Chapter Text
He first gets the inkling that something is wrong in St. Tropez.
In St. Tropez, the sun beats down for fourteen hours. Throngs of long-haired, barefooted youths accumulate wherever they go, and journalists and rubberneckers follow their every move. The humidity in the air congeals on Paul’s skin and sticks his shirt to his chest. Somehow a ceremony occurs. Someone is the best man. The groom's parents stand dithering around unattended and depart early, still clutching their gift. Paul hardly remembers how he got from the church to the reception, but the bride has already left, and Brigitte Bardot is dancing the frug with Julie Christie, and Anita Pallenberg is squatting next to Keith Richards (him, passed out on the floor, mouth gaping open) and laughing at something one of the other Stones has said, while their shaggy-haired children run ragged circles around the two of them, and Stephen Stills and Terry Reid and someone else make an ungodly racket. Three different people have offered Paul a drink, but he and Linda have two little children with them with a third on the way. He has been in this same tight little corner together with Linda and the girls for what feels like hours, and everyone besides them is far too drunk or whatever else to carry out an intelligent conversation. And this lot was not adept at that to begin with.
The last time they tried to leave, Mick accosted Paul to say that he was going to invite him, but he probably wouldn't want to come to some fag's wedding, would he? And Paul had to smile and nod and loiter for another half an hour before making for the exit again. That's when Paul sees him.
It's a testament to Jagger's refreshments that Paul's first thought upon seeing him is affectionate. Rich! And Mitch too, spotted at his side seconds later. How long has it been, a year? Her in all black, hair dark again, fringe cut pin-straight over her eyes. Him, bearded, a perfect counterpoint to her in white suit and black shirt.
The reality of a year's disagreements and a lawsuit hit him just moments after Ringo sees him seeing him. He should look away – is waiting for Richie to look away – but he doesn't.
"Well, what do you want to do?" Linda says smoothly, standing behind him.
He purses his lips. "I told you we shouldn't have bothered coming. Heather's missing school because of this."
Linda laughs and caresses the space between his shoulder blades. "She's eight, Paul, she's not missing anything important." Paul hums and, feeling her rest her head on the back of his shoulder, reaches up to twitch her hair.
"At least the other two aren't here," she adds quietly.
"Thank god for small mercies."
She straightens her head and considers his profile. "So," she says, with sing-song intonation, 'what're you going to do?"
"What do you mean?" he asks, and meets her eyes, but she says nothing in return. Paul swallows. "No. Come on."
Her touch on his back has become much less friendly, two fingers prodding into his spine like the point of a spear, urging him forward. "No," he says, pleading, clutching more tightly onto baby Mary in his arms. "Lin. I can't."
But she only prods him forward, prods until he's stood in front of the couple, and he feels rather than hears the halt of conversation around him. The people hush, clear out of the space. Linda lets go of Heather's hand to sweep the baby out of his arms and Paul drops his hands to his sides, fists them. A one-foot gap between them, Mo and Ringo on one side, Paul, Linda, and the girls on the other. No man's land.
Heather steps in it, gingerly, and Richie smiles. He offers her his hand. "Remember me?" he says.
She glances back at Paul, lower lip quivering, and he squeezes her shoulder. She takes Richie's hand, and finally, he looks up at Paul with his great blue eyes. "Paul," he says.
"Rich," says Paul, and Ringo gestures for Maureen to make space for him on the bench.
Their conversation is tentative, like children stepping around a frozen lake, desperate not to step on any cracks. He steers clear of Apple, his albums, Richie's albums, the other two, and instead asks about his kids – a third one added to the brood since he last saw Ringo – his mother, the music he's listened to recently. After a third careful question from Ringo about the Beach Boys (what did he think of Sunflower, that LP from last year), it occurs to Paul that a similar, if not the same calculus must be playing out in Ringo's head, and that melts the last bit of his unease.
Beside them, Mo coos over Mary, and the party, unimpressed by this anticlimactic showdown, carries on. Paul nearly trips over his words when he brings up James Taylor and how could they have let a talent like that go – stirring up memories of Apple and Apple records – but course corrects just in time. Seen any good films recently? What about that western (Ringo likes westerns) with Warren Beatty, the one with all the Leonard Cohen songs? Then Paul starts to think that he couldn't recall what he thought of Cohen and quickly changes the topic.
Time draws on, and Heather falls asleep with her head in his lap. When Richie darts out for another drink, Linda nudges his foot and glances at the exit. The party will go on for hours more, but he's not the kind of person who parties till four in the morning these days. Still, though he was desperate to leave just an hour ago, he is reticent to leave now. Not before asking. It's not that he cares, particularly. Only, after twelve years of living in each other's pockets, a year without communication feels strange. Like a missing toe or something, making its presence known by the emptiness whenever you take a step. The slight loss of balance. It's not that he cares, it’s just instinct. After some time pondering how to broach this, he casually says: "So, I heard you played drums on George's LP."
