John Lennon: The Life (66 page)

T
he loss of this nearest to a father figure in John’s life had the effect of turning his thoughts back to his real father. Six days after Brian’s death, perhaps from a sense that life was too short to bear grudges, he wrote to Freddie Lennon, suggesting they should meet and promising to get in touch again “before a month has passed.” At a loss for a suitable mode of address, he began with every one he could think of, even the Latin tag his educated aunts had taught him as a toddler: “Dear Alf Fred Dad Pater whatever…” The note ended with a plea not to talk to the press. (“I don’t want Mimi cracking up!”) On the back of the envelope, he scribbled a half-playful, half-embarrassed “Guess who.”

It had been eighteen months since Freddie’s dip into the world of celebrity and his last, acrimonious meeting with John. He had made no money from his short career as a pop singer and only very little from selling his story to the newspapers. When Fleet Street lost interest in him, he had returned to his old life as an itinerant hotel worker, resigned to having no further contact with the son he had so mortally offended and to living among dirty pots and scummy water for the rest of his days.

But at the age of fifty-four, after decades without a female of any significance in his life, an astounding thing had happened to Freddie. Christmas of 1966 found him employed on his accustomed bottom rung at a hotel named the Toby Jug in Tolworth, Surrey. Here he met an eighteen-year-old Exeter University student named Pauline Jones, who had a vacation job in the hotel kitchen. His recent disappointments had not quenched Freddie’s ebullient humor or his habit of singing lustily as he worked. Thanks to his recent exposure to pop culture, moreover, he now kitchen-portered in an eye-catching getup of red trousers, a yellow T-shirt, and a leather waistcoat.

It was never a question of guileful older man hypnotizing impressionable teenager; for all his other foibles, Freddie was no lecher and, to begin with, could neither understand nor believe his appeal to
an intelligent and pretty young woman thirty-four years his junior. Only after long confusion and misgivings did he come round to Pauline’s view that the Grand Canyon of an age gap between them did not matter. They began a romance initially consisting of long talks, with the occasional chaste kiss, in the Toby Jug’s kitchen between meal services. Underlining that innocence, Freddie nicknamed Pauline “Polly” after his mother, the redoubtable Grandma Lennon whom John had visited so seldom at her spotless home in Copperfield Street, Toxteth.

The odds against any more serious relationship at first seemed insuperable. Pauline’s widowed mother, understandably, was horrified to discover what was going on, and forbade her to see Freddie again. She returned to her studies in Exeter, but at term’s end rushed back to the Toby Jug, where Freddie went down on one knee and proposed to her in the kitchen. Neither of them, however, dared take it seriously. When Pauline went back to Exeter, Freddie followed, hoping to find scullion’s work on the university campus. He was unsuccessful, and ended up sleeping rough, first in a college chapel, then in an empty train in a railway siding.

As a last attempt to please her mother and follow convention, Pauline took a job as a children’s tutor in Paris; Freddie, meanwhile, drifted back to Surrey, finding work again at the Greyhound pub in Hampton, just a couple of miles from Weybridge. Pauline’s tutoring post did not work out, and, lonely and confused, she went into a Parisian church to pray for divine guidance. As she knelt there, a voice seemed to whisper the age-old proverb
amor vincit omnia
: love conquers all. With all her money gone, she threw herself on the mercy of the British Consulate, which subsidized her passage back to Britain, and Freddie.

Throughout all these rootless years, Charlie Lennon, Freddie’s younger brother, had never wavered as his ally and defender. As an eyewitness of Julia’s misadventures—he had helped track down the Welsh artilleryman who made her pregnant—Charlie was outraged by the press stories about Freddie’s alleged desertion of her and six-year-old John. The last straw was reading of Freddie’s visit to Kenwood in 1966, which had ended with John slamming the door in
his face. Charlie therefore sat down and wrote a long letter to the nephew he had not seen in more than twenty years, and who probably would not even recognize him now if they were to meet. In it he explained that Freddie’s “desertion” had simply been that of a merchant sailor in wartime (which it had, even if magnified by bad judgment and accident-proneness) and that Julia had been the one to stray, first with the Welsh gunner, Taffy Williams, then with Bobby Dykins.

