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BEATLES TO LEAVE LONDON, NEW RECORD PLANNED FOR EARLY 1969
Though their self-titled double long-player set is due to be released on the 22nd of this month, the Beatles are already planning to decamp to the countryside to begin writing their next record. Apple spokesman, Alistair Taylor, has confirmed that all four Beatles will be travelling to John Lennon’s new country residence for writing and recording the next Beatles record. He refused to be drawn on the live television event previously confirmed by Paul McCartney in his interview with the MM in September or the rumoured concerts set for the Roundhouse in December with Mary Hopkin and Jackie Lomax. Sources claim that these have not been cancelled, but only pushed back to late January to accommodate recording sessions…
Melody Maker 9/11/1968

If George had been asked, which he hadn’t been, mind, but if he had been asked, he’d have said it was a bloody awful idea right from the get-go.

But he hadn’t been asked, had he? He’d been told.

A month (at the least!) in some old wreck of a house in the arse-end of nowhere.

A month with John and Paul being John-and-Paul (or John vs. Paul) (or John (Yoko) and Paul.))

(Beatle mathematics: the hip new craze to drive you all to distraction. What do you get when you multiply a Lennon by a McCartney and divide by an Ono? A fuckin’ migraine, by George’s reckoning.)

All this in the middle of a freezin’ cold November, staying until god-knew-when, maybe Christmas, maybe after. Stuck with the terrible two, leaving him and Ringo to keep each other sane.

No, it didn’t sound like a bloody nightmare at all, did it?

When he’d left for Los Angeles, there had been rumblings about getting together somewhere and writing the new album, even while they were finishing up the old (new) one. Writing and jamming, all while someone filmed them and then doing a live show, which, if George felt like being fair to everyone’s ideas, also sounded like a bloody nightmare. Especially seeing as the ‘great place for a jam session’ turned out to be some empty film studio in Twickenham. Every single little detail about it sounded rotten to him. The location, the live show, the fucking cameras. All in a place where the four of them would feel haunted by happy little mop-top versions of themselves who could never have dreamt what was still to come. It was like someone had gone out of their way to pick the exact thing to drive him completely batty.

Not that he was paranoid enough to think someone had done that. Yet.

(He didn’t really think they were going out of their way to annoy him. No, like he said, he wasn't that bad yet. It wasn’t much a comfort, though, to think that it was just something that came naturally to them.)

But now, Twickenham was old hat. Now, all good Beatle boys were about Anningley Hall. John’s new hideaway and John’s pet plan. Slope off to the countryside for a few weeks, take a reel-to-reel recorder, their instruments and come back with a new album written. Get the whole wretched thing on tape in Magic Alex's magic new studio before Ringo had to go off to be a film star(r). Easy.

Right?

Twickenham had been Paul’s plan, of course, as had been the Roundhouse gigs for December. (The gigs that everyone knew in their bones were never gonna happen, but would never ever dare to say anything like that out loud.) And both of those grand McCartney schemes dropped as soon as it came out that John had his own ideas as to what to do. When he was feeling particularly bored at rehearsal or maudlin with drink, George sometimes found himself missing the days when they used to argue over whose idea they’d go with. Pete: in or out. Mr. Epstein: yes or no. The new single: John’s song or Paul’s. Now, Paul just rolled over and showed his belly at the slightest show of interest from John instead of showing his claws like he used to. And that was no fun for anyone.

Anyway.

George supposed he was glad him and Ringo were being asked to come along at all. Even if he was barely given any notice. And was ordered back to England from America like a kid home late for dinner. Didn’t even get to go visit Bob, like he’d planned.

Jamming with The Band would have been fun, but playtime was over, Georgie boy. No point in hangin’ out with different bands and seeing how the other half lived. Might get ideas.

In any case, the great Lennon plan was that they’d stay down in this Anningley Hall writing until possibly Christmas Eve.

“John’s had an eye out for a place for him and Yoko since- well, since they got together,” Neil explained on the phone from Savile Row. The since he fucked over Cyn went unspoken. “Wanted something new, rather than moving her in to the old place. Wouldn’t do, y’know.”

George hummed agreement. Oh yes, Kenwood would be far too ordinary for the likes of Yoko. Cynthia had lived there, after all. And Cynthia was the non-grata-est of all non-gratas.

(He squashed down the guilt that he’d been a good Beatle boy and dropped Cyn, just as John had made it clear to. Sometimes it felt like it really was a gang, rather than a band or a job. Hanging around with the wrong person could really land you in it. And god forbid you had an opinion on who really was the wrong person to hang around with. Oh no. Only certain people got to decide that.)

John had lived in Kenwood too, of course. But quiet, suburban Weybridge would not be the done thing for JohnandYoko. George could hardly see the two of them putting out the bottles for the milkman in their dressing gowns.

They’d need something grander. A statement. A house to match the two of them.

And this is where Anningley Hall, near Anning village (wherever the hell that was), had come in. Alistair had been sent an ad ripped out of the Times with ‘buy this???’ scribbled on it in John’s handwriting sometime in July or August. Then, Mal had the pleasure of being sent down that week to give the place the once over (Alistair having quite understandably pointed out that, the last time he’d been landed with something like this, he’d ended up having to smuggle a bagful of cash into Ireland in order to buy a puffin-infested rock in the Atlantic and, really, he was quite happy to let someone else take care of this one).

And John knew how to pick ‘em. Anningley Hall was a right heap, per Mal.

Mal had said, alright, the place looked quite grand from the outside, but even then, only from far away. Once you went into it, anyone with a lick of sense could see it’d cost a king’s fortune to make good, never mind to add all the bells and whistles John wanted. And it was in the middle of bloody nowhere, Mal having gotten lost on winding, dead-end country lanes more than a few times.

The only thing going for it, as far as Mal could see, was the lack of puffins.

Well. As far as he knew.

So of course, John was adamant Apple buy it. Which Apple did. Then he demanded that the four of them spend the next few weeks there writing the new album EMI were already muttering about.

After George managed to get something near the full story out of Neil, he held back a yawn, leaning against the wall of Kinfauns’ kitchen, twisting the cord of the phone around his fingers absently. He had only gotten off the plane from America the day before and was still running on Pacific time. Had he really been dragged halfway around the world for this?

“There even runnin’ water in this place?” George asked, trying to shake off the fog of the transatlantic flight. “Leccy?”

“Course there’s runnin’ water.” Neil sounded about as impressed with the whole situation as George did. “An’ the newer parts of the house are wired. Couldn’t tell you how reliable it is, but you’ll find that out yourself, seein’ as we won’t be able to source a generator to get set up there until the new year.”

Newer. Not new. Cos even the ‘newer’ parts were a hundred years old, if they were a day. And while the place had been cleaned up a bit since the sale went through, that was all there had been time for. From what George could understand, places like these took years to fix up and they’d barely had weeks.

“No chance you want to come down for a few days, Nell, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal?” George joked halfheartedly.

Neil choked back a laugh. “God, no. Remember, it’s Beatles only. No wives, no kids, no distractions!”

And wasn’t that motto both the only saving grace and the most suspicious thing about the whole mess?

There’d be no wives invited. Or girlfriends. No friends at all, by the sounds of it. If you took John’s words at face value, that meant no Yoko.

Unless he was counting Yoko as part of himself, which was possible.

George and Ringo used to joke between themselves that John and Paul were just two halves of one entity, separated at birth by a cosmic mistake.

(Oh, what laffs they had, eh? Not so funny, when you see the entity split back in two. Nor when one half shoves their new girlfriend in the open wound and expects them to heal it. Nor when the other half staggers around, barely able to accept that they’re missing anything at all.)

And the way things were now, there was definitely a possibility that John would see nothing wrong with a declaration like that and then inviting Yoko.

“We’ve got enough oil in for the heatin’ to see you through to the New Year. An’ Mal will call down once a week with provisions an’ that,” Neil reassured him. “You boys won’t be left completely unsupervised, just enough so’s you can get on with writing. John’s already been up and down from there for months ‘n’ all, says the place is perfect.”

“S’alright, Neil.” George found himself caving. “An order’s an order, right? Better get me kit bag ready.”

“You’ll be alright. An’ anyway, you were an electrician, weren’t ye? Maybe you could do a bit of rewirin’!”

George rolled his eyes. “Yeah, a shite one. Harry still won’t let me hear the end of when I fused the Christmas lights at Blackler’s.”

Neil tried and failed to muffle a snigger. “Alright then, well, stay away from the wiring, write a few songs an’ you’ll be home for Christmas Day.”

“Smart alec. Right. Home for Christmas.”

George hung up the phone and braced himself for breaking the news to Pattie. Barely back in the country and being herded off to the countryside for the foreseeable. Without her. At least, it wasn’t his idea. This time, anyway.

God, he hadn’t even managed to unpack yet.

Maybe he shouldn’t bother.

He left Kinfauns and set off for Anningley Hall early the next morning with an apologetic kiss to Pattie’s cheek and took to the road. It was a sleety, dark morning which never truly brightened. It made for a long drive down. He had thought he had driven all over the country back in the touring days, but they’d never really bothered with the out-of-the-way rural outposts he found himself driving through that morning, even though it had felt like Mr. Epstein was booking every gig going for them.

(At least he wasn’t crammed into the back of an Austin Princess this time. And his guitar and amp was safely ensconced in the backseat. God, he missed that Gretsch sometimes.)

This Anning place was only two hours or so from Esher, or so the AA map seemed to claim, but George found himself, like Mal, turned around and halfway to lost after three. He drove through village after village, many of which were barely even boasting a village shop or a pub. One place managed to combine village shop with village pub with village undertaker, which George had to admire for sheer entrepreneurial spirit. A spiritual sibling to Apple, all things to all people.

After likely ruining the suspension of his Mercedes on the godawful roads, he eventually found a signpost for Anning. He drove on, tired as anything and anxious to finally reach the damned place.

A crumbling wall beside the road gave the first indication that he’d found the house. Ancient trees crowded behind it, combining with the sleety rain to obscure any view of the house itself which must have been a fair bit back from the road. What remained of the front gates hung lopsided on cracked pillars crowded thick with ivy and they were wedged permanently open. George could just about see through the tree branches a gargoyle-type statue on top of one of the pillars, but he couldn’t make out anything other than a crouched grey-ish figure with a gaping mouth and jagged teeth. If there was a pair to it, he either couldn’t see it or it had long ago disappeared.

A weathered stone embedded in the wall declared that he had found Anningley Hall.

The way up to the house was horribly overgrown, to the point he could hear grass and dead leaves rustling against the chassis of the car as he passed over it. The trees and hedgerow bordering it grew close together and downwards, so much so that the branches and briars hit and dragged along the windscreen. He winced. God, the paintwork was going to get scraped to shit.

He bumped along the track, feeling more and more like he was crawling through a tunnel. He squinted his eyes, trying to make out an end to the darkness surrounding him. He blinked.

There were girls screaming, surrounding the car. Their arms were beating off it and the noise they were making was terrible and shook his bones. God, they couldn’t stop, but if they kept going, they’d hit one for sure-

George shook his head viciously. He wasn’t back there. He wasn’t.

He wasn’t.

With a nasty lurch, the car pulled itself up and out of the track and there Anningley Hall stood, decayed but still imposing, in the distance.

And there stood Ringo, like a beacon to lost sailors, waving from the front door.

George didn't bother turning off the engine, just pulled the handbrake roughly and jumped up and out of the car, straight into Ringo's arms in a tight hug.

“God, it's good to see you, lad,” George said into Ringo's hair.

Ringo pulled back nearly as quickly as George had shot forward and gave a distracted half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Of course. Stupid.

It was stupid to think things would have gone back to how it had been before he’d left. It probably never would.

How could it?

No matter. Brave face, now.

“Sorry, Rich.” He moved back a pace and did his best sheepish grin. “Just, yer a sight for sore eyes, y’know.”

And not even that brought the Ringo-warmth out.

He couldn't even read what his face was saying, a thing he'd managed with no issue and taken for granted up to that last rotten summer.

“Richie?” he prompted carefully. “Somethin’ wrong?”

Something pathetic must have come through in his voice because Ringo’s face turned apologetic and his blue eyes softened.

“Ah, it’s nothing, lad. Nothing. Missed you, that’s about it. Now, let’s get you settled.”

Letter to Louise Harrison from George Harrison, dated 14/11/1968
Dear Mam,
Got marching orders to countryside soon as I landed, so no chance to come up home. But no harm to be working as you would say! Love to all and hope to get up to you for Christmas or Boxing Day at the latest.
Love, Geo

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Postcard from Ringo Starr to Maureen Starkey, dated 15/11/1968

Landed yesterday. All mod cons not here. No telephone yet. G arrived this morning all the way from the US. Love you all, tell the boys to be good. Send candles and woolly socks! Yr R.

“Want the grand tour?” Ringo threw over his shoulder as George trailed him into the entry hall.

Hall. Didn’t really do the place justice, if he were honest. Made it sound like a chintzy little entry-hallway as you came into some suburban semi-d, maybe with a vase of dried flowers on a side-table if someone wanted to make the house look better than it was. But this hall was easily as big as the house he’d grown up in all on its own, if not bigger, complete with ancient portraits of prune-faced aristos in stupid clothes lining the walls. Even with all the grand hotels and fancy houses he’d seen since ‘62, this was something else.

Truth of it was, though, even the sheer scale of the place couldn’t hide how much it was a wreck. Wallpaper that had probably been worth an arm and a leg back in the high old times of 1747 was rotting on the walls and had completely fallen off in places. A tapestry doubtlessly made by Her Ladyship High-Muckety-Muck about The Battle of God-Knows was so moth-eaten and mouldy, you couldn’t see any colour other than a brownish-grey and there were holes in it you could stick your fist through (not that he’d tried that, or anything). A grand wooden staircase wound its way up to the first floor, but the bannisters were visibly riddled with woodworm and even completely missing in places, making it less ‘Grand Staircase’ and more ‘Complete Death-Trap’.

And it was dark as anything, too. The windows were that old mullioned glass which looked fancy and expensive, but barely let any of the weak November light through. And no, the misty rain that had been falling all morning didn’t help, but it felt like the sun had never reached the inside walls in all the years it had been standing. Certainly didn’t help it looked like the last time they’d been cleaned was the reign of Queen Anne (whenever that had been).

George hadn’t answered him, but he didn’t need to, not when Ringo knew how to listen to his silences (like any good drummer).

He didn’t need to turn around to see George’s unimpressed face at the state of the place. He’d seen that particular face often enough to know exactly how his nose would wrinkle at the damp mustiness hanging in the air, despite the efforts of the cleaners Ringo knew had been sent down ahead of them. His mouth would be screwed up and his brows would be meeting. A dead-ringer for a thundercloud.

“Maybe later then,” Ringo said instead, veering off to a doorway to the left. “How about a cuppa?”

A sigh of relief greeted the idea.

“Rich, how did you know I’ve been dreaming of nothin’ else since Surrey?” George asked with an audible grin.

And if he could get uncomplicated happiness like that from someone every day of his life, wouldn’t he be a lucky fella?

“Long as there are biscuits, mind.”

Never mind. Bottomless pits disguised as a stick insect in a fur coat could sod off back to Esher, something he proceeded to inform a now cackling George.

George dumped his bags and baggage in the corner of the kitchen while Ringo filled the ancient kettle and put it on the equally ancient (but miraculously still working) range cooker.

“Well, at least it’s warm in here,” George said ruefully as he fell into a seat at the rickety table. The wind had picked up outside, rattling the loose slates and whistling through cracks in the walls. He shivered. “Is the rest of the place as cold as that fuckin’ hall? Or as bloody grim?”

”Both.” Ringo busied himself finding clean cups and poking out a pack of the jersey creams he’d brought down with him and promptly hidden away. “The place ain’t exactly welcoming, ye’ve noticed.”

Cold and grim was the least of it. The godforsaken place was barely habitable, even to his untrained eye. Holes in the roof, broken windows, more rooms where the electricity wasn’t working than was…

When he’d landed the day before, he’d asked if it was a joke. The real place they were staying was down the road, right, or in the next village over. Right?

What a bloody fool he could be.

And alright, it hadn’t gone down well, but no-one got punched, he supposed. He might have preferred that, to be honest, than to be told he just didn’t understand, he probably couldn’t understand, could he.

In the end, he had just trudged up to his room to unpack. And, well, it wasn’t exactly the Ritz, but as Ringo muttered to himself hauling a suitcase up onto the (thankfully clean) bed, surveying his bedroom, “At least it’s not Butlins.”

And yes, the kitchen smelled worse than the hot-dog stand at the Cavern. And, yes, there were creepy old pictures and taxidermied animals every-bloody-where.

But he wasn’t sharing bunks in a depressing holiday camp in Skegness. Small mercies. He’d have to try to remember that.

And if you could ignore the smell, the kitchen wasn’t too bad. (Was there a dead mouse rotting away behind a skirting board or cupboard or something? Or some fruitcake put away during the Boer War? One of Lord’s Whatsit’s poor bastard footmen or valets or somethin’ walled up somewhere? Whatever it was, it was fuckin’ awful.) And if you ignored the cracked tiles and the smoke stained wall showing where the back of the range was leaking. The dirt and god knows what else caked on the wall could be just accepted as part of the furniture, he supposed. No amount of elbow-grease from the cleaners had shifted any bit of it.

(God, it wasn’t even the main kitchen, it was the back kitchen. The main kitchen was a gigantic, freezing affair with no electricity and gaps against the wall where sinks and ovens had been, wherever they might have disappeared off to. Main kitchen. For fuck sake.)

This kitchen was the warmest room in the house he’d found so far, though, not that competition was high, so that was in its favour.

“God,” George said reflectively, after a few restorative sips of tea. “What possessed John to buy this dump?” He passed a caustic eye over the surroundings, but met Ringo’s gaze with a small smile. “Least the company’s good.”

And didn’t that just make everything that much warmer?

Ringo grinned into his tea. “Give up the flattery, son. Yer not gettin’ another jersey cream. They’re rationed.”

Oh, but wasn’t he right, though? The whole mess was always that much easier to bear with George.

As if he had read his mind (or maybe just his face), George gave a quick glance to the door out to the hall, before leaning over closer to him.

“An’ whereabouts are our lords an’ masters, anyway?” he asked lowly. “Already writin’ the next number one? Or did they get straight to tearin’ each other’s hair out?”

Ringo’s eyes flicked to the door as well before he answered. It would have been funny, the two of them giving the full Burgess and Maclean routine, if Ringo didn’t know how poorly talk like that went down when their betters were about.

(God, remember when they play-fought their way across the world, in front of microphones and tape recorders and crowds of reporters with their notebooks? Never any fear that anyone would take any word badly and always secure that at the end of the day, when the microphones were put away, that they really were the best of mates?

No, he didn’t remember that either. Likely never happened. Some kid’s bedtime story, that’s all.

He missed those boys they hadn’t really been.)

“Well, now,” he began quietly. “’Bout that. Might be that somethin’ may be up.”

George raised an eyebrow. “The usual somethin’? Or a whole new somethin’?”

“Well. Dunno.” He leaned in closer over the kitchen table and looked searchingly at George. “They ain’t really fightin’, for a start. But John’s bein’ a bit odd and Paul’s worryin’, as he do. An’ you know what happens when Paul’s worryin’ about John.”

Oh, George knew it better than anyone, he’d wager. And by the sour look that had appeared on his face, he was already prepared for the picking and sniping that would come their way from a rattled Paul.

There were only a few things that rattled Paul that way.

When he got dumped.

The competition he had in his head with Brian Wilson.

When he was trying to explain the sound in his head to people who weren’t getting it.

And any indication that someone or something was getting between him and John.

So, yes, it definitely boded well for the writing sessions that they were off-balance and off-beat already. What a lovely few weeks he had in store.

Well, maybe all those dreary knick-knacks he'd seen around the place could be some kind of distraction from the ongoing John and Paul (and George) saga. He could wander around or find some gew-gaw to take his attention when the others were bickering and not writing songs he could play in. Maybe he could teach himself backgammon this time. There was probably one of those sets here. Or dominoes, maybe.

While Ringo could occasionally appreciate having his very own Mrs Dale’s Diary in front of his drums, the reality of it was rotten. So rotten, he’d high-tailed it to the Med only a few months prior.

He’d returned, but the scar remained. All of them, slightly warier around him than they had been before. Even George, no matter how much he hid it behind flowers and hugs. And him, still holding himself slightly separate from them.

He’d had his reasons, though. Still had, even if he tried to ignore them.

A distraction, even in the form of what seemed to be a lorryload of dead and taxidermied animal parts lying around the place, would be fine. At least they might provide a different kind of nightmare. Tough as he'd tried to be, had to be, as a kid, he'd always got the willies from dead stuffed animals. He remembered that there had been a little red squirrel perched high on a shelf of his nan's friend Win's sitting room. It had unseeing glass eyes and creepy little claws he had been dared to touch by one of Win’s grandsons, a right little mixer called Eric. He still had dreams about it suddenly springing to life sometimes.

So a house filled with the bloody things might take up enough of his head that he’d forget about the misery in front of him and the guilt still lurking through them all. If he was lucky. All those poor buggers left to pass eternity in this kip. Deer heads, birds of prey, foxes… Getting killed wasn’t enough, apparently. They had to be posed like a kid’s doll or a mannequin in a shop.

Grim wasn’t even the word.

(His least favourite of the assorted horrors, and it was a close-run race, was a little presentation of tiny brown birds perched on a dead branch. All the rest of the unfortunate animals were faintly ridiculous looking, their faces in weird, almost gormless expressions. Those little birds, though. They looked like they were about to take flight.)

