July 6th
Paul was beginning to regret the white jacket by the time he’d stepped off the bus. The sun was beating down on him (it was July, after all), and he was torn between the urge to tear it off and the compelling pull of the novelty of the jacket. He’d only had it a few days and had been anxious to wear it.
A church loomed above, past the winding path that had been trod into the grass and that led away from the bus stop. Ivan was already there waiting for him, another one of his smiles on his face. This one might have meant anything from “I’m glad to see you” to “you’re about to discover my practical joke.”
“They’re about to start,” Ivan said, nodding up towards the church where a cluster of people were milling around. Paul’s dubious expression suddenly illustrated all his reservations about Woolton and its fete and its bloody Rose Queen.
Before Ivan could reassure Paul, a shout rang across the grass. “Oi, out of the way!”
Paul jumped out of the way, and a lorry came rumbling through, with a few boys sitting on the back. Paul caught a glimpse of plaid shirts and guitars and they were gone. He turned to Ivan to hear whatever he was about to say before the lorry, but Ivan was staring off into the distance.
“That was them,” Ivan said.
“What?”
“My mate John and his band.”
Paul didn’t exactly like the tone of reverence Ivan used when referring to John. He hadn’t even met him properly yet, and already he was getting the impression he was worshipped everywhere. Well, Paul would decide for himself when he met him. His resolve strengthened within him.
“Let’s go then,” Paul said impatiently, grabbing Ivan’s arm and dragging him a short distance further. Ivan soon snapped into a brisk pace, and they scaled the little hill that separated them from the church and the fete.
“Is he really that good?” Paul asked thoughtfully as an afterthought.
Ivan nodded. “’Sides, doesn’t matter if they’re any good as long as they’ve got John.”
They’d reached the top of the hill and Paul looked down at the little scene below them. There was a graveyard with small, crooked gravestones littering the lawn behind the church, and old stone thing, with squat walls and oddly placed windows. Then the festivities sprawled out—people milling about, buying sweets from little stands, mothers talking together, and the children watching curiously at the movement on the stage.
The lads from the lorry were now lifting instruments—a guitar, and a tea chest bass among them—onto the little stage that had been erected. One of the boys was trying to tie one of the corners of a banner onto the tree branches that loomed over the little stage, grazing the heads of the taller boys. The hand-painted letters said “The Quarry Men.” Or “Quarrymen” might have been one word instead of two, Paul couldn’t tell. He asked Ivan to point John out.
“Him, lifting the drums,” Ivan reported.
Paul squinted. John was talking with a boy with thick red hair, possibly about the drums. John had thick eyebrows, a decisive nose, and almond eyes that had a certain intensity to them.
Ivan, unprompted, was already telling Paul about the Quarrymen. “John’s the leader, and he sings and plays guitar. Eric is also on guitar, Colin is on drums; that’s Rod and Len over there, then there’s Pete.”
People were starting to gather towards the stage, as the Quarrymen were mostly set up. Paul looked around him, noticing the audience. Most of them were children, younger than Paul. They looked up at the Quarrymen, doe-eyed and gap-toothed, waiting for them to start.
John looked around at the stage, and nodded. He took a deep breath and the drums started to go, the guitars were strumming, and he started to sing.
“Well love, love me darling, come and go with me. Close your eyes now, you don’t need to see. Follow me darling, and come go with me. I’ve been waiting for a century. Hurry up darling; you are killing me. All this stalling, now come go with me.”
“Those aren’t the right lyrics,” Paul whispered to Ivan, half horrified and half in awe.
“Brilliant,” Ivan muttered.
Paul stared in strange fascination. He observed each of the Quarrymen in turn; but he found that the drums were unsteady, the guitars out of tune, the washboard too loud at certain times, and the tea chest bass didn’t follow anyone else. The only one of them that struck him was John, whether that was because of how Ivan had presented him or because of true talent Paul didn’t know. He watched John’s mouth as it formed the words, the wrong words, but ones he was making up and that matched the tune nevertheless. Paul understood Ivan’s comment of “brilliant.” John wasn’t stumbling through a single lyric while improvising.
That was what really pushed him to go into the church to meet John. The Rose Queen was being crowned outside and he wasn’t even looking, not even to see how fit the bird was. His guitar suddenly seemed to weigh a ton on his back, and his sweaty palms didn’t seem capable of doing anything, much less playing an instrument.
