Chapter Text
With a nervous sigh, Paul shut the taxi door behind him and buttoned up his long black tweed coat. The outside world greeted him with an icy wind; it was past two in the morning, and the bitter autumn chill was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. A fine drizzle made him bury his face in the high collar of his coat and quicken his pace down the street.
In the middle of the night, Soho exuded the stillness of a sleeping giant; the tarmac reflected the yellowish glow of the streetlamps, their light stretching and warping as raindrops struck the ground. Even at such a late hour, Paul could make out the occasional dark figure darting towards the shelter of a building or hurrying on towards its destination.
Secretly, he had grown rather fond of walking through the city in the middle of the night. He adored the peace of the empty streets, the icy air, and the absolute silence, broken only by the distant, shrill echo of some jazz club.
As he turned the corner into the narrow brick passageway, the smell of damp and rancid oil replaced the clean air of the main road. Finally, Paul came to an abrupt halt and softened his footsteps. This was one of those rare scenes he preferred to admire from a respectful distance, safely hidden in the comfort of anonymity.
With his back to him stood John Lennon, dressed in paint-stained denim trousers and a matching jacket, completely absorbed in his mural. He had climbed onto a couple of old rubbish bins and was balancing on tiptoe on one foot, stretching his arm as far as it would go to reach the highest part of the composition with his brush.
It wasn't the first time he had painted in that dreadful little alley, nor would it be the last. Since Paul had discovered him, the council had already painted over three of his murals on that same crumbling brick wall, each one bolder and more provocative than the last.
This time, John was working tirelessly on what could only be described as a satirical allegory of Saturn Devouring His Son. The grotesque, elongated figure was instead Education Minister Margaret Thatcher, from whose jaws an unpleasant milky liquid dripped. She held a large glass milk bottle in her hands, drinking from it greedily while a group of primary-school children lay at her feet, their hands raised and expressions of anguish etched across their faces. The work was still unfinished, but its brutality was unmistakable, even as the rain stubbornly blurred the fresh paint and bled the colours into one another.
Taking shelter against the wall —which reeked of rubbish and urine, the price one had to pay for witnessing John's genius firsthand— Paul rummaged through the pockets of his coat until he found his metal lighter and cigarette case. The sharp click of the flame made John stop dead in the middle of a stroke.
With his shoulders tense, as though he had known who it was even before turning around, he slowly lowered his arm, the brush dripping black pigment onto his boot. He took a few seconds to let out the breath he had been holding before turning his head towards the darkness.
“You again?” he asked with a bitter smile. His voice, though low, echoed through the deserted alley. “Well, well, McCartney. Three weeks without coming round to harass me. I was beginning to miss you.” He frowned. “And what’s this, turning up at this hour? Has that packed schedule of yours as an art dealer finally left you no time for a bit of recreation?”
Paul tilted his head slightly to exhale his smoke, remaining calm and utterly unfazed by the provocation.
“I had an event in Mayfair until a little while ago. An auction.” He folded his arms, resting his elbow against the back of his hand to hold his cigarette. “Unlike you, I actually have a job and important things to do with my evenings.”
John gave an amused snort. He jumped down from the rubbish bin with an easy agility, making the battered metal ring, then sauntered towards him with deliberate leisure. He stopped half a metre away from Paul, the smell of rain and turpentine contrasting with the sandalwood scent of Floris No. 89.
“Hello, Paul.”
Without a word, Paul took his cigarette case from his jacket pocket and held it out to him with a weary gesture. John gave him a mischievous smile and held his gaze as he took a cigarette from the case, leaning closer to catch the flame.
From where he stood, Paul watched the scene with a mixture of fascination and amusement: the damp strands of hair clinging to John's forehead and trailing down his neck, his face illuminated by the lighter's flame, his pink lips wrapped around the cigarette, and the almost childish relief with which he closed his eyes after taking his first drag.
John exhaled contentedly, letting his head fall back against the brick wall, his eyes still closed.
“God, I hate this fancy rubbish you always buy.” He pulled a face of disgust, inspecting the Benson & Hedges lettering embossed just beneath the filter. “Tastes sweet... dead mild. Doesn't scratch your throat like proper tobacco.”