They were already after doing a number on his head. Sleeping in the cold and damp room had proved near impossible and he’d been seeing things moving out of the corners of his eyes all morning. Even when he had been waiting for George, he’d been half convinced that something was lurching through the tree branches up by the gate. Honestly, only in the bloody place barely a day and already driven crackers by a pack of stuffed wildlife. What a shithole they’d landed in.

And it weren’t as if they’d brighten the place up with their madcap, happy-go-lucky antics. Not with how things had been going. And things really had been… well. Not right.

“So how’s John bein’ odd then?” George asked. His face fell. “God, he hasn’t brought her, has he?”

“No, no, don’t think it’s that,” Ringo said slowly and thoughtfully. “Least, I haven’t seen her around. I dunno. It’s a hunch, more than anythin’. He’s goin’ on about how this place is the cure for everythin’ that might ail you, but you know what John’s like when he’s got a new toy, so that’s not surprisin’. Paul got all narked after tryin’ to play a few new songs to him. He jus’ didn’t seem interested. Not even enough to have a go at them. An’ he disappeared this morning for a few hours after breakfast, even though he was the one goin’ on that we needed to be up with the sun so’s we could get straight to it with the writin’. Just walked out the door at 8 an’ we didn’t see him again until 1.”

“8? John Lennon was up at 8? You’re pullin’ me leg, son.” George sat back in his chair, incredulous. “Last time he were up at 8, it was cos he hadn’t been to bed!”

Ringo shrugged. “Like I said. Odd.”

George scoffed. “More than fuckin’ odd. Sign of the apocalypse, that.” He threw a hand out and declaimed with a flourish. “And I saw a Lennon risin’ out of his bed, havin’ a bloody awful hangover an’ a dreadful case of-”

“Alright!” Ringo put up his hands in surrender. “Thank you Bishop Harrison! Look, fine,” he continued more subdued. “It’s very odd. But he just bought the place, right? Maybe he were just wanderin’ around, gettin’ a feel for it…”

George hummed, evidently not quite convinced.

”Well, we’ll just keep a weather eye out, then, right? An’ maybe nothin’ is wrong. I could jus’ be makin’ a thing of nothin’.”

George looked even less convinced. God, he should have known before he’d opened his big gob that George would be just as worried about John as Paul was, in his own way.

”Rich, yer good at this, though. You know when things aren’t right. If you think somethin’s not right, you’re usually right. But, fine. No panicking just yet.”

“Thing’s’ll work out, Georgie,” Ringo offered with a small smile.

“Aye,” George replied. “They usually do, don’t they?”

“Long as the place don’t fall down around our ears,” Ringo joked, trying to lighten the mood any way he could.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this was the exact time that something decided to fall with a loud metallic clatter by the back door.

They both jumped and swore, but once they realised what had happened, they burst out into peals of slightly hysterical laughter.

“Jesus Christ, lad, I thought that were the end of us,” George giggled.

Ringo muffled his laughter into his sleeve and tried to compose himself. “What a way to go. Beatle bonce bonked by bauble!”

After another fit of giggles, George turned around in his chair and looked around for the culprit. “What fell, anyway?”

“Think there was somethin’ hangin’ on the back wall. Nail must have finally given up the ghost. At least, somethin’ fell behind those shelves.”

“Well, it can fuckin’ stay there if it was so keen to get there!”

They both started giggling again, even if it was a pretty terrible joke.

‘“C’mon, lad.” Ringo stood after regaining some of his composure and gestured at George. “Grab yer stuff an’ follow me. Saved you the best room in the house, I have.”

“Let me guess,” George put his hand to his chin, mock-thoughtful, “The one with the most mildew and the most moths and the most ‘orrible ghosts.”

“Do you know,” Ringo said just as mock-thoughtful, “you should do the pools.”

They left the kitchen then, laughing and shoving each other's shoulders like a pair of schoolkids.

Extract from note left by Mal Evans for attention of Neil Aspinall dated 15/11/1968

Isn’t there any way for us to get the GPO to fit a telephone line in the Hall soon? I know John doesn’t want anyone knowing they’re there, but pulling a string or two couldn’t do too much harm. I just can’t help worrying about it. If anything happened, I wouldn’t like to think about how it would go. If the boys let one of us stay there, it’d be one thing, but they’re on their own and I must say, I don't like it at all.

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Postcard from Paul McCartney to Mike McCartney, dated 16/11/1968

Dear Mr. McGear, please send on singed photo of Mike and Roger and John and L. the P. for our Association of Young Lady Delinquents . I will attach thruppence to this card for your trouble. Joy to you all. Love to Ange.

Paul

It was a dump.

A cold, miserable dump.

Paul glowered out the bedroom window at the damp, grey early morning. The crows perched in the tree branches nearest his bedroom window cawed mockingly at him. Fuckin’ actual early birds. It was like they knew he hadn’t gotten any sleep again.

Bastards.

It must have been them he’d heard, clattering around outside on some part of the roof all night. Scrabbling and scraping and tapping. Making sure he never got off to sleep.

Never know. Might be he’d find a shotgun around the place somewhere. That’d be some fun.

(Better not let George see him go a-hunting. Probably go down like Page’s new lot.)

He took another drag from his cigarette and tried to settle himself. Daydreaming about hunting down his feathered foes probably wasn’t the best way to approach a day with the band.

Because he was committed. No, he was, though. He wanted this to work, why else would he have come down here? Or come up with a-hundred-and-one ideas for them to start working on in the first place? Not his fault they turned down the chance to use somewhere near civilisation with Twickenham. And turned down playing the Roundhouse. That could’ve been a real happening, an’ all. They hadn’t played live in an age and a half. Paul was beginning to get itchy fingers at the thought of a real gig. Or heaven forbid, a tour.

It didn’t have to be like the touring before, did it? They were the fuckin’ Beatles, they could pick and choose where to play, if that suited their majesties on lead and rhythm guitar. Any venue you could name would be bending over backwards to have them there in any capacity they could get. And they could get back to what really mattered in rock ‘n’ roll. The crowd. The fans. How else could you know you were connecting with them unless you could see their faces?

Put on a real show for them. Get them going with just the music and the energy. No fancy lights or projections of colours flashing (surely only there to distract from the fact the band only had two minutes of anything hummable spread out over three hours and that the bass was out of tune.)

(Not naming any names, of course.)

But real rock ‘n’ roll didn’t need any of that, in Paul’s lowly opinion.

Every now and then, Paul thought idly about just landing backstage at the Marquee some night and doing a set. Him and John, anyway. It’d be like the old days. What was it they’d called themselves? God, he couldn’t remember.

But him and John. Two guitars, one mic and a stage. That’d fix everything, surely. At the least, it’d remind them that they needed each other, needed the crowd, and nothing else. No-one else.

They’d be fab.

They were far from the good old days, now, though.

1968 had started off badly, gotten worse and seemed set to end on a record low.

Oh, alright, maybe it was the lack of sleep talking.

He’d actually been hopeful when he’d arrived at Anningley, like an idiot. He’d made sure to get there before either of the other two an’ all. Sue him, he wanted to get a bit of time alone with John before those two landed into the middle of things. Him and John needed to get themselves in sync with each other, didn’t they? If they were going to write together like before, they’d need to saw through the timber that had grown between them in the past few years, right? Who could have a problem with that? And when John had been on his own, no Yoko in sight, just like he’d said? Well. He’d believed for a moment that they could do it.

And then they’d made chit-chat and John had shown him to his room and he was a very good boy who hadn’t made any jokes or pulled any faces about the fact John had bought a house that looked like it was rejected from a Hammer Horror film for being too on the nose. John had nattered on about how terribly, terribly interesting the house was and the previous owners had been and how marvellous the woods were and the ancient stones and the lake and underground caves and god knows what else while Paul had smiled and nodded and laughed at the appropriate places. And things had been fine.

No-one had mentioned birds or bags or bloody New York. No-one had said anything out of the way at all.

It was all fuckin’ wrong.

And then Ringo had turned up and that hadn’t helped matters for once. He’d usually put everyone at their ease, but he couldn’t manage that now even on a good day and he hadn’t had one of those since before the blow up in the summer. Even managed to put his foot in it with John, which was an achievement considering Paul had by some miracle managed not to do that.

John got sharp with most people, but it usually sounded like playacting when it came to Ringo. Not this time though. It had cruelty running through it. Paul could only be grateful that it wasn’t aimed at him.

Not that it was even cold comfort. For all the surface civility and nicety, he felt like he couldn’t get his bearings with John or anything as soon as he set foot in Anningley Hall. It was a strange uncertainty and unease deep within him that he barely could recognise and certainly couldn’t name. Paul couldn’t put words to it. He just felt… wrong. Like someone had swapped his shoes around on him or put his head on upside-down or something and it just wouldn’t go away. It didn’t help that the one person he used to be able to rely on when it came to being on the same wavelength wouldn’t reach out a hand to him. Nothing he could do to get his attention worked. And the one thing that usually got them in sync didn’t work. He couldn’t interest John in any songs, couldn’t get him interested in anything that wasn’t this sodding place. He’d been half-tempted in a morbid sort of way to throw out the ‘Y word’, just to see if he could get any kind of rise at all out of him. He’d toddled off to bed that night, trying to convince himself that a good night’s sleep would sort him out good and proper.

He hadn’t had one and it didn’t.

Between the cold and the damp, the musty smelling sheets and the scraping sounds of god knows how many mice and rats scurrying around behind the skirting boards, he’d barely gotten a few hours sleep. He’d dragged himself from his bed not long after 7, cursing John’s new-found zeal for early starts and his declaration that he wanted them working as soon as the sun was up.

Only he’d gotten down to the kitchen to see John waltzin’ out the back door. He’d called after him, but he’d barely got a wave of the hand. A dismissal was what it was and he knew it.

It had been past 1 by the time he’d strolled back in.

Thing was, they’d looked for him an’ all. Not a trace of him. And no, they didn’t know the place, hadn’t even been there a full day, but they’d still tried. They’d had to. But between the woods surrounding the house, the overgrown maze behind it and the multiple pathways through a near-wild garden which blended so much as to be indistinct from the neighbouring wilderness, they hadn’t a chance of finding him. As a matter of fact, they’d been sitting down at the kitchen table wondering whether they should call in the local cavalry, whoever the hell they might be, or just try jamming together to pass the time when he’d drifted back into the kitchen.

They hadn’t gotten a straight answer from him about where he’d been or what he’d been doing, either. Not that that was anything new. There were plenty of nights over the years where they’d only ever get sly hints or jokes about what he’d gotten up to, be it in Hamburg or Liverpool or New York.

But yesterday, John had blandly fobbed off everything they threw at him and then blew up at them for ‘askin’ the wrong thing completely’ in much the same dismissive tone he’d told Ringo that he didn’t know why he bothered trying to explain anything to the likes of him the day before. He’d stomped off upstairs and hadn’t been seen again til the evening when he’d acted like nothing at all had happened and chatted away to the three of them again, nice as pie.

Him and John ended up messing about on their guitars, egging each other on to come up with filthier and filthier versions of old songs. Sally and To Know Him Is To Love Him and Peggy Sue… Anything and everything they could dredge out of their memories. Even Ringo had thrown in the most mournful version of Nobody’s Child he’d ever heard in his life. It had been everything Paul could have wished for in coming down here and he was cursing that they wouldn’t have George’s reel-to-reel until Mal and Kevin came down with supplies in a few days.

Except he couldn’t stop thinking about what John had wanted him to ask earlier. And seeing John’s eyes on him, weighing him up and judging him as wanting, all because he still couldn’t reliably read the bastard’s mind on demand.

Not that he could ask, though. Just had to slap his usual smile on his face and play along with what John wanted until he could figure it out on his own. Seemed like that was just the way of things for him, nowadays.

That was fine by Paul, of course. Not like he needed any explanations or anything. Course not. And if it had been George that had been left behind in that grotty fucking kitchen like Paul had been, he’d probably have his nose out of joint and be lurking around the place with a face like thunder. But Paul didn’t see the point in dwelling on things like that. Not like anything ever came from it, so what was the point? He could drag stuff out that he’d been fuming about since 1961, too, but you didn’t see him doing that, did you?

He took a final drag of his cigarette, then crushed it into the sorry looking geranium pot on the windowsill. And froze.

There was something moving in the trees.

He blinked and-

It was gone.

It had been there, though, hadn’t it? A shadow or a shape or the shadow of a shape…

He stood there for a moment at the window, feeling a shiver start to move through him from the sudden fright.

But no.

He shook his head.

Seeing things. Ever since he’d dropped acid that first time, every so often he’d see something out of the corner of his eye. Course, that was never mentioned anytime George was preachin’ on about how bloody amazing it was. Open those doors of perception and any bugger can just waltz through them into your synapses and squat there without even a by-your-leave.

Maybe he could have a lie-down sometime during the day. Or if George had a song he wanted to work on by himself, he could just close his eyes for a little bit.

He picked up his pack of cigarettes and turned to go out the door, but stopped halfway across the room.

“The Nerk Twins!”

Lost in the memories of the Fox and Hounds, he let himself out of the bedroom and hurried down to the kitchen with a nostalgic smile on his face. It felt like the first real one he’d had on his face in a long time.

It didn’t even get wiped off his face when he was greeted by one of George’s sulkiest grimaces in the kitchen, where he was nursing a cup of tea and eyeing a faintly scorched piece of toast.

“Thought I could smell the chef at work,” Paul couldn’t resist jibing at him.

All he got was a barely civilised grunt in return.

Gracefully, he ignored such childishness.

He grabbed a cup and poured himself some tea. Thankfully, he wasn’t left alone for long with the Great Conversationalist as Ringo arrived and rescued him.

“Morning, Rich.”

“Morning, morning, morning. Morning, Paul. Morning, George. Morning, George’s toast. You’re looking tan.”

And not even that raised a smile from the Scouse Scowler. And wasn’t that something? No matter how much of a misery George could be, he’d dredge up some sweetness for Ringo. But nothing today.

Nice to know he wasn’t the only one suffering. Even if Paul was mourning the friendship he could see slipping through his fingers and George was grumpy about not getting enough kip.

Basically the same, wasn’t it?

The communal grazing continued in silence for a few minutes. Ringo had taken the hint and sat silent next to George, cautiously eyeing him. Paul inwardly scoffed at the concern. He’d get all manner of scolding for even breathing wrong in someone’s direction, no matter what was going on with him or what the provocation was, but George being a prick for no reason at all just got Ringo all furrowed browed and worried.

Honestly, and all over what was probably just a lumpy mattress and a bit of cold!

A shuffling in the hall by the kitchen door announced a welcome distraction in John, who leaned his head into the kitchen with a pinched face.

“We should have started ages ago,” he announced.

“It’s not even eight yet,” Paul objected without thinking, but John had already turned his arse and shuffled off back to their makeshift rehearsal space, located in what’d probably been the fourth best sitting-room.

They sat in silence for a few moments before gathering their cups of tea and finishing off what remained of their toast.

To Paul’s surprise, George hung back and let Ringo leave ahead of them, fussing about with the crumbs on the kitchen table, trying to sweep them up with his hands. Strange. Lately, George took any excuse not to be in the same room as him.

For a brief moment, Paul could have sworn he was back in the kitchen of Arnold Grove and when he closed his eyes, he could pretend that George’s dad was sitting in the next room reading the newspaper headlines out to George’s mum and laughing over silly stories he found.

He opened his eyes.

George was staring at him, not with disdain or anger or even exasperation.

He looked guilty.

“Y’right, lad?” And just as quickly as it appeared, the guilt disappeared as George schooled his face into what Paul thought he meant to be a poker face, but came off more like he had a toothache.

“Um,” George eloquently answered, eyes darting around the dingy room. “Yeah, why?”

“Just seem to be in bad form, is all. Sleep alright?”

Whatever else might be said about Paul, he did actually worry about his bandmates’ wellbeing. He weren’t that self-involved, no matter what anyone else might have to say.

“Sleep? Um, I mean, yeah, or…” He trailed off and busied himself with cleaning the kitchen table, grabbing a rag from the sink.

Paul let this farce carry on for a few moments. Only a few, mind.

“What’s eatin’ you?”

His patience never seemed to amount to much when it came to George.

Maybe it was the little brother-ness of it all. (Though did he lose it with Mike, the way he did with George? He hadn’t lived under the same roof as his actual brother since ‘62, while George and him had been shoved together in rooms and cars and trains from Adelaide to John o’ Groats.)

In any case, he’d had enough of George’s misery guts face, especially at this godforsaken hour.

“Um.”

Paul tried not to let his impatience show, but he couldn’t help but let a sigh escape.

“It’s nothin’,” George quickly said and there went his face again, locked up tighter than Alcatraz.

This time, Paul managed to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

“Aw, c’mon lad, what’s up? Know this place is a shithole, right, but what can we do? We gotta get on with the show.”

He tried to give George an encouraging smile, or at least one that was trying to be.

George’s brows furrowed even more (defying the laws of physics, surely, thought Paul to himself) before he took a breath and his features smoothed.

“Yeah, lad. On with the show.”

He gave Paul a quick nod and off he went out the kitchen door to the rehearsal room.

Paul found himself standing there in that dingy kitchen staring at the space that George had occupied. For some reason that he couldn’t figure out, he felt like he’d fucked up somewhere in that conversation. For all intents and purposes, he’d ‘won’. He’d got what he wanted and George had gotten his head back in the game. But why did he feel like he’d misstepped? Took a wrong turn somewhere?

Shoes on the wrong feet still.

He stared out the kitchen window at the birds perching in the trees. No crows this time, too small for that. Songbirds, maybe. His mum would have known what they were, even from this distance. Great eyes, she’d had.

He turned abruptly and marched himself towards John and the rehearsal room.

Segment of a letter from Bill Kerr, proprietor of the Wren and Whitethorn pub in Anning, to his brother Donald in Australia, dated 15/11/1968

…and to cap it all off, there’s another lot gone into the old hall. Some hippies down from London, according to May - her brother Tony’s gone to Canada, by the by, and good riddance. Well, you know what I always thought of him! May said this new lot are musicians or some such but they’re keeping themselves to themselves for the time being, for however long that will last in that old ruin. Old Nick himself couldn’t drag me through those doors. No sense in these young people, nowadays. National Service would cure a lot of their ills. Mr. Wilson’ll never bring it back, of course…

Chapter Text

A ballad found inscribed on flyleaf in a copy of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, belonging to Frederick Carrington and dated 15th December 1868.

Fair Janet Went A-Riding

Fair Janet went a-riding
Upon a summer’s day
Her fine black hair in a knot
And her mantle green and gay

Fair Janet spied a beggar
A sorry sight was he
A grizzled head, an’ stooped an’ bent,
An’ rags from neck to knee

“Fair Janet, good my lady,
Why ride so fleet this morn?”
“Why sir, I’ll be soon married
For my son is near to born”

John didn’t like to think about Fate. What, all the bad things in his life had to have happened to get him to the Toppermost of the Poppermost? Fuck that.

But, maybe, he allowed, Fate might have had a hand in bringing him here.

Him and Yoko had been coming back from Coventry. They’d turned up with a bag of acorns, argued with some stuffy arseholes who didn’t even understand art or love or trees or anything and then back in the Rolls to get back to civilisation.

And the sodding Rolls had broken down in the middle of sodding nowhere, like it was no better than a Zephyr Zodiac.

Les hadn’t even sighed, just tipped his cap and said he’d walk back to the village they’d passed through a few miles back and see if he could find either a mechanic or a tow.

Left to his own devices, he’d crossed his arms and tried to look like he wasn’t sulking.

All the riches in the world, being one of the most famous people to ever exist and you’re still left kicking the tyres at the side of a road.

Yoko wandered around for a few minutes, making small delighted noises when she saw a bird perching in a tree branch above or a tiny daisy poking through a crack in a dilapidated stone wall. He just leaned against the expensively useless heap of junk-metal he had the displeasure of owning and stared around him disconsolately. Fields as far as the eye can see and birds a-twitterin’ in the trees.

The grand old English countryside, ladies and gents, of song and story and history.

Sickening.

John could just about deal with the isolation of Kenwood (or he couldn’t, depending on who you asked), but somewhere like this, full of absolutely bloody nothing other than dour farmers and village cricket teams and loads of other boring old peasants who hadn’t left their own back yards for generation upon generation… Well, a man had his limits, didn’t he?

He couldn’t imagine how bloody bored he’d be, stuck in a place like this. Even as a kid, dreaming of being in Just William, he’d never have wanted to be out in the sticks for real. Hours from any fun at all and probably days from any decent town.

The last record that made it to a place like this was probably recorded by Edison himself.

He craned his neck around, already feeling the itch at the back of his mind that meditation had never managed to take the edge off, to do something, anything to distract himself.

Something glittered in the distance.

That’d do.

“Here, Yoko!” he called. She turned around and he grinned at her mischievously. “Fancy doin’ a bit of trespassin’?”

They’d walked through overgrown gardens, passed by what might have been a maze at one point and an apple orchard starting to bear fruit.

And in the distance, he saw a collection of stones.

They were strangely arranged, like a giant had thrown them around the place, looking for a lost sock. He wanted to get closer to them, see what the pattern was from above, understand who put them there and why.

He was standing beside it, though part of him thought he hadn’t moved at all. The sky was bluer than he’d ever seen it before and the stones seemed to look bigger than the trees surrounding them, though they hadn’t looked more than 7 or 8 feet tall when he’d seen them first. He put a cautious hand against one of the stones, not knowing what to expect.

Nothing happened.

“John.”

He jumped and turned around to see Yoko, holding out an apple to him.

“Will you take this?”

Her voice was so sweet. As sweet as the apple she held in her hand.

John reached out and took the apple. He knew it would taste sweeter than anything he’d ever tasted before anywhere.

