and i hope we passed the audition

[candle_beck]

starts here

Several days went by, and Paul did not see John.

He was always running a step or two behind. Paul went around to the common cafés and pubs, the empty lot down by the river where the broken wall had once featured a jungle, and John had always just left, just missed him by a minute. Paul developed this sense of John like a mechanical rabbit at the dog races, barely out of reach.

Paul occupied himself with other things, the many other people in his life. He got pissed with some mates from school and ended up passed out in a bedsit in Dover Street, his face covered in garish girl's makeup when he awoke. He and George wrote half a song that was either really good, or a knock-off of something Chuck Berry had written years before. Neither of them owned the relevant record, and so they spent hours humming the melody at each other, trying to remember.

Paul was nervous and hyperaware most of the time, amplified by invisible tension that felt like static at the edges of his perception. He couldn't stop looking for John everywhere he went. His neck was sore from twisting to reconnoiter the familiar streets of their hometown. There was a rattling little thrill in his stomach every time he heard John's name, and of course he would have to have the single most pervasive name in the Empire, of course. Paul was ambushed, surrounded. He couldn't escape it.

It was feeble, pathetic beyond bearing. Recognising his own behaviour did nothing in helping him stop. There was a galaxy of things he was trying not to think about. There were so many things he had no interest in being.

And then it was a band day, and they were supposed to meet at Paul's house. Paul was frayed and short of temper in the morning, snapping at his father and getting twice back. He sulked over the piano playing the fast wild stuff that his dad couldn't stand, throwing in spiteful discordant notes just randomly enough to appear unintentional. His father took his paper and jammed a hat on his head, saying at the door, "That isn't music, Paul, play music," before leaving for the pub.

Paul let his hands spread out wide on the keys. He was feeling vaguely sick to his stomach. He wondered if John had been staying away from him on purpose. He wondered what was going to happen to the band.

George showed up first that afternoon, and Paul stayed at the piano as George unpacked his guitar, feeling more secure with an instrument that weighed as much as an anchor. They played idly, in and out of each other's tune.

John arrived with Stuart and his friends Roddy and Tony. They were already drunk though it was still shy of teatime, not yet disabled by it but made raucous, loud even from outside the house. As he opened the door, Paul's eyes met John's for just a moment, a glittering blank moment that washed a flush over his whole body. Paul escaped back to the piano. The floor under the thin carpet shook as they tromped in.

"Ah, me laddies," John said expansively. "Back together again."

Paul stared at the piano keys. His reaction was more visceral than he'd been prepared for; he knew how red his face must be.

Chatter filled the room, guitars unslung with the soft squeak of strings, scattered songless plucking as they were tuned. George was being given a casual amount of hell, which always seemed to happen when any two of John's friends got together. John was in top form, directing people around and blowing into his mouth organ in counterpoint to his punchlines.

Drunk, he's drunk, Paul thought, and that was possibly not a smart thing to think. Bad memories.

His right hand began moving over the keys without conscious direction, and after a moment it solidified into 'Greensleeves.' It surprised Paul because it felt like a forgotten dream; that was the first song he'd ever learned on the piano, sitting on his mother's lap a thousand years ago.

John said, "Oi, what century is this?"

Paul looked up. John had come to stand near him, a piquant gin cloud around him. Behind the smudged glass of specs, John's hazy half-closed eyes were fixed on Paul, sleepily dragging across his face and hands.

"Incidental music," Paul said. George laughed a little, thumping his fingers on the body of his guitar.

John smirked. Paul wanted to kiss him very badly, and he tore his eyes away, back down to the black and white.

"Needs a little something," John said, and then pulled out his mouth organ. He blew a jerky piece of rhythm to back up Paul's piano, and suddenly the regal medieval tune had transformed into rock and roll.

George stung his guitar to life and began screwing around with the theme. Paul brought his left hand up to play the chords, and as the ragged new song filled the room, he felt his damnable mood drain off him somewhat, replaced by more important concerns.

They played for an hour, this song and that and the other. The friends John had brought were slightly less useless than normal, beating on a toy plastic Indian drum and the tambourine with rust eating away at the metal jingles. Conversation was at a premium. Cigarettes burned to long cylinders of grey ash in the ashtrays, covering the dried lavender Paul's father crushed up for the smell. A flask of gin was emptied and left to lie forlornly on the carpet.

It was a pure relief. The music crowded into his head and left room for no shame or guilt or uncertainty. Paul grinned at John like old times. For that length of time, they had never committed any illegal indecencies in a churchyard; they were more like brothers, the deepest kind of friends.

Stuart, who knew a few chords on the guitar but always got bored after just a song or two, banged around in the kitchen and emerged with a kettle and a teetering stack of chipped teacups. They set aside their instruments, fingers aching, and the silence that fell was oppressive, disturbing.

Paul said, "I'll get some records," and went to his room because his dad didn't like his son's rock and roll getting all mixed up with the ragtime and brass band albums.

He was on his knees on the carpet, reaching under the bed to dig out the milk crate where he kept his small collection, and John came in. Paul looked up sharply, feeling the now-familiar clutch in his throat. John had followed him again.

"What are you getting?" John asked, and closed the door at his back.

Paul's breath caught. His fingers tightened on the skinny ribs of the records in their box. His mind sped, ratcheted up close to panic, because it was a different room with the door closed. It was a different world.

Paul pulled out the nearest record. He had to blink down at for several seconds before the obscure symbols on the front coalesced into letters and words.

"The Five Satins."

"Vocalists! Bite your tongue, sir. We're in the mood for genuine rock and roll today," John declared, magisterial in the wave of his hand. He came over to sit on Paul's bed, and things just kept getting worse and worse.

Paul swallowed, sat back on his heels. If he lifted his arm, he could place it on John's bent knee. If he leaned down, he could touch his mouth there.

"What would you recommend, then?" he asked.

John shrugged. He lay back on his elbows, his shirt pulling up and showing the metal gleam of his belt. There was the vague shadowy hint of skin, and Paul was staring. A fog was creeping over his better senses.

"That bloke from the telly, that Ricky Nelson." John flashed a brief hard grin. "You're keen on him."

