Carnival of Light || Paul McCartney/Beatles

01. Robert Fraser's Flat on Mount Street

Carnival of Light

01.

February 1966

I didn't notice Paul across the room when I arrived at Robert Fraser's flat on Mount Street, but later he would tell me he saw me the moment I walked in. He was full of charming little declarations like that, though they were usually reserved for girls he wanted to get into bed or get out of trouble with. Our entanglement became a great deal more complicated than that.

Fraser was an art dealer and a kind of kingmaker among London's swinging society. His influence was infinite. Andy Warhol listened to him. David Hockney listened to him. Soon the Beatles would start listening to him. He was a touchstone of the counterculture, but he was also part of the same club as my boyfriend Matthew— the aristocratic Eton boys with heaps of old money at their disposal club.

Matthew and I had just returned to London after six months of traveling while I tried (and failed) to finish my first novel. Now we were getting resettled in London, and Fraser was inviting us into a new kind of club — the elite swinging kind.

I had my first taste in early February of 1966 at a party at Fraser's flat, which would become a kind of salon for London's most influential artists and minds. I remember Dizzy Gillespie's latest record played on the stereo as a young gallery assistant (Chris-something) took our coats. We had just come from a formal dinner and were outrageously overdressed, Matthew in a tuxedo and bow tie, his short blonde hair slicked to the side, and me in opera-length gloves and an evening gown. I felt ludicrous among the fashionably-dressed people smoking pot and chatting easily.

"And this lovely creature must be your fiancée Beatrix," Fraser smiled at me.

He was tall and very thin, charismatic with a secretive twinkle in his eye—you wouldn't have known he was a junkie looking at him, but none of us knew that yet.

"Not quite fiancée," Matthew beamed at me. "Not yet, at least."

Fraser smirked at me, sly as a fox. "I hope you don't keep him waiting too long, Lady Beatrix."

"Just Beatrix, please," I said graciously.

"Beatrix is a writer," Matthew said proudly. "She's working on her first novel."

"Well, then you should meet Miles," Fraser waved across the room, and a young man with a flop of blonde hair and horn-rimmed glasses reluctantly stood from the couch. "Miles owns the most fantastic bookshop in London. He knows everyone," Fraser explained.

I pressed my lips together, trying to hide my frustration as Matthew was carted off for a drink and Eton-Boys-Chat while I was left to be humored by a bookshop owner.

I begged a cigarette off the gallery assistant (Chris something) as Miles made his way over to me.

"Hello," he offered his hand politely.

"You don't have to entertain me," I reassured him. "You can go back to your friends."

"Oh," Miles's eyebrows rose. Now he looked embarrassed. "I'm sure Robert didn't mean to..."

"It's fine," I insisted, taking a drag off my cigarette.

Miles frowned at me, lingering like he thought he had to fix something.

"Does your bookshop specialize in anything in particular?" I asked, hoping to fill the awkward silence, and he perked up at that.

"We stock and import anything we think is interesting or progressive," he explained eagerly. "And we're going to open a gallery downstairs for events and exhibitions. Happenings, you know?"