The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(183)
Wells was immersed in these memories one evening when he saw himself emerge from the building, exactly at the hour he remembered, and trudge wearily toward Southsea Pier, a downcast expression on his face. Quietly he followed the boy until he saw him pause before the murky waters, where he used to remain for almost an hour, toying with the idea of suicide, thinking that if this was what his life was going to be, then he preferred no life at all. He felt compassion for this pale, skinny lad whom life had cheated. In fact, if he remembered correctly, he had never considered suicide a very honorable solution, but the cold embrace of the sea, compared to the barren existence that awaited him, did not seem like such a dreadful alternative. Wells shook his head at the boy’s suffering, which had been his own. He knew that happily, things would look up for him in a matter of months, when he at last resolved to rebel against his mother and wrote to Horace Byatt asking for help, whereupon Byatt offered him a job as assistant teacher at Midhurst Grammar School on a salary of twenty pounds a year. However, the tormented boy staring into the sea was as yet unaware he would succeed in escaping this tedious life as a draper’s apprentice and construct a pleasant life as a writer. Wells strolled over to himself on the pier, preparing to burst in on his own adolescence in order to speak with himself. He hoped the fifty years that had left his face furrowed with wrinkles would prevent the youth from recognizing him, but above all he hoped his calculated intrusion in the flow of events would not provoke a landslide bigger than the one he intended.
“Suicide is always a possibility,” he said in a soft voice, catching his double’s attention, “and so it’s advisable to exhaust all others first.”
The boy wheeled round, startled, and gazed at Wells suspiciously. And for the few moments his scrutiny lasted, Wells was also able to study himself. So this was what he had looked like aged fifteen, he reflected, astonished by the boy’s eyes that had seen so little, his lips still devoid of their characteristic ironic grimace, his exaggeratedly tragic mannerisms. He found his earlier self painfully fragile and vulnerable, however much the boy, possessed of youth’s absurd bravado, considered himself somehow invincible.
“I’m not thinking of—” Wells heard the boy start to say, only to break off abruptly and add, in a tone of puzzled defiance: “How did you know?”
Wells smiled at him as amiably as he could, hoping this friendly gesture would favor an easy exchange between them.
“Oh, it’s not so hard to figure out,” Wells replied with relaxed joviality, “above all for someone who as a youth entertained the same thoughts when gazing into these waters, with the same anguish you feel now.” He shook his head vigorously, showing how painful it was for him to look back on that now. “But first you have to fight, to try other ways. If your life displeases you, my lad, try to change it. Don’t give in to defeat so easily. Death is the only sure defeat. It is the end of everything.”
For a few moments, the boy contemplated him in silence, still with some mistrust. What did this stranger want? Why had he come up to him and spoken to him like this?
“Thanks for the advice, whoever you are,” he responded coldly.
“Oh, I’m nobody.” Wells shrugged, pretending to be distracted by the gentle ripple of the waves. “Just a stranger who has watched you come here too often. You are an apprentice at Mr. Hyde’s draper’s shop, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the boy replied, visibly uncomfortable to learn that this stranger whose intentions he could not fathom was spying on him.
“And doubtless you think you deserve more in life than to be a simple draper’s apprentice,” Wells went on, trying to sound as friendly as possible. “You shouldn’t feel guilty about it. I had the same thoughts at your age, my lad. I was forced into an equally thankless job that neither satisfied nor fulfilled me. I dreamed of being a writer, you know.”
The boy observed him with a flash of interest, though Wells knew at that age he had still not decided to be an author. He loved reading, yes, but he was still unaware of his talent for emulating his favorite authors. Not until he entered the Royal College of Science in London, where Professor Huxley taught, would he begin to draft his first stories, in that clumsy, graceless handwriting he would later improve when he went to teach at the Holt Academy in Wrexham. For the moment, the months he had spent at Midhurst, watching Horace Byatt deliver his classes, had aroused in the young Wells a vague fascination for the role of teacher, a vocation incomparably more beneficial to society than that of writer.
“And did you succeed?” the boy asked abruptly, rousing Wells from his momentary reverie.
“What?”
“In being a writer?”
Wells looked at him silently in the growing darkness, pondering his reply.
“No, I’m a simple chemist,” he lamented. “I lead a very ordinary life. This is why I allowed myself to offer you some advice, my lad, because I know there’s nothing worse than leading a life you don’t like. If you think you have something to give to the world, fight for it tooth and nail. Otherwise you’ll end up a sad, embittered chemist who never stops daydreaming, inventing stories he’ll never write.”
“That’s too bad,” the boy said, without bothering to appear sympathetic. A few minutes passed, and then he added, rather diffidently: “Why didn’t you take your own life, then, if you don’t mind me asking?”