The Haunting of H. G. Wells

by Robert Masello

  He didn’t issue a riposte.

  But the moment, Rebecca realized, was utterly gone. Her lips still buzzed, her breasts, untouched, ached, but she saw no way to rekindle the blaze.

  “Thank you for your help with the bag,” Wells said quietly. “I think we’d best return to the study.” He left the bedroom, and Rebecca, wondering whether she felt more ravaged or rejected, sat up and straightened her clothing.

  What had just happened here? How had it gone so wrong? A student of the dramatic arts, she had played out this scene in her head a hundred times, but this was one denouement she had never foreseen. She could hear Wells stirring the embers in the fireplace with a poker, and she wondered how she would face him. What attitude should she take? What expression should she wear on her face?

  The rain was slashing against the windows, the bedside lamp cast a ruddy glow. How long she sat on the bed, she didn’t know, but eventually Wells put his head back into the room, and said, “Are you all right, Rebecca?”

  Was she? “Yes, fine,” she said, putting a few stray hairs back into place. “I’ll be right out.”

  “Take as long as you wish.”

  Alone again, she glanced at the open suitcase, and on a sudden whim, bent her head to kiss the shirtfront on top. Then, she closed the bag. Standing up, she smoothed her skirt and as if entering an entirely different scene, returned to the front room, her face composed, her shoulders squared, betraying none of the turmoil still raging within.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sergeant Stubb lived up to his name, Wells thought. Even in the vast railway station, where lines of young soldiers were being marched onto the trains, their kits and rifles clanking, Sergeant Stubb stood out—an anvil of a man, his head settled onto his shoulders with no intervention from a neck, his bandied legs spread apart. His face, as Wells got closer, was etched with scars and scratches that had never healed.

  After introducing themselves—the sergeant’s voice, Cockney-accented, was low and raspy—Stubb led the way to an officers’ carriage, and all but pushing aside anyone in his way, ushered Wells on board, commandeering a window seat for them both. The senior officers observed them with curiosity, wondering, no doubt, at the middle-aged man in a crisp khaki uniform, closely escorted by nothing less than a bodyguard. Wells had felt conspicuous enough already, emerging from his place on St. James’s Court; now, among these true soldiers, he felt positively fraudulent.

  And exhausted. He had slept poorly. Every time he had rolled over onto his right shoulder, he had been awakened by the soreness from the inoculation. And his dreams had been troubled, as well—not that that should have been a surprise. After Rebecca had left, he had been tormented by the scene that they had enacted. But he couldn’t decide whether he was troubled by how far it had gone, or that it had not gone further. He had never been one to turn down such an offer, and from such a beautiful and talented young woman, to boot. But maybe that was it—he held her in such high regard that he could not proceed without wondering just how deeply he would become involved. Unlike some of his other passades, this one—if embarked upon—threatened to become something of great importance in his life. Rebecca West would not be a passing fancy; she would assume a leading role in his life—he could feel it in his bones—and was he ready for that?

  Stubb had folded his hands across his belly, pulled the brim of his cap down over his eyes, and dropped into what appeared to be an enviable sleep. Wells looked out the window as the whistle blew, steam escaping from the billowing stacks of the engine, and the train crept out of the station. There was a half-hearted cheer from some of the men in the other railcars. Wells settled down into his seat.

  How many times had he taken just such a journey, leaving London for a lucrative lecture engagement, or a vacation on the Continent, with nothing but pleasure in the offing? Never, in all that time, had he imagined himself on a troop train, embarking for the most dangerous destination in the world. And despite all the assurances that he had given Jane and Rebecca about his own safety—“They’re not about to ask me to take out a sniper’s nest,” he’d said to his wife, “I’m there to bolster morale, not get shot and further depress the national spirit”—he wasn’t quite so confident as he made out. Accidents happened and bullets went astray; bombs did not discriminate, and the enemy was not aware that beneath this uniform lay a noncombatant.

