John didn't suffer fools lightly; he respected only the talented, the intelligent, the unique. Without meaning to be, John was intolerant.

But Paul McCartney made the grade. Paul was undeniably talented - brilliantly so. In fact, he wore his attractive intelligence like a club emblem. He wasn't embarrassed about being capable - he capitalized on it. And in John's eyes, that aura of self-confidence covered a multitude of sins.

It helped him overlook Paul's happy-go-lucky command of The Quarry Men that itched to edge out John's often-dictatorial leadership. It helped John transform his jealousy of Paul into a wary respect. John never forgot that Paul was a coup waiting to happen. John never relaxed against the threat that Paul imposed.

But in spite of himself, he liked McCartney. He liked him even though Paul tended to be all things to all people. While John was alternately hostile, hilarious, or bitter, Paul was generally - day after day, in all situations - well adjusted and quite agreeable.

Paul had lost his mother, too, when he was fourteen, but John found no resentment in him, no anger or deep, throbbing loneliness. Instead Paul had fond memories of Mary McCartney and the ability to go on. While John stumbled through each day, barely coping and earning a reputation as a "mad lad" bent on destruction, Paul was busy establishing himself at The Liverpool Institute as polite, charming, and most likely to succeed.

Theoretically, the lad from Allerton and the boy from Woolton seemed antithetical. But their great minds, poles apart, pulled them together in an attraction that their differences could not destroy. They complemented each other, spurred each other on. Each challenged the other to be better than either could possibly be alone. Each served as the other's critic, teacher, and muse.

In the McCartney's compact front room in Forthlin Road or upstairs sprawled on Paul's narrow bed, John scribbled lyrics and picked out tunes. Paul sat cross-legged on the round braided rug and doodled lyrics on a notepad, picking his guitar up every few minutes to rework his creations. Every now and again, they would say something to another - ask a question or listen to each other's compositions. Making a note change here or a phrase alteration there, they practised compromise. John would suggest a lyric line with an ambiguous double entendre. Paul would insist on an artistic change that would set a string of chords right. Without agreeing to do so, the two fell into a pattern of editing one another - erasing the worst and adding better - enhancing and amplifying their music.

Equally as often, they argued.

When Paul sang their latest composition for the eleventh time - a faced-paced ditty set in a train station - John rebelled.

"You've changed the tempo again," he snarled.

"Right," Paul didn't even look at him. "Better, isn't it?"

"Look, you're bleedin' worryin' the bit to death!" John slapped his thigh in frustration. "Why do and do and redo the thing once it's been fuggin' done? Just move on, son. It's enough."

Paul ignored him, fiddling with the sound. "Well, it isn't enough if it isn't right, now is it, John?" he shot back. "I mean, the truth is you're just tired of rehearsin', really."

"I'm gettin' that way with your redun-da-dundancy."

"What's the rush?" Paul shrugged. "Where's the hurry up, after all?"

John got up and slung his guitar into its scarred and ragged case. "The rush is..." he repeated with finality, "it's bleedin' done enough! You'll ruin a perfectly good thing if y'keep plunderin' it. It's all in the spontaneity - rock'n'roll."

"Not when spontaneity means ragged, right?" Paul kept experimenting.

"It's not ragged. It's done!" John snapped his case shut.

"Right, yeah, but...we've nowhere else to go, have we?"

"That's not the point."

"And the point is?"

"The same as it was a half hour ago." John's nostrils flared. "It's rock'n'roll - this! It's not some slick jazz creation for the light of feet or the airy-fairy! That's not what it's all about - rock'n'roll. It's a spur of the moment thing."

"Right, well...whatever you think." Paul's calloused fingers never left the fingerboard. He hummed the tune again and ran the bit one more time.

"Ah, buggeroff!" John grabbed his guitar and pounded down the stairs towards the snug foyer below, being careful not to nick the walls with his guitar case. John was well aware of the unseen presence of Jim McCartney, "the ever-watchful eye" as John called him, so he checked the urge to slam the front door in a final exclamation point. Paul's father might be a musician himself, but Jim McCartney had made it clear that he would not tolerate vulgarity or "nonsense" within his walls. John had learned to control his temper in Forthlin Road. He had to.

It was after all, with Julia gone, one of the few places left for them to really work on their songs. George was allowed to volunteer his tiny Arnold Grove living room only sporadically, and the lunchtime jam sessions at the art college were not conducive to writing and creating. The catch-as-catch-can rehearsals at school were poor substitutes for the long, relaxed sessions they'd once enjoyed in Julia's loo. Nothing matched the sounds they'd mastered in that box of pure acoustics.

Nothing was as good anymore.

John stormed up Forthlin Road, carrying his guitar in one hand and shielding his eyes from the late afternoon sun with the other. He could still hear Paul reworking the same tune at the second floor window. Paul would play, stop, and then play it all over again. Hurtling towards the bus queue, John shook his head and swore quietly.

John missed Julia. He missed her chicanery, her thumbed nose at convention. He missed her ability to temper him with pure nonsense, to cut his hostility with laughter. His missed her lifelong commitment to taking nothing seriously. He missed her "fly by the seat of the pants" way of doing everything.

Most of all, John missed the way she listened when he talked.

The truth was that no one knew or understood John the way Julia had. Although constantly surrounded by acquaintances - the "odd sods and bods" from the art college who occupied his hours - John was an extremely popular recluse. He was rarely but always alone. In the pubs, in the classrooms, in the theatres and on busses, John was ringed with hangers-on, but no one - not Thelma, not even Paul - could fill the void Julia had left behind.

Although the facts in this chapter are well documented (especially in Giuliano's The Two of Us which goes into more detail), all conversations are conjecture.

Jude Southerland Kessler