Chapter Text
After Almeria, his world changes. People notice his thinner body, his sunburnt skin, his short-cropped hair. They almost miss the tiny round glasses on his nose that set him on a new course.
He doesn’t need anyone to guide him through a crowded room.
In large gatherings, the glasses are the armour, the glasses are the knife. He thrills in being one step ahead. He smirks, he quips, he makes people laugh.
Moreover, to his infinite pleasure, by some trick of light, the specs sometimes become mirrors, reflecting on the person in front of him their own gaze, shrouding his intentions.
*
At home, his wife still gazes at him with the same adoring eyes she had for him before money and fame. But with his specs, he uncovers the secret conversations she is having with the personnel, with her mother when she comes to visit, hell, with Julian himself. “Behave,” her eyes implore their son when he pads into the kitchen shouting “Daddy”. “Bring him home,” her smile begs the driver who comes to pick him up to attend another party. A conviction settles deep in his gut. Their marriage is unravelling, and Cynthia knows it as well as he does.
In the studio, he watches the signs that George Martin makes from the control booth and how quickly Paul and George interpret them. The three of them have developed a language of cues, raised eyebrows and glances that he has never been privy to. He wasn’t so delusional as to believe that they didn’t communicate between themselves, decide things without him. But seeing it in front of his eyes startles him. He barks out a laugh, half admiration, half surrender.
After Almeria, he sees how Paul looks at him, how he always looks at him. He believed that fondness was reserved for their private moments together, or for the stage. He assumed that Paul had become a master of hiding his emotions under the tight smile he perfected with Aunt Mimi. But everywhere he goes, Paul’s eyes are watching him, in turn soft and wistful, glinting and amused, coy and filled with intent. Damn it. The journalists were always droning on about a stupid bubble but here they are, and their bubble is as transparent as glass. Dread should be gnawing on his insides. But instead, he doesn’t say anything to Paul, he doesn’t change his behavior. Like the night sky above the desert, even if he couldn’t see it, it was already there. Wondrous, beautiful, true.
*
“You’re different,” Paul states, a few months after Spain. They are at Paul’s house, in the garden. They have begun writing songs for the new album. Lately, he has been spending more time at Paul’s than at his own house.
“Must be the glasses,” he replies, wiggling his eyebrows, still perusing a page covered with non sensical lyrics. When he glances back up, Paul’s gaze is serious, worry etched in his features. His stomach drops. Paul so often expresses his feelings through lyrics or almost undecipherable small talk. You’re different.
He removes the specs from his face. “It’s only me,” he offers, smiling at the fuzzy version of Paul that he can see. And, as easy as the compass finding the true north, he adds, “I love you.”
*
In the lucid dreams, his eyesight does not mean anything.
He sits in the garden, letting sensations melt into each other. Trees croon a melody. A song becomes a bird. The guitar strings under his fingers taste like sugar. Words settle on his skin like fluttering butterflies. He doesn’t need his glasses for this. He doesn’t need his glasses for this.
The world is a hymn.
*
Paul is writing songs about Liverpool, resurrecting his old neighbourhood in impressionistic lyrics and melodies.
“What do you think?” Paul asks, after playing one of the new compositions, as they are both sitting in Paul’s music room.
He chips in awkwardly, uneasiness building in the pit of his stomach, mumbling something about the middle eight.
He feels like a fraud, because in his own childhood memories, Liverpool is made of splashes. Grey overcast skies. The red brick of the bombed-out buildings by the docks. The rust-coloured waves of the Mersey. The bluish grey of the North Sea in Blackpool or in North Wales. All redheaded women who could have been Julia.
He scours for ideas on how to contribute, but it’s like trying to pay for drinks or ciggies with empty pockets.
Later that week, he improvises a solution. He swallows a pill again.
In the dream that follows, he jumps over a wall and lands in a secluded place. The garden is blue and green, filled with the scent of flowers, shushed by the breeze. Standing under a tree, his muse winks at him. He grabs a piece of paper, and the words pour out of him, effortless.
*
On the roof, there are no blinding lights, no audience clad in darkness, no ocean of screams shipwrecking the music.