Amazingly enough, Charlie’s letter found its way to John, and was couched in terms convincing enough to make him question the version of events his Aunt Mimi had drummed into him since toddlerhood. Soon afterward, Brian Epstein died and, with atypical good timing, Freddie himself sent John a short, sincere note of sympathy. The result was the half-embarrassed, half-hopeful letter addressed to “Dear Dad, Alf, Fred, Pater, whatever…”

About a month later, Freddie received written instructions from Brian Epstein’s office to be outside the Post Office in Kingston-on-Thames at a certain date and time. There he was met by John’s chauffeur, Les Anthony, who handed him an envelope full of money, then put him into the back of the psychedelic Rolls and drove him to Kenwood.

John did not return home from the recording studio until late that night, but from the outset it was clear that his attitude to Freddie had totally changed. He enfolded him in one of the hugs that now came so easily, calling him Dad rather than Alf, Fred, Pater, or “whatever,” and saying they must both put the past behind them. Furthermore, in his abrupt way, he had decided this newly dubbed Dad must join the family circle forthwith. A gobsmacked Freddie was told he would spend that night in the guest room, then tomorrow the Rolls would collect his possessions from the Greyhound, and he would move in permanently.

So Freddie took up residence at Kenwood, occupying the former servants’ flat at the top of the house, where John and Cynthia had camped out during its overlong refurbishment. If he had thought that living with John meant spending more time with John, however, he was soon disillusioned. For the most part, he found himself
playing his new role of paterfamilias to an audience comprising only Cyn and his grandson, Julian—who, it transpired, had rather liked his ill-fated single, “That’s My Life.” Father and son did manage one heart-to-heart, in which Freddie reiterated that he had not wanted to walk out of John’s life that day in 1946, and at long last felt himself believed. He felt secure enough even to chide John for having accepted an MBE, which, to an old Liverpool leftie like himself, signified kowtowing unforgivably to the Establishment.

Cushy as his new billet was, Freddie found himself missing the bustle, variety and, above all, companionship of bar and kitchen work. With Julian at school and Cynthia pursuing an increasingly independent social life, he found himself alone for long periods—to such a gregarious, exhibitionistic soul, a refined form of torture. Les, the chauffeur, and Dot Jarlett, the housekeeper, both regarded him with unconcealed disdain. He could not drive and didn’t like to ask Les or Dot to run him anywhere in one of the expensive cars on hand. When he tried walking to the nearest pub, a mile away, he got lost among the estate’s private roads and driveways, and attracted suspicious stares from John’s neighbors. As he would later recall, it began to feel as if John were keeping him shut away “like a mad relative in the attic.”

An unlikely ally materialized in Cynthia’s mother, Lilian Powell, who had remained a regular visitor to Kenwood despite John’s pointed provision of quarters for her elsewhere. Finding Freddie moping dejectedly around the house one day, Mrs. Powell declared in her forthright way that he looked “like a hen in a coop,” and should ask John to set him up in a place of his own where he could enjoy some independence. John proved amenable, and Freddie was provided with a flat in nearby Kew, plus a television set, some sheets and blankets, and £10 per week, paid via the Beatles’ accountants and calculated as the equivalent of his earnings as a kitchen porter. Only after leaving Kenwood and moving into his new home did he hear from a third party that John had been upset by his decision to leave.

The revelation that Freddie had a nineteen-year-old girlfriend, whom he was apparently set on marrying, caused John none of the shock and furious disapproval it was creating elsewhere. On the con
trary, he was hugely tickled by his father’s late-flowering romance and intrigued that it seemed as much a surprise to Freddie as everyone else. Since returning from Paris, Pauline Jones was back living with her mother, under strict orders to stay away from Freddie but sneaking off to him whenever she could. Curious to meet someone who could fall for a penniless, fifty-four-year-old washer-up, John invited her to spend a weekend at Kenwood, offering her the attic quarters just vacated by Freddie.

