“How long can you stay?” I asked him. We were still in bed, feeling
mellow from the lovemaking but with far too much to talk about to fall asleep.
“I should go back right after the New Year.”
There was a moment of silence while I waited for the inevitable
question. It came, asked softly, knowing the probable answer and yet
hoping for something different.
“Will you come with me?”
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Finish school in England.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t just school. My parents. Us. We need to
be sure."
“I am sure. I am sure I want you with me. I am sure I should never
have let you leave. I am dead certain I love you and you love me. What
else is there?”
“Nothing,” I said, surrendering without a protest. He was right
about all that. I kissed him apologetically. “Nothing at all, but I still
can’t."
He made a comical, rueful face. “I know, but I had to try, din’ I?”
I laughed and relaxed back into his arms.
“But you will come to England as soon as school is out?”
“Yes!”
“And during your Spring Holidays?”
“Yes, but what happened to the Bahamas?”
“Later. I want to take you to Liverpool to meet my family.”
“Family! Oh, geez. Christmas! I have to go to my parents!”
This got a bemused look from Paul. “Am I invited then?”
“If you think you are ready for it. They are going to freak out!”
We laughed about that, speculated on how they would take it and the
conversation drifted back to the months ahead when we would have to be
apart. The album they had planned to start in the fall had only a few
weeks worth of work done, and with “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny
Lane” now slated for release as a single, they had nothing beyond a very
preliminary stage. That wasn’t a problem. Although everyone felt good
about the project and had some songs sketched out, no one wanted to rush
through this one, least of all Paul.
“It has to be solid,” he said. “There are rumors that we are
breaking up, washed up, fed up.” In short, Paul was going to be busy. He
assured me he would come to see me as often as he could. He would make
time for it.
“Don't worry,” he said in response to my worried look. “I can't go
without this.” His hand slipped between my legs making it very clear he
meant sex, but that reassurance didn't help. Maybe he meant “this”
specifically, my body parts, but after a while apart, I figured just the
generic “this” would suffice and any girl could supply that. I tried hard
to smile confidently and failed miserably.
“Tess, I know it is going to be a tough go, but if I tell you there
won't be anyone else, even when we're apart, will you try to believe me?”
Five months. Five more long months and this man had only to open
his front door and whistle if he needed it. “Let's just say I believe
you'll try,” I told him, “and if anything does happen, I'll try to deal
with it.”
“You are willing to take the chance?”
“Yes!”
He smiled at the certainty in my voice. “It's not that big a risk,
Tess. Remember when I told you that I waited so long to tell you I loved
you because I didn't want to make it worse for you when you left?”
“Yes. That first morning in Scotland.”
“That was only part of it. If I told you I loved you, then I had to
keep a promise I had made to myself. After Jane, I swore that if I ever
found the right girl that stuff would never happen again. I wouldn't screw
around. Wouldn't take the chance of losing her. Would never hurt her the
way I hurt Jane.” He stopped and sighed. “The look on her face when she
found out. I never wanted to hurt you like that, but I didn't think I
could stay away from other women if we were so far apart for so long. To
be alone for nine months. I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. So there I was,
the right girl in my arms and scared to tell her I loved her. Telling you
I loved you was making a promise I couldn't keep.”
I remembered something else about that morning, that moment when he
looked at me, about to tell me something, and changed his mind. “That
first morning in Scotland, you almost told me about cheating on Jane,
didn't you.”
He nodded.
“What stopped you?”
He sighed, shrugged. “I started to tell, to explain why I held back
telling you I loved you, but I couldn't. I just didn't want you to know
what I had done to Jane. It would be just one more reason for you to doubt
me. We had to be so far apart for so long.”
I opened my mouth to say that it was still five months, but before
I could say anything, he put a finger over my mouth. “I know,” he said.
“What? Five months yet? I'll be here whenever I can, and in between ...
well, I've had a few months to find out that I don't want anyone else.” He
laughed a little. “Right before she slammed out the door, one bird even
told me she didn't appreciate being called by some other girl's name in
bed.”