  For the next hour or two, he meditated, even dozed, but knew that they were approaching the coastline when the terrain became flatter, more desolate. Towns and fields gave way to swaying reeds and tidal wetlands. A flock of white herons, inured to the racket, paid almost no attention as the train rumbled past; and when it was time to disembark, into a vast shed riddled with dozens of tracks, Wells and Sergeant Stubb were herded from the train onto a gangway and then, almost before he was aware of it, to an upper deck of the transport ship that would take them across the Channel. Great cranes were hoisting wagons and supplies on board, while fearful braying mules were being prodded into the hold. It was all admirably efficient, Wells thought, and made a note of it in one of the two-dozen notebooks, and dozen pens, he had packed for the assignment.

  While the loading was done, Stubb went below to secure their berths for the night, and Wells lit a pipe at the starboard railing. A younger man—though weren’t they all?—was smoking a cigarette a few feet off, glancing at Wells out of the corner of his eye. He wore the red badge of a medical orderly on his sleeve.

  “First time over?” he asked, in a somber tone.

  “Is it so obvious?” Wells replied.

  “Uniform looks like it’s just out of the store window.”

  Wells chuckled, and the orderly said, “Third time for me.”

  His face betrayed it; by Wells’s estimation, he couldn’t be more than twenty-three or four, but his skin had an ashen hue. His eyes, too, had a haunted look in them.

  “That must be hard,” Wells said, “leaving home each time.”

  The soldier shrugged. “When you’re at the Front, you miss your family. When you’re with your family, you miss your friends in the trenches.” He took a drag on the cigarette, then blew out a cloud of smoke. “We don’t belong anywhere. We’re all of us unrooted.”

  Wells made a mental note to remember that.

  “Except, ’a course, for the ones who’re planted there forever.” He was looking off now, talking to himself as much as to Wells. “The ones who’re blown to bits, or buried in the ground,” he said, tamping some ash over the side, “or worse yet, burrowing under it.”

  “Under the ground?”

  “Oh, yes, they’re the ones you got to watch out for. Sneaky devils. Only come out at night. Like bats.”

  Was this man quite well? he wondered. Should he be going back into combat?

  “They don’t just want your rations,” he said, turning his head toward Wells.

  “They don’t?”

  “Oh, no. They want your soul, they do. And they get it.”

  What was most alarming was the fact that he spoke as if he were completely rational.

  “So you be careful out there, sir,” he said, flinging his cigarette butt, still glowing, over the side. “Dead is better than them.” And then, laying one finger to the side of his nose, he winked and went below.

  Wells’s pipe had gone out entirely, and he struck a match to it as the ropes were undone and the boat began to slide away from the wharf. What a strange, and disturbing, colloquy that had just been. And he had never even gotten the man’s name.

  Juddering and creaking, the ship left the safety of the harbor, brackish water sloshing lazily against its hull. But if anyone had imagined crowds of well-wishers waving handkerchiefs and blowing kisses to the valiant warriors, he would have been sorely disappointed. The sky was a brooding gray, and the only cries were from the flock of gulls flapping around the smokestacks.

  A new mood—one of solemn contemplation—seemed to descend like a pall upon all aboard. The soldiers still on deck fell silent, all of t
hem wrapped in their own thoughts, staring out to sea. Suddenly they were leaving England in earnest, and to more than one of them it must have occurred—would they ever be coming back?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Where was her husband right now? Jane wondered. Still in transit, she knew—but at an officers’ mess, regaling the others with his marvelous stories? Or on board a ship, staring out to sea? All day long her mind had been returning to such questions, though she told herself that the only way to get through this ordeal would be to try to put it out of her thoughts, and go about her own business running the rectory. There was nothing she could do to affect any of it, so it was equally pointless to fret about it.

  While Mrs. Willoughby was set to polishing the silver and changing all the linens, Jane spent the day making a typescript out of the stack of pages Wells had left for her. Only she could decipher his handwriting with any great precision. It was a novel about the home front, another of what she considered his “domestic” novels—treating everything from the zeppelin bombings to relations between the sexes—and a far departure from the earlier books, the flights of scientific fancy, that had made his name. Working so closely on the book made her feel that much closer to him, and made her miss him all the more.

