Carnival of Light || Paul McCartney/Beatles

16. Paul Didn't Come For The Picassos

Carnival of Light

16.

I walked home from St John's Wood, which took about an hour, and rang Poppy when I got there to let her know I wasn't feeling well and couldn't come out. I didn't feel bad, but I didn't know if I felt good either. I was sort of teetering between the two, and when I allowed myself to think about kissing Paul in too much detail — the way he felt, the way he'd looked at me — that teetering turned into wildly careening back and forth between heart-pounding excitement and abject terror.

So I walked home in a kind of half-stunned state, and once I'd rung Poppy I sat out in the garden and smoked cigarettes until it got dark, my thoughts a jumble.

I tried to read but I couldn't concentrate. It wasn't even ten o'clock yet, but being awake and wrestling with my thoughts was becoming painful, so I smoked a spliff and went to bed early.

Lying alone in the dark, stoned and not the least bit tired, months' worth of memories and encounters with Paul began ticking across my mind's eye. The first night at Fraser's when he'd grabbed my arse. Almost kissing him in William Burroughs kitchen. Tara's back garden. On a hillside in Staffordshire. Innumerable parties and galleries and London clubs.

I kept coming back to the less than thirty seconds I'd spent kissing him in his front hallway. What his mouth felt like on mine, what it felt like to be pressed up against him. Now I could add those sensations to what he smelled like — cigarettes and pine — what it felt like when he ran his warm hand up my leg or stroked my side with his fingertips, and what his voice sounded like when he murmured in my ear— you look unbelievably sexy in this dress, baby.

I closed my eyes and slipped my hand into my knickers, telling myself that it didn't have to mean anything. After all, I was hardly the first girl on earth to have a wank over Paul McCartney.

***

I didn't end up sleeping. I went down to the study and wrote all night, taking myself to bed around ten o'clock the next morning. I slept for a few hours, and rang Matthew for our daily chat. My voice was hoarse from chain smoking and not sleeping.

"Darling, you sound knackered," Matthew sounded concerned. "Are you alright?" 

"I couldn't get to sleep last night," I explained, lighting a cigarette, hoping it might help my throat.

"Have you thought about ringing the GP?" Matthew asked. "I know you don't like the pills but a prescription might help if you're not sleeping again."

"I was actually writing," I admitted. "It seemed a bit of a shame to sleep when it was going so well."

"I'm so pleased for you, darling," Matthew said warmly. "You're always so happy when you're working loads. It's like someone's switched a lightbulb on inside you, and you positively glow."

"Yes." I agreed, smiling.

That was what it usually felt like when I was in a creative and productive space, a warm glow. But this summer I'd been feeling fucking phosphorescent.

"Tell me about the hunt yesterday." I said. "Did Piers do well, or was he as dreadful as everyone thought?"

I searched for guilt as I spoke to Matthew about his brothers, but I couldn't find a trace of it. He existed in a different universe to the one in which Paul and I kissed. I just moved between them.

***

There was an invitation-only Picasso opening at the Royal Academy of Art a few days later. Robert Fraser rang me up to see if I fancied meeting Picasso's agent and a few art dealers from Paris, and I agreed. I needed to get out of the house, and I had a new Alice Pollock dress that was dying to be worn.