“You called her Tess!?”
“Oh yeah. She was quite insulted and I was quite unsatisfied.”
“I'll bet!” I laughed, imagining her leaving him quite literally
high and dry.
He laughed too but then said seriously, “She wasn't the only one
who didn't satisfy me. No one did. I found nobody does it to me like you.
Nobody feels as good, nobody satisfies me like you. I can have sex with
anyone, but I can't make love to anyone but you. I don't want anyone
else.”
After another interlude of kisses, Paul wanted to know how I
happened to be at the theater that night and after I explained that, we
were back on the subject of John.
“I didn't know he left Cyn that weekend,” I told Paul. “We talked
about how unhappy he was there, but he said he had no place else to go.”
“I guess that is part of why I thought you two were together. I
knew he wanted to leave but couldn't bring himself to do it. He just
needed a reason. Then you both disappeared. "
I gradually pried the details of those weeks from Paul. When Cyn's
mother told him neither she nor Cyn knew why I had left, he left Weybridge
looking for John, hoping like hell he was wrong in his suspicions and he
would find John alone, and believing John would know why I left. Les,
John's driver, said John was gone when he got back on Monday, and he
hadn't heard from him. He wasn't at Ringo's flat in London and hadn't been
there for a week or more. He checked in with Mal, then Neil who was just
back from his holidays. Neither of them had seen him. He called Brian and
Alistair, with no results. He told none of them why he needed to talk to
John, but when he called them back the next day again asking if they knew
where John was, they too were a little concerned.
Brian called Cyn and after hearing about John's request for a
divorce, managed to get past Mrs. Powell to talk to Cyn herself. She had
not heard from John. Brian objected strenuously to any idea of an expanded
search for John. He didn't think his being gone for two days warranted it.
He believed John to be holed up somewhere with a new girl and Paul wasn't
about to tell Brian that was exactly what he feared.
Paul called John's Aunt Mimi the next day, but she hadn't seen him.
Apparently, he arrived there shortly after Paul's call and since Paul had
been very casual on the phone, not wanting to worry Mimi, she never
bothered to let Paul know he had shown up. If she told John that Paul had
called looking for him, John was not in the mood to talk to him right
then.
By then Brian was taking John's absence seriously and Mal and Neil
were searching everywhere in London. Brian checked back with Aunt Mimi
after a couple more days, only to find out that John had been there and
gone, headed for New York. Still unaware that Paul was also looking for
me, Brian hadn't asked Mimi if John was alone. Within a matter of hours,
Brian got the phone call from John himself, saying he was going to take a
holiday in the States for a couple of months. When Paul was told that the
next day, he was on the phone to Brian immediately, wanting a number where
he could reach John, but John hadn't left a number because he wasn't sure
where he would be.
The next time John called it was to talk to Alistair about getting
money sent over, not to Brian. Paul kept after Brian to get him in touch
with John, but John was moving around. He went to Florida for a week, then
back to New York, then on to California. Brian finally demanded to know
why Paul was so anxious to talk to him. Paul didn't want to talk about it
even then, but Ringo and George were back from their holidays and finding
out about John and Cyn, asking about me, and finally, everything came out.
“That's when Brian went into his snit,” Paul told me. “He wouldn't
do anything to try and reach John and insisted that no one else be told.
He could have contacted people in New York, tracked him down but he was so
paranoid that it would get ‘round that John had left the band or was on
the outs with him or that he had run off with you. He just holed up in his
house. I was furious with him. He wouldn't take my calls anymore, so
that’s when I finally went to Alistair hoping he wouldn’t ask questions.
He didn’t, but he had only a New York number and John wasn't there
anymore.”
I suspected that one look at Paul’s face told Alistair that this
was no time to question what was after all a simple request as Beatle
requests went, but I was puzzled at why Alistair didn't keep trying to
find John for Paul.
