“Hello, gorgeous!” she said as she came in the door and dropped the two heavy shopping bags down on the floor. “How’s your day been then, flower?”
George Harrison, one of the four most desired men in Britain, didn’t reply.
“Well, mine was a living nightmare,” she carried on regardless, taking off her coat, “Mr. Harvey wants us out, he threatening to have the electricity or the water turned off now. But I don’t think he’d dare…” May started taking tins out of the shopping bags and setting them down on the small kitchen unit in one corner of the room that made up the pokey bed-sit. “It’s a bit of a cheek, considering how much we pay – for what? A one roomed bed-sit, with a shared bathroom, above a horrible little pub!” she told him. She held up one of the tins to him, “Beans on toast for tea again, I’m afraid. Never mind. Won’t be for much longer. Vicky thinks there might be a job going at the hotel where she works at soon, so fingers crossed!” she smiled at him. George said nothing.
May stopped and sighed. “I don’t know how I would have coped with all this without you, George.”
She shrugged it off and forced herself to brighten up again.
“Let’s have some music, eh?” she said walking over to the old record player, balanced on a stool in the corner of the room. “What do you fancy?” She flicked through her limited record collection. There wasn’t much variety but she never seemed to get tired of what she did have. She selected one and put it on, lifting the needle on to the vinyl carefully. “This’ll do then. Haven’t heard this for a while.” George stared at her unblinkingly as the music started. “Better get the tea on,” she said, looking up at the clock, “Jack will be home soon.”
“You’ll never know how much I really love you. You’ll never know how much I really care…” George told her, emphatically. May turned and smiled at him, then blew him a kiss before turning back to the old oven.
“Listen, do you want to know a secret?” George said.
“What’s that then, Georgie?”
“Do you promise not to tell?”
May was emptying the tin of beans in to a small saucepan.
“Closer, let me whisper in your ear…”
She lit the gas hob and put the saucepan on the heat.
“Say the words you long to hear...” George continued. “I’m in love with you!”
“I love you too, George,” she told him as the door opened again.
“You could get put away for that,” Jack said coming in and dumping his coat on a nearby chair, “Talking to pictures.” May just smiled and kissed his cheek. Jack was her own Beatle, well; he had the mop top hair anyway. He was a tall man, and strong with it. It was perhaps his eyes the May had fallen in love with, the same chocolate brown as George’s, but with a slight orange tinge.
“Tea ready?” Jack asked sullenly, slumping down on the bed, which except for the kitchen unit, took up most of the room. He picked up a newspaper.
“Nearly.” May hung his coat up for him.
“I’ve known a secret for a week or two…” George carried on in the corner. Jack wrinkled his nose up.
“You can put that off too,” he said. May ignored him, stirring the beans. “Or I will,” he added threateningly.
“Just this side?” May said, putting a couple of rounds of bread under the grill.
“I don’t work all day to come home to that racket,” he told her, reaching over and snatching the needle off.
“Oh, Jack!” she protested.
“Don’t know what you like about them,” he said going back to his paper. “Bunch of poofs.”
“The Beatles are just… wonderful,” she said dreamily. Jack ignored her. She looked at the picture of George on the wall. It was the only one she had, ripped out of a magazine from a year ago. It was a picture of George holding his Gretsch guitar. He was standing slightly at an angle, but staring into the lens of the camera with a dark, brooding expression on his face. His fringe was absently swept to one side and his eyebrows alluringly arched at the corners of his eyes. God, he looked good!
“The toast’s burning.” Jack said without looking up.
If it was up to her the walls of their tiny bed-sit would be plastered in Beatles pictures, but Jack wouldn’t allow that. Mr. Harvey, the landlord, would probably have something to say about it too.
“May!”
She snapped out of the daydream with a start and snatched the blackening toast from the grill.
“I’m not eating that.” Jack said.
“You’ll have to. It’s the last of the bread.”
“What? Why didn’t you buy some more?”
“Because I haven’t got any money left,” she said quietly, hoping this wasn’t going to develop into another argument about money.
“I only just gave you three bob!”
“I know, but I had to get other things.” She spooned the beans out onto the charred toast.
“Like what?” Jack demanded.
“Well, the rent was due for one thing,” she said giving him the plate. Jack snorted contemptibly and sat up. “We’re so far behind. Mr. Harvey’s threatening to have the power switched off."
“He just fuckin’ dare.”
She sat down on the bed with him, resting her plate on her lap. Jack poked his with his fork. “I’m so sick of this. Bloody beans on toast every bloody night.”
