Читать книгу The Map of Time - Felix J. Palma - Страница 16

Chapter X

Drifting through the scent of roses suffusing the lobby, the cousins left the offices of Murray’s Time Travel. In the street, they hailed the first hansom cab they saw and gave the driver the address in Woking, Surrey, where the author H. G. Wells lived. The meeting with Gilliam Murray had plunged Andrew into a profound silence where God only knew what dark thoughts he was grappling with. But the journey would take at least three hours, and therefore Charles was in no hurry to draw his cousin into conversation. He preferred to leave him to gather his thoughts. They had experienced enough excitement for one day, and there was still more to come. In any case, he had learned to sit back and enjoy the frequent unexpected bouts of silence that punctuated his relationship with Andrew, so he closed his eyes and let himself be rocked by the cab as it sped out of the city.

Although they were not troubled by the silence, I imagine that you, who are in a sense sharing their journey, might find it a little tiresome. Therefore, rather than lecture you on the nature and quality of this inviolate calm, scarcely broken by the cab’s creaks and groans, or describe to you the view of the horses’ hindquarters upon which Andrew’s gaze was firmly fixed, and, since I am unable even to relate in any exciting way what was going on in Andrew’s head (where the prospect of saving Marie Kelly was slowly fading because, although a method of travelling through time had apparently been discovered, it was still impossible to do so with any accuracy), I propose to make use of this lull in proceedings to tell you about something still pending in this story. I alone can narrate this, as it is an episode about which the cab’s occupants are completely unaware.

I refer to the spectacular ascent up the social ladder of their respective fathers, William Harrington and Sydney Winslow. William Harrington presided over it, with his typical mixture of good fortune and rough-and-ready abilities, and although both men resolved to keep it secret, they cannot do so from me, as I see everything whether I wish to or not.

I could give you my honest opinion of William Harrington, but what I think is of no consequence. Let us rather stick with Andrew’s idea of his father, which is not far from the truth. Andrew saw his father as a warrior of commerce, capable, as you will discover, of the most heroic exploits in the field of business. However, when it came to everyday hand-to-hand combat, in which the struggles that make us human take place, allowing us to show kindness or generosity, he was apparently incapable of anything but the meanest acts, as you have already seen. William Harrington was of the class of person who possesses a self-assurance that is both their strength and their downfall, a cast-iron confidence that can easily turn into excessive, blind arrogance. In the end, he was like someone who stands on his head, then complains that the world is upside down, or, if you prefer, like someone who believes God created the Earth for him to walk upon, with which I have said enough.

William Harrington returned from the Crimea to a world dominated by machines. He realised straight away that this would not supersede the old way of doing things since even the glass in the Crystal Palace, that transparent whale then marooned in Hyde Park, had been made by hand. That was evidently not the way to grow rich, a goal he had set himself, with the typical insouciance of a twenty-year-old, as he lay in bed at night with his new wife, the rather timid daughter of the match manufacturer for whom he worked. The thought of being trapped in the dreary life already mapped out for him kept him awake, and he wondered whether he ought not to rebel against such a common fate. Why had his mother gone to the trouble of bringing him into the world if the most exciting moment in his life was having been lamed by a bayonet? Was he doomed to be just another anonymous cipher, or would he pass into the annals of history?

His lamentable performance in the Crimea would appear to suggest the former, yet William Harrington had too voracious a nature to be content with that. ‘As far as I can tell, I only have one life,’ he said to himself, ‘and what I don’t achieve in this one I won’t achieve in the next.’

The following day he called on his brother-in-law Sydney, a bright, capable young man who was wasting his life as an accountant in the family match firm, and assured him that he, too, was destined for greater things. However, in order to achieve the rapid social ascent William envisaged, they must forget the match business and start up their own enterprise, easily done if they made use of Sydney’s savings. During the course of a long drinking session, William convinced his brother-in-law to let him play with his money, declaring that a small amount of entrepreneurial risk would inject some excitement into his dull life. They had little to lose and much to gain. It was essential they find a business that would bring in large profits quickly, he concluded.

To his amazement, Sydney agreed, and soon put his imaginative mind to work. He arrived at their next meeting with the plans for what he was convinced would be a revolutionary invention. The Bachelor’s Helpmate, as he had called it, consisted of a chair designed for lovers of erotic literature, and was equipped with a lectern that automatically turned the pages, allowing the reader to keep both hands free. William could see from Sydney’s detailed drawings that the device came with accessories, such as a small washbasin, and even a sponge, so that the client did not have to interrupt his reading to get up from the chair. Sydney was convinced his product would make their fortune, but William was not so sure: his brother-in-law had clearly confused his own necessities with those of others. However, once William had succeeded in the difficult task of convincing him that his sophisticated seat was not as essential to the Empire as he had imagined, they found themselves without a decent idea to their names.

Desperate, they concentrated on the flow of merchandise coming in from the colonies. What products had not yet been imported? What unfulfilled needs did the British have? They looked around carefully, but it seemed nothing was wanting. Her Majesty, with her tentacular grasp, was already divesting the world of everything her subjects required. Of course, there was one thing they lacked, but this was a necessity no one dared to mention.

They discovered it one day while strolling through the commercial district of New York, where they had gone in search of inspiration. They were preparing to return to the hotel and soak their aching feet in a basin of salt water, when their eye fell on a product displayed in a shop window. Behind the glass was a stack of strange packets containing fifty sheets of moisturised paper. Printed on the back were the words ‘Gayetty’s Medicated Paper’. What the devil was this for? They soon discovered the answer from the instructions pasted in the window, which, without a hint of embarrassment, depicted a hand applying the product to the most intimate area of a posterior. This fellow Gayetty had obviously decided that corncobs and parish newsletters were a thing of the past.