“But Alistair could have tracked him down, could have called those
people in New York,” I said.
Paul sat up in bed, agitated by these memories. “Yes. I asked him
to, didn't tell him why. He didn't think anything of it—he didn't know you
were gone too. But before he could track down John, he happened to talk to
Brian and mentioned I had asked him to get the number for me.” Paul took a
deep breath and let it out with a shudder.
I sat up and put my arms around him, sensing something really bad
had resulted. I had heard of Brian's screaming fits when he was angry and
thought perhaps he had come down like that on Paul.
“Was Brian really angry that you went around
him?”
“Angry? I dunno. Suppose so, but that wasn't the half of it. Brian
went bonkers. Ended up in the hospital all messed up on tranquilizers.”
“Oh, God! He tried to commit suicide?”
“No. I don't think so. He just started gulping pills, trying to
feel like he could handle things." Paul shrugged. “You were gone, John had
taken off, Brian was a basket case. Alistair begged off any further
involvement and I considered sending Mal to New York, or hell, hiring a
private investigator,” he said with a tired laugh at his own desperation,
“but I was afraid to push it, not knowing what Brian would do if he found
out what I was doing. So, everything just came to a halt.”
“Oh God.” Now I understood a lot better what kept Paul in the dark
for so long.
Paul was still sitting up and I could feel how tense he was talking
about this. I scooted around behind him and began to massage his
shoulders. He groaned and I could feel him gradually relax as I kneaded
the tight muscles. While I worked on him I thought about what he had told
me. There was one avenue Paul apparently hadn't explored.
“What about Cyn?” I asked, “She would have told you we weren't
together.”
“Tess, I could hardly ring her up and say, “By the way, next time
you talk to your husband, ask him if he ran off with me girl!”
I cringed at that and wondered if Cyn ever knew what the others
were thinking or wondered about it herself. I asked Paul if had ever
talked to her and seemed reluctant to answer.
“Yeah, I finally got up the nerve to go see her, find out what she
knew,” he admitted. “She asked me why you left! She said that John never
said a thing about you leaving when he went to Bristol to talk about a
divorce. When she got back and found you gone, she was surprised. If I
hadn't had a few drinks I wouldn't have had the heart to tell her what I
thought. She laughed in my face! She didn't believe it for a minute. She
said you were gaga over me and the idea was ridiculous. At that point, she
had only talked to John twice since he left and always meant to ask him
but the whole divorce thing, that was all they talked about, all she could
think about. She said I should just call you and sort it out.”
“And you didn't listen to her?” I was surprised. Paul really liked
Cyn.
The reason for his embarrassment came out. “No. I'd had more than a
few drinks. I was drunk out of my mind. I told her 'the wife is always the
last to know,' ranted and raved about what a son-of-a-bitch John was,
tried to talk her into sleeping with me and ended up bawling on her
shoulder and passing out on the sofa.”
“Oh, honey!” I stopped massaging and dropped my arms down over his
chest and kissed his neck. “She must have asked John why I left after
that. Didn't she?”
Paul shrugged. “After that scene, I was too embarrassed to talk to
her again. I figured she would call me if she found out anything. I got a
message from her a few weeks later. She had been trying to call me but I
wasn't around. I had been in Liverpool for a bit.”
“What did she say?
“I never called her back.
“What? Why not?
“That was right after I found out John was on his way to see you.”
I thought about that for a while as I went back to massaging his
shoulders. It just didn't sound right. “Cyn wouldn't have let it go at
that. She knew how unhappy you were. She would have kept trying.”
It was apparent I was right because Paul made a strangled sound,
keeled over on his side and pulled the pillow over his head. His muffled
response was. “Don't make me tell you. I feel like an idiot already!”
I snuggled down next to him, pried up the pillow and told him, “So
do I. I set Olympic records for conclusion jumping. Now tell me.”
