"Bless Eckhorn," John snickered. "And this meal."
I rolled my eyes at his religious blasphemy as he bowed his head over his baked ham and dinner roll. "Thank you for your 158 dm for Macca and our dear Pete. What can we ever do to repay you—! Georgie is eighteen, so I suppose I thank you as well for inventing aging. Although you too invented immigration laws—"
I hit him playfully over the shoulder and his elbow fell into his orange juice. He opened his eyes and stared at me, aghast. "You, Cora, you have interrupted my offerings to our great Eck—"
"John," I said, taking the dinner roll and putting it in his mouth to stop him from talking. "People are staring." And they were; there was an elderly couple on the plane who were sitting across from us, the elderly female wearing a purple dress and matching shoes, the white-haired man clad in a black sports jacket which too matched his shoes. "Verrückte jugend," the woman muttered to the man, and John quickly turned back to his food, bowed his head, and muttered a string of German: "Vater unser im Himmel, geheiligt werde dein Name—"
He paused and opened his eyes at his elbow not being doused in orange juice to see me staring at him. "Wherever did you learn the Lord's Prayer?"
"Just picked it up," he said quietly, changing the subject by buttering his roll and putting a little in my mouth. I mused over his statement as I chewed the bread and butter. There was always more of John than you thought there was, surprising you around every corner. He didn't particularly strike me as one who knew the Lord's Prayer, much less in German. Maybe he picked it up in a German church somewhere. They were indeed beautiful, architecturally speaking, and the sermons that happened must have been heightened by the stained glass, warming your soul like a fireplace, even if one didn't understand the language in which the sermon was being preached.
Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing in Germany. I thought I would end up like Cynthia or Dot, staying behind in Liverpool, waiting for the boys to return home, but when I had timidly brought it up, all of them had looked at me like I was crazy.
"You joking with us, Cora?" George had said, looking serious for once. "You blaggin' me head? You were with us in Germany, you're coming back then."
And so I had, under the assumption that I was going to be part of the band... somehow. My bass was placed in the plane with the rest of the instruments. Once we had taken the plane back and a boat and found ourselves in Hamburg, we felt right back at home. The bustling people, German being thrown around, chic Soho fashions, and once night hit, the ones wearing a lot less than usual—it was so familiar, strangely like sipping hot tea.
Peter Eckhorn welcomed us as we trooped into the Top Ten, exhausted from the trip. As we lugged our things past the stage area (a wooden stage with background curtains and an elevated platform for Pete) up the stairs, and into the rooms (a dormitory like setting with two sets of bunk beds), I saw the familiar rooms in which we had stayed in very, very briefly before we were kicked out of Germany. "You had better not try to set my wall on fire," Eckhorn joked, shaking his finger at John for some reason, and Paul quipped, "Yes, John, please don't do that this time. It was me, Peter," he admitted, turning back to a laughing Eckhorn. "John here just looks like he could cause trouble."
"Suppose I'll have to keep an eye on the ones who look like good boys, then!" He turned to me. "And you as well."
"Oh, I'm not staying," I hastily told him. "Although the prospect of starting a fire sounds delightful—"
"You not staying?"
"I'm staying with a friend. I'm just here to help unload," I told him.
"But you are playing, yes? Not today but tomorrow."
John's finger caught me in the side.
"Yes...?" I told him. "Playing and singing."
"Good!" he looked at John. "She was part of the reason I wanted you all, you know. She just brings a certain magic to the group. A sweet and low voice, that night I saw her at Koschmider's."
I laughed with the others and said, "No, I don't..."
They all stared at me. Eckhorn broke the moment by clapping me on the shoulder. "You'll be fine. Same pay as the boys here!"
Now this was legendary, at that time period the same pay for men as women. I shrugged and said, "Okay, I want it. I'm not staying here though. I'm staying with a friend—"
"Fine, fine," Eckhorn waved his hand. "Just make sure you're here tomorrow night when the Beatles are on. Now boys, and girl, I hate to copy anything Koschmider says, but tomorrow mach schau, mach schau!"
***
John and George drove me to Anna's in Neil's van. The assistant road manager had come with us to Hamburg, having quit his job in Liverpool. What a gamble, I thought, sticking my hand out of the window and catching the warm night spring breeze. Well, it would pay off in good time.
"How are ye feeling?" John asked.
