Michael found it difficult to absorb learning, Paul came out on top in almost every lesson with ease. He was especially good at English composition and art. His handwriting received praise for its clear regularity.
Money remained a difficulty, though the boys never knew it. Jim McCartney had left his job with the Cleansing department and gone backto selling cotton. This, however, was not the secure trade it had been in prewar days with Hannay’s. After a hard week’s traveling Jim would be lucky to find six pounds in his wage packet. Mary took a second domiciliary job on the Speke estate, necessitating a move from Western Avenue to another council house, on Ardwick Road. Her husband, worried at the long hours she worked, was relieved when she decided to give up midwifery and return to regular nursing. She became a school nurse, making rounds with school doctors in the Walton and Allerton district.
Bella Johnson met Mary at the central clinic from which both of them worked. A round, little, jolly woman, Bella too was finding it difficult to make ends meet. She had been widowed at the age of thirty-six, with two small daughters to educate. This she had done so spectacularly well that one of them, Olive, now worked for the Law Society in Liverpool. The Law Society’s offices were only a street away from the Cotton Exchange. On her way to work, Olive used to pass the time of day with Jim McCartney, not knowing that his wife and her mother were colleagues and friends.
Mrs. Johnson and Olive got to know the McCartneys well. Bella remembered a family contented and normal, suffused by Mary’s gentleness and strength. “She was a beautiful person: it came from something deep inside her,” Olive says. “Jim adored her. I remember how he’d sometimes tell us a story he’d picked up from the businessmen at the Cotton Exchange. If it was a bit off-color, Mary used to look at him and say, ‘Husband!’”
Olive had a small car in which they would all go on weekend trips into the Cheshire countryside. She became a big sister to Paul and Michael, joining in their games, rowing them in a skiff across the lake at Wilmslow. “Mary always made us a special treat at tea time,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I’ll never forget them. Apple sandwiches with sugar.”
On Coronation Day 1953, the Johnsons and McCartneys celebrated together at Ardwick Road. The boys had received their commemorative mugs and spoons, and Paul, in addition, had won a book as a coronation essay prize. They watched, as people did all over Britain in one another’s front parlors, the ceremonial flickering over a tiny, bluish television screen.
Michael McCartney sat at his mother’s feet, as ever. “He was the one you always felt you wanted to love and protect,” Olive says. “With Paul, you loved him, but you knew you’d never have to protect him.”
• • •
Paul passed the eleven plus examination without difficulty, and with sufficient distinction to receive a place at Liverpool Institute, the city’s oldest grammar school. The honor entailed a long bus journey each day from Speke into Liverpool and up behind the Anglican Cathedral to Mount Street, where the institute’s square portico jutted out into steeply plunging pavement. Founded in the 1830s as a Mechanics Institute for deserving artisans, the building had been later divided to form the grammar school and the college of art. Behind the heavy wrought-iron gates was an interior unchanged since Victorian times, save that the gas lamps over each classroom door were no longer lit on winter afternoons. Non nobis solum , the school motto runs, sed toti mundo nati: “Not for ourselves only but for the good of all the world.”
Among hundreds of boys, swarming through the green-distempered school thoroughfares, Paul McCartney was not conspicuous, nor wished to be. His black blazer was neat and his hair slicked flat with Brylcreem; he belonged to that cooperative species from which are recruited
Money remained a difficulty, though the boys never knew it. Jim McCartney had left his job with the Cleansing department and gone backto selling cotton. This, however, was not the secure trade it had been in prewar days with Hannay’s. After a hard week’s traveling Jim would be lucky to find six pounds in his wage packet. Mary took a second domiciliary job on the Speke estate, necessitating a move from Western Avenue to another council house, on Ardwick Road. Her husband, worried at the long hours she worked, was relieved when she decided to give up midwifery and return to regular nursing. She became a school nurse, making rounds with school doctors in the Walton and Allerton district.
Bella Johnson met Mary at the central clinic from which both of them worked. A round, little, jolly woman, Bella too was finding it difficult to make ends meet. She had been widowed at the age of thirty-six, with two small daughters to educate. This she had done so spectacularly well that one of them, Olive, now worked for the Law Society in Liverpool. The Law Society’s offices were only a street away from the Cotton Exchange. On her way to work, Olive used to pass the time of day with Jim McCartney, not knowing that his wife and her mother were colleagues and friends.
Mrs. Johnson and Olive got to know the McCartneys well. Bella remembered a family contented and normal, suffused by Mary’s gentleness and strength. “She was a beautiful person: it came from something deep inside her,” Olive says. “Jim adored her. I remember how he’d sometimes tell us a story he’d picked up from the businessmen at the Cotton Exchange. If it was a bit off-color, Mary used to look at him and say, ‘Husband!’”
Olive had a small car in which they would all go on weekend trips into the Cheshire countryside. She became a big sister to Paul and Michael, joining in their games, rowing them in a skiff across the lake at Wilmslow. “Mary always made us a special treat at tea time,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I’ll never forget them. Apple sandwiches with sugar.”
On Coronation Day 1953, the Johnsons and McCartneys celebrated together at Ardwick Road. The boys had received their commemorative mugs and spoons, and Paul, in addition, had won a book as a coronation essay prize. They watched, as people did all over Britain in one another’s front parlors, the ceremonial flickering over a tiny, bluish television screen.
Michael McCartney sat at his mother’s feet, as ever. “He was the one you always felt you wanted to love and protect,” Olive says. “With Paul, you loved him, but you knew you’d never have to protect him.”
• • •
Paul passed the eleven plus examination without difficulty, and with sufficient distinction to receive a place at Liverpool Institute, the city’s oldest grammar school. The honor entailed a long bus journey each day from Speke into Liverpool and up behind the Anglican Cathedral to Mount Street, where the institute’s square portico jutted out into steeply plunging pavement. Founded in the 1830s as a Mechanics Institute for deserving artisans, the building had been later divided to form the grammar school and the college of art. Behind the heavy wrought-iron gates was an interior unchanged since Victorian times, save that the gas lamps over each classroom door were no longer lit on winter afternoons. Non nobis solum , the school motto runs, sed toti mundo nati: “Not for ourselves only but for the good of all the world.”
Among hundreds of boys, swarming through the green-distempered school thoroughfares, Paul McCartney was not conspicuous, nor wished to be. His black blazer was neat and his hair slicked flat with Brylcreem; he belonged to that cooperative species from which are recruited
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