He sighed and punched the pillow back under his head. "I suppose
she kept calling. Dunno. I quit answering the phone. Too pissed at the
world to want to talk to anyone. After a couple of weeks, she showed up on
my doorstep. Said she was worried about me! John walked out on her and
Julian and she is worried about me! Felt like a real shit then! She told
me she had asked John why you left."
“And he said?
“He had told her that you caught me with someone else.”
“What? You ... Why ... How come you didn't figure it all out then?”
I spluttered.
Paul put his hands up. “I know, I know! But I knew that it wasn't
true! There was no other girl, no big scenes about one. That is what I
thought he meant. Guilty conscience I guess. After that mess with Jane,
that's what getting caught meant to me, and I knew it never happened.
Couldn't have anyway. There wasn't anyone else.”
“So what did you tell Cyn?
He sighed. “At least I wasn't drunk that time. I had the sense not
to tell her what I thought—that John was lying to her, covering up why you
had left. He knew that Cyn was aware of what I had done to Jane and would
believe it. I did tell her it wasn't true—I didn't want her thinking I had
pulled that shit again—and that I still didn't understand why you left.
She looked at me and I could see she wasn't sure if she could believe me.
I am sure she thought I had more reason to lie about it than John did. I
don't think she knew he was seeing you every chance he got.”
“That's not true!
“I know that now, but I had just found out he had been up to see
you at least twice in the last month.”
“You knew he came to see me again at the end of October?”
“Oh yeah. By then Brian was back in regular contact with him.” He
sounded so miserable. He had good reasons for his suspicions and
everything seemed to block him from finding out the truth.
“Cyn suggested that perhaps you hadn't told John the real reason,”
he went on, “that you just made that up as an excuse because you didn't
want to discuss the real reason you were leaving. I pretended I reckoned
that was possible and she told me again to call you. I told her it was too
late, it was long since over and done and I didn't care anymore. She left.
I got stoned. Not caring anymore was pure bullocks!”
That sweet confession might have led to something more, but as I
moved on top of him, I heard the sound of the downstairs door opening. One
or both of my roommates were home and my bedroom door was wide open. Paul
and I had the blankets pretty much over us, but still, the closet light
was on and we were way too much on display for comfort, especially if Mark
or Chuck was with them. I leaped out of bed and crossed the few feet to my
door and shut it as footsteps came up the stairs.
Turning to tiptoe back to bed, I saw Paul sitting up in bed
watching me, grinning. I hurried over to turn off the closet light, very
aware of his eyes on me, and as I jumped back in bed, I could hear the
apartment door opening.
“Do that again!” Paul laughed.
“Shhh!” I said, listening to the sounds outside my door, a
whispered conversation.
“His suitcases are still here!”
“And he isn't sleeping on the sofa bed!” Sandy's excited giggle was
unmistakable.
Brenda shushed her and the familiar sounds of my roommates getting
ready for bed were heard. As the house quieted down for the night, Paul
and I snuggled under the covers and kissed away the bad memories. It was
late and exhausted by the emotions of the evening, we finally slept,
stirring at times for murmured whispers of love and soft kisses when one
of us awoke and needed reassurance that this wasn't just a dream.
I woke up in the morning to a whiskery kiss and hands sliding over
my body. I opened my eyes to Paul's dark eyes, the brown that somehow held
gray and flecks of hazel and made his eyes so changeable. His hair was
lopsided from sleep, his cheek creased by a wrinkle in the pillow, his
beard dark and scratchy and his smile heart-catching.
“This is the best part,” I said, “waking up with you still here,”
and snuggled against his warm body. With the bedroom door closed, it was
cold in there and he felt so good.
“Mmmm,” he said “and we can make it better,” and went on kissing
me, his lips so warm and soft and his tongue wetly tickling my ear. There
was no place I could be, no moment in time that could make me feel happier
than this, but Paul was certainly going to try.
“No,” I whispered. “We can't. We'll wake up my roommates.”
“I'll be very quiet,” he said, sliding kisses down my neck.
