The Ghosts of John Lennon and Paul McCartney still haunt Ringo Starr

1

The ghost of John Lennon can no longer sing. 

He perches half in, half out of the wardrobe and wails all night about being dead or trapped in Ringo's apartment.

Ringo wears earplugs, but this has no real effect.

2

Paul McCartney, also a ghost, lives in Ringo’s bath with remnants of the water which drowned him. 

‘I’m like a yellow submarine now,’ he says, whenever Ringo gets into the shower.

‘Can’t get out of the tub even if I tried,’ he says, whenever Ringo gets out of the shower.

Sometimes Ringo plays the old records and Paul croons along. His voice is underwater sounding, and he does not know the words. John, phasing out of the bureau, shouts for Paul can in it and focus on playing the bass.

3

Ringo is a playwright now. His fourth play has just opened. It is about a young man who lives in Liverpool, named Derek. He has problems with his sexuality. Namely, that he doesn’t have one and feels like he should. Ringo feels the same way about himself. 

Sometimes, he goes to look at porn, but finds himself reading the descriptions instead. He wonders why the descriptions so frequently use capitals. HOT DILF finds pleasure from SCOTCH EGG. NAUGHTY foursome with neighbour’s DAUGHTERS after WINTER PILGRIMAGE. LORRAINE KELLY makes PASSIONATE love to LESBIAN FRENCH teacher on LONGBOAT.

Sometimes John tuts. 

‘Looking at porn again Ringo?’

From the bathroom, Paul chimes in: ‘Leave him alone, John.’

‘I won’t.’

 ‘Then stop making him feel bad about it, being a man of his age and sexually active should be praised.’

‘He’s just looking!’

Slooshes, splashes. ‘It’s good he’s trying, John, you can’t begrudge him that.’

4

Ringo hires an exorcist. She has a van with Julie’s Ghost Removal Service written on it in curvy red letters.

She unloads several thick metal boxes, covered in aerials, dials and chunky switches, onto the pavement outside Ringo’s apartment building.

‘Do you know what kind of ghost it is?’ she asks.

‘What kind?’

‘Yeah: poltergeist, spirit, wraith?’

‘It’s John Lennon and Paul McCartney.’ 

She pulls the straps of an infrasound generator over her shoulders. ‘Who?’ she says.

5

George Harrison, as you may have noticed, is missing. But George exists now in the atoms above Liverpool Secunda. He thrums joyously with the other souls who have relinquished their temporary forms. He hopes his band mates, both him and not, will resolve their differences.

6

In the flat, Julie scans the room with her equipment, attempting to find the ghosts.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ says Ringo. ‘Paul’s in the bath, John’s lying on the bed.’

‘Ringo!’ shouts John, ‘don’t give the game away!’

‘Who is it?’ shouts Paul. ‘Do we have a visitor?’

‘So you can see them?’ she says.

Ringo nods. Julie shakes her head and unstraps the monitor from her back.

‘You should have ticked the box for personal haunting,’ she says. ‘The approaches are completely different.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ringo, ‘to be honest, I’ve never quite been in this situation before.’

Julie reaches up and takes a hold of his shoulder with a hand; she looks into his eyes, as if to say, that’s okay, no one has been beset by this specific problem before so it would be unreasonable to expect yourself to handle it.

‘Are they confined to this space?’ she asks.

He nods. 

‘Then let’s speak outside.’

7

The play, the one about Derek, is not going particularly well. The critics don’t believe it holds up to Ringo’s former masterpieces. Those plays which grappled with concepts of being and substance and how we cannot really know ourselves and how the world ultimately does not care whether we know ourselves and how all of this was funny, somehow, but not haha funny, more like a joke you were excluded from and are only trying to find funny, a joke where the laughter catches in your throat. His new play is not like that. His new play, they say, is silly. It has silly jokes in it and they hate it. They want the new play to be like the old plays. But then, Ringo thinks, why not just watch the old plays? Why bother coming if you’ve already decided what you want?

8

Outside, Julie leans an elbow on the roof of the van and looks Ringo in the eyes. Ringo does not understand this look, and then realises that Julie is ‘levelling’ with him. To confirm, she says:

‘I’m going to level with you.’

Julie thinks Ringo should simply move out. It would cost a lot of work both mentally and physically to get rid of his ghosts. He would need to hire an occultist and they charged around £500 an hour.

‘How much!?’ he says.

And that’s not all, Julie continues, he would need to determine what these particular spirits - John and…

‘Paul McCartney’

…Paul McCartney - were haunting him for.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well there’s usually a reason. Most want to pass on.’ She looks at the sky, where the dead gather, no longer separate but whole. ‘Once you’ve shed the flesh you realise how burdensome a body is. So to remain you need a deeper reason. You’d have to find that out.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘You could try asking them.’

9

Three weeks later, Ringo moves flat. 

Ringo’s new flat overlooks the Mersey ver 2.0. He has put posters up and rearranged the furniture. He plays old records and listens, still, for Paul McCartney’s crooning from the bathroom. When it doesn’t come, he feels a sense of peace. 

