“Fuck,” I mumble under my breath.
“You alright, Craig?” a thin voice asks.
Like the opening chord to a favourite song, there is enough of the voice to be instantly recognisable. My mind almost caves in on itself as I raise a hand to shield my eyes before I open them again. Even with my hand to my brow, I keep my gaze low and squint to keep the sunlight out. The first thing I see is a pair of brown suede shoes and the end of a walking stick, which I assume was the wood being knocked against the bench to wake me.
Slowly my eyes adjust and I’m able to raise my head. A face comes into focus. It can’t be, I must still be asleep.
The face smiles at me.
“Welcome back, son.”
“Dad?”
13
My mind likes to compartmentalise things. It has systems and procedures that bring order to my thinking, most of the time. But the one thing my mind doesn’t like is excessive emotional input. Logic and emotions don’t play well together and it throws everything out of sync. The way my mind is wired is great for problem solving but not so great when dealing with highly emotive situations.
The cogs grind to a halt and my mind shuts down.
The last thing I remember is the look of concern on the old man’s face, just before my vision fades to black.
I don’t think I’ve ever fainted before, least not that I remember. Having now experienced it I’m surprised there isn’t a moment, just before the fall from consciousness, when you realise you’re fainting. It just seems to happen. One second you’re conscious, the next you’re gone.
From beyond the blackness I’m suddenly aware of a hand gently patting my cheek.
“Craig. Craig. Can you hear me?”
I come around, slumped on my side, lying awkwardly on the bench. I recognise the voice but it doesn’t compute.
“Well, bugger me. It really is you,” the old man says.
As I open my eyes, my mind reboots and three questions spew out.
How the hell does the old man know who I am?
How did he know where to find me?
Why is he seemingly unperturbed at finding a middle-aged version of his dead son sat on a cemetery bench?
“I know what you must be thinking, son,” he adds.
I doubt that very much.
I gingerly sit up and squint at the man who looks and sounds like my old man, but can’t possibly be my old man.
He stands straight and takes a few steps back from the bench.“1986. I know what happened,” he says, the excitement in his voice obvious.
It’s all I can do to sit and stare at him, open mouthed, frozen. Noting my temporary paralysis, he looks around for a moment as if he’s a spy about to divulge state secrets. He then slowly drops his hand into the pocket of his beige jacket and pulls out a plain white envelope. He holds it out towards me.
“Believe me, I never thought this moment would happen but this might explain why I hoped it might.”
I tentatively take the envelope from him, still too stunned to vocalise my unanswered questions. I peel the flap open to reveal what looks like folded, heavily creased pages from a lined notebook.
“The police gave those to me, after I identified…,” his voice tails off.
I pull the pages from the envelope and unfold them. I study the first few lines of handwritten notes and slowly a realisation dawns. Somehow words form in my mouth.
“These are my notes from that night. 1986, before I left the house.”
“The very ones. They were in the pocket of your jeans.”
“But…how?”
“I’ve spent the last thirty years studying every word on those pages. I know them all, back to front. There’s stuff there that made no sense unless you understood the context you wrote them.”
“And you understand?”
“You left a lot of clues behind, son. Remember that afternoon when you came to visit me in my shed?”
I nod. That visit might have been over thirty years ago for him, but it wasn’t that long ago for me.
“I knew there was something not right about you that day. The way you acted, the things you said. Don’t get me wrong, you were right to say what you did, but there is no way the sixteen year-old Craig would have said any of it.”
He looks at me, trying to ascertain if I’ve understood him. I still don’t think I do.
“Turn to the last page and read it,” he says.
I delicately peel back the pages and read the lines of scrawled handwriting on the final page.
I’ve learnt a lot here but I don’t know how much of it will filter through to the future. I don’t even know if these notes will return with me. Thirty years is a long time but in twenty minutes I’ll make that journey back, to what I don’t know. Whatever I’ve achieved in 1986, I can only hope I made the right decisions. Too late now anyway. For once in my life I hope I got things right. Good luck future Craig — say hello to 2016 for me.
My scrambled thoughts just before I fled my bedroom in 1986. I look up at the old man.
“These notes could have been meaningless. Why would you think otherwise?”
“At first I thought they were part of, I don’t know, some English project you were working on at school. But you mentioned things in those notes that nobody could have known, and only came to light after you left us.”
“Such as?”
“That stuff about your Aunt Judy and Harold Duffy. The lorry crash with that Williamson fellow and your grandparents. The line about investing in Apple shares. All that stuff came true. How would you have known any of those things?”
I put the notes back in the envelope and place it on the bench. To say this situation is surreal would be an understatement and I can’t quite believe the old man is taking it all in such a casual stride. I also can’t quite believe his demeanour. Why is he being so calm, so benevolent?
“So, at some point you came to the conclusion that I had actually travelled back in time and lived a weekend in my sixteen year-old body?” I ask incredulously.
“Mind if I sit down?” he asks, ignoring my question.
