The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(111)

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 the author 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 might be mistaken. That does not mean I doubt your words, my love, of course not. But the Derek who uttered them in the tearoom 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 boardinghouse, 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 na?ve one perhaps, but necessary all the same. I dearly hope I 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, where he stared at it for a long time. Then he stood up, walked round the kitchen in circles, sat down, stood up again, and walked round in circles some more, before finally leaving for Woking station to hire a cab. “I’m going to London to settle some business,” he told Jane, who was working in the garden. During the journey, he tried to calm his wildly beating heart.

At that hour of the afternoon, St James’s Street seemed lulled by a peaceful silence. Wells ordered the cabdriver to stop at the entrance to the street and asked him to wait for him there. He straightened his hat and adjusted his bow tie, then greedily sniffed the air, like a bloodhound. He concluded from his inhalations that the faint, slightly heady odor reminiscent of jasmine, which he detected through the smell of horse dung, must be narcissi. The flower added a symbolic touch to the scene which pleased Wells, for he had read that, contrary to popular belief, the name narcissus derived not from the beautiful Greek god but from the plant’s narcotic properties. The narcissus bulb contained hallucinogenic opiates, and this oddity struck Wells as terribly appropriate: were not all three of them (the girl, Tom, and himself) caught up in a hallucination? He studied the long, shady street and set off down the pavement with the leisurely air of one out for a stroll, although as he approached the apparent source of the aroma, he began to notice his mouth becoming dry. Why had he come there, what did he hope to gain? He was not sure exactly.

All he knew was that he needed to see the girl, to give the recipient of his passionate letters a face, or, failing that, to glimpse the house where she penned her beautiful letters. Perhaps that would be enough.

Before he knew it, Wells found himself standing in front of an undeniably well-tended garden with a tiny fountain on one side, and enclosed by a railing at the foot of which lay a carpet of pale yellow flowers with large petals. Since the street boasted no other garden that could rival its beauty, Wells deduced that the narcissi before him, and the elegant town house beyond, must be those of Claire Haggerty, the unknown woman he was pretending to love with a fervor he did not show the woman he truly loved.

Not wishing to give too much thought to this paradox, which was nonetheless in keeping with his contradictory nature, Wells approached the railings, almost thrusting his nose through the bars in an attempt to glimpse something behind the leaded windowpanes that made sense of his urgent presence there.

It was then he noticed the girl looking at him slightly perplexed from a corner of the garden itself. Realizing he had been caught red-handed, Wells tried to act naturally, although his response was anything but natural, especially since he realized straightaway that the girl staring at him could be none other than Claire Haggerty. He tried to gather himself even as he gave her a docile, absurdly affable grin. “Magnificent narcissi, miss,” he declared in a reedy voice. “One can smell their aroma from the end of the street.” She smiled and came a little closer, enough for the author to see her beautiful face and delicate frame. Here she was at last, before his eyes, albeit fully clothed. And she was indeed a vision of loveliness, despite her slightly upturned nose that marred her serene beauty reminiscent of a Greek sculpture, or perhaps because of it. This girl was the recipient of his letters, his make-believe lover. “Thank you, sir, you’re very kind,” she said, returning the compliment. Wells opened his mouth as if to speak but hurriedly closed it again. Everything he wanted to tell her went against the rules of the game he had consented to play. He could not say that although he might appear an insignificant little man, he was the author of those words without which she claimed she could not live. Nor could he tell her he knew in precise detail her experience of sexual pleasure. Still less could he reveal that it was all a sham, urge her not to sacrifice herself to a love that only existed in her imagination, for there was no such thing as time travel, no Captain Shackleton waging war on the automatons in the year 2000. Telling her it was all an elaborate lie which she would pay for with her life would be tantamount to handing her a gun to shoot herself through the heart.

Then he noticed she had begun giving him quizzical looks, as if his face seemed familiar. Afraid she might recognize him, Wells hurriedly doffed his hat, bowed politely, and continued on his way, trying not to quicken his pace. Intrigued, Claire watched for a few moments as he vanished into the distance, then finally shrugged and went back inside the house.