  She missed her two sons, away at school, too; the house seemed so empty and barren. When H. G. was in residence, there were weekend guests, and games of croquet or tennis in the yard, and the dining room was filled with lively discussions, even arguments; H. G. liked nothing more than a high-spirited debate. When Mrs. Willoughby pedaled her bicycle back to the village that evening, Jane felt the solitude and quiet even more keenly.

  In bed that night, she read a few chapters of the new Joseph Conrad novel that the author had been kind enough to send—she marveled again at how skillfully this Pole had mastered the English language, with all its nuances—before turning out the light. But the weather had turned blustery. The old house wheezed and groaned, the curtains rustled in the draft from every window. Still, among the many sounds she was accustomed to, there was one that was more unusual—a loud and intermittent banging from the yard. She rolled over in bed, trying to ignore it, but when it was joined by the persistent hoot of the barn owl, she knew something was amiss, and rolled out of her warm bed and went to the window.

  Sure enough, the barn doors had become unlatched and were swinging back and forth in the cold night wind. Should she wait until morning and deal with it then—though would she be able to sleep?—or bite the bullet and go outside now? The owl hooted again, as if an alarm, and that made up her mind for her.

  With her overcoat thrown over her nightdress, and her bare feet stuck into a pair of Wellingtons, she went out the back door, but not without glancing at the ash can to see if its lid had been disturbed. Tonight it looked untouched, though that was no guarantee it had not been pillaged. Holding an electric torch, she picked her way across the yard, where the bucket was swiveling above the well, and slipped inside the barn.

  Training the light on the owl, who flew away into the rafters to hide, she turned the beam down toward the empty cow stall, where she saw something, at ground level, darting behind a bale of old straw, and knocking over an old milking bucket as it did.

  Something bigger than a rodent. Much.

  Whatever it was, it bumped up against the side of the stall, before scuttling for the shadows.

  Her immediate impulse was to run, but something in her resisted it, and instead she directed the light in its direction. The intruder slunk along the wall, and only when it was cornered by the beam, and she could see a pair of startled eyes—human eyes—did she say, “Who are you?”

  There was no answer, but she suddenly saw the glint of a knife blade, and now she knew she’d made a terrible mistake, and spun around to run.

  She was at the doors when she felt an arm sling around her neck and she was dragged back into the barn, the whole weight of her assailant pulling her down. She threw an elbow back to catch him in the ribs, and she heard an oof, so she did it again. He lost his breath entirely, but not his grip, and she fell backward on top of him. She still had hold of the torch, and once she had managed to roll enough to one side, she used it to smack him in the head. He waved the knife at her, but half-heartedly, as if he could barely raise his arm from the dirt, and now she could see that it was a young boy—only sixteen or seventeen?—with sunken cheeks and blond stubble. Wearing a torn-up leather jacket, with a patch on its sleeve.

  A German patch.

  She struggled to her feet, teetering above him, holding the torch out as if it were a sword.

  But he was past fighting. One boot was undone, the laces trailing. His eyes were glassy, his breath ragged. Clearly, it had taken all his strength to make this one attack.

  Jane’s own chest was heaving with the exertion, and for several seconds, they simply remained where they were, speechless. Haltingly, she asked, “What are you doing here?” though she guessed the answer even as she uttered the words. He must have escaped the zeppelin crash. He must have been hiding all this time in the barn. He must have been surviving on the scraps from the ash can.

  He mumbled something in reply, but even if she’d spoken German, she would have had trouble hearing it. It was less an answer than an exhalation, and when it was done, his eyes shuttered closed, his jaw dropped, and his head flopped unconscious to one side. Had he died? She watched for signs of breathing—they were faint, but apparent—and wondered what on earth to do next. If only H. G. had been there . . . This airman was not more than a few years older than her own boys. Gradually, the adrenaline in her veins subsided. The light from the electric torch, damaged in the fight, sputtered and went out. The boy moaned in his sleep, and the hand still clutching the jackknife relaxed its grip.