There they were. They looked like the most normal people, the least imposing, compared to how they’d been a few minutes ago from their perch on the stage. Ivan stepped forward and for a brief, delirious moment Paul thought that now would be the perfect time to run away.
“…he plays too.”
Then everyone turned to Paul and seemed to be staring either dead into his eyes or at the guitar case slung over his shoulder, like it was some kind of forbidden object. Paul smiled with all the confidence he could pretend.
John had stepped forward and was squinting at Paul. Paul felt uncomfortably scrutinized, and wondering why the hell John was staring like that so much and was there something on his face or had he done something wrong—oh. John pulled out a pair of glasses and perched them on his nose, blinking once.
The glasses seemed to almost contradict the whole teddy boy image and his entire reputation, that this little thing was enough to spur Paul on and let some of his nerves melt away. John was a person after all, and Paul would not be afraid.
The guitar swung right off his shoulder and was in his hands before Paul could really think about it. He picked it up and put it in its leftie position. He already saw one mouth opening, to tell him it was upside-down no doubt, but he started playing to avoid the usual explanation.
“Oh well, I've got a girl with a record machine. When it comes to rockin' she's the queen…”
Paul saw John’s face light up in recognition, no doubt he knew Eddie Cochran. Two of the boys in the back, Colin and a boy with thickly curly blond hair, nudged each other with smiles on their faces.
Paul allowed himself a smile and continued a bit faster, just to show off a little. “…one, two flight, three flight, four, five, six, seven flight, eight flight more…”
He finished the song with a flourish and bowed slightly. The blond boy in the back whispered quite audibly “he knows all the lyrics.”
John Lennon’s eyes narrowed and Paul knew that he’d been impressive but that it took more for John. John was a puzzle, and Paul felt an undeniable desire to solve him, to show him what he could do and properly impress him.
Paul suddenly remembered the concert. “Your guitar’s out of tune,” he challenged, looking John in the eye.
“It’s tuned like a banjo,” John explained, looking a bit caught off guard.
“A guitar’s not a banjo,” Paul said. “Let me look at it.”
John handed his guitar wordlessly and Paul put on a face of concentration, his lips slightly parted as he listened to the strings and adjusted them. Finally he plucked through all of them and they seemed to sound right.
Paul handed it back to John expectantly. John tried to play a short sequence, then pulled a face. “Now they’re all wrong,” he griped.
“Actually, they’re right,” Paul said, raising an eyebrow. John looked at him, cocking his head slightly to the side. Lennon was no idiot, Paul saw. He’d spotted the game Paul had started.
“Is there a piano in here?” Paul said, looking expectantly around the group of boys. It was, after all, a church, there was bound to be something. He found what he was looking for in the form of an upright piano next to one of the cold stone walls.
“Know anything else than Twenty Flight Rock?” John asked.
“Long Tall Sally, Tutti Frutti…” Paul listed, opening the cover to the piano. He didn’t even notice when Ivan called out to him that he was leaving, he was so focused on John and the music they’d started making. At first he was a little nervous, John sitting so close next to him that when the older lad spoke he could smell the alcohol on his breath. But there was something inherently calming about John’s voice, and Paul had learned, since a young age, to learn to take refuge in music above all else.
It was only when he noticed the dark outside through one of the windows that Paul jumped up, mid-chord. John looked at him in surprise. “Shit,“ Paul growled. He was more than sure that he’d missed supper, and his father would not be happy.
“I have to go home—“ Paul mumbled, scrambling to put his guitar back into its case.
He left the church in an inglorious, undignified way, wishing with all of his being that he could stay a little longer in that strange little bubble outside of time in the church with John.
“Paul!” someone shouted, and McCartney turned back to see who it was. It was the blond boy, running down the path to the bus stop, red and out of breath.
“You’re in,” he said between pants.
“What?” Paul asked.
“Do you want to join us? The Quarrymen? Because John says you can—he wants you to.”
“Yeah—yeah, I’d like that,” Paul said, feeling the weight on his chest dissolve and become an elated lightness.
“I’m Pete Shotton,” the boy said, extending a hand for Paul to shake. Paul took it, and shook it a bit more vigorously than was probably necessary, a wide grin on his face. “Alright—I’ll see you then, I suppose.”
“Sunday,” Pete said. “John’ll look for your number in the phonebook.”
Paul nodded. “Sunday,” he repeated, before remembering himself and running towards the bus, sending one last wave behind him.