Extract From: Across the Universe – Beatles on Infinite Earths.
Everyone calls me Paul these days, but my name is William Shears.
That is to say, it says William on my birth certificate, but I was always Billy or Bill to my friends. Such as they were, you understand. I could maybe count the number of friends I had on the fingers of one hand, but I’d need to cut off 3 or 4 fingers first. I never knew many people and not too many people knew me, so friends were always few and farther between.
And before you ask, I didn’t know Paul, not personally, but I was one of his pallbearers, if you ken. I buried Paul. In a manner of speaking. George was the gravedigger. Richie was the undertaker and he had to carry out his undertakings. Johnny Moondog was Jesus of course. Bigger than Jesus.
November 9, he died. Wednesday morning at 5 o’clock.
You remember? You deciphered the clues, right? The little trail of breadcrumbs and mischief. That hand over his head, like a signifier of something untoward. Other things too. OPD, sewn onto his sleeve. OPD. Officially pronounced dead.
Then his Beetle plate, like a headstone by the kerb. 28 1F. 28 if he was still alive.
Sure. But he isn’t alive. He’s brown bread mate.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. All you need to know is that there are just 3 Beatles now. 3 of them, and me. Johnny, Georgie, Richie and now Billy too and that’s me. Billy, but you can call me Paul. Everybody does these days.
So, let me bring you up to speed.
It was Brian or one of his underlingers who discovered me, but it wasn’t in any Cavern like in all the magazines and papers and mythology. You’ve heard of Brian, no doubt? Brian was the fifth Beedle, some say, but right then in that moment, he was only the fourth, if you catch my drift. He was the manager, this grand impresario type who carried them to the top of the pops mountain, just through the force of his will.
There were four, and he loved them like his own, but one was gone all of a sudden, and a lookie-likie, was what was required. A good one though, and to cut that story shorter, it was me. I was needed and I was needed in double quick time cos Paul was already cold to the touch and he absolutely would be dead forever and wouldn’t be coming back from where he’d gone.
I never read about it in the papers, because it was hush-hush, but I heard tell of the old Paul’s demise just the same. Just whispers of course, but loud enough that they found my ear. Old Paul coming to or going from somewhere or other and his motor hit a pissy muddle of fog and black ice and skated out of control and deadly. It pirouetted around a couple dozen times, then his head came off and spilled out onto the M1 like a Saturday football. As you might expect, a copper came along. But as you might not expect, said
copper took a shufty over his shoulder and saw opportunity in all the bloody mess. He picked the head off the tarmac in his white cotton gloves, and he popped it into a shopping bag, like it was a cabbage, and he was coming home from the greengrocers to ruin dinner. I’m presuming he was a shifty character. All nasty and nine-bob-note-bent, like all coppers, in my humble. I might be wrong, but this copper didn’t take out his whistle and call up the Black Marias and the ambulances, like you would, did he? You would have thought he was duty bound, right? But no. He was a snide cunt and he thought like one
and he done what a snide cunt would do. He jimmied the crumpled door, popped the handbrake, wheeled the dead man’s motor onto the hard shoulder, out of sight and mind. Then he called a friend at the lodge who called another friend and that final friend told him to call Brian Epsteen. That’s all I can tell you about that because you had to be there, and I wasn’t there.
Here is where I come in though. Right here.
It’s Wednesday still, but wheels are in motion already, plates are spinning rather swift, I gather. I’m still Billy Shears at this point and out of the sky blue, because we don’t have a phone, I get a cable sent to my dear ma and pa’s house. It says URGENT in red and Mr Wm. Shears, all formal and then it says to stay where I am and await instructions like I’m Michael Caine in that spy film. I’m thinking, bloody nerve, but I have nothing to do but wait anyway, so I do just that. I wait around a whiles and after an hour or so, a motor gets sent for me with a driver who says his master requests the pleasure of my company
and would I be so gracious. The driver has a peaked sergeant hat on his head at a jaunty angle and a fag on his bottom lip like it was held on with wallpaper paste. The driver is called Reg and the car is a Bentley and he opens the door for me like I am the Duke of Clarence and calls me sir with a plum in his lips.
Would sir care to listen to the wireless? Please help yourself to a drink, sir. We shouldn’t be too long, sir. Just a few miles more. If you’d be so kind as to keep your feet off the leather, sir.
