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Sitting in his backyard, leaning against the wall that houses a life-sized recreation of one of John’s drawings and staring out at the pool, covered by tarp and a layer of snow, George wonders for the millionth time whether any of this was worth it.
He closes his eyes and breathes deep. Sounds bleed in deeper and more resonant: Pattie clattering with the dishes in the kitchen, a distant scrape of a neighbor shoveling their drive. Breathless giggles from his two most dedicated Apple Scruffs near the front lawn. A crackle of ice as a small animal hops across the tarp over the pool. A switch flipped, fuzz and then muffled music – Pattie turning on the radio. George picks out each sound and twists the volume down on them one by one. He finds a sweet little divot in the painted wall to rest his head in; tunes out the cold, the snow melting under his thighs. He lets his body disappear limb by limb; he recognizes each thought, cups it in hand, and allows it to float away like a blown kiss. Time stops, or passes doublespeed – it doesn’t matter. He’s outside of it now, broken through its papery barriers. He senses the infinity of the universe in his own atoms.
“George?”
He opens his eyes, slowly coming back to himself. “Hmm?”
“Paul’s here.”
Time crashes back downward into him. Smiling a little tentatively, Pattie reaches a hand down, and he takes it, lets her pull him up and brush snow from his jeans and out of his hair. He recognizes the cautious, watchful hope in her that has been threaded through their every interaction the past few days, braiding with the guilt and remorse that spins out of himself in loops. He’s missed her, really missed her. He finally admits it by leaning down and kissing her soundly, just on the edge of passionate. Surprised but welcoming, Pattie winds her arms around his shoulders. Instead of breaking the embrace and pulling away, he lets his lips travel up her cheekbone and toward her hair and they’re hugging, taking and giving from each other, and he finally feels forgiven enough to bear it.
They walk hand in hand to the front stoop, where he gives her a kiss on the forehead. She recognizes the dismissal and goes back inside; George leans against the doorframe, watching the car that’s idling in their front drive. Paul eventually gets out of the passenger side, a small surprise; he usually likes driving himself. As Paul walks up the drive, George thinks that Linda is looking at him, blue gaze piercing through a foggy window. He looks back steadily. They’ve hardly spoken at all despite how long Paul’s been with her. George supposes if he were a better person he might feel bad about that; she seems nice enough, unobtrusive in a way that Yoko is not, but strong. Strong enough to shoulder Paul’s ego and suppress her own, anyway, which Jane had not been able or willing to do. He lifts a hand to her as Paul crosses the threshold into the house as if to say I’ve got him. She returns the gesture and eases off the brake, snow crunching under the tires.
“Coming in?” Paul asks as he unwinds a thick black scarf in the front room. George shakes his head. Paul tuts as he discards his coat and tosses the scarf at George, who catches it. “You’ll catch your death, son,” he says in a passable imitation of his own father. George forces a smile, wondering if he’ll ever stop resenting Paul’s little kindnesses.
He winds Paul’s scarf around his neck and inhales the smell of him: no cologne today, just cigarettes and home. The icy resentment melts a little. He steps out onto the stoop and closes the front door most of the way while Paul sits down at the piano. Tentative first chords, as though unsure whether George would object – then a little more confident, something sad that George recognizes instantly as a piano version of I Threw It All Away. So Paul had been listening that day after all. George’s resentment melts a little more; he leans against the doorframe with eyes closed and breathes around the sudden sharpness in his throat.
Rich arrives next; arrangements are made and he takes Pattie, arm around her delicate shoulders, to go visit Maureen for the night. “No telling how long this might go, you know,” he says to her apologetically. “’Specially if John’s as late as he’s been the past two weeks.” She understands, as she always does, and kisses George again on the way out.
Paul plays on, moving into the Adagio piece he’s been circling since the sessions started, and George lets it lull him into a muted daze. Big heavy snowflakes start to fall and an old memory surfaces: Paul on the piano bench at his house on Forthlin, and George, newly fourteen and gawkish, on the sofa with his guitar. Snow falling hard outside as they played together, steadfastly ignoring the emptiness and suffocating vacuum left by Paul’s mother, their hands unsteady but synced in their shaking.
After a short while, Rich returns, his old tires sliding a little on the newly slicked pavement. He takes up watch with George on the stoop; deft fingers light up ciggies for both of them. They smoke in silence, listening to Paul circle the same song over and over, waiting for John to show and blow the whole thing up. John whose straw had been the one to break the camel’s back and send George flying out the door of Twickenham in a rage five days ago; John who stared down George’s willingness to make amends in abject silence at Ringo’s house on Sunday, Yoko speaking for him instead.
One cigarette crushed underfoot. Then two. George motions for a third and Ringo says wryly, “We’ll die of lung cancer before he gets here at this rate.”
“They,” George says darkly. Ringo hums noncommittally, tilting his head in thought. “You don’t think he’ll bring her?” he asks. He tries to keep the shake out of his voice and succeeds, sort of.
Ringo shrugs. “Always a surprise, him.”
The generosity in Ringo’s voice momentarily brings George low, shamed for his unbelief. Ringo, with a chip on his shoulder bigger than anyone, still having faith in John Lennon, even after the fiasco at his own house not three days ago. George wonders what happened after he stormed out, whether they kept up with festivities or watched telly or talked about him. But, of course, he can’t ask. Despite every meditation technique he’s learned his thoughts take the plunge into the abyss anyway; he hates this young, sullen version of himself that won’t stop bubbling up, so resentful and desperate for approval and even more desperate not to show it.
Then – miracle of miracles – a taxi pulls up, and John gets out of the back seat, and shuts the door behind him. Alone. No dark shadow on his heels or in front of him like a shield, just John, lanky and swaddled in his brown fur coat, bespectacled (George doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that), damp hair swinging in loose curls as though he’s just stepped out of the shower. Instead of snow boots, he’s chosen his Chuck Taylors, and almost immediately upon stepping into the snow, he yelps overdramatically at the cold and takes off down the drive, legs flailing behind him, snow spraying everywhere. By the time he reaches the safety of the front door, both George and Ringo are laughing; they catch him by the arms before he barrels into the house.
“Bloody cold out here, by gum!” John declares, and drags them both stumbling inside after him. Head snapping up at the commotion, Paul moves smoothly from the Adagio into a silly intro tune. John takes a sweeping bow. “All by me onesie, as requested,” John announces. George expects nastiness in his tone but there is none, no hidden barb or snide cruel jibe behind it, no Yoko words spun black into his voice poisoning it – it’s just him. A true marvel.