He hears Paul’s and George’s voices. He hears all the chords, all of Ritchie’s perfect rhythm. He hears cheers and cars honking in the streets below. He hears his heartbeat speeding up in his ears, under his wrists, in his palms. He hears the mistakes and the miracles. He hears his own voice.
On the roof, with the round specs perched on his nose, he sees everything. He sees the faintest scar over Paul’s lips, George’s outrageous coat, Maureen’s wondrous smile, Yoko’s indulgent smirk. He sees the drizzle over London, the ragtag army of office workers who have climbed up on the terraces of nearby buildings, the city’s chimneys and the big grey sky.
He sees everything and his entire body hums through the sheer joy of the moment. In his bitter days, he will blame this purest of highs on the drugs, but he will always know deep down that they weren’t powerful enough to cause this.
The colours melting into the notes of his guitar. The wind soft enough to touch. The lingering beauty of yellow daffodils and of a Viennese waltz. Yoko’s ink black hair. The bruising and shuffling and expanding of his heart. He falls again; he falls once more. The Everly Brothers lighting the path, Chuck Berry spurring him on, the curse and the blessing of Buddy Holly’s short miraculous life. It’s in his young son’s laughter the last time he got to see him. It’s all there and it’s all in the music.
And he gets to say it, and he gets to sing it, and he gets to be it. His eyes meet Paul’s, and, for a moment, every question has an answer, every cloudy night has a dawn.
*
To break something, intent or complete obliviousness are required.
He has broken drinking glasses and plates, lips and knuckles, vows and promises, but he has never broken a pair of specs.
His lovers remove the glasses gently from his face, tracing the dents left on the bridge of his nose with their fingers. He tosses them away with his clothing, carelessly, feverishly. Lenses and frames resist his lukewarm neglect. They are sturdy. They have become part of his body and, as such, they endure.
One day in September, with four words and a withering glance, he blows his own heart to smithereens.
*
In his new country, he wears white.
He longs for a visual contrast with the black leather he wore in Liverpool, and with the black suits he wore on stage and on print and on screen for so many years. People connect the colour with his fight for peace.
Later, he will understand that white was the colour of everything he left behind, among them a certain person with a gift for mismatching colours in the most surprising ways. Can a colour represent both a presence and an absence, a fight and a retreat?
He watches his new country on TV. If the Britain of his youth was the one he heard on the radio, he watches America on the screen. The young men sent to kill and die under foreign skies. The violence. The hopelessness.
He wants to be at the centre of the empire. He wants to use his influence. He waits. He watches. He observes. He seethes. He pounces. He protests. But when things get worse, he doesn’t see clearly. He sinks. He despairs. He unravels.
He goes on TV and argues about the war and about world peace. He wears his glasses like a badge of honour.
“Just like Ghandi,” he hears George smirking in his head. “White clothing and tiny round specs.”
What the hell people are doing listening to a thirty-year-old with no formal education, with no life experience except songwriting, singing and some rhythm guitar? He talks so much he gets tired of his own voice.
On the sideline, his muse sulks like a scorned lover. Is she grieving too? Is she missing her own muse-partner? White is the colour of the blank page. White is the colour of his own haunting.
*
On this side of the Atlantic, with his glasses on, food looks, smells and tastes strange. Too greasy, too sugary, too abundant, too colourful.
In truth, food has confused him for many years. So, he cuts everything into small pieces, moves them aimlessly around his plate and then nibbles a few bites. Each time his wife introduces a new diet they must follow, he holds onto it like salvation.
*
Los Angeles reminds him of the south of Spain. On the avenues and by the ocean, palm trees dance in the breeze. Red and pink bougainvillea climb over porches and walls. Did he ever believe he could find happiness on a white and blue Greek island?
Alcohol, drugs, sex and friendship replace his marriage.
When he wakes up early enough, he drinks his morning tea on a terrace, under dazzling sunlight. He fills his lungs with the dry desert air of California, nursing a hangover that never quite vanishes.
The blue sky is enough to distract him for a while. The blue sky is enough to keep out the ghosts. He likes it until he doesn’t. He flies back to New York.
