Chapter 34

That is how I come to be standing here tonight in my old bedroom at my parent's house, staring into the mirror on the closet door. Looking back at me is a bride and, wonder of wonders, she is beautiful! Her hair is shiny and soft, worn down the way he likes it, not in the elaborately curled stack the hairdresser suggested. Her dress is perfect. Not too formal or Vogue chic for a home wedding. Not too Mary Quant or hippy-dippy but still evocative of peace and love. Not too traditional and yet not so different as to be more costume than a wedding gown. There is a hint of medieval England in the soft, full skirt, embroidered overskirt, long bodice, and gauzy sleeves. The medieval maid is blended with a flower child in the ring of fresh flowers in her hair. There is no veil, just streamers of embroidered ribbon that suggest again the medieval maid.

In the mirror behind me, my bridesmaids are a flurry of heathery lavender-pink as they get dressed, but my mind is far away from their nervous chatter and laughter. I stare at the girl in the mirror and think of all that has led up to this day. The improbable twist of fate at the Radisson that day, the first touch of Paul's hand, the days at the hotel, at John's home. The on-again-off-again beginning with Paul, the hours with him in London, the days in Scotland. The blackness of the trip home, the emotional fog that being with John lifted, the confusion of loving John but knowing it wasn't real love. Then came Christmas and Paul. I remember all the trips to airports, my parents in shock, Paul and I trying to make love soundlessly on the mattress on my bedroom floor, the sweaty palms of meeting the McCartney clan, the flash of a diamond in the Cavern, my rumpled white knight Harry, and that last awful confrontation with my parents. After that ... what came after that? It is a blur. There aren't any images, just a feeling of time rushing by and too much to do. I have to take a deep breath and sort it out in my head.

With the limited options they were given, my parents had agreed almost eagerly to the graduation party/wedding scheme. Mom seemed relieved at the chance for any compromise and the only problem would be getting a priest to do the honors. We quickly agreed that at the same time I was hunting for a priest here, arrangements would also be started for a private church ceremony in England ASAP. That way, if we didn’t succeed here, there would not be a long delay in setting it up there. We would get the church’s blessing with a minimal amount of prior cohabitation. Once over that hurdle, things fell together quickly.

Anne was thrilled with any excuse not to have to be the center of attention at a graduation party, and Mom’s biggest concern was over all the work to be done. When I reminded her that anything we could put together would be better than the courthouse alternative, she was suddenly willing to negotiate the non-essentials. I said that I wanted to bring in Sandy, who would be heartbroken if she couldn’t help. Mom was more than receptive to the idea of help.

Sandy was ecstatic about the change of plan and had turned into a comparison shopping, note-taking, swatch-carrying, hard-bargaining wedding machine. When it came to wedding etiquette, wedding fashion, where to get the best cake, the freshest flowers, and how to get it all done on time, she was an encyclopedia. We stood back in awe as flighty little Sandy turned into a wedding coordinator. No one knew the wedding business, as well as Sandy and even the men paying for it, were impressed.

When Dad declined Paul's offer to help pay the costs, Sandy sat Dad down and explained the realities of the situation: This wedding was going to cost big time because it had to fast, it had to be secret, and it had to be a class act. He could contribute whatever he would have expected to pay to marry me off to a local boy, but Paul should be allowed to go ahead and set up a bank account for her to draw from for whatever else she needed. She began listing those extra expenses; catered food rather than homemade, a tent for the actual ceremony (“We have to have a separate wedding chapel,” Sandy had informed him. “I could put a steeple on the corn crib,” Dad offered.), tables and chairs and flowers and plants to turn the new garage into a reception hall, a live band. On top of that, she needed the ready money to convince people that they could work around the time restraints. Dad had looked at the figures she was jotting down for him, then looked across the table at Paul. “How big is that account?”

“Big enough even for Sandy,” Paul had assured him.

I never could have done it without Sandy, and wouldn't have even tried! She had taken vacation time from work and did all the legwork. Every day for the first week and nearly as often after that, I had rushed from school to meet Sandy at a dress shop, the florists, the bakery, the photographers, the shoe store, or the caterers to make final decisions on Sandy's selections. Brenda had to accompany us also. We needed her along so it would appear to sales clerks and to anyone else watching that we were shopping for her wedding. I wasn't certain how the Citizens for Decency would react if they realized their prey was planning to escape from their clutches in a puff of bridal lace. There was no point in them alerting the press other than pure spite, which I wouldn’t have put past them, but it very likely would have pushed them to make a last-ditch attempt to discredit me.