Ringo's mouth stops partway forming a word. He smiles to himself. "John's doing good," says he.
"Oh," Paul picks a loose thread on his shirt. Studies his fingernails. "Is he?"
"Yeah. We were one of the best trios I'd ever heard, me, him, and Klaus." He inclines his head thoughtfully. "Just being in the room with him the way he was, screaming and shouting and singing, being real, you know? It was really something. There were a lot of laughs, too, but, it was a bit" – he furrows his brow – "it was a bit, I dunno. Klaus was saying it was probably the hardest for me, out of all of us."
Paul leans forward. "How do you mean?" Ringo's eyes snap wide open halfway through a sip of his drink and he coughs, doubling over. Paul takes the drink from him and pats his back, waits for him to recover. He has barely enough dignity to not beg the question again.
Ringo wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and wets his lips. "Well, just, cause I'd known him the longest. And he was different, you know."
"Different."
"Yeah, you know." Rich picks up his drink and swirls the glass, watching the dim lights dance across its surface. I don't know, Paul wants to say. That's why I'm asking you. Rich takes Maureen's arm and stands, shaky on his feet. Paul reaches out to steady him, but Richie flinches away from him. "Look," he says, "don't -- don't worry too much about John, alright?"
He wants to tell him that he isn't 'worried' about John, but then Mary wakes up noisily, and Richie and Mo have already walked away.
Things are different up in Campbeltown. Quieter. He can hear the birds sing as they flit from tree to tree, far-off ploughs starting up, cars rolling by on the motorway. The air is different – cleaner, even with the smell of fresh manure in the mornings, the cut grass, the warm, grainy aromas from the distillery wafting over on the breeze. In New York, in London, buildings loom over you wherever you go, packed together so tightly they might choke you. In Campbeltown, he can climb to the highest point of his property, and when he looks out, he sees nothing but grass and grass and grass, fields of tall grass rolling every which way, like there's nothing in the world but grass, and civilization was only a dream.
The first thing to deal with every morning is the post. Lin is diligent about vetting any and all magazines before he gets his hands on them. He knows this because there are always massive swathes of writing cut out of them by the time he gets the chance to read them. It's come to a point where he'll have to rummage through the bins if he wants to read any reviews of his own work, though, it is a more elegant solution than what she did the day after the night he spent obsessing over the January 21 edition of Rolling Stone. (He had come in from the cold to find the magazine serving as kindling in the fire as Linda sipped coffee and warmed her feet.)
Letters from Dad and Mike he reads over tea. If they're from John Eastman, he passes the ones addressed to 'L&L&L' on to Lin and leaves the ones addressed to 'Paul' on his bedside. That way if it's bad news it'll only upset him right before he goes to bed.
He mends fences, he digs trenches. He keeps sheep and chickens and a vegetable garden. He had planted some trees earlier in the year, but the holes weren't deep enough so only a few of them had taken root. Douglas firs, Norway spruce – hardy trees, for the harsh weather. When the day’s work is done, he comes back in and holds Mary while Linda cooks dinner, watching as her belly steadily grow rounder day by day.
This is what life should be. His ten years as a Beatle – a bachelorhood for the ages – only a strange intermission, already receding into the background. Sometimes, it's funny to remember, to watch Linda and Heather do the crossword and think of how he used to have a house full of naked girls not three years ago. Two hotel rooms in LA with a hooker in each, waiting for him. Wild parties in Bob Fraser's flat, designer drugs, funding underground newspapers and art installations at the Indica.
He couldn't recall exactly when it was that things started to go sour. Was it when George told him about visiting Haight-Ashbury? Hippie Central, home of the different, the artistic – in reality, it was full of dirty kids and drugged-out dropouts. Maybe that was when it started, the strange sense of doom in the pit of his stomach, the knowledge that the party was not going to last forever. He didn't want to be left standing when the music stopped. And as the decade drew to a close and the bodies started piling up – Jones, Hendrix, Joplin, now Morrison, the latest – he only grew more desperate to get out, get out. Some part of him might yearn for it, now and then, but it'll just have to learn better. Linda isn't keen on Barry and that old swinging set, anyway.
Word from the Eastmans comes sporadically as proceedings to end the Beatles partnership continue. He thought the suit in December would've been the end of it, but there was still more and more litigation to go through: acres of contracts to sift through, miles of missing royalties and misused funds. He likes John Eastman, but he always groans inwardly when he calls.
"Listen – I can hear you zoning out, Paul – Lennon's at it again. He and Yoko have kindly expensed us a membership to a New York sex club, if you can believe it. And now they're chartering a private jet to fly people from some San Francisco utopian community out to London. Do you have any idea what the hell is going on with those two?"
