"Eleanor, Danny is here", a secretary called. She raised her head, picked up the torn newspaper, and walked away, going to Danny.
Danny Boy. He didn't change over the years. He was the deaf, nice, funny guy she loved and used to call brother. But today she wasn't that nice to him. Lately she wasn't nice with anyone. She was too worried. Worried about her own destiny. Too worried to pretend she still cared about anyone.
"All in a sudden, the waves are crashing down", she said to Danny Boy, as they were walking to the meeting room.
"What do you mean?"
"What I meant."
They entered the large room at the end of the corridor. Windows wherever you looked. But the landscape - London Town, the river Thames, and all the people at St. James’s Park - looked scary and sad. Eleanor leaned the head on the table, hiding herself from the world from one brief moment.
Then she raised her head to look to Danny. Her best friend, for ages. He might help her. They were crashing down together, there must be something they could do. She started to say what she was supposed to say to him - that's why she called him there. He was older, he was wiser. He had to help her.
"We gotta do the shows to promote Beyond The Last Gate.", she started.
"I know... Ell, get to the point. What’s scaring you?"
"Brittany, who else. She called me last night. She was out of her brain. Saying I should jump away from the window to meet James." Eleanor sighed. "Damn it! Oh, damn it. Danny, that did it. We are on the razor’s edge. What can we do to save her?"
"We tried everything, Eleanor. She’s grown-up now. We can’t lock her in a room and let she coping with withdrawn. We tried this once. You know it didn’t work. Cold turkey doesn’t go with her. We tried all we could. Only she can save herself. Accept the fact that we have no more guns."
Eleanor hid her head again. Thousand of feelings crossed her spine. "Swine little bastard!", she muttered, but wasn’t heard. Danny went out for awhile, looking outside, to the window. He was just as hurt, sad just like she was. Brittany and him were introduced to those stuff together. He felt guilty in letting go. But he knew there wasn’t more chances. He, unlike Eleanor, knew when to give up.
"I know what you are thinking, Ell. I am a filthy bastard who’s letting his friend drown in some river made of blue pills and brown sugar.", he sighed, and Eleanor’s look confirmed it. He walked back to her. "She has a wonderful excuse to cut us down, you see."
"I know, I know, I know! ‘You had tried this too, once. You have no skill to tell me what to do’ " Eleanor said, imitating Britty’s affected voice. She sighed again, and cried out her answer: "I know! She says it to me al the time. But I didn’t stay on it forever. None of us did. And now she can spoil it all. May God and all His angels be damned, I won’t let my friend die! I won’t let her kill what I built!"
Her hands slammed on the table. Danny took a step back. He was, inside, afraid of Eleanor. He knew that the fact of him being her best friend didn’t make him immune of her anger fits. She shouted some nonsense curse, then flopped on the chair again., at one step of the tears.
"Danny, I do need some time to mop myself up. Set things up in my head. The way things are going, I am going to freak out in no time!"
"Yea, indeed. We all do. Well, I have that house in Leeds. Nobody is going to bother you there. There is a lake. Some boat row may clear your head. And, if you get really bored, there’s a pinball palace at the town.", he laughed, knowing that would be impossible to Eleanor McGuire, leader of the Five-Piece, to go to a pinball palace without being recognised by an army of teenagers willing for an autograph or something like that.
Eleanor just stared at the window, looking people at St. James. How many times she had crossed that park, going to or coming from the Conservatory? Those golden days were precious. Times of hard bread and hard rehearsals. Times with William McGuire on her back, following her like a shadow, cutting her wings and breaking her dreams. Times of Submarine, of train travels, of songs yet to be sung. May your song always be sung, ‘cause you triumphed over pain.... Hard days, glory days. She’d give anything to be sixteen again - all innocence, all dreams, and all persistence. She looked back to Danny Boy, seeing he was waiting for an answer from her.
"I take it. I do need some rest, anyway. From all this madness."
James died one year ago, in a car accident in Scotland. It was the first signal of the end - after him died William McGuire, Eleanor’s father. Daniel and Eleanor never cried so much like in those days. Even after all that happened between them...they still had some respect and some love for their old man. Now they were really alone. She was on her own. It was by then that she first tried the “sweet taste”, the world of the fantasy. The things she always heard in the songs, at one touch of distance.
