moment he would have let himself be carried off by a horde of demons to the depths of hell itself. There was nothing else he could do: the build-up of nervous tension, the loss of blood and the arduous ride had drained his energy. They sat him down on the armchair nearest the hearth, where a roaring fire was blazing.
After examining his wound with what looked to Andrew like an annoyed twist of the lips, Wells ordered his wife to fetch bandages and everything else necessary to stem the bleeding. He all but told her to hurry up before the gushing flow permanently ruined the carpet. Almost at once the fire’s healing warmth calmed Andrew’s shivering, but it also threatened to send him to sleep. Luckily it occurred to Charles to give him a glass of brandy, which took the edge off his giddiness and the crushing fatigue he felt.
Jane soon returned and saw to his wound with the neat competence of a war nurse. She cut away his jacket sleeve with a pair of scissors, then applied a series of stinging potions and dressings to the torn flesh. To finish off she bandaged it tightly, then stepped back to contemplate her handiwork.
It was only when the most pressing issue had been resolved that the motley rescue team gathered eagerly around the chair where Andrew lay in a state of semi-collapse. They waited for him to recount what had happened. As though he had dreamed it, Andrew remembered the Ripper lying on the ground, and Marie closing his eyes. That could only mean he had succeeded.
‘I did it,’ he announced, trying to sound enthusiastic despite his fatigue. ‘I killed Jack the Ripper.’
His words triggered an outburst of joy, which he observed with amused surprise. After pelting him with pats on his back, they flung their arms around one another, crying out their praise and abandoning themselves to wild excitement more suited to New Year celebrations or pagan rituals. On realising how unrestrained their reaction was, the three calmed themselves, and gazed at him with a mixture of tenderness and curiosity. Andrew grinned back at them, slightly embarrassed, and when it seemed no one had anything else to say, he looked around for any telltale signs that his brushstroke had altered the present. His gaze fell on the cigar box lying on the table, which contained the cutting. Their eyes followed his.
‘So,’ said Wells, reading his thoughts, ‘you threw a pebble into a still pond and now you are itching to see the ripples it made. Let’s not put it off any longer. It’s time to see whether you really have changed the past’
Adopting the role of master of ceremonies once more, he walked over to the table, solemnly picked up the box and presented it to Andrew with the lid open, like one of the Three Wise Men. Andrew took the cutting, trying to stop his hand shaking, and felt his heart miss several beats as he began to unfold it. No sooner had he done so than he found himself contemplating the exact headline he had been reading for years. Scanning the article, he realised the contents were also unchanged: as if nothing had happened, the news item related the brutal murder of Marie Kelly at the hands of Jack the Ripper, and his subsequent capture by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Andrew looked at Wells, bewildered. How could this be?
‘But I killed him,’ he protested feebly. ‘This can’t be right . . .’
Wells examined the cutting thoughtfully. Everyone in the room gazed at him, waiting for his verdict. After a few moments, he gave a murmur of comprehension. He straightened and, without looking at anyone, began to pace silently around the room. Owing to its narrow dimensions, he had to be content to circle the table a few times, hands thrust in his pockets, nodding now and then as if to reassure the others that his grasp of the matter was growing. Finally, he paused before Andrew, and smiled at him dolefully.
‘You saved the girl, Mr Harrington,’ he observed, with quiet conviction, ‘there is no doubt in my mind about that.’
‘B-but in that c-case,’ stammered Andrew, ‘why is she still dead?’
‘Because she must continue being dead in order for you to travel back in time to save her,’ the author declared, as though stating the obvious.
Andrew blinked, unable to fathom what Wells was trying to say.
‘Think about it: if she had still been alive would you have come to my house? Don’t you see that by killing her murderer and preventing her being ripped to shreds you have eliminated your reason for travelling back in time? And if there’s no journey, there’s no change. As you can see, the two events are inseparable,’ explained Wells, nourishing the cutting, which, with its original heading, corroborated his theory.
Andrew nodded slowly, glancing at the others, who looked as bewildered as he.
‘It isn’t all that complicated,’ scoffed Wells, amused by his audience’s confusion. ‘I’ll explain it in a different way. Imagine what must have happened after Andrew travelled back to this spot in the time machine: his other self must have arrived at Marie Kelly’s room, but instead of finding his beloved with her entrails exposed to the elements, he found her alive, kneeling by the body of the man whom police would soon identify as Jack the Ripper. An unforeseen avenger had stepped out of nowhere and murdered the Ripper before he could add Marie Kelly to his list of victims. And, thanks to this stranger, Andrew will be able to live with her happily ever after, although the irony is that he will never know he has you – I mean himself – to thank for it,’ the author concluded, gazing at him excitedly, with the eagerness of a child expecting to see a tree spring up moments after he has planted a seed. As Andrew was clearly still nonplussed, he added: ‘It is as though your action has caused a split in time, created a sort of alternative universe, a parallel world, if you like. And in that world Marie Kelly is alive and happy with your other self. Unfortunately you are in the wrong universe.’
Charles nodded, increasingly persuaded by Wells’s explanation, then turned to Andrew, hoping to find his cousin equally convinced. But Andrew needed a few more moments to mull over the writer’s words. He lowered his head, trying to ignore the others’ enquiring faces in order to consider the matter calmly. Given that nothing in his reality seemed to have changed, his journey in the time machine could not only be considered useless, but it was debatable whether it had even taken place. Yet he knew it had. He could not forget the image of Marie, the gun going off, the jolt it had sent up his arm and, above all, the nasty gash to his shoulder – irrefutable proof that his experience had not been a dream. Yes, those events had really occurred, and the fact that he could not see their effects did not mean there weren’t any, as Wells had quickly grasped. Just as a tree’s roots grow around a rock, so the consequences of his action, which could not simply vanish into thin air, had created another reality, a parallel world in which he and Marie Kelly were living happily together, a world that would not have existed if he had not travelled back in time.
This meant he had saved his beloved, even though he was not able to enjoy her. All he had was the comforting satisfaction of knowing that he had prevented her death, that he had done everything in his power to make amends. At least his other self would have her, he thought, with a degree of resignation. That other Andrew – who, after all, was him, his own flesh and blood – would be able to fulfil all his dreams. He would be able to make her his wife, to love her regardless of his father’s opposition and their neighbours’ malicious gossip. He only wished the other Andrew could know what a miracle that was, how during the past eight years while he had been tormenting himself, his luckier self had never stopped loving her, populating the world with the fruit of that love.
‘I understand,’ he murmured, smiling wanly at his friends.
