Chapter Text
"The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly bent yet..."
--Rabindranath Tagore
***
September 20, 1969
***
George doesn't completely understand how he came to be sitting on wet grass with a wet dog curled up at his side. His guitar, as always, is across his lap. Evening dew gathers on the strings, just enough to make them a little sticky, and on the tuning pegs little droplets are starting to form like a child's unshed tears.
He looks up at the open window on the second floor. He knows it's Paul's bedroom, but he can't recall what it looks like inside. Has he even been in there more than once or twice? All he knows for certain is that there's a mellotron wedged outside the door. It's too big to turn around in the narrow hallway so Paul just sits out there and noodles on it when the mood strikes. But the bedroom itself is a mystery. Not like the old one at Forthlin Road where they used to sit and play guitars together, their miserable, cheap, beloved instruments, until their fingers were as raw as their talent. George remembers everything about that room. He remembers the lace curtains and the way Paul's closet was organized with all the clothes facing the same direction. He remembers the guilty look in Paul's eyes when he started to talk about this amazing guitarist named John.
Maybe John is how George has come to be here, sitting on the wet grass with a wet dog curled up at his side.
***
"I don't mean to pile on, but something happened this morning that you need to know about."
George wedges the telephone handset between his jaw and shoulder. Ringo is the only one to know why George is in Cheshire instead of London, why he missed the meeting to sign Allen Klein as the group's new manager. He's the only one George gave this phone number to.
George can't imagine trying to talk to Paul behind the walls of misery and facial hair. He certainly can't imagine talking to John. He wants to punch John in the face, shake him until his empty eyes roll back in his head. Two days ago, the very same day that George found out that his mother had an inoperable brain tumour, John had appeared uninvited at Kinfauns. Of course he had Yoko with him, silent and judgmental whilst John ranted about how he wanted out of the group. As if George could possibly have given a shit about how John was feeling.
Today it's a relief to hear Ringo's familiar voice instead of the hushed, apologetic tones of doctors explaining that the best they can do for his mother is alleviate her pain.
Sighing, George stubs out the cigarette he'd been smoking - his tenth, or is it eleventh? - and busies his fingers with the phone cord instead. He twists the plastic into ringlets around his index finger. "What happened, Ringo? Did Paul refuse to sign the contract?"
Even the mention of Paul's name puts knots in George's back and shoulders. Paul had fought against Klein tooth and nail from the first moment his name had come up, and it would have been no surprise if he'd simply refused to participate in the meeting.
"Nah, he pulled a face but he signed, right enough."
George extricates his finger from the cord and starts wrapping it around each of the other fingers in turn as he waits for Ringo to keep going. Something in the pause is sufficiently ominous to form a leaden lump in George's stomach as he waits. "Just spit it out, then."
He hears the hiss of a match being lit and the sound of Ringo taking in a lungful of smoke. Ringo holds his breath for long moments. He's getting high before he starts talking. "John's leaving."
The lump in his gut dissolves and coalesces into bats. They flap around inside George's chest and squeal as if to drown out even his own thoughts. "Leaving...?"
"The band. He's packing it in, gonna do his thing with Yoko." It's more of a sob than a sentence when Ringo adds, "We're done."
"He really meant it." George doesn't know why he's so stunned. "He and Yoko wandered over a few days ago and he said he wanted to quit."
Ringo's silence is an unspoken question George needs to answer. "I didn't tell you because didn't think anything of it," he continues. "It was the day we found out about Mum, and in he waltzes with Yoko and he rabbits on and on with her just standing there smirking the way she does, and I didn't think....I didn't think he meant it."
After all, he'd left once himself, and Ringo before him. The group always soldiered on until the prodigals returned; Field-Marshal McCartney always made sure of that.
Of course George hadn't thought anything of it because, despite all his bitching, he didn't want this to happen. Not really. Not permanently. Not like dying.
"Fuck."