And there she was, trying to run away. James was truly missed. Without him, Mary had to pick a guitar, to compensate the lack of one person at the band. It sounded awful at first, but Eleanor didn’t want to give in, didn’t want to give up. She would go on, for James’s sake, for her own sake. Why she, Britty, was the one suffering, taking those things to sleep and to stay awake? Why? She just did it - it was some force stronger than her own would. It led her to all of that, and didn’t want to let her go. When she had some moments of conscience, she made herself promises to give up of all that. She tried the cold turkey, and almost got nuts. Rephrasing - she did get nuts. Climbed walls and shouted. And loud! Three days and she was back. It was something she couldn’t live without. Something who dragged her into some parallel world, without problems, death or negative things.
A world where she could live as she lived when she was seventeen, a world without pain, sorrow, managers and other bothers. She always longed to be there.
But James told her, he made her promise. "You gotta tell me, Ell, that you won’t let go. Please keep on trying. Keep on going. Don’t let our dream die, Eleanor. Please tell me you will keep on trying. Tell me you will keep on."
She sighed again, and closed the bags. Some time on her own. No businessmen, no reporters, no band. Finally on her own. Maybe the answers she was searching would appear in that time, while she was on her own, thinking. Of promises made, of destinies not yet to be revealed. Of life that was crashing down the hallway.
At the moment she was leaving Hatfield Gardens, the place she lived at, she dared to look to the house again. "We were so happy. Why all of this is happening?", she thought, as the car moved to the long highway to Leeds.
On the backyard there was a lake, and some boats on the shore. That’s where she spent most part of her week - rowing a boat till the middle of the lake, and stay there, laid on the boat, looking to the sky that never seemed to change. A greyish roof over her head. Notebook in hand, she wrote pieces of lyrics that, one day, could be used in some song. But none of them were happy, or positive, the rave song that the Five-Piece Band’s fan was used to. The Five-Piece was going downhill, and she was going gothic, sarcastic, sad. Well, going crazy was the better option. For how long she’d keep it going? For how long she’d abide with the weight of the world on her shoulders? Danny and Mary couldn’t do nothing to help her, and Britty couldn’t help herself from falling. The dream was slowly fading to black.
Opening the book in some random page, she faced herself with her sleepy calligraphy:
Way back then, in the Liverpool morning, she didn’t know to whom she had written that. Now she knew. To her adorable troublemaker. Winston Harrison. To the one who left her without looking back, and without making any promises. Her best friend. Her warlock. Her guide.
When he was around, things were so much easier. He always helped her, backed her up, and gave her chance to think and to fly. Free as a bird. He seemed to read her mind and translate, into words, what she could only say in music. Where was he now? Lord only knows!
She held her hands together and started to pray again. Times were thick but she didn’t lose her faith. She knew all along that it was all she truly had. "Oh Lord That Lies In Heaven, show me you are there! Bring Hari back to me. Back to all of us. Let me abuse of his help again. I need to know why and how and I need his help. Where is he by now? Jamie, my love, please show me where lies our Warlock. He’s the only one that can help me now! Jamie... Jamie, my love, please...please help me...Don’t let go what happened. You know that he can help us. Jamie, can you hear me? Show me you can hear me!"
A strong and ruthless wind took place, coming from the hills, leading the boat away from its position. Leading Eleanor’s prayer to someone’s ears.
James wasn’t indifferent to his former wife’s pain. He just couldn’t do anything to help her. Locked in heaven, he wasn’t yet ready to come back. According to the Laws of the Sky, he was yet a greenhorn, over too young to be in missions. He had to learn how to use the heavenly powers, to then help out people.
The wind brought him her sadness about him and Hari. Little did she know! How to explain to Eleanor who was, actually, Winston Harrison? How to explain that her Warlock was one spirit? How to help her, help Brittany, help that dream they’ve built?
"Oh Lord! What shall I do? I can’t go to her, but I just can’t stand this either!"
"Give time to the time, James. Only time can heal her wounds."
