Beatles (11 page)

‘There was this little girl we had our eye on. As I walked past her, she said, “You look silly.” I said, “You look lovely,” and I sat down beside her. It was all innocent. I didn’t know anything.

‘She said if I was going to sit beside her, I had to take that silly hat off. So I did. I threw it in the lake. I haven’t worn a hat from that day to this.’

Fred and Julia went out together, during Fred’s spells ashore, for about ten years. He says her mother ‘loved the bones of his body’ but that her father didn’t care for him very much. But he had taught Julia to play the banjo.

‘Me and Julia used to play and sing together. We’d have been the tops today. One day she said to me, “Let’s go and get married.” I said we had to put the banns up and do it properly. She said, “I bet you won’t.” So I did, just for a joke. It was all a big laugh, getting married.’

The Stanley family didn’t think it much of a laugh. ‘We knew that Julia was going out with Alfred Lennon,’ says Mimi, one of Julia’s four sisters. ‘He was quite good looking, I’ll admit. But we knew he would be no use to anyone, certainly not Julia.’

The marriage had taken place at Mount Pleasant Register Office on 3 December 1938. No parents were present. Fred turned up first, outside the Adelphi Hotel, at ten in the morning. There was no sign of Julia so he went off and tried to borrow a pound from his brother. When he got back, Julia still hadn’t turned up so he rang the Trocadero cinema. Julia spent a lot of time at the Trocadero, as she’d always been stage-struck. She never actually worked there, though she put ‘cinema usherette’ on her marriage certificate, as a joke. ‘I spoke to one of her mates at the Troc,’ says Fred. ‘They all loved me at the Troc. They used to say to me, “If you ever fall out of love with Julia, I’ll be waiting.”’

Julia did turn up and they spent their honeymoon at the cinema. Afterwards, Julia went back to her home and Fred went
back to his. The next day Fred got on a ship and went off to the West Indies for three months.

Julia stayed at home with her parents, which was where Fred also lived on his trips back home over the next year. After one trip, Julia found that she was pregnant. It was the summer of 1940. Liverpool was under heavy bombing. No one knew where Fred Lennon was.

Julia was admitted to the Maternity Hospital in Oxford Street to have her baby. He was born during a heavy air raid on 9 October 1940, at 6.30 in the evening and he was called John Winston Lennon. Winston was the result of a momentary fit of patriotism. Mimi, who saw the baby 20 minutes after he was born, chose the name John.

‘The minute I saw John,’ says Mimi, ‘that was it. I was lost for ever. A boy! I couldn’t get over it. I went on and on about him, almost forgetting Julia. She said, “All I’ve done is have him.”’

When John was 18 months old, Julia went down to the shipping office one day to pick up her money from Fred, which somehow had been coming through. She was told the money had stopped. ‘Alfred had deserted ship,’ says Mimi. ‘No one knew what had happened to him.’ He did reappear, but Mimi says that was really the end of the marriage, though they didn’t separate until a year or so later.

‘Julia eventually met another man who she wanted to marry,’ says Mimi. ‘It would have been difficult to take John along as well, so I took John. I wanted him, of course, but it did seem the best thing to do. All he needed was a firm anchor and a happy home life. He already looked upon my house as a second home anyway. Both Julia and Fred wanted me to adopt him. I’ve got letters from them saying so. But I could never get them both down to the office together to sign the forms.’

Fred Lennon’s version of his ‘desertion’ and what happened to his marriage is naturally a bit different. He was in New York when the war broke out and heard he was to be transferred to a liberty ship as an assistant steward instead of a head waiter. ‘It meant I would lose my rating. I didn’t mind getting involved in
the war, but I couldn’t put up with losing my rating, could I? The captain of the passenger ship I’d been working on advised me what to do. He said, “Freddy, go and get drunk and miss your boat.”’

This is what Fred did, and he ended locked up on Ellis Island. He was told again to join a liberty ship. Fred said he wanted to be head waiter on the
Queen Mary
. He was at last marched on to a liberty ship, heading for North Africa. When they arrived there, Fred was put in jail.

