The Arch of Love ~ Paul McCartney

33. Good enough

Notting Hill, 4 September '67, 8:15 PM

I couldn't deny him. That was the bottom line. I couldn't deny Paul, because that meant denying myself something that made me happy. I wasn't happy when we were sleeping together, but when I cut him out of my life, I was devastated.

Knocking on my door and demanding answers was a good thing to do, but bringing that letter was worthy of a Nobel price. Because he had gotten what he came for. Me.

I found myself falling back into old patters. I had tried so hard to fight it, but in the end I had to give in. Because he had been right. I wanted him, now. Present time. He had come in the morning, but he had stayed the night. We had spent day and night rediscovering each other, laughing and joking, falling back into the easy way it had always been. We were complicated and confusing together, but we were also simple. And we had great sex.

Fran came back in the afternoon, but for once she held her tongue. She knew I hadn't been happy when I cut out Paul from my life. She knew that was the hardest thing I had ever done and that I had had doubts whether it was even the right thing to do. No, I knew that morally it was, it just wasn't the right thing for me.

And thus my best friend kept quiet and let me enjoy having him back. Even if it was just for one day and one night.

Paul left in the morning of the 27th to travel to Wales with the rest of the band, apparently to join some meditation course by an Indian guy. He had tried to explain it to me, but it just didn't strike me as something I would necessarily enjoy.

That night, however, he had called me up, his voice thick with emotion, to say that Brian Epstein, their manager, the man who had made it all happen for the Beatles, had passed away. He had been found by his maid in his house in Belgravia, just on the other side of Hyde Park from me.

'He had been alone and died. He died alone, Arch,' Paul had said with a pain stricken voice.

'It's not your fault,' I had answered him, because it wasn't. 'You couldn't have done anything.'

'I could!' he had protested. 'I could've been there for him. I live the closest of all of us. I should've been there.' He was eating himself up about it and there wasn't much I could do over the phone. Paul had realised the same and he had knocked on my door the afternoon after, having travelled straight from Wales, back to me.

He had stayed that night, curled up next to me in my bed. He didn't sleep much and neither did I. I watched the moonlight shining through the curtains that I hadn't bothered closing, until I suddenly felt him shift next to me. I looked at him and saw him staring back.

'Archie,' he whispered and he reached out to me. It was the first thing he had said all night and the last thing he would say that night. He held me close, but I knew it was more for him than for me, so I let him.

He left in the morning, with the promise to call me the day after. And he did, because it had been a year since we met in Los Angeles. A year since our story started again; chapter two. Though I had tried to finish the story in May, it had been only the end of a chapter and here we were, writing chapter three.

Only after that fifth day, the 30th, did Fran finally talk. She was waiting for me in the living room after I finished my call with Paul, a cup of tea in her hand and a steaming mug with more tea waiting for me on the table.

She let me sit down and take a sip of the tea, before she opened her mouth. 'You're back with Paul?' she asked, more rhetorically than not. She had seen him, talked to him. She knew she was right.

I swallowed. 'Yes,' I answered, not meeting her eyes.

'Are you good enough for him, Archie?' she asked.