"Go on. The very thought." Paul rattled off a little laugh. He was fiddling with the record, hating this conversation. The uncertainty was going to kill him.

"Those lovely blue eyes," John said, a faint sneer to it.

Paul shook his head, pushing out his lower lip with his teeth and trying to keep his gaze focussed anywhere but John laid back on the bed like that.

"You're talking rot," Paul just barely managed.

"Like to think that, wouldn't you?"

John was playing some different game. Paul wasn't sure of the rules or the objective, the boundaries, anything. He was wholly at sea.

"Here," Paul said, jerking another record out of the crate without looking at it and shoving it at John. "How's that?"

John sat up and looked blankly at the record, and then tossed it aside. His gaze on Paul was hazy and unnerving, a deathless flush warming Paul's face.

"Not blue eyes," John said. "That's not what you're keen on at all, is it?"

Paul looked helplessly away. He swallowed several times, compulsive.

"Don't," he said, but it was in a hushed whisper and so John didn't even bother acknowledging it.

"You might as well just come out with it, Paulie. It's not as if you're terribly subtle, you know. Not as if anybody here is blind. Aw, don't give me that face."

John pushed his fingers against Paul's cheek, a slap with no impact or pain. Paul twitched his head away. John was grinning, probably just short of laughing. Paul became caught in a memory of that night, that moment when he had put his arms around John's neck, hooked a leg around him. Of course John would laugh. Of course.

"You came after me," Paul heard himself saying.

It took John off-guard for a second. He blinked, his expression faltering and betraying his intoxication. Paul hadn't expected to say that, but he liked the effect, momentary though it was.

John rallied. "Aye, I hoped a quick toss off might stop you gazing at me like some soppy girl. More fool me, eh?"

It was exactly too much. Something gave in Paul like old floorboards rotting through, insistent memories of John's mouth working against his own, the shivering feel of thin muscle under thinner skin. Paul straightened up on his knees, surprising John with the sudden movement and taking advantage. He twisted a hand in John's shirt, adrenaline coursing painfully all through him.

"You're lying," Paul said, yanking John closer because anger was better than every other possibility at hand. "You don't mean that."

"Don't, don't think you know what I mean," John said, and Paul thrilled to hear him stammer. John's eyes were very wide, very dark. His bent leg was against Paul's side.

"Well enough, Johnny," Paul said with a half-mature sneer of his own, letting John know how he felt about certain childish nicknames. "I didn't start this. Maybe I, I, maybe I looked at you sometimes but I never started it. So who's keen on who?"

John's chest hitched as he made a strange sound that was part laugh and part choked breath. He took hold of Paul's arm but didn't shove him off, and Paul feared that his heart would give out if it was obliged to beat at this manic pace for much longer.

"Starting it doesn't mean-" John began, and then his voice withered suddenly as if he had been singing for three hours instead of just one. He looked down at Paul, his eyes shuttered and his mouth making an unstable curve. "It doesn't mean anything."

"Liar," Paul said without thinking, almost breathless. It felt so good in his mouth that he said it again, "Liar," and then pulled John down and kissed him.

John responded immediately, tipping his head to the side and opening his mouth, and giddiness rocketed through Paul. His mind sang like an aria, liar liar liar. John pushed his hand under his shirt collar and curled his fingers, still warm from the guitar, over Paul's bare shoulder.

Some small amount of time passed, heat and movement and John's tongue dragging against his own, and Paul didn't care about what any of it meant as long as it kept happening.

And then it wasn't happening anymore, John's grip tightening on his shoulder before he was shoved back, the kiss broken with deceptive ease.

Paul panted slightly. He swayed back in towards John instinctively, but was kept at arm's length.

"What?" Paul asked hoarsely. His eyes were locked on John's mouth.

"Not here," John said, hearteningly short of breath himself. "Stuart and, and everybody's right out there."

"Where, then? When?" Paul said. He shifted to feel John's rough fingers scrape against his skin.

John took his hand out of Paul's shirt. He was shaking, Paul noticed in a terribly distracted way. John wasn't generally the type.

"Meet me outside the offie on Beacon," John told him in a hurried slur like a spy passing information. "Midnight, all right?"

"Yeah, midnight." Paul pressed forward after another kiss but John forestalled him with a locked arm. John's throat dipped as he swallowed.

"Jesus, you're worse than I thought," John said. He got to his feet, deftly slipping away from any further contact. A fast hand went through his hair. "Who could guess at shameless deviance behind such a face?"

John was searching for solid ground, and Paul let him have it because he had his own problems. His body was demanding John with an intensity that Paul had never known.

"Midnight," Paul said again, the word dense and wonderful on his tongue.

John glanced at him. There was colour on John's face too, his arms tight against his sides. It occurred to Paul that John didn't know any more about what they were getting into than he did. It was a shockingly comforting thought.

"Yeah," John said, and then, "Bring Buddy Holly," and then he left the room.

Paul remained on the floor for a long moment. His box of records had been tipped over at some point, and they spilled out in a glossy cascade across the carpet. Paul lifted his hand to his mouth because it felt swollen, branded. His fingers smelled like the stuff John put in his hair.

Eventually he cleaned up the records and got to his feet on watery legs. The clock with a ship painted on it read four minutes past five o'clock, and the only thing that could find purchase in Paul's mind was seven hours, and the gleaming vision of the Beacon Street off-license shining like a city of gold in his future.

*

That night, Paul went to bed still wearing his trousers.

He waited until Mike was snoring in the other bed, and the smell of fresh cigarette smoke had faded from the front room where his father ended every day with Charles Dickens and the radio softly playing songs from Luxembourg. Paul counted very slowly, not seconds or blinks, just numbers steadily climbing. He picked up the dented metal clock to read its face in the moonlight through the window. At ten minutes till, he slid out of bed and snuck out of the house on muffled feet, his shoes and shirt cradled in his arms like a kidnapped child.

Paul dressed in the street, and ran to Beacon Street. Liverpool was sewn up tight by the night, the dark seams stitched into every building and parked car. Paul's lungs got smaller with each breath, his heartbeat throbbing in his ears.

The off-license still had its light on, though the door was locked and the windows battened. John was sitting on the kerb, his arms on his bent knees, and everything about the scene seemed surreal to Paul, impossible.

