor lined with clocks. By the time he reached the stairs he was in an excellent mood and began chanting to himself: ‘Peritoneum, spleen, left kidney, suprarenal gland, urinary tract, prostate gland . . .’

Chapter XXXVI

Not even the touch on the skin of the delicious breeze heralding the arrival of summer, nor caressing a woman’s body, nor sipping Scotch whisky in the bathtub until the water goes cold ... In short, no other pleasure Wells could think of gave him a greater sense of well-being than adding the final full stop to a novel. This culminating act always filled him with a sense of giddy satisfaction born of the certainly that nothing he could achieve in life would fulfil him more than writing a novel, no matter how tedious, difficult and thankless he found the task. Wells was one of those writers who detest writing but love ‘having written’.

He pulled the last folio from the carriage of his Hammond typewriter, laid it on top of the pile and placed his hand on it with a triumphant smile, like a hunter resting his boot on a lion’s head. For Wells the act of writing was much like a struggle, a bloodthirsty battle with an idea that refuses to be seized. An idea that nonetheless originated with him. Perhaps that was the most frustrating thing of all: the eternal yawning gap between the fruit of his efforts and his initial goal, which admittedly was always more instinctive than deliberate. He had learned from experience that what he succeeded in putting down on paper was only ever a pale reflection of what he had imagined, so he had come to accept that this would only be half as good as the original, half as acceptable as the flawless, unachievable novel that had acted as a guide, and which he imagined pulsating mockingly behind each book like some ghostly presence.

Even so, here was the result of all those months of toil, he told himself, and it felt wonderful to see transformed into something palpable what had been no more than a vague premise until he had typed that last full stop. He would deliver it to Henley the next day and could stop thinking about it.

And yet such doubts never arose in isolation. Once more Wells wondered, as he sat beside his pile of typed folios, whether he had written the book he had been meant to write. Was this novel destined to figure in his bibliography or had it been engendered by accident? Was he responsible for writing one novel and not another, or was this also controlled by the fate that governed men’s lives? He was plagued by doubts, although one caused him particular distress: was there a novel lurking somewhere in his head that would allow him to express the whole of what was really inside him? The idea he might discover this too late tormented him: that as he lay on his deathbed, before his last gasp, the plot of an extraordinary novel he no longer had time to write would rise from the depths of his mind, like a piece of wreckage floating to the sea’s surface. A novel that had always been there, calling out to him in vain amid the clamour, a novel that would die with him, for no one but he could write it, because it was like a suit made to measure just for him. He could think of nothing more terrifying, no worse fate.

He shook his head, driving out these distressing thoughts, and glanced up at the clock. It was past midnight. That meant he could write 21 November 1896 next to his signature on the end page of the novel. Once he had done so, he blew lovingly on the ink, rose from his chair and picked up the oil lamp. His back was stiff and he felt terribly tired, yet he did not go into the bedroom, where he could hear Jane’s steady breathing. He had no time for sleep: he had a long night ahead of him, he told himself, a smile playing across his face.

He padded down the corridor in his slippers, lighting his way with the lamp, and began to climb the stairs to the attic, trying to avoid making the steps creak. Shiny and magnificent, shimmering in the celestial moonlight filtering in through the open window, the machine waited for him. He had grown attached to his secret ritual, although he did not know why he derived such enjoyment from sitting on the thing while his wife was asleep below him. Perhaps because it made him feel special, even though he knew it was only a sophisticated toy. Whoever made it had reproduced every last detail: the machine might not be able to travel in time but, thanks to a clever mechanism, any date could be set on the control panel, with the fictitious destinations of impossible passages through the fabric of time.

Until now, Wells had only set the date to distant times in the future – including the year 802,701, the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks – a time so remote that life as he knew it could only appear completely alien, painfully incomprehensible – or in the past he would like to have known, such as the time of the druids. But that night, with a roguish grin, he adjusted the numbers on the control panel to 20 May in the year 2000, the date on which the impostor Gilliam Murray had chosen to stage the greatest ever battle of the human race, the pantomime by which all England had been fooled, thanks in part to his own novel. He found it ironic that he, the author of a novel about time travel, was the only person who thought it was impossible. He had made all England dream, but was immune to his own creation.

What would the world really look like in a hundred years’ time? He would have liked to travel to the year 2000, not just for the pleasure of seeing it, but to take photographs with one of the new-fangled cameras so that he could come back and show the unsuspecting crowds queuing outside Murray’s offices what the true face of the future looked like. It was a pipe dream, of course, but there was nothing to stop him pretending he could do it, he told himself, settling back in his seat and ceremoniously pulling the lever down, experiencing the inevitable frisson of excitement he felt whenever he performed the gesture.

However, to his astonishment, this time when the lever had come to halt, a sudden darkness fell on the attic. The flecks of moonlight shining through the window seemed to withdraw. Before he was able to understand what the devil was going on, he was overcome by a dreadful feeling of vertigo and a sudden giddiness. He felt himself floating, drifting through a mysterious void that might have been the cosmos itself. And as he began to lose consciousness, he thought that either he was having a heart attack, or he really was travelling to the year 2000.

He came to painfully slowly. His mouth was dry and his body strangely sluggish. Once he could focus properly, he realised he was lying down, not in his attic but on a piece of wasteland covered with stones and rubble. Disoriented, he struggled upright, discovering to his annoyance that each time he moved he felt a terrible shooting pain in his head. He decided to stay sitting on the ground. From there he glanced around with awe at the devastated landscape. Was this the London of the future? Had he really travelled to the year 2000? There was no sign of the time machine, as if the Morlocks had spirited it away inside the sphinx.

After his careful inspection, he decided the time had come for him to stand upright, which he did with great difficulty, like Darwin’s primate crossing the distance separating him from man. He was relieved to find he had no broken bones, although he still felt unpleasantly queasy. Was this one of the effects of having crossed a century in his time carriage? The sky was covered with a dense fog that left everywhere in a pale twilight, a grey blanket dotted with red from the dozens of fires burning on the horizon. The crows circling above his head were an almost obligatory feature of the desolate landscape, he reflected. One flew down, alighting very close to where he was sitting, and made a macabre tapping sound as it pecked stubbornly at the rubble.

On closer examination, Wells saw with horror that the bird was trying to bore through a human skull. This discovery caused him to recoil a few paces, a rash response in that hostile environment. The next thing he knew, the ground gave way beneath him, and he realised too late that he had woken up at the top of a small incline, down which he was now unhappily tumbling. He landed with a thump, coughing and spluttering as he breathed in some of the thick dust shrouding him. Irritated by his clumsiness, Wells rose to his feet. Luckily he had no broken bones, although as a crowning humiliation, his trousers had been torn in several places, leaving part of a scrawny white buttock exposed.

Wells shook his head. What more could go wrong? he thought, brushing himself down as best he could. As the dust settled, he stood stock still, aghast, contemplating the figures slowly emerging from the gloom. An army of automatons was staring at him in ghostly silence. There were at least a dozen, all with the same inscrutable, intimidating expression, even the one standing slightly to the fore, who was wearing an incongruous gold crown. They looked as though they had halted in their tracks when they saw him roll down the incline. A terrible panic gripped Wells as he realised where he was. He had travelled to the year 2000 and, amazingly enough, it was exactly as Gilliam Murray had portrayed in his novel. There in front of him, before his very eyes, stood Solomon himself, the evil king of the automatons responsible for the devastation around him. His fate was sealed: he was going to be shot by a mechanical toy. There, in the very future he had refused to believe in.