*
After more than ten years wearing his glasses as soon as he wakes, leaving them on his nightstand for a few hours means retreating into a cocoon of sound and touch. His son’s voice, the radio playing in the background, the delicate silk of his favourite kimono, the soft purr of the cats that sometime curl up on his lap.
He wakes up early to give Sean his breakfast, finding his way in the kitchen through use and custom, listening to his son’s happy chirpings. His wife leaves for the office to avoid any deep conversation.
When the nanny has arrived and taken the little boy for a walk in the park, he prepares his tea. He fills the kettle with water and waits for it to boil. He still drinks English tea in the morning, with one splash of milk, exactly like he did back when he was a kid. He eats a thin slice of bread with no butter and a teaspoon of jam on it. The perfumed vapour of the beverage warms up his face, with no lenses to fog. Mornings like these, blurry and white, he persuades himself that everything can be new again.
He is sitting alone in the kitchen the morning he hears Paul’s newest single. The radio goes straight from ads to the initial guitar riff. His body comes alive before his mind registers the song and Paul’s voice. The music fills him up, the music tangles around his heart like a vine.
The next morning, he wakes up and begins humming a little tune about starting over. It might be too on the nose, but he doesn’t care and maybe, if it fits, he will weave in something about a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, a winged caterpillar learning to fly.
He leaves his specs on the nightstand, forcing himself to rely again on his trusted senses, touch and smell and, evidently, hearing. The blurry whiteness around him reminds him of his youth, the countless parties, concerts and events spent squinting at everything and everyone. He invokes his teenage self. He wasn’t ashamed of his nasal sounding voice or his ignorance of proper guitar chords. He wasn’t afraid to step on stage. He wasn’t afraid to leave the house into an unfocused, shapeless world.
He breathes in deeply. He had believed his muse to be dead and buried. But she is back, a faint buzz under his skin. He walks into his music room, tunes one of his favourite guitars, sits down on the plush carpet and begins to sing.
*
He sits on the floor or on the sofa in his studio and he talks on the phone. To his aunt in England. To his friends. To his tarot reader, to his agents, to his assistants and representatives. Often, a cat perches by his side, the only witness to his conversations.
*
He enters the water carrying Sean on his hip. The Caribbean Ocean is warm and turquoise, an endless swimming pool. The white sand is soft under his feet. God, Bermuda is such an improvement on the North Sea beaches of his youth. The waves lap gently against their bodies. The little boy squeals with excitement, his dark hair reflecting the morning sunlight like diamonds would.
It is a new skill he has acquired, savouring the contentment that gathers in his chest, that shoots through his veins. He gets distracted, wondering if sacred moments have been his to notice since the beginning, bad eyesight or not. His son beams at the ocean.
The next wave is unexpected, higher and choppier than the ones that preceded, drenching them. He keeps his legs steady in the sand, holding his ground.
He cradles Sean in his arms. His son laughs in delight, his beautiful face splattered by droplets of salty water. “More, Daddy, more!” he exclaims, raising his tiny arms in triumph. But the glasses are gone, sunk beneath the waves.
His assistants would gladly ship him a back-up pair. He doesn’t care, however. He will wear his prescription sunglasses from morning to night, and no one will blink at him or raise an eyebrow in surprise. Like what happened during that first visit to New York, so many lifetimes ago. There are still perks that come with being a rockstar.
*
His eyesight has gotten worse, even with the glasses. At night, his eyes fail in their efforts to adjust the dark nothingness into grey shapes. He stares at his cats and scowls at their shape-shifting pupils, at their perfect vision.
When he has trouble sleeping, he puts on an old jacket and a cap, and he takes a taxi down to Battery Park. No one gives him a second look. It has been too long since he has made the front-page news.
He walks to the rail and slips his glasses in his jacket pocket. Without the lenses, nothing is defined, everything is liquid. He breathes in wind and drizzle, salt and exhaust fumes. The humidity seeps into his bones. He watches buildings, boats and bridges twinkle like distant stars over the dark waters of the bay. Liverpool. Hamburg. London. New York. He could be in any of these port cities where he moored part of his life. He lights up a cigarette and the smoke twirls around him like unsung songs.