"I haven't a clue," says Paul. The last time he spoke to John (Lennon) was when he called the clinic where he was attending rehab with that American doctor. That was over a year ago, now.
He can almost hear John (Eastman) massage his forehead over the line. "And another thing. You're being sued by MacLen and Northern Songs."
"For what?" says Paul. Linda ducks her head into the room at the sound of his raised voice. Her footsteps are always dead silent because she loathes wearing shoes, kicks them off as soon as she can. He mouths John at her, and she comes in, quietly.
"For 'alleging to collaborate with Linda McCartney on Another Day.'" Papers shuffle on the other side of the line. "Really what they're ticked off about is that you're taking away half their revenue by crediting Linda. It's a good business move, I guess, but we're gonna have a hard time proving they're wrong in court. Linda's not a songwriter. She's hardly even a musician."
Paul stiffens his lip. "Right."
He can't say anything to Lin with John on the phone, but he tries to tell her with his eyes. She clenches her jaw and goes out of the room.
The next time he sees her is later in the bedroom. As takes off his shirt and hangs it, she says: "I wrote a song.”
Paul whips around. He makes to sit beside her on the bed, but something in him resists that – that's too much like the way they used to do it. Instead, he kneels at her feet and squeezes her knee. "Let's hear it."
She chews her lip and looks away, bashful suddenly. "It's not, I mean. I don't have any music for it or anything. It's just my voice."
"That's fine," he says, sliding his hand up to tickle her waist. Linda smiles, twisting away from his touch, and lightly pushes him back.
"Okay, okay. Here it is." She clears her throat and starts in her thin, unpractised voice:
Oh! Papa catch the fish from the bottom of the sea
Mama fixes net, she keep an eye on me
Dainty little Mama, smile all day
Cook your sweet potato, at night she lay, lay
She catches his eye at the end of the first verse and laughs a little, sweetly self-conscious. He pats her calf to urge her to go on. She takes a breath and does:
Oh, Seaside Woman
Oh, Seaside Woman
"It's that, basically," she says. "There's just one more verse."
"Go on, then," he says, grinning. "I want to hear it."
Ride grey mule to market place each day
Sells her beads and baskets for seashell pay
Dainty little Mama, smile all day
Papa loves you Mama, and he say, say
Oh, Seaside Woman
Oh, Seaside –
"You – you get it," she says, shifting uncomfortably on the bed.
He smiles at her and strokes her thigh. "It's cute. I like it."
"Do you?"
"'Course I do," he says, and straightens to catch her smiling lips with his mouth. "Who says you're not a songwriter, girl?"
He brings it up a little while later when the two of them are in bed, the two girls safely put to sleep so it's safe to bring out the grass. They're passing a joint between themselves in companionable silence, mindlessly watching whatever's on the telly, when he posits very lightly, very casually – like he doesn't have a list of potential members written up, like he hasn't been thinking about this for most of the past two months: "What would you think about being in a group?"
Linda doesn't look away from the telly but frowns slightly. "What, a musical group? A band?"
"Yeah." He waits for a response from her. When he doesn't get one, barrels on. "If you're in the group, we won't have to be apart when we go on tour, and we could take the girls too. I could teach you the piano." He touches her arm. "Could see yourself doing that?"
She tilts back her head. "Yeah, why not?"
It's not a resounding approval, but he'll take it. People still try to turn him onto hip, experimental groups these days ('Their lead singer is this Japanese guy they found ranting on the streets of Munich. They all live together in some big fifteenth century castle and do nothing but play music all the time'), but he doesn't go for that kind of thing anymore. He wants to play rock and roll, the way he heard it when he was fifteen, and for that, you need a rock and roll band. He'll start sending out feelers in a few different directions tomorrow.
Right before he drifts off to sleep, Linda's voice comes again. "Paul," she says. Something careful in her tone. "You know I'm not him."
Paul has never felt more sympathy for his ex-girlfriends in his life; it is incredibly difficult to stop thinking about a man when he's playing on every radio station.
Sixteen months of no communication. He almost wrote to congratulate him for Imagine being number one, just to end the silence, but something in him rallied against it at the last: why should he be the one to reach out? Why should he go begging for a détente? He wasn't the one who asked for a divorce. He didn't break up The Beatles. But the longer he resists the urge to make up, the longer the stalemate goes on for. He knows the man is bloody pig-headed, but this is another fucking level entirely.
It doesn't help that cutting the new LP with the band necessitates being in London and being in London necessitates swimming in the swamp of showbiz gossip. The very sight of his face incites talk of John's moment-to-moment activities. I just saw John Lennon last week, John Lennon has a new backing group, John Lennon's moving to New York. John, John, John, John. The worst of it is the cards. Every day, a new person has one:
Dear Mr & Mrs So&So
John Lennon has had Paul McCartney erased from his memory. Please never mention their relationship to him again.