“Wonders never cease,” Ringo drawls, the only one of them who could get away with it. Paul, reading the mood, starts pounding out The Entertainer, jaunty and fast, and John and Ringo yell delightedly in tandem, throwing their arms up. They hook elbows and dance in silly hoedown circles while George claps, almost (but not quite) forgetting why they’re all here in the jubilation of their old getting-back-together ritual. There’s a manic edge to the energy in the room that George senses, a desire within all of them to alleviate any awkwardness before it has a chance to ferment. He looks at his friends and realizes, with a stab to the heart, that he hasn’t had just the three of them over to his house in quite some time, since 1967 maybe, can’t remember the last time they were alone together, maybe not since hiding in the bathroom the night after their last live show – palpable relief breaking down their walls, sharing one of the few true hugs he’s ever had with Paul. No wonder John wanted a shield this time. George wouldn’t go back on tour for love or money, not with the Beatles, not with anyone – but still, something irretrievable has been lost here.
Paul finishes the song with flair. John and Ringo bow to each other and to George and to Paul.
“All right, lads,” Ringo says, “here we are. Let’s be on with it.”
“Oh, have you got somewhere to be then?” John shoots at him.
“Got a date with Georgie’s liquor cabinet,” he raps back, smooth as butter.
“Saucy,” John minces with heavy affectation. “Why don’t you have it now, I’m starving anyway.” He dances behind the piano and claps Paul on the shoulder before George can get in a word of protest. “Can’t be expected to discuss the future on an empty stomach now can I, son?”
“No, I don’t expect you can,” Paul says, mock serious. And then they’re off to the kitchen, just like that, without even looking to see if George is following. He must look thunderous, because Ringo gives him a sympathetic glance.
“Come on, luv,” he murmurs, turning his attention to the liquor cabinet in the corner. “Eat then talk, aye?” And no matter how much John and Paul infuriate him, George can’t say no to Ringo.
Cupboards are ransacked. George is excoriated for his eating habits. A tin of weed is discovered and crowed over and rolled and smoked. Ringo pours shots, and there is a toast to something which John says in a silly voice that George can’t hear through his own laughter but assumes is equally as funny as what he is already laughing at, which is Paul braiding Ringo’s fringe. Paul shouts, “Hear hear!” though he couldn’t have, over all the laughing and the record they have put on, which is Music from Big Pink because it is George’s house after all, and they all drink.
At some undetermined point they shift to the front room, letting the snacks and the drink and the weed settle and mix. George flips Music from Big Pink over and the pounding piano of We Can Talk fills the room. We can talk about it now… It's that same old riddle, only starts from the middle… The thematic appropriateness of the song hits George in the chest like a mallet slamming into a gong.
“Ach, you planned that,” Paul accuses good naturedly. He sprawls over one end of the sofa, looser than George has seen him all month. He hasn’t run his hands through his hair hardly at all today; George considers that a good sign.
“I didn’t,” George protests, and he hadn’t. Not consciously.
“Whatever you say,” John simpers. He drapes himself over the other end of the sofa, head toward the middle, one leg hanging off the side, the other hooked over the armrest. “All right then, lads. Listen to what the Band says.”
“Go on, Geo,” Ringo says lightly. He settles into the big, soft armchair in the corner and it nearly swallows him. “Tell us all off, we know you’ve been dying to.”
“I haven’t,” he tries, but he has. Ringo gives him a look, then reaches over to pour some more whiskey into his glass. John stretches his glass out, as does Paul; eventually all of them are topped off. George takes a moment to sip his drink, grateful to Ringo for giving him a moment to think. He settles cross-legged on the floor, in the middle of the room.
“Well, uh…” He inspects the carpet where he’s sitting, a tiny stain from a wine spill years ago. “I have some ideas about the project.”
“The project you walked out of?” John whips out.
George does not rise to the bait. “The very same.”
“Don’t see why you should have any say in that,” John continues.
“John,” Paul warns. He raps John lightly on the forehead.
“I’ve got terms,” George interjects before an argument can break out, before John and Paul turn their gazes inward toward each other and away from him. If he lets that happen, he’ll never get a word in. “I’ll come back if… If we can do these.”
“Easiest one first,” Ringo decides. “Let’s have it.”
None of them are easy, that’s the point, George thinks, but he says out loud, “Don’t want to do a live show at all, do I.”
“But…” Paul’s eyes flit about the room. “That was the idea behind it in the first place. You know. Four piece band, back to our roots and that.”
“I know, but – the ideas you’ve been selling are completely mad, you know.”
“They are a bit mad, Paul,” Ringo agrees.
“We can’t – go on a boat with a bunch of fans, y’know, we can’t go to Africa or whatever it is Michael wants us to do.” George steadfastly avoids looking at Paul’s expression; he already knows there’s hurt there, and he doesn’t want to see it. “We need to be – I dunno, realistic.”
“Yeah,” Paul murmurs, but it’s not an agreement so much as it is a way to fill the pause.
Plowing on, George says, “If… If we could figure a way we could just play… without having fans so close like they were in Hey Jude… I think – that might be all right.”
“Hey, you weren’t the one with them breathin’ all down your neck,” Ringo reminds him.
“I didn’t see you hating it,” George shot back.
“I didn’t,” Ringo allows. “Not until it was over and they kept clappin’ me on the back. Left handprints for days, they did.”
“So, we play live, but with no one there?” John says. “Like Yoko’s idea, we just play to a bunch of empty chairs.”
George shakes his head, frustrated. “No, not like – I just don’t want them in me face, like. And I don’t want to do any of me own songs.”
“All too slow anyway,” John mutters under his breath. George pretends he didn’t hear it, but it sears into him deep.
“If we…” Paul drifts off before finishing, seeming lost in thought as he stares into space.
“We’ll think of something,” John says. “No fans in George’s precious hair, no live George songs. That’s easy enough. Vote yes?” They all raise their hands, 4-0. John sits up and plants his feet on the floor. “What’s next, then?”
Before George can open his mouth, the telephone begins to ring, startling all of them out of meeting mode. The clock on the wall says they’ve been here for almost two hours now, much longer than George expected to have them. He hoists himself up and walks to the kitchen, picks up the phone perhaps a bit rougher than he meant to, his annoyance radiating outward into the real world instead of contained and quiet like it should be.
“Hello?”
“George?” Soft, high, accented voice, instantly grating. Yoko. “Is John still there?”
He grits his teeth. “One moment.” He turns slightly and yells “JOHN!” much louder than necessary. He hopes it hurt Yoko’s ear.
John trots out to the kitchen and takes the phone from George’s outstretched hand. “So popular I’m taking calls at someone else’s house,” he crows. Unamused, George scoots past him and returns to the other two. Ringo gives him a sympathetic wince; Paul claps him on the shoulder when he sits down next to him on the couch.