"Can’t you hear her prayers, Lord? Can’t you see her tears? Man... you can’t test her so much, to this point. She can’t stand this for longer.”
God looked down for just one second. He knew who he could send. And, all in all, James was right. Eleanor deserved help. She didn’t lose her faith and her strength, even after all that happened. She deserved the Heaven’s Mercy.
"John!", the Heavenly Man shouted, and his voice reached all the corners of the world. "Wherever you are, show up now!"
After he solved the trouble with the Five-Piece Band, John won some freedom of flight. So he was always around, nagging at musicians who didn’t do their job correctly, inspiring more new lyrics and guitar riffs, and eventually seeing his family, his friends and colleagues. Yoko, Sean, Julian, Paul...and the Five-Piece. He tried hard to speak to Eleanor, to make her listen to him, like she could when she was only a teenager playing in a garage band. But she couldn’t hear spirits anymore. That was the price to pay. The teenager died, and with her the door of perception, the door of communication between the spirits and the human beings.
"John! Show up now!", he heard, and sighed. Oh, damn! He excused himself and ran to The Office, feeling no pain. Gallagher could finish that lyric alone - although he’d probably mess it up completely, as usual, with some nonsense verses. But he did most of the job on that "I Hope I Think I Know", and he’d not even win some credit!... It was better to make someone think he wrote all of that alone.
John appeared on The Office, where God could watch all the continents and the people on it.
"Here I am, Heavenly Man! Oh, hello, Jamie. Long time, no see."
"Hi, John.", he said, a bit dry and sad.
"What’s the trouble?"
"John" God said, "are you able to be a real person again?"
"I thought my days in a human body were over, Heavenly Man!"
"Well, something happened.", He said. "John, are you able to be Winston Harrison again?"
John took a step back. "So that’s why you are here, eh, Jamie?", he said, in half tone. Being Winston Harrison again. The Warlock. The Five-Piece Band. Laughter and happiness filled his mind. Lunch at James’s house, classes with the gang, Mohammed and his sitar, bottles of cheap wine at some theatre in Liverpool. Nice memories of wonderful days on the ground.
"Well, what’s the problem with Eleanor?", he asked.
"It’s Brittany, actually. She’s sinking fast.", James said. "And bringing the whole band with her."
"What’s the drug she’s been taking?", he asked flatly, knowing that stuff as well as he knew the back of his hand.
"As far as I could see, those uppers. Amphetamines."
"That doesn’t kill anyone.", he laughed. “I know this one as I know my name.”
"Yeah? But you do know what it leads too.", James said, pointing his arm’s veins, letting John understand what kind of stuff he was referring himself to. "I can’t go. I wish I could. But I can’t. Be Winston Harrison again. For auld lang zyne and all of that. She needs you. They need you.". Then he looked to the ground, silently. “Eleanor.”, he said quietly.
John looked a bit subdued yet. Yet, when James talked about Eleanor, he felt all his being freezing, like a thunder attacked him.
"Can I see her?", he asked. James just pointed to some window in the sky. "See her. See what I mean to say.", James said.
And John looked. It was already night in Leeds. Eleanor, sat in front of the fireplace, looked asleep. Through her closed eyes, John could see that she was in pain. And then again, he felt what he used to feel when she was near, when he was the famous teacher of History of Music. Some string pulled him to her, like it was so long ago. She suddenly opened up her eyes and walked away. To the shore. She took a boat and started to row, till she couldn’t see the house. He could hear her thoughts. "I’d give anything I have to help her. To help myself. Lord, can’t you hear me? Can’t you hear me? Jamie, can’t you hear me? Give me a signal! Prove you are there for me!"
Without thinking, forgetting about the Heavenly Man and James standing at that room, John sent her the signal she was asking for. Over her head a white feather flew by and landed on her hands. She picked it up and stared, wondering from where it came from. And she smiled, saying nothing, saying everything. She knew it was the signal.
"I can take from this you accept the mission, isn’t it?", God said. John turned away from the image, and stared at the Light. And he smiled, a bit ironic, like he used to be.
"Give me my face and my mind, and I’ll be on my way, Heavenly Man. There is some stuff I need to fix downstairs. There’s a girl waiting for me down there."
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