Wells was unable to suppress a cry of triumph. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he exclaimed, while Charles and Jane resumed patting Andrew on the back.
‘Do you know why during my journeys into the past I always avoided seeing myself?’ Wells asked, without caring whether anyone was listening. ‘Because if I had, it would mean that at some point in my life I would have been obliged to walk through the door and greet myself, which – thankfully for my sanity – has never happened.’
After embracing his cousin repeatedly in a renewed display of euphoria, Charles helped him up out of his chair, while Jane straightened his jacket in a motherly gesture.
‘Perhaps those troubling sounds we hear in the night, the creaking noises we assume are the furniture, are simply the footsteps of a future self watching over us as we sleep, without daring to disturb us,’ Wells mused, oblivious to the general rejoicing.
It was only when Charles went to shake his hand that he appeared to emerge from his reverie.
‘Thanks awfully for everything, Mr Wells,’ said Charles. ‘I apologise for having burst into your house like that. I hope you can forgive me.’
‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. All is forgotten,’ replied the writer, with a vague wave, as though he had discovered something salutary, even revivifying, in having a gun aimed at him.
‘What will you do with the machine? Will you destroy it? ‘ Andrew ventured timidly.
Wells gazed at him, smiling benevolently. ‘I suppose so,’ he replied, ‘now it has fulfilled the mission for which it was quite possibly invented.’
Andrew was moved by his solemn words. He did not consider his personal tragedy the only one that warranted the use of the machine, but was grateful that the author, who scarcely knew him, had sympathised enough with his misfortune to consider it a good enough reason to flout the laws of time and perhaps endanger the world.
‘I also think it’s for the best, Mr Wells,’ said Andrew, having recovered from his emotion, ‘because you were right. There is a guardian of time, someone who watches over the past. I bumped into him when I came back, in the doorway to your house.’
‘Really?’ said Wells, taken aback.
‘Yes. Luckily I managed to frighten him off,’ replied Andrew. With this, he clasped the author in a heartfelt embrace. Beaming, Charles and Jane contemplated the scene, which would have been touching, were it not for the awkward stiffness with which Wells greeted Andrew’s affectionate gesture. When Andrew had finally let go of him, Charles said goodbye to the couple, steering his cousin out of the house lest he throw himself once more at the alarmed author.
Andrew crossed the garden vigilantly, right hand in his pocket on the pistol, afraid the guardian of time might have followed him back to the present and be lying in wait for him. But there was no sign of him. Outside the gate they found the cab that had brought them there only a few hours before, a few hours that to Andrew seemed like centuries.
‘Blast, I’ve forgotten my hat,’ said Charles, after Andrew had clambered in. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy, cousin.’
Andrew nodded absently, and settled into his seat, utterly exhausted. Through the tiny window he surveyed the encircling darkness as day began to dawn. Like a coat wearing thin at the elbows, night was unravelling at one of the furthest edges of the sky, its opaqueness gradually diluting into an ever paler blue, until a hazy light slowly began to reveal the contours of the world. With the exception of the driver, apparently asleep on his seat, it was as if this stunning display of golden and purple hues was being performed solely for his benefit. Many times over the past few years when Andrew had witnessed the majestic unveiling of dawn he had wondered whether that day he would die, whether that day his increasing torment would compel him to shoot himself with a pistol like the one he was now carrying in his pocket, the one he had removed from its glass cabinet the previous evening without knowing he would use it to kill Jack the Ripper. But now he could not watch the dawn and wonder whether he would be alive to see it tomorrow because he knew the answer: he would see the dawn tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because he had no reason to kill himself now that he had saved Marie. Should he go ahead with his plan out of sheer inertia, or simply because, as Wells had pointed out, he was in the wrong universe? This did not seem to justify the deed. In any event it felt less noble – and might even imply a fundamentally absurd jealousy of his time twin. After all, he was the other Andrew, and he ought to rejoice in his good fortune as he would his own or, failing that, that of his brother or his cousin Charles. Besides, if the grass in next door’s garden was always greener, how much more luxuriantly verdant must it be in the neighbouring universe? He should feel pleased to be happy in another world, to have achieved bliss in it.
Reaching this conclusion threw up another unexpected question: did knowing that you had achieved the life you wanted in another world absolve you from having to try to achieve it in this one? At first, Andrew did not know how to answer this question, but after a few moments’ thought he decided it did: he was absolved from being happy; he could be content to lead a peaceful life, enjoying its small pleasures without the slightest feeling of inner frustration. For, however trite it might seem, he could always console himself with the happy thought that he was living a full life in another place, which was both nearby and far away, a place that was inaccessible, uncharted, because it was on the reverse of any map.
Suddenly, he experienced an incredible sense of relief, as though a burden he had been carrying since birth had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt unfettered, reckless and wild. He had an overwhelming desire to reconnect with the world, to tread the common path of life with the rest of humanity, to send a note to Victoria Keller, or to her sister Madeleine, if Victoria was the one Charles had married, inviting her to dinner or to the theatre or for a walk in a park where he could ambush her, brush his lips against hers – simply because he was aware that at the same time he would also
Andrew leaned back in his seat, amazed that each of life’s twists and turns should give rise to a new existence vying with the old one to discover which was most authentic, instead of falling like sawdust and being swept away by the carpenter’s broom. It made him giddy to think that at each crossroads, clutches of other Andrews were born, and their lives went on at the same time as his, beyond the moment when his own ended, without him being aware of it. Ultimately it was man’s limited senses that established the boundaries of the world. But what if, like a magician’s box, the world had a false bottom and continued beyond the point where his senses told him it stopped? This was the same as asking whether roses kept their colour when no one was there to admire them. Was he right or was he losing his mind?
This was obviously a rhetorical question, yet the world took the trouble to respond. A soft breeze sprang up, lifting a leaf from among the many carpeting the pavement and making it dance on the surface of a puddle, like a