Thank you.
Ringo has one. George Martin has one. All addressed from some place called 'The New Life Temple' in San Francisco, California. This must be one of Yoko's things, some way to psychically erase their friendship from existence.
It's not that he spends a lot of time actively thinking about John. On the contrary, he does as much as he can to stop himself from thinking about him, but, here and there, he comes through, regardless. When Paul writes, but John’s always there when he writes music: a little voice in the back of his head saying do this, no do that! It used to say yes, and good, sometimes, too, and it doesn't anymore. It only mocks – you must be joking with that.
There are other times too, in the spaces between moments. When he washes the dishes at night and sees his own reflection in the window, when he's soothing baby Stella to sleep, when he drives a long way down a straight road, he wonders. Who John’s been talking to lately, if he still refuses ninety per cent of all foods. Is he wearing his hair long again, or does he crop it short, and is it more gold or copper these days? Has that California sun given him more freckles on his back? He used to have dimples when he smiled. He doesn't anymore.
Work on the album is winding down now. All that's left to do is mix some songs, so he can afford to come home early and help Linda with dinner. He tries to be gentler with her after the scare with Stella, the terror of losing both of them in the same night. She insists she can do it, but he does any work that requires lifting of any kind, too worried that she might overexert herself and split her stitches. He carries down the laundry baskets, ferries the little ones up and down the stairs, and takes out the rubbish.
There are usually fans outside the gate when he brings the bins out, and today is no different. The fans aren't as young as they used to be these days. These girls must be at least college-aged, maybe a little older, and American by the sound of their broad vowels: "We hope we aren't bothering you too much, Paul."
He waves his hand, "It's alright," and accepts an Abbey Road sleeve and pen from one of the girls, the one in the crochet Irish country hat, big, round glasses perched on her pert nose. Her friend, sporting a heavy black bob and a fringe that overhangs her kohl-lined eyes, takes a picture. "Who's it for?" he says.
"Grace," says the one with the glasses, grinning. "That's me."
He smiles at her. "Nice to meet you, Grace." He bends his head over the sleeve and starts to write to Grace, love Paul McCartney, vaguely aware of a whisper-giggled conference between the two girls. He doesn't pay them much attention until Grace burst out with: "Are you and John ever going to be friends again?"
He stops writing and looks up at her.
"We don't really mind if you guys don't ever play together –"
"Well –" starts the friend, but Grace rushes on.
"It's just, you guys were always such great friends – all four of you, but you and John especially, and it'd be such a shame if you're just gonna hate each forever now."
The two girls regard him pensively. "I don't hate John," he says carefully.
"So, is there a chance of you guys getting together again?" the friend asks. "We asked him, too, but he ignored us."
"Him?"
"John, we asked John," says Grace. "At his new house? I think they were recording Imagine then. There were tons of people around, and half of them didn't even look like musicians."
"Yeah," says the friend, nodding. "There were all these people with, like, crew cuts running around, the kind you get when you get sent to bootcamp, and there was this huge cloud of smoke coming up from behind the house. We kind of snuck around the back to see what was going on –"
"We didn't sneak –"
"And we were just hit by the smell of burning plastic, and we saw this, like, bonfire of Beatles stuff – records, promotional stuff, Beatle boots, Beatle jackets. I even saw the guitar he used in that promo clip you guys made for Paperback Writer. It was all going up in flames, it was crazy. And she told me not to," -- she elbows Grace – "but I saved the pair of shades he wore in the clip for Penny Lane." She puts a hand in her jacket. "Wanna see it?"
"Con,” Grace hisses, “why would he want to see it?"
Paul bites the corner of his mouth to keep from smiling -- Christ, but they're so young! He's twenty-eight and feels ancient just looking at them. It's only too bad that their cause is something as hopeless as theirs, especially now that John is burning things to do with The Beatles, apparently. Even that isn't enough to dampen their spirits. God bless.
"Well." Paul caps the pen and returns both it and the sleeve to Grace. "I think John's already given you your answer there, girls."
He opens the gate and shuts it behind him. The sweet sting of nostalgia: two friends alone in a foreign country, guided by nothing but love for rock and roll. He knows what that feels like. God, does he know.
It's September, and the weather is still warm, but the wind has a bite to it that it didn't a month ago, and it's raining, the shower falling fine, yet briskly.
Paul brought back a tape of the most recent cut of the LP to listen to at home. Though he has heard to it ten or fifteen times in the studio, he still brought it home with him in case the new location helps him discover that a guitar is grossly out of tune in Some People Never Know during his eighteenth listen-through.