Getting Paul fitted for a tux without blowing our cover had sounded impossible to do, but Paul simply called Alistair who called the tailor who made their suits for Sgt. Pepper, got the measurements and called Paul back with them. After Mike had gotten himself measured and called with the results, Sandy had called the shop where we were getting tuxedos. Everything was going fine as Sandy read him Desmond Jones' measurements (Paul's alias for any wedding plans. Mine was Molly Quinn), but suddenly her face had turned bright red. She covered the mouthpiece of the phone with one hand, grabbed my arm in a painful pinch with the other, and jerked me to her side. “He wants to know if he dresses right or left!” she said with horror.

“Huh?” I had said, not having the slightest idea what she was asking. “He is left-handed."

“No!” She whispered, “His trousers. Which side does he put his ... his thing on?”

“Oh!" I glanced out at Paul, slouched on the sofa in the living room watching TV, did the mental gymnastics to get his left and right in my mind and said with absolute certainty, “Right.”

Sandy had reported that to the man on the phone, then had started with Mike's numbers, covering the receiver long enough to hiss at me “You have to ask Paul about Mike!” So I had done so, stepped into the living room and said, “The tuxedo shop needs to know if you and Mike dress right or left. I don't know what to tell him for Mike.”

Brenda had started laughing and Paul had grinned. “Mike dresses left, I believe.”

Sandy had finished her phone call and leaned her head against the wall muttering “I didn't want to know that! Paul McCartney's favorite color, favorite food, fine, but I didn't want to know that!”

The worst, most nerve-frazzling part of the wedding preparation had been finding the dress. I'd had nightmares thinking about what kind of wedding gown and bridesmaids dresses would be suitable. It had to be traditional enough for Mom, but fashionable enough to keep me from being a laughing stock in London. The J.C. Penney Bridal Catalog was not an option here. On our first two shopping trips, we saw only the same dress redone with minor changes. The only real choice was between huge Southern Belle hoop-skirts or simply a full skirt. Worse, “Six to eight weeks delivery time,” said the sales ladies, “and a week for alterations.”

“Money talks,” Sandy assured me when I looked at her in dismay. By Friday night I was feeling panicky. Mom and Anne joined us for the next shopping expedition. Having exhausted the three big bridal shops in the city, we decided to check out a few of the smaller shops before taking Mom to look at the two dresses I had decided were the least objectionable.

The first small shop was a cut-rate place with a poor selection of close-out model dresses, all showing signs of a long life on the hanger. At the second we were greeted by a tiny little Vietnamese woman who spoke with a French accent. She settled us into Queen Anne chairs and, with the help of two women who were apparently her mother and her daughter, she showed us her dresses. They were expensive, beautiful dresses with lush satin and sequins and swirls of lace.

The first she showed us was a stunningly sleek and starkly modern dress that screamed Vogue.

“It is beautiful,” I said. “but it is so elegant. I was thinking of something a little more ... romantic.”

The next one looked like the prototype for The Bridal Gown. Traditional to the core, it would have required not just a Church but a whole Cathedral to live up to it.

“That is a little too formal,” I said. The wedding is going to be at my parent's house. Sort of a garden wedding.”

The next was a plain, almost utilitarian version of the same dress. “No, that is a little too ordinary,” we all agreed.

“Some-zing a leetle more with zee fashion of today?” she suggested and came back with two more. One was an over-sized little girls dress adorned with gauzy scarves and ribbons in pastel tie-dyed peace symbols, for the hippy-dippy bride. The other was a Mary Quant mini-skirted dress.

“No,” I said, and I heard Mom exhale in relief. “I want something a little different, but not quite that different.”

Out came a dress with a beautiful long straight lace skirt and a Spanish style mantilla for a veil. “It is beautiful, but if we are going international, I am marrying a guy from England.”

“England?” she said. She looked

thoughtful, going through her inventory in her mind. I had visions of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation Gown done in white, complete with the stiff pleated neck ruching.

“Mama?” whispered the daughter. They conferred in whispered French and the woman turned to me with a beaming smile. “Romantique but modern, modern but not too-too, not so formal and not so plain? Come, Cheri!”

Five minutes later she was buttoning me into the dress. The gathered skirt was soft fabric, not satin, but had an overskirt made of satin lightly embroidered with tiny white rosebuds. White embroidered roses edged the split front of the over-skirt like handmade brocade. The bodice was snug and tapered to an extended V below the waist and was decorated by vertical seams and tiny lines of beads that gave it a corseted look. The neckline was simple and the sleeves were a gauzy burst of fabric that puffed at the top and were caught in an embroidered band around the upper arm then fit like a glove down to extended points on my hands. She added a headpiece that was a simple halo of silk flowers, ribbons, and airy netting. “It will be real flowers, like zee flower child of California,” she explained as she turned me to face the mirror.