It did.

He handed it back to Yoko and she took a bite of it too.

She smiled at him and he turned back to the stones. They didn’t look outsize now, they were just a collection of stones a foot or two taller than him. Strange how the eye can play tricks.

He turned again to say as much to Yoko, but she was gone.

It didn’t mean anything anyway.

He sat for a few minutes in the still afternoon at the base of one of the stones. The air was so still there. No breeze. No insects buzzing. No birds. But his mind wasn’t restless, for once. He knew he needed nothing else than to be right there and he’d finally get what he was after.

True peace.

But it didn't last long. He heard a voice crying out for him, calling his name over and over and over.

Yoko. Of course. It was almost like he'd forgotten about her, but how could he?

He found her staring uncertainly at the entrance of the maze.

“I thought you might be in here, I didn’t know what to do. Why did you leave me?” she asked with a querulous, chiding tone.

He took her under his arm and kissed her hair.

“I wasn’t the one goin’ off scrumping apples.” Yoko made a confused noise. “Stealin’, somethin’ you do when you’re a right little shit as a kid, like me.”

“I would never steal.” Yoko shot a lightning bolt glare at him.

“Course not. You’re pure as the driven snow, you are. You certainly don’t have half a Granny Smith in your pocket.” Usually by now, she’d be giggling.

But she wasn’t. She turned her head up to look at him, a look of pure distress on her lovely face.

“What are-”

A car engine revved to life in the distance.

“Aha! Here we go, Yoko! We’re saved by the blessed Les Anthony!” He tapped her on the nose. “If me ears don’t deceive me, that’s the sound of a Rolls-Royce rumblin’ happily.”

Yoko smiled at him, relieved.

“Let’s go home, John.”

Home. Now, that was a job he had to look after. Not Kenwood anymore, no.

He and Yoko ambled back the way they came. He turned his head to look back.

The stones were definitely as tall as the trees.

“Fair Janet, oh my true love
A grave for thee and me
For it is the Queen of Elfland
Who laid her curse on me”

Chapter Text

Excerpt from Joshua Brownlow’s journal (vicar of Tanworth-in-Arden), 28th December 1868.
…Tom Bradshaw, of Far Leys, spoke of the recent turbulence and commotion that befell the Carrington family of Anningley Hall in that county of —. They are no strangers to scandal, of course, but an ignominious end for such a family. The Hall still stands, apparently, but who would take on such a place after this tragedy? There is dark talk too, that alludes to young Frederick. He was known to be a fine young gentleman, intelligent and a notable sportsman. He was not found with the rest of the family, Tom says. Where is he now? A sinister affair, no doubt.

George was no stranger to bad dreams.

(If he was feeling particularly waspish, he’d say that everything from ‘64 to ‘66 was a bad dream, writing off the good with the bad with one caustic comment.)

That old one of being about to go on stage and knowing in his heart and soul that, as soon as he picked his guitar up, it’d fall to pieces there and then. Another old favourite: Stu talking to him about a painting and not being able to hear him. That one had been a real bastard when it first turned up, way back in ‘62. (The painting used to change. Sometimes, it was them on stage or in the pub. Sometimes, it was Astrid. Once, it had been Jürgen.) And a real old one from when he was a kid and had seen a creepy old biddy when he’d been on holidays. Her and her big black shawl used to chase him up hill and down dale nearly every night when he was doing his 11+ exams.

No, definitely no stranger to bad dreams.

Sleepwalking, though.

That was a new one.

He stared up at Ringo’s mournful blue eyes and blurted out, “It were her, Rich. She’s here. Yoko.”

Even as he said it, he knew how mad it sounded.

“...’m not crazy, Richy,” he finished off weakly.

For all that he had wished earlier that day that he could see straight through to Ringo’s heart again, he hadn’t wanted this. He didn’t want to recognise the mixture of fear and pity that flew across his face before Ringo was able to master himself.

The look which said ‘I don’t know what to do with you and you’re scaring me’.

The one he’d seen once before.

It had been going so well, an’ all.

After he’d unpacked and they’d all met up for dinner (hot meals were to be delivered daily from the local pub, Neil had promised, and they’d look after the laundry too), they’d ended up chatting and smoking and messing about on their guitars til late. Literally giggling and playing about like kids. Trying to come up with the filthiest lyrics possible to make the others laugh, just like they had done back in the Quarrymen. Any idea that John was off-form or wasn’t himself seemed utterly ridiculous to him at the time, even coming from Ringo. If anything, John was the best version of himself. Laughing and playing the fool and leading everyone along in the merriment, like the Pied Piper. It was like the last few months hadn’t happened. And by the time they’d stumbled off to bed, George had pushed the worries he’d had since his conversation with Ringo out of his head entirely.

He’d fallen asleep quickly, despite the cold and damp and the sound of tree branches tapping and scraping against the window.

Snatches of the songs they sang earlier drifted in and out of his head. Serenaded by the songs of his teenage years, George drifted off.

He’d heard her, was the thing.

One minute, he was in that blue-black darkness of near-sleep and the next, he heard her.

John’s bedroom door had opened. He’d said something then, something near inaudible. And then. That damned half-silent laugh she had.

The sound of it made his skin crawl.

LIes. Lies were the line. He had to get up and have it out with John.

He couldn’t abide lies.

Then he was in John’s bedroom, but with no John or Yoko in sight.

Then he was in the woods, staggering along an uneven path.

He didn’t remember going outside.

Then he was surrounded by giant stones in a rough circle, desperately searching for John under the cold moonlight.

A white sleeve trailing out from behind a weathered, grey stone half covered in moss glowed.

He was a hairs-breadth from catching them…

A hand landed on his shoulder.

He turned and for a second, it was Yoko, but then it changed. To Stu, to Mr. Epstein, to Julia Lennon. And finally to Paul. Paul with empty eyes and a wide smile on his face that looked hungry.

He screamed and stumbled back.

For a horrible, dizzying second it felt like the whole world swung around on its axis and a sharp pain exploded in his chest.

Everything went black.

When he opened his eyes, he was lying, not in his bed, but on the floor in Ringo’s room and Ringo himself was anxiously hovering over him.

“I’m not crazy, right?” he repeated.

Ringo summoned a reassuring smile, even if it wobbled at the edges. “Naw, Georgie. Sleepwalkin’ usually don’t mean you’re crazy. Plenty people sleepwalk.”

“Sleepwalkin’,” George echoed, unsure. "That’s all it was, right?”

“Right,” Ringo exhaled. “Nothin’ more. There’s no Yoko here. You jus’ had a bad dream an’ started wanderin’.”

Wandering. That was all it was. Richy said so, so that was that. George nodded and hauled himself upright.

“Sorry. Um. For wakin’ ye an’ that. I’ll- uh, get meself back to bed.”

He started to move towards the door but halted when Ringo touched his arm gently, then drew back his hand swiftly.

“Richy?”

For a second, he thought Ringo was going to give him a reassuring smile and tell him not to be a silly bugger, wasn’t there room in here to bunk up together? Like before?

But he didn’t.

“It’ll be alright, lad.” That was all. George knew that Ringo knew it wasn’t enough, could see it in his eyes, but he couldn’t offer any more. He didn’t push it though. And he wouldn’t try to. That never got him anywhere, he told himself.

If Ringo was a coward, so was he.

Needless to say, he wasn’t exactly at his best in the morning. Sleep hadn’t returned easily and though he hadn’t dreamt of Yoko again, plenty of the old favourites paraded through his head til dawn arrived.

Once morning came, George stood in their motheaten excuse for a rehearsal space guitar in hand, with hardly any sleep. Hanging on to civility by his eye teeth, he just had to stand there and smile and not scream at anyone.

But as much as he would have liked to really throw his toys out of the pram, he kept his counsel for the time being. He was Fort Knox. Nothing was getting out.

Well. Apart from whingeing to Ringo. But that didn’t count.

And what happened in the kitchen didn’t count either. He’d been so on edge, so nervy at breakfast just seeing Paul (the real Paul, he reminded himself). He’d been fine (well, not fine, sleep-deprived and sour as anything, but alright). It was hardly the first time he’d had a bad dream. It was hardly the first time he’d had a bad dream starring one of them, for fuck sake. It shouldn’t be bothering him.

But he’d looked out the window and suddenly, he wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. He was back in that stone circle and he knew that there was something behind him that was not Paul.

It only lasted half a second, but it was long enough.

He was in the kitchen and Paul was still standing there, with his eyes closed, looking more like his friend from school than he had done for a long time.

Was he really going crazy? Was his mind trying to set him against Paul? For all the bad feeling there could be between them, he’d never been afraid of him.

But then Paul had started talking and he’d had to do his best to not lose it entirely. It wasn’t his fault, he had to remember that. It was like getting cross with someone after arguing with them in a dream. He’d come close to throwing some verbal darts at him but as much as parts of him (the sleep-deprived bit, the missing-Pattie bit, the bit who’d heard one too many nitpicks about his guitar playing) wanted to see the fireworks, his better nature (the bit that sounded like his mam) won over. He’d bit his tongue.

On with the show.

Ringo slowly and deliberately leaned forward to adjust a cymbal and looked up at him with a grimace. “Might want to look a little less like you want to strangle someone, lad. Bad for morale.”

Well, he were tryin’ to be Fort Knox…

He took a steadying breath and tried to focus on the here and now. Get through the morning.

Maybe everything could be sorted out through music. It had kept them all together for this long, after all.

Someone just had to be the one to kick things off.

He stared at Ringo, Ringo stared at Paul and Paul eventually huffed and broke the silence.

“Right, I’ve got this new one…”

It was obvious after a few runthroughs that John wasn’t really interested in Paul’s new one. And he wasn’t interested in the next new one, either. Nor in the new one George volunteered for the slaughter. He barely said anything, good or bad. God’s sake, he couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to pay attention, eyes wandering to the windows not even halfway through the songs.

It was one thing for him to pull that with George’s numbers, but Paul weren’t used to that kind of treatment. Be a shock to the system, that.

Around 11, Paul sighed and tried again.

“Alright. How about-”

“No,” John interrupted.

Paul froze, mouth still hanging halfway open. His shoulders hunched up and George could have sworn his beard had bristled.

“You got somethin’ new, then?” he asked, all casual like.

George couldn’t help but wince. It was weird, hearing all the warning signs in Paul’s voice that were usually aimed at him, aimed at someone else. He wasn’t the target, but he still reacted the same. Hardly fair, that.

John didn’t seem to react at all.

That definitely wasn’t fair.

He just strummed a chord and made a dissatisfied face.

“Y’know, we’ve never done one bloody thing that really means somethin’. Why can’t none of you see that?” he snapped out.

They didn’t dare look at each other, they hardly dared breathe. You had to see which way the wind was blowing sometimes with John. Stick the head carefully above the parapet, wait for the mortar fire…

“Think I’ve finally done it with this one, though. We’ve jus’ been messin’ about until now. Writin’ kiddy stuff. But, yeah, I’ve got somethin’, Paul.”

Paul fidgeted in his chair. George knew he was running through all the hits, the so-called ‘kiddy’ stuff. But he’d not argue it. Not now. And wasn’t that proof of how bad things had gotten?

(George didn’t even bother thinking about his own songs. He knew damn well what people thought of them. They weren’t exactly quiet about it, were they? Too blunt, too preachy, too sour, not good enough.)

But then John started playing and everything in the room that wasn’t him flew out of George’s head and he understood exactly what John had meant about everything else they’d ever done.

It flowed like water but tangled up in your head like a briar and wouldn’t ever leave. The words were simple, almost quaint, but there was a whole world in there, one which took over George’s whole body. It was a song which held you when you were sad, roused you when you were tired and soothed you when you hated everything and everyone. It was everything and it was over too quickly.

As the last notes rang out, George could feel it slipping away from him. What had the first line been? Something about a hand and the sky and a bird in flight. But the specifics escaped him and he needed to hear it again. He couldn’t abide the thought of never hearing it again.

“Yeah, it’s pretty good John, s’pose we can make somethin’ of that, alright.” Paul’s voice broke into whatever daze George had fallen into. He shook his head and piped up, “Yeah, Johnny, any more like that an’ we’ll be off to a good start.”

John was usually like a flower bending towards sunshine when it came to praise. But not today.

“It already is somethin’.” He hadn’t looked up from his guitar, but they were in dangerous territory, George knew.

But Paul couldn’t help it. He couldn’t leave a song alone. He wanted them to sound like he knew they could sound, how they did sound in his head. He started throwing out suggestions like backing tracks and harmonies and how they could get it to sound like somethin’ else, John!

John’s head snapped up and Paul stopped in the middle of “flutes or maybe chick-” with the ferocity of it.

“Don’t you listen?” John snarled. “Y’can’t take this over. What I say goes on it, not you, not George Martin, not nobody.”

He strummed a chord again, then slapped a hand over the strings to stop the vibration. He pulled himself out of the chair and glowered at them.

“Can’t bloody think in here surrounded by you lot an’... an’ all your buzzin’! You’re suffocatin’, you know that?”

“John-” Paul tried, but he was already halfway out the door, shaking his head like he had a flea in his ear.

“Need some air. Can’t- God, I jus’ can’t fuckin’ deal wi’ you all. I’m goin’ for a walk. Don’t fuckin’ follow me.”

Paul, rising from his chair, dropped back into it again at the sharp order. The door slammed behind John with force and rattled the room and all its inhabitants. Silence fell and the three of them tracked the sound of hurried footsteps through the house and out the kitchen door.

The first thing George thought was, What the fuck?

The second thing was, At least it wasn’t my fault.

(Was it?)

He looked over at the other two, thinking he’d see the same shock and upset on their faces. And there was upset, yes, but no shock. Ringo looked as miserable as he’d ever seen him but with an unnerving edge of fear on his face. And Paul…

Paul looked as if he’d murder the next poor unfortunate who crossed his path.

Quickly, George averted his eyes.

“What’s that look for?”

Too late.

“Jus’-”

“Don’t you start too!” Paul, all chipper just a few hours ago at breakfast, sounded like he’d swing for him, given half a chance.

George raised his hands in surrender and said nothing, waiting to see if the powder-keg would finally go off. His hands didn’t shake. This wasn’t the dream.

It wasn’t.

The powder-keg remained dormant. Paul just wilted in his chair.

“Look,” Ringo said after a few silent moments, that edge of fear gone again. Maybe George had imagined it. His own feelings mapped onto Ringo’s face. “How about a cuppa and then we see if we can figure out Johnny.”

George nodded and was relieved to see Paul nod too, that initial burst of fire now dampened. (But not gone, no, never gone entirely. And that was no dream.)

“Right.” Ringo stood up and stretched. “Cuppa first then. Think me eyelids are stickin’ to me eyeballs.”

Sat around the kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea that was probably strong enough to march itself up to the road and start thumbing its way back to London, George took stock of the whole rotten situation.

Body: feelin’ shite actually. Jet-lag (which only seemed to get worse as he got older) made everything feel sharper, but not in a good way (much like the prellies had, come to think of it). Lack of sleep was making him aware of every individual bone and muscle in his body. His nervous system (never the most robust, especially since touring) was about ready for the glue factory. And his stomach was definitely regretting eating toast for breakfast that was 90% char.

Spirit: pretty low, thanks.

Company: jury was out, but the judge definitely had the black cap in his back pocket.

External situation: godawful. Don’t ask.

All in all, not doing too great.

He sipped at his tea disconsolately. To think, he could be in Bob’s sitting room right now, maybe even getting the guitars out and playing.

“Any idea where he might have gone off to?” he asked the other two gloomily. From what Ringo had said the day before, he wasn’t too hopeful for an answer.

Ringo shrugged and fidgeted with his St. Christopher’s medal and Paul just looked sulky.

“Dunno. But no chance he’s gone too far. He’s all wrapped up in this place, isn’t he? He’s probably off inspectin’ the land an’ measurin’ the maze.”

George thought again about that laugh in the night.

No. That was a dream. His imagination running away with him and coming up with his worst nightmare. And a house like this, with weird noises and unfamiliar shadows - well, that’d put all sorts of mad ideas into someone’s head.

(Not that Yoko was his worst nightmare, as dead not-keen on her as he was. No, it was John lying. That, he couldn’t bear. That. Not a bird, not a broken marriage. John respected them enough to expect them to deal with all that. And lying would mean he didn’t anymore.)

So he bit his tongue again and just nodded.

Ringo took a drag off his cigarette and gazed out the kitchen window.

“Look. Paulie’s right,” he pronounced, his tone even. “He can’t have gone too far. We’ll each take a direction and have a gander. Worst comes to worst, we’ll at least have gotten some fresh air an’ John’ll be back before dinner time jus’ like he was yesterday.”

It wasn’t the best plan, but as George and Paul exchanged looks, they silently agreed that it wasn’t as if they had any other ones to offer. Ringo hadn’t a habit of taking the lead in situations, but when he pointed the way, they were (or, at least, George was) inclined to listen.

They left the kitchen table as it was, cups, cutlery, crumbs and all. They stepped out and for a moment looked around, hoping that their wayward Lennon would appear from around a corner with that nonchalant smirk of his and a smart-alec remark.

Not to be, though. A crow flew overhead, the only thing breaking up the stillness of the landscape surrounding them.

George slung a quick look over at Ringo. “He’ll be back before dinner, yeah?”

Ringo shrugged and gave him a half-hearted smile.

“Can’t see ‘im decidin’ to ramble around the place all night. Johnny’s not one to appreciate the cold. Or missin’ a meal. Bit like Jostick.”

George stifled a laugh. To be fair to Ringo, John did have a lot of similarities to a spoiled cat.

“Maybe we could put ‘is dinner out on the back step and he’d come running?” he suggested wryly and Ringo gave an answering snigger.

He looked over at Paul, who didn’t appear to be listening to them, but was instead craning his head around, as if he still expected John to jump out from behind a bush or down from a tree.

And thank fuck, too. Paul generally didn’t appreciate talk like that.

George found himself looking to Ringo again. As unsteady as George was beginning to feel, he could still look at Ringo and know that they’d be steered right. Steadiest backbeat in the business, that lad.

“Why don’t you go through the gardens, Georgie?” Ringo suggested.

Good old Ringo. He’d bothered him enough over the years about plants and trees and whatnot. If he was being optimistic, he’d think that he was trying to cheer him up.

He summoned a grateful smile. “Sounds good, Rich. Where’ll you go?”

“Think I’ll try along the other side of the house, the woods an’ that. Paul? That leaves out by the old stables. Mind tryin’ there?”

Paul looked at them both blankly for a second, then plastered a grin on his face.

“Sure thing, fellas. No time like the present, is there?”

With that, he set off at a hurried pace towards the old rickety stables, looking for all the world like the man about town, late for an assignment at The Scotch or the Bag O’Nails.

George and Ringo nodded at each other and they too set off on their separate ways.

The garden path wasn’t easy to walk. It disappeared and appeared at random, the border plants escaping their boundaries and creeping across it slowly over the years, eroding the path inch by inch til no sign of it remained in places. George was left to follow a strange, zig-zag route through tangled weeds and uneven ground which threatened to topple him over at every step. It felt like it took twice as long to get anywhere than it should.

And it wasn’t as if the garden was a good distraction either. Even George, who would admit to maybe having more of an interest in the different cultivars of dahlias than most people, couldn’t find an appreciation for it. And it wasn’t just that the grey sky above made everything seem lifeless, either or the standard winter straggliness. No, it was, for want of a better word, the spirit of the place.

The bare branches of trees hanging over him, curled and gnarled like claws, nearly scraping the ground. Overgrown bushes that grew into each other, creating weird combinations where rose branches with nearly completely wilted flowers clinging on seemed to explode out of a gigantic holly bush. As if the holly had some terrible growth coming out of it, like a tumour.

It felt like the garden had been left on its own for so long, that it was gone too wild to ever be brought back.

God, he was so bloody tired. If it weren’t bloody November, he’d sit down and rest, but it was bloody November and he could just hear his mother warning him about sitting down somewhere damp. And he couldn’t rest here. No, he’d get no rest in a place like this.

He walked on. He’d been walking for half an hour now and felt like he’d barely covered even half of one side of the garden.

And his eyes were making every small shadow look like it was bigger and more sinister than it really was.

He was getting disoriented now, every turn in the path seeming to lead him towards more darkness and more wilderness. Was he even still in the garden?

There were standing stones in front of him and trees to his right.

He didn’t like the look of the stones. He couldn’t put his finger on why. He just knew they didn’t like him.

No.

He just knew that he didn’t like them.

He stared at the stones. There was something about them. There was something he should remember. But he couldn’t. He had to get away from them.

Would he, though? He’d already been walking for hours. And the house. The house never felt like it was any closer. Or further away. He didn’t get it. How it worked. It shouldn’t work.

Was he going in circles?

What was he doing here? Could he remember?

There were standing stones in front of him and trees to his left.

He was so fucking tired.

He looked up again at the house. It looked smaller than he thought.

He just had to get back to the house.

Without even thinking, he broke into a run. No-one ever believed them when they said they were fast, faster than any other bugger. Years of running from the screaming hordes, after all. Neil had joked at one point that, if it all went to hell, they could do the Olympics as a relay team.

He was still fast and, though the shoes weren’t exactly made for it, he sprinted back up the garden path and back towards the house.

He ducked under an overhanging branch and shoved a few briars out of the way.

He was so close.

Just another few yards and he’d be home free.

A crack sounded behind him and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a black shadow moving. He gasped and felt his legs tangle up underneath him. He was falling before he knew it and clattering hard into a hawthorn bush.

George curled up on the damp grass as something passed over him, far too close for comfort. He could hear some kind of hideous noise, like laughing or scraping or-

He forced himself to look up at whatever or whoever had attacked him.

