The '86 Fix: A 1980s Time Travel Novel

by Keith A Pearson

  “I don’t need any help,” he snaps.

  “I think you do, and you’re not doing yourself any good by ignoring it. It’s not like a cold, it won’t suddenly clear up. If you’re gay, then that’s it, you’re gay.”

  “I’m not bloody gay.”

  “Whatever. I know you are, and you know you are. Keep kidding yourself and you’ll make things worse in the long run, I promise you.”

  I sense I’m wasting my time here. I can’t help him if he’s not prepared to accept the truth. Maybe he really does think it's just a phase, and his plan to sleep with Tessa will somehow cure him. But I know what humiliation awaits him. If Tessa ignores my advice and they end up in bed, it will only make matters worse for the both of them.

  Though in all likelihood, I suspect the reason he’s in denial is the era in which we currently live.

  This is not a time where gay men and women can marry, adopt children or enjoy equal rights. Nor is it a time where, on the whole, homophobic bile is silenced by hate crime laws. This is an era where the spectre of AIDS looms large. Where fear and intolerance are fuelled by newspapers and their jaundiced headlines about the ‘gay plague’. This is an era where it’s illegal for a sixteen year-old to even engage in consensual sex with another man. Would I want to come out as gay in this era? Would I embrace my sexuality in a time where it’s not unusual for people to decline a handshake with a gay man in ignorant fear of catching AIDS? No, 1986 isn’t even close to mainstream tolerance of homosexuality, let alone acceptance or celebration.

  In truth, I’d do exactly what Marcus is doing. I would remain in vehement denial.

  “Look Marcus, you have my word I won’t tell a living soul about what happened this morning, or anything we’ve said. You don’t have to justify yourself to me, or anyone else for that matter, but can you at least accept a few words of advice?”

  He looks at me, rolls his eyes and eventually nods.

  “Only you know how crap it must feel to have your old man treat you the way he does. But you can’t keep treating other people the same way. If you don’t want to become a small-minded, spiteful man like him, you need to deal with things differently. You need to be making friends, Marcus, not enemies.”

  “Why do you even care? It’s not as though we’re mates or anything.”

  “Well, maybe we could be friends?”

  “That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever heard, Pelling.”

  There was no malice in his statement and I guess most sixteen-year-olds would consider it a fairly lame thing to say.

  “Fair point. But can I assume that neither of us want a re-run of this?”

  “Not really, no,” he sighs.

  “Good. Come tomorrow, I’ll go about my life like this never happened. You keep out of my way, and I’ll keep out of yours. There’s not long left until the end of term so we won’t have to avoid one another for long.”

  My work here is done. Maybe it didn’t go quite as I’d hoped, but considering how bleak the outlook was when I left Marcus’s house, it’s not a bad result. Whether he accepts any of my advice remains to be seen, but I won’t be around to find out, at least not for three decades. Maybe he’ll come to terms with his sexuality sooner than he would have done, or maybe he’ll just bury it deeper so nobody else can discover his secret. Not my problem.

  “Are you going to be okay getting home?”

  I suspect whatever remains of his pride will only allow him to answer my question one way. He stands up and takes a couple of tentative steps away from the bench.

  “I’m fine, you didn’t hit me that hard, Pelling. I’ll be right as rain come tomorrow.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you around.”

  He nods and ambles away towards the far end of the embankment and the gentler slope leading down to the road. His gait suggests he’s still in pain, but he’s trying hard not to show it.

  I stand and watch him shuffle down the road. If all goes according to plan, it will be the last time I ever see Marcus Morrison.

  3

  For all the benefits of the Internet, it has ruined nostalgia. Toys, fashion, music, TV shows — every childhood memory digitalised and regurgitated through social media, to the point where there are no more forgotten moments. I remember once watching an episode of ‘Roobarb & Custard’ on a VHS cassette at a friend’s house, several years before the Internet invaded our lives. The picture was grainy, and the sound terrible, but it didn’t matter. It had been over twenty years since I’d last seen my favourite childhood cartoon, and it was a magical moment. Now I can open YouTube on my phone and watch every episode of ‘Roobarb & Custard’, or ‘Mr Ben’, or ‘Captain Pugwash’, or 'Hong Kong Phooey’. Nostalgic memories should deliver surprise and delight, but thanks to the Internet, they’re now so ubiquitous that there’s no surprise, and therefore no delight.

