the subject and interrupted their regular meetings to discuss it. Speculating about what tomorrow’s world would be like or discussing which past events ought to be changed became England’s favourite pastime, the quickest way to liven up conversation during afternoon tea.
‘Naturally such discussions were futile, because nobody could reach any enlightened conclusions, except in scientific circles, where an even more heated debate took place, whose progress was reported almost daily in the national newspapers. But nobody could deny it was Wells’s novel that had sparked off people’s yearning to journey into the future, to go beyond the bounds imposed on them by their fragile, destructible bodies. Everybody wanted to glimpse the future, and the year 2000 became the most logical objective, the year everyone wanted to see. A century was easily enough time for everything to be invented that could be invented, and for the world to have been transformed into a marvellously unrecognisable, magical, possibly even a better place.
‘Ultimately, this all seemed to be no more than a harmless amusement, a naive desire – that is, until last October, when Murray’s Time Travel opened for business. This was announced with great fanfare in the newspapers and on publicity posters. Gilliam Murray could make our dreams come true. He could take us to the year 2000. Despite the cost of the tickets, huge queues formed around his building. I saw people who had always maintained that time travel was impossible waiting like excited children for the doors to open. Nobody wanted to pass up this opportunity. Madeleine and I couldn’t get seats for the first expedition, only the second. And we travelled in time, Andrew. Believe it or not, I have been a hundred and five years into the future and returned. This coat still has traces of ash on it. It smells of the war of the future. I even picked up a piece of rubble from the ground when no one was looking, a rock we have displayed in the drawing-room cabinet, a replica of which must still be intact in some building in London.’
Andrew felt like a boat spinning in a whirlpool. It seemed incredible to him that it was possible to travel in time, not to be condemned to see only the era he was born into, the period that lasted as long as his heart and body held out, but to be able to visit other eras, other times where he did not belong, leap-frogging his own death, the tangled web of his descendants, desecrating the sanctuary of the future, journeying to places hitherto only dreamed of or imagined. For the first time in years he felt a flicker of interest in something beyond the wall of indifference with which he had surrounded himself.
He immediately forced himself to snuff out the flame before it became a blaze. He was in mourning, a man with an empty heart and a dormant soul, a creature devoid of emotion, the perfect example of a human being who had felt everything there was for him to feel. He had nothing in the whole wide world to live for. He could not live, not without her.
‘That’s remarkable, Charles.’ He sighed wearily, feigning indifference to these unnatural journeys. ‘But what has this to do with Marie?’
‘Don’t you see, cousin?’ Charles replied, in an almost scandalised tone. ‘This man Murray can travel into the future. No doubt if you offered him enough money he could organise a private tour for you into the past. Then you’d really have someone to shoot’
Andrew’s jaw dropped. ‘The Ripper?’ he said, his voice cracking.
‘Exactly’ replied Charles. ‘If you travel back in time you can save Marie.’
Andrew gripped the chair to stop himself falling off it. Was it possible? Could he really travel back in time to the night of 7 November 1888 and save Marie? The possibility that this might be true made him feel giddy not just because of the miracle of travelling through time, but because he would be going back to a period when she was still alive: he would be able to hold in his arms the body he had seen cut to ribbons. But what moved him most was that someone should offer him the chance to save her, to put right his mistake, to change a situation it had taken him all these years to learn to accept as irreversible. He had always prayed to the Creator to be able to do that. It seemed he had been calling upon the wrong person. This was the age of science.
‘What do you say, Andrew? We have nothing to lose by trying,’ he heard his cousin remark.
Andrew stared at the floor, struggling to put some order into the tumult of emotions he felt. He did not really believe it was possible, and yet if it was, how could he refuse to try? This was the chance for which he had waited eight years. He raised his head and gazed at his cousin, shaken. ‘All right,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.
‘Excellent, Andrew,’ said Charles, overjoyed, and clapped him on the back. ‘Excellent’
His cousin smiled unconvincingly then looked down at his shoes again: he was going to travel back to his old haunts, to relive moments already past, back to his own memories.
‘Well,’ said Charles, glancing at his pocket watch. ‘We’d better have something to eat. I don’t think travelling back in time on an empty stomach is a good idea.’
They left the little room and made their way to Charles’s carriage, which was waiting by the stone archway. They followed the same routine that night as though it were no different from any other. They dined at the Cafe Royal, which served Charles’s favourite steak and kidney pie, let off steam at Madame Norrell’s brothel, where Charles liked to try out the new girls while they were still fresh, and ended up drinking until dawn in the bar at Claridge’s, where Charles rated the champagne list above any other.
Before their minds became too clouded by drink, Charles explained to Andrew that he had journeyed into the future on a huge tramcar, the Cronotilus, which was propelled through the centuries by an impressive steam engine. But Andrew was incapable of showing any interest in the future: his mind was taken up with imagining what it would be like to travel in the exact opposite direction, into the past. There, his cousin had assured him, he would be able to save Marie by confronting the Ripper.
Over the past eight years, Andrew had built up feelings of intense rage towards that monster. Now he would have the chance to vent them. However, it was one thing to threaten a man who had already been executed, quite another to confront him in the flesh, in the sort of sparring match Murray would set up for him. Andrew gripped the pistol, which he had kept in his pocket, as he recalled the burly man he had bumped into in Hanbury Street, and tried to cheer himself with the thought that, although he had never shot a real person before, he had practised his aim on bottles, pigeons and rabbits. If he remained calm, everything would go well. He would aim at the Ripper’s heart or his head, let off a few shots calmly, and watch him die a second time. Yes, that was what he would do. Only this time, as though someone had tightened a bolt in the machinery of the universe to make it function more smoothly, the Ripper’s death would bring Marie Kelly back to life.
Chapter VII
Although it was early morning, Soho was already teeming with people. Charles and Andrew had to push their way through the crowded streets, full of men in bowlers and women wearing hats adorned with plumes and even the odd dead bird. Couples strolled along the pavements arm in arm, sauntered in and out of shops, or stood waiting to cross the streets, along which moved, as slowly as lava, a torrent of luxurious carriages, cabriolets, trams and carts carrying barrels, fruit, or mysterious shapes covered with tarpaulins, possibly bodies robbed from the graveyard. Scruffy second-rate artists, performers and acrobats displayed their dubious talents on street corners in the hope of attracting the attention of some passing promoter.