I almost didn’t recognize myself. There in the mirror was a bride with a willowy waist and perfect bust line. The dress was reminiscent of English maidens and yet the soft fabric and flow of the skirt and sleeves and ribbons of the headpiece were suggestive of the flower child of today. The embroidered satin over-skirt made it formal enough to be unmistakably a bridal gown but still right for an informal wedding.

“Is eet enough?” the woman asked.

I looked at her, not understanding.

“Do you feel like zee beautiful bride?”

“Oh! Yes!” Then, rather pointlessly because I had my heart set on this dress, I asked the price. It was high but not the most expensive thing I’d seen. She led me out to my waiting audience.

"Ophelia,” breathed the brainy one.

“Guinevere,” said the romantic one.

“Juliet,” said Anne, going with their train of thought. “Or maybe Ann Boleyn?”

I burst out laughing at the thought of Paul as Henry VIII. “Don’t you know any English women who had happy endings?” I asked.

“Maid Marion?” Anne asked.

We laughed again and then I turned to Mom. “What do you think?”

“You look like a bride,” she said with tears in her eyes.

“What have you got for the bridesmaids?” I asked the shopkeeper. We quickly settled on some simple pastel pink dresses as being the best bet. They were nothing special, but I was so relieved to have found the perfect dress, I thought it was pushing it to hold out for perfect bridesmaid’s dresses, but Sandy was frowning as she looked at the pink dresses.

“They need something to dress them up a bit."

“Mama?” said number one daughter. “The sleeves ... we could take them off and make sleeves more like the wedding gown.”

“Perfect!” we all agreed.

“That can be done,” said the shopkeeper. “For, oh, let us say twenty dollars a dress.”

That was a bit high for the seamstress fees of the day. Mom was saying, “I could do the sleeves.” She was obviously weighing the cost against the time it would take and all the other things she had to do in the next four weeks.

Sandy patted her arm reassuringly if somewhat absentmindedly and went on with her primary objective. “In four weeks?”

The woman looked shocked. “Four weeks? Oh, no, no. Zee dresses to order are six weeks.”

Sandy was unperturbed. “Do you know any seamstresses who could make the dresses instead?”

“Oh, but eet is so busy with June weddings!"

“We will pay double,” Sandy went on matter-of-factly.

The woman’s eyebrows soared and Mom made a sound of dismay.

“This is the kind of problem that my wedding account is supposed to take care of,” Sandy said, absently patting Mom on the arm again while she waited for the shopkeeper to respond.

“Yes, I think that can be arranged,” she said. “And zee gown... ?”

Sandy spent a couple of minutes tugging at the dress, checking the seams, the hem, the sleeves. “The dress you have is nearly the right size, and is in good condition,” she announced. “Any dress has to be altered a bit anyway.”

“Oh, but zat is zee showroom model. We only sell zem when zee style is discontinued.” She wasn’t objecting, she was bargaining.

“Have it cleaned, fix this spot where the hem is loose, make the alterations. We will pay 20% extra. That will give you a 50% profit since showroom gowns are sold at 30% off.”

I was finding out money was a nice thing to have, indeed. Sandy had also insisted that I shop for a trousseau and Paul agreed. “You are going to be on the cover of at least one magazine,” Paul had predicted. “Newsweek, Post, Look, Life.” With that threat hanging over my head, I had spent another big chunk of Paul's money on clothes.

With the shopping part of wedding preparations alone, life would have been hectic. In the evening all I wanted was to be with Paul but instead, I did homework. I'd had a term paper to finish and finals to prepare for. If that weren't enough, we'd had prenuptial classes with Father Michael two evenings a week.

Father Michael was… ahem... a gift from God. I had been brusquely informed that a Catholic wedding required three months of advance notice by the first two priests I contacted. No exceptions. The idea of priest-shopping was disgusting to me, but having a priest was the one thing I could do to make this palatable to my parents.

“Maybe we could just hire an actor,” I'd said, not really in jest after a third call got the same response. “Mom would never know the difference!”

It was Mark who suggested I try the Newman Center for Catholic students on the U. of M. campus. The priests there tended to be younger, more with the times. Father Michael was with the times all right—a little ahead actually—and not long for the priesthood as it turned out, but he was a bona fide priest then and willing to meet with me and consider doing the honors before he even knew who the groom was.

Father Mike was tall, thin, and incredibly good looking. Something in his mannerisms hinted that he may have chosen the priesthood out of a desire not to have to deal with his sexual orientation. He had listened quietly as Molly Quinn sat in his office and told him that she wanted to get married in four weeks at her parents home, there could be no published banns, and the groom would be available for only three of the four intervening weeks.

