my father, Sebastian Murray, had, as it were, loftier ambitions.’
They had scarcely walked a few paces when they came to a small precipice. Unconcerned about taking a tumble, Murray trotted absurdly down the slope, arms stretched out at his sides to keep his balance. The dog bounded after him. Wells let out a sigh before beginning the descent, taking care not to trip over the mangled bits of pipe and grinning skulls poking out of the ground. He did not wish to fall over again. Once was quite enough for one day.
‘My father sensed the beginning of a new future in those transparent houses rich people erected in their gardens,’ Murray shouted over his shoulder, ‘the first step towards a world of translucent cities, glass buildings that would put an end to secrets and lies, a better world where privacy would no longer exist!’
When he reached the bottom, he offered his hand to Wells, who declined, not bothering to conceal his impatience at the whole situation. Murray seemed not to take the hint, and resumed strolling, this time along an apparently gentler path.
‘I confess that as a child I was fascinated by the glorious vision that gave my father’s life meaning,’ he went on. ‘For a while I even believed it would be the true face of the future. Until the age of seventeen, when I began working with him. It was then that I realised it was no more than a fantasy. This amusement for architects and horticulturalists would never be transformed into the architecture of the future, not only because man would never give up his privacy in the interests of a more harmonious world, but because architects themselves were opposed to glass and iron constructions, claiming the new materials lacked the aesthetic values that they claimed defined architectural works.
‘The sad truth was that, however many glass-roofed railway stations my father and I built up and down the country, we could never usurp the power of the brick. I resigned myself to spending the rest of my life manufacturing fancy glasshouses. But who could content themselves with such a petty insignificant occupation, Mr Wells? Not I, for one. Yet I had no idea what would satisfy me either.
‘By the time I was in my early twenties I had enough money to buy anything I wanted, however whimsical, and as you might expect life had begun to feel like a card game I had already won and was beginning to tire of. To cap it all, around that time my father died of a sudden fever, and as I was his only heir I became even richer. But his passing also made me painfully aware that most people die without ever having realised their dreams. However enviable my father’s life may have seemed from the outside, I knew it hadn’t been fulfilling, and mine would be no different. I was convinced I would die with the same look of disappointment on my face. I expect that’s why I turned to reading, so as to escape the dull, predictable life unfolding before me.
‘We all begin reading for one reason or another, don’t you think? What was yours, Mr Wells?’
‘I fractured my tibia when I was eight,’ said the author, visibly uninterested.
Murray looked at him, slightly surprised, then finally smiled and nodded. ‘I suppose geniuses like you have to start young,’ he reflected. ‘It took me a little longer. I was twenty-five before I began exploring my father’s ample library. He had been widowed early on, and had built another wing on to the house, probably to use up some of the money my mother would otherwise have helped him to spend. Nobody but I would ever read those books. So I devoured every one – every single one. That was how I discovered the joys of reading. It’s never too late, don’t you agree? Although, I confess, I wasn’t a very discerning reader. Any book about lives that weren’t my own was of some interest to me.
‘But your novel, Mr Wells . . . Your novel captivated me like no other! You didn’t speak of a world you knew, like Dickens, or of exotic places such as Africa or Malaya, like Haggard or Salgari, or even of the moon, like Verne. No, in
Wells shrugged off Murray’s praise, and carried on walking, trying not to trip over the dog, which had the irritating habit of zigzagging across his path. Verne, of course, had beaten him to it, but Gilliam Murray need not know that.
Murray resumed his monologue, again heedless of the author’s lack of interest. ‘After that, as you know, a spate of authors, doubtless inspired by your novel, hastened to publish their visions of the future. Suddenly bookshop windows were crammed with science-fiction novels. I bought as many as I could, and after several sleepless nights spent devouring them in quick succession, I decided this new genre of literature would be my only reading.’
‘I’m sorry you chose to waste your time on such nonsense,’ muttered Wells, who considered those novels a regrettable blot on the
Murray glanced at him before letting out a loud guffaw. ‘Oh, I know those potboilers have little merit,’ he agreed, when he had stopped laughing, ‘but I couldn’t care less about that. The authors of this “nonsense”, as you call it, possess something far more important to me than the ability to create sublime sentences: namely, a visionary intelligence that amazes me and which I wish I had. Most of those works confine themselves to describing a single invention and its effect on mankind. Have you read the novel about the Jewish inventor who devises a machine that magnifies things? It’s a truly awful book, yet I confess the image of an army of giant stag beetles swarming across Hyde Park truly terrified me. Thankfully, they are not all like that. Such ravings apart, some present an idea of the future whose plausibility I enjoy exploring.
‘And there was something else I couldn’t deny: after enjoying a book by Dickens, for example, it would never have occurred to me to try to imitate him, to see whether I was able to concoct a story about the adventures of a street urchin or the hardships of a boy forced to work in a blacking factory, because it seemed to me anyone with a modicum of imagination and time would be able to do that. But to write about the future . . .
‘Ah, Mr Wells, that was different. To me, that seemed a real challenge. It was an undertaking that required intelligence, man’s capacity for deduction. Would I be capable of creating a believable future? I asked myself one night after I’d finished another of those novels. As you will have guessed, I took you as my example because, besides our common interests, we are the same age. It took me a month to write my novel about the future, a piece of science fiction that would display my insight, my powers of invention. Naturally I made every effort to write well, but I was more interested in the novel’s prophetic side. I wanted my readers to find my vision of the future plausible. But most of all I valued the opinion of the writer who had been my guiding light. Your opinion, Mr Wells. I wanted you to be as intellectually stimulated by my novel as I had been by yours.’
The two men’s eyes met, in a silence broken only by the distant cawing of crows.
‘But, as you know, it didn’t happen like that,’ Murray lamented, shaking his head sorrowfully.
The gesture moved Wells, as he considered it the only sincere one Murray had made since they had set off on their walk.
They had come to a halt next to a huge mound of rubble, and there, hands dug into the pockets of his loud jacket, Murray paused for a few moments, staring at his shoes, clearly distressed. Perhaps he was waiting for Wells
