Carnival of Light || Paul McCartney/Beatles

25. A Very Brief Engagement

Carnival of Light (Part 2)

25.

March 1968

When I think back on those last weeks in Rishikesh, they're just a blur.

I was a complete mess, more physically and mentally exhausted than I could ever remember feeling in my life and bloody terrified of what was happening to me. At that point it all seemed to be happening to me; I felt like I had no control over anything anymore.

Paul was unfailingly lovely. He was level headed and positive, and he didn't press me on anything like I'd worried he might.

At Cyn's urging we spoke to Igritte, a Swedish woman who used to be a midwife before she decided to become a transcendental meditation guru. I told her my symptoms and that I'd forgotten to take my birth control while travelling to India and she agreed that I was more than likely pregnant.

Paul had more questions for her than I did.

"So you can get pregnant forgetting to take the pill a day or two after, y'know," he lowered his chin and gave Igritte a meaningful look. "Havin' sex."

"Yes," Igritte said, and then calmly explained ovulation and fertilisation to Paul, which he found mystifying and fascinating, making me wonder if he'd never bothered to question where babies came from before.

Igritte answered all of Paul's follow up questions about pregnancy, which included the one that seemed to be coming up the most: my lack of nausea.

"It doesn't mean there's anything, like," Paul glanced at me sideways. "Wrong with the baby?"

"Not all pregnant women feel nauseous," Igritte offered him a reassuring smile. "Beatrix is just lucky."

I didn't feel lucky, and I didn't really believe or accept there was a baby to be worried about, regardless of the signs pointing to it.

Cyn told me she didn't believe she was pregnant with Julian until she got the results back from her doctor. We were sitting on the steps of the Beatles' bungalow, listening to John, Paul, and Donovan work on a song of Paul's on the roof above us. I caught a fragment about Ukraine girls and Moscow birds but the rest was all "la la la's" and "ooh ooh ooh's" as Paul worked out the words.

"I don't think I really believed it until I felt him move," Cyn admitted, smiling. "It feels like little fish swimming around your belly at first."

I put my hand on my stomach, trying to imagine little fish swimming around inside there. But I just couldn't picture it. This all seemed impossible.

In India in 1968, they didn't have the sort of tests you could get from a doctor in England to tell you if you were pregnant. That left me with two options: going home to London to find out for sure, or staying in Rishikesh, waiting to see if my belly would grow.

It took me a few days, but eventually the uncertainty over not knowing seemed vastly worse than the alternative. Mal was dispatched to Rishikesh to sort us out with transport to Delhi and flights back to London, and that was that. We were going home.

Paul and I were supposed to have months together in India to figure everything out. Instead we had a matter of weeks before I became unwell in the early throes of pregnancy and every conversation became about that — not what we were going to do about it, just if I was being sick yet.

Paul and John had a bad row the night before we were due to leave. Paul would never tell me exactly what was said, but he stormed into our bungalow with his cheeks flushed and a look on his face like I'd never seen before. I knew John could say horrendous, hurtful things when he was in the right mood, and it was clear he'd said something to get under Paul's skin, but Paul wouldn't say what.