  With Marcus sorted and an hour to spare before I’m due home for Sunday lunch, I’ve decided to indulge in some tangible nostalgia. After a ten minute stroll and a visit to Patels’ Newsagent, I now possess a Texan Bar and a can of Quatro; two of my favourite childhood treats that are long-gone from the shop shelves in my day.

  I find a bench a few hundred yards from the shop and sit down to indulge in my retro brunch. I open the can of Quatro and take a hesitant sip. The whole shtick behind the Quatro name was that it combined four fruit flavours: pineapple, orange, passion fruit and grapefruit. All I can taste is a sickly, sugary brew of chemicals that bears little resemblance to actual fruit. I put the can down on the bench and take a large bite of my Texan Bar. Stripped of its childhood allure, I’m left with some extremely chewy toffee and an aching jaw. I can’t help feeling somewhat underwhelmed. That’s the problem with childhood memories I guess — everything is tinged with a fuzzy hue of sentimentality, clouding the reality. At the end of the day, it’s just junk food.

  With the nostalgic illusion broken, I head home, dropping the nearly full can of Quatro and the Texan Bar into a bin on the way.

  I arrive home about fifteen minutes before lunch is due to be served. I unlock the front door, and rather than the stench of cigarette smoke, I’m greeted by the aroma of roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. I kick my trainers off and head straight to the kitchen where my mum is carving the joint, and my dead grandmother is stirring a pan on the hob. My equally dead grandfather is sat at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper.

  For a few seconds my brain can’t process what I’m seeing. My maternal grandparents died over two decades ago, but now they’re a few feet away from me, living and breathing. In the last twenty-four hours I’ve focused so much on fixing my life, it never crossed my mind that there are people here, in my past, who are long-gone from my future. It’s as much as I can do to stand on jelly legs and stare, my mouth agape, while the kitchen walls close in on me.

  I never knew my dad’s parents, not that they were really my biological grandparents, anyway. His father died before I was born, and his mother when I was only three. George and Alice are the only grandparents I’ve ever had in my life, and we were exceptionally close. My gran was everything my mother was, and my granddad everything my dad wasn’t. The day they died was by far the worst of my life. I don’t know if I should feel ashamed for feeling it, but it was far worse than hearing Megan had lost our unborn baby. These were real people who had been part of my life for as long as I could remember, and suddenly they were gone, for good.

  Looking back, it was my first real experience of bereavement, and I don’t think I ever came to terms with their deaths, not properly. For weeks, months and even years after they died, I still had moments when, without warning, the stark reality they had gone would hit me. A moment when you wanted to share, to talk, or just to sit with them. A moment you needed a hug, a kindly word, or just a smile. Gone. Eventually you do adjust, and in some way it’s easier, less painful, to bury the memories. I hadn’t forgotten my grandparents, but I’d locked them away in a distant part of my mind where their memory couldn’t hurt me. Maybe
it’s a cowardly thing to do, but it was pure self-preservation, a way to stop the hurt turning up unannounced. They were always there, just never close enough to encroach upon my conscious day-to-day thoughts.

  Now, stood motionless in the doorway of our kitchen, I can feel twenty-two years of bottled-up emotion about to be uncorked. My shield of self-preservation isn't designed to withstand a reality where I sit down to Sunday lunch with my grandparents once more. Why would it?

  “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you sweetheart?”

  Mum’s voice breaks through the noise in my head but my mouth won’t function. The best I can do is let my face convey my confusion.

  “You’ve forgotten your grandparents were coming for lunch — I told you on Friday when you got home from school. What are we going to do with you, eh?”

  My Gran turns away from the hob and wipes her hands on a tea towel.

  “Don’t be standing there like a lemon, young man. Come and give me a hug.”

