The Map of Time

There was no doubting he was a successful author, but one with an extended family to support. And while Jane and he had married and moved to a house with a garden in Woking (the basket sticking out like a sore thumb among Jane’s hat boxes), Wells had to take care not to let down his guard. There was no question of him stopping for a rest. He must carry on writing – it did not matter what: anything to take advantage of his popularity in the bookshops.

This was not a problem for Wells, of course. He had only to turn to the basket. Like a magician rummaging in his hat, Wells pulled out another novel called The Wonderful Visit. This told the story of how one balmy August night an angel fell out of the sky and landed in the marshes of a little village called Sidderford. When the local vicar, an amateur ornithologist, heard about the arrival of this exotic bird, he went out to hunt it with his shotgun and succeeded in destroying the angel’s beautiful plumage before taking pity on it and carrying it to the vicarage where he nursed it back to health. Through this close contact, the vicar realised that, although different, the angel was an admirable and gentle creature from which he had much to learn.

The idea for the novel, like the plot of The Island of Doctor Moreau, which he would write some months later, was not his, but Wells tried not to see this as stealing, rather as his own special tribute to the memory of a remarkable man, Joseph Merrick, who had died in the horrible way Treves had predicted two years after the unforgettable invitation to tea. And as tributes went, he considered his far more respectful than the surgeon’s own: according to what he had heard, Treves was exhibiting Merrick’s deformed skeleton in a museum he had opened in the London Hospital. As Wells had said to Merrick, he had gone down in history.

And – who could say? – perhaps that convoluted tale The Time Machine, which owed so much to Merrick, would do the same for Wells. In the meantime, it had brought him more than one surprise, he said to himself, remembering the time machine, identical to the one he had written about in his novel, that was hidden in his attic.

Dusk had begun to submerge the world in a coppery light that lent an air of distinction to everything, including Wells who, silting quietly in his kitchen, looked like a sculpture of himself in flour. He shook his head, banishing the doubts stirred up by the harsh review in the Speaker, and picked up the envelope that had appeared in his letterbox that afternoon. He hoped it was not from yet another newspaper asking him to predict the future. Ever since The Time Machine had been published, the press had held him up as an official oracle, and kept encouraging him to display his supposed powers of divination in their pages.

But when he tore the envelope open he discovered he was not being asked to predict anything. Instead, he found himself holding a publicity leaflet from Murray’s Time Travel, with a card in which Gilliam Murray invited him to take part in the third expedition to the year 2000. Wells clenched his teeth to stop himself unleashing a stream of oaths, crumpled the leaflet and hurled it across the room, as he had the magazine moments before.

The ball of paper flew precariously through the air until it hit the face of a young man who should not have been there. Wells stared with alarm at the intruder who had just walked into his kitchen. He was a well-dressed young man, now rubbing his cheek where the ball of paper had made a direct hit, and shaking his head with a sigh, as though chastising a mischievous child. Just behind him was a second man, whose features so resembled those of the first that they must be related. The author studied the man nearest to him, unable to decide whether he ought to apologise for having hit him with the ball of paper or ask what the devil he was doing in his kitchen. But he had no time to do either, for the man spoke first.

‘Mr Wells, I presume,’ he said, raising his arm and pointing a gun at him.

Chapter XIV

A young man with a bird-like face. This was what Andrew thought when he saw the author of The Time Machine, the book that had transformed all England while he was wandering like a ghost amid the trees in Hyde Park. On finding the front door locked, Charles had led him silently round the back of the house. After crossing a rather overgrown garden, they had burst into the small, narrow kitchen whose cramped space the two of them seemed to fill.

‘Who are you and what are you doing in my house?’ the author demanded, remaining seated at the table, perhaps because in that way less of his body was exposed to the pistol aimed at him – which was also undoubtedly the reason why he had asked the question in such an incongruously polite manner.

Without lowering the gun, Charles turned to his cousin and nodded. It was Andrew’s turn to take part in the performance. He suppressed a sigh of displeasure. He deemed it unnecessary to have burst into the author’s house brandishing a gun, and he regretted not having given some thought during the journey to what they would do once they reached the house. Instead he had left everything up to his cousin, whose impetuosity had put them in a very awkward situation. But there was no turning back now, so Andrew approached Wells, determined also to improvise. He had no idea how to do so, only that he must mimic his cousin’s severe, resolute manner. He reached into his jacket pocket for the cutting and, with the abrupt gesture appropriate to the situation, placed it on the table between the author’s hands.

‘I want you to stop this happening,’ he said, trying his best to sound commanding.

Wells stared blankly at the cutting, then contemplated the intruders, his eyes moving from one to the other like a pendulum. Finally he consented to read it. As he did so, his face remained impassive.

‘I regret to tell you that this tragic event has already occurred, and as such belongs to the past. And as you are fully aware, the past is unchangeable,’ he concluded disdainfully, returning the cutting to Andrew.

Andrew paused for a moment. Then, a little flustered, he took the yellowing piece of paper and put it back into his pocket. Clearly uncomfortable at being forced into such close proximity – the kitchen did not seem big enough to accommodate another person – the three men gawped at one another, like actors who have suddenly forgotten their lines. However, there was room for another slim person, and even for one of those new-fangled bicycles that were all the rage, with their aluminium spokes, tubular frames and modern pneumatic tyres.

‘You’re wrong,’ said Charles, brightening. ‘The past isn’t unalterable, not if we have a machine capable of travelling in time.’

Wells gazed at him with a mixture of pity and weariness. ‘I see,’ he murmured, as though it had suddenly dawned on him what this business was all about. ‘But you’re mistaken if you imagine I have one at my disposal. I’m only a writer, gentlemen.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I have no time machine. I simply made one up.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ replied Charles.

‘It’s the truth.’ Wells sighed.

Charles tried to catch Andrew’s eye, as though his cousin would know what to do next in their madcap adventure. But they had come to a dead end. Andrew was about to tell him to lower the gun, when a young woman walked into the kitchen. She was a slim, small, amazingly beautiful creature, who looked as though she had been delicately wrought by a god tired of churning out inferior specimens. But what really grabbed Andrew’s attention was the contraption she had with her, one of those so-called bicycles that were replacing horses because they