The Beatles (13 page)

Before he was twenty, Jim was already “
the swingman of Solva Street
,” a youngster preoccupied with pop music who would stumble home from work, stay just long enough for dinner, then hit the road, looking for a jam. During the early 1920s, he fronted his own band, the Masked Melody Makers, a quintet of like-minded musicians, including his brother Jack on trombone, outfitted in “
rakish” black facecloths
, who played irregularly at small dance halls around Liverpool. The same configuration evolved into Jim Mac’s Jazz Band, with a repertoire of ragtime standards and at least one original McCartney composition, “
Eloise
,” a bright-eyed but unwaveringly banal ditty.

Jim McCartney’s performing wound down in 1930, at precisely the same time he was promoted to the position of salesman. No longer restricted to side streets girding the Cotton Exchange, he threw himself into the friendly price wars waged with local buyers, and with his easy Scouse affability and natural charm, he quickly became a fixture in the market, “
a born salesman
who invited easy confidence and left an imprint of his personality on everyone he met.” In his demeanor, his generosity, his plainspokenness, his effusiveness, his intimacy, and his irrepressible wit, Jim, like Paul later on, proved an earnest, often devoted companion. People of both sexes were attracted to him. But having served such a daunting apprenticeship to an industry that rarely promoted men of working-class backgrounds, he dedicated himself single-mindedly to the job, shunning serious relationships for a period of almost ten years.

It wasn’t until June 1940, during one of the increasingly frequent German air raids over Liverpool, that Jim fell in love. That night, the family had gathered at the McCartneys’ new home in the suburb of leafy West Derby Village to socialize with Jim’s sister Jin and her new husband, Harry Harris. There was a great deal of excitement, with whimsical toasts made in honor of the newlyweds and vain attempts at song. One of the guests, a fair, round-faced woman with unruly hair and a tender, abstracted look in her eye, gazed at the proceedings as if she belonged somewhere else. She’d arrived with the Harrises poised and gracious, but soon settled quietly in an armchair, an unseen presence.

Her name was Mary Mohin. Her voice was soft and resonant, without a trace of the guttural Scouse accent that echoed around the room. Paul would later say that
she spoke “posh
,” which was the basic Liverpudlian knock on anyone who practiced the King’s English. In Mary’s case, her accent didn’t sound at all pretentious, having been drawn quite naturally from the melodic Welsh and cultured university cadences of various hospital staffs on which she’d worked. It was indicative of her overall character, which is to say she was an exacting person who sought to refine her circumstances through hard work and determination. Yet at thirty-one and unmarried, Mary was no longer considered “a prime catch.” At the age of fourteen, she had worked as a nurse trainee at Smithtown Road Hospital, where dormitory accommodations were provided. Afterward,
she enrolled in a three-year general program
at Walton Hospital, the main neurological facility serving northwestern Liverpool, rising quickly through the ranks to become a staff attendant and eventually a prestigious state-registered nurse.

Remarkably, over the next seventeen years, there were no serious suitors in her life. “
Mary was so career-conscious
that she didn’t worry much about men,” says her sister-in-law and confidante Dill Mohin. A Welsh nurse who trained with and later worked alongside Mary explains how the job extracted an enormous commitment: “
We were so immersed
in our work,” she recalls, “no one was in any hurry to get married.” But if Mary Mohin harbored any regrets or disappointment in what had been dealt her, she never let on to a soul.

Jim, at forty, had settled into what friends considered “a confirmed bachelorhood.” Although he was about the same age as his father when he found a bride, he had shown no inclination toward marriage, and throughout the evening, the quiet guest who “
wasn’t at all musical
” did nothing to alter that facade. Had the festivities progressed as a matter of course, it is likely Jim and Mary would never have seen each other again. The reality, however, was more extraordinary. About 9:30, a blast of air-raid sirens rumbled across Merseyside. The Luftwaffe had resumed its habitual sorties, attempting to knock out the strategic port. Usually, an all-clear blew within the hour, but this time emergency measures lasted all night, so the McCartneys and their guests hunkered down in the cellar until dawn.

