George and Paul were hitting a rough patch.
“I really am trying to just say, ‘Look, lads, the band, you know. Should we try it like this?’ You know,” Paul said.
It was the ultimate bad sign, when he started saying “you know” like a fucking broken record; then he was really panicking. He just kept digging himself deeper and deeper into this hole with George, trying to save face and amend what he was saying but only managing to aggravate Harrison all the more.
“It's funny, though, how it only occurs when we record,” George said sardonically.
“It's like should we play guitar all the way through 'Hey Jude', and I don't think we should,” Paul said, his bossy nature getting the better of him.
“Okay, well, I don't mind. I'll play whatever you want me to play. Or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you, I'll do it.”
Paul shot George a sour look and sat at the piano with more force than necessary. George was just looking morosely at the wall, and I wondered what had happened to the two old friends.
Shit, George had known Paul before me, he’d known him when he was less than a nobody, when he was just a Liverpool lad at the Inny, and had taught him to play a few chords on his guitar. I’d never tell George but I envied him at first, being there at the beginning.
And where did that leave me, in the middle of all this?
Sometimes the tension even reached Paul and I.
“Do you have to bring her?” Paul asked.
“What, are you bloody jealous?” I scoffed, while she was out for a moment.
“Well, none of us bring our birds to the studio,” Paul said.
“I mean, we’ve recorded things together. We work together. We made music together,” I said, trying to justify myself. Honestly I didn’t know why I brought her, maybe to make a point, maybe because Paul had his head stuck up his arse again and was only thinking of work, and I needed someone who would be devoted to me.
“We make music together,” Paul said dangerously.
“What about that Linda you’re dragging along everywhere? Why don’t I tell you to stop bringing her to our events?” I snapped.
“Linda? You’re bringing Linda into this? Linda is not in the studio with us every fucking day!” Paul shouted.
He’d even stop talking to me for days at a time.
She was there, clicking pictures, all blonde and perfect like Paul liked them.
This was evidently his sign of defiance; he wanted to show that the great and powerful McCartney could also bring the girlfriend to the studio.
I winced slightly. All the clicking was making me nervous. I knew she was snapping pictures of me; which photographer didn’t want a piece of Beatle John these days? It made me jumpy, being watched, like the paparazzi had been let into the most private and personal of places, the studio where we recorded.
In this case, the press was Paul’s plus one.
That
“Fuck, why’d you bring the bloody clicking camera?”
“Why’d you bring the bloody whining brat you’ve got there!”
“Shut up, Paul!”
“She’s telling me what to do like she’s superior or some shit!”
was
“Where’s George?”
“Gone.”
“Pissed him off again, have you?”
how
“Right, seems you don’t care anymore.”
I cared, I cared, but he wasn’t paying attention to me. He wasn’t even making an effort to pry me out of my shell of denial, like he used to.
it
“Let’s do one last performance.”
“No, we can’t do that. We’re not ready.”
“Are we ever going to do something with these songs? Another album?”
“Shit, John, I don’t know,” he said sarcastically.
all
“Paul.”
ended.
“John.” His tone was hard.
It was on one of those days, in May of 1969, that we broke up, just like that.
“Right, I’m fucking done.”
“Done?”
My voice was steady, but underneath was pure fear, welling up like a flood, ready to spill out my eyes if it weren’t for my self-control,
“Shit, I can’t stand you anymore. You’re not the same. I’m going home.”
And that was that.
I saw my life replay before my eyes; well, my life with Paul.
The late nights at Mendips.
A little groan escaped from Paul’s throat.
“John—I’ve got to study,” Paul said, staring down at a page with complicated German shit written all over it.
“Don’t be a killjoy, there are much better things to do than study,” I said, but my reasoning didn’t convince his overachieving arse.
“We’ve got to write some songs,” I almost whined, but Paul shook his head absently.
“I’ll fail,” he said.
“Fail school all you want, you’re out of the band,” I said seriously.
Paul turned so quickly he knocked the book closed. He stared and I stared in stony silence, until I let my face slip into a grin, enjoying the shocked expression on his face. I started to laugh at him, doubling over on the bed, as he slowly realized that I’d been messing around.
“Bastard,” Paul said, tackling me, but he didn’t get me to stop laughing until a full minute later, when I was left, panting, pinned on the bed.
