Carnival of Light || Paul McCartney/Beatles

38. A London Knees Up

Carnival of Light

38.

I almost instantly regretted leaving Paul the way I did, but when he told me he'd split with Jane and wanted to make a proper go of it, sounding so confident about what he wanted, I panicked.

Until he'd said that, I'd thought he was freshly reconnected with Jane and I was signing up to become his mistress because I couldn't seem to stay away from him. Now he was asking me to be his girlfriend. Just us.

Just Us sounded like a dream too good to be true. Just Us was all I wanted. But with Paul holding my face in his hands, looking at me so earnestly while he waited for me to answer him, I suddenly had visions of my picture being splashed across the front of newspapers with horrible headlines, my life becoming swallowed up by his and my name forever tied to his no matter what happened between us. It scared the bollocks out of me, just like there'd always been something about how drawn I was to him that frightened me.

I could say yes or no to him, and the consequences of both options left me riddled with indecision, and so I panicked.

But within about thirty seconds of locking the gate, chucking the key back over it, and taking off down the street with the gate birds staring after me, I wished I'd stayed.

Bloody hell. Why didn't I just stay?

***

Tripping with John Lennon had been an experience I wouldn't soon forget. We'd gone to Fraser's flat where I introduced him to Richard Hamilton and William Burroughs, and then to Fraser, who John was reluctant to like but liked him anyway.

I ran into Keith, who could tell I was upset from the way I was hoovering up all the drugs I could get my hands on. He provided me with a tab of acid. I got a second dose off him and went to find John.

About twelve hours later, John and I were sitting across from each other in Brian and Anita's bathtub at Courtfield Road, sharing a joint as we came down and discussed the books we liked and how he wanted his new song Strawberry Fields Forever to sound.

Then we talked about Paul.

Or rather, John talked about Paul.

John had a lot of theories about Paul.

"Paul's got to be loved," John said, his eyes glassy behind his granny glasses. "It's like a compulsion. He has to make people love him whether it's for five minutes on stage making eyes at some bird or needing the fucking music press to call him a genius."

"You think that's why he sleeps with so many women?" I asked.

"Nah," John wrinkled his nose. "Paul's just obsessed with sex and plenty of women want to shag him, so he shags plenty of women."

"I've noticed that," I said moodily. "It's like he has the entire world bewitched into thinking it's acceptable to cheat on Jane."

"He's very practical, is Paul," John said. "Cunning, y'know? He knows he can get away with it with Jane cause she pretends it's not happening. His last bird, Dot, she was the same. Rolled over on everything. Jane rows with him to make herself feel better about it, y'know, for the sake of her pride, but she's the same as Dot, really. She fights with him about smoking grass but ignores the fact that he's fucking other birds in their bed, and they both know it."

That made me wince. "So he wouldn't sleep around if he knew he couldn't get away with it?"

"I didn't say that, did I," John looked down his nose at me meaningfully.

"Fair enough," I squeezed my hands between my knees. "What did you mean when you said I wasn't his type? That day I came out to Weybridge."

"You weren't letting him into your knickers at the time," John smirked. "That right there isn't his type."