Who's Your Daddy, John Lennon?

TELEPHONE RINGS

Hospital Receptionist: Professor Magnus?

Magnus: Speaking.

Receptionist: The Fuhrer is at the desk and asks to see you alone. He has come about the English patient Unity Mitford.

Magnus: Who's calling? This is not the place for practical jokes.

Receptionist: No Professor. He really is here. He is alone. His adjutants are waiting in the car outside the hospital.

LONG SILENCE

Hitler: Give me the telephone. Hello Professor Magnus. This is the Chancellor Adolf Hitler. I have come here to talk to you about Unity Mitford. May I see you in your consulting room?

Magnus: Yes my Fuhrer. The receptionist will take you up.

KNOCKING

Magnus: Heil Hitler.

Hitler: Good morning Professor Magnus. I am a friend of Unity Mitford and am responsible for her safety now that her country and ours are at war. I was told that she has been seriously injured by a gun shot.

Magnus: She was found in the English Garden with a bullet wound in her head and a pistol beside her. The bullet had lodged in the back of her brain. After preliminary police investigation and medical examination no foul play is suspected.

Hitler: Poor poor child. I imagine she was home sick. Why didn't she come to me? I would have seen she was returned safely to her homeland despite hostilities. Can I speak to her alone?

Magnus: Since her injury she has not spoken to anyone. She cannot move or feed herself.

Hitler: I must speak to her alone. Take me to her.

Magnus: I will take you now to her private room. There is one further thing you should know Herr Chancellor. Unity Mitford is in the first stage of pregnancy.

Hitler: Oh Good heavens! Who knows about that?.

Magnus: Only I think myself. I had the tests done personally.

Hitler: Then by order of the Reich these test specimens must be destroyed at once by you. Take me to her room. Then while I am with her go to your laboratory and destroy these specimens.

SILENCE

SOUNDS OF HEAVY BREATHING THROUGH HOSPITAL TUBES

Magnus: My Fuhrer. As you can see, Unity Mitford cannot recognise or speak to you.

Hitler: Leave me alone with her.

Magnus: Yes my Fuhrer.

DOOR CLOSES

Hitler: Unity my little English peach. This is the Fuhrer speaking. You are sleeping. Wake up and speak to the Fuhrer.

BREATHING BECOMES LOUDER
A FAINT VOICE

Mitford: I am so grateful to see you Herr Wolf

Hitler: Why did you do this?

Mitford: I love England and I love Germany. Because of the treachery of the Jews, England and Germany are at war. If I cannot love both then I would sooner be dead.

Hitler: You are just a child. Not even the Jews would harm your safe return to your family. I will see to your safe return to England. Professor Magnus told me you are pregnant.

Mitford: I knew that morning. Then I walked to the English Garden. I took out my pistol from my hand bag and put it to my temple.

SOUNDS OF GENTLE KISSES

Hitler: Is it me who is the father?

Mitford: Yes. There is no one else it could be.

Hitler: But I was so careful. We just played together in my apartment.

Mitford: Yes Herr Wolf. I sat on your knee like in that song – 

SINGS:
Picture you upon my knee,
Just tea for two and two for tea,
Just me for you,
And you for me …alone.

SPEAKS:
I heard a coloured man singing that song at Debo's coming out ball at my last season in London.

Hitler: So you sat on my knee after you did that to a coloured man. If we do not win this war, in fifty years time the whole world will prostrate to a negro.

Mitford: He was just an entertainer. It doesn't matter. We are now at war.

Hitler: War is madness but also so glorious.

Mitford: What are you going to do?

Hitler: I would never kill a child even an unborn one. When you are back in England, your family will be informed you are bearing my child. They will have to be sworn to total secrecy. I am deeply dismayed. But I am also filled with a deep happiness. This war will bring so much destruction. But this child – half German, half English – will usher in the new united Europe.

Mitford: I am going back to sleep.

Hitler: Have sweet dreams of happier times.

A GENTLE KISS. DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES.
SILENCE.

SOUNDS OF GERMAN AIR BLITZ OVER LIVERPOOL
TO THE BACKGROUND OF EXPLOSIONS AND WHISTLING BOMBS, MIMI SPEAKS.

Mimi: This is Julia Lennon's sister speaking. Has Julia Lennon had her baby yet?

Maternity Ward Nurse: Mrs Lennon has just had a boy.

Mimi: SCREAMS HYSTERICALLY Mum! Mum‼ A boy! A boy!

SOUNDS OF AIR BLITZ DROWNS OUT HER VOICE
SILENCE

Mimi: Oh George, John is so clever! When I put the teaspoon of baby food to his mouth, he grabs it and pulls it to his mouth. I don't know where he got his brains from. Certainly not from that no good lump of a father. Watch him, he's doing it now.