Then I noticed. Oh. Paul was on top of me, holding me down. His lips were just above mine, and I had a wild urge to reach up—no, he couldn’t know.
It took every ounce of self-control to gently push him off without ravishing his lips.
Hamburg, where we could barely contain ourselves around each other.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!”
“Shit.”
I disentangled myself from Paul, who either hadn’t heard, or was still in a daze, clinging to my neck. I shook him slightly. “It’s starting,” I hissed.
He blinked at me, and I decided to take matters into my own hands. I pulled him roughly out of the storage closet, hoping no one was outside to see us, and we ran down the backstage hallway out to the stage.
The other three Beatles looked incredibly stupid, onstage and not playing, waiting for us.
“We’re here,” I said weakly.
George shot us a death glare that made me worried, for a moment, that he knew what had happened. I glanced at Paul. Maybe his too-red lips and ruffled hair said too much.
The days I’d stay over at Forthlin Road.
“What do you do for food over here?” I said, pawing through a cabinet, and finding nothing recognizable as edible, just some teabags and canned beans that were probably from before the war.
“Well, I cook,” Paul said, looking at me, amused.
“You cook?”
Now he’d gotten me interested.
“Yes, John. What do you do?”
“Well, I ask Mimi for some brekky. Or I go down to the pub like a normal bloke,” John said.
“You can’t even fend for yourself,” Paul teased, enjoying the increasingly aggravated look I’m sure was on my face.
“I can make sandwiches,” I defended myself.
“Anybody can make sandwiches.”
Paul opened a paper packet from the butcher’s that was lying on the counter, and his expression brightened. “Oh, Dad must’ve gotten some bacon,” he said, smiling.
“Glad he’s away,” I muttered.
“Oi, Lennon! Stop antagonizing me poor father!”
“I’m only letting you win this one ‘cause I’ll starve otherwise,” I said, watching Paul take out a frying pan.
The touring, the mania.
We were collapsed in a fit of giggles by the time we’d escaped.
I suppose it was possibly the least funny situation conceivable, but Brian’s face… priceless. Well, then he’d keeled over and fainted.
“Did you hear ‘im,” Paul choked out, tears running down his face now from the laughter.
“I can’t believe he took us seriously,” I said. “Remember, ‘Paul is what? P-p-p-p-pregnant?’”
“He could barely say the word…”
“Eppy should’ve checked today's date first,” I chuckled. It had been a long time since I’d been checking off days until April first.
Everything that had led up to this point.
The door slammed and I looked around at the deserted studio.
The papers were still scattered, all around, leaving a sort of halo of pages to mark the place where Paul had sat, right here next to me. I let my fingers slide up and down the range of the cool keys of the piano, not playing it but making a slight rattling sound, giving my hands something to do. They were shaking now, and I felt a wave of cold sweat pass down my back.
It wasn’t loud; it wasn’t spectacular. Paul and John and John and Paul hadn’t ended with a bang, a blaze of glory then the bullet. No, he’d just gotten tired. Tired of everything I’d done, of everything I was doing.
“I’m done,” I repeated, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears, as if saying Paul’s last words would somehow invoke him and erase the last ten minutes. No, not the last ten minutes, I needed to erase the last three years.
Shit.
I stood up, and ran out the door, hoping I’d see him outside on the street before he left, not stopping to think if that would really change anything. I pushed the doors out of Abbey Road and I stood there, the wind blowing in a sudden gust, ruffling my hair.
He was gone and I felt something much like despair broil in the pit of my stomach. I wished I’d stayed inside.
I wanted to spite him, make him suffer for having us break up.
“Fuck! Fuck the bloody world, fuck Paul!” I shouted, knocking over furniture, watching the dresser crash and hearing the tinkling of scattered glass and legs collapsing beneath chairs, breaking, snapping, the wood coming apart in splinters, in thick slats that unglued and were reduced to twigs, and the ceramics that stood in neat little rows were dust and powder and little crushed bits that were once pottery, littering the floor and getting caught in the fibers of the carpet, blanketing it in a crust of debris.
“John?”
She came running in, and I was standing, breathless, crouching over every piece of furniture that had once made up our entrance hall; now unrecognizable rubbish.
A small gasp escaped her and I closed my eyes, rubbing my temples.
I craved having someone want me again; I couldn’t bear to be alone. And that’s where your mum came in.