Paul came up to John, his mouth already dry, his hands already aching. John tipped his head back to look at him, his eyes sinking into deep hollows.

"And he's prompt as well. Teachers must just love you to pieces."

An imbecilic grin was apparently the only viable response. Paul mind had gone fantastically blank. John snorted, and imperiously held out a hand for Paul to grip and haul him up.

"Stupid git," John muttered in a kind of sideways-smirking way. "All right, come on."

Paul fell naturally into step beside him. He pushed his hands in his pockets, shoulders up against the stinging draughts of wind. John walked like he was taller than the truth of it, like some part of his brain was ever-replaying a John Wayne film. They didn't talk because even their footsteps on the pavement echoed in the quiet street.

They went to the condemned council house. John gave Paul a leg up into the window, their bodies dizzyingly close for a brief physical moment, and then Paul was in and it was pitch black. John climbed in through the murky square hole cut in the velvet fabric of the room.

There was a concentrated rustle, and then John sparked a match with his thumbnail. His face flared orange and grey, and Paul moved closer like a moth, a meteorite roped by gravity.

"Well," John said. He was whispering, though there was no one around. Two weeks ago, the band had played in this house until the sun came up; no one cared.

"Well," Paul agreed. He wondered if he was allowed to touch John yet.

The match burned down. Paul wanted to say, what should I do, but John might laugh at him for not knowing. He wanted to say, what do you want, but then John could answer with anything. It seemed like nothing but wrong choices.

The flame met John's fingers and he dropped it with a hiss. The room went dark again. John said, "Right," and reached out.

His hand collided with Paul's cheek, his fingers curling as he recognised where he was. John's hand smelled like sulphur. His thumb dragged across Paul's lower lip and Paul's whole body trembled. John stepped right up to him, his boot knocking Paul's feet apart. When their hips pressed together, Paul gasped, and John took advantage, kissing him hard.

It was like picking up a conversation hours later, Paul's body shifting a critical gear, curving to match the shape of John's. He gripped John's hips and groaned into his mouth, felt it clearly when John flashed a grin.

It was suddenly so easy. Not in the awkward moments just before, nor during the silent walk through the benighted city streets, but now, now that John was kissing him and touching him and pushing his shirt up, now Paul knew exactly what to do. He'd always had more luck learning things by ear.

John broke away, panting, and rolled his forehead on Paul's. His palms were hot and flat on Paul's ribs under his shirt.

"Always up for it, eh?" John said breathlessly, grinding his hips down into Paul's at a maddening pace.

"Not alone in that, it would seem," Paul answered, frankly surprised at his own coherence.

His mouth found its way to John's neck and stuck there for a long while. That particular gasping rustling chorus grew urgent between them. Paul scraped his teeth and John moaned. It struck Paul harder than the best music, the prettiest song.

John took Paul's head in his hands and drew him up, showing a blackly joyful grin.

"Try something for me, Paul."

"Yes," Paul said at once. John slid his fingers just into Paul's trousers, brushing the top of his hip.

"On your knees, love," John whispered against his mouth. Paul shivered hard, heat coursing through him. He knew John hadn't meant it like it sounded. Somehow that was better.

Paul succumbed to the weakness in his legs, slipped down to the floor. His hands hooked in John's belt, his knees hitting the soft floorboards with a sound like stones on sand. Paul's head spun, arousal smothering him, suffocating. He sucked on his lower lip, tilted his face up towards John.

"Yeah?" Paul said.

John nodded, staring down at Paul with blackened eyes as his hand worked blindly at his belt buckle. Without thought, Paul leaned forward and licked at the shine of metal and John's fingers, silver and ink. John blew out an explosive breath, and muttered a raspy curse. He jerked his fly open and slid his hand around the back of Paul's head.

"C'mon then," John said in an underground voice.

There should have been some hesitation, some last pale vestige of shame, but Paul was too far gone. He braced a hand on John's stomach and took him in his mouth with a small happy sigh. He was stunned to hear John cry out above him, his fingers twisting in Paul's hair, his hips wrenching forward.

Paul ripped open his own fly, just for some kind of relief, and dedicated himself to learning what else would cause John to make that noise.

It didn't take much, really. Paul learned the rhythm of it, the slick twist of his hand, the roll of his head. John clutched his hair and moaned through gritted teeth, all his cleverness and cruelty stripped away for exactly that long.

It was over suddenly, without any warning beyond John's stomach tightening, his back curving in. Strange white taste and Paul choked, rocked back on his heels, spitting and coughing. He pushed one hand into his trousers and took himself in hand, groaning and letting his head fall back.

John hissed, "Jesus," and then the floor thumped as he dropped to his knees. He shoved his hand in over Paul's, and Paul leaned into him, mouthing frantically at his neck. They stroked together blindly, without skill, without enough room to move. It didn't matter; nothing could have been better.

John ducked his head and kissed Paul, licking deeply after that taste in his mouth. Paul gasped and jerked and came all over both their hands, a boundless rush of pleasure crashing through him.

He collapsed onto John, breathing hard. John kept him propped up, holding Paul's head in his hand with his thumb on his cheekbone and fingers tucked behind his ear. Several long moments passed like that. Paul was floating ten feet above the floor. He could feel John's heart rate settling under his skin.

It became quiet. They were kneeling on the floor together, bodies braced together, long stretches of their throats touching. Paul thought in a slow-focussing haze that this was the kind of life he wanted to live, this kind of madness. He wanted it to be music and stage lights and smoky rooms, back alleys and condemned houses, sex like a reckless mistake, these spare sparse moments of quiet.

And he wanted John with him. Paul came to it at last. Wherever he was going, he wanted John there too.

It was a suicidal thought. Paul huffed out a silent laugh, and brushed his lips on John's neck.

John pushed him up and back, stroking his fingers across Paul's throat and then taking his hands away. He rummaged for a pair of cigarettes and lit both on the same match before passing one to Paul. They sat down on the floor and smoked for a moment in a dazed silence, blinking at each other dumbly.

Eventually Paul said in a scraped-up voice, "Will you come over tomorrow? Today?"

