The Free Spirit

Love's Labours Won, 1972 (Part One)

"Everything was waiting for me to come to you, and everywhere I look, I see the golden touch of love..."

New Years' Eve during the day was all that my family spent calmly together, but that evening, we had a gathering with myself, my family, Phil and his two children (excluding Wyatt, of course, whom he no longer had contact with), Ike and Margaret and some friends like John Sebastian, Scott McKenzie, Joanna Pettet (if the reader recalls, my brief friendship with Sharon Tate became so through Joanna Pettet), Elton Macfadyen (which meant that Ginger declined to come), Murphy MacPhearson and his wife and daughters and a few people from Don and Phil's record company. As one could tell, the house was packed.

Joanna and the wife of one of the producers were happy cooing over Marley, Jason was trying his hardest to play with Maggie but Maggie wasn't interested, Elton was chatting it up with Elton Macfadyen, Murphy and John Sebastian over music, Stacey was watching New Years' Eve telly with Murphy's two oldest daughters, Cynthia, who was nine, and Rosie, who was seven. His other two daughters, Sarah, who was four, was clinging to her mother, Denise's, side, and Denise was holding their youngest, Claudia, who would be two very soon. Don was in the kitchen helping me cook food, but would soon join his son in chatting with the men, while I passed between guests and chatted with them. When I went to pour myself a drink, Elton Macfadyen was already there, with a face almost as long as his hair, which fell to his shoulders. "Why so long? It's a happy day, isn't it? Celebrating a brand new year with friends, and a chance to start over," I said to him.

"A chance to start over, huh? And just get stuck in the same loop again?" Elton asked me somewhat bitterly as he popped the bottle cap of a beer bottle off.

"Elton, you have a wife and, so Murphy says, a baby on the way," I told him.

"Nah, Lin lost it actually," Elton told me.

"Oh, love, I'm so sorry..." He shrugged.

"How's Gin? I know you girls nearly got yourselves shot at a protest in the summer."

"Well, it was hardly our faults, wasn't it? She's doing good, but she couldn't make it here tonight. Something about her parents, I think she said. She's sort of stepped back from protesting though - apparently an assassination attempt was enough to scare her away from it for a while."

"But not you?"

"Not if I could help it, but I promised Don I'd step back from it. I've got four kids to raise, after all." I took a sip from my drink.

"I heard she and Peter finalised their divorce."

"Yeah, but they've remained good friends. Peter has custody of Wilson and Ginger is trying her best to be a good mother to him, but she's struggling. She supposes motherhood just isn't for her."

"She never played with dollies like the other girls did, but she had them. Her mother would put one in her arms and she never knew what to do with it." We shared a chuckle.

"I've never met Mrs. McAllistor, but Ginger always said she was quite a woman. What's she like?"

"Your stereotypical Welsh woman, that's what Allison is like," said Elton. "She's a fine woman and she's raised a fine daughter, but perhaps the fact that Ginger knew she was adopted has something to do with the fact that she struggles with motherhood."

"She's always known? Her whole life?" Elton nodded.

"Pretty much. Her parents used to tell her that she was found on their doorstep on a rainy summer morning, abandoned by her mother and left only with a note. Nowhere in the note did her birth mother say that she loved her, and maybe that's what's stuck with her."