George shut the door to his car and paused. It was a nice, pretty street. Rows of neat houses with neat green front lawns, peppered with rose bushes and bordered by hedgerows. Some children played at one end, not taking one bit of notice of the Beatle within their midst.
Number seven was no different. Nothing distinguished it from any of the other houses on Princess Street, except for its number. George pushed open the little green garden gate and walked up to the front door, set back from the house by a tiled porch. He rang the bell and looked down at the doormat he was standing on. ‘Home, Sweet Home’, it said.
The door was answered by a short, portly man wearing glasses, with a copy of The Times under one arm and a pipe in his hand.
“Yes?” he asked, looking George up and down with contempt.
“Um, I’m looking for May Brown?” George said.
“No May Brown here,” said the man and made to shut the door.
“Ralph!” a woman’s voice shouted from within the house, “You know very well the lad means our May,” a stout woman in a white apron joined him. She looked like the female version of the man.
They could be salt and pepper pots, George thought, smiling to himself.
“Well, don’t just leave him standing there, let the poor lad in!”
“He’s a Scouser, Mary!” he protested.
“Ralph…” the woman said in a warning tone.
Grumbling under his breath, Ralph opened the door wider and allowed George to step inside. The woman, May’s mother George supposed, ushered him through a narrow hall way into a kitchen with an open fire and the smell of baking bread. She sat him down at the table in the middle and busied herself with brewing tea. Her husband followed them into the kitchen and warily sat down opposite George. George gave him his best smile.
He hated meeting parents; he always seemed to end up giving them the wrong impression. The first time he had met John’s Aunt Mimi she had thought him to be a terrible little thug and it had taken him ages to irradiate that first impression.
“What do you want with our May then?” Ralph asked, viewing George over the top of his spectacles.
“Er, I just need to have a word with her, if that’s alright?” George said carefully.
“No. No, it’s not. It’s quite impossible.”
“Oh,” George said, taken aback.
“What he means, dear, is that she isn’t here,” May’s mother set down a heavy pot of tea in the middle of the table.
“Oh,” George said again, sounding disappointed. ‘Have you seen her recently?”
“No. Is everything alright, dear?”
“Um, yes, it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Have you come far?” she asked, joining them around the table.
“From London.” May’s father snorted at the mention of the capital and opened his newspaper.
“All that way to see our May? And just to say hello to her?” Mary coaxed gently.
“I was a bit worried about her. We didn’t part on very good terms.”
“And who might you be when you’re at home, then?” Ralph said, putting the paper down.
“Ralph! Don’t be so rude!” May’s mother scolded him, reaching to pour the tea. “You know who this boy is.”
“No, I do not, Mary, I certainly do not! He looks the same sort as that reprobate she married!”
“Ralph!” She passed a cup to George.
George smiled, amused. “I can assure you, Sir, I am nothing like the ‘reprobate’ she married.”
He shook the paper out again, “Well, glad to hear it.”
“He’s the boy in the pictures,” Mary whispered to Ralph.
“What pictures?” Ralph exclaimed loudly.
“On May’s bedroom wall, the pop stars, Beatles, is it?”
George nodded.
“Oh yes, ruining the paintwork… Pop star, eh? Yes, I’ve read about you. I know about you, son,” he narrowed his eyes at George, “I’ve got your card marked, sonny Jim. Just you see.”
Mary rolled her eyes. Ralph went back to the paper.
“Perhaps you would like to see May’s room?” she asked George, smiling.
“That would be nice,” George said.
He followed Mary up the stairs to May’s old bedroom. The one she had grown up in, George guessed. Mary opened the door for him and George walked in, only to be met by hundreds of paper clones of himself. The others too, but mostly it was George’s grinning mug. Posters, cut out pictures, magazine articles and photos covered the walls almost entirely. It was difficult to see what colour the walls were underneath. It all felt quite surreal, standing there, surrounded by himself, like being in an inanimate hall of mirrors.
“I don’t know how Ralph could fail to recognise you!” Mary laughed.
“No,” George said, “Well, I guess all us ‘reprobates’ look the same…”
“So what really brings you all this way? Has she fallen out with Jack?” George was quite surprised by the directness of the question. It must have told on his face because then she said, “I knew it! I haven’t heard anything from her in so long. And he rang here a week ago, but he wouldn’t say what had happened. Don’t mention that to Ralph. Her father doesn’t like me to contact her since she married Jack, but I can’t just abandon her like that. She’s still my little girl, however old she is.”
Mary sat down on the edge of the bed and George worried for a moment she might break down in tears. He sat down next to her.
“She and Jack have… er, had a bit of a rough patch, but she’s okay,” he added hastily. “May’s been staying with me for a while. We have quite a big flat in London, lots of spare rooms. But…” he faltered.
“But you’ve upset her?” Mary finished for him, “You must have done to make her leave you. Before Jack came on the scene all she talked about was George this and George that.”
George smiled at the irony. She had liked him so much before he met her, and then when she did meet him, she was so preoccupied with another man she had hardly noticed he was there. “You might say that,” he agreed.
“Oh dear,” Mary said, fretting.
“That’s why I was looking for her,” he said, “to make it up with her.”
“You’re not… are you?” George had forgotten how straight to the point middle-aged Northern women could be.
He shook his head and was surprised to realise he was blushing faintly. “No, nothing like that. We’re friends, that’s all.”
“How strange. May’s never told me about you. I’m sure she wouldn’t have forgotten!”
“We haven’t been friends very long.”
“Oh, how did you meet her?”
“By chance really. I guess I was in the right place at the right time.”
“So she’s left Jack to go to London with you, but now she’s left you too.” Mary said intuitively, turning her head to look out the window.
“Yes, I suppose,” George replied quietly.
“Oh dear.” Mary repeated, then turning back to George, “You go and find her then. You seem like a nice boy. That Jack’s not for her, really.”
“No, I don’t think he is either,” he said softly.
“She married too young. She was naive and stubborn. She should have waited. You find her, Mr. Harrison. You seem a good man, and you sing such lovely songs. What’s that one? – There were bells, on a hill…”
George just smiled.
أنت تقرأ
The Certainty Of Chance (Beatles Fan Fiction)
قصص الهواة'Marry in haste, and repent at leisure.' May knows all about that. Stuck in a small Welsh town in 1964, May's life couldn't be more different to the life of her favourite Beatle, George Harrison. But one chance encounter and that is all that is set...
