Philip Norman - John Lennon - The Life

Alf stayed overnight at Mimi’s and the next morning was awoken by an exuberant John bouncing up and down on his chest. His suggestion that the two of them should go out together for the day was greeted with wild excitement. Mimi offered no opposition, believing the purpose of the outing was to buy some new clothes for John. Father and son then caught a tram into Liverpool, where Alf took his older brother Sydney into his confidence, swearing him to secrecy. Sydney reiterated his own willingness to adopt John, though Alf later claimed never to have seriously considered this option.

Blackpool was Alf’s chosen destination not only as a northwestern seaside resort of fabled child appeal but also as the hometown of his shipmate and fellow black-marketeer Billy Hall. For something like three weeks, he hid out there with John, staying with Billy’s parents and spending his abundant spare cash on every carnival ride and sticky treat the little boy could desire. The kindly Halls also found themselves added to the waiting list of John’s would-be guardians. Alf’s initial idea was that, when his money ran out and he returned to sea, John should stay on with the Halls in Blackpool. When it transpired that they were about to sell their home and emigrate to New Zealand, a more complex scheme took shape. Mr and Mrs Hall would take John with them, posing as his grandparents; a little later, Alf, Billy Hall, and Billy’s brother would obtain their own passage to New Zealand free of charge by signing on to some Australasianbound liner, then jumping ship when it reached Wellington.

The plan had no chance to mature any further. Julia had by now picked up Alf’s trail and, one sunny June day, turned up at the Halls’ house, accompanied by Bobby Dykins, to take John back. Initially her demand was not backed up by any real force. When Alf outlined the New Zealand scheme, she agreed it could be the start of a wonderful new life for John and indicated her willingness to let him go, merely asking to see him one last time. When John was brought into the room, his first reaction, after their days of fun and intimacy, was to climb into Alf’s lap. But when Julia admitted defeat and turned to leave, he jumped down and ran after her, burying his face in her skirt, sobbing and begging her not to go. To break the impasse, Alf pleaded with her to give their marriage another chance, but Julia would have none of it.

Alf then told John he must choose between going with Mummy or staying with Daddy. If you want to tear a small child in two, there is no better way. John went to Alf and took his hand; then, as Julia turned away again, he panicked and ran after her, shouting to her to wait and to his father to come, too. But, paralysed once more by fatalistic self-pity, Alf remained rooted in his chair. Julia and John left the house and disappeared into the holiday crowds.

That evening, good-hearted Mr and Mrs Hall sought to cheer Alf up by taking him to a pub called the Cherry Tree and persuading him to do his Al Jolson routine for its assembled customers. His all-too-appropriate song choice was Jolson’s ‘Little Pal’, a eulogy to some angelic Sonny Boy tucked in a soft, safe nursery as his faithful dad watches adoringly over him. Instead of ‘Little Pal’ in each verse, Alf sang ‘Little John’. It made tears stream down his cheeks, although—ever the pro—he sang the song to its end, amid a storm of clapping and whistling. Unlike the little pal he had given up, Alf Lennon would never find crowds oppressive nor applause wearisome.

Shall I call you Pater, too?

Britain emerged from the Second World War looking far more like a defeated nation than a victorious one. Crippled financially as well as bombed to ruins, the country remained in a state of crisis and privation long after the lights had begun to go on again all over the rest of Europe—even in Germany. Meat, butter and sugar continued to be doled out in miserly amounts dictated by coupons from dun-coloured ration books. Clothes were drab, shapeless and as devoid of individuality as the uniforms they had replaced. Every day seemed to bring some fresh shortage or restriction or appeal by the grim-faced new socialist government for self-sacrifice or thrift. In the pervading climate of shabbiness, inconvenience, chilblains and snot-green smog, the young and the old were almost indistinguishable. Youth had been permanently cancelled, it seemed, along with any kind of frivolity, spontaneity or joy.

Yet despite the icebound grip of this so-called Austerity era, life went on in much the same way it always had. The class system still operated as feudally as ever, the Royal Family was still sacred, the aristocracy still revered. Authority received unquestioning trust and respect, whether manifested in politicians, doctors, lawyers, the clergy, the armed forces or the police. Newspapers voluntarily suppressed anything that might upset the status quo. While rapidly dismantling their colonial Empire, Britons continued to regard themselves as masters of the world, despising all foreigners, treating as natural inferiors all races with skins darker than theirs, and using terms like nigger and wog (not to mention Jewboy and yid) without a qualm. Endemic class snobbery came from beneath as much as from above. Most people on even the lowest social rungs aspired to speak a little ‘better’ than they really could, taking as their model the clipped enunciation of royalty, prime ministers, Shakespearian actors and announcers on the BBC.

Like all great cities of the north, Liverpool lay in ruins for so long that grass grew over the bomb sites and wildflowers sprang up around the disused shelters and the giant letters SWS (for Static Water Supply). An Ealing Studios film called The Magnet , shot on location there and released in 1950, shows how, five years after Victory in Europe, whole districts around the docks still consisted of nothing but craters and rubble heaps, the latter now used by children as unofficial playgrounds.

Seaports by their very nature tend to be individualistic places where life is lived in tougher, freer, more eccentric ways than in the non-mercantile hinterland. Even in the pungent company of Britain’s ports, Liverpool has always stood alone. Its particular character dates back to the 18th and early 19th centuries, when Liverpool merchants were the mavericks of the shipping world, earning fortunes on the infamous Triangle route that transported black slaves from Africa to the Americas, then brought home the proceeds as cotton, sugar and tobacco. In the American Civil War, while the rest of the country maintained uneasy neutrality, Liverpool sided firmly with the slave-owning South, gave it space to open an embassy (which has never been officially closed), and built its most famous warship, the Alabama . Indeed, the final episode of the conflict did not take place in America at all, but in this faraway safe haven for rebels and secessionists. As defeat for the Stars and Bars became inevitable, another Confederate warship, the Shenandoah , appeared in the River Mersey. Rather than turn her over to the victorious Yankees, her captain had crossed the Atlantic to surrender to Liverpool’s lord mayor.

Such was the attitude Liverpool would maintain into the 20th century—its back turned to the rest of Britain, its gaze fixed admiringly, yearningly, above all knowingly, on America. America came and went each day in transatlantic liners like the Queen Mary and Mauretania , and in the savoir faire of Liverpudlian crews whose easy familiarity with fabled cities far away earned them the nickname Cunard Yanks. Even the skyline that greeted ships as they came up the Mersey had a touch of New York’s. It was composed of a wide riverfront piazza called the Pier Head and an acropolis of three giant grey stone buildings known as the Three Graces, respectively the headquarters of the Docks and Harbour Board, the Cunard organisation, and the Royal Liver (pronounced ‘ly-ver’) Insurance Company. The last named was embellished fore and aft by a pair of matching green domes, on each of which a stone ‘Liver Bird’ flapped its wings defiantly at the encircling gulls.