"Good," I told him. "I'm really excited. I can't believe Eckhorn wanted me."
"As he should," George said from the back seat. "You're brilliant, you know that?"
I looked out of the window at the figures in the dark sidewalks, some of them illuminated by nearby sidewalk neon lights to hide my smile. "I feel bad for Paul. He's going to miss Dot."
"McCartney will be all right," John said. "He's got—" he started and suddenly stopped.
"What, what's he got?"
"He's got his fellow musicians," John recovered. I didn't ask, and I didn't want to know, so I dropped it. The van reached the front door of Anna's bakery. I rang the bell and heard footsteps descending downstairs. The door was opened and I saw Anna there, looking exactly the same as usual, her red hair tied up in a bun, wearing a sleeveless top and pants.
"Cora!" She bear hugged me and shook hands with John, looking from me to him. "You're—"
"Anna, how many times have I said in the letters?"
"Of course. All of them look the same, sometimes I get confused," she jokingly teased, and I saw John's eyebrow raise quickly, coupled with a grin.
"George," she smirked, and he came out of the shadows. "Look at you."
"Look at you," he said back, and amidst John saying, "Just kiss already, like they do in the pictures," they embraced. I saw the pull of Anna's fingers on the back of George's sweater and George's left knee wobbling a bit and felt a sudden drop of emotion. My hand met John's halfway and I looked over at him; he wiped a fake tear from his eye. It was then that I realized I was so lucky to be with John right now.
"Better go, love, we've got a set to play tonight," George told Anna, kissing her one last time. "Back to the bunks at the Top Ten. I bet Cora is going to have a grand old time with a nice big bed."
"Don't kick too much in yer sleep, Geo," John told him as the two of them descended down the stairs, John giving my hand one final squeeze. "I'll see ye in the morning, love."
I followed Anna upstairs to the tiny living area where she prepped some hot chocolate for me and caught me up on what was happening around Germany since I was gone. I closed my eyes as the rich taste warmed my mouth, not knowing I was cold until then. The Germans really knew how to do chocolate.
"I see Mila got used to your tattoo," I told Anna as she turned around to grab some sugar, the heart showing proudly on her arm. "I'm going to art school in the end, gott sei dank. It took some arguing, but—"
She was interrupted as another female figure entered the room. "Hallo?"
"Oh, Emilia," Anna said as she got up. A girl with long, wavy brown hair entered the room, looking around our age, wearing a short velvet dress with long sleeves. "Wer ist das?" she asked, smiling at me.
"Ich bin Cora, ich... bleibe bei Anna," I told her, struggling with the language, having been absent for a few months. The girl smiled at my efforts. "Ich bin Emilia," she told me. "Englisch?"
"Ja," I confirmed.
"It is easier if we all speak English," she said and walked into the kitchen. "Although your German is really quite impressive."
"Thank you, the same to your English," I said, looking to Anna for explanation. "Emilia was looking for a job..." Anna said, her cheeks going momentarily red as she navigated the awkward situation. "So... she erm..."
"On, no, please Anna, it's only natural, after all. I go back to Liverpool, what do you expect Mila to do? Everything is fine, I'm not offended in the slightest," I told her. Emilia was still looking at me and I couldn't read her expression under a curtain of wavy brown hair. Anna nodded briefly at me, flashing me a slight smile. Emilia was German through and through, having grown up in Munich all her life and had only just moved to Hamburg in her early twenties to be a dancer. She didn't give me her exact age; I didn't ask. And so as we talked I realized she followed in my footsteps in the same way, working in the cafe in the daytime, dancing at night, living in a whirl of activity .
***
Shake it up, baby (shake it up baby!)
Twist and shout (twist and shout!)
C'mon c'mon baby—
"Cora!"
I closed my eyes, mouthing the next words, trying to ignore her, making up my own dance to what might have been the actual twist and shout. The soles of my doc martens scraped against the rug in my room and I tripped on my shoelace, landing on the rug, my failed dance resulting in my chin falling into a pile of books.
The door opened and I looked up at my father. "You all right, buttercup?"
"Yeah," I smiled at him. "I didn't know you came." He extended a hand to me and pulled me up, his other hand turning down the dial on my radio on my nightstand as Paul started singing, "Ahh, Ahh, Ahh..."