“Telly?” he asks. “Surely they’ll be a while.” With a long sigh, George agrees, and Ringo gets up, turns the record off and flips the television on. Instead of returning to his chair, he joins George and Paul on the sofa. They all watch Town and Around, agonizing inches between them, while John murmurs indecipherable, loving words over the telephone. Once upon a time, back in their touring days when living with each other was second nature, they all used to crowd together on chairs and sofas that shouldn’t have been able to hold four, arms all around each other, totally secure in the knowledge that they were allowed to take up each other’s space, that the space they shared was theirs and theirs alone. Now in the luxury of their own homes, a tentative split divides them, each of them on their own cushion, their hands tight to themselves, no casual arm around his shoulders that he could lean back on and doze against.
George forces it out of his mind. Ringo pours another round of drinks and George downs his gratefully, resting his head back against the cushion. When he opens his eyes, Paul is looking at him with an odd expression (wistful, George’s mind supplies); George almost asks what the hell he wants. Paul falters a little, mouth slightly open, perhaps wanting to speak – but he doesn’t, instead turning back to the television and fixing his eyes squarely on the screen. George hates Paul terribly in that moment for never being able to say what he truly feels; he hates himself for never knowing how to draw it out of him. They seem destined to continue missing each other, and those few inches between them feel like a yawning chasm.
After nearly half an hour, the tv having ticked over into Quiz Bingo, John finally hangs up the telephone and dances lightfoot back into the front room. He notes Jimmy Savile calling out quiz questions on the telly, the audience’s raucous laughter, then looks back at George, Ringo, and Paul, all stonefaced and shrouded in a collective black mood.
“Goodness, who died?” John says.
“You leaving, then?” Ringo says, more of a statement than a question, like he’s Jimmy Savile with the answer to the question already on his card; the tinge of bitterness in his voice shakes George a little. If Paul had said it, or George, there would have been defiance, a sweep of his coat, and John would have been gone – but John can’t hurt Ringo, any more than George can, and he visibly makes a decision.
“Nah, just checkin’ in, like,” John says breezily. As if to punctuate his commitment to staying, he kicks off his shoes and sets them neatly against the wall; then he marches over to the sofa and wedges himself between George and Ringo, an arm thrown around both of them. George looks at him and John sticks his tongue between his lower lip and his lower gums and crosses his eyes; it startles a snort of laughter out of George, but a lump quickly stops up his throat. Seeing glimpses of the old John always does that to him now. He remembers their younger selves, the shades of clear fierce love that threaded all of them together, tighter than anything. You could’ve set your watch to them, to their comfortable rhythm so well worn and natural. Those threads are still there but so often it feels like a shadow of that now. They’ve been breaking apart for a long time, the metronome of them out of whack and swinging crazily.
The phone rings again, just before Jimmy calls the final quiz question. “Bloody Waterloo Station today,” George grumbles as he goes to the phone again. “Hello?”
“George?” Yoko says.
Her voice. That’s what he really can’t stand. He can stand her sitting on their amps, her black presence in every corner of the studio; he can stand her conceptual art and her nonsense poetry and her black bag stunts. If he concentrates, he can even accept the fact that John has attached himself to her, and she to him, like demented Siamese twins, one unable to move without the other. Because it’s John, he can accept that. But he can’t stand the sound of her voice. Always speaking and ordering as though she has a right to, as though it is a foregone conclusion that everyone will listen and comply. The accent he knows she is exaggerating, the arrogance of belief that she belongs with them, that she can speak for John and tell them what for.
He wants so badly to hang up on her. It’s a near thing; his hand itches to slam the phone against the receiver on the wall and break it forever.
Then he feels a small touch on his shoulder. Whirling, he sees John standing there, having followed him out to the kitchen, looking slightly guilty. “For me?” he asks sheepishly. George hands him the as yet unbroken telephone and rushes toward the loo before his mouth has a chance to betray him.
The door firmly closed behind him, he takes a long breath and lets it out through his nose. Slowly, slowly, one finger at a time, he unclenches his fists, little pink points of aching in his palms where his nails have left tiny half-moons. He performs his chants under his breath until he can open his eyes and look himself in the mirror without smashing it. Hush, he soothes himself, hush.
He returns to Paul and Ringo in the front room, where they are still sitting silently, staring at the television screen. For the briefest of seconds it seems to George as though his friends have died propped up, their eyes only staring sightlessly at the telly because of the angle at which their bodies perished. George shakes the thought away and grabs the whiskey bottle before sitting himself back down. He gulps down a few swallows and passes it to Paul, who takes a few long drinks himself before passing it behind George’s head to Ringo, who does the same.
It’s nearly impossible to tell over the television, now playing Tomorrow’s World (“What’s new today for those interested in tomorrow!” the BBC voices cheerfully claim every Wednesday night), but John’s voice sounds a little less agreeable than it did before, less overtly adoring and more clipped and rushed, as though he’s trying to untangle himself from the conversation.
A look passes between George and Paul, hundreds, thousands of words spoken in the space of a few seconds. George knows that nothing he says will change anything but he can’t stop his eyes, his own body, begging Paul: Do something about this. You’re the only one that can. And it doesn’t stop the hurt when Paul responds exactly as George expected: I can’t. I don’t dare.
As estranged as they have become, in many ways George knows Paul better than he knows the back of his own hand. He knows deeper than anyone, except maybe Rich, that Paul will never, ever challenge John about Yoko. Paul would rather endure the two of them howling nonsensically into microphones all day long than risk John walking out forever. Wouldn’t look good for the show, would it, George thinks uncharitably, then stops himself and digs for the real reason, further down in his soul where he doesn’t like to look: it would kill Paul for John to leave. When George really sorts through himself, looks at what he knows, at Paul – he knows Paul is trembling at the edges of falling apart already. He’s gone strange, less iron-backed and careless with people than he was last year but more indecipherably anxious, slippery, always tiptoeing along some high icy ledge. And John would walk away with no thought for the wreckage he would leave behind, as he always did, and Paul would collapse like an old wood floor rotted right through. Not even Linda could shoulder a cave-in of that magnitude.
John hangs up after a short ten minutes this time, walks back into the front room instead of dancing, his expression preoccupied, eyes a little glazed. “All right?” Ringo asks.
“Mmm,” John says distractedly, nodding almost as an afterthought as he takes his seat.
Not five minutes later the phone rings again.
George starts to stand up, rage curling his fists, but this time John grabs his wrist with icy-cold fingers.
“It’s her again,” he says in a strangely detached voice. “Don’t bother.”
“Sure?” George asks, astonished.
“Said so, didn’t I?”
The line rings out and goes quiet. Then it rings again. And again. And again. John stares at the television, deliberately neutral, the screen reflecting off his glasses.
“She used to do this with Cyn and me,” he says suddenly, in one of the brief silences. The shadow of guilt passes over his face at the mention of Cyn. “Before we… She’d ring. Just ring and ring.” The phone jangles again, seemingly trying to ring itself off the hook, and then John gets up in a sudden flurry, stomps into the kitchen, and yanks the cord out of the wall, stopping it mid-ring.