“There might be a job going at The Pier Hotel. You know, where Vicky works. I thought perhaps…”
“No wife of mine’s gonna be a barmaid.” Jack interrupted.
“I’ve got to get a job…”
“Not in a fuckin’ pub!” Jack said. “And I don’t want you talking to that scrubber who works there either.”
“It’s a hotel bar not…” she began.
“I said no.”
“But…”
Jack exploded. Jumping up, he flung his plate at the wall. It smashed on impact and fell to the floor leaving an orange stain.
“Fuckin’ bitch!” he screamed at her, “You’ll do as you’re bloody told!” She stayed still, avoiding his eyes. He glared at her a moment then stormed out, snatching his coat up on the way and slamming the door.
When he had gone she relaxed with a sigh. Jack could be so sweet, but when he let his temper get the better of him… well, she just didn’t recognise him sometimes. She looked at the wall where the plate had hit. That was going to leave a stain. Luckily Jack hadn’t hit George’s picture, it had missed him by a few inches.
“Oh, George,” she sighed, “At least I’ve still got you.”
George looked back at her blankly.
Jack came back sometime after midnight, smelling of smoke and beer. May lay in bed, pretending to already be asleep. She felt Jack get in beside her and it was only a couple of minutes before he fell asleep, deep rhythmic breathing taking over his body. May opened her eyes. A shaft of light was cast over George’s image by a chink in the curtains.
She hadn’t been married a year yet, but she was already having doubts. Her mother’s words echoed in her ears, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure…” But she had known better. May had met Jack in her second year at university. She had fallen in love with him almost immediately; his Beatle mop top and piercing brown eyes had reminded her of George. He still wore his fashionable Beatle hair, despite his low opinion of the band.
Six months later Jack had been offered a job in Aberystwyth in Wales and May thought the world was going to end, until he said, “We’ll get married then. You can come with me.” Not the most romantic of proposals, but Jack was an old fashioned, no-nonsense Englishman; romance wasn’t exactly his strong point.
Her parents had been horrified. Too young to get married, throwing away everything she had worked for, hardly even knew Jack. Truth was they just didn’t like him. He could rub people up the wrong way sometimes, but maybe no one she brought home was ever going to measure up.
“You marry him and you’ll never set foot in this house again,” was the ultimatum her father had finally delivered, and she had married Jack as quickly as possible, almost as much out of spite as anything else.
Things had gone sour pretty much straight away. The job Jack was promised fell through and he had had to take a labourer’s job just to put bread on the table. It was difficult, backbreaking work and he hated it, meaning he came home in a foul mood most nights. He hadn’t been keen on letting May get a job either, holding a rather old fashioned view of ‘a woman’s place’, but it was getting harder and harder to make ends meet and she believed he would have no other choice but to let her soon enough.
The truth was she was bored. At least if she had a job she would have something to do. She missed the city. She had always lived in one, Manchester at home and London at university and moving to the sleepy regressive Aberystwyth had been a bit of a culture shock. It was pretty, by the coast, but there were no clubs or live music venues, nowhere to do any shopping (even if they had the money for it) and it was isolated by the Welsh hills, making it a massive operation to venture out for even for a day. In the magazines and papers May read about the exciting and innovative sixties that was happening elsewhere in Britain – new music, new fashions and how her generation was making its mark in history, but stuck here she felt as if it was all passing her by. By the time the sixties happened in this town it would probably be about 1985!
Jack was disillusioned too. He had changed since they’d married, but May was sure that was only down to his frustration and the perceived pressure on him to make something of himself now he was a married man. She had suggested that they move back to London where there would be more job opportunities but he had refused point blank. He said he hated the city and anyway, then they would both be unemployed if they moved back, but really May suspected it was the fact Jack refused to admit defeat. He had made such a big fuss about the job and his ‘new life’, bragging about it to his friends before they left that he could hardly go back, tail between his legs and admit it hadn’t worked out. He hadn’t even had the courage to tell his parents who thought he was merrily working his way up the career ladder.
Jack had become short tempered, rude and difficult to live with. He had always had a bit of a temper but more and more often he was becoming uncontrollable. He’d been arrested for being drunk twice in the past couple of months and it was down the pub that May feared most of the rent and housekeeping money was going.
Still, she told herself, love was what mattered. It didn’t matter where we are or how harsh things get, so long as we’re together.
God keep us together, she had prayed so earnestly when Jack’s move to Wales had first come up and found herself praying the same again now as Jack grew distant from her, please let things get better. So long as we’re together, she resolved watching Jack sleep, everything will be okay, as long as we’re together, and then looking back to George on the wall amended, and so long as I have the Beatles.