I say yes and yes and yes and then, for shits and giggles, I calls him Reginald like I’m his maiden aunt and he doesn’t like that at all ha ha. Though I am in the back seat of the motor and I definitely took a bath on Tuesday, he harrumphs and rolls down all the windows, front and back, like my odour is an offence to his beak and he drives me down the motorway, annoyed but careful like, as if I was made of glass and shit. He don’t say anything, just every now and when, he casts me a sneaky peek in the mirror and he squints back, like he’s trying to place my face or something else. I stare back at him in the little rectangle and one time I ask if he fancies me and does he want to get in the back for a little kiss and a cuddle with us and that makes him even more irate ha ha. Then we
drive in silence for a while further until I get ants in my pants and start nattering for want of conversation, which is a problem I have, and he winds up this electric window between us and pretends to pretend I am not there.
Charmed I’m sure, I think and I pour myself a drink from a bottle that is made of jewels and has a glass stopper and a silver chain that says whisky around the neck, like you would find in the Lord Mayor’s chambers or at a posh relative’s, if you have one. You might have one. I don’t, as you might gather. In any case, I drink of the whisky and I get all nice and fuzzy around the edges, as the city grey turns brown and green gradually and then just green and Reginald ignores me all the way. Sulking in the front half of the limo like a crumb, while he takes me up this drive that’s as long as your high street and out to this big country pile. And truly, it is a fucking pile. I mean, it’s as high as the sky and twice as wide. And even though the day is getting eaten up by the purple and black sky, the air still smells of yesterday. It smells like a tart’s perfume and the gravel is crunchy, like snap, crackle, and all that under my feet.
I check the back of the seat for my pack of smokes and my scarf and wave ta ta and Brian drives away without a toodle or a fucking loo, the graceless tosser. Still, I give him a little bow and blow him a kiss in thanks, but he just looks dead ahead, his face turning purple and blue with cholera or something. Then before you know it, I am ushered into the west wing by a man in coattails who shushes me every time I open my mouth to yawn. It’s all on the quiet and he is all on the quiet too. Under cover of night-time, I follow his coattails down a long, creaking corridor, with paintings of queens and naked babies with wings,
floating on the walls in gilt frames, for miles and miles until we get to another door, a nice slab of oak, where I stand with my hands in my pockets like a truant. Then Coattails raps on the door and says there’s a Mr Shears to see you Mr Epsteen and Mr Epsteen says that’ll be all Coattails and casts his eye over me. Come in, come in, you must be freezing Mr Shears he says and I say I’m warm enough thank you very much.
He has his head balanced on the tips of his fingers, like he’s having a ponder for a minute, while I fidget in place a minute. Then he says tea, but he lands a question mark on the tail, like ‘Tea?’, a single word question, and he tells me to have a seat in front of the fire and I wriggle on a Chesterfield while he pours me a cup of piss weak char from a bona China pot and I check the shelves for a book I might have read.
“Sugar?” he says. Another one-word question and I want to say, ‘Yes, Sweetie’ but I fight the urge. Then he chimes the spoon on the side of the cup like he is ringing a bell to bring out the dead.
“Why not,” I tell him. “Two lumps, if you’d be so kind.”
He picks up the sugarlumps with little tongs and they land in the pissy tea with a couple of plops. Then he’s down to brass tacks. No foreplay. Not even a kiss on the cheek.
I see he’s all red in the eyes and his desk is a fucken state and there are Jack and Jills all over the place. Coloured barbs and sleepers, I recognise from my auntie’s nightstand, scattered around like little candies in a palaver and there’s a tray of scrunched Dunhills that got lit and puffed one time and then stubbed out right away like the taste was too shitty. When he speaks, his voice is all cracked and broke and this wayward little curl of his hair keeps spilling over his face. Then he says that what he’s about to tell me is strict confidence and then he has me sign a waiver to the same. When I hand it back, he looks at my spider writing and he frowns, like I am a grand disappointment somehow or other.
“You’re right-handed,” he says and his face creases like I just took a piss in his pool and stirred up the yellow water with my dick.
“I’m both handed,” I tell him. “Ambi-handrous,” I joke and he laughs. The sound is like someone who never tried laughing before. Like air being let out of a tyre.
“Do you have any idea why I’ve asked you to come, Mr Shears?” he says and I say no and, because I read about a scene like this once in Titbits, I sniff the tea in case there is a Mickey in it. The tea smells fine though, just weak and too milky, and Brian tells me that what he’s going to say is a big secret and if it ever got out the world would slip off its axis.
“I can keep a secret,” I tell him and he smiles like it’s the first good news he ever heard.
“Cross your heart?”
“Hope to die,” I say and I wonder a minute, is this flirting? “Well, not hope to die, but definitely stick a needle in my eye territory.” I am flirting, I realise suddenly. Great Caesar’s fucken goat.
“Well, that’s reassuring. Do you know who I am and who I represent?” he smiles, but the smile is a bit on the thin side now, as if the effort is getting to him. I put him out of his misery real quick. Of course I know.
