“That one is shaped like a bell,” said Murray.
“And that one resembles a shark’s fin,” Wells parried.
“And the one over there a toadstool.”
“And that of her friend a bird’s nest,” Wells said, and then, before Murray had a chance to point out another, he quickly cut in, flaunting his superior inventiveness: “And the one that girl is wearing looks like a bowl of fruit.”
Murray looked at the woman Wells was referring to and nodded silently, grinning to himself.
“Well, can you come up with a better comparison?”
“Oh, no, George, as always you have hit the nail right on the head. I was only smiling because I know that girl. And I assure you she is capable of far more fanciful acts than sporting such a hat.” Wells looked at the young woman, intrigued. “Her name is Claire Haggerty, and the gentleman beside her is her husband, the son of a rich shipping magnate called Fairbank. We met them at a party last week. She didn’t recognize me, of course, but I could never forget her.”
“And why is that?” asked Wells, imagining some kind of romantic entanglement.
“Because she was one of the group who went on the second expedition I organized to the future,” replied Murray. “And when I saw her climb aboard the Cronotilus, I swear I would never have imagined that bubbling away inside her little head was the mad idea of separating from the group and hiding in the ruins in order to stay behind in the year 2000. Luckily, we found her before she was able to get very far. I hate to imagine what might have happened if we hadn’t discovered her in time.”
“And why would anyone want to live in a ruined world?” Wells murmured, incredulous.
“I think she fell in love with Captain Shackleton.” Murray smiled good-humoredly. Wells raised his eyebrows. “I assure you she wasn’t the only one, George. You can’t imagine the extent of some young girls’ fantasies.”
“Well, she seems to have found her hero without having to travel to the future,” Wells said, noticing how the young woman doted on her affluent husband.
Murray nodded and, looking away from the couple, began rummaging through his pockets.
“Incidentally, George, I brought you something.”
“Another invitation to travel to the year 2000 to add to my collection?”
Murray’s loud guffaw almost made the box quake.
“You should have accepted one of them, George,” he said. “I guarantee you would have enjoyed the trip. But no, I’m afraid it’s something else.”
With a solemn gesture, he placed in Wells’s hands the letter he denied having written. Wells opened it and at last was able to read the advice someone else had given Murray, to forget about reproducing a Martian invasion and simply make Emma laugh.
“Well, what have you to say now, George?”
A triumphant smile appeared on Wells’s lips.
“This isn’t my handwriting, I assure you,” he told Murray, passing the letter back to him, “and I can prove it to you whenever you wish. As I told you, this was written by an imitator.”
Murray folded the letter again and slipped it back into his pocket with great care. Then he studied Wells with an amused grin.
“Don’t you think an imitator would try to reproduce your handwriting? Besides, how do you explain a stranger replying to a letter only you and I know exists?”
Wells shrugged. For a moment he imagined Jane replying secretly to the letter he hadn’t wanted to answer but instantly ruled that out. Jane would never do anything behind his back. Besides, that wasn’t her handwriting either.
“Do you know what my theory is?” said Murray. Wells shrugged again. “The letter is so clumsily executed it looks like someone crudely attempting to disguise his own handwriting, perhaps so that he could later deny his selfless act.”
Murray concluded his theory with a wink that came close to rousing all the old resentment Wells had made such an effort to smother. And yet, knowing that this puzzling misunderstanding would one day be cleared up, he managed to contain himself and change the subject. Toward the end of the day, worn down by Murray’s indefatigable bonhomie, Wells even thought it might only be a matter of time before, as the apocryphal letter announced, he would end up considering him his friend.
A week later, at the engagement ceremony, Wells was one of those who applauded the most. Somehow, he had grown used to the couple’s mutual displays of affection and couldn’t help feeling happy when he saw them formalize their betrothal. Murray and Emma agreed to marry in London, the city invaded by Martians that had joined their lives forever, but the wedding date was postponed until Emma’s father, who had suffered the spectacular loss of all his hair, had recovered. Despite the couple’s eagerness to tie the knot, they decided to wait until the bride-to-be’s parents could cross the Atlantic, considering that they had already broken quite enough conventions.
