The World Spinning Round (Beatles/Paul McCartney)

27. Keep Calm and Carry On

November 1969
Alice

I'd been staring at the uneven chunks of butter for so long that it felt like I was in a trance. Was I was meant to press them into the flour with my fingers or with a fork? Or was it two knives? Paul's stepmother had given me the definitive answer ages ago, but it was like that happened in another life.

In fact, it felt like most of my life -- specifically, anything that had happened prior to September -- had happened to someone else in a parallel universe. There was the groovy Alice who had bagged the unbaggable Beatle. And then there was the decidedly un-groovy Alice who lived in the middle of bloody nowhere and had nothing better to do than make scones.

Martha trudged over and leaned against my leg, her nose nearly at the edge of the counter. She made snuffling noises and looked up at me, her eyes begging for a spot of butter. Her fur was getting matted, which was my fault because I was meant to be brushing it every other day but somehow days went by without me realizing.

Time-blindness, John Lennon had once called it, back when he was friend and not foe.

"You'll ruin the scones." I gave her a look. "That's my job, to ruin the scones."

The telephone rang, which I answered but there was only static, likely because of the wind. I'd all but given up on having a functioning phone and, with it, the ability to maintain contact with the outside world. Paul seemed comforted by the fact that we'd dropped off the map, but I found it stifling. And I'd basically given up on trying to run Zarby from here, because only so much could get done with telegrams. I received regular updates from Suzie and my accountants, but everything in London seemed so far away that it couldn't possibly be real.

The house was quiet except for the sounds of wind howling outside and a Simon & Garfunkel record playing in the bedroom. Paul had purchased the Mrs. Robinson LP at a record shop in Campbeltown during the one outing we'd taken since we arrived. For the past week, he'd played the song on repeat for hours at a time as he lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. Every so often, he would pick up his guitar and play a few chords unrelated to the song before abandoning the instrument like it had somehow failed him.

The song ended and the farmhouse was quiet, the quietest it had been in ages. After a moment, I heard him shuffling over to the other side of the bedroom and, after a brief pause, the buzz of the telly being turned on.

"This morning when I woke up and the sky was all dark and cloudy."

Morticia Addams' voice floated through the farmhouse, the timbre sounding a bit tinny because of the awful speakers on the television.

"I knew right then and there that this was going to be a lovely day!"

Paul said the punchline out loud, seeming to delight in the fact that he'd seen the episode so many times that he'd memorized the dialogue.

I winced slightly as saccharine giggles from the laugh track seeped through the bedroom door. Years ago, Paul had met the creator of the laugh track machine and was very taken with the technique. Apparently it could produce 320 different types of laughs on 32 tape loops. Of course, Paul being Paul, he immediately thought of the mellotron, and we all know how much he bloody loved the mellotron, so it was a match made in heaven.

Another quip by Gomez Addams and more artificial laughter. There was a cartoonish boing! that made Paul laugh -- real laughter, but dimmed as though someone had turned down the intensity of his ability to feel joy. I paused, leaning my forearms on the counter and staring out the back window. Winter was quickly descending and I missed the lush green meadows, which had been one of the only saving graces of this place.