He doesn’t wait for a reply and moves across to the bench, lowering himself down a few feet from me. His movements are more fluid than the old man I originally left behind in my former life.
“Do you know how many people knew I wasn’t your biological father?” he asks.
“No.”
“I can tell you with absolute certainty that only two people ever knew — me and your mother. Now, I know she definitely never told you, and obviously I didn’t, so how could you have possibly known?”
This is not a subject I’m keen to revisit and remain silent.
“I’d say that unless you had psychic abilities as a teenager, it would have been impossible for you to know. But nowadays you can buy those kits to test DNA like they use on The Jeremy Kyle show. But you know that already, don’t you? You mention it in your notes.”
Rumbled.
The old man continues. “Have you ever heard that famous quote by Arthur Conan Doyle?”
I shrug my shoulders.
“He said that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Even taking into account the information in your notes, I never really believed such a thing could be possible. But hope is a strong motivator, son, it clouds the rational. You’d be surprised what a man is prepared to believe when all he has left is hope.”
I turn and eye the old man. Its been nearly a year since I last saw him, well, the previous version of him. His face is fuller now, the stern edges gone and the lines not so deep. I can only remember the face permanently etched with a frown. This man feels like a stranger to me.
“Let’s say for a minute you’re not too far from the truth about what happened to me, how did you know I’d be here?” I ask, still deeply dubious about this ridiculous turn of events.
“I’ve been tending the garden at the vicarage for about six or seven years n
ow. I asked Father David to give me a call if anyone ever turned up and asked about your mother’s grave. I figured that if you were ever going to reappear, it would be here.”
The final piece of a preposterous jigsaw falls into place.
“I can’t get my head around this, around you,” I sigh.
“I know. It’s a lot to take in, but here I am, and so are you.”
“But not Mum.”
The colour drains from his face. “No,” he whispers. “Not your mum.”
“What happened?”
He closes his eyes and draws in a deep breath. Clearly Mum’s death is a raw subject and he deflects my question.
“Have you been to her grave yet?” he asks.
“No. Don’t know where it is.”
“Shall we wander over to see her? I’ll try to explain on the way.”
I nod and slowly get up from the bench, my body still stiff from my nap. The old man steels himself and follows suit.
We move slowly back up the slope and despite the walking stick, the old man appears fairly nimble on his feet. As I watch him, the shear absurdity of the situation strikes me. A reinvented father and his long-dead son, taking a casual stroll through a cemetery on a summer afternoon. Such has been my life in the last year, very little now surprises me.
“What’s with the walking stick?” I ask.
“I had a hip operation a few months back. I probably don’t need the stick now but I’ve grown quite fond of it. Every man of my years should own a sturdy walking stick.”
“Right. No arthritis then?”
“No,” he chuckles. “Ever since you told me I’d get arthritis in my knees, I’ve been taking omega-3 and glucosamine supplements. Touch wood, my knees are good for a few years yet.”
We cross the brow of the slope and return to the path. The old man raises his walking stick, as if to demonstrate its versatility, and points at a position off at two o’clock.
“She’s over that way. It’s a nice spot near the trees.”
I follow the old man along the path, still waiting for my explanation about Mum. My patience quickly wears.
“So, Mum?”
He stops and turns to face me.
“Look, son, are you sure you want to know the details? Some things are best left unknown.”
“It’s not up for negotiation. I need to know.”
He mindlessly taps the end of his walking stick against his shoe and appears lost in his thoughts for a moment.
“Very well, if you’re sure,” he eventually puffs. “I’m afraid she…she committed suicide, back in ‘96.”
I already know the when and the how. What I don’t know is the why. I don’t even try to feign shock at his revelation.
“Why did she take her own life?”
He turns back to the path and walks on. I let him move a few strides ahead before I follow. I catch up but he continues to look straight ahead as he delivers his answer.
“After what happened to you, she was fragile, emotionally close to the edge. I lost count how many times I came home from work to find her crying. I tried my best, son, I really did, but there was nothing I could say to ease her pain. In time, she seemed to gain a little strength but then within the space of about twelve months your gran had a massive stroke and your granddad suffered a heart attack. Neither of them survived. Losing both her parents so suddenly like that, well, it was enough to push her over that edge.”
I put my hand on the old man’s shoulder, halting his stride, and stand facing him.
“Wait. Gran and Granddad. They both died before Mum? Earlier than ‘96?” I confirm.
“I’m afraid so, son. Your gran went in June ‘95, and your granddad about nine months later.”
It’s my turn to close my eyes as the blood drains from my face. My meddling didn’t prolong my grandparents lives for years as I hoped.
“I know from your notes that your grandparents originally died in that road accident. 1994 wasn’t it?” he asks. “I couldn’t quite believe it when I saw John Williamson’s name in the paper. It was at that point I realised your notes were more than just an English project.”
“I changed the future so they never got in their car on that day. I wasn’t to know they’d both die within a few years regardless. I thought I was giving them the chance to live for years,” I sombrely reply.