He had leaned back in his chair, body English and tone conveying that his response was coming from some invisible power behind him, and not from him personally.

“Molly, the Church requires the marriage classes and the publishing of the banns to assure that couples do not rush into marriage. Even when the situation seems to demand immediate action, we find that waiting is for the best.” Then he had smiled and added in a more personal and sympathetic tone, “People count the months anyway, Molly.”

“I am not pregnant,” I had told him. “That is not the reason we need to do this. It is a lot more complicated than that.”

He had raised his eyebrows questioningly, and it was time for the truth. “My name is really Tess Martin.” The surprise on his face was simply that I had used an alias in making the appointment to see him, it didn't seem to ring any bells. “I am going to marry Paul McCartney.”

Bells clanged then and I had his full attention. I had explained that we had gotten engaged in March but had been in no rush to get married. I would finish school, move to England, get a job, and get adjusted to all that and then tackle the problem of arranging a wedding without fans or the press knowing about it. I told him how I wanted a traditional wedding and although Paul wasn't a practicing Catholic, he had agreed to a church wedding because that is what his mother would have wanted. I had glossed over my feelings about a church wedding and let him assume it was important to me. I had explained that we planned a civil ceremony to throw off the press and keep our real wedding day from turning into a mob scene. He had nodded, apparently accepting the need for the civil ceremony. “But,” I had said, bracing myself, “now we have a problem and we have had to change our plans.”

“What is the problem?”

“The Citizens for Decency.”

Something had flickered across his face. “Do you know who they are?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” he had said and the tone of his voice told me he was no fan of the Citizens.

Relieved, I had explained about the problems at school, the ongoing trouble, and the potential for them to keep me from taking my State Boards.

He had listened sympathetically. “That sounds like the Citizens for Decency, all right,” he said. “I went up against them last fall when I started having guitar masses here on campus. Praising God is supposed to be done in Latin accompanied by an organ. Not the most progressive thinkers, I'm afraid.”

“I don't know about progressive. All I know is that they are making it impossible for us. As long as we are not married, they won't give up. They are looking for any excuse to file complaints against me. I am not a saint, but I don't deserve to be kept out of nursing. The really scary thing is that all it would take is one false impression, or one person willing to lie about me. I never would have believed it before I met Paul, but there are people who hate the Beatles enough to do that, and fans who would do anything to split us up.”

Father Mike had nodded and I went on. “We have to get married or I can't go to England. I don't want to stay here for most of the summer. Paul has permanent jet lag from going back and forth as it is. The longer we wait, the more time the Citizens have to cause trouble. So, we just want to get on with our lives. We want to get married at my parents in four weeks, we cannot risk posting the banns, and Paul has to be in England for a week. Can you help us?”

He had tipped

back in his chair again, contemplating for a long time. “There is certainly precedent for it. If he were going into the service and you were already engaged, there could be special dispensation. I was also able to get it recently for a couple who was accepted into the Peace Corps. They couldn't be guaranteed assignments together if they weren't married and they had to leave in just a few weeks or wait six months to a year for the next opportunity. In your case, it is a little trickier, but we could boil it down to simply saying it is necessary for you to get married so that you can move to England without risking your nursing career.”

I had been impressed with his way with words. “And not posting the banns?”

“That seems a reasonable request in light of the situation and that would have to be addressed no matter when you got married.”

“Then you'll do it?”

He looked uncertain. “I'll have to talk to the Bishop,” he had finally said.

“Why?” I asked in surprise. The last thing I wanted was to take this to the Church hierarchy.

He had smiled. "This is a little bit of an unusual situation. Performing nuptials for a Beatle isn't ordinary for us! Don't worry, the Bishop will certainly be agreeable to helping Paul McCartney be married in the church. One of his biggest concerns is the loss of young people in our church and this ... well!”

As the full implication of what he was saying hit me, I cringed. I stared down at my hands, trying to think what to say, how to get out of this mess and getting angrier the more I thought about it.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“Please, just forget I was ever here,” I had said as I got to my feet. He looked stunned and I decided to just be blunt. I couldn't think of a tactful way to say it anyway.

“Anyone else would get the dispensation if they needed it, but Paul is famous so we have to go to the Bishop so he can use him as a ... a recruiter for the Church. That isn't fair. If people hear about the wedding and think again about how they want to get married, fine, but he won't let his name be used as a recruitment advertisement for the Church—and you wouldn't ask him to if he was Joe Blow! You wouldn't ask anything beyond whether he was baptized or not. You would just be glad he wanted a Catholic wedding, but Paul McCartney has to become a missionary for the Church to get the same thing. That is unfair and we won't do it.”