Everyone sits in stunned silence as John comes back and sits down. George wants to make a joke, something about having to pay for a new phone, but it won’t come. Wordless, Ringo passes John the whiskey, only about a third of it left now. John takes a long swig and they pass it around again, Paul finally finishing the bottle off with a sigh. George feels simultaneously heavy and weightless: the effects of good whiskey and good weed swirling together.
“She’ll be on her way here soon,” John says. He sounds equal parts thrilled and disgusted.
Without any idea he’s going to say it, George says, “We could go.”
“Go?” John raises his eyebrows.
“Yeah. Go.”
“Go where?”
Paul says, “Mal’s place is empty for the night.”
“Yeah, visiting his Mum back home, isn’t he,” Ringo remembers.
“Aye.”
They all look at each other. The idea bounces between them like lightning between metal rods, gaining traction the longer they think about it. John begins to grin, and that catches too, ping-pongs around them with the building adrenaline. In the back of his mind, George realizes they are all probably a bit drunk.
“Shake a leg then, lads,” John exclaims, and they all explode from the sofa at the same time. George digs frantically through his coat pockets for a set of car keys; Ringo and Paul raid the booze cabinet for whatever they can carry; John digs the rest of George’s marijuana stash out of the old tea tin and then flits between the three of them like a nervous butterfly on its first day out of the cocoon. “Come on, come on, she’ll be here any minute,” John urges.
“I’m going, I’m go – GOTCHA!” George finally shouts in triumph. He shakes the set of keys he’s found, the ones for his Mini, tosses them up and catches them smoothly. George in the lead, they race out to the garage behind the house and tumble arse over teakettle into the tiny car, glass clanking in Paul and Ringo’s arms. The inside of the car is so small that they’re packed in practically on top of each other but no one notices – John cracks the whip, literally smacking George on the back, yelling Go, go, go! George turns the key and it is smooth as butter; it has been waiting for them all evening and it shifts easily under his touch. The radio blasts something loud and fast, and it takes a second for George to recognize his own voice, four years younger, aeons younger, as it sings in tandem with Paul, John overtop them. Help me if you can, I’m feelin’ down. It sets them all laughing like loons, just as they had when they’d first heard Love Me Do on the radio in 1962, and George peals out into the empty street, tires sliding on the snow, still laughing. Ringo pounds out the drum part on George’s shoulders while Paul and John and George all attempt to harmonize through their laughter in silly voices. Maybe a little past drunk, George admits to himself.
Mal’s flat is in the southwest of London, only a forty minute drive away; somehow they manage to avoid both coppers and potentially angry Japanese women. With every pair of headlights that starts to follow them, John shushes them dramatically and motions for them to drop their heads while he peeks. Even though he knows it’s a game and there’s no way Yoko could know where they’re going, George finds himself playing along, ducking his head as deeply as he dares while still being able to see through the windshield.
They make it in thirty minutes flat, a miracle if there ever was one. No Apple Scruffs line the walkways, another miracle; in fact, no one is there at all to see the four most famous men in the world spilling out of George’s car like clowns, giggling wildly, shushing each other for no reason.
Mal’s flat is small but frightfully, impeccably clean. Photos of him and his wife, of him and the four of them and Brian and Neil, are framed and hang well-placed on the walls, not famous photos but silly private ones that make George miss Mal something fierce, even though he just saw him a few days ago. He vows silently to give the man a big hug the next time he comes back to the studio. With that comes the realization that he’s already decided to return, and he makes his peace with it then and there. Doesn’t mean they won’t have to work for it, though, he thinks to himself, and smiles a little.
There’s a slight stumbling comedown as the adrenaline ebbs; they all look at each other, smiles fading, all of them looking as bewildered as George feels. Whatever energy that bound them together falls apart in pieces and George feels adrift, bereft.
“Well,” Ringo says to break the silence. “Who wants shots?”
They go in search of Mal’s shot glasses in his little kitchen; Paul puts one of Mal’s records on, Cream’s Wheels of Fire. George recognizes and accepts the peace offering – if music is the only way Paul can communicate today, George will take it for what it means. As Jack Bruce’s falsetto wavers over Eric’s heavy guitar from the front room, Ringo pours them all healthy shots of a dark, dangerous looking rum. They tap the table with their full glasses and throw them back at once, flipping the shot glasses over to sit upside down. Rich pours them all a second shot right away and the ritual is repeated, same synchronicity; tap, drink, flip.
“Whew,” John says. “Right. Now we’re ready.” Imitating a gavel, he hits the table with his fist. “This meeting of The Beatles will now… continue to be in order!” he commands. Pulling out a chair, he sits, Paul and Ringo following suit, all of them looking expectantly at George. A dark thrill goes through him; he hates how much he still craves this, having John and Paul’s eyes on him, the full force of their attention turned away from each other and trained on him alone. He has never stopped gasping for it since they gave him his first taste on the upper deck of that bus when he played Raunchy and nailed it. Hearing Paul vouch for him had been a good high, but having the two of them look at you with admiration was like being reborn, like being stripped utterly naked and swaddled like an infant. It felt like being blown apart and put back together; and when John and Paul put you back together you came back more than the sum of your pieces.
George clears his throat. “Thank you all for coming,” he says in an imitation of an Overly Serious, upper class RP accent. The others make appropriate “hear hear, dear boy” noises. “We have gathered here tonight to continue discussing the sessions, heretofore known as G.D. sessions, standing for the God Damn sessions. Said meeting will now come back to order!” George bangs his glass on the table. “Item one has already been discussed. Therefore, we shall move onto item two: Twickenham Studios has been designated by my client as Not On and he requests the G.D. sessions be relocated.”
Paul raises his hand. “And for what reason does your client designate Twickenham as being, eh…” He pretends to check his notes, peering down his nose through fake glasses, “quote, ‘Not On?’”
“Too bloody cold,” Ringo calls from his end of the table.
George points at him. “Too bloody cold indeed, son! Ten points to the gentleman with the empty shotglass.”
“Inquiry sir, inquiry,” John calls in a mousey solicitor voice. “The court would like a definition of the word ‘cold’ as used here.”
“Cold, from the middle English,” George starts. “Meaning empty, soulless. So devoid of life that one hardly stand to be there, let alone get anything done.” He pours himself some more rum and takes a sip to calm his shaky hands in the silence. “It’s too… I dunno,” he says helplessly, dropping the accent and finally sitting down. “It’s like we’re making A Hard Day’s Night again. It’s a fuckin’ set, y’know. Feel like I’m playing someone named George Harrison but it’s not me.” He shudders thinking of the colored lights illuminating the walls, the feeble attempt to inject some sort of life into a dead thing. “Can’t stand it.”
“It’s just a place, y’know,” Paul says, trying to sound sensible. “You can’t let the place affect your playing.” He looks to Ringo. “Rich?”