“What a remarkable amount of ignorance in a single remark,” Paul scolded, rolling his eyes and returning to his folded-arm stance as he took a deep drag from his own cigarette. “It's Virginia tobacco, properly cured, John. Not the cheap, unfiltered rubbish you smoke. At least this doesn't leave you smelling like a chimney.”
“Oh, bollocks. This stuff doesn't even take the edge off, and I'll bet it costs a bloody fortune.”
“It costs what it costs,” Paul muttered irritably. “You could have turned it down and smoked one of your Woodbines.”
“Are you mad? I don't turn down anything that's free.”
John rested his shoulder against the damp wall, watching the rain fall diagonally, while Paul studied the mural with narrowed eyes. They smoked in silence for a while until Paul eventually flicked his spent cigarette into the side of the alley. He took another cigarette from the case and lit it absent-mindedly, never taking his eyes off the work in progress.
Absorbed in thought, more to himself than to John, he murmured:
“The composition has a rather strange angle from here.”
John snorted, rolling his eyes as he blew a thick cloud of smoke through his nose.
“Here we go again.”
Paul ignored him, keeping his eyes on the mural.
“It's a real shame the uneven texture of the bricks distorts the proportions so badly. The wall bulges exactly where Thatcher's elbow is, so the eye is immediately drawn towards it.” He paused to take a drag. “It's a shame, because ideally the viewer should notice her face first... then the milk, then the children. It completely disrupts the experience.”
“Maybe that's because paintings are meant to be looked at from the front, not from the side, Mr Giorgio Vasari.”
“And therein lies the problem.” Paul raised his index finger, an irritating habit he had picked up during his first months at university. “No one is going to stop to admire your mural head-on, John. Everyone who comes through this alley is on their way somewhere else. You'd be lucky if anyone even noticed it in the first place.”
There it was again: the exact point in the lecture when John would grumble and look away, his hands buried in his jacket pockets and his cigarette clamped between his teeth.
Paul continued, relentless:
“It's an awful waste for work of this calibre to be condemned to disappear. The rain is already taking its toll on our Education Minister's right eye.”
He gave John a mocking smile, which, naturally, his companion did not return.
“You know, John, I don't think this is your best work. Using Saturn to condemn a politician hardly strikes me as particularly original. And the whole Thatcher-and-school-milk business? That's been done to death already... But your technical skill is undeniable, and your ability to convey discomfort through the characters' expressions makes the message —banal as it may be— just as striking.”
John took a few steps towards Paul, dragging his shoulder along the wall until he stopped only inches away from him. Hunched over, one leg crossed over the other, he took the cigarette from his lips and blew a thick cloud of smoke straight into Paul's face. Paul let out a small sound of protest and had to blink repeatedly to ease the sting in his eyes.
“You're awfully chatty tonight, McCartney. Don't you ever get tired of listening to yourself?”
“My critique must have been sublime if that's all you've got to say.” Paul smiled at him through his watering eyes. “You've run out of arguments.”
“I've got plenty of arguments,” John replied, resting his head against the brick as several strands of brown hair fell across his cheek. “The difference is, I know when to admit defeat...” He paused. “We've had this conversation before, Paul. My position hasn't changed.”
“What a waste,” Paul protested. “If only you'd paint properly, on walls that were prepared for your work and with the proper materials...”
“Then my art would lose its original purpose,” John interrupted, tossing his cigarette away from them. “And what exactly do you mean by prepared walls? You want me to become one of those domesticated muralists who paint on commission, like Diego Rivera? I rather doubt Margaret Thatcher would be thrilled to see her head twisted out of shape over the entrance to Central Point.”
Paul frowned.
“Of course not... I mean that you could paint these same works on large canvases and put on an exhibition. A proper one. I could handle the logistics and find buyers who would give your work the value it deserves. It would be sublime.” Paul stepped closer, and now they were so near he could smell the tobacco on John's breath. “Your murals have nothing to envy in those up-and-coming artists from New York; Warhol and Oldenburg would throw their entire catalogues in the bin for a mind as brilliant as yours.”