"Your mother wants you," he said, walking over to my bed and sitting down. His frame pulled the bed towards the middle where he sat. I walked over to him and sat next to him, burrowing my head in his arm. He put an arm around me. "Come on, love—"
"Cora." The door swung open for the second time. "Well."
"Mum," I gasped. "I'm—I'm coming."
She turned to my father. "I thought you said—"
"And I did. Didn't I, love? Didn't I tell you to go downstairs?" He turned towards my mother. "You really want to take her away from me, that much?"
I hated it when he asked me, I hated when he pulled me into this. "Yes," I whispered. He was looking at my mother from my bed with hard eyes, and my mood took a plunge; I got up and walked to the middle of the room, in between the two of them, wishing they would just leave. "Mum, do you want me to help you?"
"Forget it," she snapped. "Spend the time you have with your father." She left the room, leaving me with my father, and I was plunged into annoyance. I turned away from him and looked at the Stones poster on my wall. It reminded me of him, so I turned towards my desk and picked up my rubix cube, evening sunlight from my window illuminating the cube.
"Cora." My name, said softly.
"What," I said, fiddling with it.
"I love you, you know."
I turned back to him. "Then do me a favor and don't go at mum's throat whenever you're with her."
He looked at me. "I'll try, love, I'll really try."
"Then do a better job, please."
He held an arm out to me. I walked over to him, sat by him and leaned over his lap, so I could flick through the CD until I found what I was looking for.
I read the news today oh boy,
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
"That Lennon's got some voice, huh?" I felt his arm around me; I almost shook it off but I heard my mother: Spend the time you have with your father.
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
***
Shake it up, baby (shake it up baby!)
Twist and shout (twist and shout!)
C'mon c'mon baby—"
John stopped, an unmoving hand stuck between two chords sticking out of a lilac jacket, a concentrated expression under his slicked back hair. "Work it on out," I told him. "C'mon c'mon baby now, come on and work on it out."
"I knew that."
I stretched one leg over the rung of his bunk bed. "Mm. Let me try."
"No," he said, holding onto his guitar. "You're better than I am."
"Say that again," I grinned wickedly. "Say it!"
"I didn't say anything," he said, reaching over and tickling the bottom of my foot. I gave a sharp giggle and rolled over to avoid his hand, hitting the wall. "How do you know that song anyways? It just came out."
"Hence why I don't know any of the words. How do you—ah, that's right, Ms. future. That's why you know the song."
Back in Germany. Back in Germany meant days spent practicing, honing skills, exploring Hamburg, I knew, but on that very first night I could sense some nervousness between the group. We were sharing the bill with Rory and the Hurricanes, and even though we were good, there was always that unspoken competition between bands who were around the same playing level as you. Three other lilac jackets had joined us; Paul, George, and Pete had walked into their bedroom let us know it was time to go. Usually we'd be out on the floor relaxing and talking until it was time to go out but I suppose since it was the first night, nervous energy bounced around. I saw Paul watching Ringo, nodding his head to the drum beats, and then we were on.
It was just as I expected it. Once the music started and the crowd was moving we were in. Once the first note was played, the first melody sung, we were fine. We had never left Hamburg, I thought, smiling, and I looked out into the crowd and caught a familiar face: Anna in leather pants and a cropped shirt, to see us, to see George, and I saw Emilia next to her in a sleeveless black dress, bobbing to the beat. I gave a short wave and glanced to my right to see George throw in a lick I knew he had been practicing recently. Anna whistled, but I saw Emilia eyeing the direction of John singing with Paul.
Let me tell you 'bout a girl I know
She is my baby and she lives next door
Every morning 'fore the sun comes up
She brings me coffee in my favorite cup
That's why I know, yes, I know
Hallelujah, I just love her so...
Take five. Backstage, or rather on the dance floor, we met up with Stu and Astrid, who had come back to see us as soon as possible, having had college that day. I saw Emilia run up to John and give him a quick hug, which I thought odd, as she had met him once, but then she did the same to Paul, her fingers lingering a little longer on his shirt than normally, I thought. Stu said something funny; John laughed and I felt his appreciation at being back with Stu, his good, good friend. That laugh warmed up the conversation. It felt good to be back with my old friends, back in old Germany in a new place, old music with a new future.
Thank you all for voting and commenting—as for you newcomers, welcome welcome! I see your votes ;) thank you loves! You all make this story happen! Let me know what you think/feedback as usual!