Ringo shrugs. “He’s right,” he says quietly. “It’s misery being there. It’s all…” He gestures. Hands create a paper-thin set, then tip it over. “False.” He crosses his arms and sits back. Then he adds, “And too cold, at that. I told Mal to turn the heat up but it’s broken.”
“Two against,” George says. “John?”
“Where d’you propose we go?” John asks instead of answering. “Studio 2’s booked since we weren’t using it.”
“Camera crew can’t set up there anyway,” Paul mutters.
“Alex just finished the basement at Apple, hasn’t he?” Ringo remembers.
“Yeah,” George breathes with relief. “Apple, then?” Ringo and George raise their hands. They look at John, who nods thoughtfully. “Can’t get no worse,” he quips.
Paul sighs. “I’ll ask Michael about moving.”
George takes a deep breath. “No,” he says. “We’ll tell him. We’re Beatles. We do what we like and everyone else follows, we don’t have to ask. If he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t get his movie.”
“Right,” Paul murmurs.
There is a long stretch of seconds where George gathers himself and the others wait, unnaturally patient with him. This one will hurt Paul, he knows. His other demands have mostly needled Paul too, since they were Paul’s decisions – filming at Twickenham, doing the live shows. But this will cut deep at the heart of Paul’s concept of the Beatles, which refuses to expand or change. He knows Paul was annoyed with him for bringing in Eric last year, and this will rankle more than that. It will look like George doesn’t trust them to behave. Well, he thinks, in my own defense, we’ve got something of a backlog of evidence that says we can’t.
George breathes in and out. He does a short chant in his head and then says out loud, “I think we should bring someone else in to play with us.”
“Why?” Paul says, just as offended as George knew he would be.
“Ach, you know why,” George snaps. “To make sure we all fucking behave.” So the cameras and mics don’t pick up any more arguments between us, he doesn’t say. So I have some fucking backup for once when I want to practice one of my own songs.
Paul still looks angry, so George tries a different tack. “You know we’re too far advanced to just have four-part songs anymore. We haven’t done simple stuff like that for years.”
“We did last year,” Paul says stubbornly.
“That was different,” George counters. “We can’t do overdubs in a live show. What if you want a piano and a bass and two guitars for something? John’s been begging for someone on keyboard for Don’t Let Me Down.”
“It’s...” Paul starts running his hands through his hair, over and over, and George’s heart sinks. “No, this is a get back to basics thing, you know. Get back.”
George sighs. “I know the concept, Paul, but it isn’t working. We’ve barely had one good run through of any song at all!”
“Well, but it’s rehearsal, for live, not takes for an album.”
Barely suppressing a groan of frustration, George drops his forehead to the table. Paul makes a despairing sound. “No, Geo, don’t be like – Come on.” Almost desperate, Paul lays a clammy hand over George’s and squeezes. He lets go before George can figure out how to react. “I’m trying, y’know. I just… Don’t think we need anyone else, you know, we’ve never needed anyone else before. Like you said, there’s no other three people I’d rather play with when we’re on.”
George opens his mouth to respond, probably with something cruel and thoughtless, but then John cuts in: “All right, lads. Break. We’ll be having no punch ups tonight.”
“I’ll stir up some cocktails,” Ringo tries, looking hopefully at George, begging him to let it go for the moment.
Teeth gritted, George relents. “Fine.” His lungs constrict tight behind his ribcage; he can’t quite catch a full breath. This is how it always seems to go with them now – it will be easy, good, even wonderful, for long stretches and then before George realizes what’s happening things will take a hairpin turn and he’ll start to drown again. He doesn’t realize how drunk he is until he stands and the world wobbles a bit. He has to stretch to reach the bottle of rum they’ve been drinking out of; instead of bothering with the glasses again, he simply takes the bottle with him and walks out to Mal’s backyard, slamming the door behind him.
The winter air feels amazing on his face. Snowflakes brush his cheeks and eyelashes like butterfly kisses; a soft breeze ruffles his hair. He closes his eyes. Breathes in; breathes out. Fills his lungs, expands them as far as they will go, then expels the sour air, imagining all his anger and resentment flowing out with it. Distant sounds of cars speeding along, always hurrying to wherever they need to be; a faint muffled argument from one of Mal’s neighbors. Brushing the snow from one of the outdoor chairs, George sits down. He picks each sound out of the world and tunes them all out, one by one.
The back door creaks open, then shuts. Someone sits down in the other chair and George knows it’s John just on instinct, on smell alone. Sometimes he takes a step back inside his own head and marvels at how well they know each other, at how entangled they all are. He thinks he has never known anyone as intimately, as intrinsically, as the three of them, and never will know anyone like this again. Sometimes that fact is a miracle; other times, increasingly more so these days, it feels like a curse.
“Hold out your hand,” John says very quietly. George obeys without opening his eyes. John’s hands curl gently over his, reshaping his fingers, then places a short, small rolled paper in between his index finger and thumb. George opens his eyes to find a joint, perfectly rolled and already lit for him. He brings it to his lips and inhales gratefully.
“You hate us, don’t you,” John says, and it isn’t a question.
George exhales a stream of smoke and with it all of the cruel horrible things he wants to say. Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t I hate you? I’m a child to you, I’m nothing to you, why would I love two people who don’t even know how to look at me like a grown adult? Each cruelty disperses in a curl of marijuana haze, no one ever knowing what an awful person he could be. Except he looks at John, and he thinks John can see some of it anyway.
“No, I don’t,” George says, but he can’t make eye contact when he says it. He passes the joint back and John takes a long drag.
There is a long silence where they simply smoke and drink together, taking and giving what they need from the quiet. “Does he even want me back?” George asks eventually, and he hates how small that sounds, how needy.
“He’ll probably die if you don’t come back, y’know,” John says, and that snaps George’s head up, the matter-of-fact way he says it. “Not about wanting, is it. He needs you back, and he knows it.” John passes back the joint, but as George reaches out to take it, John holds on. George looks him in the eyes. “We all need you, y’know,” John says softly. It’s an apology, more than George ever thought he’d get from John, and instantly he forgives him. John can be so easy to forgive.
“Then why is he fighting me on everything?” George asks once John drops his hand. “Moving studios isn’t hard, y’know. Agreeing to not play on a ship shouldn’t be hard.”
“It’s just his way, you know that.” John waves his hand to dispel some of the smoke. “Takes his time catching up to us, doesn’t he. Prellies, acid. Same with expanding the Beatles, y’know. He’ll come round. Just needs a light touch, he can’t jump in headfirst like us. Bring in someone we know, and he’ll see how good it can be, and then…” John spreads his arms. “Imagine the possibilities.”
“I’m thinking of Billy Preston,” George muses.
“Yeah, man!” John exclaims. “That’s perfect. You can’t say no to Billy, not even Paul.”
“He seemed pretty hell-bent on it,” George mutters.
