Carnival of Light || Paul McCartney/Beatles

37. Thisbe & Pyramus (Paul)

Carnival of Light

37.

Paul pulled onto the M25 toward Weybridge, the Mini's engine giving a pathetic little whine when he pushed the clutch too hard. He felt a stab of resentment that Neil hadn't been able to get his Aston Martin air ferried back to England from Spain, so now some Spanish bloke was driving his car up through France.

He was also irate that his brother hadn't managed to get his arse down to London with Martha yet.

Also, Paul was meant to be arriving home from Kenya to his freshly painted piano, but Dudley hadn't finished it yet, so now he had no bloody piano.

Not to mention, George Martin turned up on his doorstep that morning to stand over him until he wrote the theme for The Family Way, treating Paul like a naughty schoolboy who'd been skiving off. It took about five minutes on the guitar, and another five minutes of playing it through again so George could write it down.

There was also the looming, horrible, hard to swallow fact that Jane had thrown him over in Kenya, and Paul was now single. Properly single. No girlfriend to speak of, secret or otherwise.

It was done with Jane. Finished, as she'd put it, and Paul may have cried about it once or twice or more (much more) in the days since.

It was fucking painful and Paul already missed her. Even when she was far away, which was most of the time, Jane had been a constant and a comfort throughout the insanity of the past three years, which felt more like three-hundred years to Paul, and he was well and truly gutted that she wasn't there to tether him to the earth anymore.

Her mother and sister came round to collect her things from Cavendish the day before. Paul hadn't even finished unpacking from his holiday, but Jane and her family were keen to untangle her from his life as soon as possible. That untangling was painful too, and it was only going to get more painful once it became public.

The great irony was that Paul had been see-sawing over ending things with Jane for ages but hadn't been able to find the bollocks to do it. He'd gotten as far as deciding to wait until she went back to Bristol, hoping the distance would have made it easier on both of them, but before that could happen Beatrix went off the bloody rails.

Paul had more or less gotten down on his knees to tell Beatrix he loved her only for her to kick him out of her fucking house. He'd jumped on an air ferry to France with his car the next day and spent a week alone, driving through the French countryside in disguise, contemplating his life and his art and his fame and what it all meant.

After being ignored by everyone he came into contact with for a week and even being rejected from a nightclub, Paul decided being famous wasn't so bad after all, and neither was being a Beatle. There were some perks to the job so long as he was in control of the job.

Mal joined Paul in Bordeaux, and they travelled down to Spain to see John, who'd already gone back to England, so an impulsive safari to Kenya had been arranged to finish off the holiday.

Jane met him there. They hadn't seen each other in weeks, and ending it with her now felt like a pointless and exhausting exercise. They had one brilliant day together in Kenya, reconnecting and remembering all the things they liked about each other. Then it was time to have the big talk about what would happen when she came back from America, and it turned into the big ongoing argument that superseded all of their other ongoing arguments.

Paul wanted her to promise she wouldn't go back to Bristol or do a show that meant she was never home. Jane said her career was important to her. Paul said being together was important too. Jane said if that was true he would have made time for her in London rather than going out every night.