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It began as a summer job through her mum’s friend’s sister, meant to be just something to keep Peggy busy until she, in her mother’s words, came to her senses and re-enrolled at the secretary school. But then summer turned to fall turned to winter, and then spring tumbled into another summer, and Peggy’s still here.
Serving up chips and sandwiches in the EMI Studios’ canteen isn’t the most glamorous profession, but it beats secretarial work by leagues, in Peggy’s opinion— shorthand may as well be Greek to her, and just as boring. Plus she likes the feeling that she’s behind the scenes of it all, the mystical capital-I Industry, brushing elbows with the musicians and occasional voice actors who pop in on their breaks. It’s a bit like seeing your teachers outside of school, all unnatural-like, remembering they’re human; the first time she saw Johnny Gentle spill brown sauce on his trousers, Peg had had to bite her fist to smother her laugh, she was so startled.
And then there are, of course, the boys. The Beatles.
They don’t stop in every day, and if they do it’s mostly at the odd hours, mid-mornings or late afternoons when they get a moment to breathe before rushing off to their tapings. All Peg’s friends are absolutely mad with envy that she gets to see them up close— and yes, they’re even cuter in person than they are on the telly, even though typically when they come ambling in they all look a little frazzled: their suits in various stages of undress, jackets shucked and shirts wrinkled, their moptops frizzy, sweat licking at their temples.
They’re putting together their album, she knows, from the conversations she overhears amongst their producers, who keep steadier schedules. They’re the biggest band in the UK, and tomorrow probably the world. They’re allowed to be frazzled.
And to her surprise, at least when they’re in the shelter of the canteen, they’re remarkably normal.
It’s almost always all four of them; they pile into a table together, sometimes with newspapers, sometimes with a deck of cards. They joke and tell stories and smoke a million cigarettes, and almost always end up sharing their meals amongst each other. She learns how each of them take their tea, sees how Ringo always plucks his tomatoes off his egg sandwiches and hands them off to an expectant George, watches how John and Paul fluidly rearrange themselves to accommodate for Paul's left-handedness, elbows practically fused together.
Their dynamic is much like the kind Peggy shares with her own siblings— or at least used to, since there’s not much in the way of it now her older sister’s left to the guillotine of the secretary pool and her younger brother plugs his ears anytime the Beatles come on the radio, much less when Peggy mentions them. He swears he loathes them, but Peg knows it’s because he’s a curly ginger like she is and no matter what he does he can’t get his hair to lie flat the way all the girls want the boys to look these days.
She knows it’s rude, but she likes to eavesdrop. She’s a middle child— it’s second nature. Plus, it’s rather easy with the boys; when you serve tea to a bunch of orchestra members you usually get a lot of posh accents rotating through, so their Liverpool slur sticks out like a rock in the murmuring stream of conversations.
Mind, though, she’s got other customers to attend to, and she’d also probably lose her job if she just spent her whole shift staring at the boys, so she mostly only catches snippets as she clears plates and wipes down tables:
“Eppy’s gonna kill me if I don’t get this stain out,” “Well maybe if you didn’t eat like a vacuum, Haz,” or “Pints tonight, lads?” and “Got a spare plaster, mother Macca? My fingers are nubs.”
They’re all exceedingly polite to the canteen staff, too, always picking up after themselves and saying please and thank you, showing off the manners some of their older colleagues could do to learn. Peggy’s the youngest on the staff so they talk to her more than the others, maybe because they’re just glad to see another young face on the studio property.
George doesn’t say much, but he’ll occasionally wiggle his eyebrows at her to make her laugh; Paul asks after her mother; Ringo signs a napkin for her brother that she knows he’ll pretend to hate but will sleep with under his pillow for years to come.
John’s the only one she can’t really get a read on. She thinks maybe it’s the mad genius vibe, or maybe just mad: he’s always got a crude joke at the ready, always doodling obscene things on napkins. He barely looks at anyone beyond his mates, but that might be because he’s actually blind as a bat, as Peg discovers the day he nearly goes flying across the tile when he doesn’t see the stray chair right under his nose. George laughs so hard he nearly chokes on a chip, til Ringo smacks him on the back to save him.
Because as often as they do take the piss out of each other, they are overwhelmingly protective of one another, too. There’s the day they stumble in and John can’t talk at all, just chugs milk bottle after bottle like the cow personally offended him, while the rest watch on with concerned eyes and grave faces. Paul especially leaned close that day, brow creased in distress, wringing his hands like an old lady.
Paul’s the one who seems to speak John’s language fluently— they’re joined at the hip even more so than the other two. If they’re not seated next to each other, they’re across from each other, heads nearly bumping over the table as they talk.
Usually the canteen is an unofficial business-free zone; no one talks outside their own tables beyond a polite hello and how-d’you-do, if that. This is a no man’s land, EMI’s own Switzerland. No photos or autographs or contracts allowed.