John did not answer immediately. He kept his gaze fixed on the streetlamps in the distance, watching the golden light fracture through the curtain of rain. He ran a rough, paint-stained blue hand through his hair —greasy, unkempt, and hanging to his shoulders. The gesture left a streak of fresh paint clinging to one of the strands, and Paul had to suppress the neurotic urge to reach out and wipe it away.
Finally, he looked back at Paul; the streetlights cast an intense gleam in his brown eyes.
“You still don't understand, do you, Paul?” His voice sounded rough from the cold. “If there's one thing I avoid at all costs, it's letting my art become what those bloody clowns in New York are doing. Gallery art, museum art, art that's sold...” He shook his head. “It's dead. Born dead.”
John took the cigarette from Paul's hand, sending a faint shiver through him at the sudden brush of their skin. He took a long drag and turned his head towards the alley to exhale, revealing his prominent profile to Paul's astonished gaze.
“You think I'm throwing my talent away just because some council bloke is going to come along in three days and paint over this. You think the work dies there... but you're wrong. This is the purest, most alive form of art there is.”
Paul stared at him for a long while, his lips pressed tightly together. Finally, he closed his eyes and let his head fall against the wall in a gesture of utter resignation. It was impossible; John was infuriatingly stubborn. Everything he had in genius, he had in obstinacy as well... And stupidity.
How was it possible for someone with such artistic sensitivity to live in such utter poverty?
Paul had not pried too deeply into his private life, but he knew enough about his circumstances. John lived the bohemian life in its rawest form: he didn't have a penny to his name. Every night he slept somewhere different, sometimes at the home of an old friend from art school, sometimes in a flat shared with three other artists... On one occasion, Paul had even found him sleeping off a drunken stupor in St James's Park. He ate whatever acquaintances of his who worked in the food trade could spare for him, and whatever little money he managed to scrape together from odd jobs, such as walking dogs and the like, he spent immediately on alcohol, cigarettes, and God knew what other vices.
In a way, Paul admired his determination. No matter how badly life treated him, John's position never changed: his art was not negotiable. He rejected everything the artistic elite represented with a visceral, almost irrational disgust, and stubbornly refused to become part of it. For him, painting in the street was what gave his art its drive, what gave it meaning. It might have been a rather moving philosophy, if it weren't for the fact that his works never lasted more than a week.
For some reason, Paul seemed to be the only one who had a problem with that, because John couldn't give a damn. In fact, he revelled in watching his murals disappear. As though censorship itself were an immediate confirmation of their provocative value. It fed his ego.
“Right,” John finally said, breaking the thick silence that had settled between them. He looked thoroughly pleased with himself, knowing he had had the last word. “So, you gonna tell me what happened over the last three weeks? You didn't come round once. I thought you'd finally got tired of pestering me.”
Paul rolled his eyes. He snatched the cigarette from him, took one last drag, and tossed it aside.
“I was busy, John,” he explained. “Meetings to attend, exhibitions to curate, catalogues to write... Unlike you, I actually put my passion for art to practical use.”
John let out a bitter laugh, revealing a row of straight, yellowing teeth from years of smoking. Despite his dishevelled appearance, John was a reasonably handsome man, with sharp, masculine features. The streetlamp cast dark shadows across his long, aquiline nose, giving his face a mysterious, almost solemn quality.
“Course. If my family had the money yours does, I'd be the most sought-after art dealer in Britain too.”
“And having the most sought-after art dealer in Britain backing you doesn't give you a clue as to what you ought to be doing with your life, instead of lazing about and defacing alleyways?”
John looked at him, somewhere between disbelief and amusement, raising his thick eyebrows and flashing a crooked half-smile.
“Seriously, Paul? We just had this conversation.”
“And I have no intention of having it again.”
Paul pushed himself away from the wall, straightening the cuffs and lapels of the designer suit he wore beneath his raincoat. He ran a hand through his hair where it had become dishevelled, his expression one of studied indifference.
“In fact, the reason I went so long without looking for you was because I realised there was no point in carrying on trying to persuade you.”
John raised an eyebrow, genuine interest flickering in his eyes.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes.”
John smiled, amused.
“So what brought you back, then?”
“Nothing. I hadn't planned on us ending up arguing.” He gave him a soft, challenging smile. “Actually, I came to invite you somewhere.”