Once they had recovered from their surprise, William and Sydney looked at each other meaningfully. This was it! It did not take a genius to imagine the warm reception thousands of British backsides, raw from being rubbed with rough newspaper, would give this heaven-sent gift. At fifty cents a packet, they would soon make their fortune. They purchased enough stock to furnish a small shop they acquired in one of London’s busiest streets, filled the window with their product, put up a poster illustrating its correct usage, and waited behind the counter for customers to flock in. But not a single soul walked through the door on the day the shop opened, or in the days that followed, which soon turned into weeks.

It took William and Sydney three months to admit defeat. Their dreams of wealth had been cruelly dashed at the outset, although they had enough medicated paper never to need worry about procuring another Sears catalogue. However, at times society obeys its own twisted logic, and the moment they closed their disastrous shop, their business suddenly took off. In the dark corners of inns, in alleyway entrances, in their own homes during the early hours, William and Sydney were assailed by a variety of individuals who, in hushed tones and glancing furtively about them, ordered packets of their miraculous paper before disappearing back into the gloom.

Surprised at first by the cloak-and-dagger aspect they were obliged to adopt, the two young entrepreneurs soon became accustomed to tramping the streets at dead of night, one limping along, the other puffing and panting, to make their clandestine deliveries far from prying eyes. They soon grew used to depositing their embarrassing product in house doorways, or signalling with a tap of their cane on window-panes, or tossing packets off bridges on to barges passing noiselessly below, slipping into deserted parks and retrieving wads of pound notes stashed under a bench, whistling like a couple of songbirds through mansion railings. Everyone in London wanted to use Gayetty’s wonderful paper without their neighbour finding out, a fact of which William slyly took advantage, increasing the price of his product to what would eventually become an outrageous sum – which most customers were nevertheless willing to pay.

Within a couple of years they were able to purchase two luxurious dwellings in the Brompton Road area, from where they soon upped sticks for Kensington. In addition to his collection of expensive canes, William measured his success by the ability to acquire ever larger houses.

Amazed that the reckless act of placing his entire savings at his brother-in-law’s disposal had provided him with a fine mansion in Queen’s Gate from whose balcony he could survey the most elegant side of London, Sydney resolved to enjoy what he had, giving himself to the pleasures of family life, so extolled by the clergy. He filled his house with children, books, paintings by promising artists, took on a couple of servants and, at a safe distance from them now, cultivated the disdain he claimed he had always felt towards the lower classes to the extent that it became contempt. In brief, he quietly adapted to his new affluence even though it was based on the ignoble business of selling toilet paper.

William was different. His proud, inquisitive nature made it impossible for him to be satisfied with that. He needed public recognition, to be respected by society. In other words, he wanted the great and the good of London to invite him foxhunting, to treat him as an equal. But, much as he paraded through London’s smoking rooms doling out his card, this did not happen. Faced with a situation he was powerless to change, he built up a bitter resentment of the wealthy élite, who subjected him to the most abysmal ostracism while wiping their distinguished backsides with the paper he provided. During one of the rare gatherings to which the two men were invited, his anger boiled over when some wag bestowed on them the title ‘Official Wipers to the Queen’. Before anyone could laugh, William Harrington hurled himself on the insolent dandy, breaking his nose with the pommel of his cane before Sydney managed to drag him away.

The gathering proved a turning point in their lives. William Harrington learned from it a harsh but valuable lesson: the medicinal paper to which he owed everything, and which had generated so much wealth, was a disgrace that would stain his life for ever unless he did something about it. He began to invest part of his earnings in less disreputable businesses, such as the burgeoning railway industry. In a matter of months he had become the majority shareholder in several locomotive repair shops. His next step was to buy a failing shipping company called Fellowship, inject new blood into it, and turn it into the most profitable of ocean-going concerns. Through his tiny empire of successful businesses, which Sydney managed with the easy elegance of an orchestra conductor, in less than two years William had dissociated his name from medicinal paper, cancelling the final shipment and leaving London plunged in silent despair.

In the spring of 1872, Annesley Hall invited him to his first hunt gathering on his Newstead estate, which was attended by all of London society, who eagerly applauded William’s extraordinary achievements. It was there that the witty young man who had made a joke at his expense regrettably perished. According to the newspaper account, the ill-fated youth accidentally shot himself in the foot.

It was around that time when William Harrington dusted off his old uniform and commissioned a portrait of himself bursting out of it, smiling as though his unadorned chest were plastered with medals, and greeting all who entered his mansion with the masterful gaze of sole owner of that corner opposite Hyde Park.

This, and no other, was the secret their fathers so jealously guarded and whose air of light entertainment I considered appropriate for this rather wearisome journey. But I am afraid we have reached the end of our story too soon. Total silence still reigns in the cab and is likely to do so for some time because, when he is in the mood, Andrew is capable of daydreaming for hours, unless prodded with a red-hot poker or doused in boiling oil – neither of which Charles is in the habit of carrying around with him. Therefore I have no other choice but to take flight again so that we reach their destination, Mr Wells’s house, more quickly than they do. Not only, as you will have gathered from some of my commentaries, am I not subject to the cab’s tortuous pace but I can travel at the speed of light, so that – voilà! - in the blink of an eye, or faster still, we find ourselves in Woking, floating above the roof of a modest three-storey house with a garden overrun by brambles and silver birch, whose frail façade trembles slightly as the trains to Lynton roar past.