Ordinarily he would have flinched at hearing himself say that, but his body was still humming with satisfaction and nothing else could intrude.

John exhaled through his nose like a dragon. "Can't get enough, can you?"

"Suppose not," Paul answered. John let the corners of his mouth curl up.

"Well, maybe you'll get lucky," John said with a beatific smile.

Smoke drifted into Paul's right eye. He blinked fast as if fighting tears. He wanted to hear John promise, but he knew that was impossible to ask for.

They didn't linger much longer in the council house. Paul followed John out of the window and through the untended backyards until they reached Beacon Street again. There in the filter of the streetlamps, John touched his knuckles to Paul's jawline, the least effectual punch in the history of combat, and grinned like a rake before saying good night and walking away.

Paul stood on the pavement, in the dim, waiting to see if John would look back.

Of course, John did not.

*

John didn't show up the next day.

Paul whiled away the morning and afternoon trying to write a song. He didn't have much luck, treacherously distracted by recent history and his pie-in-the-sky dreams of the future. Every melody in his head was someone else's; everything had been done before.

He left the house before his father came home from work, not wanting to get into an argument about things that were or were not music, and friends who were or were not bad influences on a person. Guitar on his back, feeling like the greatest hero the world had ever known, Paul bicycled over to Stuart's house. Excitement ran hot and fast under his skin, wondering what John might ask him to do this time.

But John wasn't there. Stuart told Paul that John had been staying at his mother's place in Blomfield Road as a bridge to making an unsteady truce with his aunt. The whole thing was largely predicated on John's disregard for feeding himself properly since he'd been staying at Stuart's. What little money John had went to guitar strings and India ink and beer and cigarettes, until he'd been living on tea and toast for a week and his collarbones stood out in relief. His mother would baby him for a week or two and then it would be back to Aunt Mimi's and the standard grind.

Stuart said, "He doesn't like you following him around, you know."

Paul sneered, righteous and sincere. "You don't know what you're on about."

Stuart shrugged. He had paint on his face, just a few fingerprint smudges on his jaw, on the side of his nose. He looked stupid, Paul thought insistently.

"Believe what you like, laddie," Stuart said in that particular Scottish burr that he affected from time to time. "And hit the road, there's a girl coming over."

Paul was hustled out, dismissed. He cadged a cigarette off Stuart before the door slammed, and paced a slow circle around his bike as he smoked it. He half-heartedly considered just going home, giving up on it, resigning himself to dinner with his father and his brother and the empty chair, but it was never serious. There was never any real doubt as to where he would go next.

Blomfield Road was a long ride, and Paul's shirt was sweat-stuck to his back by the time he got there, hair itching high on his forehead. John's mother's house was shuttered, mewed up. Paul flicked stones at the windows, but there was nothing, no one.

Paul sat on the kerb and waited for two hours. People and dogs and cars passed him by as the sun sank behind the buildings. Paul sang to himself under his breath. He played his knees like ivory or catgut.

No one came, and eventually he went home, baffled and scared in an increasing way that was like an army's steady approach, a German bomb falling in slow-motion.

That night, Paul left his bedroom window open and he slept in his trousers, or anyway he lay there in his trousers staring at the ceiling until morning. John didn't turn up, and by dawn Paul felt beaten up, left for dead, sick with exhaustion and doubt and worse things.

George called before the morning report was off the radio, wanting to go to the record shop in Whitechapel. Paul put him off, not up to daylight and simple conversation right now. He rang off and picked up his guitar but it felt fragile and unwieldy in his hands, so he set it back down.

Stupid, Paul thought, and then again, like he could shock himself awake: stupid. It had become the leitmotif of his life.

His brother came home from playing footie, bringing two of his friends and filling their little house with the sour smell of dried sweat, the too-loud cracking laughter of boys. Paul escaped out the back door into the alley, not in the mood for any of it.

He was on foot, and he didn't know where to go. Blomfield Road was too far, and he had no good reason to go over there again. John would find him when John wanted to.

Paul walked down near the river. He sat in the back of a café, close enough to the jukebox that he could rest his head on it if he leaned back just a bit. He made a cup of tea last for two hours, sipping away a millimeter every five minutes. He was run out of the place eventually, when the docks let off for lunch and the place flooded with heavy-armed men who smelled like seaweed.

At odds, Paul wandered back towards the art college and found himself in Stuart's neighbourhood again. Paul stood on the pavement debating his options for a minute, the milky sun heavy on the back of his neck.

Before he could resign himself to going upstairs and making a fool of himself again, Stuart emerged. The door slamming shut behind him made Paul jump.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Stuart asked. There was something like crushed glass in his tone.

Paul braced himself unconsciously. "I, I was just nearby. I was wondering if John was around."

Stuart's face warped. He looked faintly sick. "Jesus, leave him alone, I've told you."

"You don't get to tell me anything," Paul said sharply, suddenly so tired of Stuart Sutcliffe he could scream. "And John doesn't need you picking his friends for him."

"Shut your mouth, Paul, you don't know," Stuart said, and his voice cracked, his hands clenched in fists.

Paul blinked at him, registering the furious colour on Stuart's face, the wheeling look of frustrated misery in his eyes.

"What?" Paul asked. "What happened?"

Stuart shook his head and looked away. Paul stared at the side of his face, the pale scatter of freckles and the finely drawn shape of his nose. There was a cold dense feeling gathering in Paul's stomach like a cloud full of icy rain.

"His mum," Stuart said, and he choked a little bit. "She was killed in the road yesterday."

No, Paul thought at once, it was cancer. He was impossibly confused for a moment before shock jerked through him, swelled his eyes. He lifted his hand and then let it fall.

"What?"

"Have you lost your fucking hearing?" Stuart spat. "John's mother is dead. He doesn't want you hanging about. You can't do anything for him."

Paul took a shaky step backwards. Stuart was distraught, doing a poor job hiding it behind bluster and attack. His eyebrows were bent in a particularly helpless manner, his mouth noticeably weak. It frightened Paul worse than anger could have done--he couldn't imagine what John might look like at this moment.

A tar-coloured bird zipped past in Paul's peripheral vision, drawing his attention for an infinitesimal second. He exhaled a breath that tasted like dust, like a million years had passed since he'd breathed in.