He writes for several hours most nights. In bed, he still puts in the earplugs, but soon enough he abandons this practice. Without John singing, there is only the dull hum of technology, of charging devices and fridges and hallway lights left on.

He sleeps better than he has in years.

10

The play continues to fail. Ringo asks his director: why aren’t the audience connecting with this play? The director takes off their glasses and pinches their nose while screwing up their face in annoyance.

‘Do you really want to know?’ they ask.

‘Yes,’ says Ringo.

‘It’s for you, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘This one’s for you.’

The theatre sends an email about the play’s lack of ticket sales, and several paragraphs about risk, and marketing pushes, and sincere thankfulness on behalf of upper management in regards to all the hard work all of you have put in all this time, but unfortunately the play is not performing anywhere near where it should be and though they are willing to give it another few weeks, soon they will have to look at decommissioning the play.

Ringo opens another tab. 

This ALL TIDES DAY I’m going to dress up and FUCK my uncle’s GARDENER. My SN3001P ATEN 1-PORT RS232 SECURE SERIAL SERVER DEVICE is gagging for DOUBLE PENETRATION. SLUTTY cheerleader HARRISON FORD devours BEEF taco in short skirt and BUTT PLUG.

He tries to sleep but can’t.

11

At the play’s last show, theatre management puts out several paper cups and three bottles of champagne. Most of the actors don’t come and Ringo, given his advanced age, no longer drinks. He and several of the stage hands and the director stand around awkwardly for half an hour. The director keeps looking at his watch and talking about the train he’s going to catch.

On the way home, the rain stops for a while. This amazes Ringo, for it seemed as if it had been raining for over a year. He looks up at the clouds, their grey underbellies, the winking sun, and tries to imagine the dead. He cannot.

Ringo grows sadder day after day. He tries to write, but nothing he writes seems relevant now that the play has flopped. The fear that he will write something just as bad and just as disappointing freezes him. After a fortnight of this, he decides he needs help.

12

When Ringo returns, John is partially in the toilet cistern and Paul is still submerged in spectral water. 

‘Perhaps I like the bath,’ Paul says. 

‘Come on Paul, don’t lie,’ John says, ‘you must want to explore.’

‘Explore what? The flat? It’s hardly the most enticing geographical excursion, is it?’

‘I don’t really think you’re achieving your spiritual potential in the bath.’

‘Hello,’ says Ringo, ‘I need your help.’

John phases out of the cistern and drifts into the centre of the room. He has his arms crossed.

‘And what makes you think we’re willing to give it?’

From the bath, gurgling from the water, Paul says: ‘I’m all ears Ringo.’

13

What follows is thus: Ringo brings the script he has been working on to Paul and John. John immediately trashes it. ‘Wrong form, Ringo,’ he says and ghosts through a nearby wall. Paul says now lets bear with it and give him a chance. John returns through a different wall. ‘It’s a novel,’ he says, ‘anyone can see that.’

At first, Ringo writes the novel in his own apartment, and brings the printed pages across the city, but soon enough this doesn’t quite work. He moves back in with his ghosts. In the evenings, he reads out his writing.

The ghosts give feedback:

‘That scene doesn’t contain enough conflict.’

‘Your use of Ekphrasis is far too short; if you must use that technique then have the confidence to expand.’

‘Try excising all of the Anglo Saxon words from the description of the bakery.’

In return, John and Paul show him the songs they have been writing. Sad songs. Songs about how lonely non-life is. Most are terrible. But some, some touch on something new and these he praises.

Over the summer, Ringo completes the first draft of his novel. When he reads them the ending, they clap. Though, being corporeal, this is more like sea winds visiting the shores, like the quiet stirrings of the ancient forest where all things come from.

14

One night, John, supine in the sock drawer, begins to sing. It is a song they have heard before, but John has been working it over in his head, trimming words and tuning the melody. It is a song about how the river Mersey - the original river Mersey - burst its banks and all the shopkeepers watched their goods flow away. It decorates the air with ready sadness and when it’s done, Ringo and Paul don’t want to break the silence.

‘That’s beautiful,’ says Paul, eventually, leaning his head over the bath’s side so he can see John. But John is already fading. He is passing on to the sky above, ready now, it seems, to finally leave. The lines of him become indistinct and his features blur and scatter. Ringo hears the faint ring of tinnitus in his left ear.

After John’s leaving, the pair sit for a while.

‘That song was really quite something,’ Paul says. ‘We should record that when he comes back.’

Ringo doesn’t have the heart to tell him.

15

The flat is quieter without John. The pair continue to work on their art. Ringo traces his way through the passages of his first draft. It is like looking at ruins and trying to determine what sort of a civilisation lived there. He can feel John’s advice as he writes. He knows, almost, what must be done, what sentence should be cut, what paragraph needs moving.

He is content, he thinks. He feels, at least, that he cannot fail and that may be as close to contentment as one can come.

 Every night, Ringo sits on the toilet to listen to Paul sing. Paul has lost his gift for melody almost entirely. Many of his songs would rightfully be considered a racket. But Ringo hopes that one day Paul will luck upon some new song, a song like he used to write, simple, quiet, but new, with its parts placed neatly together and no flourishes, no wilder touches, a song for a listener and nothing more.