He had stared at me in surprise as I picked up my purse and coat and headed for the door.

“Wait!” he said. “Just hold on.” I turned back to him, hand on the doorknob. “You are right. That isn't fair.”

I let go of the doorknob and waited.

“Let's talk,” he said.

I had left half an hour later with a priest lined up for our wedding. Whether out of compassion, a sense of fair play, Beatlemania, ego, or just plain rebelliousness, he agreed to do it for us. No banns would be posted and the prenuptial classes would be compressed into a crash course.

So, on top of everything else, we'd had sessions with Father Mike twice a week and homework to go with them. There had been a list of topics we were to discuss to get to know each other better. The point was not necessarily to agree but to discover whether we were indeed compatible or at least able to negotiate. We started at the top of the list; money management:

“How much money should either of you be able to spend without discussing it with the other?”

“$25,” I said.

“200 pounds,” said Paul.

Well, at least it was time spent with Paul.

I had felt I was neglecting him, but he had taken the hours of waiting for us to come home from school and shopping without complaint. He spent some of his time at the dance studio using the piano and tape recorder. In the evening he watched TV with Sandy while Brenda and I studied, waiting for some time with me. For me, those weeks were exhausting, but I could sense his pent-up energy increasing. He was never this inactive on his own. Even on tour the endless hotel rooms were full of people coming and going and interspersed with plane trips and press conferences, and the concerts.

The bright spot in his week had turned out to be—of all things—going to my parents on the weekends! In fact, after the second weekend visit, Paul ended up staying there while I went back to Minneapolis. Mom had a list of things to do before the wedding that was a mile long and much of it involved outside work. She wanted the trim on the house repainted, shrubs planted around the new garage, and a general facelift for the old homestead. Rainy days were making all that difficult and she was getting frantic. Dad had no time. No farmer had spare time in the spring. Paul had offered to stay a few days and do what he could if the weather allowed. He jumped at the opportunity, in fact. He loved the privacy of the farm, the chance to ride horses, and he definitely needed something to do, so I had left him there with few misgivings.

Late Thursday afternoon I had arrived to pick him up and had found Mom busy planting petunias in a new garden along the front sidewalk with the happiest smile I had seen from her since the day John Lennon had fallen into my life. From behind the house came the sound of a radio blaring WDGY. They were in the midst of a commercial for Minnesota Drag Raceway (“SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!”) when I arrived and I had a moment to talk to Mom and find out Paul had dug up the new garden for her.

“He has been working like a trooper!” she had informed me. I wasn't surprised at that, but a moment later I was astounded. From behind the house came the radio sounds of Do Wa Diddy—accompanied by Paul and a chorus of female voices. My shy little sisters who refused to sing even in church were singing along, loud and strong! I looked at Mom, mouth open with surprise.

“That started last night,” she had told me. “I still don't quite believe it!”

Behind the house, Paul and my sisters were painting the last of the side porch. I had taken one look and burst out laughing. Paul was dressed in one of Dad's old bowling shirts, (“Cargill's Feed and Seed”), and a baggy pair of Dad's old pants. Even better, he was paint-spattered from head to toe, and the white paint contrasted nicely with his sunburned face and arms. I had hugged him and found him sweaty, reeking of paint and turpentine, and still wonderful to touch.

As we prepared to leave later that evening, Dad had slapped Paul on the back and said “Thanks. You swing a mean paintbrush, and handle a shovel like a ditch digger.” Mom and Paul had exchanged a warm hug and we left. Sunburned and hands blistered, Paul had won over my parents.

Paying for my hand with sweat equity had kept Paul busy and taken care of his excess energy. Well, most of it. The fact that we couldn't be alone had started to get to him. There were times when we didn't see our friends from the Citizens for Decency for a couple of hours, but then they were back again, watching and waiting. They seemed to have worked out a good routine; make sure Paul was at his motel in the morning and that I left for school, leave for the day, then come back and watch through the evening. I had been pretty certain they were not watching all night during the week but Brenda had arrived home at 2:00 a.m. one weekend and reported them present and accounted for at that hour.

Their surveillance may have had holes, but something more sinister seemed to be happening. Friends reported being approached by someone wanting to hear about me and that someone made it clear they were looking for dirt. A reporter or the Citizens? I never knew, but suspected the latter. I was sure they knew of my plans to go to England with Paul so, at Harry's suggestion, we had gotten a couple of people to “leak” the information that I was planning to live with him in England. We had expected that if they thought I was going to give them some solid proof of “moral turpitude” in a few weeks they would back off a little now. They hadn't, and we began to look for a place, a time where we could be alone.