It-

It were fuckin’ crows.

God, he could never tell the lads this.

He stared up, confused and breathless, at the grey sky from the ground, rain now falling directly onto his face and in his eyes. What had gotten into him? How the fuck he had gone from planning to meet Bob Dylan to this fucking disaster in the space of less than a week?

Small mercy that no-one had seen him lose all dignity.

He pushed himself upright with a groan and took stock. He didn’t think he was properly hurt, really. He ached all over and had a few scrapes from his collision with the bush on his hands and his side, but nothing major.

He staggered back to the house, cursing all feathered fiends as he went. He didn’t bother looking for any of the others, just trudged up the stairs to his bedroom. All that tiredness and aches had just now hit him like a brick to the head and the one thing he wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Sitting down on the bed and leaning down to pull off his boots, his side pulled at him and he was reminded of the scrapes and cuts he’d been ignoring.

“Jesus Christ, can’t a man just sleep,” he muttered and stood to look in the mirror to assess the damage.

His hands had most of the worst of it and he knew without looking that his elbow definitely had seen better days. A long scrape on his side looked red and angry with little bubbles of blood along it. Nothing serious. Nothing lasting. He’d wash his hands and call it good.

He really just wanted to sleep.

George woke up to Ringo knocking on his bedroom door, calling him down for dinner. He sat up, groggy and discombobulated. Tired as he had been, sleeping during the day hadn’t worked out the way he hoped it would. Time was, he could put his head down anywhere and get some kip. But it didn’t feel like he’d had any real rest at all. A vague feeling of dread clung to him as well, but god, that wasn’t nothin’ new. And those old dreams again. He pointedly avoided looking out the window for fear of seeing an old scarecrow of a woman clad in black, with a long bony finger pointed towards him and calling doom down upon his head.

He pulled himself up and out of bed, his head and side aching. Everything ached, though. Shoving his feet into his boots, he shuffled out of his room and downstairs to dinner where hopefully, John would be waiting.

Note on patient’s file dated 16/11/1968 - St. Lucia’s Home, Shropshire.
In distress this evening before dinner. Unco-operative and arguing with Nurse Lindsay again.
Has asked for telephone twice. In good health otherwise, progressing as expected.
Upped dosage of —--- to ensure sleep.
REMINDER - NO ACCESS TO POST/TELEGRAPH/TELEPHONE

Chapter Text

Excerpt from note from Vicky Kerr to her friend Lindy Kane dated 16/11/1968
I’ve got a plan to go over to the Hall tomorrow and you, Miss, are going to help me. We’ve got to find out who these musicians are! Imagine, they’ve come here all the way from London! Gosh, who could they be? Jenny said that they’re probably just no-hopers shoved down here so they don’t take up space at a proper studio but she’s always acting like she knows everything about everything just because she spent a week with her aunt in Croydon last summer. And she lied about seeing Traffic at the UFO Club too because that’s been closed for ages and you know I heard that on Radio Luxembourg! So, we’re going to trip our way down to the Hall tomorrow and find ourselves some nice musicians who might take us back to London with them and away from this boring place!

Let no man say Paul McCartney didn’t learn lessons.

Alright, so he had slightly put his foot in it with that song of John’s (what was it, Bird Flew By or Bird In Flight or something?). Maybe he shouldn’t have jumped in with all those ideas, good and all as they were. Sometimes he let his mouth run away with himself without thinking about it. He couldn’t help it. Wasn’t that how he’d almost got thumped by Dave Davies a few years ago after all? (He still didn’t get why he’d overreacted like that, though. Try an’ compliment a song and get nothin’ but grief. That lot were always looking for a fight.) But it was supposed to be different when it came to him and John. Wasn’t that how they always worked? Give and take? Able to take a criticism on the chin? If he didn’t think much of one of John’s or vice versa, no-one was taking their ball home in a sulk. But John had decided to do just that, leaving them to trudge around the grounds looking for him in vain. Paul had found empty stables and sheds and enough rusty tools to keep a museum happy, but no John. He’d given up looking after an hour and ended up attempting to skip stones over the ornamental lake he’d found. He’d never been too good at it, though and ended up just flinging stones into the greenish black water in a temper. He’d returned to the house, cold and tired, but feeling like he’d at least gotten rid of some of his frustration in those depths about the whole situation.

At least John had shown his face for dinner.

He was quiet though. Not half as ebullient as he’d been the night before. But he weren’t sulking. No, he just looked tired. (But weren’t they all? He hadn’t slept well since they’d got there, Ringo looked like he needed a holiday and George looked even more miserable than he had at breakfast.)

Paul did his best to keep spirits up, but the others weren’t exactly meeting him halfway. He did get a few laughs out of Ringo and John made a few terrible jokes which George smirked at, so he’d count it as a success anyway. So he went to bed trying to count the positives from the day.

Alright, so John hadn’t paid the blindest bit of attention to his songs.

Sure, he’d stormed out not even halfway through their planned day of songwriting.

And, yeah, John was acting like he could just strum any old racket on an acoustic and call it a backing track.

But he had a decent kernel of a song. If Paul kept his mouth shut for now, maybe he could get George Martin to talk him round about that. Talk about adding a piano, maybe. See what kind of instruments were lying around the studio. But it was a song from start to finish so for now he’d just have to bide his time. He’d suggest John record it onto the reel to reel as is and try fighting that battle again once they got back to civilisation. And he had at least two, if not three songs that were workable, he just needed to get John interested in them.

All in all, four songs. That was nearly half an album. Not bad. Pretty good even. He wouldn’t have bet on that when he’d arrived here. With that thought, Paul let himself drift off to sleep. A deeper, more restful sleep than he’d gotten in a while, too.

And a good thing too. The next day was hard going. By the time they broke for a lunch of slapped-together sandwiches, he felt like he was after running some kind of a marathon. Keeping everything on the rails was no joke, especially when he was trying to make sure no-one was noticing he was doing it. Not only was he watching every word that came out of his face and ensuring that any slight twitch he made couldn’t be interpreted by John as him trying to control things, but he was watching every move the rest of them made and trying to anticipate every possible issue.

John did have another song, which was a positive. Sure, it was similar to the bird one, but maybe by the time they got back to London, they’d either have knocked it into a more unique shape or maybe they could combine the two songs and make something better. Worked before, hadn’t it?

Paul had pulled out a few scraps he’d been working on, even giving the small upright piano in the corner a tryout.

They still didn’t like Junk, the pricks.

George hadn’t bothered playing them anything. God, he’d really want to pull his socks up if he wanted his usual two songs.

But still. There was something there now, instead of nothing. And even a Beatles Nothing was worth ten of any other band’s Something.

Jesus, it was hard work, though, just trying to manage the unmanageable.

(There were some days where he found himself wondering how more people hadn’t died while working for them. As much as he’d found fault with Brian’s management at the time, since he’d died, Paul had new-found appreciation for what he’d achieved. By any sane man’s reckoning, he should have been done in by it all halfway through 1964. The booze and the pills weren’t really to blame. It was Beatle Business that killed Brian. Beatle Business took no prisoners.)

(The only prison Beatle business had was fully occupied by the four of them, after all. Life with no parole.)

It wouldn’t have been too bad even twelve months previously. Back then, he’d felt like he could still be himself around them all. That day had gone, though. Now, he had to make sure no-one could see what was going on below the surface. No-one was allowed to see the cogs and gears spinning and spinning. But Jesus Christ, all this hiding and putting on a mask took a toll on a man.

Don’t get him wrong. Paul was no stranger to putting up a front to get the job done. He’d been doing it long before the band started, after all. But it wore on you. And some days he worried that there wouldn’t be a Paul there one day when he looked behind the mask. Where did the act stop and Paul start? Was he gonna just turn into the shiny, surface Paul and lose touch entirely with the Actual Him?

And yeah, time was, he could do without it around the others. No need to pretend to be someone else when you were all basically the same person, after all. But now, he needed so many of them just to get through a few hours with the four of them together, it was exhausting just to think about. He needed to be the boss, but no-one could see that he was being the boss. In fact, if anyone did look at him, he needed to look like he didn’t want to be the boss. He needed to look like he was absolutely fine, happy even, with whatever John brought to proceedings, be it some new avant-garde concept he’d have to pretend to never have heard of before or some new avant-garde girlfriend who he’d insist on having on their records. And then he’d have to pretend that George’s songs were in any way comparable to his or John’s. And then he had to look like Ringo leaving hadn’t hurt, but nonetheless, show how glad he was that he returned And that it didn’t matter that George and Ringo could still be exactly who they were with each other with none of the fear that Paul had. That he wasn’t jealous of that at all.

It felt like he was in a play and getting recast every five seconds.

He knew it wasn’t sustainable.

But all he had to do was get to Christmas, right? He could do that. It was, what, a month?

Easy.

Finally given the reprieve of lunch, he’d fled to the kitchen and some grub. He gnawed on the ham and cheese sarnie single-mindedly. At least all he had to do at lunch was be hungry.

John had only picked up an apple to eat.

“That all you’re havin’, mate?” Ringo asked solicitously.

John looked down at the apple core in his hand almost as if it was his first time seeing it, then looked back up at Ringo.

“I like apples,” he said simply.

Paul waited for the punchline. The easy allusion to Apple. The Lennon dry wit.

It didn’t come and it was dead weird.

Silence instead filled the small room, curling around each of them and shoving down on their shoulders.

Eventually, Ringo cleared his throat.

“That’s alright, lad. That’s good.”

He paused then looked over to the kitchen window with a frown.

“Here. You hear somethin’?”

He stood, then cautiously stepped closer to the back door. Then, with a quickness Paul had nearly forgotten he’d had, his hand shot out and jerked open the door and two teenage girls in matching red duffel coats fell into the kitchen rather unceremoniously.

Fuckin’ great.

“Oh!” squeaked out the blonde one. “Vicky! It’s-”

Abruptly, the redhead (Vicky, presumably) clapped her hand over the blonde’s mouth.

“Shut up! Oh my god, shut up!” she hissed.

This earned her a shove, which she returned with interest.

As amusing as this was, this was something that needed to be dealt with carefully. They didn’t want these two to go off blabbering about how they had found the Beatles on their secret getaway. But they also didn’t need them to go off blabbering about how they had found the Beatles on their secret getaway and they were just dreadful, simply awful to them.

Wouldn’t the press just love that story.

Time for the Apple Scruffs’ best mate, Paul.

He plastered a kind smile on his face and stepped over to the girls.

“Girls!” he chirped out. “Delighted to make yer acquaintance!”

He held out a chivalrous arm to first the blonde, then to Vicky to help them up from the floor. Ringo and George quickly pulled out the kitchen chairs for them, following his lead.

Bewildered, they sat down and looked up at them. The mixture of fear, astonishment and triumph on their young faces was all too familiar.

Yes, if they played their cards right, they’d convince these girls to keep their secret and that it was their own idea, to boot. Time to soft-soap them, as his dad would say.

“So, girls, this is a bit of a surprise,” he began with a carefully calibrated smirk. Just enough to get the girls all flustered. Not enough to put their backs up. “Won’t you have a cuppa?”

“We’re so sorry!” blurted out Vicky, the blonde girl seemingly having taken to heart her instructions to stay quiet. “We just wanted to see who was here!”

“Don’t fret about that,” Ringo reassured them. “Now, c’mon an’ have some tea, ladies. We won’t bite.”

“Promise,” George added with a cheeky glint in his eye that he must have really dug deep to summon, considering how half-asleep he’d been five minutes before.

The girls’ eyes drifted over to John. He hadn’t made a sound, not even when they’d tumbled through the door. Had barely even looked at them. He fiddled with the apple core still in his hand and then looked up with a charming smile.

“We’d like it if you did, girls. You could give us all the local knowledge about this place. The stuff that don’t make it into the brochures, dontchaknow.”

A little tense bit of Paul unwound when he spoke. There was nothing quite like it when all four of them were all in sync. It was like a well-oiled machine. They moved and spoke and thought as one.

After a bit of small talk and introductions (the little blonde introducing herself shyly as Lindy, the daughter of the local vet, Vicky being the daughter of the couple who ran the local pub), they gladly accepted cups of tea and a few biscuits donated from Ringo’s stash.

“Well, there’s nothing really to know about Anning,” Vicky said, her snub nose wrinkling. “It’s ever so boring here. I really think this is the most exciting thing to happen here in around a hundred years.”

Lindy nodded in agreement, then piped up quietly, ‘Yes, ever so boring. Are you going to be going back to London soon?”

“Not sure, girls, not sure,” Paul answered lightly, committing to nothing.

“We ain’t been here only a few days,” drawled George, “you tryin’ to get rid of us already?”

The two girls chorused earnestly and wide-eyed that no, no, of course they didn’t want that!

“Just kiddin’, girls, don’t worry,” George laughed. If Paul didn’t know him as well as he did, he’d have believed it an’ all.

John still hadn’t said much up til now, but he leaned forward on the table, chin in hand and fixed his eyes on Lindy.

“How about you tell us all the stories you’ve heard about this place? Surely you’ve heard of some ghosts or ghoulies hangin’ around? Anythin’ goin’ bump in the night?”

Lindy blushed and tucked a lock of blonde hair which had escaped out from her velvet headband behind her ear. “O-oh! I’m sure there’s nothing like that!”

Vicky elbowed her. ‘“C’mon Linds, there’s plenty! You know half the old folks won’t go near this place!”

Lindy shot her a mulish look and hissed something in her ear which caused Vicky to roll her eyes.

“You’re too uptight. None of it’s true so there’s no harm in telling them!” She leaned forward towards them. “Lindy still believes in fairies and all that rot, you know.”

“I’ll never, ever, speak to you again, Victoria Kerr,” Lindy muttered, and Paul really couldn’t blame her. He’d have been just as mortified by that at her age. But they seemed alright, these two. They reminded him of being a kid, running around, saying and doing the stupidest things that you’d swear you’d never forget all your life. Lindy, obviously the shyer one, the one to be talked into recklessness. Vicky, the wild one, the leader, the mouthy one.

Not that they reminded him of anyone. Oh no.

“It’s not so stupid to believe in fairies, Miss Vicky,” John said with a firmness Paul hadn’t expected. He was looking at her intently over his glasses. “In fact, I’ll say I believe in ‘em. Why not? The world’s boring and grey enough without us deciding that fairies ain’t real jus’ cos grown ups tell us they’re not. Fairy stories go back a long way, after all. Longer than the kings and queens of England.”

Vicky wilted a little bit in her chair and focused intently on the cup of tea in front of her, while little Lindy’s face was graced with a small but grateful smile.

“It- It’s not that I really, truly believe in them,” she said softly. “My mum and granny do, though. And I think… I think there might be something to it, but I don’t really know. There’s places around here that feel… oh, I don’t want to sound silly!”

“Don’t worry about that, love.” John reached over and patted her arm, prompting a shiver from Lindy and a daggers look from Vicky. “If we ever worried about looking silly, we’d never have left Liverpool.”

The two girls giggled at that and the tension broke somewhat.

“Well… alright!” Lindy’s hands fidgeted with the toggles of her jacket. “You’re going to laugh at me, I know, but there’s stories about the standing stones up here. If we were going out playing when we were kids, we weren’t allowed to go anywhere near them. Not that I wanted to. They’ve always given me the shivers. And the farmers around here say that you shouldn’t let your animals graze near it, even though there’s good pasture near here.

“Oh? Why not?” George asked. His voice sounded strangely tight. He was always the one who found it hardest to keep up a polite front. Maybe it was an insult to his integrity. Or maybe he just couldn’t be arsed. It depended on the day what conclusion Paul came to.

“Um! Well!” Lindy stumbled over her words, her cheeks lightly pinking. No prizes for guessing who her fave rave was then, Paul noted drolly.

She mastered herself after a quick sip of her tea and tried again. “I don’t quite know where it comes from but some people say the animals get sick and other people say they go missing. And you’re not supposed to keep cows near there at all because of the milk, you see.”

“There’s meant to be a ghost here too!” Vicky broke in. “Some one of the local lord’s sons killed the whole family, oh, a hundred years ago, and he was never caught, and now people say that he wanders the woods because he’s forever cursed!” She looked around at them after this with a macabre glee. “Isn’t that perfectly horrid?”

Ringo stifled a laugh at Vicky’s obvious delight at telling this grisly tale. “Sounds like a real drag for that bloke.”

“Oh yeah,” Paul agreed. “Sounds like a bore an’ a half.’’

George let out a half-hearted laugh but John didn’t say anything. He turned the apple core over and over in his hand and seemed lost in thought.

The girls finished their tea and made to leave, not without extracting promises from them that they might call again the next weekend and they in turn extracted vows of secrecy about their presence which were easily made, given how little the girls wanted their parents to find out what they had been up to when they’d promised they were just going for a walk.

They escorted them to the back door and waved them off after a few hugs and kisses to the cheek. After only a few steps, Lindy hesitated then turned back.

“If you’re in trouble, or- or you need anything, my house is just down the next laneway off the road towards the village. We’ve got a telephone line for Dad’s job, if there’s an emergency.”

They all thanked her for her offer but reassured her that they should be fine. George gave her a gentle “thanks, Lindy” which she ducked her head and grinned at.

When they closed the door, Paul turned to the rest, prepared to herd them back to the living room and remind them of the purported reason they were down there but stopped himself on seeing John’s pensive face.

“Y’right there, John love?” he asked softly.

John startled, then nodded. “Yeah. Jus’ thinkin’.”

“Twenty quid for ‘em?” Paul joked, but John didn’t even crack a smile, just remained half-lost in thought.

“Bet that bloke got it all wrong,” he said eventually and, before Paul could ask what he meant, he’d turned and left the rest of them standing there like lemons.

Paul hurried behind him, the others in his wake. Eager to catch hold of the mercurial John’s sudden whim.

Mask back on. No room for mistakes on this little jaunt.

They had a Beatles album to write, after all.

Extract from article titled ‘Distressed wife requests aid to locate husband’ in The Times dated 23/12/1918
Mr. Cooper’s wife raised the alarm the next morning when he did not return from the public house, The Wren and Whitethorn. His drinking companions declared that they had seen him leave the establishment in good humour after two pints of beer. No trace was found of him in the following days after an extensive search of local woods and rivers. His wife has offered a reward of £10 for any information that leads to his discovery.

Chapter Text

Excerpt from memo from Derek Taylor to Mal Evans dated 15th December 1968
‘...and when you get there, could you possibly bring any influence upon John to telephone or write his Aunt Mimi? I have been the unwilling recipient of her complaints that he is not fulfilling his familial duties and she is, as I’m sure you will know, not a lady to be fobbed off with talk of ‘deadlines’ and ‘record companies’. I have given her my word that we will bear upon him that she is not amused by his abandonment of her (her words, I assure you, not mine) and that if that silly boy knows what’s good for him, he’ll at the very least send a note to prove he’s not dead (ibid).’

When you were a kid, Ringo thought, time stretched out forever. If you were told that Christmas was in a month when you were six, it felt like it’d never come. Every day you’d ask how many days were left and be told this gigantic number that you could barely even grasp.

Christmas , you decided, was never gonna come.

But it did. Christmas morning came. And even if there was damn little in your stocking, it was still a wonder because Christmas had come.

Now, Ringo was seeing the days between him and Christmas disappearing far too fast.

They’d gotten around twenty demos down on tape once they hit the second week in December, but there was no talk of stopping. More specifically, there was no talk of them taking a break for Christmas.

There was no talk of them going fuckin’ home.

It was alright for John, he found himself thinking unkindly. He’d already disappointed his kid. Did he have to make sure Ringo disappointed his kids as well?

He’d written, of course and a couple of times, he’d snuck up the road to Lindy’s house where she had let him use their phone to call Mo and the boys. He was fairly sure George and Paul had done the same.

He’d better remember to leave her a good few quid before he left, rather than leave her to pay the piper when the bill came in.

She was a good kid, Lindy. So was Vicky, in her own way, loud and impulsive and trying to be brash but with a good heart underneath. But Lindy was a quiet little thing, who didn’t seem to want anything from them, except a chat every now and then. She was at home alone a lot, she said, because of her parents being out working so much, so she had taken to coming over after school every other day or so for the company. Her and George got on the best, nattering about flowers and animals and how she was finding school. On a quiet afternoon, if they weren’t playing, George and Lindy would sit outside with mugs of tea, softly talking, bundled up in a fur coat and duffle coat respectively. An odd pair on the surface, they fitted together on a deeper level.

Forever the baby of the band and of his family, it seemed like George quite liked acting the older brother. Lindy, for her part, had changed from a fan with a crush to a kid who just wanted a friendly ear. Ringo had made some joke one Saturday evening after a game of Forty-fives about George going the extra mile to keep the local fans happy and he hadn’t laughed. He just looked a bit sad.

“She’s lonesome, Rich. An’ she’s a sweet kid. Y’know, she’s real clever, but don’t give herself credit.” He paused and fiddled about with the deck of cards he’d been shuffling. “She reminds me of Astrid, a little bit. Can’t y’see it?”

Ah. Well, that explained a lot. George always had a soft spot for Astrid and vice-versa. The whole band had, really, but they had a special friendship.

And now that George had said it, Ringo really could see why he’d become so invested in this sad little blonde who always looked a little lost. So he’d leave off of the jokes and such.

Not least because it was one of the few times that George didn’t look unhappy.

He weren’t grumpy, like how people always said he was. (God’s sake, that were just how his face was. An’ his voice. Not his fault he were from Speke.)

No, he’d seen George grumpy and angry and insulted before. Plenty of times even. That wasn’t what was happening here. No, George looked awful.