"Yeah," Ringo agrees. George imagines him leaning back in his favourite chair as he smokes, blue eyes dim with exhaustion and pink around the rims from too much weed. "I know this is the worst possible time, but I'd rather you hear it from me than the grapevine." Another long inhalation, then, "How is she doing?"
"She's got a fucking brain tumour and they're gonna drill a hole in her skull to keep her head from exploding, Ritch, how the fuck do you think she's doing?"
Uncalled for, no doubt, but how else should he respond when he's spent the day watching his mum writhe in pain.
Ringo says nothing, just makes an apologetic little humming noise.
George rakes his hand through his hair. It's down to his shoulders now, thick as sorrow. "Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to lash out at you like that."
"Nah. I understand. 'S gotta be rough on you. Last thing you want to hear about is the fucking band when your mother's so poorly."
Thinking about losing his mother makes George's memory run like home movies. Paul, clambering aboard the bus after missing a few weeks of school, eyes downcast. Me mum's dead. John, white-faced except where too much alcohol has stained his cheeks red. Julia...Julia...
"There's something else," Ringo says before George can completely wrap his brain around the idea of losing his mother and his band in one fell swoop. "It's about Paul."
It was cancer. Dad didn't even tell us. We didn't get to say goodbye. We were sent off, as if we were in the way or summat.
George shakes his head, willing away the image of Paul's mournful eyes. "What about Paul?"
"He...he didn't take it well."
"No surprise, there. It wasn't just Cynthia that John was cheating on, after all."
Ringo huffs out a chuckle. "Funny you should mention her. Well, not really funny. But that's what John said, that he wanted a divorce from the band just like with Cynthia. We all just stood there for a minute. Then Paul...well, he went to bits."
"Shouting?"
"Crying."
Paul hadn't wept in front of George, not once. Only with John, the night they were stuck in Florida and drank enough to drown out the hurricane. Only John could wring tears out of his Macca.
"Mal took him home," Ringo continues. "Mal kept his arm around him like he was a lost little boy, guided him out past the Scruffs. I saw through the window. Yoko was stood there next to me, looking like she'd skimmed the last of the cream, and all the while Paul couldn't stop crying all the way to the car."
George tries to imagine what that looked like. Tries not to imagine how Paul felt. Tries to stay distant, collected. Tries not to remember offering to walk to Yew Tree Cemetery with Paul to put flowers on Mary's grave.
Ta, but we can't really. There's just a patch of grass. Dad said that headstones are too dear.
For a second he wonders if Paul will offer to visit Louise's grave, when the time comes. If he even recognizes Paul by then.
"...if it makes any difference, just thought you should know."
George grunts, annoyed that he let his thoughts run so wild that he missed the beginning of Ringo's sentence. "Sorry. Been a long day. D'you think I ought to ring him?" he asks, hoping that Ringo will say no.
Which he does, good lad. "I'd let it sit. I'm thinking of popping 'round tomorrow just to check."
"What about John?"
"Fuck John." There's a pause, then Ringo laughs, dry and mirthless. "Of course, fucking John is what got Paul into this mess to begin with."
Startled, George fumbles the receiver for an instant. "Ringo--"
"I know, I know, we don't talk about this." Ringo inhales again. "But now there's not really a 'this' anymore, is there?"
He has a point.
Plus, they don't really talk about anything anymore. Not like the old days.
"No." The concession feels cold. Dead. Their band is dead. His mum will be, sooner rather than later. He shakes off the impending rush of self-pity; after all, it's Ringo's life that's been shattered as well as his own. And Paul's. "Thanks for telling me. I know it wasn't easy."
"Some rough times ahead, lad. Let me know how things are with your mum, would you?"
"Of course." Oh, God. Mum. George clears his throat. "Love to Mo and the kids."
"And send ours to Pattie." George hears the click as Ringo disconnects, then he sets down the phone, frowning.
It's just gone two. If he leaves right now, he can get into London by six or so. He scribbles a note for Pattie and his dad. "Had to leave for London. Emergency. Back tomorrow."
It's only when he's on the M6 headed for London that he realizes he has no idea what, exactly, he's going to do when he gets there.
***