‘But…’

‘But when it comes to the crunch there’s nothing better than “Yesterday”. That’s the pinnacle. It could’ve been written for the harpsichord or a string quartet. It could’ve been a motif in a Schubert symphony. As far as I know, it’s as popular as the Bible, if I may put it like that. In the next century computers will be humming it as we go to work, in the same sad, melancholic way that we whistle it at any time at all, wherever we are and whoever we’re with.’

He nodded. ‘And it’s not just the melody that’s brilliant. It’s the lyrics telling us exactly what we all think we know. That yesterday was better.’

I nodded. We were yesterday’s standard-bearers. We had lived our lives a quarter of a century ago and ‘Yesterday’ was our recurring refrain. There was nothing we believed in more than yesterday. There was nothing we longed for more. But we were big enough to know that now. Yesterday will never come back. Yesterday is a place you have left forever.

I smiled wryly. Had we only known when we were at school a few decades earlier that one Saturday evening towards the end of the century we would be sitting in a dark sitting room, wifeless, Jakob with a whisky, me with a beer, listening to the Beatles. Had we only known that the years would pass so quickly, only to wash us ashore on an unknown beach, like Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, in a decade where neither of us felt at home.

I stared into my glass. ‘When did you … fall in love with her?’

He stared over the rim of his glass, like a sort of land surveyor of life. ‘I don’t remember exactly. At the beginning it was pretty difficult to get to the head of the queue.’102

‘Were there that many of us, then?’

‘On top of that, she never went to dances. It was always easier for us musicians to get girls from the stage. Then you didn’t have to say anything. You didn’t have to think up a funny pick-up line. It was enough to catch their eye, knock out an extra-special guitar solo or, after I’d changed instrument, stretch the organ tones into something slow and sensual. At any rate, snare them in a net of music.’

‘Sounds simple.’

‘There were others who went with her to the chapel.’

‘Parish hall,’ I said, setting the record straight.

‘But then … When was it?’

‘1962?’

He shot me a look. ‘1963 it must’ve been. We took our final exams in sixty-one, didn’t we? Anyway, at school there was always someone ahead of me in the queue.’

I suddenly looked straight at him. ‘Why do you call him “someone” all the time? I was the someone, Jakob. It was me.’

‘Yes, I know. The two of us were never closer than in those years. Why do you think I held back? I knew what she meant to you. Who the hell would want to take your best friend’s girl?’