Yeah Yeah Yeah (Beatles/Paul McCartney)

37. Would Meditation Help?

June/July 1967
London

Alice

The girls were perched across the street with their eyes on the taxi as it pulled up in front of the gate. There was a flutter of interest as I climbed out of the backseat, frowning slightly at the marks on my white gloves from the door handle. Usually, I took them off somewhere between the airport and home, but I'd been in such a state of shock that I'd apparently forgotten to do so.

A few girls hopped off the wall and headed across the street to cluster around me. The others sat there staring imperviously as if they couldn't be arsed with me since I'd stolen away their one true love. I wondered which of them had been responsible for carving 'bitch' into the gate the week prior.

"Good trip, innit?" the girl they called Plain Jane asked. She was American but seemed to have fallen in love with British English, which she mostly misused.

I offered her a polite smile. "I'm happy to be home."

That was a bald-faced lie. The truth was that I had been happy when my plane landed several hours prior. I'd taken a few days off to celebrate Paul's birthday and attend the One World broadcast. However, at that moment, I just wanted to get back on a plane to fly somewhere--anywhere--so my only worries would involve mixing martinis properly and avoiding having my arse grabbed.

Plain Jane leaned closer, lowering her voice. "Have you read it?"

Her eyes darted to a copy of Life magazine dangling from another girl's hand. I knew without looking that it was the most recent issue and featured a color photograph of Israeli troops in battle attire. A few pages in was an article entitled "The New Far-Out Beatles," with a black-and-white picture of the boys huddled around a piano at EMI. And a few paragraphs into the article was a quote from the one-and-only Paul McCartney extolling the mind-bending virtues of LSD.

I nodded but didn't say much more as I rummaged through my purse for my keys. I'd been on the verge of a migraine for days, and it had hit me full force around the time the reporter approached me at the airport. My head was throbbing and I felt vaguely ill.

For once, the girls didn't pepper me with questions as I fussed with the gate. Perhaps they correctly intuited that it just wasn't the day to find out what Paul liked to eat for breakfast or what he was doing at that exact moment. My heels echoed through the courtyard as I walked towards the front door listening to the music drift out of the half-open third-floor window.

Paul had his back to the door when I entered, though surely he must've heard the girls chattering, the front door closing, and my conversation with Mrs. Bennington about how my father had called twice in the past half-hour. I leaned against the door frame as he played listlessly on the piano, repeating the same chords until he figured out something in his head.

Finally, he turned around. Even though I'd only been away a week, his hair looked longer and like it could use a wash. His fringe was brushed upwards, allowing the slight wrinkles on his forehead to look more pronounced than usual.

"Have you read it?" he asked quietly.

I nodded. "A reporter at the airport very kindly pointed me towards the article. Until then, I'd been blissfully living my life not knowing that my boyfriend had spilled all his groovy ideas to the papers. LSD, wow, far out, man."

He stilled and frowned slightly. "A reporter? How did he know your flight schedule?"

I shrugged. "No idea. He was from the Daily Mail."

He'd been in his early 20s and had sported a tan suit that looked like it belonged to his dad. Do you have a comment on Mr. McCartney's statement? Have you ever taken LSD, Miss Edwards? How does your father, the prime minister, feel about it? Have you spoken with him? He'd taken a pen from above his ear to jot down the comment he presumed I'd give, which, of course, I did not.