‘One of the cooks on board had said to me one day, go and get a bottle from his room. I was drinking it when the police arrived. I was supposed to have broached the cargo. I hadn’t. It had all happened before I got on board, but the whole crew got off, except me. Stealing by finding, that was what it was. I defended myself, but it didn’t do no good.’

Fred spent three months in jail. Naturally, he says, his money to Julia stopped. He hadn’t any to send her, but he did send her some letters. ‘She loved my letters. I said to her, there’s a war on, go out and enjoy yourself, pet. That was the biggest mistake of my life. She started enjoying herself and met someone else. And I’d told her to.’

John has vague memories of his days living with the Stanleys, being looked after by his mother while Fred was at sea, although he could not have been more than four years old at the time. ‘One day my grandad took me for a walk to the Pier Head. I had a new pair of shoes on and they hurt me all the way. My grandad slit the heels with a penknife so they would be comfortable.’

He did get the impression from his mother that she and Fred had had some happy times. ‘She told me about them always larking around and laughing. I think Fred must have been popular. He used to send us ship’s concert lists with his name on singing “Begin the Beguine”.’

Julia, according to her sisters, was always singing as well. ‘She was gay, witty and full of fun,’ says Mimi. ‘She never took life or anything seriously. Everything was funny, but she couldn’t see
into people until it was too late. She was more sinned against than sinning.’

Fred went back to sea again, after Julia had gone to live permanently with the new man, and John went with Mimi. During one leave Fred decided to go and visit John at Mimi’s house. ‘I rang up from Southampton and spoke to John on the phone. He must have been getting on for five by then. I asked him what he was going to be when he grew up, that sort of thing. He spoke lovely English. When I heard his scouse accent years later, I was sure it must be a gimmick.’

Fred arrived in Liverpool, worried sick, so he says, about John, and went to visit Mimi. ‘I asked John how he’d like to go to Blackpool and go on the fair and play in the sea and the sand. He said he’d love it. I asked Mimi if I could. She said she couldn’t refuse. So I set off with John for Blackpool – intending never to come back.’

Fred and the five-year-old John spent some weeks in Blackpool, staying with a friend of Fred’s. ‘I had bags of money at the time. You couldn’t go wrong in those days, just after the war. I was on lots of rackets, mainly bringing back black market stockings. They’re probably still selling the stuff in Blackpool I brought over.’

The friend he was staying with in Blackpool was planning to emigrate to New Zealand. Fred decided to go with him. All the preparations were made, when one day Julia arrived at the door.

‘She said she wanted John back. She’d now got a nice little home and decided she wanted him. I said I was now so used to John I was going to take him to New Zealand with me. I could tell she still really loved me. I said why didn’t she come with me? We could start again? She said no. All she wanted was John. So we argued and I said, well, let John decide.

‘I shouted to John. He runs out and jumps on my knee. He clings to me, asking if she’s coming back. That’s obviously what he really wanted. I said no, he had to decide whether to stay with me or go with her. He said me. Julia asked again, but John still said me.

‘Julia went out of the door and was about to go up the street when John ran after her. That was the last I saw of him or heard of him till I was told he’d become a Beatle.’

John went back to Liverpool with Julia but not to stay with her. It was his Aunt Mimi who wanted him back. He moved in, for good this time, with Mimi and her husband George at their semi-detached house in Menlove Avenue, Woolton, Liverpool.

‘I never told John about his father and mother,’ says Mimi. ‘I just wanted to protect him from all that. Perhaps I was overanxious. I don’t know. I just wanted him to be happy.’

John is very grateful to Mimi for what she did. ‘She was obviously very good to me. She must have been worried about the conditions I was brought up in and must have been always on at them to think about me, telling them to make sure the kid’s safe. As they trusted her, they let her have me in the end, I suppose.’

John soon settled down with Mimi. She brought him up as her son. She was a disciplinarian and stood no nonsense, but she never hit him or shouted at him. She considers this a sign of weakness in a parent. Her worst punishment was to ignore him. ‘He always hated that. “Don’t ’nore me, Mimi,” he used to say.’

But Mimi allowed his personality to develop. ‘We were always an individual family. Mother never believed in being conventional, and neither do I. She never wore a wedding ring all her life and neither have I. Why should I?’