After the twentieth listen, even he's convinced that it's fine. It's fine. It's done. He lays back on the settee and lets the accomplishment settle over him.
Faintly, he hears the water running somewhere upstairs, the rain pattering on the windows. Stella gurgles beside him and he dances his fingers over her, holding them barely within her reach. She flails at them, waving her hands skywards – her hands, so little compared to his that he can cup both within them. He should be used to it by now, after Mary, but the sight still makes his heart seize, and he watches her with a sated smile until, at last, she grasps his little finger with such force that he has to pry her off. Then she starts fussing again.
"Hungry? But we only just fed you," he says, twirling a finger over Stella’s face. "Sleepy, is it?" As if in response, she lets out a faint whine. "Alright, alright, we'll get you to sleep." Paul swaddles her up and lifts her, carries her up the stairs. "Kids these days," he murmurs, padding across the landing. "How do you get so tired and cranky when all you do is lie around in the first place, hmm?" He gives her a little shake.
In the nursery, Linda is soothing Mary to sleep, and watches Paul as he puts Stella in her cot. "Think I'm gonna turn in for the night," she whispers when he's done, mindful not to wake the babies. "You coming?"
"Not just yet," he says. He's drowsy, but in a pleasant sort of way.
"Alright." She ruffles his hair. "Don't stay up for too long."
He takes a blanket with him back downstairs, turns on the telly for a little while and fixes himself a drink. On instinct, he moves to mix coke in his scotch but stops himself at the last second and pours in tonic instead.
The station turns off for the night at half twelve. He switches off the telly around midnight and squats at the shelf under the turntable to dig through his records – he tells Linda not to stack them on top of each other because it'll damage them, but she never listens. He discards, Roy Orbison, Carole King, The Who, The Stones, and at the bottom of the pile, like it'd been waiting, that old familiar face peering at him through circle glasses. He picks up the record and has a staring contest with the man on the cover. At this point, he's heard the title song enough times. Might as well listen to the whole bloody thing.
Since the first song on John's last album made him jump nearly out of his skin, he braces himself to listen to this one, but, thankfully, it's just a straight pop record. The music is good, catchy, whatever.
Through the first side of songs, he flips the record over. On the first side of the record was a closeup of John's face overlaid with the songs of side one; on side two, the Apple core image and the songs on side two. The first song: Gimme Some Truth.
Paul furrows his brow. Hold on. Hadn't they worked on this? He puts on the record.
I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics…
Yes, he knows those words. That in itself isn't strange, because he took plenty of songs he first showed to The Beatles for his solo record, but he and John had worked on this one together.
No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
Is going to Mother Hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope
Aren't those his words that John is singing? He came up with some part of it anyway, something about rope. It says on the inner sleeve that all the songs are written by John or John and Yoko, why on earth hasn't he mentioned this? Did he not think it was important enough? Had he forgotten?
The music continues, and a strange sensation sinks down his chest, into the pit at the base of his stomach. He scrutinises the liner notes.
Klaus on bass again and Phil Spector producing, naturally. No Ringo but three different drums, Nicky Hopkins on piano, two of the fellas from Badfinger on guitar -- oh, and one George Harrison on guitar, too. Splendid. He examines the track list again:
Imagine
Crippled Inside
Jealous Guy
It's So Hard
I Don't Want To Be A Soldier
Gimme Some Truth
Oh My Love
Call My Name
How?
Oh Yoko!
Standard, radio-friendly pop music spiced with politics. What's wrong with that? What's wrong is:
The first song on his last LP isn't exactly about John and Yoko, but it isn't not about them, either. Just one or two lines in there. Not on purpose, of course, but he wrote the song. It came from his head; smatterings of his thoughts made their way into the track. It's inevitable. He didn't think it was obvious, but Linda did give him a meaningful look when he showed her the song. If Linda saw it, there wasn't a chance in the world that John hadn't seen it -- and the John he knows would never let a slight pass unremarked, imaginary, or otherwise.
Which begs the question: why hasn't he written a response to it?
What is the worst possibility, that John hasn't heard the track – that he just doesn't care about Paul or his music anymore, that these sixteen months of silence were nothing to him because he simply doesn't think of him anymore – or, that Paul's wrong in the first place. He doesn't know John, never really did.
John's peppy song about Yoko resolves into silence, leaving him alone in the quiet house. He stands, draws the blanket more tightly around himself, and steps out into the back garden. The rain has abated a little, though he still feels little droplets bumping his head, sliding down the back of his neck. Barefoot, he walks to the meditation dome, the soil cool under his toes and softened by the rain. In other parts of London, parts he once knew well, the party is still going on, but here, it's relatively quiet.
Now that he's no longer not thinking about John, he can't look anywhere without seeing him. Here: on the deck chairs, sitting opposite each other with their guitars, the way they used to at the back of Forthlin Road when they were young. There: at the steps to the porch, sitting and drinking tea in the evenings. Everywhere.