"Mine too," Paul said, witless and incoherent.

"What, your what?" Stuart demanded, furious at all the things he couldn't do.

"My mum," and Paul's heart contracted, squeezed in on itself. He gasped silently, looking down at the pavement and blinking fast.

Stuart stared at him for a long moment, and then shook his head again. When he spoke, he'd lost most of his impotent fury, replaced by something as dull and colourless as grief.

"I'm sorry about that. It doesn't change anything, though."

"No," Paul said in agreement. He couldn't say why he had brought it up. The shock, most likely. The bone-deep shift of the world beneath their feet.

The two of them stood there in silence for a moment, in the wind and kindly sunshine of the day. They weren't looking at each other, fascinated by that ever-obscured vision of the middle distance.

"Is he all right?" Paul asked.

Stuart shot him an aggravated look. "Don't ask stupid questions, mate."

"No, I mean, I, uh," and Paul trailed off. He didn't really know what he meant. "Was he there?"

"No, thank God. He saw her a little while before it happened. She won a little dosh playing bridge and so she bought him a record at the shop. Little Richard, you know how he's always on about Little Richard."

Paul said, "Yeah," and then nothing else because Little Richard with his sculptured hair and his gemful rings and his giddy howl of a voice didn't fit in this conversation at all.

Silence again, and then Stuart said, "Give him a week or two. He--he's not himself."

Paul nodded by rote, thinking that that was right, that was what it was like. John wasn't himself; he wouldn't be. Two years ago Paul had been a boy with a mother, as John had been three days ago, as they never would be again. It was an intractable fact.

Stuart sniffed, digging his hands into his pockets and pulling his shoulders up as if facing a devil wind. He shot Paul glances that felt like scalpel cuts.

"I'm meeting somebody," Stuart said, jerking his head in the general direction of the college. "I'll--I'll see ya, all right?"

Another dumb nod. Even simple things were beyond Paul, even goodbye. Stuart tossed him one last probing look over his shoulder as he walked away. Paul raised his hand as if Stuart were going off to sea. He felt like a manikin, going through the motions with stiff wooden arms, no properly beating heart.

Paul began walking. He didn't let himself head for John's house and he didn't let himself head for his own. That was self-preservation, mostly. Everywhere else in this city was his to travel as he wished.

*

A week or two, Stuart had said, and of course Stuart was right, but that didn't stop Paul from showing up at the funeral.

Paul wasn't thinking things through. He wasn't sleeping and food didn't taste like much, all his senses rubbed raw. It wasn't exactly similar to what he'd gone through when his own mother died--he was no longer obliged to shut himself up in the loo three times a day and chew on his knuckles until he didn't feel like crying anymore, thank God--but it was near enough to make sick memory creep under his skin.

The idea had become stuck in his head that seeing John would fix some part of it. Paul didn't bother investigating his own logic; he was aware that it would prove sorely lacking.

He told his father he was going over to George's house (his dad liked George very much: "That lad will make something of himself one of these days" was a common refrain), and waited until he was on the coach before pulling on his good black jacket with the frayed seam at the shoulder. It was the same jacket he'd worn to his own mother's funeral, and now the prominent bones of his wrists showed at the ends of the sleeves.

Paul slipped into the back of the church. The place was less than half full, everyone gathered in the pews up front, an array of dark-clothed backs and shoulders. Paul recognised John by the back of his head, the particular tension with which he held himself. John was sitting beside his Aunt Mimi, whose greying head was bowed, making her look as small as a child.

Paul took a seat in an empty pew, fastening his hand on the smooth polished wood as if it were a ladder rung. He stared at the back of John's head because he didn't want to look at the plain casket at the front of the church, the weak spray of flowers, the priest with his inch-thick glasses and palsied fingers. Paul knew how this went, the formality of it, the futility. The grand sober spectacle of death playing out before its captive audience.

As the priest began to speak, John folded over into his aunt, collapsing with one hand hiding his face. He was trying not to cry and it wouldn't work, Paul knew. He dragged his eyes away from John. It wasn't the kind of moment you wanted other people to see.

Of all the things Paul had never expected to live through again, here he was at another mother's funeral. He tugged at the sleeves of his jacket, wondering what was wrong with him. There was a pit opened up in his stomach.

The sparse congregation murmured, "Amen," and rustled to their feet, began filing out. Paul was stuck in place, his hand locked on the pew in front of him.

John had his arm around Mimi's shoulders, the two of them staggering together. His eyes were swollen, dark-circled like he hadn't slept once in the five days since Paul last saw him. John looked faded, as if his blood had been diluted with water.

Paul watched the macabre procession coming up the aisle, saw the moment when John lifted his head and caught sight of him. Something flashed on John's face, more than recognition but less than whatever Paul had been hoping for--Paul didn't even know what that was.

John's jaw tightened, cloudy-eyed, and he tipped his chin at Paul. Paul tore his gaze away, an obstruction filling his throat. He shouldn't have come. It suddenly seemed overwhelmingly obvious that he never should have come.

Paul left in the opposite direction as the funeral crowd that broke up into separate cars and headed for the cemetery. He stripped off his jacket as soon as he was a block away, and ran back to his side of town with it flying behind his hand like a winged black flag.

After that, Paul managed to pull himself under some semblance of control. He stayed away from John because he didn't know what to say to him in regular everyday conversation, much less in the two weeks directly following his mother's accidental death. He kept Stuart's voice on a loop in his head, telling him, you can't do anything for him, and that was true--nobody knew better than Paul that that was true. There was nothing to do.

So Paul stayed away. Sometimes he imagined John's voice singing melody behind his when he was working out a new song, and sometimes he had hot suffocating dreams, but physically, at least, he stayed away.

He and George went to the condemned council house with their guitars knocking against their backs. They passed an hour in companionable non-silence, their fingers trilling on the strings, and then George said:

"Are we still a band?"

Paul's hands came to a screeching halt. He looked at George, feeling caught out.

"Of course, course we are."

George gave him a searching look. "Have you spoken to John?"

"No," Paul confessed. George blew out a breath.

"Then how are we still a band?"