“Ah,” John says, tapping his temple with one finger. “That’s why I called the break, you see. He gets so bent on doing things his own way no matter what that you have to knock ‘im off course. Derail the train of his conservative thinking. You watch, he’ll give in now.”
I don’t want him to give in to me, I want him to understand me, George thinks, but he’ll have to take what he can get for tonight. George takes a swig of rum for courage and follows John back inside.
The four of them gather around the kitchen table once again; John passes the blunt to Paul, who takes it with a tiny smile.
George clears his throat, and the others take their seats. “Um… Look. I’ve been thinking –"
“Uh-oh,” Ringo says obligingly.
“Shut up,” George replies with a grin. “Really. I’ve been thinking Billy Preston would be great for us. He’s in England this month anyway, and I want to invite him to come see us and play with us for this. Remember how good he was when we saw him with Little Richard?” Paul nods, skeptical but more open than he had been before. “Well, he’s only got better since,” George continues. “He can improvise like crazy, just come up with these keyboard parts out of nowhere. I’ve heard him.”
“But will he do as he’s told,” Paul mutters.
“Why do you always think,” George says through gritted teeth, “that people are trying to get one over on you.”
“Because they are, usually,” Paul protests.
“Billy’s a kid,” John cuts in. “He worships us. Besides, he couldn’t get one over on us even if he tried.”
George uses that break to calm himself with a deep breath and turns specifically to Paul then, trying to keep the pleading note out of his voice when it wants to bleed in. Light touch, he reminds himself. “I’m not trying to break up the group, y’know,” he says softly, and Paul drops his eyes. “I’m not. I meant it when I said that there’s no one I’d rather play with than you three. Having him come in on this doesn’t have to change everything. We’re still us, y’know.”
“And if we don’t like him?” Paul asks, but George knows he’s won.
“Then at the end of the project we say thank you, that’ll be all, and we all go on our merry ways.”
There is a silence; Paul stares at the table and chews on his thumbnail. Then John calls the vote: “All right. Billy Preston, yes?”
George and John raise their hands immediately, Ringo just a second behind. After a long, drawn-out moment, Paul raises his hand too.
George grips the table as his knees go wobbly with relief. He nods at Paul, and Paul returns the gesture. “I’ve got his number,” George says, “so I’ll call him tomorrow.”
“What’s next?” John says.
George looks over at him. “Eh?”
“If you’ve got something to say to me, son, out with it,” John challenges. He’s got his closed-off, faraway look on now, the one George associates with Yoko, and George realizes that having beaten Paul, John is expecting him to challenge Yoko’s presence next.
It almost comes out, then. All of it. It dances right behind George’s teeth, begging to be set free. We know what you’re doing. We know you’re bringing her to provoke Paul, that it has nothing to do with me and Rings, that we’re just your sidemen, you don’t even see us. I don’t even know if you really love her, maybe you do, maybe she’s just convinced you that you do with her fucking heroin. You have to leave her. She’s killed you, you’re not the same, you’re not my friend John anymore when you’re with her and I want you back and it’s why I’m fighting Paul on everything, because I can’t fight you when you’re not even really here half the time. She’s ripped out whole chunks of you with her bare hands and replaced them with herself, her black arts and drugs and it fucking scares me, all of us.
He swallows it all back, and this time John doesn’t see any of it. “No,” he lies instead. “You came alone like I asked. That’s all I wanted.”
John relaxes. “Was that it?” he says, almost bemused, a grin growing on his face. “Cheap get, you are, Harrison.”
He shrugs and sits down, finally, head spinning unpleasantly from the drink and weed mixture. He feels stripped and empty, divested of the thing that had kept him going for the past five days.
Ringo says, “Supper?”
“There’s a Thai place down the street that does late night takeaway,” Paul suggests. George looks at Mal’s cuckoo clock; it’s gone ten. Everyone agrees and Ringo puts in the call while John goes out to the sitting room to turn on the television and George remains seated at the table, gathering his wits, suddenly exhausted. He doesn’t feel as though he’s won; he feels as though he has given them a crutch with which to limp along indefinitely. It feels like a band-aid on a gaping, weeping wound.
On his way to follow John, Paul touches George’s shoulder, uncharacteristically timid. “You’re really back, then?” he asks.
George tries to give him a smile. “Yeah, Paul. Long as you all behave.”
Paul’s grin lights up his eyes. “Good,” he says. “Good. We were lost without you, y’know, really. It…” He catches himself being effusive and dials back. “Anyway. Good.”
After a moment, they both realize Ringo is still in the room, phone still to his ear. He’s staring at Paul with a strange expression.
“Huh,” he says, blank. He seems to realize the line is dead and hangs up the phone.
“What?” Paul asks, puzzled.
“Not a word out of you when I came back.”
Paul’s hand is on George’s shoulder when that hits him, and he can feel Paul realize what he’s done. Paul’s whole body stills, face gone white as paper. George looks away; he wants desperately to bolt from this thing that’s bound to turn into an excruciating argument. But Rich has never been one to twist the knife. He turns to the countertop where he and Paul had laid out their prizes from George’s liquor cabinet, grabs whatever’s in reach, and just leaves.
The sting of that is worse than anything he could have said. It wasn’t directed at George, it has nothing to do with him, but in that moment he can feel so distinctly what Paul is feeling that Paul might as well have been shouting it in his ear: the dread, the dropped stomach, the realization that you’ve truly injured someone you love, that you left him bleeding on the ground and passed him by, oblivious, again and again.
Paul drops into a chair and buries his head in his hands. The clock ticks; the television hums in the background. George stands, intending to flee Paul’s nakedness; after all, he did this to himself. But for a moment, the younger brother in him that can’t stand to see Paul brought low takes over and he wraps one arm around Paul’s shoulders, snaking his other arm around Paul’s chest. Paul, rigid with shame, a deer in the headlights of his own mistakes, doesn’t acknowledge him, but George holds on anyway. After a brief spell of stillness woven between them, he lets go and leaves Paul to it.
In the sitting room, Ringo has settled onto Mal’s couch as though comfortable for the first time all day, head tipped back against the armrest. When George comes in, John is lifting Ringo’s feet and sitting down, laying Ringo’s legs in his lap. George plants himself on the floor near Ringo’s head; Ringo wraps a lazy arm around him from behind. Because they are drunk, really and truly drunk now, the touch is allowed, and George basks in it.
It takes George a few blurry minutes to realize that the BBC is playing football highlights. He watches, confused, for a few more minutes, before asking, “Why is this on?”
He feels Ringo shrug. “Turn it off if you don’t like it.”
George groans. “Too far.”
“PAUL!” John shouts suddenly, and George and Ringo tense. “Pick us out a record and turn the telly off, will you!”