The only thing worse than him and John hating each other forever is him and John being indifferent to each other, like two boys who sat next to each other throughout school, got on well enough, but never really cared for one another.
George was at the sessions. He will call George in the morning, he decides, wiping off his feet and stepping back into the house. George can tell him more.
He goes upstairs, cleans his teeth, washes his face, changes into his pyjamas, and crawls into bed next to Linda, who is already fast asleep, her hair spread like a golden sheet over the pillow. He burrows into her side and waits for sleep to come. And waits.
He turns over. He lies flat on the bed, spreads his limbs as far as he can without disturbing Lin, and studies the scuff marks in the polish on the headboard. The curtains tremble in the light breeze through the creaked-open window. He checks the time: nearly quarter past two. By the time the hour hand hits three, he gives up and goes downstairs. Would George be awake so late in the night? None of them have kept regular hours in years at this point, so why not?
"Hello?" says Pattie.
"Hi," he says, twisting the cord. "Lovely morning, isn't it?"
"Oh," -- he hears the receiver jiggle a bit, and Pattie artificially raises her voice – "it's you Paul, how nice. Why on earth are you calling so late at night?"
"I only ever call people very late at night. It's the air at this time, makes me chatty – do you think I could have George, for a minute?"
"Of course, just a second. Let me find him for you."
Pattie puts down the phone and walks -- not very far because he hears her voice again in a few seconds, indistinct and further away. And then another, lower voice, that speaks with a harder edge. Pattie's voice comes again, gentle and consoling, and moments later, there's movement on the other side and George's voice, saying: "Paul?"
“George.” Alone in the room, he smiles, an old habit that John always mocked him for. Do you think the other person’s going to hear you smiling, Macca?
Paul clears his throat. “How’ve you been?”
Following a similar strategy to that he used with Richie, he asks about the concert for Bangladesh, opening the new recording studio at Saville Row, All Things Must Pass. George spends nearly half an hour describing all he’s learned about Friar Park: the gardens, the caves, the grottos, the thousands of underground passageways – though it does not have a hundred and twenty rooms, only "around thirty."
As the conversation winds near its natural conclusion, he asks: "So, have you been playing on other people's records lately?"
A pause. "Oh, yeah. Here and there, you know."
Paul purses his lips. "Really? Like who?"
"Just people, you know. I reckon you might've even heard a few of them."
"Is that right?" He swallows what remains of his dignity. "Like John's, for example? Did you play on that?"
"Let me think." He hates talking on the phone, the fact that he can't see what George's face is doing. "Would you believe it, I think I have," he says wryly. "But you already knew that didn't you? So why ask?"
“George –” he starts. Before he can get into the sentence there’s a loud smack on the other end. Static buzzes over a muffled conversation.
Paul shifts his weight between his feet, anxiety curdling in his gut. He considers putting down the phone, but then the sound clears again, and he hears Pattie on the receiver for a second, then more rattling. George’s voice, saying something, Pattie answering in the affirmative, and then a last bit of movement on the other side. George huffs a laugh right in Paul’s ear. “Should’ve known you’d never call without an ulterior motive.”
Paul tightens his grip on the receiver. “Look,” he says. “I know you still don’t like me, but this is important –”
“Oh, it’s important, is it?” George sneers. “If it’s so bloody important, why don’t you ask him instead of bothering me?”
“He won’t talk to me.” George snorts. Paul rushes ahead before he can cut him off again. “I keep hearing strange things about what’s going on there. I know something’s up, and you both know but it’s just like fucking Klein again because none of you are telling me anything.”
George is quiet for so long he almost thinks he’s cut the call.
"It was a bit strange," George says, his voice gentler than it has been so far. "We still had some of the devotees from the Radha Krishna temple around, and all these people –"
"People with crew cuts?" says Paul.
George pauses. "Yeah. Where'd you hear that from?"
"I'd never give away my sources."
"Apple scruffs?" he says, dryly.
"Tittenhurst scruffs, surely." Paul smiles, but it falls quickly. "Go on."
"Right. John said they're from something called the New Life Temple in San Francisco. They mostly left us alone while we were playing, but I know they were making John do some odd things. One day we showed up and they were burning all his Beatle stuff. And they’d gather every morning in one of the rooms near the front of the house, John and Yoko included, all the doors locked and curtains drawn so you couldn't see what was going on. When they’d come out, they all had this look in their eyes like they'd been in a warzone."
"Okay." Paul swallows. "Is, is that -- ?"
