The Map of Time (35 page)

“You may have been lucky enough to write a nice novel everybody likes,” Gilliam said when he had managed to calm down, although the tone of his voice 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. He 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—in this case envy. However, this was preferable to having to put up with his angry outbursts. They were now entering the domain of verbal sparring, and Wells felt a rush of excitement, for 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 calmly. “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 judgment.

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.” Gilliam 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 demoralizing, 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 managed to recover his relaxed, almost blasé demeanor. 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 me, Mr. Wells?” The author saw no reason to reply and simply shrugged.

“Our outlook,” Gilliam went on. “Our outlook on things.

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 it, debating about 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 recognized as an imaginative writer. I want people to believe in my invention without realizing 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 those 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, Gilliam rose from his chair and smoothed down his jacket with one of those 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 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 heard him shut the front gate. He remained seated for a long time in the sitting room 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 finally made him forget the disagreeable encounter. Until the day when he received the leaflet from Murray’s Time Travel. Then Wells realized what Gilliam 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 his novel 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 Gilliam was certain he would never accept, and this turned the invitations into a mockery, a taunt on paper that was also a threat, for the fact that the leaflets were delivered by hand suggested Murray himself, or one of his men, placed them in Wells’s letter box. 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 him, as Tom had suggested, for the simple reason that Gilliam 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 from doing anything except stand by while Murray made a fortune. And the situation appeared to amuse Murray enormously, for by placing the leaflets religiously in his letter box, 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.

31

That afternoon Wells went for a longer bicycle ride than usual, and without Jane.

He needed to think while he pedaled, he told her. Dressed in his favorite Norfolk jacket, he rode slowly and silently along the Surrey byways while his mind, oblivious to the action of his legs, reflected on how to reply to the letter penned by the naïve girl named Claire Haggerty. According to the imaginative tale Tom had concocted in the tearoom, their correspondence would consist of seven letters, of which he would write three and Claire, four, and 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. And he had to admit, the more he thought about it the more intriguing he found the semiliterate young 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: Gilliam Murray being somehow mixed up in this, as he had been in saving the wretched Andrew Harrington’s soul. Were their lives destined to carry on being entwined, like creeping ivy? Wells felt distinctly odd now that he was stepping into the role of Captain Derek Shackleton, the character his adversary had invented. Would he be the one responsible for breathing the gift of 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 begin this letter several times over before realizing that, however strange it might seem to me, I can only begin by declaring my love to you, exactly as you requested. Although I have to confess 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 I 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 eye on you, why shouldn’t I? Otherwise I would be doubting my own judgment. 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 tearoom 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 savor 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 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 pretense, 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 rather than Wells had lain with the girl. If the day before Tom had wondered whether the fluttering feeling in his chest was love, now that he had the yardstick of the author’s words to measure it by, he was certain of it. Did Tom feel the emotions Wells attributed to Shackleton? After a few moments” reflection, Tom concluded the only one answer to that tortuous question was no, he did not. He could never 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 paragraph 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 be awaiting 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 civilization. I do not know what will happen if my mission fails, if I am unable to stop this war from 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 which 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 imbued 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 which 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 Boardinghouse, directly opposite the tearoom. 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 might 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 of course 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 boardinghouse, I suddenly realized 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 boardinghouse will be very small but cozy. 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 neck collar, my overcorset, my corset, my overskirt, 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 off 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, you 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 artist’s 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 marveling at the notes it produces when a pair of hands pluck 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.