“Everyone knows who you are, Mr Epsteen,” I tell him and he looks all flattered, sticking his chest out slightly and checking the wave in his hair.
“This thing. This terrible thing. Well, it would break the world’s heart,” he tells me. Then he reminds me of the waiver I just put my name to, and he suddenly starts weeping and he says I am to tell no one on pain of death and the like, but Paul is dead, is the long and short of it. Our dear Saint Paul is dead, he whispers and his voice breaks and he dabs at the corner of his eyes with a Kleenex, but it isn’t nearly up to the job. I feel a tear coming too, but I sniff it back inside. Paul is the Beedle I see when I’m at the mirror shaving, so
I actually feel something like a pang of sad stirring in me for a minute, like the passing of a family member. You see, I was in the paper once. Local lad begs local girls, please, I’m not Paul! Him and me, we have a connexion. We have a face in common, but more than that, I like to think.
“I’m real sorry Mister Epsteen,” I tell him and he says, call me Brian, please.
“We’re friends now. My friends call me Brian,” he says and he smiles. Then he tells me he has a proposition for me, if I might be interested. He leans back in his chair and it creaks in protest. I nod and I tell him to keep talking.
“How old are you?” he says, looking at me all squinty and I tell him and he writes everything down in a yellow legal pad. And then he says how skinny are you Billy, and can I grow my hair a little longer and are my eyes brown or green and I say they are hazel and he seems to be happy enough with my answers. Do I play the guitar he asks and I tell him no but I can play the piano. When I say piano it comes out as Joanna and he says please don’t call it that and I am so uncouth, he shivers like someone had just stomped all over his grave. And singing? he says. Can you sing, he asks and I tell him I can hold a tune and I sing a few lines to him.
Scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs.
He seems happy with that, but after a bar he tells me to stop like it’s too painful. We sit there in silence while the fire cracks, then finally, he necks a couple of aspirin while I take a sip of the tea from the saucer, like an old man would.
How tall are you, he says, but you could drive a bus in the gaps between the lines he’s leaving. How Paul are you? That’s the question on his lips, but he can’t bring himself to say it, I’m thinking and my thoughts are overlapping with Brian talking. Then outside the window it starts to rain and thunder and whatnot and I change the subject and ask what time the trains are.
“You should stay here tonight,” he says finally all tish and fipsy, then he presses a button for his man to come back like we’re back in that spy movie. I say are you putting me on? But he doesn’t answer.
“I have to get back,” I tell him and then I take a last sip of the weak char and he’s all, no that’s nonsense and he won’t hear of it and harrumph.
“If it’s inconvenient Mr Shears, we can pay you for your time,” he says and I feel my ears prick up, which is one of the drawbacks of being as poor as shit, which I was and always was before.
“How long?” I ask him.
“I don’t know,” he says and he starts rubbing his temples as if the headache won’t shift. “How long is a piece of string?”
I got nothing in my calendar, but I play it like I’m playing my old man at poker. “I don’t know Mr…” I say, like butter wouldn’t even.
“…Brian, please,” he smiles.
“Brian. Yeah. Sorry. Bri. I have commitments, Brian. Mr Epsteen.”
“How does fifty guineas a week sound?” and he opens a cheque book the size of a Yellow Pages, but he’s nonchalant about it.
It sounds like a lot of guineas, I think, but do not say.
“Perhaps sleep on it,” he says and the door at my back opens and I feel the hustle and bustle of his butler or housekeeper or whatever he is and Brian tells him to make up one of the spare rooms and looks me square in the face.
“It’s been a long day. We can talk more in the morning over breakfast.”
Then the phone rattles to life on his desk and half the pills do a little Mexican jumping bean dance across the teak. Brian picks up the phone and answers, yes and yes, yes. I’m speaking with him now. No. No. Yes. Yes. He’s perfect, he says, looking straight at me as he jots down an 01 number. After a minute he hangs up. He’s already dialling the number when I speak.
“Fifty guineas,” I scratch my chin and he looks up. “Fifty guineas, a week?”
“Yes,” he says. “Fifty. To start,” he says and I choke back a smile but he isn’t looking anymore. I get out of the Chesterfield and stand there a minute like a spare prick and then he looks up again, surprised almost that I haven’t gone already. He holds a hand over the receiver and chivvies me out like I’m on his staff now.
I guess I am, I think, counting the money in my head.
A couple weeks after that, I stop being Billy Shears altogether.
The morning after I arrived at Mandalay or wherever he lived, Brian stood over me in the dining room while I wrote a letter to my ma and pa.
