The Arch of Love ~ Paul McCartney

17. Old eden

Liverpool, 6 May '67, 9:20 AM

With my mind in shambles, I was saved by my older sister, Trudie. After speaking with her on the phone, she insisted I would drive up and spend the weekend in Liverpool. To be honest, with everything messing up in London right now, it sounded like the only sane thing I could do. A weekend in Liverpool sounded perfect.

So on Friday afternoon, after my early morning shift, I got into the little car Fran and I shared with each other and drove the four hours to Liverpool. I had the windows open to let in the spring air, which for the first time this year felt somewhat warm. It was a welcome change from the frosty nights we had just a few days ago. Welp, it was England and no one ever moved to England for the weather, did they now?

The radio was filling up my mind with music and it became a game to turn the volume down as soon as the BBC dared to play a Beatles song. Unfortunately for me, that was almost every other song. But no, I didn't want to hear anything about the Beatles this weekend. I was fleeing to Liverpool to forget about the Beatles, now that was something.

It was late, cold and wet by the time I entered the narrow street I grew up in. But I also felt calm. I had left all my worries on the road from London, flung them straight out of the window. There were no Beatles here. I was home.

After a hot meal and a cuppa tea made by Ma, I went up to my old bedroom. It was just how I had left it five years ago, when I had moved down to London to start my job at St. Mary's hospital. There were memories in every corner; splattered on the wallpaper, tucked in with the books on the bookshelf, living in the little dollhouse now ready to be given to Trudie's daughter as a birthday-present. It was my childhood bedroom, the room I had shared with all my sisters, the room which had been my safe place for the first twenty years of my life.

With two adults and six children in a small house in Speke, sharing a room was a given in the Murray household. My parents obviously got a bedroom. Trudie and Jeanie, eleven and nine years older than me, used to share one, with Eileen and Marty, born two years after that, to share the last room.

That is, until Maggie and I came along, the two girls born unplanned in wartime. Maggie and I were tugged in with the twins, until Trudie, and two years later, Jeanie started boarding. We got their room, until one by one all the girls left for a school up North, only to return for holidays.

I was the only girl to come back after boarding school and thus had decorated the bedroom to my liking. There were a couple of posters of Elvis who had promised to marry me, even if it was just in my dreams. There were also a lot of pictures; of me and my friends from school, me and Fran, my family, me, Jackie and Brenda and even a picture of me and Paul. It was now my bedroom, more than anyone else.

Nothing cleared your mind more than sleeping in your childhood bed, slightly shorter and much more narrow than I had in London, but a very safe place nonetheless. As soon as I lay down and closed my eyes, sleep took over. A dreamless sleep without any worries came over me. Many hours later I woke up with a thoughtless mind.

It wasn't for long, unfortunately. Though, maybe it was for the better. After all, I came up to Liverpool to figure out what to do about Paul. Trudie had just the solution. Even though she had invited me to Liverpool for the weekend, she had other plans; sewing club with her friends, all of whom where mothers.

I had more fun than I would ever admit to anyone. Going to a sewing club wasn't exactly what people expected a single twenty-four-year old girl to do. At least, not back in London they didn't. But no, it was actually really soothing to fix the holes in Tommy's trousers and sew nametags into little Mary's school uniforms.

And Trudie made sure I was talking, even if it was in a room full of women I had never met. 'So, how is it going with your love life, Archie? You know, Ma's worried you'll end up alone?' she asked me as if she were talking about the weather.