The weather hadn't cooperated. Weekends at my parents had been chilly and spattered with rain. Fine for digging holes and planting shrubs, fine for an ordinary horseback ride, but not conducive to a rendezvous in our little hideaway. We had contemplated taking the car and somehow slipping away from our stake-out and finding a quiet unlit street or parking lot, but we knew Harry's advice made sense. One nosy policeman would have been a disaster. We had sneaked down the back stairs and tried to break into the garage but Steve kept it locked up tight. The basement was accessible only through Carol's kitchen. The back porch was another idea but since the other renter was home just about the same hours I was, that never worked out. We had considered the dance school but there were no locks on the practice room doors and I couldn't think of a reasonable excuse for asking Carol for the keys to her office. We couldn't be seen staying in the school after closing and we certainly couldn't take the chance of being interrupted by a tuba toting ten-year-old looking for a practice room!

By the end of the second week in the five-week wedding countdown, we had begun talking about my sneaking out of the apartment in the middle of the night on a weeknight when surveillance was down. We semi-planned it several times but my days were so long and so full, and something always came up that made the idea of going with only a couple of hours of sleep that night sound like a really bad idea.

“Tomorrow night,” I had promised time after time as Paul left for another night alone.

He had been frustrated as hell by the end of the second week and had begun a campaign of trying to convince me that they would never find out. As much as I had wanted to be with him, I just couldn't get past the fear. There is nothing like being watched to send you over the edge into total paranoia.

“What if they have the

motel night clerk keeping his eyes open for just that kind of thing?” I had asked, wanting what he wanted and too scared to do it. “Hell, for all I know, they chalk-mark my car tires every night so they can tell if it is moved overnight!”

Paul had stared at me with amazement for a moment, then gathered me in for a hug that was supportive, not seductive. “That's it,” he said with a half laugh, half sigh. “No more James Bond for you, miss!”

He hadn't tried to talk me into it again. We had settled for heated but unsatisfying make out sessions in the downstairs hallway on our way to take him back to his motel. Those sessions hadn't helped much. There was always the chance Carol or her husband would walk in on us on their way in or out of the house so we couldn't let things get out of hand.

Paul's reserve broke in the middle of the third week. “This is torture!” he had finally complained one night as we stood in the hallway, saying goodnight and tormenting each other. “I can't have you but I spend every evening in your apartment. Nylons hanging in the john, perfume, and girls laughing and jiggling and bumping into me. Tits and bums everywhere I look! I'm afraid one of you is going to bend over to turn the channel on the telly and I am going lose it right there! Then you bring me down here and ... ah, love, this is crazy!”

I had thought so too but for a slightly different reason. He was going back to England in a few more days for the release of Sgt. Pepper. Sending him back there in the state he was in had sounded like a really bad idea. In desperation, I had resorted to one of our earliest rendezvous spots, a closet. There was a fairly large closet in the downstairs entry hall and this time I had pulled Paul into it. It was far from ideal, being full of winter coats and snow boots and a sled and bowling ball and all the other junk accumulated by an overcrowded family. Worse, the side wall sloped away under the stairs, the back wall was covered with shelves crammed with precariously balanced junk including an open box of Lincoln Logs and coffee can of marbles, and the other wall was home to a hanging assortment of fishing rods, a baseball bat, and a big string of Christmas lights. In short, there was no wall to lean against—and the doorknob was ancient and the catch mechanism wouldn't hold the door shut against more than a gentle nudge. Even so, we had groped, sweated, got crazy, and got off in that dark, stuffy, crowded, booby-trapped little space.

“Forget the house in the country and the villa in Italy,” Paul had gasped. “I am buying you a house with lots of closets!”

The scrutiny of the Citizens did give us a few laughs though. Father Michael had agreed to come to the apartment for our sessions with him since taking Paul onto the campus sounded risky. To make sure the reporters didn't make the connection with a visiting priest and an impending wedding, we had asked him not to wear his clerical collar. He complied, showing up in rainbow and flag patched bell-bottom jeans, and an army jacket.

“How do you like my disguise?” he had asked. We assured him he looked not at all priestly.

The Citizens didn't peg him as a priest either. They began taking his picture as he arrived. We figured they thought that they had found our drug supplier!

Paul got his jollies by killing our sentries with kindness. He had taken to tapping on their car window to tell them we were headed to my parent's and if they planned to follow, perhaps they had better fill up with petrol before starting out. “Wouldn't want to lose you along the way,” he had said, voice all concern.