Life went on regardless, and after the reprieve he had given Murray, Wells began to experience a kind of spiritual inertia, which to his surprise brought him a degree of serenity. Now that he had no great adversary who regularly upset him, who made him seethe whenever he thought about him, Wells felt oddly calm. If he stopped short of describing himself as happy it was because he had always been suspicious of such emphatic statements. As for his work, it had also begun to flow harmoniously, as though in accordance with his mood. Gone was his youthful zeal, the times when, in an attempt to find his own style, he would read his favorite authors with the methodical attention of a spy, as he dreamed of blazing a trail so original nothing hitherto published could be compared to it. And although critics had praised the imagination his novels exuded, the fact was that many of them hadn’t evolved from his own ideas: he owed The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The Wonderful Visit in part to Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man, with whom Wells had enjoyed a most inspiring meeting in 1888. But the novel with the strangest beginnings of all was undoubtedly The War of the Worlds, the work that had marked the start of his unexpected friendship with Murray. A stranger had passed the plot on to him when he was fifteen years old. At that time, Wells was apprenticed to the loathsome bakery in Southsea where his mother had sent him to learn a trade. Every afternoon after work he would saunter down to the jetty and stare into the black waters while he wondered forlornly whether drowning in them wouldn’t be his only escape from the depressing future that awaited him. It was on one of those melancholy evenings that a strange fellow of about fifty had walked up to him and started to talk to him as if he knew him better than anyone else in the world. Despite Wells’s initial mistrust, they had ended up holding a conversation, as brief as it was astonishing, during which the stranger had told him a terrifying tale about Martians conquering the Earth. After he had finished, he told Wells that the story was a gift: he could write it one day if he became an author, although if that happened, which the man seemed in no doubt about, Wells must promise to find a more suitable, hopeful ending. And his prediction had come true: that youth had gone on to become a writer and with five novels to his name had finally felt equal to the task the stranger had entrusted him with eighteen years before. In the end, he thought it had turned out rather well. As had occurred with The Time Machine, his readers, oblivious to the social message in his novel, had interpreted it as a simple fantastical tale, but Wells consoled himself by thinking that if the stranger on the jetty were still alive and had read the book, he might feel satisfied with the ending Wells had given it.
However, Wells paid less and less attention to the quest for surprising plots for his scientific novels, because in the past few years he had decided to change course: he would abandon the fantasy fiction that had brought him such success and instead use as his narrative material his own experiences and responses to life. For the moment, he had managed for better or worse to finish Love and Mr. Lewisham and almost without coming up for air had submerged himself in Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, a comic novel in the Dickensian style, with a host of amusing cha
racters going about their ordinary lives. And the fact was Wells seemed to have discovered an inexhaustible mine within himself. Moving to Sandgate had undoubtedly proved a great success: he had more ideas in one day there than in a whole week in Worcester.
And so, five months later, when it became abundantly clear that the air in Sandgate agreed with him in more ways than one, the couple moved to Arnold House, a semidetached dwelling, less exposed to the elements, where the sea lurked at a safe distance at the far end of the garden. Murray and Emma were frequent visitors, and their neighbors, the Pophams, a couple of private means and sophisticated tastes, soon proved the perfect companions. They read a lot and so could discuss with them their latest reads and their favorite works, and they were also keen athletes. Together they helped teach Murray to swim, fixing a raft thirty yards from the shoreline so he could swim out to it.
Overnight, without anyone planning it, Arnold House became the center of a vibrant cultural universe, where meetings of leading members of the Fabian Society took place as did endless discussions about art and politics, but also about cookery, sport, or any subject worthy of serious or lighthearted debate. Many writers and thinkers lived nearby, and as everywhere was easily accessible by bicycle, a network of houses soon sprang up, like the one the Blands had at Dymchurch, through which a stream of writers, actors, painters, and others possessed by the Muses would pass, partaking in lengthy social gatherings, many of which led to heated debates about this and that, which occasionally ended in a game of badminton. After dark, those discussions would turn into impromptu parties that went on until two or three in the morning, and the next day a haggard group of guests would emerge with hangovers from their bedrooms to guzzle the usual hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs, punctually served up in the hosts’ dining room at noon.
Wells, who thanks to the success of his novels no longer suffered the past hardships, could also abandon himself in a controlled way to that placid and deceptively carefree existence. Above all, he enjoyed seeing Murray and Emma comfortably integrated into their circle of friends. He was proud to have introduced them to that stimulating, creative world that they would otherwise not have had access to, and—why deny it?—he felt thrilled to arrive at those gatherings accompanied by the famous millionaire, to introduce him to his acquaintances as he might a species of exotic bird, leaving everyone to puzzle over how their paths had crossed and the extent of their friendship. Occasionally, in the middle of one of those gatherings, Wells would pause during a conversation and observe with delight how Murray endeared himself to the others with his sardonic remarks, or how within minutes he managed to make everyone forget he was a millionaire by rolling up his sleeves and helping out with the chores, whether it be pruning hedges or fetching logs.
But the one thing Murray really enjoyed was conversing with the authors who would turn up from time to time. Thus he met Bob Stevenson, Robert Louis’s cousin, Ford Madox Ford, and Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, a diminutive, unassuming Pole who had abbreviated his name to Joseph Conrad for the benefit of his English readers. Murray had read all of them and at the least opportunity would give them his brutally honest opinions without provoking an outcry, much to the astonishment of Wells, who had warned Murray about the fragile vanity of authors. On the contrary: many of them would smile as Murray painstakingly pulled their works apart, and some even ended up agreeing with him and asking his advice on some creative problem. Wells was never sure if his colleagues’ submissive attitude toward Murray was a result of the protection of his immense fortune or the extraordinary insightfulness of his remarks. Whatever the case, Murray seemed more at ease in their company than Wells did, possibly because he had produced no body of work and so was not open to attack, unlike the unfortunate Wells, who would go on the defensive whenever there was any talk of the exact mode of expression or the most suitable word.
