More From Hamburg

Random Interlude

It was probably the cold that woke him up. One doesn't always know what wakes one up, you just wake up, but a few moments after waking George realised that he was freezing cold. He automatically curled up tight, and tugged his blanket closely around himself and drew his feet up so that they were covered up too instead of sticking out at the end of the bed, but he was still chilled through.

Yet, in a moment, that was not his main problem. As he lay, curled up like a dormouse but not so cosy, he was suddenly assailed by a wave of homesickness so acute that it made him gasp. His eyes shut tight and one cold hand unclenched itself to cover his face. And then he pulled the cover up over himself entirely. He was heartsick. He was alone. He was hundreds of miles away from his home - well he actually had no idea how far he was from home but it felt like hundreds of miles – he was cast adrift in a tiny stone cell; he was alone. He felt so alone. Coursing through his mind were the images, melted and merged together into one indistinct chord of home, of his bedroom, of his family, of his kitchen, of his mum. That all embracing concept that was his mum.

George lay in foetal huddle under his blanket, and found himself rocking in unmitigated distress.

It went on for ever. It went on for the rest of his life, It went on until Paul burst into the room a few minutes later. "Hey, Geo, coming to the Sailors? I'm starved." Then Paul looked at the blanket-covered mass and drew the wrong conclusion. "Georgie!! Wake up! Come out for nosh. We're on stage in three."

A moment passed, and then the top of a head and one eye appeared from under the blanket. "Huh?" A pause. "Paul?"

"Who the fuck do you think it is?"

George blinked, but didn't move, and it slowly began to dawn on Paul that there might be something amiss. He stepped the three feet from the door to the bed, and leaned over the huddle. "You okay?"

The rest of George's head emerged from under the blanket. Dark eyes stared, wide, sad.

"George! You ill?" He prodded the blanket-covered shoulder. "Wassup?"

George shook his head. He then tore his eyes from Paul, and moved them to take in the rest of the room. Stu was gone, John was gone. "Wassa time?" he mumbled.

"Two. Cummon. We're meeting the others down there. And John's had some ideas for another set we can do. Gerrup! What's up with you?"

What was up with him? Nothing, George reflected. He was in the same place he'd been for weeks, he was with his friends, they were going to talk music, he was going to eat, he was going to drink, he was going to play music. He cleared his throat to make sure his voice was okay. "Nothing," he said, sounding confident and reasonably grown up, to his relief. "I'm fine. Give us a minute." He pushed himself to a sitting position, rubbed the heels of both hands fiercely over his eyes, and then pushed the blanket aside. Paul plonked himself down on Stu's bed to wait, and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and held it up. "Want one?"

"In a minute." As Paul lit one for himself George reached for his trousers and pulled them on over his shorts, and then groped for and found his teeshirt and wriggled his way into that too. Socks, inside his boots. Boots. He stood, steadily, slid his arms into his leather jacket and then ran his fingers through his hair and pushed it upwards into something approximating his usual style. He shoved his hands into his pockets and faced his friend, head slightly to one side. "Okay."

Paul climbed back to his feet, and the two walked to the door and out of the tiny, cold, ugly and foul smelling box of a room into the alleyway beyond. "You okay?" Paul asked, still a little puzzled by the indefinable malaise which had seemed to have paralysed his friend for a while back in the room. "You were a bit strange there."

George ventured a smile, and found that it worked. "Yeah, I'm fine," he replied. "Just tired." He turned to look at Paul as they made their way along the noisy street. "Where's that ciggie you said?"

He walked, he smoked, he chatted. He was baffled. He now felt completely fine, not even subdued, not even shaken up. He had no idea where that terrible and disabling grief had come from, or why, and he felt ashamed. He'd been a stupid baby. Somewhere in his subconscious mind he knew that that wave of acute sadness had nothing babyish about it, but, consciously, he couldn't or wouldn't realise that. Being homesick was babyish.

However, he reflected as they stepped into the welcoming warmth of the Sailors Society, his friend John's voice already in evidence rising above the others' as he shouted good natured abuse at another customer, no-one would ever know, so that was alright. He wasn't any kind of baby. He was one of the group.