“No, you won't!” I said as his kisses found my breast. “You aren't
quiet! Oh, don't do that!” I said as he moved on top of me. “The bed will
bang on the wall and Sandy's headboard is on the other side!”
My concerns got me one of those “Oh really?” McCartney looks.
Eyebrow raised, big teasing grin. He had no inhibitions about sex and was
amused at mine.
“I know they know we're having sex,” I protested, “but they don't
need to know exactly when! These springs are so squeaky they will be able
to hear every move!”
Paul did some trial bounces and, sure enough, the springs
responded.
“Ah yes. Any shagging done in this bed will have an orchestral
accompaniment!” he laughed. “Maybe this will be quieter." His kisses moved
down across my stomach. I squirmed away from him. The bed banged the wall
and I joined him under the blankets to muffle my laughter.
“This is going to be a problem,” he said when we had stopped
laughing and caught our breath.
“No, it isn't. They'll be leaving to go to their parents for
Christmas in a couple of days and then—”
“A couple of days!”
“Sorry, but my roommates aren't used to immorality close up. As far
as they know, I was a virgin until last night.”
That surprised him. “Come off. You went to California to see John.
What did they think you were on about?”
“Nobody knows about that! Nobody!” I said with an over-abundance of
emphasis.
“Good!” he said with equal feeling.
There was an awkward, mood spoiling silence.
“I can't undo it, Paul,” I said softly.
“I know,” he said with a sigh. He took my hand in his, moving it
down to feel hard evidence that he wasn't too upset. “Undo this,” he said
and began kissing me persuasively.
I wasn't having any luck dissuading him and the longer
it went on, the less I wanted to, but the bed squeaked mercilessly
and I ended up scrambling out of the bed. I slipped on a robe and went to
the bathroom and then brought his suitcases in from the hallway where they
had sat all night. Paul asked if my roommates were up yet and when I said
no, he rolled quickly out of bed, pulled some jeans, a t-shirt, and his
shave kit from his suitcase.
“Come 'ead,” he told me with a wicked grin. Next thing we were in
the shower together finishing what he had started in bed. This was one
real advantage of having the bathroom so far from the bedrooms! Of course
not being able to pop back and forth from bath to bedroom also made for a
rather funny moment later when we got out of the shower and Paul flipped
up the seat on the toilet and proceeded to take an unselfconscious morning
leak while I toweled off, trying to neither laugh or blush. In our time
together in England, this sort of intimacy had never occurred!
I put on my robe, Paul his jeans, and we took turns with the
hairdryer and at the sink. I flipped the seat and the lid down on the
toilet, (thinking that if Paul was going to be a long term house guest I
would have to say something about putting the seat back down!) and watched
Paul shave while we talked. There were a lot of questions that last night
hadn't answered.
“Paul, when John got back to London, did you ask him about me?”
Paul snorted. “I barely spoke to him. You were the last thing I
wanted to talk to him about by that point.”
“But you were working together. Didn't he try to talk to you?”
“I wouldn't let him say anything. I walked away if he talked about
anything except the songs we were working on. He didn't seem to want to
chat with me anyway, so we got on fine while we were working and didn't
see each other outside of that. None of us saw much of him.”
I nodded, remembering that first phone call from John. “He said no
one was exactly friendly. He couldn't understand why everyone was so upset
with him for asking Cyn for a divorce. He didn't know that everyone
thought that he and I had been together."
“Oh, it was worse than that,” Paul said grimly, frowning at his
lathered image in the mirror as he rinsed the razor. “He had a meeting
with Brian the first day he was back. He left Brian's office in a rage,
yelling something about inviting Cyn's solicitors over to his flat to meet
the “correspondent” in person. We thought he had brought you back with
him! Whatever they thought of you, no one wanted to pal around with you
and John. No one wanted to get involved in it.”