But Uncle George, who ran the family dairy business, was the weak link, if John wanted to be spoiled. ‘I used to find notes John had left under George’s pillow. “Dear George, will you wash me tonight and not Mimi.” Or “Dear George, will you take me to Woolton Pictures.”’

Mimi allowed John only two outings of that sort a year – one to the Christmas Pantomime at the Liverpool Empire and the other to a Walt Disney film in the summer. But there were smaller treats, such as Strawberry Fields, a local Salvation Army children’s home which each summer had a big garden party. ‘As
soon as we could hear the Salvation Army band starting, John would jump up and down shouting, “Mimi, come on. We’re going to be late.”’

John’s first school was Dovedale Primary. ‘The headmaster, Mr Evans, told me this boy’s as sharp as a needle. He can do anything, as long as he chooses to do it. He won’t do anything stereotyped.’

John was reading and writing after only five months at school, with the help of his Uncle George, though his spelling was funny, even then. Chickenpox was always chicken pots. ‘He went on holiday to my sister’s in Edinburgh once and sent me a postcard saying “Funs are getting low.” I’ve still got it.’

Mimi wanted to take John back and forward to Dovedale School herself, but he wouldn’t allow it. After only his third day, he said she was making a show of him and she hadn’t to come any more. So she had to content herself by walking secretly behind him out of school, keeping about 20 yards behind, shadowing him to see that he was all right.

‘His favourite songs were “Let Him Go, Let Him Tarry” and “Wee Willy Winkie”. He had a good voice. He used to sing in the choir at St Peter’s, Woolton. He always went to Sunday School and was later confirmed when he was 15 of his own free will. Religion was never forced on him but the inclination was there until he was a teenager.’

Until the age of 14, Mimi gave him only five shillings a week pocket money. ‘I tried to teach him the value of money, but it never worked.’ To get any extra money, John had to work for it by helping in the garden. ‘He always refused to, until he was really desperate. We’d hear the shed door being furiously opened, then he’d get the lawn mower out and race across a few feet of the lawn at about 60 miles an hour, then storm in for his money. But money didn’t really mean anything to him. He didn’t care about it. He was always generous beyond belief when he had any.’

John started writing his own little books when he was about seven. Mimi still has bundles of them. His first series was
called ‘Sport Speed and Illustrated. Edited and Illustrated by J. W. Lennon’. It contained jokes, cartoons, drawings, pasted-in photographs of film stars and footballers. It had a serial story which ended each week with ‘If you liked this, come again next week, it’ll be even better.’

‘I was passionate about
Alice in Wonderland
and drew all the characters. I did poems in the style of the Jabberwocky. I used to
live
Alice, and
Just William
. I wrote my own William stories, with me doing all the things.

‘When I did any serious poems, like emotional stuff later on, I did it in secret handwriting, all scribbles, so that Mimi couldn’t read it. Yes, there must have been a soft soul under the hard exterior.

‘
Wind in the Willows
, I loved that. After I’d read a book, I’d relive it all again. That was one reason why I wanted to be the gang leader at school. I’d want them all to play the games that I wanted them to play, the ones I’d just been reading.’

As a little boy, he had golden hair and looked very like his mother’s side of the family. People always mistook him for Mimi’s real son, which she liked. If they were strangers, she never contradicted them.

Mimi was very protective, looking after him all the time, trying not to let him mix with what she called common boys.

‘I was coming down Penny Lane one day and saw this crowd of boys in a ring, watching two boys fighting. “Just like those common scruffs,” I said. They were from another school, not John’s. Then they parted and out came this awful boy with his coat hanging off. To my horror, it was Lennon.

‘John always liked me telling him that story. “Just like you, Mimi. Everybody else is always common,” he used to say.’

In his playing, with kids around the neighbourhood, Mimi says he always had to be the boss. But at school it was much more serious. He had his own gang, which led to brawls and physical fights with everyone, just to prove he was the best. Ivan Vaughan and Pete Shotton, his two closest friends at school, say he seemed to be perpetually fighting.

Mimi quite approved of these two friends, as they both lived locally, in the same sort of semis, but not of some of the others.

‘I did fight all the way through Dovedale, winning by psychological means if ever anyone looked bigger than me. I threatened them in a strong enough way that I would beat them, so they thought I could.