Despite such unromantic surroundings, Jim and Mary shared enough moments to kindle serious interest. She found him “
utterly charming and uncomplicated
,” delighted by his “considerable good humor.” With his
steel-blue eyes, thin hair swept back from a high forehead, trim businessman’s build, and robust personality, Jim became an object of Mary’s disciplined interest.

She was no doubt enamored of his openly affectionate family as well, having been deprived of similar feelings in the Mohin house. The situation there had deteriorated soon after her mother’s untimely death in 1919 while giving birth to a fourth child. With her brother Wilf away in the army and two-year-old Bill in need of vigilant supervision, Mary, who was only twelve, found herself pressed into service. She looked after the family for two years and was predisposed to the maternal role until the spring of 1921, when her new stepmother, Rose, arrived.
Rose was a witch
, according to Bill Mohin. Elderly, embittered, reluctant to adapt, she was a scornful, iron-willed woman devoted entirely to a son and daughter from a previous marriage who’d accompanied her to Liverpool. It became instantly clear to everyone, especially Mary, that Rose had no love for domesticity, even less for sparing her new husband’s children. Within a year, the women had reached a point whereby they were unable to communicate. “
Mary went to nursing school
because she couldn’t stand being at home with her stepmother,” Dill Mohin recalls. “She’d occasionally meet her father on his rounds,” delivering coal by horse-drawn cart to Liverpool families. “That way, they could be together for a while. But because of Rose, she never went home again.”

Jim and Mary began dating that summer, an otherwise fearful, desultory period marked by the staggered advance of war. Hardly a day passed that prevented them from enjoying each other’s company. They were like a pair of mismatched bookends: Jim, frisky and unserious, a man of modest dreams; Mary, an earnest, resourceful nurse on the front lines of a dangerous world. Despite the depth of their love, it wasn’t an easy business. They faced turmoil head-on as a function of the war. The government formed
the Royal Cotton Commission
, becoming, in essence, the central body for importing the crop—as well as its rationing—which meant that after twenty-four years at A. Hannay & Co., Jim was chucked out of work. Mary’s job, too, was in turmoil, owing to the scarcity of experienced nurses at the front; rumor circulated that she faced imminent military conscription. “
Medical personnel were being recruited
for emergency posts as far off as Egypt and Ethiopia,” says one local historian. Jim, whose age and boyhood injury exempted him from national service, feared abandonment—and worse.
^*
At forty, he was disconsolate, afraid of drifting into uselessness.

It was the “austere side
” of Jim McCartney that regained its bearings in a temporary job designed to aid and expand the war effort. Everywhere in Liverpool, businesses had hastily retooled their facilities, becoming functional military providers. The Bear Brand Stocking factory was a perfect example, abandoning production of silk tights in favor of parachutes. Clothing factories in Litherland churned out infantry uniforms, auto assembly lines built tanks, warehouses were appropriated and conveyed to the Royal Ordnance Factory, churches were converted to mortuaries. The Napier plant, which had flourished making plane parts, was commissioned by the Air Ministry to produce engines for the streamlined Typhoons that strafed enemy skies.
Ungrudgingly, Jim labored there
for the duration of the war, turning a lathe that made shell casings for explosives.

There were other perks that rendered his job more agreeable. To good, solid citizens like Jim McCartney who did “war work,” the government made subsidized housing available. Tiny terrace dwellings, referred to as “half houses” inasmuch as they resembled sheds, were authorized on the outskirts of the city. That was all the incentive necessary to hasten Jim and Mary’s plans. They had been dancing around the issue of marriage for several months, postponing decisions on the pretext of Jim’s job loss or Mary’s possible transfer. Finally, unwilling to wait out the war, they took out a license
at Town Hall on April 8, 1941
, and got married a week later at St. Swithins Chapel, in a Roman Catholic ceremony that was undoubtedly a concession to Mary’s traditional Irish family.

