An Adventure In Ireland

Friday 27th March 1964, late afternoon.

Lunch was an extended, relaxed and happy affair. Wine flowed, and the injection into the previously close knit and familiar group of a new face was effected smoothly and seamlessly. Pattie's nerves gradually evaporated with each course and with each generously poured glass, and the stress of the unpleasant journey lifted. And, John was funny. Pattie had not anticipated this. Not caustic funny, not risqué funny, not scary funny, but just funny. The Lennon persona seemed to soften with each imperiously summoned bottle; Pattie observed this with relief and the other two with astonishment. As Pattie leaned back in her chair howling with laughter at John's account a recent escape from a theatre George cut glances with Cynthia at the same time as reaching for Pattie's hand under the table and squeezing.

John didn't even call her Brigitte Bardot. Not during this lunch anyway.

After lunch they wandered in a mildly intoxicated haze through the Blue Room's broad French windows and down towards the lake. They explored, played, hunted, sat and chatted. Cynthia bemoaned the fact that she'd left her black comfy shoes behind, Pattie poked George meaningfully, George affected indifference. John asked Pattie whether this place was like her family home where she grew up, Pattie told him not to be an idiot, but then walked with him along the lakeside for a while and told him something of her home in Kenya and he listened with genuine interest and asked if she'd been sad to leave it and she said yes. The evening was approaching, the temperature was dropping and they decided it was time to turn around and go back to the castle. The four strolled back across the neatly kept lawns and, rather than cut back into the blue Blue Room, they skirted around the huge building and went back in through the main reception doors. There they were met by chief flunky, who approached them with the unmistakable air of someone who was going to issue bad news.

"They're chucking us out," muttered John.

"I didn't tell them about you," said George, equally sotto voce.

"No, it was me. I couldn't help meself." John then smiled his beaming most deliberately artificial smile and closed the gap between himself and the hotel manager. Pattie was so fascinated to witness the mercurial speed of the change that she didn't focus on what was said; but a minute later found herself jolted out of her happy post lunch haze by the strength of the two Beatles' reactions to the manager's news.

"Oh fuck no!"

"Fuckin' 'ell!"

"John," Cynthia remonstrated mildly at her husband's public obscenities. She left George's unchecked. It was none of her business what George said...

"What's happened?" Pattie queried in alarm. George turned to her, his face a picture of combined disappointment and anger.

"They've found us!"

"Who have??"

"Press!" He spat the word as though it was another obscenity, which at that moment, only hours into their rare and precious private time, it was. "They're here."

Pattie looked around as though expecting to see a ring of men with cameras surrounding them. "Where?"

"Some Daily Mirror fuckers have booked in," said John. "That's it. It's blown."

"Not necessarily," Cynthia ventured but John was having none of her attempt to lighten the blow.

"They'll be all around us at dinner..."

"Well, we don't have to go to dinner." Cynthia forestalled his interruption and continued with her idea. "We can have it in our suite. Plenty of room. We can have a picnic! They can't get in there."

There then fell a pause as the two men digested this idea. It was crystal clear to Pattie that theirs were the opinions which would count; she didn't consciously formulate the thought, she simply knew. Pattie, Cynthia and the vastly intrigued hotel manager waited to hear the verdict.

Again, George and John glanced at each other. Clearly, that glance had signified assent, though Pattie had no idea how. John turned to the manager. "Will you fix that?"

The manager almost bowed, such was the level of his spirit of cooperation. "Certainly sir. Ah... would you like to take this evening's menu with you, and you can phone down your orders."

George and John beamed. Cynthia looked relieved. George reached out and took Pattie's hand and, when the menu and wine list had been duly presented, the four surged up to their suite, as excited at the idea of a huge picnic as any children on their holidays.

Which in a way they were.