"Erm, no," George fiddles with something on the other end. "There's one more thing you probably should know. There was a song. It was about you. John showed it to me, said he'd started it a year or two ago, and the lyrics were about you. Anyone could see it. 'A pretty face may last a year or two,' 'The sound you make is muzak to my ears,' – that sort of thing. Couldn't be about anybody else. Anyway, he showed me the song and he said," – speaking through his nose – "'What do think it's about, George? Must be about some old chick.' Like he didn't know. 'I must've made up some rubbish to save the tune.' It was a pretty good tune, from what I can remember. But it was clearly about you, and he was sitting there like he hadn't a clue, and he'd only written the thing."
Paul bites his fingernails, hands shaking. "Was he, joking or…?"
"Must've been."
"Of course, I –"
"I mean, how could it be possible that he just doesn't remember? That's mad. Doesn't make any sense."
"Yeah. Of course. Look," Paul says, "thanks for this. I think I'm going to try and sleep a bit before the girls wake up. I'll talk to you again soon, alright?"
"Alright."
"And George?" He licks his lips, suddenly thirsty. "Were you, not going to tell me?"
Static on the other end. The dim light of the lamp outside the front window faintly traces the first design he did for the Sgt. Pepper drum and he remembers the afternoon he and John spent looking for a place to hang it: how the sun fell through the windows in the parlour, catching motes and washing John's back, outlining him in red.
Paul thumbs a bit of dust off the edge of the phone table and bites his nail.
"I was going to," George says. He sounds subdued, apologetic almost. Paul wishes he would be cruel again. "I was, you know. Eventually."
Paul swallows with an audible click and puts down the receiver, keeping his hand folded over it. San Francisco, California – who does he know that knows about things in California? He flips the phone book to A and dials.
"Hello?" says Peter. "Who is this?"
"Peter," says Paul, tapping his foot. "It's me."
"Paul, what a surprise! It's so good of you to call, Betsy and I –"
"Peter, do you mind if I ask you something a bit out of the ordinary?"
"Er, no, I don't mind. What is it?"
"I know this," – he considers – "this girl. She and her boyfriend had a bit of a bad breakup, and we just got this letter from some place called the New Life Temple in San Francisco telling us that she's had him erased from her memory. Do you know what this is about?"
"Oh, they're just another one of these groups. There's millions of them around here. Come to us, we'll change your life – that sort of thing. Led by a Dr Henry Monk, I believe. A psychoanalyst."
"So, it's just a spiritual, psychological thing, like she's not supposed to think about him anymore, or…?"
"No, Paul," Peter sighs. "I'm afraid it's quite real. I know it's a bit way-out."
Paul chews the cord. "It's way-out, alright."
Over the years, John has had many way-out ideas, but fucking off to California and having his memory wiped is certainly a novel one, even for him. It would be a bad enough thing to attempt, to put yourself in the hands of some hack and let him do whatever nonsense, and worse still to do successfully. Never mind that Paul’s still not sure how it’s physically possible.
"I couldn't quite believe it at first myself, but it's true. I don't know how they did it. They've figured out some way to erase specific things – people or events or whatever – from the memory. Father was telling me about an experimental clinic in Basel, I think, where they do the same procedure. That was before, you know…"
"Yeah," says Paul. "Wow."
"I know."
"That's – wow! So, she doesn't remember him at all? Not even if she saw him? If she talked to him? She wouldn't have a clue who he is?"
"That's how it works, yes."
"Fuck."
"Yeah," says Peter, and laughs a little. "Are you alright, Paul?"
The full weight of what that means hits him between the eyes. John does not know him. If he saw him tomorrow, his eyes would slide right over him like they would any other stranger in the world. Twelve years of friendship gone.
"Paul?"
"I'm alright, yeah," Paul massages his temples. "Do you, what were you saying earlier? The doctor told you about a clinic that does the procedure?"
“Right, yeah. They're called Lacuna. Father used to work with one of the physicians there at the Middlesex Hospital."
Paul opens to the back of his phone book and writes, Lacuna. "Do you know much about the procedure?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like, is there any risk of brain damage, or something like that?"
"Brain damage? No, I don't think so. It's not much worse than a night of hard drinking, I believe."
Paul pulls the cord taut. "What if you erase someone you've known for a very long time? Like a father? Or brother? Would there be damage?"
"Would there be damage? It would make sense – if you erase more stuff, there's more risk of damage. I think you'd still be able to hold a pen at the end of it, but I really don't know, Paul. I mean, erasing a father – I should imagine that'd have some, consequences."
"Alright, okay," he scribbles down a few more things. "Thanks for that, Peter."
"Paul, you aren't thinking of …?"
"Oh, no, no. It's just about my friend you see, we've all been a bit worried about her. You've been a great help. Thanks. We'll talk again soon, alright?"
Paul puts down the receiver and rereads the word: Lacuna.