  Somehow my brain sends a message to my legs and I shuffle forward towards the tiny frame of my gran. Growing impatient at my hesitancy, Gran takes a few steps forward and suddenly we’re stood in front of one another in the centre of the kitchen. The cork pops and I fling my arms around my gran, burying my head in her shoulder. Her curly grey hair brushes my cheek as I inhale lilac and cotton. The times I have wished, begged for this moment again. Hundreds, thousands of times, knowing it could never be. Any effort to maintain constraint is futile and tears stream. I become oblivious to my surroundings, to the people stood watching a teenage boy smothering his grandmother, who herself must be bewildered by my emotional outburst.

  Gran eventually unpeels herself from my embrace because I can’t let go. She lifts her hand to my cheek, sweeping a tear away with her thumb. As she looks up at me, her green eyes dart across my face.

  “Darling, what’s the matter?”

  My granddad has left his chair at the table and is now stood a few feet to my side, seemingly just as puzzled by my behaviour as everyone else in the room. I now feel incredibly self-conscious as my mum, and both grandparents, stare at me with some concern.

  “I...I...err, had a bad dream last night. I thought you and Granddad had died,” I stutter.

  Considering the circumstances, it’s a better explanation than I would have credited myself for. If I’d been a forty-six-year old man standing here, blubbering away because of a bad dream, it’s an excuse that would never have washed. As a hormonal teenager, I think it’s just about plausible.

  My granddad drapes a reassuring arm across my shoulder.

  “You’ve nowt to worry about lad, we’re not planning on going anywhere for a while yet, are we love?”

  Just hearing his broad Yorkshire accent again almost brings more tears. He left the county of his birth over forty years ago, to build a life with my gran, but his accent remains a badge of honour. For years after his death, I would turn the TV over if I heard anyone talking with a Yorkshire dialect. I couldn’t bear to hear it. Now it’s the sweetest sound.

  “Course we’re not, silly,” Gran smiles at me.

  “See, your gran and I are in fine fettle, least we will be once we’ve got some lunch in us. Come sit down and we’ll have a catch up.”

  He guides me over to the table and we sit down. I try to compose myself, at least externally. My inner turbulence shows no sign of abating.

  I sit in a trance while Granddad natters away. It’s all I can do to offer an occasional mumbled reply or a nod. Mum and Gran are busying themselves preparing lunch, accompanied on the radio by the Country & Western crooner Jim Reeves. The normality of a typical Sunday lunch, no different to millions of families across the land. Well, maybe slightly different inasmuch that I’m about to dine with two dead grandparents, sat beside a mother and father who are currently both younger than me. Perfectly normal.

  I need to take five minutes to get my head together.

  “Sorry Granddad, just need to pop to the loo.”

  “Okay lad, don’t forget to wash those hands.”

  I get up from the table, give him a nod and head upstairs.

  I close the bathroom door behind me and lean against the sink for a few moments, drawing deep breaths. The shock of seeing my grandparents is ebbing away, but not before it kicked open the door to memories I had safely locked away — and behind that door is nothing but hurt. This should be a special moment; who hasn’t dreamt of spending just a few more hours with somebody taken from them? Nobody ever gets to live that dream but I do. So why can’t I see beyond the pain which is welling inside me? Why can’t I take this blessing and be happy for a few hours?

  Because my pain is fuelled by anger. Unresolved, latent anger.

  People die. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents. It’s the only certainty in life. My grandparents were in their mid-seventies when they died so it shouldn’t have been such a huge shock. However, most couples their age aren’t taken together in one cruel moment. They float away slowly, one first, then the other. You can’t bear it, but you can just about accept it. Maybe you get to say goodbye to them. Maybe they tell you they’re happy to have lived such a long and fulfilling life. Maybe they tell you not to grieve because they’re ready to go. I was never afforded any such words to take comfort from. I was in the car park at RolpheTech when my not-altogether sensitive father told me my grandparents were dead. I will never forget that day.

  Tuesday 13th September 1994.

