Andrew Beardmore 'Those Three Little Words'

I was dumbstruck. It should have been the greatest moment of my life. But there was no audience; no applause. The inaugural demonstration of a decade’s work had been presented to four cellar walls, a refrigerator...and a mouse called Albert.
Despite this, the fact still remained: it had worked! Albert was back eating his previously devoured cheese. More significantly, the clock, which seconds earlier had read ten past eleven, now read five past. I really had done it! And, yet, I didn’t feel remotely euphoric – probably because, recently, my distinction between important and irrelevant had shifted irrevocably. Could I ever feel unbridled joy again?
Those three little words.
As ever, my self-defence mechanism kicked in and my thoughts auto-piloted themselves into the past. At least the past could still be happy. In fact, the past had almost always been happy: the six of us, friends for life, each couple devoted to their partner since sixteen years of age; no affairs, no moose-down-an-alley, not even an innocent tonsil-tickle on the dance-floor. That was the way we were; exceptionally lucky, perhaps, to have found our respective soul mates so young.
As the clock reached six minutes past eleven, I deliberately encouraged the myriad memories from our shared past; one particular pushed itself to the fore...

‘I’m telling you, mate,’ began Will, excitedly, a long index finger tapping the table-top. ‘It’s a bloody syrup!’
‘Give over!’ I replied. Nevertheless, I could neither keep the smirk from my face, nor prevent my eyes from being riveted to the head of our neighbouring diner.
‘I’m telling you, it is!’ exclaimed Will, loudly. ‘Look at the back! I can see the bleedin’ join, mate!’
‘Oh, Will, honestly!’ whispered Emma, half reproving, half amused. ‘Will you please keep your voice down? They’ll hear you!’
‘Look, I didn’t ask him to come out wearing it, did I?’ replied Will, bluntly.
‘He’s right, Ben!’ blurted out Robbie, having finished his lengthy scrutinisation and thus completely ignoring the pleas of Will’s wife. ‘Look at the way it slips backwards and forwards, every time he chews.’
Despite the wishes of the three ladies around our table, Robbie’s comment meant that six pairs of eyes were now unflinchingly glued to the cranium of our unfortunate neighbour. And the more we concentrated on the now blantantly oscillating hairpiece, the more it made you envisage someone holding a piece of string attached to the front of it whilst pulling and releasing it in time with the chewing. Then the giggling started...

I grinned as I recalled the incident. It hadn’t been the first that we’d been asked to leave a restaurant, either. But what could we do? Once we’d rumbled the syrup, making fun of the poor bloke became mandatory, didn’t it? How were we supposed to know that he was the bloody restaurant owner on his night off?
As my grin widened, I suddenly realised what I was doing and the warmth immediately faded as images of the previous month flooded in. I berated myself for smiling. How could I? At a time like this? And so, as the clock reached seven minutes past eleven, I found myself recalling more sober events from years gone by – for it definitely hadn’t been all plain sailing over the years. And certainly not when Will and Emma’s youngest, Luke, had developed diabetes at the age of four...
‘I can’t explained to you how it feels,’ said Will, his frown, which had been etched through years of sardonic ribbing, now taking on a more genuine form.
I found myself unable to reply. What do you say to a father who has just been told that he’ll have to administer daily injections to his four year old son? Especially when the four year-old asks the same question every time: ‘Why does Daddy have to hurt me so much?’
Eventually, Will continued, characteristically rubbing the back of his neck to ease out a little stress. ‘At least we know what it is, now,’ he said. ‘And we can control it.’
‘Well,’ I replied. ‘You know that you can rely on me and Danni for support...in whatever way you might need us.’
‘I know that, mate,’ Will replied, clapping me on my shoulder. ‘You’re the best friends that we could possibly wish for,’ he added...

The memory forced in further painful images. In particular, the desperately sobbing Luke -.
I broke off my line of thought; I simply couldn’t contemplate that image. Think happy thoughts, Ben, I told myself, now at odds with my stance of a minute earlier. It’s all right to think happy thoughts. After all, that’s what he would have wanted; what he had asked for, in fact. ‘There’s no need to feel guilty,’ he’d said. ‘You’ve nothing to feel guilty about.’
‘Yes, but I’m still alive, Will, I thought, ruefully. Where’s the fairness in that?
‘Please try not to grieve for me, too much,’ he’d say. ‘Celebrate my life instead. And then celebrate yours. Live yours. Fill it with happiness. I’m pretty sure that life’s not a dress rehearsal, mate’ he added.
He was right, of course – to fill my life with happiness – it was just that it wasn’t so easy without the source of so much fun. But he was right. ‘So think happy thoughts, you fool!’ I said out loud. The Lovely Bubbly would do for starters. The Lovely Bubbly was legendary...