One of the things that most irritated Wells, for example, was Conrad’s insistence on discovering what his true aims were when he set about writing a novel—a question to which Wells could give no clear or satisfactory answer. Yet it was the Pole’s very stubbornness that allowed Wells to realize that during those past few months Murray had become one of his closest friends.
This was how it happened. Wells and Conrad had been lying on the beach at Sandgate one afternoon, discussing how best to describe a ship that had appeared on the horizon, and after a couple of hours during which neither had managed to convince the other, Conrad had withdrawn with the air of a swordsman who has just won a duel. Then Murray had gone over to Wells, had sat down beside him and tried to lift his spirits, telling him that Conrad only wrote about the horror of strange places and only enjoyed the favor of the critics because of the inevitable exoticism the Anglo-Saxon mind always imagined it perceived when a foreigner used the English language. Personally, he found Conrad’s prose as exasperatingly elaborate as a piece of Indian carving. Murray’s comparison made Wells burst out laughing, and before he knew it, he found himself admitting that more than once he had asked himself whether his own lack of attention to style didn’t make him less of a writer. Murray was shocked. Surely he wasn’t serious. Of course not! Wells simply wasn’t like Conrad and other authors who were adept at grandiloquent prose, and why should he be? His only aim when starting a novel was to finish it, employing the simplest vocabulary possible to describe his vision of the world without too much fuss. He only sought to create entertaining stories with which to criticize what he thought was wrong with the world, in a language that didn’t distract the reader’s attention. Wells was astonished by Murray’s accurate definition of him as a writer, and he remained silent, looking out to sea, where the contentious vessel still cleaved the waters. Then he glanced at Murray, who was still sitting beside him, smiling as he watched Emma cavorting with Jane down by the water’s edge. Wells stifled a sudden urge to embrace Murray and instead heard himself saying that as soon as he could, he would introduce him to James Brand Pinker, his literary agent, who would help him publish his novel, the futuristic love story that had sparked their now-distant enmity. Wells’s offer came four years too late, but Murray thanked him for his tardy gesture without alluding to that and wagged his head. He no longer had any interest in publishing that novel, nor did he intend to write another. He didn’t need to. He was quite content to do nothing now except bask in Emma’s love. And with that Murray stood up and strolled jauntily down toward the two women. Wells felt a slight pang of envy as he watched him. There went a man brimming with happiness who asked nothing more of life except perhaps that no one should take away what he had.
13
AND NOW PERMIT ME, AFTER riffling through those last two years like a cardsharp shuffling his deck, to choose one from the pack and place it on the table for all to see, because it behooves our tale to describe the events that follow in greater detail. Let us then take a closer look at one frosty February afternoon in 1900, when, in an unprecedented gesture of altruism, Wells had invited one of the most celebrated authors of the day to Arnold House as a surprise for Murray, who was a keen admirer of the man’s work.
At the agreed hour, the carriage with the pompous “G” announced its arrival with the slow clatter of hooves imposed by its old coachman. When it finally reached the entrance to Arnold House, Emma and Murray stepped out, enveloped in that happiness they had that never faded. The Wellses came out to welcome them, and after the usual polite greetings they walked toward the house. But the coachman detained Wells with a question.
“You don’t happen to own a dog?” the old man asked, gesturing with his chin toward the garden gate, which stood ajar.
“I already told you I don’t,” replied Wells impatiently.
The peculiar melancholy he had been experiencing recently seized him once again, confirming his suspicions that it was somehow related to the coachman’s presence. The idea was so absurd he could scarcely believe it, and yet he had realized over the past few months that every time the old man came he brought that uneasines
s with him.
“Of course, of course . . . It slipped my mind. The trouble is, you see, I have an irrational fear of them ever since I was bitten by one as a child,” Wells heard the coachman explain as he tried once more to engage him in conversation.
“Then it must be difficult for you to work for Gilmore, as he has a rather large one,” Wells retorted, looking at the man suspiciously.
“Er . . . yes. It is, rather. I spend all day avoiding Buzz. For some reason he insists on sniffing me all the time, as if he were inspecting me.” Wells smiled to himself at the name Murray had chosen for his old dog, Eternal. “Look, this is the scar I got from the dog that bit me when I was a child,” he said, extending his left arm.
Wells showed no interest in examining it. Instead, he used the opportunity to ask the old man what he had been burning to know since the day when, somewhat taken aback, he had noticed the coachman’s other mutilated hand.
“What about the fingers missing on your right hand? Was that from a dog bite as well?”
The coachman looked at the hand Wells had referred to, and his face took on a sad, inscrutable look.
“Oh, no, that came from fighting a rather more formidable foe . . . ,” he said, before going back to the subject that he really seemed interested in. “But I already showed you my scar, didn’t I? And you said you’d once been bitten by a dog, too, isn’t that so?”
“No. Actually, I told you I never had,” Wells replied blankly. “Both times you asked.”
The old man looked straight at him.
“Never? Are you certain?”
“Yes,” replied Wells, no longer trying to hide his annoyance at this absurd exchange, “despite how convinced you seem to be of the contrary.”
The Map of Chaos Page 23