I am leaving, I wrote, to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, like Beau Geste and I will never see you again and you will never see me neither. Have a good life and all that. If you’re wondering, I left because I love this bird and she doesn’t love me back, so don’t blame yourselves. Blame her. Don’t come after me. Your loving son, Bill.
In truth, I didn’t even cross the channel. I was billeted at Brian’s country pile while he stayed at his London Pied-à-terre and fed the press stories about the holiday the other Paul was taking. Every newsman in the country took flight to a hundred different destinations and meanwhile I had the run of the liquor cabinet most nights. It wasn’t so bad. Coattails was a Michelin man chef. He made a mean steak and potatoes that I ate at the kitchen table, to save the Chippendale and the good china until I learned a few table manners. For my starters, I would have prawn cocktail out of a martini glass and then a plate of black forest gateaux for afters, washed down with Deutsch pilsner out of the refrigerator. The nights were fine. Coattails asking, will that be all tonight sir and then me listening to records, or playing billiards or watching telly until the Queen, but the daylight hours were a pain in my arse.
During the day I had all these surreptitious Henry fucken Higgins’s of the parish coming over and for a month, everything was all how now brown cow and listening to tapes and watching movies of dead Beadle Paul talking and I had to pick it up real quick. I picked up the guitar and the bass too. The teacher told me I was a quick study for a novice. It’s the same as playing piano, really. Only the notes are in slightly different places and I have to hold the guitar upside down so as no one will ever twig I am not a southpaw.
On the first day of my new life, a German geezer with a knife came out to the summer house. They said he was a plastic surgeon, but he seemed more like he was made from rubber. He cut me and bandaged me, to finetune the details of my face from looking sort of like dead Beadle Paul to being his spitting image. He was annoyingly spritely for a Deutscher. And the more scabby and itchy I felt under the gauze, the more spritely he got. He was all, ah zo, for you, ze war is over Herr McArterney. Sehr gut? Sehr gut.
When the bandage came off finally, at this great unveiling, like Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy, Brian started crying suddenly. Then Derek called by and he started to weep as well. Later, they dressed me up like a fashion doll in some of Beedle Paul’s old clothes, but instead of weeping, they started laughing like drains. After a while, I remember I started laughing too. It was infectious. I said thanks for the money and all the steak and Thousand Island Dressing, but no one was going to believe I was him, not really. The lie
is just too fucken big. Brian just shook his head and laughed at my stupidity.
“Why would they not? This is real life. Not the Saturday morning pictures. People accept the reality they live in every day,” he told me.
“A tanner says I get found out in a week,” I said, but he was right and I was not. Everyone believed it because to not believe it was to start believing that everything in the world was a conspiracy and that all the world was a stage and everyone was an actor except for you. So, the Beedles and everyone they look at me and they see him. I mean sure, they sometimes double-take and narrow their eyes when I walk into a room. Is it him they think – or, I think they think – and I just say yeah of course it’s fucken me even though I am not, but since I don’t break character ever, the worst anyone might say is, Paul was acting funny today or Paul was a prick earlier, yeah? And everyone acts funny sometimes. Everyone is a prick sometimes. Everyone says the same about Johnny, Georgie and Richie every single day. So I grew into the role. After a while, even I am convinced sometimes. I even start to think, maybe they’re the imposters and that they all died and got replaced with new ones.
We take some pictures for the album a few months later and I’m Paul now completely. Not a trace of my former self. I treat the shoot as a sending off for Billy Shears and the other Paul, God Rest Their Souls. In my head, Georgie-boy is the grave digger, Ringo is the undertaker and Johnny is the shaman. Cardboard cut-outs of Chaplin and Hitler accept the invitation to the wake. Mae West, Jung and Stockhausen too. Diana and Huxley, the Dors of Perception. Alister Crowley, Astaire and Zimmerman, Liston, Burroughs, Brando
and Stu. I’m wearing a silk tunic, in blue, with fancy epaulettes on the shoulders. I’m a member of a lonely-hearts club band and so is John. I feel a bit of a ponce and I think so does he. Less so, after we smoke some grass.
“I’m onto you, so-called Paul,” John says to me, peering at me, studying me, over the top of his glasses. “I know your game,” he says and I feel my heart do a little somersault in my chest. His eyes are hawk-like and for a split second, I get the notion that he’s in my head, rooting around there like he’s in an attic. Then I drop into that sing-song grammar school scouse the Henry Higgins’s helped me perfect months ago. I don’t even flicker.
“OH, you know MY game? Well, I know yours, you swine. So-called John.”
There’s a moment’s pause, agonising silence and his eyes are like slits.
Then we both break up laughing and it never happens again.
Everyone calls me Paul now.
Peter Stoneman - Freelance Writer and Researcher 
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