When Linda comes downstairs in the morning, she finds Paul in the kitchen cooking breakfast and eyes him dubiously. "Someone's up early," she says. Upstairs, the shower starts.
"Wanted to get the jump on you," he says and offers her a cup of coffee. She sips it, smacks her lips, and smiles thinly.
"You've put salt instead of sugar in this."
Paul stills momentarily, then carries on. "It's one of my practical jokes. I'm very spontaneous, you know."
She lifts the cup sitting by him on the counter and drinks from it. "There's also salt in this." Paul is about to offer another excuse, but she cuts him off. "It's fine to be tired Paul, really, what I don't understand is why. Why didn't you sleep last night?"
He gives her a nervy smile. "Pretty serious questions for so early in the morning."
Linda pulls out a chair, sits, waits for him to answer. He relents; turns off the stove and sits down beside her. She arches an eyebrow, well?
He cups his elbows and takes a deep breath. "Have you heard of this thing called Lacuna?" Linda blinks "They're an experimental clinic in Basel, Switzerland, and they do this procedure where they can erase the existence of certain people from your brain. Just poof! Gone. So, Heather's midterm break is coming up in a week, and I thought –"
"Hold on, hold on!" Linda waves her hands. "Where the hell is this coming from? Who told you about this? And who do you want to erase?"
Paul picks at the edge of the placemat.
"Paul," she touches his arm. "Who do you want to erase?" He shrugs. Doesn't look her in the eye. Eventually, she gets it.
"John?" she says, incredulous. "You can't be serious. Paul? How's this going to –"
"It'll be fine," he cuts in. "Our lawyers talk more than we do these days, anyway."
She breathes in, out, and leans forward. "How are we going to explain to the media," she says slowly, the tone she reserves for speaking to Heather when's she angry but composed enough to keep her voice low, "that you don't know the man who you wrote the biggest songs of this century with? That you spent years touring with, living with?"
"Well, John's already done it." And he shrugs again, twines his legs together to keep them from shaking. "Might as well do it too, you know?"
"Oh, both of you! That's just great!" She leans back her head and puts her face in her hands. "People are going to think you've gone crazy. You can't be serious Paul."
"Why not?" he says, aiming for exasperated but falling into petulant, and his voice cracks, horribly. A terrible pressure in his sinuses. He can feel his eyes burning, Linda's face softening in his periphery, and averts his gaze to the kitchen table.
"He erased me first." Breathing shallowly, Paul bites his lip. "He broke up the Beatles. If it all means so little to him, why should I hold on to it, like some--?"
He jerks away from the table, but Linda catches him before he can, catches hold of him and folds him into her body. Her lips are in his hair, thumb stroking over the ball of his shoulder. "Oh, Paul," she breaths, barely a sound, and kisses the top of his head. He only cries more, holds her tighter. Her hair falls over his face and he closes his eyes and thinks of how it smells, how soft it feels on his skin. He tells her everything – what Richie said, what George said, the girls outside the gate, and Linda keeps murmuring, "Paul, Paul," like she's worried he might cry so hard that he forgets his name.
By the time Heather comes downstairs, he has composed himself enough to sit and smile at her while Linda puts on her shoes and retrieves the car keys. She comes into the kitchen and kisses Paul as Heather eats her eggs. "Will you take care of the plane tickets?" Linda asks lowly, packing Heather's lunch.
Paul blinks at her as if in a stupor. Every part of him cries out against this endeavour. Experimental clinics, strange medical procedures – this is simply not what he does. He’s hardly even had a chance to think about this. But wouldn’t it be nice, finally, to have some peace inside of his head? To go one full week without thinking of him. Hasn’t he spent enough nights asking the bottom of a bottle what became of all of John's love and respect?
He nods.
Tell us about this rehab you and Yoko went to.
What about it?The lifetime rehabilitation idea. There's a lot of scepticism about it.
But what else is there? You can't go for the programs they have at the NHS because, first of all, 'H', it's a crime. It's illegal. You're scared out of your mind that they'll put you in jail. Then there's the thing that half the folks there have no intention whatsoever of actually kicking the habit in the first place. They're only there because the smack isn't giving the same hit that it used to. They just want to go off it to lower tolerance or whatever and then they'll get right back on it.You see, the thing with heroin is: the first time you take it, it'll take you weeks and weeks to get a habit. But if you've had a habit once, you could go forever without touching the stuff and then be hooked again [John snaps his fingers] like that, because it does change you in some fundamental way. It's not enough to just detox or whatever. We quit cold turkey, but we're still addicts in some essential way. Chemically, cellularly, I don't know. It changes you fundamentally and you can't just quit and cover it up and pretend it doesn't exist. You can't tie a bandage around your arm if you've got a broken bone and hope it'll fix itself. If you have a pain like that – any pain – you have to get at it, get at the source of it, and take it out.