Whether it was sleepwalking or persistent bad dreams or something else entirely, Ringo didn’t know. George wouldn’t say. And Ringo was afraid to poke at it too much. George seemed fragile and while there used to be days when Ringo would have been the one to keep the pieces together for him, that wasn’t now. Now, he was afraid to even breathe too close to him.

He wasn’t sleeping right, that was about the only thing Ringo was sure of. The bags and shadows under his eyes looked painful. And his complexion, pale at the best of times, was verging on grey-white. He seemed out of it any time they weren’t playing but not like how you’d get on something like Mandies so Ringo didn’t think it was anything chemical.The only time he was able to dredge up genuine enthusiasm for anything was John’s songs and the contrast between that him and him the rest of the time nearly worried Ringo more than anything.

Nearly.

No, George not sleeping wasn’t even the thing that worried him the most.

It was John not eating.

He picked at meals, sure. He drank tea. But the only thing Ringo ever saw him eat with any relish were those bright green apples he always seemed to have to hand.

He’d thought, when he’d got there, that there was at least one good point to them being out in the sticks and that was that John would get off whatever he’d gotten on in the summer. The whole Yoko thing and the Cynthia thing had taken up most of people’s attention, but not his. He was on some bad drugs. Probably heroin. He’d gotten skinnier and skinnier and more and more unkempt. They’d blamed it on stress, they’d blamed it on the affair, they’d blamed it on any fucking thing they could except for the thing it obviously was.

So when Anningley Hall had been proposed with its remoteness and isolation, Ringo thought, Good. Good, he’ll get away from all that there. It’ll be just us and we won’t bring any of whatever it is down and he’ll get better.

More fool him.

He didn’t know if he’d made some arrangement with a dealer to get deliveries down here (which would explain the random disappearances out into the grounds for hours on end which happened at least twice a week even now in the wintery freeze that had hit hard this year). Or maybe he’d brought down some giant stash and hidden it about the place before the rest of them had arrived.

Maybe he kept the drugs wherever he kept his bloody green apples cos Ringo didn’t know where he was getting them either.

They seemed to be appearing out of thin air. He’d had a quiet word with Mal when he was dropping down another batch of supplies about them and he didn’t have a clue about them. He weren’t bringing them, Mal had said with a puzzled air (understandable, since when had any of them ever worried about eating enough fruit?). They weren’t in the kitchen. There was no store of anything like food in any of the sheds or half derelict stables. And it was December, so it was hardly like he was going outside and picking them.

But mystery apples weren’t really the problem, were they?

He couldn’t even swear it was heroin. John was dreamy and quiet, except when he was the life and soul of the place. He wasn’t nodding out around the place. He didn’t even look like he had in the summer. All clammy and with the weird doll-like cast to the complexion that junk gave you. Hell, if you stood him next to George in his sleep-deprived state and asked someone which they thought was the junkie, it was even odds which one they’d pick. And there were new drugs appearing nearly every week now, it seemed, so heroin really was just a bloody guess. It could be anything. Something flown in to London in October and straight down John’s gullet or up his nose.

And it weren’t that he felt like bein’ some goody-goody about it. He’d brought down his own stash of brandy and Paul had definitely enough reefer with him to knock more than a few horses.

But the weirdest thing, the thing that really set his nerves on edge, was Yoko.

Or more to the point, the lack of Yoko.

It was one thing for them to never bring her up. They were so used to skirting around the topic, just to avoid a half-hour speech on how she was better than the rest of them, or an argument when they even mildly disagreed, that they were old-hands at avoiding even things semi-related to her. But John always had a talent for relating everything and anything back to whoever he was currently madly in love with, be it Yoko or Françoise Hardy or Dylan.

But now, not only was he not mentioning her, but he couldn’t be led to talk about her, either. Wouldn’t even acknowledge her existence.

It were damn odd. He'd talk about his mother or Brian or even Stu before the woman he'd destroyed his marriage for.

They’d tried the direct approach, but that rarely ever worked with John, unless you counted damage of the emotional and property kind as ‘worked’, so they hadn’t expected much from that. They’d then tried coming in from the side, talking about Japan and New York and her mates there, that whole Fluxus lot and Warhol and his crowd.

And nothing.

He just ignored them to carry on whatever he was doing, or drifted off, or accused them of more ‘buzzing’ before flying off in a temper.

Maybe they’d broken up. Maybe that’s what this whole thing was about.

It’d all be a bit too good to be true though, wouldn’t it? Not only could all John’s oddness be neatly packed away in a box labelled ‘Yoko’, but there would be an expiration date to it. Break ups were rotten, they all knew that and they all knew how much it could twist you up in your head and your body. Every teenage boy and girl out there had gone off their tea when their sweetheart did them dirty, after all and John wasn’t a whole pile different. And wandering off to get some time to feel sorry for himself because he couldn’t admit it to the rest of them seeing as they’d never liked her anyway?

Well, that would be the other thing that would be too good to be true. All the discord and drugs and difficulty that the ‘Yoko thing’ had introduced could be forgotten about. John could write it off as a mad impulsive notion that had taken him over for a few months and go back to Cynthia and Julian and stop arguing with the band and bringing her into everything.

God, but it was tempting to think it could be that simple.

Probably wasn’t though.

Things couldn’t go that easy for them. Safer to assume that John had somehow been turned on to a drug similar to heroin but newer and weirder and subtler.

But whether he was or he wasn’t and whether George was sleeping or wasn’t, he still wasn’t going to hang around all Christmas just to watch them destroy themselves.

He felt callous and shitty even just thinking it. But then he felt worse at the thought of missing Zak and Jason opening their presents from Father Christmas. Leaving Mo to explain yet again that Daddy had to work with his friends and miss all these little moments of theirs.

In ten or twenty years, would they think he hadn’t wanted to be there? Hadn’t wanted to be with them?

As much as he’d like to say that he always made up for missing time with them, he knew that he didn’t do it enough and it didn’t undo any of it. It would always only be a bandage on top of a wound that would remain for the rest of their lives. Long after he was gone. He didn’t want to be remembered only for the things he hadn’t done.

So as much as he worried about what he would leave behind when he went home for Christmas, he couldn’t stay. He wouldn’t. If it came to it, he’d just leave a note and just sod off. Get up early to drive home Christmas Eve and drive back on the 27th of December to face the music.

(As tempting as it would be to confide in George, he couldn’t leave him to take the brunt of it from the others. Not now. Not with George being how he was. It killed him to think of keeping a secret from him, especially when silence and keeping secrets during the summer had driven Ringo away from him and the band entirely, but this was to protect him. Wasn’t it?)

But that was the worst-case scenario. Maybe they’d just wrap it up in the next few days. John’d just look up at the end of the day and say, “Thanks for coming, lads, now get back to those loving families of yours!”

He could dream, right?

So, he waited. Through near silent breakfasts, through rehearsals successful and unsuccessful and through evenings spent just with George or with all three. Waiting for that moment, that benediction from on high.

By the morning of the 23rd, he’d admitted to himself that the moment just wasn’t going to come and he was the only one who wanted it to. Paul didn’t seem to care. The second he’d arrived at Anningley Hall, of course, he’d been in for the long–haul. Whether it was a family Christmas or the Second Coming, he’d give it all up just for a chance to be writing an album with John. Ringo couldn’t even hold it against him. Who would? Paul hadn’t made a secret of how miserable the last twelve months had been for him. The longer John went without mentioning Yoko, the more this misery sloughed off him, leaving the Paul of 1967 behind. Well, not exactly. A wiser Paul than that, certainly. Ringo had noticed how he’d stopped offering any kind of ideas for John’s songs after that first explosion. So, Paul certainly wasn’t going to rock the boat and whinge about missing his Christmas dinner.

George didn’t seem to want it to end either but Ringo couldn’t swear that he wanted anything other than to curl up in a heap somewhere quiet. So he definitely wasn’t going to rock the boat. It just wasn’t in him to do it in his current state. And that was alarming and upsetting on its own. The idea to shove him in the passenger seat and take him home with him had certainly crossed his mind, but he’d been so useless up to now, not even able to talk to him about what was troubling him so obviously, that he dismissed the notion nearly immediately.

(Was it out of his own apathy or was it fear of being rejected? He didn’t want to think about it. Neither option was good.

God, no help to his friends and barely needed to keep the beat during these sessions. This whole thing was pretty rotten for his self-esteem. Was it any wonder he was eyeing the exits like a man waiting to be released from a twenty year stretch inside?)

And as for John, it may as well have been May Day, as much as Christmas, even with the frost clinging to the windows. Ringo had made jokes about mistletoe, quipped that he was expecting a green apple in his Christmas stocking and explicitly talked about what Zak had asked for from Father Christmas. And it had all rolled off him like water off a greasy duck’s back, the bastard.

He’d gotten so fed up, he’d nearly just out and out said it.

But he’d looked over at John, curled over his guitar, staring intently down at the lyrics he’d scribbled down for that first song he’d played them like they contained the secrets of the universe and lost his nerve entirely.

When they’d finished up at four, he’d slumped outside the kitchen door, cup of tea (with a slosh of brandy added to counteract the freezing cold) in one hand and cigarette in the other, and gave himself a good five minutes of a mental telling off for being a coward.

Halfway through a diversion on how he couldn’t even drum on half the new songs, he saw a familiar red duffle coat sprinting towards the house down the frozen path.

Lindy waved her hand at him, too breathless to talk and giant puffs of steam escaping from her in the cold air, but the giant grin on her face gave away that her haste wasn’t the sign of anything sinister. She pulled up in front of him and had to take a moment to catch her breath, hands on her knees. Ringo stifled a laugh at her, her teenage joy almost contagious and squelching the self-pity he’d been wallowing in.

“Y’right there, LInds?” he asked with a smile in his voice once she’d mastered herself.

She nodded vigorously and gasped out, “Oh, Ringo! I think I might just die! It’s the best day ever! I can’t believe how lucky I am!”

“Did you meet Mick Jagger down the post office or somethin’?” He couldn’t help lightly kidding her. It flew over her head, though.

“Better! Far better! Look!” And with that, she shoved a shiny new black camera towards him clasped in her gloved hands.

“Oh! Christmas come early, I see!”

Lindy’s grin got even broader. “It just came today in the post! I’m the luckiest girl ever! I’ve always wanted a camera of my own and Mum and Dad always said that I was too young and they were too expensive. Oh! It’s the best present I’ve ever got! I’m going to be so, so careful with it, though, I promise!”

Ringo met her grin with one of his own. “I know you will be, kid. Now, am I going to get a picture taken by the great photographer before she became famous?”

Lindy curled her hands around the camera and squeaked out a delighted agreement. She took a few steps back and lined up the camera. Ringo gave her a grin and saluted her with his teacup as the shutter clicked.

“Thank you!” she sang out and leapt forward to hug him. He returned it happily, even with the camera digging into his back and trying not to spill his tea down hers.

“I must find George!” she declared and shot off like a greyhound towards the gardens where George had taken to wandering around when he had a break while it was still light.

As he watched her run off to find George to tell him her good news, he made up his mind. He had to go home. He had to see Mo and Zak and Jason. Kids really were what Christmas was all about, weren’t they? That joy that Lindy had over her camera. Imagine missing something like that just because you were too wrapped up in work.

He’d leave first thing in the morning, before any of the rest of them got up.

They’d be just fine without him.

Note from George Harrison to Derek Taylor, dated 08/12/1968
Could you arrange to get a decent new camera sent to the following: Lindy Kane, Whitethorn Cottage, Anning Village, —-----? Ask Astrid for a recommendation for a good camera to start someone off with, maybe. And if you could get it wrapped up nice and fancy as well and put in the note that’s attached to this, that’d be great. Thanks, Degs. You’re a good pal and I wish you were down here hope to see you soon in London. Give my best to Joan and the kids.

Chapter Text

George loved going on holidays to Ireland with Mam and his brother. Usually the furthest they’d go would be Drumcondra beach, but today they got to go out to a farm that belonged to some cousins or cousins of cousins or somethin’. There were cows in the fields an’ all. Mam and Cousin Annie went into the kitchen to drink tea and ‘catch up’ with the lady who lived there, Mrs Casey (an’ they didn't even talk about anythin’ interesting, only ever seemed to be a load of stories about people he didn’t know and half of them were dead). There weren’t no kids around, just a little baby in a crib, and everyone else were out in the fields so him and his brother were left to chase hens around and climb up on four bar gates and see if they could stand up on top of them.

They poked their noses into various sheds, seeing pigs sleeping in straw (and they stunk to high heaven) in one, a washboard and tub in another, and another that had timber and turf piled up against a wall, ready for winter fires. Eventually they dawdled their way back to the kitchen. Mam and the cousins had moved on to a sitting room and he and Pete edged their way towards the kitchen table to see if there was anything left they could nab.

“And are you Louise’s boys, so?” a creaky voice came from the doorway.

An old woman, stooped and thin, stood there. She was wearing all black, including a long black shawl over her head, covering her hair. She was so wrinkled, she was probably at least a hundred years old, George thought.

The weirdest thing was, she was smoking a pipe. George didn’t think he’d ever seen a lady smoking a pipe before.

“Urm,’ Pete said unsurely. “Yes, ma’am. I’m Pete an’ this is my brother, George. Pleased to meet you.”

Pete always had better manners than him.

“Pleased t’meet you,” George mumbled.

“Aren’t ye well spoken? You’re a credit to your Mammy, ye are. And do ye like the farm?”

They agreed that, yes, they very much did like the farm. The old woman shuffled into the kitchen and settled herself in a chair next to the fire with an air of confident ownership. She curled her bony hands around the pipe and smiled at them.

George looked around at the kitchen walls, a bit more at ease. There were pictures of Mary and Jesus and someone else who was definitely a saint, considering the halo. There was a kind of a cross woven out of what looked like grass sticking out from the top of one of the frames and a holy water holder with ‘1932’ carved into it near the door out to the farmyard. And above the door, a horseshoe was nailed.

“Why’s there a horseshoe up there?” he asked the old woman. “Do you have horses too?” That’d be really fun. Maybe they could go riding horses, like in the Westerns!

The old woman looked at them questioningly. “Ah now, do they not teach ye that over in England? Do ye not know what that shoe is there for?”

Both he and Pete shook their heads.

“But ye know they’re good luck at least!” She leaned forward in her chair, expectantly.

George’s confusion eased. Yeah, he did know that and he nodded, as did Pete.

“Well, thanks be to God for that. But, d'you know, they're not just good luck, boys. They'll keep you safe. There’s bad things out there that would want to come into the house and that little horseshoe keeps them out”’ She sat back again in the chair, satisfaction evident on her face.

“‘How does it do that?” Pete sounded a bit doubtful and a bit anxious. George didn’t like it one bit.

“The fairies, boys. The fairies don’t like them. The iron hurts them and they can’t come in to do mischief if there’s iron over the door. And they’d only love to come in and run away with little boys if they had their way!”

The old woman’s voice had gotten louder as she went on and she ended on what was nearly a shout.

“Mam! What are you doing? Ah, you’re not telling Louise’s boys aul piseogs, are you?” Mrs Casey bustled out to the kitchen and George breathed a sigh of relief.

“Piseogs?” the old woman snorted, insulted.”‘I’m telling them things they should know! Do you know, they don’t teach them a bit over there that’s useful! I don’t know how many times I’m after saying-”

“Mam!” Mrs Casey flung her hands up in exasperation. “You can’t be frightening them! They’re not used to- Hold on a tick, now.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re smoking that rotten aul pipe again! I’ve told you, I can’t stand that smell and you said you’d smoke it outside!”

George traded a look with Pete who nodded slightly at him to make their escape as the bickering continued. They edged towards the door to the farmyard but with a familiar loud metallic clang, the horseshoe fell from above the lintel and landed on the stone floor, cracking in two halves and the sound echoed and echoed through his head and turned into a scream….

George woke up in a cold sweat. Again. The dream disappeared into the black air around him and he sagged back into the lumpy pillow with a miserable sigh. What had woken him? He’d been dreaming again, he couldn't remember of what, but there had been a sound. A strange sound, and loud, but one he could have sworn he’d heard before…

He listened out but nothing seemed to be stirring. Maybe something had just fallen. Maybe when he got up, there would be a light fitting crashed on the ground like from the Phantom of the Opera.

Or maybe it was just in his head. He wouldn’t be surprised, really.

Either way, he wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep.

Bird flew by, bird flew by
Bird calls out, why why why

Every bird falls, every one lies
I’ll hold my tongue, you hold your sighs
I won’t care for life down here
There’s nothing left I hold dear

Bird flew by, bird flew by
Bird is gone, why why why

We’re gonna fly away so far
Leaving them all to curse our star
High above, we’ll never die
Hand in hand, we’ll never lie

Bird flew by, bird flew by
Bird calls out, bye, bye, bye

Chapter Text

Excerpt from Popular Folklore of the Irish by Tomás Ó Murchú, published 1948
The wren, despite its small stature and unassuming plumage, has a great deal of importance here. It is known as ‘the King of the Birds’, a title earned by trickery in a race between all the birds to see who could fly the highest. The tradition of ‘hunting the wren’ remains in some rural outposts. Local boys dress in strange clothes and masks and travel from house to house with a wren they hunted and killed in the days before. When they call to a house they sing, ‘the wren, the wren, the king of all birds, St Stephen’s day she was caught in the furze, Up with the kettle and down with the pan, Give me some money to bury the wren.’ If no money is given, they threaten to bury the wren outside of the front door which is the greatest of bad luck…

When Paul went to bed on the 23rd, he’d thought everything was going quite well, actually.

Never mind that George looked like he was about to drop at any second, whatever the fuck was going on there.

Never mind that Ringo more and more obviously had one foot out the door the closer to Christmas they got.

(Though did he ever have two full feet in the door once he came back?)

And never mind that him and George were definitely talking about him and John behind their backs and had been for months, or maybe years. Probably ever since Ringo had joined the band.

(No wonder George was dead keen on him from day one. Paul could see right through him. Always could.)

Regardless of all those little things, though. Things were good, he kept telling himself. Things were so good. He’d gotten everything he wanted, hadn’t he? They had songs. John was writing consistently and was writing good stuff, even if they didn’t really sound like his other songs. They didn’t sound like anyone’s songs. Not really like Beatles songs, not even what Beatles songs could be. The closest Paul could get to nailing them down was one of those creepy old folky songs that people like the Pentangle liked to drag out of dusty old archives. It wasn’t like that was something John ever did or was interested in doing, though. But so what if they were different? They’d been changing the whole time. It was on everyone else to keep up.

And, of course, he’d been writing too and they were pretty good, if he did say so himself. Not like anyone else was going to.

And yeah, a small, insecure Paul within him was sure that he’d turn around one day and John would have gone back to looking at him with suspicion and with that wall he’d built up behind his glasses to keep him out.

But things were good. He told himself that enough times so he'd believe it. Which might have been a very John thing to do, he admitted to himself.

There had been no real arguments (he wasn’t counting John’s occasional tantrums and disappearances as arguments, in any case, he was used to that). They’d gotten around 14 songs down on tape that he’d be happy with on an album (but not a double again, never a double again). And sure, while him and John weren’t like how they were in ‘62 or ‘64 or ‘67, at least they weren’t like how they were in the rest of ‘68.

And there was never any talk about certain people.

As the days went on, he always went to bed counting the positives. On the night of the 23rd, it was how him and John had ended up playing their favourite rock ‘n’ roll songs until late together, long after George and Ringo had given up and gone to bed. It was just like being teenagers again, playing each other songs to impress each other.

And when he’d woken up on Christmas Eve, Peggy Sue was in his head, which he took as a very good sign for the day to come.

He shouldn’t have.

When he got down to the kitchen, it was dark and empty. It may as well have been three in the morning, not half-seven.

He stoked the fire back to life in the range and made the tea, pouring himself a cup and nabbing a slice of the ginger cake Vicky had delivered two days before. Then he sat down, lit a cigarette and waited for the others to show their faces.

George eventually shambled down and made his own cuppa. He’d started off when they’d got there by throwing as much milk and sugar into it as you could get away with while still calling it ‘tea’. Now, it was black and unsweetened and he wasn’t even bothering to strain the tea leaves out, which irritated Paul to no end, even if he couldn’t really put a finger on why.

At least Ringo would amble in soon and break the tension with some crack about how luxurious the place was or, as he had done once the weather had turned nasty, how lovely and tropical it was outside.

Any minute now.

Eight came, then five past, then ten past. No Ringo. John popped his head in the door at quarter past and started to chide them to hurry up as usual, but stopped dead.

“Where’s Ringo?”

None of them knew.

“Alright,” Paul sighed. “I’ll go drag ‘im out of bed, the lazy bastard.” He knew he was going to end up doing it, so why delay? This way, he’d cut out all the shrugging and staring at each other, doing nothing.

He found himself doing that a lot since Brian died. Wasn’t like any of the rest of them would.

He hurried up the stairs, vaguely aware of George following slowly behind him. Great, because he really needed supervision on such a delicate task as rousing Ringo from his slumber. But he shouldn’t have been surprised that George would have to stick his oar in when it came to him.

Turning right and down the hallway, past the godawful painting of the pinched looking woman with the birds balanced up and down her arm, and he arrived at Ringo’s bedroom door.

He knocked and waited.

And knocked again.

Nothing.

By this time, George had caught up with him and was lurking behind him.

He knocked again.

“Fuck’s sake,” he muttered and turned the handle.

There was no-one in there.

The bed was made neatly and a letter was left perched on top of one of the pillows.

He became aware of a sinking feeling in his stomach. He grabbed the letter and read it quickly.

That lazy fuckin’ bastard.

He’d only gone and fucked off home.

“What’s goin’ on?” he heard from behind him. George. Tryin’ to sound all confused an’ worried.