‘You’ll never get me back, lads,’ Will had said, in a voice full of supreme confidence. We were all worn out as we sat there in the dressing room after that infamous match, our legs splayed out in front of us and the floor awash with stud-holed lumps of mud, stray socks and abandoned tie-ups.
‘Oh yes we bloody will,’ Robbie and I had replied in weary unison. And boy, did we mean it. Three weeks earlier, Will had emptied Robbie’s shampoo and replaced it with treacle. ‘I was still washing the bastard out, two weeks later, lads!’ had been the disgruntled Robbie’s frequently uttered phrase of the previous week. And how it made us cry with laughter.
But then Will had gone one better the kick-off of that particular match, hadn’t he? Replaced the Deep Heat with hair removing cream, hadn’t he? Of course, there was only one muggings who was going to go and rub it all over his thighs. My bloody hands had come away looking like a frothy Persian rug; thighs as smooth as a baby’s butt, I had!
Anyway, there was no way he was going to get away with that, sky-high confidence or not. Oh yes, he may well have checked every canister and container both before and after each subsequent match, but he hadn’t thought for one second that we’d be able to get inside the seams of his number five shirt, had he? But we most certainly had: ‘Produces ten times more studs than ordinary washing up powders,’ or so the logo went. And that it did – as soon as it came into contact with pressurised water. Of course, the heavens had opened in that second half – just like the weathermen had forecast.
Oh, revenge had been so sweet...