I realized as he spoke what that was all about. That was when John
considered having some girl move in with him so Cyn's lawyers wouldn't go
digging around and find out about us. No wonder everyone was uncomfortable
around him. The last thing they wanted was to have to chat with John about
his new love, Paul's old flame, Cyn's ex-friend!
“Oh shit, what a mess.”
“Every bit that,” Paul agreed and took a few more swipes with the
razor.
“How did you find out I wasn't with him?”
An unexpected smile lit up his face. “I beat it out of him.”
“What!”
“We had been working since noon, and it was late. Ringo wanted to
go home. He said Maureen was waiting. John laughed and said he wanted to
call it a night too. He made some remark about having a little blond with
big knockers waiting for him. I couldn't believe it. He was screwing
around on you already and bragging about it! I landed a couple of good
ones and had him on the floor before Mal pulled me off him.”
“You didn't!”
“Damn right I did. As mad as I was at you, you deserved better from
him.”
“Oh, Paul.” Poor John. Poor Paul. Poor little blond with big tits
who probably didn't get any that night. I started laughing.
“You didn't hurt him did you?”
“No. I meant to take him apart, but they stopped me. Good thing,
too. He would have pulverized me in the end!”
Well, that explained John's mention of a sneaky uppercut in his
note. “That is when you found out we weren't together?”
“No. That is when I walked out.”
“You left?”
“Hell yes. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I felt like a fool.”
He hesitated and when he went on, the laughter in his voice was gone. “Up
until that minute, if anyone had asked me, I would have said I hated you.”
I caught my breath, a painful stab in my chest and Paul caught the
look on my face in the mirror.
“Aw, love, no,” he said, turning around and reaching to pull me up
off the toilet seat. He hugged me hard but awkwardly, trying not to get
shaving cream on me. “I never did. Never. I was mad and hurt and would
have said anything, and I guess I thought I hated you, but when John said
that ... God. I just went off. By the time they pulled me off him, I knew.
I wasn't over you. Never would be. I still loved you. Pathetic. Bloody
awful pathetic, right?” he asked with a little laugh, trying to jolly me
out of feeling bad.
A smile was a little hard to manage right then and I just hugged
him.
“You must have hated me,” he said softly, questioningly.
“No. Not really,” I told him. “Sure, I was mad but I was madder at
myself for being such a fool.”
He looked completely surprised at that. “Why?”
This was going to take some explaining. I sat him down on the
toilet seat, took the razor from him, and finished shaving him as I
explained how stupid I felt for handing over my heart and my virginity to
a big star, to someone whose life and concept of love had been warped by
fame, about believing that he had loved me as much as he was able to love,
about alternately wanting to call him and praying he wouldn't call me,
about making up the lie about Terry that my roommates saw through so
quickly, and finally, about how hard it was not to be able to completely
confide in anyone, out of pride as well as loyalty.
He listened in silence (probably fearing facial scarring if he
moved a muscle) and by the time I finished telling him how I felt over
those first few weeks, I was done shaving him. Still saying nothing, he
got up, rinsed his face, splashed on aftershave, and began stuffing his
things back into his shave kit. Just as I was beginning to worry that I
had said something really wrong, he stopped and said softly, “My God. You
thought I had used you like that and you still made excuses for me and
kept it all a secret to protect me.”
He turned to me and there were tears in his eyes. It was my turn to
hold him and comfort him. Of course, I started to snivel too, but this
time they were happier tears and short-lived.
We were interrupted by the sound of a roommate stirring around out
in the kitchen. We couldn't tie up the bathroom all morning and at some
point I was going to have to face my roommates. I had been so caught up in
Paul, so busy sorting out how all this happened and so glad to have him
back that I hadn’t given more than a passing thought to how they would
feel about us sleeping together. I figured Sandy would be so enchanted by
the romance of it she would almost be disappointed if we hadn’t. Brenda
was not going to be as wholeheartedly supportive though. Even though her
romance with Mark was going strong, and things no doubt got hot and heavy
when they were alone, she wasn’t one for public displays of affection
beyond a simple kiss, and she still believed in waiting until you were
married. I hoped that it would be Sandy we faced first, but when we
emerged Brenda was in the kitchen making coffee and heating water for tea.
