to place his hand on his shoulder and offer words of solace, which, like the shaman’s chant, would soothe the painful wound Wells himself had inflicted on Murray’s pride. However, the author simply studied him with the disdain of the poacher watching a rabbit struggle in a trap, aware that while seemingly responsible for what was happening, he was a simple mediator, and the animal’s torment was dictated by the cruel laws of nature.
When he realised that the only person capable of alleviating his hurt seemed unwilling to do so, Murray smiled grimly and carried on walking. They went along what – to judge by the grandiose wrought-iron gates and the palatial remains of the buildings amid the rubble – had been a luxurious residential street evoking a life that seemed incongruous amid the devastation, as though man’s proliferation on the planet had been no more than a divine blunder, a ridiculous flowering, doomed to perish under the elements.
‘I shan’t try to deny that at first I was upset when you doubted my abilities as a writer,’ Murray acknowledged, in a voice that seemed to ooze with the slowness of treacle from inside his throat. ‘Nobody enjoys having their work pilloried. But what most vexed me was that you questioned the plausibility of my vision, the future I had so carefully contrived. I admit my response was entirely unacceptable, and I wish to take this opportunity to apologise for having attacked your novel as I did. I’m sure you’ll have guessed that my opinion of it hasn’t changed. I still consider it the work of a genius,’ Gilliam said, laying a faintly ironic emphasis on the final words.
He had recovered his conceited smirk, but Wells had glimpsed a chink in his armour, the crack that from time to time threatened to bring this colossus crashing down. In the face of Murray’s intolerable arrogance, Wells felt almost proud to have been the cause of it.
‘That afternoon, however, I was unable to defend myself other than like a cornered rat,’ Wells heard Murray justify himself. ‘Happily, I came to see things in a different light. Yes, you might say I experienced a kind of epiphany.’
‘Really?’ commented Wells, with dry irony.
‘Yes, I’m sure of it. Sitting opposite you in that chair, I saw I’d chosen the wrong means of presenting my idea of the future to the world. In doing it through a novel I was condemning it to mere fiction, plausible fiction, but fiction all the same, as you had done with your future inhabited by Morlocks and Eloi. But what if I were able to put my idea across without confining it to the restrictive medium of the novel? What if I could present it as something real? Evidently the pleasure of writing a believable piece of fiction would pale beside the incredible satisfaction of having the whole country believe in the reality of my vision of the year 2000.
‘But was this feasible? the businessman in me asked. The conditions for realising such a project seemed perfect. Your novel, Mr Wells, had sparked off a polemic about time travel. People in clubs and tea rooms talked of nothing but the possibility of travelling into the future. It is one of life’s ironies that you fertilised the ground for me to plant my seed. Why not give people what they wished for? Why not offer them a journey to the year 2000, to “my” future? I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull it off, but one thing was certain: I wouldn’t be able to go on living if I didn’t try. Purely by accident, Mr Wells, the way most things happen in life, you gave me a reason to carry on, a goal that, were I to achieve it, would give me the longed-for fulfilment, the elusive happiness I could never obtain from the manufacture of glasshouses.’
Wells was compelled to lower his head to conceal his sympathy for Murray. His words had reminded Wells of the extraordinary chain of events that had delivered him into the loving arms of literature, away from the mediocrity to which his not-so-loving mother had sought to condemn him. And it had been his way with words, a gift he had not asked for, that had spared him the need to find meaning in his life, had exempted him from having to tread the path taken by those who had no idea why they had been born, those who could only experience the conventional, atavistic joy found in everyday pleasures such as a glass of wine or a woman’s caress. Yes, he would have walked among those redundant shadows, unaware that the longed-for happiness he had scarcely glimpsed during his fits of melancholy lay in the keys of a typewriter, waiting for him to bring it to life.
‘On my way back to London I began thinking,’ he heard Murray say. ‘I was convinced people would believe the impossible if it were real enough. In fact, it was not unlike building a glasshouse: if the glass part of the structure was elegant and beautiful enough, nobody would see the solid iron framework holding it up. It would appear to be floating in the air as if by magic.
‘The first thing I did the next morning was to sell the business my father had built up from scratch. In doing so I felt no regret, in case you were wondering, quite the opposite, if anything, because with the money from the sale I would be able literally to build the future, which, ultimately, had been my father’s dream. From the proceeds, I purchased this old theatre. The reason I chose it was because right behind it, looking out over Charing Cross Road, there were two derelict buildings that I also bought. The next step, of course, was to merge the three edifices into one by knocking down the walls to obtain this vast space. Seen from the outside, no one would think it was big enough to house a vast stage set of London in the year 2000. Yet in less than two months, I had created a perfect replica, down to the smallest detail, of the scene in my novel. In fact, the set isn’t nearly as big as it looks, but it seems immense if we walk round it in a circle, don’t you think?’
Was that what they had been doing? Walking round in a circle? Wells thought, containing his irritation. If so, he had to acknowledge that the intricate layout of the debris had taken him in completely, for it made the already sprawling stage set appear even more gigantic, and he would never have imagined it might fit inside a tiny theatre.
‘My own team of blacksmiths made the automatons that gave you such a fright a while ago, as well as the armour worn by Captain Shackleton’s human army’ Murray explained, as he guided Wells through a narrow ravine created by two rows of collapsed buildings. ‘At first I thought of hiring professional actors to dramatise the battle that would change the history of the human race, which I myself had staged so that it would look as appealing and exciting as possible. I immediately discarded the idea because I felt that stage actors, who are famous for being erratic and vain, would be incapable of giving a realistic portrayal of brave, battle-hardened soldiers in an army of the future. More importantly, I thought that if they began to have qualms about the morality of the work they had been hired to do they would be harder to silence. Instead, I employed a bunch of bruisers who had far more in common with the veterans they were supposed to portray. They didn’t mind keeping the heavy metal armour on during the entire performance, and they couldn’t have cared less about my scheme being fraudulent. In spite of all that, I had a few problems, but nothing I wasn’t able to sort out,’ he added, smiling significantly at the author.
Wells understood that with this twisted grin Murray meant to tell him two things: first, that he knew about his involvement in the relationship between Miss Haggerty and Tom Blunt, the young man who had played Captain Shackleton, and second, that he was behind Tom’s sudden disappearance. Wells forced his lips into an expression of horrified shock, which appeared to satisfy Murray.
Wells wanted more than anything to wipe the arrogant smirk off the man’s face by informing him that Tom had survived his own death. Tom himself had told Wells so only two nights earlier when he had appeared at his house to thank him for all he had done for him, and to remind him that if Wells ever needed a pair of strong arms he could call on him.
The ravine opened on to what looked like a small square where a few gnarled, leafless trees still grew. In the middle, Wells noticed something resembling an overly ornate tramcar, whose sides were covered with a mass of chrome-plated tubes. Sprouting from these were dozens of valves and other elaborate accessories, which, on closer observation, he thought could only be for decoration.