But the curiosity vanished from John's face at once.
“Well, that's bloody tempting.”
Paul continued without flinching.
“I have a table for two booked tomorrow at eight at the Criterion. I'd like you to come.”
“Two men on a date, McCartney? How scandalous.”
Paul frowned irritably.
“Don't be ridiculous. Obviously, this isn't some charitable gesture on my part. I have a proposition to make.”
John did not answer. He narrowed his eyes and began walking back towards his mural.
“Oi, what do you think you're doing?” Paul protested, grabbing his jacket. “We're talking!”
John turned around again, looking exasperated.
“No, Paul. You're talking. You and your bloody messiah complex, playing saviour to poor independent artists. How many times do I have to tell you I'm not interested in working with you?”
“This is different... I promise, John. Trust me.”
Paul thought he had caught a small flicker of doubt in his eyes and had to force himself not to smile.
“Look, all you have to do is show up... Have a wash, put on the smartest shirt you've got, and come to dinner with me at eight. No strings attached. If you come and decide to tell me to bugger off even after you've heard what I have to say, at least you'll have had a meal at one of London's most iconic restaurants.”
John pursed his lips, irritated. But that look did not fool Paul for a second: he was tempted.
“And if I end up turning down your... proposal, will you stop bothering me?”
“Yes,” Paul replied, and he meant it. “I promise, John. You won't see me round these alleys again.”
John let out a little laugh, looking Paul up and down with scepticism.
“I'm not going to the Criterion, McCartney.”
“What?” Paul blinked. “For God's sake, John, it's not—”
“If you're going to buy me dinner, it'll have to be somewhere I choose.”
Oh.
Paul weighed his options. Although he felt considerably more relieved by this last clarification, he rather doubted that any place John might suggest would come anywhere near his standards.
Whatever, he thought, as long as he actually bothers to show up.
“Er... all right. Where did you have in mind?”
“For starters, nowhere fancy.” John folded his arms. “Those posh restaurants of yours charge you an arm and a leg for putting three bloody peas on a plate... You leave still starving. And I've got no interest in having a load of rich bastards staring at me like I'm some sort of circus freak.”
“All right, John, just tell me wh—”
“There's one I really like, two streets from here,” John continued cheerfully. “Used to go there with my mates from art school in my first year, back when my parents still gave me an allowance. Bernie’s Cafe. Know it?”
Of course he knew it. It was one of those cheap cafés frequented by London's bohemian crowd —serving greasy breakfasts and miserable little meals. Just imagining the place, young musicians and artists laughing and talking at the tops of their voices, choking clouds of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, and the smell of low-quality greasy food— sent a shiver down Paul's spine. Once again, he had to suppress his better judgement and convince himself that the sacrifice would be worthwhile once John agreed to work with him.
“Yes, I know the place.” He tried to hide the distaste in his voice, but the smug smile on John's lips told him he had not succeeded. “Fine. Eight o'clock, then.”
“All right, McCartney. Whatever you say.”
“See you tomorrow, then?”
John narrowed his eyes, but he was smiling.
“We'll see.” He turned back towards the inside of the alley to carry on with his Saturn.
Paul chose to ignore the sarcasm in his voice. With renewed hope, he turned around and strode firmly towards the main road. The sharp click of his loafers against the wet tarmac echoed through the deserted street.
Fortunately, a black taxi was moving slowly through the darkness just as Paul turned the corner. He raised a hand and the vehicle pulled up beside the kerb with a faint squeal of brakes. Quietly wishing the driver goodnight, he slid into the worn leather back seat and gave him the address of his luxurious flat in Mayfair.
Beyond the window, the city's yellow lights passed in a blurred sequence. Paul watched the raindrops slide down the glass while absent-mindedly turning the lighter in his pocket, a satisfied smile on his face. He knew John: his pride, his stubborn, defensive attitude, and his rejection of high society. But beneath all that moralising about living, pure art, John was an egotist hungry for attention. He longed to be heard.
John would come to that dinner; Paul was convinced of it. Even if he did it purely out of spite, simply to make Paul waste his money and have the pleasure of insulting and mocking him.
And once he had him sitting there, far from the cold of the night and the stench of that desolate alley, the real conversation would begin.