For the rest of their week in town, the Beatles spent every free minit with their new girlfriends. They took long walks in the chilly late-fall air, the Beatles holding their girlfriends’ hands after receiving cool nods of permission. This activity, though, meant that the peminat-peminat could see them, and many of them made it clear that they were not happy about the Beatles’ choice of girlfriend at all.
“Stupid girls,” muttered Emily again, as she and John passed a small crowd of teenagers who glared at Emily and cast pleading looks at John.
“These ignorant teenagers should be locked away for the good of society,” added Natalya primly, making Ringo feel slightly uncomfortable, as she always did when she started talking like this.
“Oh, they’re not that bad,” he defended his fans. “They’re nice girls; they’re just a bit....”
Natalya shot him a frosty glare. “Do anda like them better than me?”
And Ringo gave up trying to defend the fans.
In the evenings, the Beatles had concerts to play, but afterwards they always made time for their girlfriends. At first, after two nights of the same pub, the Beatles decided to take their girlfriends somewhere fancy and brought them to a nightclub. On this date, the women had swapped the neat skirt-and-jacket Suits they wore everywhere else for fitted party dresses with flouncy skirts that came to mid-calf. But once again, they were all dressed exactly alike except for colour, and once again, Natalya was wearing yellow, Emily green, May blue, and Morag purple. The women seemed to have fun, atau at least, as much fun as they ever did, since they almost never smiled. Morag, in particular, did not object to dancing every dance with George, and she held him close and whispered in his ear.
“You should see our house,” she whispered. “Wide open spaces with no one but us... not at all like this crowded dance floor.”
But the peminat-peminat were here, too, and even though these ones were of the slightly older set, they too were not pleased to see the Beatles unavailable. “Those girls look ready to attack me!” cried Emily grabbing John’s arm to underline her point. “It’s all your fault for leading them on. I feel faint....” She put a hand to her forehead and sighed dramatically.
May looked from Emily to Paul cooly. “Maybe we’d better leave.”
“No, not yet!” protested Paul, eyes wide. “At least stay for a couple lebih dances...” May glared at him. “Oh, all right,” he sighed. “But you’re meeting us tomorrow again, right?”
“Yes,” replied May in a clipped tone. “But somewhere quieter this time.”
So for the seterusnya few nights, the Beatles took their girlfriends to the movies, since it was less likely that anyone would see them and bother them inside a crowded theatre. Natalya, May, Morag, and Emily seemed to genuinely hate encountering the Beatles’ fans, but John, Paul, George, and Ringo were still hoping that one the peminat-peminat had gotten used to the idea that they were unavailable, they would be nicer to their girlfriends and then their girlfriends would change their minds.
“How much longer are anda staying here?” Emily asked as the Beatles took a walk with their girlfriends one day.
“Couple lebih days,” Paul answered, turning round to look at her from where he was walking just ahead hand-in-hand with May. “Then our tour ends and we’ve got recording to do.”
May raised her eyebrows. “Oh. I thought anda would be staying here a little longer, after the way you’ve been leading us on.”
George wrinkled his thick eyebrows. “We’re not leading anda on,” he told her. “Aren’t anda going to come and visit us when we go back to London?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Morag replied delicately. “It can be so hard to get away sometimes....”
The Beatles looked down, feeling a bit guilty. This hadn’t occurred to them when they’d decided to look for girlfriends while they were still on tour.
“We could send a car for anda atau something,” Ringo suggested hopefully. “You could visit us recording, tell us what anda think of our new songs and all that. We’re trying to write a new single that will make it big in the States,” he added, trying to turn the conversation to a lebih pleasant topic.
Natalya scrunched her haughty little nose at this statement. “Why? Haven’t anda got enough of those idiot girls running after anda here, without trying to get lebih of them?”
Ringo’s blue eyes grew wide and upset. “Come on, Natalya, at least give them a chance....”
“I’ve telah diberi them all the chances I need to,” she replied coldly, as they passed two teenage girls coming in the other direction. The girls paused to glare at the women, before one promptly burst into tears and the other put an arm around her shoulder and shot Emily a nasty look.
“Never mind them,” advised John, giving Emily’s hand a squeeze. “Maybe we’ll find some smarter peminat-peminat in America. anda can come with us there.” He batted his brown eyes at Emily.
“Not if those – ” Emily shuddered “ – peminat-peminat are around.” She shook her head and put a hand to her chest. “My nerves can’t take much lebih of them....”
“Doesn’t it ever get tiring?” purred Morag in George’s ear.
George frowned. “Well....”
“I know!” Paul sounded excited. “Why don’t we let anda girls sertai us on the Krismas broadcast we’ll be sending to our fans? Help them get to know anda a bit better.”
“Talk to those brainless imbeciles?” snapped Natalya. “And why would we want to win them over?”