“Leave ‘im alone,” George murmurs softly, but then Paul emerges, composed, and does as he’s asked with no fuss. He re-sleeves the Cream album and puts The Dock of the Bay on the turntable; then he is left standing, fidgeting, uncomfortable. Eventually he plants himself behind Mal’s junky, secondhand upright piano that George knows Paul gave him so he’d have something to play when he visited. Paul picks out off-key notes and plays haltingly with the record while they all chat about nothing and drink.
When the food arrives, it is Paul that jumps up to receive it at the door. He passes out the individual bags and then takes his own into the kitchen to eat.
Ringo sighs. “Should I?” he asks, almost to himself.
George cranes his neck to look back at his best friend, covers his bejeweled hand with his own. “You don’t have to,” he says quietly.
“I do,” Ringo responds, and, true to his word, never able to hold a grudge, he gets up and follows Paul, dragging his food and a bottle of booze with him. John asks with his eyes what happened, but George just shakes his head and moves unsteadily up to the couch to sit next to him. There’s no precedent for it, but John looks so strangely fragile just then that George puts his arm around him. He might weigh less than George does now, and that’s a frightening thought; he can feel all of John’s bones grinding together, poking out through his thin shirt. He goes willingly, if a little surprised, into George’s side.
“You hate me,” John says, repeating his earlier non-question but in singular form, even though I, me, us, we – it all means the same with them. I am he as you are he as you are me. “Don’t you.”
George sighs and decides to tell the truth this time, or as close as he can get to it. “Yes. And no. It’s all mixed up, you know?”
John nods, and that is what George loves about him – he can accept contradiction because, in many ways, he himself is just a bunch of contradictions all tied up in knots.
After a few minutes, George realizes he needs to pee. He has to pass by the kitchen to get to the loo, and when he walks by the doorway, Paul and Ringo look to be in deep conversation, leaning forward into each other, their heads almost touching as Paul gestures something indecipherable that seems very important to him. Ringo is nodding in that way he has. On George’s way back from the loo, they are hugging, tight tight tight, faces buried deep in each other’s shoulders.
Things start to fragment a little, after that, and he can never quite recall the time slip between one conversation and another. Scenes are cards flashed in a hand. At one point, someone puts on a Buddy Holly record; John plays a truly horrendous version of Be-Bop-A-Lula on the piano and Paul joins him on the bench to duet, equally as awful. They giggle into each other’s shoulders, helpless laughter knocking them together, and for a moment it’s like it used to be: booze sweating on the piano, cheap carpet under their feet, Ringo tapping out a rough beat with his plastic cutlery from the takeaway food. Paul and John joined at the hip, united and dragging George and Ringo along with them into the spotlight, insisting on the four of them together.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, the mood has shifted into something melancholic; someone, perhaps Ringo, has put on Patsy Cline’s Showcase. George sips on a whiskey coke, sitting at Paul’s feet like a disciple of Jesus, listening to Paul croon The Wayward Wind softly while John and Ringo play an intense game of cards a few feet away. “And he was born the next of kin… The next of kin to the wayward wind,” Paul sings, almost under his breath as the song comes to a close. He catches George watching him and smiles, a bit self-consciously.
They’re all pretty far gone, so George doesn’t feel any embarrassment when he asks, “You and Rich all right then?”
Paul’s smile fades. “I dunno, y’know,” he mumbles. “I think so. ‘M a fuckin’ fool, aren’t I?”
“Yeah,” George agrees. To soften it, he lays his arm across Paul’s knees and rests his cheek in the crook of his elbow. The record spins on; Patsy’s voice, low and plaintive, feels pulled straight out of George’s soul.
“You know I love you,” Paul says, completely out of the blue. George looks up at him; Paul focuses his eyes on the piano off to the right.
“You can’t even look at me when you say it, can ya?” George says.
With difficulty, Paul forces himself to look down into George’s eyes. The sincerity of it burns into George’s heart. “I do love you, George,” he says again, meaning it, every syllable an earnest one.
And George can’t take it, has to poke holes in it. “You’re only doing that because I said you couldn’t,” he needles.
Paul’s face falls, and George mentally slaps himself. Paul takes the strangest things seriously these days, makes odd jokes about somber things. It’s like his joke-meter has been mis-calibrated. “It’s all right, I’m only winding you up,” George assures him before he can spiral off into some dark oblivion.
“Do you hate me?” Paul asks in a terribly small voice.
George snorts. “You’re the second person to ask me that tonight,” he says sardonically, by way of reply, and lays his head in the crook of his arm again.
“But do you?” Paul asks again.
George sighs. “No,” he says, only half the true answer he gave John because he knows Paul can’t take a contradiction in stride like John can. “I do love you too, Paul. That’s the trouble.”
“Why is that the trouble?”
“It’s why we’re like this, y’know. Why we keep hurting each other. It wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t love him.” Paul freezes. “Or me,” George says, releasing him from the awkward moment, “or Ringo. And it wouldn’t hurt me to fight with you and John if I didn’t love you both half to death. I wish I didn’t, y’know.”
Paul puts a clumsy hand on George’s arm, leans down and kisses his forehead, an awkward but sweet gesture. A long silence passes where they watch John and Ringo’s card game progress, some complicated dance of trading and slapping the deck and calling out numbers that George can’t make sense of.
“He doesn’t,” Paul says very very softly. George’s mind wheels to catch up, and he follows Paul’s eyeline to John. “Not anymore.”
George pushes away from Paul and stands up, suddenly sour. “You are so thick it’s a wonder anything gets through at all.”
Deeper into the night, George finds himself standing in front of Mal’s sitting room clock, staring at it. It’s a huge, ornate monster of a thing, gnarled and wrought in a way that intrigues him. He traces the curlicues and jagged edges with his fingers; he’s sure for a moment that if he can untangle the maze of this clock he can fix everything.
“Have you got the time?” John asks, rocking up next to him. Somewhere in the night he’s lost track of his glasses.
George tries to make sense of the positioning of the arms, the secondhand as it moves inexorably in circles. Finally, he comprehends it. “Two-fifteen.”
“Way past your bedtime, little child,” John chides. George is too far back in his head to craft a witty response; John’s voice echoes a long way before it reaches him, faint and shadowy. John nudges him. “Ey. Where are ya?”
“I dunno,” George says very slowly. “Am I here?”
John touches his cheek, turns it gently toward him so they’re looking at each other. He peers into George’s face. It feels like one of their acid trips together, where they would have to ground each other, remind themselves that they were humans on earth as they crested and came down. “Yes,” John says seriously.
“Thanks,” George murmurs. They maintain eye contact; George is suddenly flooded with the sense that he is seeing the old John, his old friend John, for the last time.
“Is this it?” he half-whispers.
“Is what it?” John matches his volume.
“The last time I see you like…” George gestures helplessly. “Like what you really are.” He is pulling up handfuls of his guts to say it; the pain is unspeakable, like being turned inside out.