  A man by the name of John Williamson is driving his thirty-two ton truck along a dual carriageway when he reaches for his pack of cigarettes. The pack slips and falls to the floor of the cab, so Williamson scans the floor to locate it. He takes his eyes off the road for no more than five seconds, but it’s sufficient time for his truck to travel over one hundred and thirty yards. Locating the pack, Williamson plucks it from the floor and looks up just in time to see the brake lights of my grandparents’ stationary Ford Orion in the lane ahead of him. He slams his foot down hard on the brake pedal but the momentum of the huge truck carries it a further sixty yards until it strikes the rear end of my grandparents’ car with unimaginable force. Sandwiched between the rear end of a National Express coach and Williamson’s oncoming truck, the Orion is obliterated beyond recognition. My grandparents are killed instantly, along with three people on the coach. A further nine people are left with life-changing injuries. Williamson escapes with a broken collarbone and mild lacerations to his face.

  He served three years of a five year prison sentence before alcoholism and guilt pushed him under a train eight months later. Those five seconds in that truck eventually claimed the lives of six people and left an indelible scar on countless others. No matter what I achieve this weekend that one cataclysmic event in 1994 will still happen. I can’t let my grandparents leave like that again. I won’t carry that anger or that pain again. I won’t sit and watch my poor mother fall to pieces. Whatever pain I went through, it was far worse for her. She came close to a complete mental breakdown. It took nearly a year to gain anything of her old self back, but even then she still carried the deepest scars.

  I have to find a way to stop my grandparents being on that road on that day.

  My mind churns with analytical fury. In an ideal world I’d track down John Williamson and happily kill him. One life for five seems a fair exchange, but it’s not possible within my limited time, even if I believed I was capable of killing a man. No, my solution will need to be simple and I need to implement it within the next few hours.

  I splash my face with cold water and let the cogs continue to turn. Ideas are seeded, then quickly dismissed. Think Craig, think. I could just tell my grandparents not to get in their car on that day, but it’s such a ridiculous request and even if they happened to remember my prophetic advice in eight years’ time, I doubt they’d heed it. Shit, this is impossible. How on earth do you convince somebody you know the exact date and circumstances in which they’ll die? If somebody claimed that they knew when I
was due to clock-out, I’d assume they were a charlatan, or a lunatic. I’d treat their warning with the same contempt as an email from an exiled Nigerian Finance Minister, offering to drop a few million dollars into my bank account for a modest processing fee. The fact of the matter is that it’s just totally unbelievable. The only possible way such a statement would be credible is if the words came from a Priest or...

  An idea.

  I turn it over for a while and consider any flaws. Maybe one or two, but they can be addressed. I dry my face on a towel and push the idea further. Could it really work? It’s got as good a chance as anything else I’ve considered. I look at my youthful face in the bathroom mirror and concur with my reflection that our idea is workable.

  Now I have something to work with, I need to pull myself together so I can enjoy the next few hours. It pains me to accept it, but even if my plan works, it’s unlikely my grandparents will still be alive in my future. They’d both be a few years short of a century by then, way past the average age most people live to. The only certainty I have is that we’re together now, and for what remains of the afternoon. Tomorrow might be uncertain, but today is a gift. Time to unwrap it.

  4

  Religion, politics and sex. Worthy subjects for a discussion in a pub with friends, but not ideal for a family lunch. Mercifully, Gran has never sought my mother’s opinion on the reverse cowgirl position, and as we’re all cut from the same religious cloth, it’s not a subject to prompt serious debate. However, when it comes to politics, the old man and Granddad have polar opposite alliances, and views to match.

  To look at my Granddad, you’d think he’d just stepped off the set of a Werther’s Original advert. His portly frame is decked in a navy cardigan over a checked shirt, mustard-coloured cords, and tan leather brogues. His head of white hair caps a kindly face, with rosy cheeks and twinkling blue eyes. But beneath that genial veneer lurks some militant left-wing views. He grew up in a Yorkshire mining town that was hit hard when the pit closed by order of Thatcher’s Government. Conversely, the old man is a staunch Conservative and Thatcher is his hero. As long as I can remember, our Sunday lunches have descended into both men squabbling over their political differences.