Their flabbergasted looks and flustered embarrassment had spurred him on and he began to push things. One night he asked them for a ride back to the motel. The sentry on duty couldn't think of a reason to say no and it soon became a regular event. Another very embarrassed Decent Citizen found herself driving him to the store for cigarettes! Paul thoroughly enjoyed their discomfort.

The originally planned release date for Sgt. Pepper in England had been June 1, but the demand for the album was overwhelming and the date was pushed ahead to Friday, May 26. Paul had flown back on May 22 and spent the remainder of the week doing promos and interviews. The album was selling like mad, as hoped and predicted, but what had really gotten to Paul was that he had dropped into the Bag O' Nails with the other Beatles on Saturday night, just 36 hours after the album hit the stores. Jimi Hendrix had done an incredible cover of the title song and the place exploded with an enthusiastic response! That wasn't just standard fan response to a new Beatles album, it was incredible praise from a new musician Paul was in awe of. Hendrix had performed a song just 36 hours old, and if that was not tribute enough, the audience not only recognized it but had sung along. It had been pretty obvious that the album had gotten heavy play in the few hours since it's release. Paul was just blown away by that.

He had ended up staying all that week in London too. There was such a hoopla over Sgt. Pepper that I told him to stay and enjoy it since it would be finals week for me anyway. I wasn't going to have my nose out of a book until Wednesday and planned to sleep all day on Thursday. Friday was my graduation, then we had a week before the wedding. He wanted to be back in time for my graduation ceremony on Friday evening, but it didn't seem like a good idea for him to try to attend that anyway so I'd encouraged him to stay and enjoy the positive publicity in London.

It was during a transatlantic phone call that we finalized our honeymoon plans. Alistair needed to make arrangements and I had to make a decision. Paul had offered me the whole world for our honeymoon, but, frazzled by the current craziness I was going through with trying to get the wedding pulled off, knowing that the press and the fans were going to be wild when news of the wedding broke, and now, seeing a resurgence of plain old Beatlemania as a result of Sgt. Pepper, I had opted for a few days hiding out in Scotland on a farm Paul had purchased but never seen. Instead of renting that Italian villa or Greek island hideaway, Alistair ended up scouting out a farm in Scotland. He reported that it had minimal furniture, no running water, no telephone.

“Get camping gear,” Paul told him. “and a mattress.” When Alistair suggested that perhaps he should also make other reservations to go someplace a little posher after a few days of roughing it, Paul had said, “You don't know my girl. It will be fine with her.” He was right. All I wanted was to be alone with Paul.

So, Paul had gone to England and I had been too busy to miss him. With Paul gone and the worst of the wedding preparations and decisions made, I had knuckled down to study and passed all my finals with A's. It felt great to go out on that positive note!

Friday night had arrived, we had donned our first all white, real nursing uniforms, and assembled in the hospital's small auditorium to sit through speeches and receive our diplomas. As we stepped up onto the stage one at a time to receive our nursing pin from the dean and our diplomas, our families had applauded and cheered. Several girls had been embarrassed by calls like, “Way to go, Susie Q!” from enthusiastic family members. When it was my turn, my family had applauded but the applause had been interrupted by my classmates obviously planned and rousing “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Then, from the back corner of the little auditorium had come the unmistakable, authentic, sound of Paul adding his own resounding “Oooooh, Yeah!”

Heads had swiveled, a rush of excited talk had swept through the room, and I located Paul near the doors. He was accompanied by Mark and four of his friends. Paul had smiled and applauded and I had only a moment to smile at him—and to note that his mustache was gone (“For your Mum, for the wedding,” he explained later). Sister Ignatius was smiling and waiting to put the pin on my collar. I had accepted my diploma from the stony-faced hospital administrator, gone down the waiting line of instructors, shaking hands with them and had pointedly skipped Mrs. Berghoff.

Paul and his crew of conspirators had slipped out the door sometime during the benediction but Mark stayed behind. He joined Brenda and me at the reception that followed and told me Paul was being taken care of and that I was to stay and enjoy the reception and go on to the party a bunch of us had planned. Paul would meet me there if it looked safe.

It had turned out to be a great evening. We had accepted the graduation gifts from our families with decorum and then had retreated to a classmate's backyard for a bonfire and a keg of beer. No one had known Paul was going to be there, but a half dozen copies of Sgt. Pepper, just released in the States that day, had shown up at the party. It was the album everyone wanted to hear and was already playing on the stereo set up on the lawn when he arrived. His arrival had caused a flurry of excitement, but nearly everyone there had met him at some point in the last few months and we graduates had soon settled down to the purpose of the occasion—to celebrate our freedom. We drank a big toast to ourselves and, sloppy with sentiment, sang along with “With A Little Help From My Friends.” We hugged and cried a little and signed each other's uniform aprons as keepsakes. Then, dancing and laughing, we had tossed the rest of our hated student uniforms into the bonfire.