“You did what you did for the right reasons. They were old, don’t blame yourself.”
I don’t blame myself for my grandparent’s fate, as much as that stings. I blame myself for removing them from the road on that day, and the additional deaths their absence caused. It’s not a fact I wish to share with the old man.
“Why do you think Mum did it, took her own life? I know it must have been hard, but I don’t understand why she’d resort to that.”
“I don’t know. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was your Aunt Judy putting ideas in her head. She was always in the house, harping on about the afterlife, spirits, and other such nonsense. Maybe she convinced your mother that you and her parents were waiting for her, on the other side. I tried to talk to Judy about it but she said I wouldn’t understand, that she knew things I’d never accept. Your mum seemed happy to believe it though.”
Shit. The information I gave to Aunt Judy might have been the reason Mum was so quick to believe her. If she warned Mum about John Williamson’s rampaging truck, and then it actually happened, all of her other crazy notions must have seemed plausible.
“I told Aunt Judy.”
“Sorry?”
“I asked her to warn Mum about Williamson’s truck crashing on that day, so she could ensure Gran and Granddad weren’t on the road. I thought Mum wouldn’t believe me so I asked Aunt Judy to convince her.”
“Oh, crikey, son. I assumed you’d warned your grandparents somehow. I wanted to ask them, but how do you even start that conversation? Why did you tell Judy, of all people?”
“I didn’t think. I knew she was into all that paranormal stuff so I told her I had a dream. I might have also said a few things about that stuff that happened to her at school, so she’d believe me. I never thought that Mum would swallow all her other crap.”
“Well, it appears she did,” he says flatly.
“Fuck. I don’t know what to say, Dad.”
He stares off into the distance, his face unreadable. I want to say something but the weight of guilt is so debilitating I can barely breathe.
He pulls a hanky from his pocket and blows his nose. It seems to pull him back to reality.
“As remarkable as your little foray into the past may have been, I’m assuming it didn’t come with the power of prediction?”
I shake my head.
“So you weren’t to know how any of this would turn out. I don’t blame you, son. Hell, if I was given the chance to go back, damn sure I’d change a few things, right a few wrongs. None of us can predict the future, even if we were afforded the chance to change the past.”
“Thank you,” I mumble quietly.
“One thing is for sure though, son,” he adds. “This whole thing is pretty bloody ridiculous don’t you think?”
If only he knew the half of it.
“To be honest, Dad, it feels like a curse. I didn’t ask for it and wish it had never happened.”
“Do you know why, or how?”
“Not the first clue. One minute I’m sat in my old bedroom in 2016 and the next thing I know, I’m lying in bed in 1986.”
“Right. One thing I don’t understand though, is how you ended up in the middle of the road that night you left. I remember poking my head around the door and saying goodnight. Next thing I know, the police are banging on the door in the middle of the night to say you’d been hit by a van. What happened?”
“I decided at the last minute I wanted to stay in 1986. So I left my bedroom and ran, hoping I could avoid being sent back. I got as far as Eton Drive and suddenly the world seemed to stop. Next thing I know, I’m lying in a hospital bed, back
in 2016.”
“Worst night of my life,” he says, more to himself.
It never crossed my mind the old man would grieve for me. In all of this, his feelings have been given the least consideration.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“No, son, I’m sorry,” he says.
He stops in his tracks again and slowly turns to me. “I’m sorry that I was such a terrible father. I’m sorry I never got the chance to make everything right. Not a day has passed in the last thirty-one years that I haven’t thought about you. Not a day when I haven’t felt regret, felt shame.”
Of all the unbelievable, impossible twists in my life over the last eleven months, what happens next almost trumps them all. The old man drops his walking stick and takes two steps towards me. I instinctively flinch, knowing he only ever gets so close when he’s about to start yelling. Not this time. He throws his arms around me and buries his head in my shoulder. I hesitantly place my arms on his back and reciprocate the embrace. Thirty-one years and against all hope, he gets the chance to say sorry. All that pent up remorse proves too much and he begins to sob.
At least a minute passes before he withdraws from our embrace and pulls a hanky from his pocket. He dabs his eyes and clears his throat.
“That miserable old bastard you referred to in your notes; that’s not me. I can only imagine how I’d have turned out if we had never had our chat in the shed that afternoon, but we did, and you need to know I’m not that man.”
That much is already crystal clear.
“It’s okay, Dad. There’s no need to apologise for what might have been. Different person, different life. I’m just glad you’re here, I really am.”
In truth, it’s relief I’m currently feeling. Relief that I’ve finally got someone to talk to. Someone who knows what actually happened to me.
We swap wan smiles, suggesting we both understand one another, and walk on.
Sixty seconds later we’re stood side-by-side in front of a black granite headstone. Two virtual strangers, inextricably linked by the occupant of the grave — Janet Georgetta Pelling. Now I can see her name, engraved in two-inch high gold letters, the stark reality of her death bites hard. I’m grateful not to be here alone.
Beyond Broadhall (The '86 Fix Book 2) Page 11
