Despite the effort involved in reading, Tom re-read Claire’s letter three times, with the exact look of surprise the girl had predicted, though for quite different reasons, of course. After the third reading, he replaced it carefully in the envelope and leaned back against the tree, trying to understand the contradictory feelings the pages stirred in him. The girl had swallowed every word, and had come all that way to leave him a letter! He realised that while for him it was all over, for her it was just beginning.
He saw now how far his adventure had gone. He had played with the girl without stopping to think of the consequences, and now he ‘knew’ what they were. Yes, this letter unintentionally revealed to him the effect his misbehaviour had had on his victim, and he would rather not have known. Not only had Claire believed his cock- and-bull story to the point of obediently following the next step in the sequence of events, but their physical encounter had been the breath of life her nascent love had needed to catch fire, apparently taking on the proportions of an inferno. And now the blaze was consuming her. Tom marvelled not only that one brief encounter could produce so much love but that the girl was prepared to devote her life to keeping it alive, like someone stoking a fire in the forest to keep wolves at bay. What amazed him most of all, though, was that Claire was doing this for him because she loved him. No one had ever expressed such love for him before, he thought uneasily, and it no longer mattered that it was directed towards Captain Shackleton: the man who had bedded her, undressed her tenderly, taken her gently was Tom Blunt. Shackleton was a mere act, an idea, but Claire had fallen in love with Tom’s way of acting him.
And how did that make him feel? he asked himself. Should being loved so unreservedly and passionately produce the same feelings in him, just as his reflection appeared when he leaned over a pond? He was unable to answer that question. And, besides, there was little point in speculating about it – he would probably be dead by the end of the day.
He glanced again at the letter he was holding. What was he supposed to do with it? Suddenly he realised there was only one thing he could do: he must reply to it, not because he intended to take on the role of star-crossed lover in the story he had unthinkingly set in motion, but because the girl had insinuated she would be unable to live without his letters. Tom imagined her travelling there in her carriage, walking to the top of the little hill and finding no reply from Captain Shackleton. He was convinced Claire would be unable to cope with this sudden twist in the plot, his unexpected, mysterious silence. After weeks of going to Harrow and leaving empty-handed, he could imagine her taking her own life in the same passionate way she had decided to love him, perhaps by plunging a sharp dagger through her heart, or downing a flask of laudanum.
Tom could not let that happen. Whether he liked it or not, as a result of his little game Claire Haggerty’s life was in his hands. He had no choice.
As he walked back to London across country, keeping away from the roads, tensing at the slightest sound, he realised something had changed: he no longer wanted to die. And not because his life seemed more worth living than before but because he had to reply to the girl’s letter. He had to keep himself alive in order to keep Claire alive.
Once in the city, he stole some writing paper from a stationer’s shop and, satisfied that Gilliam Murray’s thugs had not followed him nor were posted round his lodgings, he locked himself into his room in Buckeridge Street. Everything seemed quiet. The usual afternoon noises wafted up to his window, a harmonious melody in which no discordant notes were struck. He pushed the chair up to the bed to make an improvised desk, and spread the paper out on the seat, with the pen and ink he had also purloined. He took a deep breath.
After half an hour of grappling with the page, deeply frustrated, he had discovered that writing was not as easy as he had imagined. It was far more arduous than reading. He was appalled to find it was impossible for him to transfer to paper the thoughts in his head. He knew what he wanted to say, but each time he started a sentence his original idea seemed to drift away and become something entirely different. He still remembered the rudiments of writing that Megan had taught him, but he did not know enough grammar to be able to form proper sentences and, more importantly, he did not know how to express his ideas with the clarity Claire had.
He gazed down at the indecipherable jumble of letters and crossings-out that defiled the pristine page. The only legible words were ‘Dear Claire’, with which he had so optimistically begun his missive. The rest was a pitiful demonstration of a semi-illiterate man’s first attempt at writing a letter. He screwed up the sheet of paper, bowing to the inevitable. If Claire received a letter like this she would take her own life anyway, incapable of understanding why the saviour of mankind wrote like a chimpanzee. He wanted to reply, yet was unable to. But Claire had to find a letter at the foot of the oak tree in two days’ time or . . .
Tom lay back on the bed, trying to gather his thoughts. Clearly he needed help. He needed someone to write the letter for him – but who? He did not know anyone who could write. And it couldn’t be just anyone – for example, a schoolteacher whose fingers he would threaten to break if he refused. The chosen person not only had to be able to write properly, he had to have enough imagination to play a spirited part in the charade. On top of that, he needed to be capable of corresponding with the girl in the same passionate tone. Who could he find who possessed all those qualities?
It came to him in a flash. He leaped to his feet, thrust aside the chair and pulled open the bottom drawer of his chest. There it was, like a fish gasping out of water: the novel. He had purchased it when he first started working for Murray, because his boss had told him it was thanks to this book that his business had been such a success. And Tom, who had never owned a book in his life, had gone out and bought it straight away. Actually reading it, however, had been too exacting a task for him, and he had given up after the third page, yet he had held on to it, not wanting to resell it because in some sense he owed who he was now to that author.
He opened the book and studied the photograph of the writer on the inside flap. The caption below said he lived in Woking, Surrey. Yes, if anyone could help him it had to be the fellow in the photograph, a young man with bird- like features named H. G. Wells.
***
With no money to hire a carriage and reluctant to risk hiding on a train bound for Surrey, Tom concluded that the only way for him to reach the author’s house was on foot. The three-hour coach ride to Woking would take him three times as long on foot, so if he left straight away, he would reach his destination in the early hours of the morning. Obviously this was not the best time to arrive unexpectedly at someone’s house – unless in case of an emergency, which this was. He put Claire’s letter into his pocket, pulled on his cap and left the boarding-house for Woking without a second thought.
