The Map of Time

He walked out into the garden to breathe in the night air, and gazed up at the pale full moon laying claim to the sky. In addition to the insignificance he always felt beneath the heavens, he was aware of his own clumsiness in comparison to the far more direct, spontaneous way others had of relating to the world, in this case the girl named Claire Haggerty. He remained in the garden for a long while, until he thought it was time to see the effect the letter had produced in his wife.

He walked slowly through the house, with almost ghost-like footsteps and, unable to find her in the sitting room or in the kitchen, he went upstairs to the bedroom. There was Jane, standing by the window, waiting for him. The moonlight framed her naked, tempting body. With a mixture of astonishment and lust, Wells examined its elements, its proportions, the supple wisdom with which her womanly parts, always glimpsed separately or divined through fabric, formed a greater landscape, creating a liberated, otherworldly being that looked as though it might fly away at any moment. He admired her soft, malleable breasts, her painfully narrow waist, the placid haven of her hips, the dark woolliness of her pubis, her feet like small, appealing animals. Jane was beaming at him, delighted to feel herself the object of her husband’s astonished gaze.

Then the writer knew what he must do. As though obeying an invisible prompter, he tore off his clothes, also exposing his nakedness to the light of the moon, which instantly outlined his skinny, sickly-looking frame. Husband and wife embraced in the middle of their bedroom, experiencing the touch of each other’s skin in a way they never had before. And the sensations that followed also seemed magnified, for Claire’s words etched in their memories redoubled the dizzying effect of each caress, each kiss. Real or imagined, they abandoned themselves hungrily, passionately, to explore each other, to venture outside the boundaries of their familiar garden of delights.

Later on, while Jane slept, Wells slipped out of their bed, tiptoed into the kitchen, took up his pen and began rapidly to fill the paper, prey to an uncontrollable sensation of euphoria.

My love,

How I long for the day when at last I shall be able to experience all the things you have described to me. What can I say except that I love you and I shall make love to you exactly as you describe? I shall kiss you tenderly, caress you softly and reverently, enter you as gently as I can and, knowing as I do everything you are feeling, my pleasure will be even more intense, Claire.

Tom read Wells’s passionate letter with suspicion. Even though he knew the author was pretending to be him, he could not help thinking those words might just as well come from both of them. Wells was evidently enjoying all this. What did his wife think of it? Tom folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and hid it under the stone next to the mysterious Peachey’s grave.

On the way back, he went on mulling over the author’s words, unable to help feeling as if he had been left out of a game he himself had invented, relegated to the mere role of messenger.

I love you already, Claire, I love you already. Seeing you will simply be the next phase. And knowing we will win this bloody war gives me renewed joy. Solomon and I locked in a sword fight? Until a few days ago, I would have wondered whether you were quite sane, my love: I could never have imagined we would settle our differences with such a prehistoric weapon. But this morning, picking through the ruins of the History Museum, one of my men came across a sword. He deemed the noble relic worthy of a captain and, as though obeying your command, solemnly presented me with it. Now I know I must practise with it in preparation for a future duel, a duel from which I shall emerge victorious, for knowing that your beautiful eyes are watching me will give me strength.

All my love from the future,

D

Claire felt her knees go weak and, lying down on her bed, she luxuriated in the wave of sensations the brave Captain Shackleton’s words had unleashed in her heart. While he had been duelling with Solomon he had known she was watching him, then ... The thought made her slightly dizzy again, and she took a moment to recover.

Suddenly it dawned on her that she would receive only one more letter from her beloved. How would she survive without them?

She tried to put it out of her mind. She still had to write two more. As she had promised, she would only tell him about their encounter in the year 2000 in her last letter, but what about the one she had to write now? She realised, somewhat uneasily, that for the first time she was free to write what she liked. What could she say to her beloved that she had not already said, especially considering that everything she wrote must be carefully examined in case it conveyed information that might jeopardise the fabric of time, apparently as fragile as glass?

After some thought, she decided to tell him how she spent her time now, as a woman in love without a lover. She sat at her desk and took up her pen.

My darling,

You cannot know how much your letters mean to me. Knowing I shall receive only one more makes me feel dreadfully sad. However, I promise I will be strong. I will never falter, never stop thinking of you, feeling you near me every second of each long day. It goes without saying that I will never allow another man to tarnish our love, even though I will never see you again. I prefer to live from my memories of you, despite the best efforts of my mother to marry me off to the wealthiest bachelors in the neighbourhood – naturally I have told her nothing of you (my love would seem like a waste of time to her, for she would see you as no more than a pointless illusion). She invites them to our house and I receive them courteously, of course, then amuse myself by inventing the most outrageous reasons for rejecting them that leave my mother speechless. My reputation is growing worse by the day: I am doomed to be a spinster and a disgrace to my family.

But why should I care a fig for what others think? I am your beloved. The brave Captain Derek Shackletons beloved, although I have to hide my feelings for you.

Apart from these tedious meetings, I devote the rest of my time to you, my love, for I know how to sense your presence swirling around me like a fragrance even though you are many years away from me. 1 feel you near me always, watching me with your gentle eyes, although at times it saddens me not to he able to touch you, that you are no more than an ethereal memory, that you cannot share anything with me. You cannot slip your arm through mine in Green Park, or hold my hand as we watch the sun go down over the Serpentine, or smell the narcissi I grow in my garden, whose scent, my neighbours say, fills the whole of St James’s Street.

Wells was waiting in the kitchen, as before. Tom silently handed him the letter and left before the writer could ask him to. What was there to say? Although in the end he knew it was untrue, he could not help feeling as though Claire were writing to Wells instead of to him. He felt like the intruder in this love story, the fly in the soup.

When he was alone, Wells opened the letter and began to devour the girl’s neat handwriting.

In spite of all this, Derek, I shall love you until my dying day, and no one will be able to deny that I have been happy. And yet I have to confess it is not always easy. According to you I will never see you again, and the thought is so unbearable that, despite my resolve, I try to make myself feel better by imagining you may be mistaken. That does not mean I doubt your words, my love, of course not. But the Derek who uttered them in the tea room was only guided by what I am saying now, and it is possible the Derek who hurried back to his own time after making love to me in the boarding-house, the Derek who is not yet you, will be unable to bear not seeing me again and will find a way of coming back to me. What that Derek will do, neither you nor I can know, for he is outside the circle. This is my only hope, my love – a naive one, perhaps, but necessary all the same.

I dearly hope I will see you once more, that the scent of my narcissi will lead you to me.

Wells folded the letter, put it back in its envelope and laid it on the table,