John and Paul are the exception, but she thinks it’s not intentionally so— she thinks they literally just can’t separate themselves from the work. Guitars and the like aren’t allowed, not when everyone’s come to decompress from the work of noise-making, but sometimes the two of them will arrive with a stack of crinkled paper between them, and while George and Ringo play cards, Paul will tap softly on the laminate table top with his and John’s spoons, and John will mutter as he scribbles what are presumably lyrics— never loud enough for the other patrons to hear, but again, she doesn’t think the courtesy is intentional, either. She gets the impression it’s like this anywhere they go. They disappear into their own world, just the two of them.
Some days they don’t have a show to scurry off to, and they’re in their studio well into the evening. One night all four amble in with dark circles under their eyes, fringe a little sweatier than usual.
Ringo’s eyes close the second he’s settled at their usual table, while George lights up a cigarette. John and Paul are silent as they sip their tea, both of them staring at the speckled surface between them, John absently fingering a packet of sugar. After about five minutes, George ambles over to the counter, not far from Peggy’s register where she’s pretending not to listen as she counts the till for the third time. His departure shakes John and Paul from their fog and they look at each other in unison.
“That bit—”
“No, yeah, with the—”
“Was a bit too—”
“Drowned out the—”
“Right. We’ll have to—”
“George is going to kill us,” and then they’re pushing away from the table.
George appears suddenly with some coins for a packet of crisps. He doesn’t quite wink, but he does arch an eyebrow knowingly, which might be worse, and Peggy turns red as her hair, embarrassed to be caught. But George just smiles sharkily.
“Yeah, they’re always like that. Creepy, innit?” he says, and then he goes too, popping a crisp in his mouth and chucking one at Ringo’s head to wake him up from his doze. Ringo, to his credit, doesn’t startle, only squints his eyes to where John and Paul’s jackets are disappearing round the door. “Again?” he groans, but he follows, of course he does.
After a few months in their orbit, she makes a pass at one of them— she’s only human, after all. She’s heard tales of lucky girls who end up with a fumble in a coat cupboard (albeit they’re mostly tales of secretaries, she concedes begrudgingly), so maybe they’d be keen for a distraction, something to take an edge off after a hard day in the studio. Peg’s in the service industry, isn’t she? She can service.
Of course she goes for Paul— it’s the eyelashes, honestly. She wants to know if she can feel them against her cheeks when he kisses. Her friends all claim to be John or George girls, like setting their sights on Paul is maybe aiming a little too high, especially when he’s got an actual model on his arm in all the magazines these days. But Peggy just takes that as confirmation that he’s got a thing for redheads, so maybe she has a chance. She takes that chance one afternoon when they’ve come in for an early dinner, Paul up at the counter ordering for all of them.
She compliments his waistcoat where it’s done up haphazardly, one button off and hanging crooked. He looks down at it and groans exaggeratedly, playing the charming fool, but he doesn’t blush. She doesn’t think Paul McCartney can blush; he doles them out in spades, but he’s obviously settled in his skin in a way most boys his age aren’t.
To her delight, he flirts back— or at least she thinks he does. But the second she opens her mouth to reply, John appears, as if in a puff of magician’s smoke.
“What’s taking so long? Has service really gone that downhill?” he tuts, looking pointedly down his sharp nose at Peggy. There’s a smile on his lips as though to soften the barb, but it’s all teeth, unkind, and the banter shrivels on her tongue. He doesn’t bat an eye when Paul elbows him.
She hands over their food and Paul’s change in stilted silence, feeling suddenly, bizarrely like she did in sixth year when she’d asked out Rod Tomlin when she’d bumped into him at an ice cream stand, unaware his new girlfriend Emily was only paces away. At least Paul is nice enough to give a quiet thanks and an apologetic smile before departing.
As they head back for George and Ringo, arms laden with sandwiches, Paul flicks the side of John’s head. “That was rude,” he admonishes, but there’s a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and after a moment, its match blooms across John’s, something unspoken passing between them.
She watches them settle back at their table, shoulder to shoulder, and under the bright lights of the canteen, John’s hair glints, streaked through with red.
She doesn’t make a pass again.
Usually it’s just the four of them, but every now and then an older man will tag along. There’s a blonde bloke who reminds her of her father, utterly unfazed by their chaos, who drinks more tea than anyone she’s ever met in her life. He’s one of their producers, she thinks.
Then there’s that posh one, with the dark wavy hair and the posture like someone’s taped a broom to his spine. The manager. He’s quiet, almost enough so to give George a run for his money, but there’s something about his presence that quells the storm that is the boys— even John. One look from him and they simmer down, fondly grumbling as they acquiesce.
Peg wouldn’t mind taking a few lessons from him, if only to become the most fearsome canteen employee Britain’s ever known; though she does wonder, sometimes, if she’d have what it takes too, to manage a band.
Regardless of her mother’s disapproval and insistence that down the way of EMI looms ruin, Peg’s actually learning rather a lot about the capital-I Industry from behind her counter. There’s an application for an internship that’s been fluttering in the front lobby for a month now, that she sees every day when she walks in. She knows girls don’t usually go in for that sort of thing, but, well. This is the place for changemakers, isn’t it?
She’s musing it over again one late summer evening when, ten minutes till closing, those floppy haircuts come bobbing through the door.