Spinning on his heel, he shoved the letter right in George’s face.

“You knew. You fuckin’ knew, don’t bullshit me!”

George stumbled back, hands out in front of him. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times, but could only croak out a “...what?”

Typical. Couldn’t even defend himself, that little voice that lived in Paul’s head whispered poisonously.

“He’s fucked off home, hasn’t he? How long have you two been plannin’ this?” He shoved at him again til he hit the wall behind him.

“Paul, I- I don’t know what-”

“Shuddup! You knew! Don’t fuckin’ lie!” Paul howled, the betrayal and anger and jealousy roiling within him dangerously. Part of him wanted to grab him and shake him until he just admitted it. Admitted that they’d been conspiring. Conspiring against him and John. Against the band.

“Richy’s gone?” The sound of George’s voice stopped Paul dead on his rampage. It was small and sad and scared and like a kid who’d just been told Father Christmas didn’t exist.

He couldn’t quite let go of the anger though. He didn’t like to think about what he’d be left with without it.

He stepped back, giving George a chance to peel himself off the wall.

“He told you, didn’t he?” Not so much of an accusation now, more of a statement.

“No,” George said faintly. “No, he never did. He’s gone? Is it- is he comin’ back?”

He shoved the letter towards George again, less violent this time. George took the letter into his shaking hands (don’t feel guilty, don’t feel sorry for him) and read the few lines quickly. He looked up at Paul again with, oh Jesus, watering eyes.

“I- I promise I didn’t know, Paulie,” he choked out. “He never said it t’me. I’d-” He broke off and looked down again at the letter. “He’ll be back though, right? He says he will. He will, right?”

“...Yeah,” he said eventually. He couldn’t say anything more than that. He turned and walked out of the bedroom and headed back downstairs, still angry with Ringo for abandoning them. Angry now with him for breaking George’s soft heart, too. Nothing else.

No, nothing else.

He slouched his way to the rehearsal room and flung himself down in his armchair. John didn’t even look up.

“Richy’s gone home for Christmas,” he blurted out. “There was a note on his bed. Said he’ll be back in a few days.”

John nodded absently and continued to fiddle about with his guitar, absently playing random chords over and over again.

“John. Did y’hear me?” Paul tried again. “Ringo’s gone.”

“Heard yeh. Don’t matter,” he mumbled

“An’ I don’t think George is gonna want to do anythin’ without him, either.”

“Don’t matter,” John repeated. “Don’t need ‘em.”

As much as Paul knew he should argue that, he wasn’t gonna. Especially when it gave him a traitorous warm feeling inside.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “We don’t need ‘em.”

He sat back in his armchair with a private little smile on his face.

Maybe Ringo skiving off wasn’t the end of the world, after all.

“Can’t rely on no-one.” John suddenly said after a few more minutes of those random chords. Paul startled. He had been trying to work out the pattern of the music while staring at the wallpaper. It was circular, definitely. He’d heard the same progression a few times now, but he couldn’t seem to predict what was coming next.

“He’ll be back, Johnny,” he reassured him.

John snorted. “They always say that. They never do though. They fuck off an’ they never come back. That’s all anyone does.”

The viciousness in John’s voice jolted Paul.

“Everyone does it. Me mam. Me dad. Uncle George. Stu. Bri. Yoko. An’ now him. There’s only one person I can rely on, really rely on, outside of meself.”

Paul nodded, almost unconsciously. He was about to voice his reassurance, that no, he’d never do that. Never leave him. But then.

“Don’t need no-one but ourselves. We’ll show everyone.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we will.” Joy unconfined was bubbling in his heart. John was right. They didn’t need no-one but each other. Lennon and McCartney for the rest of their lives.

John plucked a few more notes, his eyes soft and his hair glowing in the winter sunlight streaming in through the window. But he didn’t acknowledge what Paul had said.

Should he say anything more? He didn’t want to say the wrong thing and for the last year, he’d only ever managed to say the wrong thing to John. He pushed the thoughts of India and New York out of his head again.

He’d done nothing wrong.

He’d done nothing.

Whatever John had thought, then or now, he’d never explained himself. Maybe this was as much as he’d ever get. That John felt abandoned. That he just wanted someone to stay.

And Paul didn’t want to ruin this golden moment. He just wanted to savour it. Live in it. Him and John. A guitar. Forever.

A cold breeze came down the chimney and Paul shivered. The light lost its golden tinge as it could do so quickly in December. He looked out the window.

“Here, Johnny, it’s snowin’.”

The moment broke. John’s eyes lost that softness and that fuckin’ wall shot up again between them.

“Johnny, don’t-”

But it was too late. He’d stood up and was glowering at Paul, like he’d just interrupted something important.

“Why don’t you get the fuckin’ hint, Macca? I don’t need you.”

And with that, he stormed out of the room, guitar abandoned behind him on the floor.

And Paul.

Paul was left sitting there alone. Abandoned again. Was that it? Was he going to have to be the one always left holding the Beatles baby? The only one who knew that this was going to have to be the most important thing in their lives? More than any women or families or anything?

All that shite John was spouting about relying on people and him the most unreliable arsehole around. All that shite and he ended up walking away. Again. Why was it always Paul being shoved away and then being told he was walking away? Was it John just making him do the things he’d already decided he’d do in his head?

Why would he do that? Hadn’t Paul stuck around through everything? Losing his mam, Stu, him marrying Cyn, him leaving Cyn…

And still, Paul was being treated as the flaky one that couldn’t be relied on. The fickle one always looking for the exit.

Couldn’t John see?

“Those bastards,” he growled. He didn’t know if he meant John and Ringo or all three of them or everyone who ever looked at him and labelled him without knowing him and made him contort to fit their ideas.

He threw himself out of his chair, needing to get out of this rotten room, this rotten house as soon as he could. He couldn’t stick it inside, he’d have to avoid John til the urge to scream at him subsided. And he couldn’t deal with George right now. He couldn’t even look at him. But he wasn’t about to sod off somewhere else, though. He wasn’t gonna just give up on the band, no matter how much John pushed him to.

Fresh air. He needed fresh air. He stalked into the hallway, pulled on a coat and headed out into the snow. It was falling steadily now, softening everything around. He quickly made his way down the path to the lake. He needed to be alone and where better than there? He’d never seen any of the others there, anytime he’d wandered over to it in search of solitude.

It was frozen over, had been for days now, so there was no satisfaction to be gotten from skimming stones. Absently, he wondered how thick the ice was. It looked practically solid down to the lake bed. Did the rich lords and ladies skate on it in times past? Standing on the edge of the lake, he shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat and dug the toe of his shoe into the gravel surrounding it. He thought for a moment about how easy it would be if he was the kind of person who could cry about the wrongs done to him. He never could do it, though. Not since he was a little kid. All you could do with something bad was to either decide it was fine or get angry about it. Either way, you’d be doing something with it. Tears didn’t do anything.

It was so quiet. Snow always made it feel like you were the only person living in the world. Even the birds perched in the trees were quiet. Just clinging to the snowy branches and occasionally ruffling their feathers to knock the snow off them.

He kicked a small stone across the frozen surface of the lake, just to watch it skitter away from him. It left a sharp line through the fallen snow and slowed to a stop nearly at the dead centre. He kicked another and another and another, feeling a childish glee in him as the small stones got further and further away. The further they went, the more it felt like the cold air was invigorating him. He didn’t think about the band, he didn’t think about Ringo, or George, or John. It was a beautiful, cold blank.

Eventually, he wore himself out. Cold and breathless, he considered his options. Go back to the house and face the other two. That didn’t appeal. Go to the local pub and drink away his sorrows. Tempting, but he’d have to be Beatle Paul and he didn’t really have it in him to pull out that well-worn mask. Maybe he should throw himself on Lindy’s mercy and see if he could ingratiate himself with her family for Christmas Eve.

Not a bad idea.

He made to turn around and go back to the path when a loud caw startled him and he stumbled back. It didn’t sound like a normal bird call. It was loud in a peculiar way, echoing through his head, but nothing else moved or reacted to it. It was probably just because it was so quiet. Or maybe a few of them had decided to caw all at the same time just to freak the human out. Troublemakin’ bastards.

He saw the likely culprits perched on one of the branches overhanging the lake. He narrowed his eyes and curled his lip. Those bloody crows. Always causin’’ trouble. Skittering around at night and cackling around the place. Keeping him awake. Maybe it was them keeping George awake too. What was that saying, two birds with one stone?

Before he could even think about it, he’d scooped up a decent sized one and flung it at them. It bounced off the branch and fell with a loud crack onto the ice, then through it. The crows, startled and furious, ascended into the sky in a flurry of feathers.

Good.

Curiously, the little brown birds that had been staidly perched on the higher branches of the tree hadn’t moved. Well, weren’t they brazen, as his dad would say.

Paul dusted off his hands, pettily happy with the only revenge he was likely to get that day. He turned again to head away but-

But his foot was stuck. He tried pulling it forward to no avail. He looked down to see a strange greenish-black tangle around his ankle. He tried tugging it loose again, but no luck. If anything, it felt like it was tightening the more he struggled. But that didn’t make any sense.

Jesus, what if it was a snake? He didn’t think they had ones like that in England, but god alone knew what you could find out in the country…

He couldn’t panic. Panic wouldn’t do anything, he told himself. He made himself calm down and relax. He took a deep breath, then another, the warm breath clouding around him.

There! It felt like it loosened. Cautiously, carefully, he lifted his foot…

Then suddenly he was on his back and being dragged roughly down the slope of the lake and down, down, down through the cracked ice into the freezing water.

The last thing he saw before the water closed over his head was a little brown bird perched in a tree staring straight at him with its beady little eye.

Note attached to gift delivered to Lindy Kane on 23/12/1968
Dear Lindy,
You’re a great kid, Lindy and I’ve loved getting to know you. I know you’ll make good use of this camera and I’m sure you’ll take care of it. Thanks for being my friend. I think I really needed it.
Love,
George
P.S. I’ve put the telephone numbers and addresses for me and Ringo on the back of this. Stay in touch, won’t you?

Chapter Text

Letter left by Ringo Starr for the Beatles at Anningley Hall, 24/12/1968
Dear lads,
Sorry for jumping ship but I’ve got to go back home for Christmas. I’ll be back in a few days, the 27th at the latest, I promise. I’ll give your love to Mo and the boys. Look after yourselves, won’t you. I’ll be thinking of you all. Happy Christmas.
Love, Ringo.
P.S. Don’t get in Jimmie Nichol.

He was gonna come back.

He said so.

So he had to come back, right?

George sat on Richy’s bed, the letter in his hand.

He could read it now. Not like when he looked at it first, all shaking hands and blurry eyes.

He was going to come back, he told himself. No need for any of this fuss. He’d just need to get through this evening and the next day and then he’d be back.

And of course Richy had to go home to his family. He had the kids and Mo. He should be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with them. With his actual family. He should. Why should George get upset about him doing just that and not taking him along or even talking to him about it?

Why should he have told George?

It was unreasonable. The way he was acting. You’d swear that Richy had just walked out for good, never to return

Again.

No, but he was overreacting, wasn’t he? He’d not even felt like this when Richy had actually left the group and ran off to the Med with ol’ Grytpype-Thynne.

(But that was a lie, too. He’d done his best to hide it back in September, but he’d been devastated when Richy left. That he’d leave without even telling him, talking to him…)

And it felt like somehow he must have made the same mistakes as he must have made back then, because it had ended up just the same, with Richy going and leaving him behind and he didn’t tell him. What were the mistakes? He still didn’t know, even though he must still be making them. And was it worse then, when he’d not seen it coming? Or now when he’d been here before and the pain was like an old friend? He clutched the letter tightly in his hand but relaxed his grip suddenly for fear of tearing the paper.

What if this was the last remnant of Richy he’d ever have, he thought suddenly.

No.

No, he was being irrational, he told himself. He was going to come back.

Look. It says it in the letter. He’s coming back. He promised.

But Richy had promised never to leave again too and now look.

God, what was wrong with him? Two months ago, he’d never have acted like this, he could have sworn. He’d have been mortified. But two months ago seemed like an eternity now. Now, he was afraid he’d never get out of this fucking place and he’d never-

A crow cawed outside the window and George realised with a start that he’d been feeling sorry for himself for a good hour or more and neither Paul nor John had come looking for him. Thank god.

He wasn’t even sure where the time had gone, but that was true a lot lately. Time just seemed to… go. Moving on without him. Rushing past him like he was a stone in a river.

He could leave, maybe. Couldn’t he leave too? Go home to Pattie, or to his mam. For a moment, he let himself think of Christmas Eve when he was a kid. His mam running around trying to make sure everything was in for tomorrow’s dinner, that everything in the house was clean, that all the kids were washed and ready for Christmas Eve mass.

A sharp pain rose in his throat and the tears threatened again.

He forced himself to stop thinking of it. It didn’t do any good.

They didn’t even live in that little house now anyway. Long gone. Long sold. You can’t go home again, Harrison.

But where could he go? It seemed impossible to even think about. Everything did now. He slowly made his way out of Richy’s room, steadying himself with his hand against the wall and headed downstairs, sticking to the back stairs that brought him down into the kitchen and kept him away from the rehearsal room. Even if he couldn’t hear anything from there, didn’t mean it was safe to go past it. And thank god, when he got down there, the kitchen was deserted. Cups and remnants of breakfast were left on the table like they were on the Marie Celeste. He dropped down in one of the abandoned chairs and stared at the messy table. He thought for a moment he should try to tidy up. But he let it go nearly as soon as it came into his head. Everything took so much energy now. And he didn’t have any.

He hadn’t been sleeping properly. He wasn’t sure he ever had done.

And he knew he was looking like death warmed over. Moving felt like he was trying to walk through a swimming pool full of gravel. Every motion was slow and clumsy and hurt. And talking was hard enough that he was rarely making the effort now.

It was the dreams. Those old dreams. The old woman in the shawl shouting at him and waving her black clad arms. She was getting closer and closer every night.

And Stu. Stu was there every night too. The portrait changed, but Stu was the same.

It went from Yoko, then to Mr. Epstein, then to John’s mum and then to Stu himself. That last one had made Stu frantic, grabbing George by the shoulders and shouting soundlessly in his face in a way that so unlike Stu, it was truly frightening and George had been unsettled for hours afterwards. Stu had just kept shouting and gesturing wildly at the portrait, then turning back to George again with a desperate, terrified look in his eyes.

It was the look in his eyes that stuck with George, more than anything. Stu hadn’t ever looked like that, not even that time he got jumped by those Teds. He hated that he had ever seen it, even in the confines of a dream. It felt like an insult to the memory of his friend.

There were other dreams too, but they evaporated as soon as he opened his eyes, leaving behind only a cold deep in his bones and a feeling of dread that stayed with him all day.

And he couldn’t shift the dreams. Couldn’t outrun them. Nothing he did made any difference. He’d smoked with Paul before bed, he cadged some Hennessy from Richy and in an act of sheer desperation, he’d gone for a long, bracing walk through some nearby fields. And still. He’d barely get three hours sleep in a night total. Every single night.

He was sure his head ached all the time, but it was hard to tell because everything hurt all the time. His eyes not only hurt and were dry as the desert, but everything was too bright and blurry as well.

(Karma, he thought mordantly, for all those jokes at John’s shortsighted expense.)

And it wasn’t that ghost-like feeling you got on too many prellies, where you felt like a being of pure energy speeding through the universe and everything surrounding you was shining at the edges. No, it was the world being too much, too intense and he couldn’t process it. There wasn’t enough left of him to do it. It was like he was turning slowly into something heavy, statue-like and one day he’d wake up, a grey, solid mass and completely immobile. Stuck forever in Anningley Hall, just another stiff to be gawped at.

He’d had to give up shaving because he’d cut himself with his trembling hands once too often. Eating was harder than it ever had been because he constantly felt nauseous. And he wasn’t healing. He’d had a long scratch on his side for at least a week now, or possibly more, that was as red as the day he’d gotten it. Not that he could remember getting it. Everything was blurring altogether. It was hard to remember an individual day. And there were days that he wasn’t sure he could remember anything before Anningley Hall.

He wasn’t sure if it was the lack of sleep was causing all of this or if the lack of sleep was because of all of this. Which came first? Did it matter?

He’d have said that it was all getting too much, but he was fairly sure he’d passed that signpost a good few miles back.

And for all his misery that Richy hadn’t talked to him about leaving (not leaving, he reminded himself, he’d be back in two days), it wasn’t like he’d talked to him about any of this either. He’d thought about it. He’d even tried. Or tried to try. Him and Richy were talking late one night about nothing and he’d been just about to tell him, to explain why he was the way he was and then he’d remembered how Richy had looked when he’d woken up in his room that first night and that was it. He just couldn’t.

If he’d gotten that reaction again, it would have been worse than anything he’d been feeling in the last few weeks. His heart would have shattered.

Richy hadn’t asked either though, a little voice whispered. It sounded like a very young him, a bitter little him who’d seen his best friend abandon him for the cool Ted with proper sideboards and a skiffle band. Insecure and lonely. And he hated it, but that him was right. No, Richy hadn’t asked him, even though he had eyes to see that something was going on. He had looked at George and talked with him and had to have known he was sinking down, down, down. And he hadn’t asked. Hadn’t held out a hand to steady him. Pull him back. If he had asked, George liked to think he’d have told him. He might be lying to himself, but he wanted to think he’d have told him. It was different, you see, to be asked. He’d have felt safer then, knowing that Richy wanted to know. Wanted to know that part of him. To carry it with him.

He took a sip of the tea in front of him and made a face. Cold. When did he make this? How was it cold already?

He stared at the half-full cup in his hand. He didn’t remember making it and he didn’t remember picking it up.

His hand shook.

No, he was fine.

Maybe he should go lie down. There was no work today, so why not? Why not take the break that had fallen into his lap?

But his bed was upstairs and it wasn’t like he got any rest there anyway, no matter what time of day he tried.

And the kitchen was warm and he was so tired.

Surely it wouldn’t matter if he closed his eyes.

He was so fucking tired.

His eyelids grew heavy.

And then Stu was sitting at the table across from him, turned in the seat so he was looking out the window. The winter sun shone on him, making the red strands in his hair he always denied having glow brightly.

“...Stu?” George whispered. He wanted to run over to him, to hug him and never let go, but it was like weights had been attached to his arms and legs and neck and all he could move were his eyes.

Stu turned his head and looked George in the eyes. He hadn’t changed. Aged. Still looked like James Dean.

“I’ve been trying so hard to reach you, reach any of you.”

It was soft, softer even than life, and more like an echo than a real voice but still.

George hadn’t heard Stu’s voice in so long. So very long.

And it might only be a dream, but he might never get this chance ever, ever again.

“I’m sorry we weren’t there,” he blurted out. “I’m sorry you’re gone. I wish you weren’t.”

“I know. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. You should tell them that, when it’s all over.”

Stu gave him that little smile he used to give. A quirk of the lips more than anything.

“When it’s all over?” George parroted. “What’s all over?”

“All of it,” Stu answered with a grimace. “Just be careful. You can’t trust their faces, you see. It’s their face, but not them”

“But-”

“You’ll have to go back there. I’m sorry.” And to be fair to him, he did look sorry. And Stu never made a habit of lying either.

“Back where? Stu,” George pleaded, frustration and fear warring within him. “Jus’ tell me!”

But Stu just shook his head and turned again to look out the window and George felt it all just fading away, leaving only a glint of silver behind to dazzle his eyes.

“No! Stu, c’mon please!”

“...George? George, are, um, are you okay?”

A small hand on his shoulder and a pale little face in front of him. For a second, it was Astrid, but then-

“Hiya, Lindy,” he croaked, then he promptly burst into tears.

Once he’d made a right mess of himself and frightened the life out of Lindy to boot, George found himself being led out of the house and down the lane to Whitethorn Cottage. She had assured him that her father was out on an emergency call to a calving (“they’re breech” she’d said ominously) and her mother was at the church cleaning and arranging the flowers for the Christmas Eve service.

Lindy led the way through the freshly fallen snow, George following obediently behind like a little kid, wrapped up in his fur coat, and they reached the front door quickly. Once inside, she settled him in the little sitting room near the crackling fire, then made her way into the kitchen to make them some tea.

George looked around him, taking in the details of the little cottage. He’d only ever been as far as the hallway before, to give Pattie a quick call to check in. The walls were freshly whitewashed and the stone floor was clean as a whistle with a colourful mat in front of the fireplace. The curtains were a bright yellow and a Christmas tree stood in the corner, wreathed in tinsel and baubles and colourful lights shaped like little carriages. Pictures hung on the wall had holly and ivy placed over them and a red candle in a holly bedecked holder stood in the windowsill, waiting to be lit. With the view of the snow falling outside through the window, it was like a Christmas card made real.

Lindy, he thought, was lucky to grow up somewhere like this.

She came in then with a teapot and two cups and saucers on a flower-patterned tray, only slightly shaky and making it to the coffee table with no disasters.

“Right,” she said bracingly. “A nice cup of tea for you, with plenty milk and two sugars. We haven’t any biscuits unfortunately. Mum will know if I open up the tin before tomorrow and there’d be hell to pay. I could do some bread and jam, if you like.”

George shook his head and gratefully took a sip of his tea.

“Thanks Lindy,” he said after a moment. “You don’t need to be feedin’ me. I’m alright.”

Lindy fixed him with a serious look. “Are you? I don’t know that you are.”

He opened his mouth to deny it, but nothing came out. Instead, he looked down at the stone-flagged floor and sipped again at his tea

Lindy sighed, but thankfully, instead of pursuing the matter, she went over to the radiogram in the corner, opened up the top and placed a record in it. After a moment, he heard a violin, then an operatic voice. Lindy returned to her armchair and gave him an apologetic smile.