“I just couldn’t,” added Emily with a little shudder. “I don’t know how anda can stand those – girls anda sing to.”
May just gave Paul her iciest look yet and said, “I don’t think so.”
So the Beatles, slightly disappointed, dropped the subject of their fans.
“Do anda think they’re right?” asked John, on the last evening of their stay in the city.
“Who?” asked Paul, looking up from where he was making a drawing at a little meja, jadual in their hotel suite.
“Our girlfriends.” John came and sat seterusnya to Paul. “Think our peminat-peminat have got out of hand like they said?”
“Of course not,” Paul berkata quickly, then looked up thoughtfully. “Although they have been a bit – temperamental lately.”
This was true. Lately the Beatles didn’t even have to start Singing their touching Cinta songs before every girl in the theatre had dissolved into tears. And their cries were no longer happy ones. They sounded desperate, even angry.
George, perched on the arm of a chair eating a sandwich, shrugged. “We know our peminat-peminat go crazy when they see us.”
Ringo’s blue eyes were wide and sad. “What will we do if our girlfriends can’t accept that?”
John nodded. “Right. They reckon we shouldn’t be lettin’ our peminat-peminat go crazy at us like that.”
“ But it’s not our fault they do!” protested Paul, gesticulating wildly with his left hand to make his point. “We’re Beatles; they’ve been Berlakon like that since Please Please Me!”
George’s brown eyes were serious. “Maybe they’re right. We’ve seen how our peminat-peminat have been Berlakon lately.”
Ringo frowned. “Maybe. I don’t want to upset Natalya, but....”
There was a knock on their hotel room door. George got up to open it. Standing outside were Emily, May, Morag, and Natalya, and they looked very angry.
“Can’t we even go to see anda without those girls interfering?” snapped May, the minit the door was opened. She marched right in and settled herself on the couch, her fellow women following suit, Emily collapsing onto her kerusi, tempat duduk as though drained. John put his arm round her, glancing at his fellow Beatles as though uncertain what to do about this.
Natalya looked Ringo square in the eye. “I hope you’ve been thinking over what we’ve been telling anda about your peminat-peminat this whole time.”
How had she known they’d just been discussing that? Ringo nodded hesitantly. “Yeah....”
Natalya just shook her head in disgust. “Good. I don’t know how much longer anda want us to put up with this....”
Paul snapped to attention. What was she saying? The women hadn’t come here to break up with them, had they?
“It’ll be easier when we’re not around,” berkata John smoothly, thinking along the same lines as Paul. “Then it’ll be your turn to come visit us at the studio. How soon can anda get there?”
“Come visit you?” snapped Emily. “With all your crazy little girlfriends hanging around your studio?”
Paul’s hati, tengah-tengah sank; he felt suddenly cold. “You mean you’re not....”
“I have a better idea,” interrupted Morag. “Why don’t anda four come and visit us?”
George’s eyes lit; Morag had been talking to him about her house a lot, and from what she'd been telling him, it sounded like heaven. “You mean...?”
“That’s right, George,” Morag purred reaching out and touching his wrist seductively. “A nice secluded place for us; no one else around for miles.”
“But our record...” Paul started to say, then broke off at the frosty look in May’s eyes.
“Of course,” she said, and there was a lilt of deepest annoyance in her tone. “Your record.”
Emily gave them big eyes. “I thought we meant lebih to anda than that,” she whispered. “But of course....”
“You prefer your fans,” finished Natalya, disgust etched all over her dainty face. “We should have guessed.”
“Of course we don’t,” berkata John without thinking. “We’ve chosen you, haven’t we?”
“You don’t prefer your peminat-peminat to us?” Emily glanced up quickly at John’s face through her short blonde hair. “Then anda will come and stay with us?”
The Beatles exchanged glances. This would put them behind schedule – they had been hoping to have that single written and recorded before New Year’s. And there was that Krismas broadcast they had wanted to do for their fans, too....
But then they looked at their girlfriends, their hopeful, beautiful faces, and thought of all the fun they could have, just the eight of them alone in their house... all alone, with no one to bother them, no one to stop them from doing anything with each other....
Four Beatles found themselves nodding. “All right.”
“Wonderful!” The women looked happy, atau at least satisfied, which was as happy as they ever looked.
“We’ll go right away, tonight,” Morag decided.
“After anda take us out to dinner, of course,” added Emily, laying a hand over her heart. “You should, after what we’ve gone through all week thanks to your fans....”
“Tonight?” But the Beatles were supposed to do a little meet-and-greet tonight, signing autographs for their peminat-peminat and probably giving out kisses, as a way of saying good-bye and thank you....
May locked eyes with Paul, fixing him with an icy stare. “Is that a problem?”
Paul swallowed under her intense, intriguing gaze. “No,” he managed. “It’s no problem.”