Paul turned swiftly on the defensive. "What's all this 'we'? You were never in the band."

George went quiet for a moment, his eyebrows hunching into a scowl. A prickling feeling of guilt ran through Paul, but he pushed it aside.

"What if we had a new band?" George asked eventually. He punctuated it, stinging his hand on his guitar. "If John won't play-"

"John will play," Paul said. It immediately became the foundation of the world. "He just needs some time."

George nodded, but he was glaring at the weak floorboards, strangling his guitar. He played an aborted chord, the corner of his lip sucked into his mouth.

"How much time, do you think?" George asked, and something in it made Paul's blood run hot.

"I don't care how much. It's his band. It'll bloody well be here when he gets back."

Surprised, not anticipating such vehemence, George nodded again, ducking his head. Paul let out a breath that burned in his lungs, and rubbed his fingers on the strings. He felt helpless and useless and angry at everything, but that was just the moment, just this black span of days.

"Here," Paul said, and picked out the beginning of 'Ain't That A Shame.' George came in on the second bar, and they played clatteringly loud, racing each other.

Paul was sitting in roughly the same place where he had gotten on his knees for John two weeks before. The floor was familiar beneath him, accusatory, old splinters in his kneecaps. Paul thought about John's mouth on his, John's hands curving around the back of his head. He shoved it aside. He reminded himself that that didn't matter, none of that stuff mattered. They couldn't repair each other's losses; it didn't work that way.

If there was something Paul could save, it was the band.

*

It was almost a month after the funeral before Paul saw John again.

It was in the Cavern Club, subterranean and overflowing that night , black leather and the tweed jackets some of the skiffle bands had been sporting recently. The floor was sticky with beer and sweat, girls in the corners trying to keep their hair up with pins and prayer. The band onstage was some corrupted jazz affair with a stand-up bass, cheap shiny suits.

Paul was with George and a few other friends. They were in the back by the bar, shouting to be heard, breathing out smoke and roguish laughter. Paul was drunk.

Drunk was good, because when he was drunk he wasn't fully responsible for the things he thought or said. It had been a hard few weeks.

George was leaning on his shoulder as Paul slumped over the table, propped up on an elbow with his fist chocked under his chin. Paul was trying to recount the plot of a cowboy picture he'd seen a few days before. There had been brothers and vengeance and mysterious strangers, and it was all a sand-coloured blur in his mind now.

Then from onstage: "All right, you bloody sots, here's some real music," and a rock and roll scream that caught feedback from the speakers and flooded static through the club.

Paul jerked up, dislodging George and almost spilling his beer. It was John, up there onstage with his teeth on the microphone. He was singing 'Don't Be Cruel,' too loud and fast, far beyond his natural range. Falling down drunk, John clung to the microphone stand like the last handhold of a crumbling cliff.

"Is that John?" George asked, and Paul didn't even acknowledge it. His attention was wholly occupied.

John got through half a verse before the proper lead singer demanded the microphone back. John wrapped his arms around the stand, danced away. He laughed at the lead singer, his mouth sneered.

Paul stood up, shoving his chair back into the wall. George said, "What?" piping over the ruckus, but Paul was already shouldering through the tight-packed people.

Onstage, the lead singer took a swing at John. John's face split in a mad grin, rushing to swing back. The rest of the band dived in and it became a scrum with John somewhere at the bottom. The crowd roared, whether in approval or dismay Paul could not tell. A girl shrieked directly into his ear as he was making his way through, a brief throbbing spike of pain.

Paul jumped onstage, yanked the drummer back and then the bassist. Someone served him with an elbow to the jaw, his teeth snapping down on his tongue, and now he could taste blood. John was on his knees, protecting his head with one arm and still flailing with the other, still with that terrible grin on his face. He wasn't wearing his specs and like this he might as well have been blind.

Paul grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and hauled him out. He shouted at the homicidal band, "I'm taking him, he's going, get away," and they let John go, cursing him and spitting on his trousers. John kicked and twisted, fighting to get free but too disoriented to break Paul's hold. John's nose was bleeding, and his mouth.

Somehow, Paul managed to get John through the crowd and up the shoe-blackened stairs to the cleaner air of the street. John was muttering, wrenching backwards to scream new obscenities as they occurred to him. Paul wasn't sure if John knew who it was who had rescued him from the stage. He wasn't sure if John would care.

Outside, it was easier to think, quiet and cool. Paul propped John up against the wall and tipped his face into the light to see the damage.

John jerked his chin away. "Don' touch me."

Paul froze, then pressed his lips together and shuffled back half a step. "They got you pretty good."

"They didnae get me," John said, slurry. "They tried, and that's not the same thing."

He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and blinked down at the streak of blood as if confounded. Paul could see how John's lower lip was beginning to swell. John's hand was shaking as he let it fall.

"John," Paul said, and it crashed between them like a plane shot out of the sky.

John brought his face up, his eyes shining and the blood darkening. He pressed back against the wall at his back, as if cornered. It was discordant, John with all his bluster and bravado and here he was cowering, hunted down by heartbreak and sorrow. It made Paul sick to see.

"Oi, Paul," and that was George, George emerging from the Cavern with his sharp-featured face and his scrappy voice. Paul jerked away from John, flushing even though he hadn't been doing anything.

"It's okay, mate," Paul said, barely sparing him a glance.

George hovered, uncertainty writ large and young on his face. He stared at John with morbid fascination.

"All right, John?" George asked in a poor attempt to sound normal.

A hideous false grin stretched on John's face, his teeth bloody. "Aye, wonderful. What joy we find in life, what glory. What love."

Paul shot George a frustrated glance. "He's all right, just let me--just give us a minute, yeah?"

George nodded, his dark eyes very wide, and slipped back into the Cavern, checking on them over his shoulder as he went. Paul watched him go, wishing he could follow, leave John here in the street and never worry about him again, but he was not built for that kind of thing.

A moment of silence passed between them. A few streets away, a dog howled, plaintive and haunting. John studied Paul from behind his half-lidded eyes, his beaten face. Paul withstood his scrutiny like a shower of pins.

"You were there," John said, hoarse from all the screaming. "At the funeral, you, what were you doing there?"