“I thought some music might cheer things up. Dad only has his records down here for the radiogram, though. I’m not allowed play anything fun on it. He says it damages the stylus,” she said, rolling her eyes at the idea.

George let out a little laugh. Parents. They came up with the strangest rules.

“I know,” Lindy said ruefully. “At least I’ve got my Dansette in my room, along with my records. Still. I like this, especially this time of year. It’s the Messiah.”

“I don’t mind it,” George said absently. He didn’t either. The soaring opening song of the choir made him feel for the first time that year that it really was Christmas. “It’s the one with the Hallelujah, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Lindy smiled. “Mum always plays it on Christmas morning. Then it’s straight into carols til dinnertime.”

“That sounds nice.” George tried not to sound sad or wistful, but he wasn’t sure how well he succeeded, given how Lindy’s face fell. Better to head her off at the pass.

“What had brought you over to the Hall, anyroad? We usually don’t see you til later.”

Her face lit up again. “Oh! I completely forgot! I’ve got a present for you!”

“Lindy! You didn’t have to!”

She waved off his protests and handed him a small, heavy object wrapped in what looked like a page ripped out of Jackie.

“Never mind that. It’s only a small thing, but I want you to have it,” she insisted and George couldn’t find it in him to argue. He opened the gift carefully and found a roundish white stone with grey lines running through it and a hole the size of his thumbnail straight through the centre.

“My granny gave it to me,” Lindy said quietly. “She didn’t like that we moved so close to the Hall. The day after we moved in here, she gave me that stone and told me if I ever thought I saw or felt something strange, I should look through the hole in the stone and I’d see things as they really were.”

George felt those traitorous tears well up again.

“Lindy, you shouldn’t-”

“I should,” she interrupted, obstinance making her bolder. “Don’t tell me I shouldn’t. If you don’t believe in that sort of thing, then it’s a pretty little thing. And if you do, it’s even better.”

“That’s not what I was goin’ to say,” George tried to explain. “It’s not anythin’ like that. Just cos we got you somethin’ didn’t mean we wanted anythin’ back. We thought you should have it, that’s all. An’ as well as that, if it’s a present from your Granny, she mightn’t like you givin’ it to someone else.”

Lindy didn’t look convinced.

“Well, I know my Granny and you don’t. She won’t mind if it’s going to someone who might need it more than I do. And don’t think I don’t know it was just you behind the camera, not the others. Ringo looked nearly as surprised as I was when he saw it.”

George couldn’t really argue. It had been his idea. He’d just wanted to do something nice for her. What was the point in having money if you couldn’t do something like that for someone like Lindy?

She looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Alright, how about a compromise? You keep the stone for as long as you’re staying here. You can give it back to me when you’re going home again.”

“A loan, then,” George said slowly. “Alright. It’s a loan. Thank you.”

He sat back in the armchair then and turned the stone over and over in his hands, before placing it in the pocket of his trousers, wrapping it in his handkerchief.

The Messiah continued to play from the radiogram.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.

“What’s going on, George?” Lindy asked softly. “You were ever so upset. Is everything alright?”

She must have seen something cross his face, because she made a dissatisfied noise.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t really want to, or if it’s not my business,” she said, reluctance evident in her voice, ”but don’t think you can’t because I’m a kid. We’re friends, aren’t we? You said we were.”

He had.

“Yeah,” George admitted. “I meant it, too. I jus’- I don’t want to be a drag, you know? Bring down your Christmas.”

Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,

He took a breath and tried to sort out his thoughts into something that he could explain.

“Rich- um, Ringo’s gone home for Christmas and I suppose I’m a bit lonesome now. I’ll miss him. An’ I didn’t sleep too good the last few nights. Bit tired, y’know?”

Hopefully that would do. Explain himself a little bit, without making it sound like it was bigger than it was. Don’t mention Stu and the confusion and sadness left behind after his dream. It was just a dream. There was nothing more to it than that. His mind was probably dwelling on Stu so much because of how much Lindy reminded him of Astrid.

Don’t get upset, whatever else you do. You’ve scared the kid enough.

LIndy wrinkled her nose. “Can you not go home too? Maybe you might feel better.”

Yes, that was the obvious thing, wasn’t it? But he couldn’t. He’d thought about it, certainly. He’d thought about it that very morning. Dreamt about turning up on the doorstep of Kinfauns or his parents’ house and just being home. And every time he let himself consider it, the image of Stu returned to his head looking panicked and frightened and he knew.

“I can’t, Lindy,” he said plaintively. Hoping she’d understand better than he did himself.

He couldn’t leave John and Paul.

He didn’t know why. He just knew that, if he did, he’d regret it.

Not that he was going to say that to Lindy. She’d think- well, he wasn’t sure what she’d think, but it couldn’t be anything good. He wasn’t even sure how to think about it. When he let himself think about it at all.

“I just don’t want you to be unhappy,” Lindy said quietly. “Especially not at this time of year.”

“I know,” George answered helplessly. “I just- I can’t go and leave John and Paul.”

Lindy didn’t look particularly happy with his answer, but didn’t argue it. Thank god. He couldn’t handle an argument. Even if it was with a kid.

“Well, alright,” Lindy conceded. “You can’t go home, but why don’t you all come over for a little bit tomorrow after dinner?”

George couldn’t help but let out a disbelieving laugh, prompting a highly insulted look from Lindy.

“Sorry! Sorry, Lindy, I’m not laughin’ at you, promise.”

“Well, I hope not!”

He took a breath and got a hold of himself. “No, it’s jus’- Your parents don’t even know you’ve been callin’ up to us, or that we’ve been down to use the ‘phone, do they? I don’t think they’d appreciate three hairy musicians come landin’ into their sittin’ room to watch Ken Dodd! It’s Christmas! That’s for family, Lindy.”

“If Dad’s cousin Keith can call on Christmas morning for hours and hours and delay our dinner every year,” Lindy retorted spiritedly, “then you can come after dinner. I don’t mind if you stay five minutes or a few hours and once I tell Mum you’re all on your own over there, she won’t mind one bit. And I know her and Dad want to see who’s come down to the Hall, anyway, they’ve been talking about it for weeks now.”

“Have they,” George said weakly. He didn’t like to think what they’d have to say, especially once they found out they’d been hanging out with their daughter without them knowing.

“Oh yes,” Lindy answered with relish. “They know you’re musicians, Vicky’s dad told my dad that ages ago. But I know they’d like you all. Mum likes your music, too, you know. And Dad says it’s not the worst out there, but he says that nothing compares to Acker Bilk anyway so you can just ignore him.”

He was so tempted to agree. But, god, he didn’t want her to get in trouble and this definitely would do it.

But the idea of sitting here in this cosy little room for Christmas night with a happy family, instead of in the cold, draughty Hall…

Come unto Him that are heavy laden, and He will give you rest.

“Alright.”

He gave in. It was a bad idea and it would undoubtedly go wrong but…

“Alright, we’ll come over for a short bit. But!”

He gestured at her with the tea-cup.

“You’ve got to tell your mum as soon as you can and if she says no, you have to let us know. I know you’re bein’ kind, Lindy an’ I appreciate it, I do, but we won’t go where we’re not welcome.”

“Deal,” Lindy said with a brilliant smile. “Now, do you fancy a fresh drop?”

He stayed until they had listened to the Hallelujah Chorus and then he made his excuses.

Standing on the front step, he gave Lindy a grateful hug.

“Thanks for the tea an’ sympathy, Lindy. An’ the invite.”

She waved him off with a smile and he set off down the path and back to the Hall.

The snow had continued to fall while he’d been in Whitethorn Cottage and now covered the landscape entirely. He shivered and shoved his hands deeper into his coat. Burying his chin into the fur, he ducked his head down and quickened his step. Their three cars were entirely white with snow now and stuck completely where they were. The snow and ice would have made the path down to the road near impassable. Richy was lucky to get out when he did.

Once he reached the back door into the kitchen, any warmth and cheer he’d built up while he was at Lindy’s had dissipated and he was tired once again. It was well after 4 now and nearly dark. The snow had built up on the windowsills and blocked a lot of the meagre light that made it in to the kitchen. He fumbled around for the lightswitch and clicked it on.

Nothing.

He tried it again. And nothing. Sighing, he leaned his forehead against the wall and took a moment to really feel sorry for himself. No sleep, no Richy and now he had to go look for a lightbulb? For fuck sake.

But then, a nasty little idea wormed its way into his head.

He straightened up and strode over through the door to the hallway and tried the lightswitch there.

Nothing again.

Damn it all. The snow must have knocked out the electricity. His breath quickened and panic started to bubble within him. He stood helpless in the hall, staring at the stubbornly dead lightbulb and tried to calm down.

There wasn’t a sound in the entire house and darkness crept from the corners towards him.

He couldn’t let it touch him.

Hands shaking, he rushed into the kitchen and dug through every drawer and cupboard until he found a handful of candles. He dug out his lighter from his pocket and lit one with care. The flame guttered and flickered in the draughty kitchen, but held. He let out a sigh of relief. At least he wouldn’t be left alone in the dark. Remembering how his mam had done similar during power cuts, he found an empty jam jar and stuck the candle in it, stuffing some ripped up newspaper around it to steady it. He placed it carefully on the kitchen table, then dropped into one of the chairs, exhausted from the effort and fright.

Damn it, the washing up from breakfast still wasn’t done and now the fire in the range was basically gone out. For a second, George just wanted to give up and give in to tears again.

But no. There was no point in anything like that, he reminded himself. He wasn’t alone. John and Paul must have shut themselves away in some other part of the house, that was all. Nothing new there. He could take a hint that they weren’t interested in socialising and, given his mood today, it was probably for the best. He didn’t need nor didn’t want to go hunting after them through the dark. They’d find their way to the kitchen soon enough if they wanted to, And Mrs. Kerr from the pub surely wouldn’t be braving the weather to deliver a hot meal, but there were leftovers from yesterday and enough grub in the cupboards for a few days.

He wouldn’t give in to despair. He’d done that enough times today and made a fool of himself.

Richy might not be there, but he’d be back and George would have pulled himself together by then and would be standing at the front door for him like a beacon, just like Richy had been for him.

He’d be fine and Richy wouldn’t leave again and everything would be alright.

But right now, the fire needed tending and the washing up still had to be done.

George sighed and got to work.

That night, he still hadn’t seen John or Paul around, but he’d heard a guitar playing somewhere in the house, so they were obviously entertaining themselves quite happily without even a thought to him. He had holed himself up in the kitchen in the chair nearest the range with some old book he’d found shoved into the back of a shelf. He tried to lose himself in the frankly ridiculous plot (there were around five different people running around with the same name, for a start), but kept startling and thinking that something was scraping at the back door. He’d given up opening it and checking after the first three times because every time he did, any of the heat that had built up disappeared out the door and he was left shivering.

The wind had picked up and was howling around the eaves and rattling the panes in the windows. And the snow looked to be a fixture for the next few days. There was no thaw in the air and every now and then a fresh scattering would fall. By the time it was past 11, he had given up on the book and just was watching the snow fall outside, half-lidded.

Nothing stirred outside or inside.

George didn’t fancy moving. Didn’t see much point in hauling himself up the stairs to his cold and dark room. And the idea of navigating stairs with a candle really didn’t appeal to him. Shaky as he was, he’d probably end up arse over tit halfway up them.

Surely it wouldn’t do any harm to just curl up here for the night.

Safer really.

He closed his eyes and prayed for a dreamless sleep.

A black clad figure stood outside the window, the face obscured by the darkness. George’s heart leapt into his throat as it reached out a gnarled hand to the window and slowly brought its nail against the glass.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

A crack like a spider’s web spread out from where the nail touched the window pane.

George screamed and woke himself up.

His head jerked automatically to the window and he let out a sigh of relief.

There wasn’t anyone there.

The candle barely had two inches left of it but was still lighting, thank god. If George had woken up and it had been dark, he’d probably still be screaming.

Tap.

George froze. His eyes moved unwillingly towards the windowpane. God, he wished he’d remembered to pull the curtains before he’d dropped off.

Tap.

There was a bird. Perched on the windowsill and tilting its head. A little brown thing, barely the size of a golf ball and about as round. It danced back and forth on the windowsill, claws barely touching the snow.

A little bird. That was all it was. He could have cried with relief.

Tap.

And there it was, the bird’s beak hitting the glass. Not a nightmare come to life. A little bird.

Tap.

Crack.

A crack like a spider’s web spread out from where the beak touched the glass.

The bird tilted its head again and it looked at him.

Maybe he was still dreaming. Maybe it was one of those weird ones where you think you’ve woken up but everything’s still off and weird and you’re still in the fuckin’ dream.

Tap

Crack.

Actually, he didn’t care and actually, it didn’t matter if it was a dream or if it was real. He just knew with a sharp, cold certainty that he didn’t want to be anywhere near it when that bird got through the glass.

He grabbed the jam jar with the candle and ran.

He ran into the hallway and slammed the kitchen door behind him, uncaring of the noise. Where could he go? Where would be safe?

Reason had abandoned him and all he knew was that he had to get away from it. He raced towards the stairs, unthinking of anything except escape, run, hide.

He took them awkwardly, trying to keep hold of the jam jar, keep the candle lighting and keep from toppling backwards on the worn carpet. He didn’t even look up, he just kept his eyes on the stairs and counted them as he went. Eleven, twelve, thirteen…

George nearly ran straight into Paul at the top of the stairs.

Breathless and disoriented, all George could do was clutch at Paul’s shoulders to steady himself.

“What’s the matter, George, love?”

George couldn’t even form words, he was just gasping for breath.

“Blue meanies?”

The flickering light from the candle cast strange shadows on Paul’s face. Why else would it look like he was staring at George with a wide, hungry smile?

Paul’s head tilted in a strange birdlike motion.

George quickly let go of him and took a short step back, but quickly found he only had the stairs behind him.

“I’m- I’m, um, I’m–”

Paul just stood there smiling.

It was just Paul.

“Sorry, I’m- I mean, I don’t know what happened t’me. I don’t know what’s happenin’ me, Paulie,” he got out haltingly.

“That’s alright, Georgie,” Paul replied smoothly. No temper or impatience or anything. “You should lie down, Georgie. Go to bed, Georgie.”

That last sounded less like a suggestion and more like an order. But it was Paul and he was sensible and his oldest friend and George just wanted to go to sleep and have the nightmare be over.

He nodded.

Paul’s smile broadened and he gestured for George to follow him.

He did. Paul led George down the hall towards the bedrooms they’d set up in. All four of them in the one corridor. Sticking together no matter where they went.

It seemed much longer than it usually did, but time was funny for George now. And dreams were funny too.

Paul led the way confidently, seemingly unnoticing of how dark it was. George, for his part, clutched the candle in the jar tightly in his hand, powerless to stop his eyes flickering to the shadows it cast on the walls and paintings they passed.And they were weird, those shadows. They were reaching out towards him, like tree branches.

He walked on, shivering.

Instead of entering Richy’s empty room or George’s own room, they carried on past them. Past the diorama with the little birds that always creeped him out. But someone must have moved them because now they were perched on top of one of the paintings, fluttering their wings.

He walked on.

They stopped outside John’s room.

“In here, Georgie. John is in here, too. You’ll be happy here, Georgie.”

He stopped outside the door and looked at Paul who smiled expectantly at him.

You can’t trust their faces, you see.

A snowflake drifted between them.

It’s their face, but not them.

Slowly, carefully, George reached into his pocket and pulled out a little white stone with a hole in the centre.

He looked through the hole in the stone and saw things how they really were.

Note from George Martin to Neil Aspinall, dated 24/12/1968
Neil,
Did you have a chance to listen to the reels before you had them delivered to me? I’m sorry to say, but they’re duds. I played them here in the studio and there’s nothing on them, except the occasional sound of birdsong. Is it possible the boys misdirected the microphone? I don’t care to be the one to tell them this news, but someone will have to. They usually are quite good at remembering the songs, so this may not affect the album too much, but it is still quite an irritant. (Unless it’s one of their jokes, but I can’t see them being restrained to just simple birds chirping if it was that.)
G.M.

Chapter Text

Note from Debbie Wellum (receptionist at Apple Corps) to Derek Taylor 24/12/1968
Message for you from a Nurse Lindsay in St. Lucia’s Home in Shropshire. She has asked that you telephone her as soon as possible as she has an urgent message for you. This place does exist and she is a nurse there, so it is not a complete hoax. I have attached her telephone number below if you wish to pursue this further.

Ringo sat in the familiar, exquisitely decorated sitting room. Every item was perfectly in place and fresh white roses filled the vases dotted through the room. The plush carpet felt marvellously soft on his bare feet.

He thought that perhaps he should feel embarrassed that he didn’t have shoes on, but something in him said that he was welcome exactly as he was in this place.

He sat back in the perfectly comfortable couch, knowing that he’d done the same thing a hundred times or more but the knowledge of when and where remained out of his reach. That was alright, though, as that same something told him that it would come to him soon enough. He didn’t need to poke at the familiarity like a loose tooth.

And he didn’t feel like setting himself a puzzle to solve, anyway.

It had been a long day, after all.

He’d arrived home to Sunny Heights after a long drive made longer by a sudden snow storm. For all the trouble he’d had getting to bloody Anning, it had been worse getting away from it. He’d come close to bursting a tyre on a pothole barely a mile away from the Hall and the journey had continued in that vein.

Mo had been delighted and relieved to see him and the boys had been over the moon and bouncing off the walls. He’d spent the day running around with them, getting all three of them out from under Mo’s feet. By the time the two of them had been put to bed, he was happily worn out in a way that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Mo and him had gotten on with those fun parental duties of filling stockings and placing the presents from Father Christmas under the tree then. Once they’d hung the stockings on the boys’ bedposts, they’d tiptoed down the stairs and collapsed on the couch.

To think, he’d come close to missing this.

But then, Mo had given him a concerned look and asked him quietly how things had gone for the last few weeks. And if he were in her shoes, knowing that he’d nearly given up the whole thing only a few months prior and seeing him return home with a shadow on his face, he’d be doing his best to work out what had gone wrong now too.

He’d given her a somewhat edited rundown of events. He’d gotten damn good over the years at polishing the few highlights and placing them in prime position, conveniently and purely by accident obscuring the things that would only upset.people. Even still, Mo’s face went from interested to anxious quicker than he liked.

And he couldn’t entirely blame her. Just saying things aloud made them sound stranger and madder than he’d thought they were.

Ringo had a dawning sense, as his story went on, that he’d gotten used to some real fuckin’ odd things while he’d been in Anningley Hall. Mo wanted to know the why of a lot of things that Ringo didn’t have a why for. And it wasn’t like Mo to do that. She was usually entirely happy for work to be left outside the front door and for home to be its own little kingdom.

He hadn’t any answers for her.

By the time he’d explained why the rest of them hadn’t gone home too or why they’d stayed in such a wreck of a place at all (he didn’t know and he couldn’t explain it), both him and Mo were fit for nothing but bed and trying not to think about the fact there was a four year old in the house set to leave his bed like a rocket the second he thought that he could get away with calling it morning.

He’d fallen asleep in between the blink of an eye. A mattress that didn’t feel like it was stuffed with straw, a pillow that didn’t feel like it was filled with rocks and a room that didn’t feel like it had a hundred generations of mould growing in it: what chance did he have?

And he’d opened his eyes in this luxurious room which he knew that he knew, but couldn’t put a name to.

A record played softly from another room. He wasn’t sure of the song, but he knew the singer. Cilla.

The door to his left opened and Brian stepped into the room. Every item of his clothing was tailored exactly and his hair was artfully pushed back from his forehead. He was perfectly put together like he had been nearly every single time he’d ever seen him.

He smiled at Ringo, just as he had so many times before.

“I’m so dreadfully sorry for keeping you waiting, Ringo, please do forgive me.”

Ringo could only give him a slow, relieved grin. He felt that smile in a way he hadn’t done in a long time. He could feel it in his eyes. Just hearing Brian’s voice made his shoulders relax and something ease within him. If Brian was here, then everything would be alright.

They’d be alright.

“D’you know, Brian, I think you might be the only person ever who could sort out the mess we’ve gotten ourselves in?”

Brian sat down on the armchair to his left and folded his hands together, the only sign of any stress or worry being that tell tale little pinch he got to his mouth.

“Yes, you boys certainly have found troubles, haven’t you?”

Troubles. That was a very Brian way to put it. Disasters, calamities, catastrophes… that seemed to be a more realistic way of looking at it. But Brian always found a way of making everything sound classier. Genteel. Less like it was absolutely and completely fucked beyond repair. It was one of the things he hadn’t appreciated until it wasn’t around anymore.

“Now, the situation in the Hall with the others. You shall have your work cut out for you, I’m afraid, Ringo.”

“Me?” Ringo protested. “I don’t even know what the situation is! An’ I’ve been down there an’ helped nothin’!”

“You do know,’ Brian chided gently. “It is simply that you haven’t allowed yourself to see it and accept it. Not that I am blaming you, however, Ringo. It is a particularly, ah, strange one.”

Sitting in Brian’s sitting room in his London pad, it was almost like the chats they’d had about EMI or album covers or his potential film career. Almost, except for how he was there talking to a dead man in the first place and how he was hinting and implying about strangeness. Small things like that, really.

He crossed his arms and gave Brian an unimpressed look.

“Well, Eppy, you know I’m the thick one, so’s you’ll just have to explain it in small words, now won’t you?”

Brian returned it with an equally unimpressed one.