*
The eye doctor announces that his eyesight is changing. “Your myopia might get less pronounced in time.”
He laughs. This is not what he expected to be told. Turning forty might be the best thing that has happened to him.
“Ageing. Our eyes age with us.” Behind his own frames, the doctor’s brown eyes are friendly and soulful, reminiscent of a familiar pair of eyes.
Under his breath, he whistles the song about starting over.
“Keep wearing glasses. You’re the best advertisement us nearsighted people ever had.”
He scoffs. Elvis Presley was worshipped for his quiff and his wicked smile. Will he be remembered for his nose and his round specs? Or will the mop top win? He shakes his head. Damn Buddy Holly for coming too late into the scene.
“Your eyesight might also explain your musical abilities,” the doctor continues, as he writes the prescription for the new lenses on a notepad.
“Like bats with their sonars?” He quips, remembering a book about animals he was reading to Sean a few weeks ago. Since getting back from Bermuda, he has felt lighter, better equipped to talk to people.
“A little,” the doctor says, his voice kind. “Your other senses might have sharpened because of it.”
He exits the doctor’s office taking stock of all the moments when his bad eyesight transformed his life.
*
In the bathroom mirror, his face flushed by the hot shower appears through the clearing fog.
Close enough, his features are sharp, defined. He surveys the wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes, spiderwebs on his pale skin. He examines the thread of grey at his temples, the shadow of a beard that awaits a razor. He inspects the dusting of freckles on his nose and cheeks. Mechanically, he tightens the bathrobe’s belt around his waist, remembering his younger self, with his fuller face and body.
It might be the warm air around him, it might the sweet scent of the coconut soap, but he feels an odd tenderness for who he was, for the brash and the clatter of his youth.
His memories are smudged like his vision without specs. But he remembers standing in front of the bathroom mirror at Mendips, hoping to get out of Liverpool, wishing for money and fame, wishing to be heard. “We made it,” he whispers to the ghosts that he carries within him, “we made it.”
*
“I’ve heard the new single,” Paul says, after some minutes of chatter about their kids and bread recipes. Something akin to happiness settles deep in his chest.
He has picked up the phone from its place in Yoko’s office and carried it into his studio. Mercifully, the cable is long enough. He sits on the white sofa in the corner. He holds the handset between his jaw and shoulder, freeing up his hands to tangle and untangle the telephone cord. Night has fallen over New York, making it close to midnight in London or Scotland, their usual time.
“Yeah?”
Talking on the phone comes naturally. Growing up, without his glasses, he was rarely close enough to interpret changes in facial expressions, he had to pay attention to changes in tone and topics instead.
After Almeria, when he started wearing specs every day, he hid behind their lenses, using them as a shield, using them as a weapon, misreading attitudes and situations. For years, he had forsaken the unfocused, delicate core of himself that demanded that he listened closely to people, and to his own heart.
“Yeah,” Paul replies.
They never say much. This has always been their way. But, like music weaves notes and silence, what they leave unsaid matters just as much as the words they do speak, exists just as much. He was hopeful when he heard the early cuts in the studio, when the song played for the first time on the radio. But nothing beats Paul’s quiet appreciation.
His throat tightens, the sudden emotion chocking him. He releases the plastic knotted around his fingers.
“Hey… are you still here? It seems like I lost you for a second,” Paul comments, amused.
“You’ve never lost me,” he slips in, finding solace in the words, letting them shine like gold.
On the other side of the line, he hears Paul cough, probably caught off guard by his rare directedness, already grasping for safer ground.
He chuckles as Paul begins to tell him about his next projects, the recording techniques he wants to try, the instruments.
How many nights did he turn off the lights in his childhood bedroom but keep the radio on, volume low, to avoid waking up Aunt Mimi. Wrapped up in blankets and music, he would daydream of the future, imagining himself on stage or writing songs. He hasn’t changed. He closes his eyes, letting Paul’s voice wash over him, warm and tender. For as long as he can hear Paul’s voice and music, all will be alright in the world.