The broad grin was back on my face again as I recalled Will’s endless obscenities...
Hey, that was better, I thought. Smiles were allowed after all, weren’t they? And so next, I laughed as I recalled the photograph; Will lying on the sand with the Blackpool Tower strategically positioned. Not exactly original, granted, but it was the hand positioning, plus the unique and fantastic look upon his face that clinched its legendary status. Quite indescribable. And how we’d all cried with laughter when it had been developed, and continued to do so a thousand times afterwards.
My smile disappeared. How many more tears would be shed on viewing it now?
Those three little words.
No! I wouldn’t allow the melancholy to re-claim me...and so I banished the sad thoughts and encouraged the happy again. Summer Sundays cruising around endless local beauty spots. The excitement and warm companionship of our respective weddings, each one month apart: May, June, July.
The chronology continued: holidays, parties, more nights out. And then, as we approached out mid twenties, more nights in – wonderful meals followed by the inevitable board games, the bizarre potential of each game optimised, the tear-invoking hilarity exacerbated by the odd beverage or six. I smiled at a hundred comical situations, a thousand classic one-liners.
In time came out children, two apiece, and all of the humorous debates that they inspired. Still so much to laugh about. And so much easier for we six, having our first children in the same year. By the time we had all hit thirty and the kids were growing up, life was still so good, we six unknowingly protected from pain, friends forever, invincible. If only time had stood still at that point.
I couldn’t bear to move any further forward in my chronological meanderings, and so, as the clock touched eight minutes past eleven, my thoughts dipped further back in time. More Will-inspired wind-ups, some distinctly un-subtle – water cups balanced over half-open doors and pepper-filled sandwiched – others distinctly more elaborate. Despite being a many-times bewildered or outraged victim, the memory of Will’s tears of joy as the penny dropped still made me chuckle. You just had to take it. We rarely got him back – Lovely Bubbly apart. Sometimes, he didn’t even need to do anything to come out on top. Like the night he’d started flicking chips at me and I’d resolved that I was going to have the last laugh with the entirety of my dodgy-tasting bean-mix. Even then, with arm drawn back and ready to deliver the coup-de-grace, my foot had slipped on a stray greasy chip. The rest was history: me going arse-over-tit, the bean mix arcing up in the air and gravity and alcohol-limited reactions doing the rest.
I smiled at how he used to take such savage delight in telling everyone about it – particularly the bit where I’d run off with embarrassment, as the street had been lined with lads and lasses all having a good old laugh at my expense. And, funnier still – for him, anyway – how I had then gone straight home and attempted to have a sober conversation with my parents, having completely forgotten about the bloodshot eyes, the lager-soaked breath and the plethora of beans that were still matted to my scalp. My parents, bless them, hadn’t even batted an eyelid. Of course, in the ensuing years, my parents and Will had shared endless bean jokes at my expense.
I laughed out loud, half startling Albert. He looked at me enquiringly for a second, before resuming his meal, his over-stuffed cheeks pounding as if driven by dozens of deranged pistons. Still, I felt an explanation was in order. ‘He always had to have the last laugh,’ I told Albert, as if that should explain everything. And it did. His spirit was indomitable. ‘He was indestructible,’ I added, gently.
Unimpressed, Albert swallowed the last of his cheese, looked at me dolefully as if to say: ‘Sorry, pal – I’ve got problems of my own,’ and then he scuttled back to his home.
As the clock reached eight and a half minutes past eleven, I looked at my machine. I’d never told Will about it – let’s face it, his ribbing would have been remorseless! Oh, he knew that I was a bit of a closet sci-fi buff, that I’d studied Physics at Oxford and progressed the field into my career. But I’d never over-egged my fascination for temporal physics. How fitting, that this very knowledge could now help to save him. Just nine months would do it. If only he’d seen his GP earlier...
Before I knew it, the melancholy mood had set in again. Once again, I recognised it and berated myself. If it was this terrible for Danni and I, and for Robbie and Laura, then how much worse must it be for Emma and the children? For Will’s family?
The obituaries zoomed in, one after the other, accusing me of temporary neglect for not remembering their terrible loss, too.
Cherished and beloved son.
Loving and beloved husband.
Adoring and adored father.
It was all so bloody unfair!
My heart sank; sank as much as my shoulder had when carrying the coffin with five other bewildered friends. He was a big lad, Will. But I remembered how, paradoxically, the discomfort had been a comfort. A penance for having the audacity to still be alive. ‘I’d suffer for you, Will,’ I’d thought. ‘If only it would bring you back.’ Well, now I truly had that chance.
As the clock reached nine minutes past eleven, I knew what I must do. I’d bottled it at this point so many times before, afraid to throw the lever; petrified of undertaking that final test. But I had to test my machine...for Will’s sake -.
I broke off my line of thought. Something wasn’t quite right. I blinked, once, as something scuttled across the farthest reaches of my tangled mind. Something was definitely amiss. Somewhere, there was a very important fact that I needed to seize...but whatever it was, it remained frustrating just beyond cognitive reach. A sense of deja-vu, perhaps?
I smiled, wistfully. The words of old Professor Marchant echoed in my mind as he propounded the potential dangers of temporal loops. But then, he’d never had a friend to save, had he?
Those three little words.
And so, finally, I forced myself to remember the day those words had been spoken. Barely able to open his eyes for the pain. But still he’d smiled; smiled through all of that unimaginable agony. And then, he had said those words to me! To me! Strewth! If they’d ever been uttered prior to six months ago! We were blokes – liked football, cricket, beer and women. We made fun of over-sensitivity and particularly of male affection towards other men.
But he had looked at me, and for a second, his eyes had focused and had said it too.
I was thunderstruck. A more wonderful phrase a friend could not wish to hear and there I was – tongue-tied, a completely irrational grin upon my face. Did the grin tell him that I didn’t care? What a complete idiot I was!
Fortunately, Emma had smilingly replied on my behalf. The hand that gripped his, perhaps, hopefully, had said it too.
The drive home that day had been a blur of saltwater. The significance of his words hadn’t gone unnoticed. He was saying goodbye. The realisation had been devastating.
My eyes filled up again at the memory. I had to be sure that my experiment would work. Without the resulting funding, Will was lost to that evil, silent killer. I only had to travel back in time by five minutes to get that backing. Five minutes, that was all! What was five minutes?
That was the point at which I knew that I was going to do it. It’s something that you just sense; that moment when hours of agonising are about to be realised in deed. I briefly flashbacked to a New Zealand bridge, my feet teetering over a gorge, with my first ever bungee rope securely tied around my ankles. As I re-lived that toppling, gravity invoking point of no return, I made my decision...and I threw the lever to my machine.
Nothing changed. It was almost a relief. I had failed. But at least no visible damage had been done.
And then I heard a little munching sound, low to my left. It was Albert! And the cheese was back, too!
Then I noticed the clock. Five past eleven! I was dumbstruck. It should have been the greatest moment of my life. But there was no audience; no applause. The inaugural demonstration of a decade’s work had been presented to four cellar walls, a refrigerator...and a mouse called Albert...