“Good morning,” she said, eying us with a combination of
embarrassment and uncertainty about how to handle this rather awkward
moment mixed with an unavoidable appreciation for the sight of
Paul—barefoot, blue-jeaned, white T-shirted. Then she took a good look at
me and saw the after-effects of last night's storm of tears and this
morning's scattered showers of emotional tears. Whatever she thought about
our morality took second place to her caring heart.
“Are you alright?” she asked with real concern.
“Bren, I have never been happier. Just some old hurts to get out of
the way. I'll explain everything when Sandy gets up,” I told her and
changed the subject. “So did you and Mark have a good time last night?”
“Not as good as some!” she said with a laugh that told me she was
not as upset by our behavior as I had feared she might be. With that
acknowledgment of our sleeping arrangements out of the way and the awkward
moment passed, she filled us in on what had gone on after we left.
We started making plans for the day. We needed to do laundry, and
Mark and Chuck were coming over later, but breakfast was the priority. I
went to throw on some clothes before I started fixing breakfast. Paul
followed and it would have taken only a couple of minutes for us to finish
getting dressed, but I still had questions I wanted to be answered.
“So if you left after the fight with John, when did you find out I
wasn't with him?
“The next day.” Paul was pulling shirts out of his suitcase. “I
didn't want to go back the next day, but we had to get the mixing done.
Ringo and George were exchanging funny looks when I came in, and when John
showed up they rushed everyone else out of the studio. John looked like he
wanted to have another go at me, but he just sat down in front of me and
said, ‘Get it straight. Tess is not with me. She did not leave London with
me. She had nothing to do with my divorce and I had nothing to do with her
leaving you.'”
Paul stopped to pull on a shirt. “I told him to get off it. I said
I knew about his trips to see you as well as you being in California with
him. He said he only visited you twice—as a friend—and that you went to
L.A. on a school holiday, sightseeing.”
He wouldn't look at me as he told me all this. “I believed him.”
I knew the way he said it, with a strong undertow of bitterness,
that he wished it had been true. Just as I had earlier that morning when I
told Paul that I couldn't undo what had happened with John, I felt
a chill. The whole thing with John wasn't just a sore spot, it was
a land mine. I wasn't sure how to defuse it but I knew at some point I was
going to have to try or we weren't going to make it. I had no idea how to
do that.
Paul sidestepped that land mine, careful not to set it off yet not
pretending it wasn't there. “I don't understand why he lied. He admitted
it just a few days later.”
Recalling the conversation John and I had right before I left
California, I said, “I know why.”
Paul looked at me then, his expression carefully neutral.
“Because I asked him not to tell you anything about us.”
“You thought you could keep it a secret from me?” he asked with
surprise.
“No. Not exactly. Not after I answered the phone that day. I didn't
want John to have to lie."
“He's quite capable of that,” Paul said and there was a definite
glint of humor in his expression.
I relaxed a little. “It just seemed best if you never knew we
had... " I stumbled over the words I didn't want to say and ended up just
skipping them. “I didn't want what happened between John and me to come
between you and John. You had been friends for so long, been through the
whole Beatle thing together. I thought we could keep it a secret, that no
one would be affected by it. It just seemed better to deny it was anything
but a sightseeing trip than to let it drive you two apart.”
Deep in thought, Paul buttoned his shirt.
He finished, looked at me, and I could see doubts and questions
unspoken in his eyes. I sensed he wanted to ask more about what John meant
to me, why I had let it happen in the first place, but he wasn't ready for
that. He gave me a weak smile. “For Beatle fans, everywhere, eh?”
A truthful answer would have been “Yes, in part, but mostly for you
and John.” but I was glad for the way out of that sensitive area. I
smiled. “Yup. We are waiting on a new album and we'd prefer you two not be
bashing each other around in the studio!”