John changes, hardens and glosses over before his eyes, the contradiction incarnate: he can be the kindest person George knows, but he can also be the cruelest. “You’ve never seen me like I really am,” John says, calmly. “Never.”
“Bullshit.”
“Only Yoko can see me for who I really am,” he continues, as though George hadn’t spoken.
“Then why’d you run from her?”
John gives him a withering look and walks away. George turns back to the clock, tries to go back into his head and trace the gnarled twists of metal to fix everything. But it means nothing now, just old pieces of rusting iron mocking him, and everything stays broken. He wants to cry, so he puts his fist through the glass face of the clock instead.
Time slips a little bit again; he doesn’t really remember who took him by the shoulders and pulled him away, or if anyone said anything to him, but when he comes back to himself, the four of them are squeezed into Mal’s tiny bathroom, Ringo setting a bloody piece of glass aside and holding a rapidly reddening washcloth over George’s hand while they sit in front of the tap.
“Should’ve led with your left,” Ringo murmurs. “Won’t be comfortable writing songs for a while.”
“Why bother anyway,” he mumbles bitterly. John and Paul avoid his eyes and he suddenly can’t take it, the charade of it all, the way they’re all pretending he means something to this band. On the edge of the bath they sit in tandem, united only by their joint dismissal of him, John twirling his hair in his fingers, Paul gnawing on his nails. “Not a word, aye? Nothin’ to say at all?”
“What is there to say, really,” Paul says quietly, regretfully, and George truly hates him for a moment, no room at all for love, because he’s right. They cut him out because they didn’t think him worthy and they’ve stood by it and they still believe it. His songs will never be more than B sides at best; he’ll never grow older than seventeen in their minds. And what is there to say when faced down with that?
George starts to weep when Ringo pulls out the bandages. He’s so quiet that no one notices for a few minutes, Ringo working gently and diligently at his hand, John and Paul looking anywhere but at him. He wishes he could believe they’re just silly drunken tears, loosened and pushed by the alcohol and the weed and the lateness of the night. He feels suddenly devastated at the towering crash he can see coming, the slow fall from grace that’s barreling toward them, that they are already in the beginning stages of. He’s seen it in glimpses before, in Paul’s idle “Maybe we should think about divorce” at the beginning of the month, at his own echoing of the phrase a week ago, in Ringo’s dull exhausted silences, in John’s pointed ones. But it’s never been so clear as it is now, in this awful inversion of what used to be their safe place – a small bathroom, just the four of them against the world outside.
“There, that’s the las…” Ringo trails off when he looks up. “Oh, hey, no,” he says softly. “Jojie.”
He can see all of it now, their lives spread out along vast desolate plains, all of it crumbling and dying and turning to dust. The storm races across the sky toward them, and he can already feel the first rainfall in the air, electric, ready to destroy everything in its path. Inevitable, unavoidable. All things must pass away, he thinks as Ringo draws him in, and the lyric gives him no comfort.
“I don’t want this,” he whispers through it, shaking against Ringo’s shoulder. “I don’t…”
“What, love?” Ringo asks. Someone’s hand strokes through his hair, Paul or John, he can’t tell. No more words manage to make it past his lips, only soft sobs, pathetic little whimpers he’ll be embarrassed about in the morning, if he remembers. Three pairs of hands hold him, try to dispatch love through their touch. He tries to receive it.
Eventually he gets himself under control; the storm recedes, the horizon stops crumbling and he can breathe again. “Sorry,” he croaks, wiping his eyes with his bandaged hand, which he suddenly notices is aching like crazy. “Fuck, that hurts,” he says, and it cracks the tension in half; everyone laughs, a little wild with relief. John smacks him on the back, a bit harder than he probably meant to; they are all awfully drunk, George remembers.
Time slips and fuzzes out again. There is chatter, unimportant and light, little talks making delicate attempts to knot the snapped threads between them. At one point, John lays his head on Paul’s shoulder and closes his eyes, nuzzling in like a cat. Paul goes still, then lifts a tentative light hand to John’s back. He makes eye contact with George, who lifts his eyebrows in a See? Toldya gesture.
“Bed,” Paul whispers. John nods without opening his eyes, and Paul leads him out across the hallway, into Mal’s guest bedroom.
“And then there were two,” Ringo says. He’s starting to slur the way he does when he’s very drunk and hasn’t slept in a couple of days. There are deep purple shadows under his eyes, almost as though Maureen smudged some of her eye makeup into his skin. On instinct, George reaches forward and hugs him; Ringo doesn’t protest or even seem surprised. He just accepts it and hugs back. They breathe together.
“What was that for?” he asks when George lets go.
Instead of answering, George goes back to Ringo’s other unanswered question. “I can’t see how we go on much longer, y’know,” he says quietly. “I don’t want a divorce, y’know, not really, but I can feel it coming at me. At us. Like a fuckin’ freight train.”
Ringo tilts his head, thinking through George’s despair. “Do you not want a divorce because you don’t want us to break up?” he asks. “Or do you not want a divorce because you’re afraid of what’s next?”
George stares. Trust Ringo to get to the very heart of it in one go. “Because you shouldn’t be,” he continues softly. “You’ll be great on your own, y’know. None of us dirtying up your songs.”
Another unwelcome lump starts to grow in George’s throat. A couple more exhausted tears fall before he can stop them, and he wipes them away impatiently. “I don’t want to do them on me own,” he says. It’s only a half truth, like so many of the things he’s said tonight, but it feels real and honest anyway; it’s the closest he can get to admitting that Ringo is right, that he is frightened at the devastation he can see coming, already bracing against the pain of it.
“You do,” Ringo says, with his quiet confidence, his absolute assuredness that he knows George inside and out, and he does. The knowledge of that makes George feel protected and safe, even inside his fear. “You do, and it’s all right. You deserve to, y’know, really.”
George nods, trying to accept that. He meets Ringo’s tired eyes. “You deserve better than the three of us nutters,” he says.
“Yeah, I know,” Ringo replies deadpan, and they both crack up.
“Bed, you think?” George asks. Ringo nods. They stand together and half-walk, half-stumble across the hallway into the guest bedroom. John and Paul are out cold on one half of the bed, curled around each other, the way they always end up. Ringo and George crawl in under the duvet, George with his back up against Paul’s, Ringo on the outer edge, almost falling off. “Come ‘ead, scoot in,” George sighs, already part of the way to sleep; Ringo does as he’s told and scoots in.
George closes his eyes, breathes in deep. He exhales. Inhale, exhale. The sounds around him – the winter wind, John snuffling and shifting in his sleep, faint music from Mal’s neighbours – fade down into nothing, one by one. He lets his thoughts flow through his fingers like water, not trying to grab onto anything.
All things must pass. The thought streams down his arms and over his hands and out into the universe and for the first time it doesn’t distress him.
He falls asleep.