from having to listen to one of Henley’s sermons aimed at steering him into the fold of authors destined to pass into the annals of literary history – and why not accept his advice for once? he suddenly thought. Why not give up writing for naive readers easily convinced by any adventure story – or any story that shows a modicum of imagination – and write for more discerning readers, those, in short, who reject the entertainment of popular fiction in favour of more serious, profound literature that explains the universe and even the precariousness of their existence in centuries to come. Perhaps he should resolve to write another kind of story altogether, one that would stir his readers’ souls in a different way, a novel that would be nothing short of a revelation to them, just as Henley wanted.
Immersed in these thoughts, Wells turned down Charing Cross Road and headed for the Strand. By that time, a new day was slowly dawning around him. The black sky was gradually dissolving, giving way to a slightly unreal dark blue that instantly paled on the horizon, taking on a soft violet tint before turning orange. In the distance, he could make out the shape of Waterloo Bridge growing more and more distinct as the darkness faded, slowly invaded by the light. A series of strange, muffled noises reached his ears, making him smile contentedly. The city was beginning to stir, and the isolated sounds hanging in the air would soon be transformed into the honest, relentless flow of life, an ear-splitting din that might invade the outer reaches of space transformed into a pleasant buzz of bees, revealing that the third largest planet in the solar system was very much inhabited.
Although, as he walked towards the bridge, Wells could see nothing beyond what was in front of him, somehow he felt as though he were taking part in a huge play, which, because every single inhabitant of the city was cast in it, seemingly had no audience. Except, perhaps, for the clever Martians, busy studying human life in the way that man peered down a microscope at the ephemeral organisms wriggling in a drop of water, he reflected. And, in fact, he was right for, as he threaded his way along the Strand, dozens of barges loaded with oysters floated in eerie silence along the ever more orange-tinted waters of the Thames, on their way from Chelsea Reach to Billingsgate wharf, where an army of men hauled the catch on to land.
In wealthy neighbourhoods, fragrant with the aroma of high-class bakeries and violets from the flower-sellers’ baskets, people abandoned their luxurious houses for their no less luxurious offices, crossing the streets that were filling with cabriolets, berlins, omnibuses and every imaginable type of wheeled vehicle, jolting rhythmically over the cobblestones, while above them, the smoke from the factory stacks mingled with the mist rising from the water to form a shroud of dense, sticky fog. An army of carts drawn by mules or pushed manually, brimming with fruit, vegetables, eels and squid, took up their positions at Covent Garden amid a chaos of shouts.
At the same hour, Inspector Garrett arrived – before finishing his breakfast – in Sloane Street, where Mr Ferguson was waiting to inform him rather anxiously that someone had taken a pot shot at him the night before, poking his pudgy thumb through the hole it had made in his hat. Garrett examined the surrounding area with a trained eye, searching among the bushes around Ferguson’s house, and could not prevent a tender smile spreading across his face when he discovered the charming kiwi bird someone had scratched in the soil. He glanced up and down the street to make sure no one was watching, then quickly erased it with his foot and emerged from the bushes, shrugging his shoulders.
Just as he was telling Ferguson with an expression of feigned bewilderment that he had found no clues, John Peachey, the man known as Tom Blunt before he had drowned in the Thames, embraced the woman he loved in a room at a boarding-house in Bethnal Green, and Claire Haggerty let herself be wrapped in his strong arms, pleased he had fled the future, the desolate year 2000, to be with her. At that very moment too, standing on a rock, Captain Derek Shackleton declared in a grating voice that if any good had come of the war it was that it had united the human race as no other war had ever done before. Gilliam Murray shook his head mournfully, telling himself this was the last expedition he would organise, that he was tired of fools and of the heartless wretch who kept smearing his building with dung, that it was time to stage his own death, to pretend he had been devoured by one of the savage dragons that inhabited the fourth dimension – dragons between whose razor-sharp teeth Charles Winslow was that very instant being torn to ribbons in his dreams, before he woke with a start, bathed in sweat, and alarmed with his cries the two Chinese prostitutes sharing his bed, at the same time as his cousin Andrew, who was just then leaning on Waterloo Bridge watching the sun rise, noticed a familiar fellow with bird-like features coming towards him.
‘Mr Wells?’ he enquired, as the man drew level.
Wells stopped and stared at Andrew for a few moments, trying to remember where he had seen him before.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ said the young man. ‘I’m Andrew Harrington.’
As soon as he heard the name, Wells remembered. This was the lad whose life he had saved a few weeks before, preventing him killing himself, thanks to an elaborate charade that had allowed him to confront Jack the Ripper, the murderer who had terrorised Whitechapel in the autumn of 1888.
‘Yes, Mr Harrington, of course I remember you,’ he said, pleased that the young man was still alive and his efforts had not been in vain. ‘How good it is to meet you.’
‘Likewise, Mr Wells,’ said Andrew.
The two men stood in silence for a moment, grinning idiotically.
‘Did you destroy the time machine?’ asked Andrew.
‘Er . . . y-yes, yes,’ stammered Wells, and quickly tried to change the subject. ‘What brings you here? Did you come to watch the dawn?’
‘Yes,’ the other man confessed, turning to look at the sky, which just then was a palette of beautiful orange and purple hues. ‘Although in actual fact I’m trying to see what’s behind it.’
‘What’s behind it?’ asked Wells, intrigued.
Andrew nodded. ‘Do you remember what you told me after I came back from the past in your time machine?’ He was rummaging for something in his coat pocket. ‘You assured me I’d killed Jack the Ripper, in spite of this newspaper clipping contradicting it.’
Andrew showed Wells the same yellowed cutting he had presented to him in the kitchen of his house in Woking a few weeks before.
‘You said it was because my action had caused a bifurcation in time,’ Andrew went on, slipping the cutting back into his pocket. ‘A parallel world, I think you called it, a world in which Marie Kelly was alive and living happily with my twin. Although, unfortunately, I was in the wrong world.’
Yes, I remember,’ said Wells, cautiously, uncertain what the young man was driving at.