Paul smiled. “Oh, I think we've done with that. Though there were a
few things John said that would have ended in another go-round if I hadn't
been so muddled trying to figure things out.”
“So he never did tell you why I left?”
“No. He told me you hadn't left with him or for him, then got up
and started playing back tapes. I sat there for a few minutes before I
realized he was not going to say anything else. So I went over to him and
asked why you left. He looked at me as if he thought I was completely
demented! He called me a ‘Stupid bloody idiot' or something like that and
turned away.”
Paul pulled a pair of socks from the suitcase and sat down on the
bed to put them on.
“I wasn't about to give up and when I asked him again, he got
pissed off. He called me a hypocritical bastard and a lot of other names.
He finished by telling me I was a two-faced, blind, ignorant, smarmy
bastard and to fuck off.” Paul sighed. “I have dodged around the man so
many times when he was in a foul mood 'cause I didn't want him to start in
on me but this time I just stood there and took his shit because I didn't
know what else to do. I had to know. When he was done I asked him again
why you left. He just stared at me then started laughing and called me a
few more names. Finally, he said, ‘You just think about it for a while,
mate. I think you can come up with some reason a girl would walk out on
you.'”
“And what did you come up with?” I asked.
“Nothing. Nothing that made any sense anyway. We went back to
work—or at least the others did. I sure as hell couldn't concentrate. We
gave up trying to get anything done after just a few hours. Everyone was
leaving but I cornered John. I told him I had to know why you left. I
couldn't come up with a reason. Ever since you left I had been trying to
come up with some other reason. The last thing I wanted to believe was
that you were with him.”
He laughed a bitter little laugh. “The old ‘Me girl and me best
mate', but I couldn't explain it any other way. Nothing else worked. Maybe
you meant some old boyfriend back home. Maybe you just had second thoughts
about living with the kind of stuff we have to put up with. Maybe you had
just been playing games all along. Couldn't convince myself of a bit of it
though. I knew all that was rubbish.” He laughed a self-mocking laugh and
shook his head. “God, I must have been a sad case. I all but got down on
my knees and begged him to tell me! But it got to him finally. He took
pity on me and said, ‘She'll kill me for this, but I think you had better
talk to her.'”
“He never told you I had seen you with her?”
“No. I dunno why. Maybe he still believed I had done it but saw how
much I loved you and thought we could work it out. If he had told me—”
Paul stopped abruptly, realization dawning on his face.
“God! He did! He said I was a two-timing, lying, cheating,
mother-fucker who didn't deserve any decent woman! It didn't register with
me that he was laying it on the line!”
He gave me a chagrined look. “I remember thinking he was a fine one
to talk, but mostly I just thought he was blowing off his mouth, had a
head of steam up and was dredging up old dirt. It was just one of the
things he threw at me and it didn't mean anything because I knew I hadn't
cheated on you!”
Still shaking his head at his thickness, he groaned, got up and
came to me, putting his hands on my shoulders, squeezing gently. “I would
have called you right then, been on the next plane, but he made me agree
to this whole setup. He wasn't about to let me upset you until classes
were out. He said the last time had been hard enough on you, that you had
trouble in school because of it.”
At least John hadn't repeated Sandy's exaggeration about me almost
flunking out! “Yeah, I guess I did. A little.” I said.
There didn't seem to be anything left to say. It had all been a
ridiculous, snarled mistake that had managed to perpetuate itself. I
finally had all the pieces put together and I didn't want to talk about it
anymore. I settled into his arms, and said, “But everything is fine now.
You are here and if I wasn't starving to death, I would be the happiest
person on earth.”
Paul chuckled. “Yeah. Eggs, scrambled, and—”
“Toast. Strawberry jam. Juice and Tea. Anything else, sir?”
“Yes,” he said as his hand slipped down to my ass, “but we can eat
first.”