It was a fair question, albeit one with no good answer. Paul swallowed, his eyes dipping to the flushed edge of John's throat.

"I wanted to pay my respects," Paul said, and it sounded dull and tinny to his own ears.

John's eyes flashed, some bit of his own come back to him. "You didn't know her, hardly even fucking met her."

"But she's. She was your, your--she taught you how to play the guitar."

That wasn't quite right; there was so much more to it than that. Paul knew it as he was saying it, confirmed by the way John's expression flinched. Paul wished he could put his hand on John's shoulder, maybe thumb away the smear of blood under his lip, but John had told him not to, and anyway, it wouldn't help.

"She was important," Paul finished lamely, his voice fading to a whisper.

John's face contracted, a shuttered kind of agony so terribly familiar to Paul that it felt almost nostalgic. John's throat ducked as he swallowed, and turned his eyes up to cold-glowing streetlamp and the ashy smudge of a yellow moon far above. Paul stared at the revealed line of John's throat for a moment, and then he snapped back, and pushed that forcibly aside. He kept telling himself, everything is different now.

Without taking his eyes from the sky, John said, "Stuart said--he said you know what it's like."

It wasn't a question, but Paul said, "Yes. I. Yes," as slight fractures began spreading their branches in his chest.

John swallowed again. "Does it always feel like this? Will it?"

"Yes," Paul said like his own echo, and then, "You become accustomed. Eventually."

Paul stopped talking. His throat was thick and he wasn't getting anything right.

John was shaking against the wall, subtle tremors under the skin. He lifted a hand to his temple. His eyes screwed shut.

"I don't-" John cut himself off. He drew in a ragged breath. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now."

Paul shook his head, feeling godawful. "No one ever does."

"I, I," and John trailed off, a small choked sound. Paul couldn't stand seeing him like this.

"Steady on," Paul said. He reached out and set a tentative hand on John's shoulder. "We should go home."

"Home." John laughed like a sneer, humourless and wearied. He leaned into Paul's hand ever so slightly. "If you can find it, it's yours."

He was drunk, Paul reminded himself. They were both drunk, not culpable for any of this. The night had closed in around them, soft-sided and treacherous. The black solidity of the buildings and the streets made Paul feel slightly less than real, a hollow spectre drifting through the world and leaving no mark behind.

Paul took John home. Coming in through the front door, John stumbled and knocked over the little table for the post. Paul caught him around the shoulders, kept him upright, but the clatter brought Paul's father out of his bedroom and down the hall, pyjamaed and sour-faced, squinting through his silver-rimmed spectacles.

"What's all this, Paul?" his father asked as he turned on the light, a standard tone of disapproval in it. "Who've you got there?"

Caught, flush-faced, Paul twisted his hand in John's shirt. "It's John, Da."

His father came closer, his eyes narrow. Paul kept John tugged close to him. Jim got a look at John and his expression changed abruptly, opened up with fatherly concern.

"What happened to your face?" Jim asked.

John's eyes were fixed on the floor, his body tensely filling the space. "Just a fight," he said, sounding almost ashamed. "Doesn't even hurt."

Jim huffed, disbelieving, and told John to sit down in a tone that brooked no argument. Paul sank down onto the sofa next to his friend, listening to his father running the tap in the kitchen, staring at where his and John's knees were pressed together.

The black and white faces in family photographs watched them from the wall. Paul's father brought a wet rag and handed it to John, who began cleaning his face awkwardly, hunching forward. Paul watched his father watching John, grief like an empty reflection, a dark mirror.

When John's face was clean, he twisted the rag between his hands. Jim glanced at Paul, and Paul widened his eyes to show himself totally lost. He wanted his father to fix it.

Jim only sighed. "I heard about your mother," he said to John, and didn't say I'm sorry because all three of them knew exactly how much good that would do. "You'll stay here tonight."

John looked up, guarded. His leg tensed against Paul's, knuckles white on the pinkish rag. "I'm all right."

"No one said you weren't." Jim took the rag out of John's hand and efficiently swiped a stray spot of blood off his cheek. "You're staying. Paul, fetch him a blanket."

Paul obeyed thoughtlessly. He went back to his bedroom where Mike was slack and open-mouthed in sleep, pulled a blanket down from the closet and clutched it to his chest, stood there for a moment in the middle of the lightless room. He was shaken, stunned, locked on the image of his father cleaning the last bit of blood off John's face, the wounded colour in John's eyes.

When he came back to the front room, John and his father were sharing a silence that was at once wary and companionable. Jim was in his favourite chair, his hand looking odd without a cigarette smouldering. Paul hesitated, disconcerted by the visual of his father in pale blue pyjamas and John in battered grey tweed and denim. He sat down beside John again, and passed the blanket to him without a word.

"All right, lads," Jim sighed and hefted himself up out of the chair. He gave Paul a look of incipient remonstration. "Tomorrow you and I are going to have an abrupt chat about going to the pub when you're supposed to be at George's house."

Paul ducked his head, and said nothing.

"Get some sleep, the both of you," and then Jim said to John, "Keep that chin up, son," and went back to bed. The house creaked and settled behind him.

John and Paul sat side by side without speaking for a long moment. Paul stared at John's hands out of the corner of his eye, remembering them smooth and clever and now they were scuffed, rust-coloured scabs and bruises. A fighter's hands now, an artist no longer.

"So that's what it takes to make him like me," John said, his tone so low it could only have been heard in an empty room, in the middle of the night.

"Everybody likes you," Paul answered. It was supposed to be a joke, he was pretty sure. It landed awkwardly, a bird with a missing leg.

A slow side-eye was John's first response. He touched his lip carefully, feeling the swell of it, the asymmetry of the split.

"Some more than others, eh?" John said.

Paul tried out half a smile. "I suppose."

"You suppose." John sounded strange, wooden and quiet.

"No, I, I know," Paul said, trying to get it right, and he shifted closer, raised his hand to touch John's face like he'd been dying to all night, his heartbeat kicking into his mouth.

John flinched away. His shoulder rolled up as a shield. Paul froze, and then snatched his hand back, mortification rushing through him.

"Sorry," he said, breathless with shame, and John shook his head fast, his face wracked.

