The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(99)

As he walked back to London across country, keeping away from the roads, pausing and tensing at the slightest sound, he realized something had changed: he no longer wanted to die. And not because his life suddenly 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’s thugs had not followed him nor were posted round his lodgings, he locked himself away in his room in Buckeridge Street. Everything seemed quiet. The usual afternoon noises wafted up to his window from the street, 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 together with the pen and ink he had purloined. He took a deep breath. After half an hour of grappling with the page, deeply frustrated, he realized writing was not as easy as he had imagined. It was far more arduous than reading. He was appalled to discover it was impossible for him to transfer the thoughts in his head onto paper. 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 same clarity as she had. He gazed down at the indecipherable jumble of letters and crossings out that defiled the pristine page. The only legible words were the “Dear Claire” with which he had so optimistically begun his missive. The rest was simply 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 end up taking her own life anyway, incapable of understanding why the savior 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 she would end up taking her own life! 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. It could not be just any person, for example, a schoolteacher whom he could force to write it, threatening to break his fingers 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. And 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 leapt to his feet, thrust aside the chair, and pulled open the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers.

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 straightaway. Actually reading it, however, had been too exacting a task for Tom, and he had given up after the third page, yet he had held on to it, not wanting to resell the book 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, this young man with birdlike 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 by walking. The three-hour coach ride to Woking would take him three times as long on foot, so that if he left straightaway, he would reach his destination in the early hours of the morning, obviously not the best time to turn up unexpectedly at someone’s house, except in case of an emergency, which this was. He put Claire’s letter in his pocket, pulled on his cap, and left the boardinghouse for Woking without a second thought. He had no choice and was not in the least daunted by the walk. He knew he could count on his sturdy legs and stamina to complete the marathon journey without weakening.

During his long walk to the author’s house, while he watched night spread itself lazily over the landscape, and glanced over his shoulder every now and then to make sure neither Murray’s thugs nor Solomon were following him, Tom Blunt toyed with different ways of introducing himself to Wells. In the end, the one he decided was the cleverest also sounded the most far-fetched: he would introduce himself as Captain Derek Shackleton. He was sure the savior of mankind would be far better received at any time of the day than plain old Tom Blunt, and there was nothing to stop him successfully playing the role offstage as he had already done with Claire. As Shackleton, he could also tell the author the same tale he had told the girl and show him the letter he had found when he came through the time hole on his first visit to their time. How could this Wells fellow not be taken in if he himself had written a novel about time travel? If he were to make his story believable, though, Tom would need to think up a good reason why neither he nor anyone else from the future was able to write the letter himself.

Perhaps he could explain that in the year 2000, long before the war began, man had fallen out of the habit of writing, because the task had been given to automaton scribes. In any event, introducing himself as Captain Shackleton still seemed like the best plan: as he would later rescue the planet from the automatons, it felt preferable for the famous hero of the future to ask for help in order to save his beloved than for a nobody to wake up the famous author to beg him to get him out the predicament his desire for sex had got him into.