The Beatles Boxed Set (2 page)

The McCartneys

            With
the end of the war came the reprivatization of the cotton industry and the
reopening of Hannay’s. While Jim was restored to his job as a salesman,
Liverpool’s economy remained a shambles. Jim’s salary was reduced by half. Fortunately,
Mary had traded her regular hospital work for the more flexible hours of a
visiting midwife. She had a guaranteed salary and benefits. With their combined
salaries, they did well enough to provide for their family, and sometimes even
afford occasional luxuries. Mary’s job as a midwife enabled the family to move
to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton where the family lived through 1964.

            Paul
began attending Stockton Wood Road Primary School in 1947 and transferred to Joseph
Williams Junior School in 1949. He had made a reputation for himself as a
well-behaved student who’d go to school in his pressed trousers and knitted
tie. What he considered to be his most striking achievement in primary school
was when he won his age division’s prize in an essay contest pegged to the
coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. One of the prizes was a gift
certificate for a book. It came as a surprise, given his age and backgrounds,
when he chose a book on modern art.

            When
he was 11, Paul took the eleven-plus examinations, the standardized tests that
kids his age took, and performed well. Those who scored well gained access to
the upper rank of the city’s schools. Paul was one of only four students out of
the ninety students from Joseph Williams who took the examination, passed and was
offered to attend the prestigious Liverpool Institute, the city’s best grammar
school.

The Liverpool Institute in the 1950s was an imposing
Greek structure. It was known that its students went through a day that was
rigidly structured and had to submit to strict discipline and intellectual
rigor.

            Every
morning, the students would convene for an all-student assembly in the school
chapel. The headmaster, J. R. Edwards, would recite prayers and instruct music
teacher Les “Squinty” Morgan to play the morning’s hymn on the school’s pipe
organ. Then the students would proceed to the classrooms and receive lessons in
English, mathematics, world history, music and foreign language.

            From
the moment Paul first stepped through the school’s side door – only
sixth-formers were allowed to enter through the front door – he had made a
strong impression on both his instructors and fellow students. Arthur Evans,
the instructor who taught German, referred to Paul as “eminently likable” and a
boy who was “always armed with very ready quips, but [wasn’t] impertinent.”

            His
fellow students thought of him as the sort of student who’d be “head boy” in
the class. Paul regularly took attendance at the start of the class and served
as an ambassador between fellow students and their teachers. Alan “Dusty”
Durband, the literature instructor, said that Paul was “responsible for
organizing the class. But never in any bootlicking way – he was just a good
executive.”

            Paul
didn’t like school very much, “but I didn’t dislike it. And I quite liked parts
of it. What I didn’t like was being told what to do.”

            Generally,
Paul’s childhood was a happy one, if not for an event that would forever change
him and his family.

            Sometime
after Mike’s birth in 1944, Mary was compelled to go to the hospital because of
a painful swelling in her breasts. She was diagnosed with mastitis, an illness
that affects new mothers. Now, doctors know that its symptoms could also be an
indicator of breast cancer.

            The
swelling subsided and Mary went home, but her health would change from that
moment on. In 1948, she returned to the hospital, and this time, she was
diagnosed with breast cancer. The disease was in its earliest stages, but Mary
knew that her time on earth, and with her family, would be limited.

            But
Mary and Jim soldiered on. And when the going got tough, Jim would offer his
hand and whisper to her another family saying: Put it there, if it weighs a
ton.

            And
so life went on for the McCartneys. Their sons grew to become a pair of
energetic boys who were always into mischief. When they were in grade school,
Paul and Mike got caught stealing apples and were locked up in one of the
farmer’s outbuildings. They were only released when Jim came and apologized.
There was also one time when, ignoring advice to avoid a water-filled lime pit,
the boys fell in. The walls were too slick for them to climb out, and so they stayed
down there until a construction worker happened by and helped them out.

            Their
cousin, John Mohin, recalled that “The McCartney boys were like a circus.” But
they were also sweet. Paul, in particular, closely resembled his father and had
taken Jim’s winning smile and wink, both of which Paul would use to get himself
out of trouble. His childhood peer, Tony Bramwell, recalled, “He was a charmer,
even then. He was always the diplomat, always very nice.”

            But,
not known to many, Paul had an introspective side to him and he would at times look
for solitude. He would usually bike toward the nearby woods where he’d be
content to examine the wildlife and consult his
Observer Book of Birds
when a bird fluttered to a nearby tree. And if there were people around, Paul
would climb a sturdy tree and find a perch where he could sit and watch the
world pass beneath him. He remembered, “I’d be like a superspy, the silent
observer, the sniper.”

