More From Hamburg

In Hamburg

Spirits were raised; temporarily. "Nowhere to live" had just been changed to "I will let you stay in one of my places.", and the five young men trooped after Koschmider along the grubby noisy street with a degree of cheer. They were still disappointed that they weren't going to be playing at the better club further back along the street but, it was okay. They had a job, and somewhere to live.

And then - "You must be fucking joking!!"

John, of course, was at the front in the doorway, the first one there, Stu at his shoulder. These two were the only ones who could see the place, so George, Paul and Pete were at a loss as to the reason for John's unexpectedly violent response to their new home until they pushed through the door and stood in their rooms so generously provided by Koschmider in the Bambi-Filmkunsttheater.

"The what?"

"Cinema", their host explained.

"Shit." This last from Paul.

"There are two rooms. The other is through there."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when John surged through the further door to the next room. Stu followed without thought; and some instinct for social survival propelled George through with them. "This one," cried Stu, and he and George each claimed one of the three beds in there, George dropping his case onto one of them and sitting on it to make sure.

Paul and Pete stood together in the adjoining doorway. Pete just looked. The dismay from Paul was, to George, palpable.

There was no qualitative difference between the two rooms. Both had filthy concrete walls, both smelled of communal lavatories, both were dim and windowless, both were too hideous and miserable to be described. Yet the difference for Paul was that John, with his old friend Stu and baby George, were in one room, and he wasn't. He was alone with Pete, who never spoke. Staring up at him from his place on the low cot, George found that he'd unconsciously tightened his grip on the mattress, as if Paul might suddenly come over and challenge him to his place in the room.

Which of course he didn't. Such a display of lack of confidence, which is what it would have been, would have been out of the question for Paul McCartney. Instead, he shrugged and smiled and light-heartedly turned away from the door and dropped his bags onto the better of the two not very cosy beds. Pete, with no choice but to have the last one left, was as clearly at the bottom of the pecking order as if he'd worn a badge. He showed no sign of minding.

George meanwhile opened his case and tucked his pyjamas under the one blanket on the rickety bed. He listened to the banter between his room mates as he sat on his bed and lit a cigarette. Really, he reasoned, it was no different from when he went to live at Gambier; except that he knew it was. The flat in Gambier Terrace was Stu's and John's, and they'd let him have a corner of the floor – in their flat. But this room here, in the bambi-whatever it was, this wasn't their flat. George had staked out his own equal third of the same space as John and Stu.

So, now, he just had to live up to it.