“You and I both know you are far from ‘thick’, as you put it. As it is, you are the only one of the boys who is not caught by something wicked, with very little hope of escape. And in all my dealings with you, time and time again, I saw that you were exactly the right person to place in the band when we did and you easily quieted any doubts I ever had. Your musicianship was inarguable, yes, but you could have been the best drummer in the country and still be the wrong fit. Your mind and your heart were far more important. And that remains the case, Ringo.”

He should have felt somewhat mollified, but all Ringo felt was cold.

“What do you mean, ‘little hope of escape’? What’s got them? Are they hurt?’ Did me going cause this?

Brian’s face grew more serious. And sadder.

“At this precise moment, they are not beyond your reach, Ringo. Any of them. I cannot say as much as I like, but you must know that if the sun rises and they are in the same predicament, then they will be lost for good. If you are to free them, you must be careful and remember yourself at all times. I can tell you three specific things, Ringo. Follow the birds until you find them. There is hidden treasure in the hollow below. And the smallest gift will set the final trap.”

“Why can’t you say more?” Ringo cried out, losing patience with the whole situation.”I need answers, not fuckin’ cryptic crossword clues! They’re your boys! Didn’t you say that enough times? If you know what’s goin’ on, you’ve got to fuckin’ tell me!”

Brian didn’t wince, didn’t flinch and didn’t lose his temper in turn. He only closed his eyes for a moment, deep sadness marring his face.Then he opened them again and raised his hands towards him. Ringo only noticed then a thin silver chain looped around his wrists. How he hadn’t seen it before bewildered him.

“Don’t scold yourself,” Brian said gently. “It isn’t meant to be seen. Whatever power is at work in Anningley is very old and very strong. It can reach even where we rest and hold our tongues even when we wish very dearly to help you directly. I am trapped by the rules of the story it wishes to tell.”

“How can I see it then?” Ringo couldn’t take his eyes off it, now that he had seen it. It glinted strangely in the warm light. It was like it leached the warmth around it and turned the air cold. Like it could hurt to touch. He hoped, wherever Brian was, he was beyond hurt.

“You said it yourself,” Brian said with a small proud smile. “You’re my boys. There are certain things that it can’t argue with and that is one of them.”

“An’ I suppose I can’t break it or somethin’. Nor you,” Ringo said gloomily. That would be too easy by half.

“Precisely.” Brian let a hint of irritation through with this and Ringo could understand it. He couldn’t imagine how he’d feel if he woke up dead somewhere and he couldn’t even complain about it properly because some sod had decided to play some stupid trick. And it weren’t even something Brian would like the look of, which annoyed Ringo to no end for some reason. It just seemed like an insult on top of an insult.

“Alright, then what am I supposed to do? Head back down there? An’ then what? I don’t even know what’s happened down there or- or who’s behind it or anythin’! I know you can’t say much, but you’ve got to say what you can. I’m in the dark, Bri. I’m on me own. It’s just me.”

“You aren’t.”

Brian looked at him intently. “You are most certainly not alone. You will have help when you need it, if you know how to see it. But apart from that, you have not been and will never be so. You are part of one great whole. You have been ever since you became a Beatle. And four Beatles together changed everything. You saw the world as it was and remade it as you saw fit. And as long as you remember that and act as one, then you will triumph.”

Act as one? Oh god. He thinks we’re all still friends.

“You four have been through experiences no-one in the world can imagine,” Brian said gently, reading the discomfort on Ringo’s face as easily as any of the books on his shelves. “No matter what may come between you four, you’ll never truly be divided from each other. Not when it matters. Don’t you see?”

Ringo opened his mouth to argue that no, he didn’t and he could do with something a bit more concrete to go on than sentiment when he was interrupted by a telephone ringing.

Brian didn’t look surprised in any way, he simply picked up the handset and listened for a moment.

“It’s for you,” he said with a sad smile, holding the handset out to him.

Mo’s hand was on his shoulder shaking him.

“It’s for you,” she said with a worried twist to her mouth, holding the handset out to him.

He sat up in bed and pressed it to his ear.

“Ringo?” a young female voice asked. But not a fan that somehow got his number. He knew that voice.

“Lindy?” he asked, confused.

“It’s- Oh Ringo, it’s awful. The Hall is on fire! Anningley is on fire!”

It had taken him well over four hours to get home from Anning that morning. Driving on frozen roads at reckless speed, on deserted roads on that Christmas Eve night, he made it in three.

As soon as he’d heard Lindy’s voice, he’d known it couldn’t be good news. The how and the why of how she had his telephone number aside, she wasn’t the kind to be calling for a trick or a stunt.

He hadn’t even asked a how or a why. He’d just told her he was on the way and slammed down the phone. Turning to Mo, he could barely get the words out.

“Anningley’s on fire. I’ve got–”

“You’ve got to go,” she’d said immediately. “Get dressed, I’ll get the car goin’.”

Had he ever mentioned how much of a cracker Mo was?

Hanging out the driver’s side window, he’d promised to ring as soon as he had news and asked her to ring Neil. Neil would know what to do, all the phone calls and arrangements and whatnot. She’d nodded and gave him a kiss on the crown of his head.

“Bring ‘em home, Richy.

He’d set off with a spray of gravel and didn’t go under seventy the entire way there.

He ran through everything Brian had said in his dream over and over again. Follow the birds. Look below. The smallest gift. Brian was trapped by someone else’s storytelling.

He still didn’t know what he was going to do.

By the time he reached Anning, it was four in the morning. It looked like it hadn’t stopped snowing since he’d left and he had to slow to a crawl.

Around a quarter mile from Anningley Hall, he could see a red glow on the horizon.

He abandoned the car at the side of the road and ran the rest of the way, slipping and stumbling through the heavy snow.

He didn’t even slow when he turned in at the gate, just kept running up the track to the Hall. He could hear the flames crackling from there and shouts from the onlookers from the village that had gathered.

“Psst! Ringo!”

He nearly fell over his feet, flat into the snow. Vicky and Lindy darted out from where they had been hidden under the trees and steadied him.

“Sorry! Sorry!” panted Vicky.

Lindy said nothing, but the tear tracks on her face reflected in the moonlight said all that was necessary.

“What the hell happened?” Ringo asked once he’d gotten his bearings again. He looked up the track towards the Hall, where smoke and flames reached greedily towards the night sky.

“Lindy’s mum smelled smoke after midnight,” Vicky explained, curling her arm around a shaking Lindy. “She sent Lindy’s dad over to check and then they rang the fire brigade. They’re waiting for another engine to come over from Salisbury now. It– They said it’s going to need at least one more.”

“We told them,” Lindy added quietly. “We told them that there’s three people in there. That we knew you. But they haven’t found them yet. They couldn’t stay in there looking very long because the fire was so bad.” By the time she got to the end of the sentence, she was barely audible.

“They told us to just go home, but…” Vicky trailed off, then shook her head. “I don’t know. We wanted to wait for you.”

The two girls, bundled up as they were in coats and scarves and boots over their nightgowns, still looked half frozen. But Ringo couldn’t bring himself to tell them to go home too. These two were the only people in the whole village who really gave a damn about the four of them. Girls like Lindy and Vicky were always the ones standing with them, when it counted.

You will have help when you need it, if you know how to see it.

“Thank you,” Ringo said finally, “Girls, thank you. Look, this might sound completely crackers, but there’s something weird after happening to the others and I think the fire is only there to hide it. To stop them from getting help. An’ I’ve got to figure out how to get them out of it.”

Instead of laughing in his face or running back home, the girls just looked at each other.

“Lindy, you have to tell him,” hissed Vicky. She turned again to Ringo and leaned forward. “Lindy was talking to George before and he was acting odd. Really odd. Right, Lindy?”

Lindy reluctantly nodded. “I went over to give him a Christmas present. Only a little thing. It’s a lucky stone my granny gave me. She gave it to me years ago and I wanted George to have it. And he was, Nothing- nothing scary or, or not like him, but he was so upset. And I think he was scared of something. But he wouldn’t tell me about it. And I did ask, I promise, I did ask, Ringo. But-” Tears started trailing down her face again and she wiped them away roughly.

“It’s alright, kid,” Ringo consoled her. “Just- did he say anythin’, anythin’ at all that might help? Or did you notice anythin’ particular?”

She stood for a moment, silent and leaning on Vicky, thinking hard.

“He didn’t want to talk about it really. But I asked him why he didn’t go home too and he said he really couldn’t leave John and Paul. It was like he was scared something might happen if he did. And-” she broke off, looking unsure.

“Anything, Lindy,” Ringo pleaded. “You don’t know what might be helpful.”

“When I called over, he was in the kitchen asleep at the table. Even though it wasn’t noon yet. He was having a nightmare. I had to wake him,” she said shakily. “And it must have been very frightening. He was arguing with someone, I think. They wouldn’t tell him something or answer him, maybe. I just heard him say, ‘back where’. And I think he was talking to someone called Stu. Or something like it, anyway. It was all muffled. Then when he woke up, he-” she halted herself awkwardly. “Um, well, he was very upset.”

Back where, Stu? It sounded like George had been visited by another one of their guardian angels, trying his best to help from the Great Hereafter. Ringo gave a silent thanks to a man he’d never really gotten a chance to know. A Beatle to the end, and after it.

But did it help?

He’d have to think about it, but standing around chatting wasn’t going to get him anywhere. If his dream was to be believed, he had til the sun rose and it was nearly 5 now. And the sun usually rose around 8 this time of year. They’d just had the shortest day, after all.

“Right, girls, I’m gonna need a hand,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “I’m gonna go find them. Can you girls make sure no-one knows I’m here? An’ try to keep ‘em near the Hall. At least til our friend Neil gets here? You can trust him to help keep people having a Beatles freak out.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Vicky said with a small, impish smile. “We told them it was the Incredible String Band when they asked. And they all said, ‘who?’ so you shouldn’t have anyone hunting after you.”

“Girls, when all this is done,” Ringo said fervently. “I’ll take you to every shop in London you want to go to. Any shop in New York! You can have any job you like in Apple when you’re older! You’re bloody wonders.”

With a fierce hug to the two girls and a loan from Vicky of her little battery powered torch, he set off further up the track, being careful to stick to the darkest part of it to avoid being seen.

He veered off to skirt around the side of the house, avoiding the gathered people as much as he possibly could. His job was made easier by Lindy and Vicky running up the track towards the house and bursting into dramatic, noisy tears.

Bless them.

He tried not to look at the burning building, but it was hard to ignore. The flames had spread through the entire ground floor, cracking the windows and radiating intense heat. The upper floors hadn’t entirely been taken over by fire yet, but it was only a matter of time. The fire brigade were doing their best, but he couldn’t see them beating it.

He stood there for a minute, mesmerised by the destruction. What if he was wrong? What if it really had been just a dream and his friends were trapped in there?

A rustling overhead caught his attention.

A little brown bird sat on the branch staring at the fire, the flames reflecting in its beady little eyes.

If he didn’t know better, he’d swear it looked smug.

But birds couldn’t do that, could they?

Follow the birds until you find them.

And as he looked through the trees, he could see more of them, perched high in the trees, all of them staring at the burning Anningley Hall.

Even if he’d never dreamed of Brian, if he’d never seen George turn into a walking ghost before his eyes, if he’d never worried for a single second about John Winston Lennon, he’d have to admit that it looked dead weird.

And though it could be a trap laid to catch him, he knew he had to follow them. So he turned and walked through the dark woods, following the trail of small brown birds, perched stock still in the trees. He didn’t make a noise, carefully stepping through the snow. He didn’t turn on Vicky’s torch, afraid that the birds would startle and fly away into the starry night.

He took stock as he walked. He had the girls keeping the crowds from hindering him. He had a torch in his coat pocket. He had Brian’s words in his head.

The black sky and crescent moon above him and the woods around him were so quiet, it was eerie. Though he didn’t have a hole in his pocket, he felt like he was stuck in a film.

The path through the woods led him to the standing stones. Those standing stones that John had gone on and on and on about. That George had looked sick at the mere mention of.

It made sense, he supposed.

But the place was deserted.

Snow fell on the stones, leaving a thick cap of white on each of them. Nothing stirred.

Had he just wasted his time? The little time the boys had left?

He walked further into the circle of stones, his footsteps strangely quiet. He thought they should be louder in the quiet. But he could barely hear them. He could barely hear anything, not even the sound of the Hall burning.

Something was keeping this place quiet.

He turned around slowly, trying to see anything that looked out of place. But he’d never gone exploring in this direction, he’d never seen the place up close, how would he know?

Hopelessness started to overwhelm him again. That feeling of being useless, helpless, pointless…

He’d listened to that feeling far too many times this year. And maybe if he hadn’t, they might never have come to Anningley.

Or maybe he’d just be trapped here along with the rest, caught in a story woven by an ancient power.

No point in dwelling, young Starkey. Find your friends.

He started to examine the area with renewed vigour. None of the stones were alike and they were only vaguely arranged in a circle. And there was a great big gap, where it looked like one had been there but now was gone. He could see a dip in the earth in the middle, probably where the original stone had stood.

And there was one leaning on another, one behind the other, like you might lean on one of your mates to see over their shoulder.

He walked nearer to that one, tilting his head this way and that to look at each angle in turn.

There was a hole in the ground. Nearly hidden entirely by the way the two stones rested on each other.

There is hidden treasure in the hollow below.

Brian Epstein, you marvel of a man.

Ringo crept nearer to the stone and turned on Vicky’s torch.

It wasn’t just a hole in the ground.

It was a passageway. Steps were carved into the earth travelling down deep below the circle and the lintel stone above them had crude carvings etched into it. It might have been a warning to stay out. Or a declaration of ownership.

Or maybe it was Beware of Fido, Ringo thought glumly. Be just his luck if there was a Cerberus down there waiting for him. Pity he didn’t think to bring a bone with him.

The cartoon version of him in the film they saw only a few months ago would have had a handy bit of dynamite. Clever bugger, that Ringo.

The snow hadn’t touched the steps, covered as they were by the tilted stone and the walls had carvings on them which he hurriedly angled the torch away from, but the grotesque images would stay in his mind.

Ringo stopped dead when the thought hit him.

He’d have to go down there.

He felt like crying all of a sudden. Down there, through that evil feeling passageway? Down into the bowels of the earth, on his own?

But, hadn’t Brian said that too? He was never truly on his own. He was one of four. One of a set. And the rest of them were probably down there, waiting for him to help them. To get them out. Waiting for him to count them in.

He cautiously placed his foot on the top step and then the next. Nothing shot out at him or screamed at him or took his legs out from under him. He carried on, down and down and down, until the open sky disappeared behind him and he was surrounded on all sides by the dark earth.

He angled the torch straight down at his feet. He didn’t want to give away his approach to anyone. And it helped to look straight down, not at the awful things depicted on the walls on either side of him. Every now and then, he’d catch a glimpse of a disturbingly contorted face or a restrained limb and quickly avert his eyes downwards again. He couldn’t afford to lose it now.

He carried on. Down and down and down. The air grew stuffier and hotter and the smell was like the mustiest old attic you’d ever stuck your head into times a hundred.

And all of a sudden, the darkness became less dense and he could feel a coolness and a dampness in the air. He stopped where he was and turned off the torch, tucking it away in the pocket of his coat again. Slowly, carefully, he took the final steps down and he saw in front of him a high-ceilinged cave with a slimy, black-green viscous coating covering the stone walls. It was divided in half most of the way through by dark, gleaming water.

And his three best friends were clinging to each other as they huddled against one of the walls near him, shivering and pale.

Near them was a grey, peculiarly proportioned mass, clothed in rags. It was hunkered down low on the floor of the cave, crouched like a dog about to go for the throat. It had a gaping mouth and sharp teeth and he really didn’t want to think about why it looked so fuckin’ familiar.

And its horrible sunken eyes had that same black-green slime dripping from them.

Its skin was looked dry and papery and hung off it in awful loose fragments that were hard to distinguish from the filthy material it was clothed in.

There was a smell of rot and decay that he’d never forget in all his life.

However long that would be.

Now, what the fuck was he supposed to do?

Try to distract it, so the others could run?

Try to attract the others attention and work out something between them?

Walk right in like he owned the place?

There wasn’t a good answer. He’d just have to pick one and hope.

But then a high, cold voice rang out through the cave and his blood froze.

“Ah. I did want the complete set.”

It came from a figure behind the hulking mass, leaning against the far wall. That was the best he could do. A figure. Any detail he tried to focus on slipped away out of his grasp, like it was created out of fog. Its face changed so often, it was dizzying. It was Stu, it was Yoko, it was Paul, it was a beautiful, high-cheekboned man with a supercilious air who looked like one of those blokes off the covers of Mo’s Georgette Heyers, it was a strange, catlike woman with long, golden hair.

The only thing he could retain was that it was tall and filled with bones.

The others had noticed him now too. John looked dazed and pale, but relief, then shame crossed his face. Paul looked frozen with the cold and was shivering. Somehow, he must have been dunked in water, because his clothes hung heavily from his limbs. Him and John were just hanging on to each other for dear life.

And Georgie.

Poor Georgie just looked devastated to see him. He was holding out something in his hand between him and the grey thing. Like it had some power in it to keep it away.

Lindy’s Christmas present. The lucky stone from her granny.

The smallest gift…

The empty space in the circle above. Like a door left open. Or a gate not closed.

…will set the final trap.

Ringo pasted his best smile on his face and stepped into the cave.

He was the best actor out of all of them, after all.

Let’s see who can act naturally.

“The Beatles without Ringo? Who would want that? No bugger, that’s who.”

He could see them clearer now. The poor bastards had scrapes and cuts all over them, like they’d fallen or had to run through a load of briars. Paul had a nasty cut on his forehead, bleeding slowly and bruising up and down the left side of his face. And the way the other two were flanking him said enough about how he had fared since Ringo had left for home.

He stopped a few feet away from them, shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged at the figure.

“Dunno if you can afford us, though. It’s 90% of the gate per night and £1,000 up front. An’ we only do half an hour. An’ no matinees.”

He wasn’t sure if his words were impressing the bony bastard over there. But they didn’t have to. They just had to take up attention. Set the tone.

He flicked his eyes over towards the others. Trying to get them to read his mind. All they had to do was follow his lead.

“He’s right, y’know,” John piped up, staring straight at Ringo. “You’ve shot for the moon here, love. Gettin’ the Beatles? That’s a hell of a swing. We’ve had plenty folks try.”

“That’s right,” Paul joined in, hiding his confusion fairly admirably. “We’ve had everyone from Lew Grade to Robert Stigwood. An’ none of ‘em managed it.”

George didn’t say anything, just kept holding out the stone in his shaking hand. The fear on his face hadn’t faded, but the sadness in his eyes was slowly being replaced with a cautious hope. Those eyes fixed on Ringo like he was a drowning sailor seeing a lifeboat on the horizon.

He shifted closer to George, turning now to face the danger.

The grey creature stood between them and the heap of bones.

He smiled blandly and stepped towards it.

“Impressive little doggy you’ve got yourself, here, love. Gonna enter ‘im in Crufts? Dunno if he’ll land Best in Show. Think ‘e might have distemper.”

The bones tilted its head like a bird. He didn’t hear the bones crack, but he could see them moving and clicking in the joints.

“Honestly, love, you ever tried feedin’ the poor thing? I can see its ribs. An’ its lungs.”

“Think its nose is fallin’ off too,” George added shakily.

Ringo tamped down on a smile. All four of them as one entity. Bein’ those Beatles that the world knew and loved and laughed at. That was all he needed.

As quick as he could, he grabbed the torch from his pocket and crammed it in the poor, afflicted thing’s mouth, wedging it open and summoning a guttural howl from it. Then, with all his strength, he shoved it back towards the pile of bones. People didn’t ever think he was strong, all they ever saw was his slighter stature than the others and slim figure. But he was a drummer and he’d never met a drummer who wasn’t made out of wiry muscle.

The gargoylish doglike creature landed on the bones and Ringo took that as their cue to leave at speed.

Reaching behind him, he grabbed one of the boys and ran for the stairs, praying that they all were following on.

They ran and they ran and they ran up the stairs, Paul and John and George following on Ringo’s heels as close as they could, none of them talking but all of them practically breathing in sync.

They burst out into the fresh air and the sky was pinkening towards the east.

How long had he been down there? Ringo could have sworn that it had barely been thirty minutes, but it looked like the sun was close to rising. They hadn’t any time to lose.

Turning to George, he grabbed him by the shoulder and gently shook it.

“Georgie. Georgie, listen to me now. I need that stone. I need Lindy’s stone.”

George, dazed by the light and the flight to the surface, just looked at him.

“Georgie. Listen to me. D’you trust me?”

George nodded wildly. “Y’came back, Richy. Like you said. Course I trust you.”

“Give me the stone,” Ringo said gently and George handed it over without question.

He turned to face John and Paul as well. Paul had his hands on John’s shoulders and was muttering something at him that John was paying close attention to.

“Right, now you three get clear of these stones. Get away as far as you can. Find the girls. Find Neil.”

They didn’t move. None of them moved.

“Said it yerself, Richy,” Paul said with a brittle smile. “No bugger wants the Beatles without you, ye daft sod.”

It was very sweet and very gratifying and Ringo could have argued that he was making the rules of the story now, but he didn’t have time.

A scrabbling and scraping noise came from below them.

“Fine!” he exclaimed. “C’mon an’ fuckin’ run, then!”

If he was right, then this would save them. And if he was wrong, he didn’t want to think about it.

John, Paul, George and Ringo ran for the gap in the stones and the rising sun.

Message left on Derek Taylor’s answering machine, early morning 25/12/1968
“Get your arse out of bed, Degs, you’re needed. The Hall’s on fire an’ the boys are missin’. I’m up here for the last hour an’ everyone here is fuck all use, apart from two of the kids. Get here an’ fuck the speed limit.”