George: A good dairy farmer can always know there is a rat lurking in the cow shed. Ever since John was born, I've been scratching my head. Your sister was supposed to have a cesarean. You ring the ward and the nurse says – Oh! the baby's born.
Then you come rushing back when I'm worried sick about you catching it from Hitler's bombs, screaming – He doesn't have any wrinkles.
What is he, an angel?

And then your silly sister insists that his Christian name will be John. Named after his grandfather so she says. Then to really stick the knife into my guts, she insists his second name will be Winston. Winston! What has that Tory warmonger done for us? Born the very night hundreds of Liverpudlians lose their homes and their lives while Winston loafs around with his fellow Tories with his fat cigar! Winston is a sham. I have heard he is he never in London when London's bombed? How does he know?

And those radio speeches of his. I swear I've heard that voice before on the Children's Hour. Winnie the Pooh sounded like that when I was having tea after the milking.

Mimi: Shshsh, watch your tongue George. If you go on talking like that, one morning the police will come and we will never see you again. We are just ordinary working people. There is a war. We have to play our part and keep our thoughts to ourselves.

George: But haven't you thought something doesn't add up about John? Why did she give him those names? Why has she handed her first baby over to you and seems afraid to touch him! That ain't natural but she is not sick. She won't speak to me, but has she said anything to you?

Mimi: I'll close the door. There are long ears in our neighbourhood.

SOUND OF DOOR CLOSING.

Mimi: WHISPERS I have asked her. She told me when John turns eighteen she will tell him and me the full story. Or rather what she knows. If you ask me. I think the baby's father is Winston Churchill.

George: So we have in our house the son of the arch Tory war‑monger Winston bloody Churchill!

Mimi: Please be kind. He is only a baby. Even if he was the son of Adolf Hitler, we are his carers.

George: Now that would be interesting! If he's Winston's he should have baby fat. If he's Adolf's he should have a glare. Let me look at him. Christ alive! He's got the glare! Mimi! We are bringing up a foundling. A Nazi in our house!

Mimi: What you are saying is ridiculous. Winston's child maybe! But Hitler's! That's insane!

George: He is a baby and we must give him all the care. When he is four and a half I will teach him his letters. He will be ready for them. Maybe we have been chosen for a special mission.

SOUND OF CRYING BABY

Mimi: You have frightened John. Now you sooth him while I get ready for his nappy change. If we value our lives George, we must keep these thoughts to ourselves.

George: Too right. Talking about John's father is banned in this house. That useless lump of a brother‑in‑law and your dim sister are his parents. No more of this.

Mimi: My sister should do the same. If she spills the beans even in 1958, she will be dead. If the Gestapo don't do her in, then Scotland Yard will.

SILENCE

SOUNDS OF CUTLERY

Lady Harrod: Now Unity dear, don't slop your tea. Drink it like a lady.

SOUNDS OF AIR RAID SIREN

Lady Harrod: Finish your tea. Then we will go downstairs.

Unity: Oh how I hate the blitz!

Lady Harrod: I know dear. These are difficult times. But it too will pass.

Unity: It's odd for me because I want to die.

Lady Harrod: You mustn't say that. One day you will meet a nice young man and have a family.

Unity: Ha ha ha‥

SINGS:
Day will break and I'll wake,
And start to bake a sugar cake,
For you to take,
For all the boys to see.

SPEAKS:
I will have six babies. Six is the devil's sign. The first baby I will call Adolf.
All the others I will call John.

Lady Harrod: Now dear, that was not nice. Follow me down to the garden air‑raid shelter. It's good weather for him tonight. And you are not going to name your first baby after him.

Unity: Ha ha ha‥ You are all going to be in for a big surprise!

SOUND OF DOOR CLOSING
SIREN STOPS
SILENCE

King George VI: D…d…does Winnie kn…kn…know about this?

Duke of Kent: No Bertie. Pass me a slice please Lizzy.

Queen Elizabeth: It is frightful odd. You are telling me England is sheltering Hitler's baby son.

Duke: My dear Lizzy, as my dear friend Nöel Coward would say, Tis a lark. Smuggling into a Liverpool maternity ward Hitler's and Unity Mitford's baby. I have never had such fun since knocking off policemen's hats.

King George: We m…m…must not forget the baby is the child of the G…G…German head of State and a very old ti…titled English family.

Duke: That's the spirit Bertie. Hitler is – oh so low class, nouveau riche. But he has now bred into us.

Elizabeth: A dose of good peasant German blood into a titled family will be good for it and England.