  When it fell from his fingers, she snatched it up. Would he have used it on her, she wondered? Her thoughts were all in a jumble. What she knew she should do was call the police immediately, and then let them turn him in to the military authorities. That was what one did in wartime. To do anything other than that was to court disaster—and charges of everything from harboring a fugitive to aiding the enemy.

  So why was she hesitating? What was it in the sight of this injured, helpless boy that gave her pause, any pause at all? And what was compelling her, even now, to unbutton her own coat and drape it over him?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  By dawn, the ship was off Le Havre, and by eight thirty, Wells found himself, swaddled in his newly issued greatcoat, following Sergeant Stubb through the chaotic harbor scene. Hieronymus Bosch could not have done it justice—twisting avenues lined by bales of barbed wire the height of houses, teetering mountains of crates and barrels, whinnying horses and skittish mules, a thousand shouting voices, little French boys begging for a cigarette or a bit of the breakfast the swarms of soldiers had just been issued: tins of bully beef, along with a biscuit as hard and thick as a fist.

  Stubb might just as well have been walking in Green Park, so unperturbed was he by the commotion and discord. Sucking on a Victory lozenge—a hard, medicinal tablet, containing ether and chloroform among its several ingredients, whose slogan, aptly enough, was “It’s got a kick like a mule!”—he led his ward to a waiting train. The carriages for the troops were marked “Hommes 40, Chevaux (en long) 8” in white paint, and the men, who had hardly enjoyed terra firma for more than a few minutes, were herded into them like the cattle, Wells reflected, they were. At the officers’ carriage, in front, a porter was serving up cups of hot tea, and Stubb was once again able, after showing ministry papers to the lance corporal in charge, to commandeer a window seat for Wells.

  “I trust that the sergeant has been taking good care of you,” the corporal said, after Stubb had excused himself to travel, by choice, with the infantry recruits.

  “Yes, quite,” Wells replied, “though getting a word out of him is an ordeal.”

  “Yes, well, it’s a miracle he can talk at all.”

  “Why is that?”


  “The mustard gas,” the corporal said, as if surprised Wells did not know. “Didn’t they tell you he’s won an MC for exemplary gallantry?”

  “No, no one said a word, least of all Stubb.”

  “I served with him in the front line. After the Germans had laid down a gas attack, the wind changed, and blew it back into their own damned trenches. Served ’em right. Stubb went over the top to retrieve some of our own who’d been blinded, or couldn’t breathe even with their respirators, and carried three of them to safety. By the time he went back for a fourth, the wind had changed again, and he was caught in it; it clings to the ground, you know, in patches like some damned weed, but he still managed to drag a man back by his collar, before succumbing himself.”

  “And here I thought he’d just had a sore throat.”

  “The vocal cords,” the corporal said, tapping his own throat. “Once burned, they seldom come back.”

  Wells felt chastened, for not having discovered this story himself. He had been so caught up in his own impressions and thoughts, his note-taking and observations, that he had missed the most moving story of all, one that was right under his nose. He put it down to the slight disorientation he’d felt, the effects perhaps from the inoculation, but resolved to do better, to wake up, which was made no easier by the constant rocking motions of the train. On and on it went, stopping and starting, its shrill whistle preceded each time by the tootling of a little horn that sounded to Wells like some child’s instrument. Several times Wells was engaged in brief conversations with other officers, most of whom struck him, as Colonel Bryce would have put it, as “capital fellows”; others impressed him as boors, buffoons, or worse. It was just the mix one would have expected from the officers’ corps, composed, as it was, of the aristocrats and public-school boys. But the racket from the train made talking to any of them difficult, and the increasingly stuffy air inside the car seemed to induce a mild drowsiness and inertia.