            He
tried to adopt those things when he was in the streets of Speke in his desire
to avoid young thugs who patrolled the working-class neighborhoods. But he
couldn’t avoid them forever. One time, they caught up with Paul and Mike on the
Mersey banks and took a watch from them. The McCartney brothers ran home
tearfully and told their father about it. Jim relayed the information to the
local constable. Paul knew who the thugs were, and when they came to trial
later, Paul was the key witness. His testimony helped convict them.

            Paul
didn’t like trouble, but that experience certainly taught him a lot about fighting
for what belongs to you. But except for occasional troubles, the McCartney
family was blessed. Even though Jim would never again reclaim the previous
status he enjoyed while at Hannay’s, Mary’s income was enough for a family of
four. They had a good home and two sons who were both attending the Liverpool
Institute.

            However,
the darkness that followed Mary for almost a decade would soon descend on her
again in 1956.

Mary McCartney succumbed to breast
cancer, and her death was a shock to her eldest son

            The
pain became more pronounced this time, so intense that she would double over
with her hands pressed against her aching breast. There was one time when on
his way to his room, Mike saw his mother on her bed, crying softly and clutching
a crucifix in one hand and a portrait of a relative who served as a Catholic
priest in the other.

            Mike
asked, “What’s up, Mum?”

            Mary
tried to hide the pain and hastily wiped the tears from her eyes and reassured
her son that it was nothing. Jim took his wife to the clinic where she had x-rays
done, which showed that the cancer had spread beyond her breast and were
targeting her vital organs. There was nothing the doctors could do but to delay
the inevitable. They would perform a mastectomy if only to keep the illness at
bay for a while.

            The
operation was set on October 30. The day before, Mary busied herself over
household chores, making her sons’ breakfast and cleaning the house from top to
bottom. She swept the floor and pressed her sons’ school uniforms for the next
day. When her sister, Dill, came to accompany her to the hospital, she sighed
at how hard Mary had been working instead of resting for her surgery. But Mary
insisted that everything had to be ready “in case I don’t come back.”

            Mary
was taken to the operating room that evening. The surgery was a success, but
her body could no longer cope with battling the disease for a couple of years. When
she woke up the following morning, she was very weak. And by the next
afternoon, her blood pressure was slipping.

            The
McCartneys and the Mohins gathered at her bedside. Jim came back home and told
his boys that they could see their mother at the hospital. They washed their
hands and faces and wore their school uniform. At the hospital, Jim asked his
sister-in-law, Dill, to check the fingernails and ears of Paul and Mike.
Afterwards, the boys were taken down the corridor and into their mother’s room.

            Mike
sat on the bed and hugged Mary. He and Paul kissed their mother’s face as she
reached for their hands. Paul, who was just 14 then, was too young to
understand what was going on, but when he saw a red stain on the white sheets
of the bed, he knew something was wrong. He recalled, “It was terrible.”

            Mary
struggled not to cry as she talked with her sons for a few minutes. Paul and
Mike kissed their mother’s face for the last time and were taken home. An hour
later, a priest had placed a rosary around Mary’s hand and began to recite the
last rites. Mary told her sister, “I would have liked to have seen the boys
growing up.”

            Mary
died that same night. Paul noticed that his aunts and uncles were all tearful,
and his father… he was torn apart. He told him, “Your mum … the doctors did
what they could … I’m afraid she passed last night. She’s in heaven now, with
God…”

            Paul
remembered that he and Mike did not cry, but they understood. Their mother’s
death was a big shock for all of them, although Paul didn’t know then why she
died. It was only later that he learned it was breast cancer that took his mum
away.

            The
McCartney boys stayed with Uncle Joe and Aunt Joan for several days because
their father needed time alone. Jim had told his sons that no matter what,
just
soldier on
. And so it was what they did. They went to school the next day,
going through the motions of tucking in their shirts, smoothing their pants.

            Suddenly,
Paul said, “What are we going to do without her money?”

            That
joke shocked the youngest McCartney, so much so that he thought it was he who
made that joke. Mike recalled, “We both regretted it for months.”

            And
there were so much to regret after their mother died. They would no longer see
her around, or hear her voice as she called them from downstairs. There would
be no longer her scent around the house.

            Mary’s
death shook the foundation of the family to the core. Paul saw how their
father, who had once been their strength, faltered visibly. He would later say,

“My mother’s
death broke my dad up. That was the worst thing for me, hearing my dad cry. I’d
never heard him cry before. It was a terrible blow to the family. You grow up
real quick, because you never expect to hear your parents crying. You expect to
see women crying, or kids in the playground, or even yourself crying – and you
can explain all that. But when it’s your dad, then you know something’s really
wrong and it shakes your faith in everything.”