On June 18, 1942
, a boy was born in a private ward at Walton Hospital, coincidentally on the same floor where, twelve years earlier, Mary had satisfied her state registry requirements. As was customary with the practice of midwifery, no doctor was present during the delivery. Instead, Mary was attended by a team of maternity nurses, dressed in a spectrum of colored uniforms that determined their rank, most of whom the mother-to-be knew by name. Because of his volunteer service in the local war effort, Jim was detained fighting a blaze behind the Martin’s Bank Building, where German bombs had incinerated a warehouse, and arrived later that night after visiting hours were over and was granted a special dispensation to see his son.

There was never any doubt what the baby would be named. With the “
teardrop eyes, high forehead
and raised eyebrow—the famous
McCartney eyebrow”—that were unmistakable characteristics, the firstborn would be James, after his father and great-grandfather, who brought the clan to Liverpool. As no one on Jim’s side had a middle name and in keeping with tradition, it was simply James McCartney IV. But before it was registered on the birth certificate, Mary, thoughtful and scrupulous as always, wondered how she would distinguish the men from each other. To solve the problem, it was decided that her son would be James Paul. Exactly when James was dropped in favor of the more familiar middle name has been a source of some speculation among family members. Some believe that during the hospital stay both parents referred to the baby as Jimmy; others swear that was never a factor. Given the circumstances, an explanation seems immaterial because by the time they brought their son home he was acknowledged only—and forevermore—as Paul.

The first few years of Paul McCartney’s life were marked by a blur of consecutive moves.

It was evident from the start that Jim and Mary’s flat in Anfield was hopelessly inadequate to shelter their little family. In addition, Everton was growing increasingly popular as a German bombing target, the district frequently a mottle of smoldering frames where houses once stood, the air heavy with
lime from nearby mass graves
where war casualties were buried. “
Everton,” as a longtime resident put it, “was a place to leave
.”

Wrapped snugly in Mary’s arms, Paul adjusted to the extreme northern weather as his parents hopscotched around Liverpool, scaling each rung up the Corporation housing ladder in measured stride. Initially, they commuted by ferry, relocating in Wallasey, across the Mersey and an ostensibly safer district by comparison. Then, in 1944, after the birth of another son, Peter Michael (he, too, known by his middle name), they moved back to the mainland, to a “
drab part
” of the city called Knowsley Estates, whose condition was typified by its street name: Roach Avenue.
The building, called Sir Thomas White Gardens, was part of a semicircular complex and decent enough
, according to a relative who visited often. They “had a [ground-floor] flat in a well-built tenement, a big block of concrete with kids everywhere. But the [neighbors] were very much to be desired.”

Jim, by this time, was beyond the restless stage, waiting for the Cotton Exchange to reopen. His job at Napier’s was eliminated, and a temporary position with the Liverpool Corporation’s sanitation department proved debilitating. Mary bore the brunt of his frustration. She returned to work
part-time, in order to supplement their income—and get out of the house. Fortunately, the Corporation had been signing up state-registered nurses to canvass each district, inspecting the hygienic conditions in places where women elected to give birth at home. Such deliveries had grown common in the forties, in no small part because travel was severely restricted during the war. To meet the demand, district midwives took on great local importance, “
much like the parish priest
or the beat policeman.” People came to her door for advice. “Is the nurse in? I need to talk to the nurse,” they’d inquire, then anguish “about the sister-in-law who’d run off with the postman.”

But mostly Paul watched his mother depart at all hours of the day—or night—to assist in the home delivery of babies. The usually mellow Mary switched over to automatic pilot when pressed into action. Her transformation never failed to astound Paul. Double-time, she’d inventory her equipment, checking the contents of the black leather delivery bag for thoroughness. Her cases were thrown over a bicycle, whose front and rear lights were tested, as were the batteries in her headlamp. When everything was approved for takeoff, Mary straddled the bike, threw her purse into a brown wicker basket attached to the handlebars, and sped into the dark like Bruce Wayne, often not returning home in time for sleep.

Cycling around Liverpool was no waltz in the park. The hills surrounding the McCartneys’ residence were steep and unforgiving. Incredibly, Mary never surrendered to them, despite the effects of
a deadly cigarette habit
that left her gasping for breath. One road in particular,
Fairway Street
, was the steepest in all of Liverpool, but Mary routinely scaled it at all hours of the night, rain or shine.