Duke: My darling Lizzy, as Nöel Coward would say,
‘We do it to horses and greyhounds. So we should do it to ourselves.’

King George: Keep your nightclub humour to yourself. R…R…Remember this is Buckingham Palace.

Duke: Of course your Majesty. But there are no servants here. Only us German frauds.

Elizabeth: That's enough! If we can't believe in ourselves. Who else will?

King George: How was it done?

Duke: Hitler passed word that Liverpool was his English city so he wants his child raised there. M15 has since found out that he lived in Liverpool with his brother and Irish sister‑in‑law in 1912. He was a spy for Cousin Willie. He sketched HMS Audacious on the River Mersey. We in Naval Intelligence now hold him personally responsible for the torpedoing of the ship in 1914.

King George: A st…st…stalwart German patriot even then.

Duke: Quite right. M15 considered it best the baby be adopted out and raised by a respectable English working class family. They would keep him out of mischief until he was old enough to be of use to us.

King George: How?

Duke: My dear boy. This ain't any Tom Dick or Harry. This baby, if used rightly, will be a genius. The young people by the 1960s will fall at his feet.

Elizabeth: For heaven sakes. One Adolf is enough. Why fight this war if we breed him here?

Duke: Why indeed? That is why he will be our Adolf. Actually his name is John Lennon. The Socialists will have all the cards if we defeat Hitler. And Winnie leaves no bones about that. How do we get to our young subjects today?

King George: I know. Th…th…through popular music.

Duke: Exactly right Bertie. That was the great secret of our dear lamented Eddie. All the best modern songs were immediately identified with him. He never composed or sang any himself. It just seemed that way. The English people and the Scots of course adored him. Even the Socialists.

Elizabeth: But what will this John Lennon sing?

Duke: Oh complete adolescent nonsense for shop‑girls and clerks. By the time he is forty he might become a loose cannon. Then we will remove him.

Elizabeth: What about the Lennon family? What do they know?

Duke: M15 took the baby from an Oxfordshire maternity home for wayward girls when he was three months old. Of course a nurse was provided. He was taken to a Liverpool maternity hospital. They thought they would quietly put a new born baby to sleep. One less working class statistic. But once there they couldn't do that. M15 are English gentlemen too. So they waited and waited until a baby due for a cesarean was stillborn during an air raid. John Lennon was slipped into Julia Lennon's bed in a hospital blanket. Julia is respectably married to a merchant seaman away at sea. They thought mission accomplished.

But Julia and her dratted sister noticed the baby had no wrinkles. The mother said: That is not my baby. That was when I came in. I took the train to Liverpool and had a private meeting with Julia. I said your first baby was stillborn in the air raid. This is now your baby. It is your patriotic English duty to raise him as your own. Julia cried and cried. She brightened up when I said the Government will keep the child permanently in clover. The lower classes are, thank goodness, so mercurial.

Then she said: I know it is Mr Churchill's baby. I said: If you want to you can believe that. So now the simpleton believes that without question. Then she said: What should I call him? I suggested John after our late darling little brother. She said she would. But only if she could call his second name Winston. I pretended to hesitate. Then said yes.

King George: Jolly good old chap. The Winston bit is a master stroke.

Elizabeth: Where is the little chappie now?

Duke: M15 reports he is living at his grandparents Liverpool home. His mother is unsure with him. But he is receiving excellent care from his mother's sister. John Lennon is our hostage from the Reich. I passed a message to Hitler that in return for the safety of his child in England, the British army must be allowed to return to Britain. M15 attributes their return from Dunkirk to my message.

King George: Oh do pl…pl…please pass me another slice Lizzy. When you are forty they are going to remove you too.

SILENCE
SOUNDS OF CAR BRAKING, SOUNDS OF COLLISION.
SILENCE.

CROWD SOUNDS
BANGING OF A GAVEL

Judge: Eric Clague, this court finds you not guilty of the death of Julia Lennon. You may leave the court.
However, you will carry the guilt – for the rest of your life – that your car driving was responsible for the death of Julia Lennon.
She was the mother of John Lennon who, I have been told, is a seventeen year old talented young musician and a member of a popular music group The Quarrymen. You will carry extra guilt as you are a police constable.

Mimi: Murderer!

SILENCE

BEATLES SONG, SUNG BY JOYOUS DRUNKEN ENGLISH CROWD

All You Need Is Love,
All You Need Is Love,
Love Is All You Need

TV Announcer: Tonight, the British nation and the Commonwealth are celebrating the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Second with a chorus, sung by millions of her loyal subjects, of the old Beatles song, All You Need Is Love.

SILENCE

THE END