"Don't say that," John said unevenly.

Paul bit his tongue. He stared at John, keeping very still with his hands clutched on his own knees. John looked back, mouth twisted in despair. They were quiet, listening to the house murmur to itself.

"It's something gone wrong with me, Paulie," John told him, sad and insistently drunk. "Nothing is the same."

Paul caught his breath, caught himself leaning towards John without thinking. He dug his hand into the sofa cushion, willing his mind to calm.

"Some things are," Paul managed.

John shook his head, staring fixedly at the space between his shoes. The dip of his throat betrayed a painful swallow.

"Let me get some sleep," John said, dead-sounding and exhausted.

Paul didn't want to go, but John's eyes fairly pleaded at him, and he found himself on his feet. John looked suddenly vulnerable from this angle, the pale nape of his neck showing above his collar. Paul wanted to put his hand there, hide that brief stretch of skin from every other prying eye. It was another one of those impossible wishes of his, another thing he had to pick up and cast aside.

John lay back, covering his face with his arm. Paul looked at him nakedly for a moment, then whispered, "Goodnight," and turned off the lamp as he left the room.

*

In the morning, Paul awoke to his little brother singing to himself in the mirror as he combed his hair. Mike was cheerfully out of key, mumbling nonsense whenever he forgot a lyric, which was often. Paul fished a shoe off the floor and pegged it into his back, making him squawk and drop the comb.

"Learn the words, at least," Paul said, dragging a hand across his yawn. "You're butchering it."

Mike turned, ferocious glare etched on his face. "Oi, when I want your advice, I'll ask for it. And don't throw things at me, you great buggering prat."

"Come off it, Mikey, it's too early."

"So says you, the laziest wanker on this side of the river. Some of us have been up for hours."

Paul smothered himself with his pillow for a moment, his body moving grudgingly towards full awareness. He had been having lovely dreams, and reality felt like a horrible cheat just now.

"There are two eggs left," Mike said. "Also your mate John is still here."

The information sizzled through Paul's brain. The night before washed over him, imperfect in its details but all the crucial elements were there: John storming the stage at the Cavern, bloody and shaking in the street, sitting stiffly on the sofa cleaning his face with a damp bit of cloth, John pulling away from Paul's raised hand.

Nothing is the same, John echoed in his mind, and Paul shoved himself out of bed, not wanting to listen.

He splashed some water on his face, brushed the dead-thing taste out of his mouth, and put on old trousers and a fresh shirt. Low-level anxiety kept him warm and moving quickly, slicking his hair back with wet hands instead of combing it properly.

John was at the kitchen table when Paul emerged, slouched in the chair as if he had grown up there, a piece of toast with jam half-eaten in his hand. His shirt was untucked and wrinkled beyond quick repair, his hair a smashed wreck on his head. He looked at Paul, his eyes heavy-lidded and unreadable.

"I've eaten your eggs," John reported.

"All right," Paul said, opting for the path of least resistance. He took the seat across from John, covertly studying him.

John tapped a spoon on the table, keeping a small rhythm. He looked different in the light of day than he'd done in the shadows of the alley or the midnight lamp glow of the front room. He seemed older, a misplaced decade carved into the lines of his face. He seemed only half there.

Paul fixed himself a bit of toast with margarine and jam. He stuffed his mouth because he couldn't think of anything to say. John gazed out the window, his lower lip swollen and lopsided.

The feeling in the room was odd, doubtful and electric. Paul looked at John's hands, the steep line of his neck. He wondered if John would ever touch him again, and the thought was distant, almost rhetorical.

There was a knock at the door. Paul startled, rattling the silverware, and John gave him a faint mocking smirk. Paul kicked him under the table, and rose to answer the door.

It was George with his hands in his pockets, the wind blowing his hair hard to the side. He had his guitar on his back, the strap cutting a neat diagonal cross across his chest. He tipped his chin at Paul.

"Hullo," George said.

Paul leaned on the jamb. "Bit early, innit?"

George shrugged. "Never too early for rock and roll."

"He's right, you know," John said, coming up behind Paul. "Any time is the right time."

A fast smile took over George's face. "Hey, John. Long time, mate."

John pulled George into the house, turning him to get a look at the guitar on his back. George stood for the inspection, blinking at Paul.

"New one, eh?" John said, running his hands over the planished wood. "Let me give it a go."

George unslung the guitar and gave it to John. They settled in the front room, John folding himself onto the sofa where he'd spent the night. Paul fetched his own guitar from his room, followed the eking music back down the hall. John and George were huddled together, humming up and down and over each other, trying to work out a Bo Diddley song.

Paul sat down in his father's chair. His guitar covered him. He watched his friends, an alien sense of calm sinking through him.

"No, it goes like this," John said, and his fingers rang against the strings. "It's not so sweet as that."

George nodded, watching John's hands intensely.

"It's the rough edge," John continued, his face opening up as Paul watched, slow and lovely. "That scrape, the way you can feel it. And it follows you. It sticks."

John's fingers trilled and danced and sang. His grief and anger seeped away, a subtle kind of contentment smoothing the plane of his forehead. Paul's vision sparkled, gave John a halo of stars, and after a moment he realised it was because he'd been holding his breath.

"It's just like this," John murmured, and then looked up, caught Paul's eye.

Paul smiled at him, helpless. John's mouth curved, and he tipped his head to the side. He mugged at Paul, pushing out his lower teeth and bugging his eyes, stupid boyish face to make Paul laugh silently, to make genuine affection curl like a wisp of smoke in his chest. A wedding picture of his parents watched benevolently from the wall, and Paul thought that he'd been right, after all.

Some things were still the same. There was still family in this house. There were all different kinds of love in the world.

"Come on, are you in this band or not?" John asked, once again rakish and cocky, the beating heart of the world.

It was one of those very specific moments. Sunlight poured through the front window, cast rays of silver and gold across John's hands moving on the guitar strings. Paul took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to sing.

THE END

Endnotes: "She's the woman that I know, she's the woman that loves me so," is from 'Be Bop A Lula,' written by Gene Vincent, rockabilly legend.

Paul references that "Stop all the clocks" poem by W.H. Auden.

Also:



(be still my heart)