Understanding John Lennon. Francis Kenny

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СКАЧАТЬ John’s life at this time are reflected by the fact that as well as being a fighter, petty pilferer and bully, he was also a church-going choirboy and (like his hero Just William) a boy scout. In every area of every town, there were rogues like young John. It was rebellion, suburban style.

      After John’s move to senior school, there began first a trickle and then a flood of mixing with other children outside of school hours. It was at this time that John discovered his mother’s address, not 20 minutes away from Mendips – a discovery that was to cause a further radical change to his outlook. Visits to his mother’s house were barred by Mimi – Blomfield Road was strictly off limits. Mimi successfully rewrote John’s childhood with comments like:

      Of course things couldn’t have worked out better if we’d have planned it because George and I loved him madly and every day Julia would come over and play with him, so really he has two mothers in a way.¹⁰

      Stanley Parkes, John’s older cousin by six years, remembers it differently. Stanley lived in Scotland and would travel down to Liverpool for the summer holidays, and in many ways he acted as a big brother to John, taking him and his cousin Leila on trips to the park and days out to New Brighton beach. All in all a good egg, he looked out for his younger cousin, who had already been through so much. Stanley asked on John’s behalf if they could visit Julia, a request which Mimi refused. Stanley then used subterfuge. Asking Mimi if he would be allowed to take John and Leila to his Aunt Harriet’s, Mimi agreed. Stanley risked the wrath of Mimi by ‘smuggling’ John on a visit to his mother’s house. Stanley recalls:

      John tolerated Aunt Mimi. She was a bit of tyrant. She kept a tight rein on his activities, but he would rebel against her.¹¹

      Len Garry, John’s friend at this time, goes further:

      Mimi was a cat lover … She loved her cats more than she loved kids, that’s for sure. She was a frightening woman. She wasn’t homely, she was more like a headmistress, librarian type person. And you were scared to knock on the door.¹²

      Little wonder that as John grew up he would gravitate towards Blomfield Road.

      At various times in his life, John would give the general impression that all was fine with his childhood. Occasionally, though, he would provide insights into a somewhat different opinion of his time at Mendips. His comments of a happy childhood and his own inner turmoil could be compared to a duck sailing along a pond – all peace and calm while underneath the paddling feet creating turbulence and purpose invisible to those above. While at Rishikesh in a search for inner peace John reflected:

      When you’re born, you’re in the pram and you smile when you feel like smiling. But the first game that you learn is to smile before you get touched. Most mothers actually torture the kid in the pram – make it smile when it doesn’t want to: smile and you get fed.¹³

      The important term of reference here from John is ‘most mothers’. This could be a subconscious term intended to deflect directly from Mimi and couch the cry for help and understanding by denial of the emotional distress he was going through.

      Child psychologist Alice Miller’s research showed that

      repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. And the worst thing is that, although the feelings of the abused child have been at the point of origin, that is, in the presence of those who caused the pain, they find their voice when the battered child has children of his own.¹⁴

      John’s confused childhood entered a new phase when, at the age of 10, he had to live with total strangers. These strangers were Mimi’s lodgers – local university students who rented out the spare rooms at Mendips. Mimi moved her and George’s bedroom into the downstairs living room, which left John upstairs in his box room flanked by a yearly change of students. An interview for the Liverpool Echo by one of Mimi’s old lodgers revealed that she ‘targeted’ male students from the Veterinary Department of the university. This particular department was chosen so that free, professional pet care could be doled out to her three cats and John’s dog, Sally. Not only were the students expected to provide free pet care but they had to endure ‘greasy breakfasts, sometimes with cat hairs floating in them’.¹⁵ Julia Baird remembers the young John being taught ‘The Dirty Alphabet’ by one of these student lodgers which entailed ‘A is for Arse, B is for …’ Well, you get the idea. What other introductions made towards the adult world of sex by this conveyor belt of students is anyone’s guess. In Hunter Davies’ authorised biography, The Beatles, he reveals nothing at all of John having an annual round of new faces to share his home with. There was certainly no mention of one of the very early students from Yorkshire, Michael Fishwick, a student of biochemistry who would later return to Mendips while completing his PhD.

      The introduction of these lodgers may have served Mimi well, providing additional monies and free pet care, but for John, beside the issues of his privacy and sheer uneasiness of the situation, he was constantly reminded by these young men of the educational path he was expected to take: O Levels, A Levels and then university, like many other pupils at Quarry Bank. The pressure of a grammar school education was compounded by the constant reminder at Mendips to apply and adapt to the homilies of ‘getting on’ in life by ‘building character’ and ‘a need to learn right from wrong’. Mimi never missed an opportunity to self-publicise herself as a caring mother substitute – ‘firm but fair’.

      Mimi’s explanation for taking John with the aid of social workers from Julia centred on the ‘love’ she had for him the instant she saw him. This follows Mimi’s fairytale ‘mad dash through German bombs’. In her mind she had no competition in writing the history of John and Mendips. In all the interviews she gave, she never once mentions at any point spending time with John as a baby or toddler, not one word to the effect of buying baby John clothes, a pushchair or toys. Not one word of going on days out with toddler John or trips to the park or cinema, nothing.

      These omissions are strange when one considers the complete ‘accuracy’ Mimi gave to every little detail she had in John’s upbringing from birth to adulthood. Only when John was taken to Mendips was there any recollection of her involvement with the child. The story of Mimi being besotted with John as a newborn baby appears to have been essentially a smokescreen for what she would carry out with the aid of Liverpool Corporation Welfare Department five years later. Mimi took Julia’s child not for any altruistic means, but because she wanted to and she could. The manipulation, threats and total insensitivity to the needs of young John would ultimately leave him psychologically scarred. Later, John would recall that he had a ‘subconscious urge to get above people or out of a rut’¹⁶ and in terms of his childhood, ‘nothing would drive me through all that if I was normal’.¹⁷ John’s reflection of his childhood was honest and heart-rending:

      The worse pain is that of not being wanted of realising your parents do not need you in the way you need them … When I was a child I had experience of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my mind and into my eyes.¹⁸

      John was plainly aware of how the perceived absence of love in his life tainted his perception of the world. A double blow for John was that he was conditioned to judge and dislike his parents and hence be dependent on Mimi, who in turn left him in emotional turmoil. John’s feelings for Julia and Freddie became increasingly complex and confused. Cynthia Lennon, a first-hand observer of Mimi and John’s relationship, commented:

      She loved to fuel the image of the stern but loving aunt who provided the secure backdrop to John’s success. But that wasn’t the Mimi I knew. She battered away at John’s self-confidence and left him angry and hurt.¹⁹

      Hunter Davies explains what happened when Mimi insisted he sent her СКАЧАТЬ