“You know where I figured out I went wrong?”
Dad, I
“I got a phone call and”
Dad you don’t
“Let me finish. I got this phone call late one night. I thought it was the lawyers, or the landlady or even a bloody journalist. Do you know who it was?”
…I don’t know, who was it?
“There was a voice that said “Hi Dad, I just brought a motorbike.”
He hates the smell. They’ve put a woman on mars but they still can’t get rid of that fucking ammonia stench. There’s not a single person who has happy memories from taking a whiff. Gods bless the NHS.
Claire came in on Wednesday to see him, and somehow managed to bring the entire extended family with her. He still doesn’t like the guy she’s had her litter with, but he’s learned to live with it, and for someone like him that’s a fucking leap and stride. Yesterday it was Sean, and John was beginning to see so much of himself in little Max, so much brooding, so much angst. Max says the kids are teasing him at school, calling him a ‘hipster’ because of his glasses. John recommends he belt the ringleader across the face. Sean laughs and says Grandad was only joking, then with a stern look,
weren’t you, granddad? He wasn’t. Sometimes he forgets he was a pacifist. It goes with age.
Now, it was his eldest – Julian. Poor, poor Julian.
Yeah, but I brought it with that check you sent me
“Come off it, Jules. It takes a lot for a geezer like me to admit he fucked it.”
You did fuck it, actually
“I’m sorry.”
Uh huh
“No, I"
There is a bump at the window. Looking over, they see a lens, supported by hunk of metal and wire, with little wiring propellers. The prick with the controls must’ve pushed too hard on the forward toggle. Julian swears and shuts the blinds.
Bloody vultures
“They never change. Didn’t give you much trouble, did they?”
They almost swallowed me. I felt like a bug
“At least they didn’t try tearing your hair out.”
Heh
“How did we end up here, Jules?”
Oh, er, the smokes, definitely. Or the coke. Or the
“Julian.”
I was kidding
“I thought I was so right. I thought everything was going good, you know?”
We all do
He’s finally softened, he thinks. Dethroning a mad king gives one time to think, and much thinking he did. Eventually he looked the big green lady up and down, took a deep breath, and invited her in. No harm, no foul. If Yoko was still around she would’ve been bloody ecstatic, and she would’ve taken his arm and dragged him around. It’s still hard to walk the streets and look at all the little details without getting mobbed, granted, but they’d find a way. It’s not like a scouser to not learn to evolve.
The fabs petered out too, of course. He’s put out the occasional LP, but all they did was humour him, always put former Beatle right before his Sir. The rest of the world couldn’t really accept it, kept nagging for another album. Just one more, the critics boomed, like it was a push to shit out a nostalgic baby. Weren’t that simple, ‘specially since he was the last one left. First to be mentioned, last one to leave. Not only that, but the ‘Threetles’, as he told ‘they’ (as ‘they’ so love to be called), is one of the dumbest names he’s ever heard. And he was around for Gerry and the Fuckin Pacemakers.
“Yeah, but your old man was a special case. I blame my dad.”
And I blame mine
“Jules.”
Kidding
“No, Julian.”
I really was kidding, dad
“No, I mean, you should.”
It’s okay
“No it—“
Shut up a sec, okay? It happened. Ashes ashes, dust dust. I got over it, mum got over it, eventually the history teaches will too
“...not mine, Jules. He was a right git.”
They both laugh.
He feels a kick.
“Oh.”
Dad, are you
“Nothin, just a”
John
He feels another kick
Oh shit – nurse! Nurse! He’s
John Lennon
He sees things, very suddenly and very clearly.
He sees a truck driver, stout of tum and slack of jaw, sifting through his pockets. There is a jangle, several coins hit the floor and a precious few slide down the grating, never to be seen again by living eyes. The driver curses. He sees the driver go along his route, stop at all the lights he’s supposed to.
He sees a man with a hook nose and a cold heart swim through a crowd of baying press like a fish. This man is a free man, say the man, and he’ll stay in the country. He has a wedded fish by his side, and they look inseparable. Pisces hoping for a new age of Aquarius.
He sees this man make an embarrassment of himself behind a closed door when one of his many nemeses succeed on national television.
He sees the man spend a weekend lost in a place that is very sunny.
He sees the man laugh and sing and scream at a storm while he grapples the wheel of a sinking ship.
He sees the man cradle an impossible child high above a city that never sleeps.
He sees the man phone another, and inform them that he’s started making bread.
He sees the man fall on a hotel desk then stop moving.
He sees this and so much more.
...
And then nothing.
...
And then?
*