For most nineteen-year-olds in this era, staying at John Lennon’s house would have been a prize beyond the dreams of
Boyfriend
or
Mirabelle
magazine. Pauline, however, was resolutely unawed. Her chief impression of John was his “atrocious” table manners, though on the plus side, he seemed to accept the validity of her feelings for his father and to see no reason why they should not marry if that was what they both truly wanted. Pauline’s grown-up air so impressed Cynthia that during the weekend she offered her a job as nanny to five-year-old Julian. John was initially dubious, but warmed to the idea when Cyn pointed out that they also needed someone to deal with the incessant telephone calls and the piles of fan mail that silted up the house. So, while Freddie remained in his new quarters at Kew, Pauline took over Kenwood’s servants’ flat.

One of Brian’s last executive acts had been to sanction an authorized biography of the Beatles. Such things already abounded for the teenage fan market, but Brian, typically, had put together something much classier: a “real” book to be written by the
Sunday Times
journalist Hunter Davies and published in hardcover by the prestigious house of William Heinemann. Davies received generous access to each Beatle and interviewed their respective families, in return for paying them a third of his royalties and allowing his manuscript to be vetted by all four before publication.

In John’s case, “family” now not only meant his Aunt Mimi but also a newly emancipated dad. Hunter Davies therefore talked at length to Freddie, who willingly provided a colorful account of his education at Liverpool Bluecoat Hospital, his courtship of Julia, his adventures and misadventures at sea, and the circumstances behind his sudden exit from John’s life. According to Pauline, John was anx
ious that the story should be published in its full and correct form. “No question that he wanted Hunter to portray the truth about his parents—after all, he had just learned via Charlie what really happened—and this had been corroborated and further explained by Freddie, and I truly believe he wanted to do his father justice.”

I
n 1967, the Beatles knew nothing—literally nothing—about the vast business they had created and continued to generate. Brian had always taken care of everything, periodically bringing them contracts or agreements, which they always signed without question, often without even reading. After his death, therefore, extensive detective work was necessary to disentangle the Beatles from his other complex enterprises and construct a full financial graph of their career to date. When this was finally accomplished, it revealed anything but the infallible young tycoon they, and the outside world, had always taken him for. As often as Brian had been astute, he had also been naïve; as well as prescient, he could be shortsighted; among the breathtaking deals he had done for his boys were others of almost laughable inadequacy.

Their two globally successful feature films, for example, had earned them only a pittance in comparison with the makers and distributors, and the rights for both had somehow ended up with the producer, Walter Shenson. Even worse was the maladministration of the merchandising opportunity—for Beatle wigs, toy guitars, bubblegum, and such—which, after their American conquest, had been virtually limitless. Not foreseeing the market potential, Brian handed over responsibility for granting merchandise licenses in the United States to a group of young British opportunists on a 90–10 percent split in their favor. Then, realizing his error, he began a lawsuit against his British partners, creating such confusion among the manufacturers involved that orders worth millions of dollars were canceled. As a result, the biggest marketing bonanza since Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse had dwindled to dribs and drabs, and a present and future fortune beyond computation was lost.

For some time before Brian’s death, the Beatles had been discussing how to extend the creative control they enjoyed over their music
output into the ancillary spheres, like films, publishing, and fashion, which earned such colossal sums off their name. John coined a bitter phrase, “the men in suits” for what he saw as the dull-spirited, dully clad oldsters ruling over those areas (though, in truth, it was besuited older men like George Martin and Dick James, not to mention Brian himself, who had given him his unprecedented degree of artistic freedom and also refrained from ripping him off in a thousand and one possible, permissible ways).

With Brian’s full support, a first step toward greater autonomy had been taken before the release of
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
. A Victorian house had been acquired in Baker Street, central London, and a small music publishing company established there, to be run by Terry Doran, “the man from the motor trade.” As it chanced, the art dealer Robert Fraser had lately supplied Paul McCartney with René Magritte’s painting of a green apple, entitled
Le Jeu de Mourre
(
The Guessing Game
). This image perfectly expressing the freshness and simplicity of the Beatles’ corporate intentions (as well as coincidentally recalling John’s first encounter with Yoko), the company was named Apple Publishing.