Peg’s the only one with the closing shift tonight after Maude called in sick (though really she’d gone off to Brighton with her latest boyfriend, the slag) and if it had been anybody else stumbling in— yes, even Gerry Marsden— Peg would’ve given them the stink eye, made them stick to the á la carte items that taste like the Saran Wrap they come cocooned in.
But it’s her boys, so she retrieves the freshly washed and dried kettle from the cupboard and makes a pot. When George sleepily mumbles something about chips, she starts up the fryer. Sure, she’ll have to stay an extra twenty minutes to clean it all up again once they go, but, again. It’s her boys. She doesn’t know when she’d grown so fond of them all, like they’re her own brothers, but here she is. She wonders if anyone else at EMI has found themselves in the same predicament, if this is just a natural side effect of prolonged exposure to the Beatles.
There’s something different tonight. They all look exhausted, but they’re also grinning, blinking dazedly at each other as they settle into their usual seats. Their hands shake slightly around their cups.
They’re more hushed than usual, their instruments probably still ringing in their ears, but since the rest of the canteen is empty Peg can hear them well enough as she readies their snacks. They sit in silence at first, probably listening to Peg’s soft clattering and the songs echoing in their heads. Ringo mumbles a quiet ‘ta’ as she sets down their plate of chips and retreats.
She tries to keep as quiet as possible as she scrubs down the fryer. There’s a peculiar peace over the canteen tonight, like the rest of the world has fallen away and it’s just them in this little chip-scented bubble, and she doesn’t want to be the one to shatter it.
It’s John who speaks first, unsurprisingly.
“Suppose it's done, then?”
"Suppose so," Paul answers.
Another long moment, before John asks, quietly, randomly, “Where we goin, lads?” The other three beam back at him.
“To the top, Johnny, to the top,” they chorus back, disbelief in their voices, and they all collapse into giggles.
They chat and eat a while longer, but eventually George and Ringo decide it’s time to turn in, standing up and shrugging into their jackets. But John and Paul stay seated as they bid the other two goodnight.
Peg watches out of the corner of her eye as George pushes in his chair; the legs screech softly across the checkered tile, and the displaced air picks up his napkin and sends it fluttering, unnoticed, to the floor. Her eyes track it on instinct, though it leads her to something else.
There, beneath the table, John and Paul’s ankles are pressed together. Their pant legs are hitched up slightly as they sit, revealing socks and a thin strip of pale skin above it, and that’s where their calves lean against each other. The contact could probably easily be blamed away on the cramped seating, but as George and Ringo depart, neither of them move to adjust. If anything, John seems to tuck closer, hooking his foot around Paul’s like—
It’s only natural for her eyes to lift, slowly traveling up from their legs to the table surface, where their teas sit cold and forgotten. She pauses there as, in the next moment, John spiders his fingers across the laminate, an easy motion like he’s done it a million times, crossing the distance until his right hand knocks against Paul’s left between their cups, pinkies entangling, and stays there.
It’s the slightest gesture, half-hidden by their dishes: it’s nothing you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t— well. If you weren’t looking for it.
And Peg realizes all at once that she isn’t shocked in the slightest. Rather, she wonders how long she’s known. Probably from the first time she’d ever seen them. Hell, maybe it’s in their songs, even. It had to be, right? They are their music. They’re connected at the hand and the foot and the voice and the heart, they know each other better than anybody else could ever dream of, where they come from and where they’re going, too. It makes sense they’d share the same secrets, too.
She glances up to their faces to see what answers she might uncover there, and freezes when she finds Paul staring back at her.
John doesn’t seem to have noticed his mate’s split attention, still talking quietly as he is, focused on their joined hands. But Paul’s eyes are intent on Peg’s, an unreadable expression on his carefully composed face. Maybe he’s trying to figure her out just as she’s trying to figure out them.
Because Paul, she knows, is all too aware of when they’re being watched. He’s the born entertainer of all of them, eternally tuned for an audience, always ready for a show. She wonders when was the last time they had an evening where they didn’t have to rush off somewhere, didn’t have to race through a mob of screaming strangers yanking at them like they own them, didn’t have to stand up in front of a big glass wall of producers and engineers and literally sing for their supper.
She hopes he gets to relax sometimes. Maybe he can let his guard down around John.
So she gives her gentlest, most reassuring smile— the one she saves for when her brother comes to her room in the middle of the night when he wakes up from a nightmare, or when her sister comes home with her lipstick smeared and a haunted look in her eye, or when her mother clears away her father’s untouched plate from the dinner table— and looks away before she can see what expression he makes in return. Giving him the promise of keeping their secret, but sparing him the obligation of another performance.
She goes quietly back to her closing tasks, letting them be.
When they finally get up to leave, Paul gives her a nod as they pass the service counter to the door, gratitude plain in his eyes, even if he doesn’t smile. John’s a step behind him; he’s got the hem of Paul’s jacket pinched between his fingers like a toddler that doesn’t want to be separated from his mother. He doesn’t spare a glance for Peg, of course. She didn’t expect him to.
She gathers their dishes— snagging a leftover chip for herself— and washes up, closes up the register and switches out the light, locking the door behind her. She’ll be back tomorrow, she knows, but beyond that— who knows where the road might take them.