A quietly spread warning by Mark that Paul would be removed immediately if latecomers suddenly began arriving at the party had been taken seriously. There was no repeat of the Halloween Party craziness. The evening rolled on and after a couple of hours of snuggling with Paul by the fire and drinking more beer than I should have, it had been really hard to send him off to

his hotel. I had hoped that perhaps my graduation would mark the end of the surveillance by the Citizens for Decency, and as it turned out, they did back off considerably after that, but a little reconnaissance stroll down the street showed that they were still watching yet that night. Paul was dead on his feet after a day and a half spent traveling but he refused to be taken to his motel until we ended the evening back in that hallway closet.

Surveillance had remained high over the weekend but on Monday there was no one around all day until around four. Someone was there on Tuesday afternoon and off and on all week. We suspected the Citizens simply didn't have enough people to cover weekdays, but not knowing when they would show up was almost more nerve-wracking than knowing they were there. We were so busy during the day there seemed to be no time to be alone anyway. With my freedom from a class schedule, we had talked again about my spending a night in his room but decided that even though the risk seemed minimal now, it was silly to take it at all when we would be married in just a few more days. “Especially now that we have found these fine accommodations,” Paul had laughed as we slipped into the closet.

Paul had come back from England high, flying on rave reviews of Sgt. Pepper. Reporters had arrived in droves from all over the world, wanting the inside story on the album cover, the music, the mood, and everything related to Sgt. Pepper. At the motel and the apartment, fans stood outside singing Sgt. Pepper songs, clutching their brand new albums and begging him to autograph them. Our single, intermittently used security guard was suddenly full time and others were hired. The “Macca Mafia” as Mark and his friends dubbed themselves, became indispensable additions to the security team, driving Paul to interviews at the TV station, and generally running interference for him. Somewhere along the line, our phone number had become common knowledge and we had already changed it twice. Now within two days of changing it, it was ringing constantly again. Beatlemania was raging and it was a wild week. In spite of the complications it brought, Paul was thoroughly enjoying it. I worried at first that it was going to make keeping the wedding a secret impossible, but the fever over Sgt. Pepper overwhelmed the interest in his personal life. If anything, it was the perfect distraction and perhaps the only thing that could have eclipsed interest in our engagement!

With school finished, and Paul busy satisfying reporters in hopes that they would go away by the weekend, my last week had been devoted to packing, helping Mom clean the house, setting up tables and decorating the new garage and a million small details of final wedding preparations.

Packing up my things for the move to England had been a strange feeling. There wasn't much to pack. Other than my clothes there were only a couple of boxes of books, a box of childhood mementos, some records, but not including the Beatle albums Anne and I had jointly collected. “You got Paul, I get the albums,” she had pointed out. I didn't have a hope chest or shower gifts to bring and that had upset Mom. A bride should have the kitchen basics, some linens, a set of good china. She and Dad were giving us a set of crystal stemware as a wedding gift but other than that and the as yet unopened wedding gifts from Brenda and Sandy, I had no dowry to take with me. Brenda and Sandy had given me one gift already. A personal shower for the bride was not possible, but they had gotten me a silk dressing gown and added a special nightgown—one made of stitched together doilies, those thingamabobs that never failed to turn Paul on!

Jim McCartney and Mike had arrived on Thursday, picked up by the Macca Mafia and stashed away at a different motel from Paul who was able to sneak over to see them that evening. Angela was seven months pregnant by then and had been advised not to make the trip, and Angie was terrified of flying. None of the other Beatles were coming. They would wait until the big reception in Liverpool. John would have come but had agreed that the press would have known what was up immediately if he showed up in Minneapolis. Brian was able to come though, since a business meeting in New York was not an unusual event on his calendar, and no one would notice that New York was just a stopover. He had arrived on Friday and got a suite at the Radisson. His arrival was probably the riskiest moment in the whole wedding conspiracy. Reporters from out of town seemed to all pick Friday as the day to head home. We hadn't even thought of them running into him at the airport, but our luck had held. If any of them had passed him walking through the airport, they had failed to recognize him.

Friday evening should have been the traditional rehearsal followed by the groom's dinner and concluding with a bachelor party guaranteed to leave the groom hungover, but Friday evening had been Anne's graduation. Sandy had been insistent that there be a rehearsal at my parents. “Church weddings are easy,” she had declared. “It's the non-traditional ones you really have to rehearse.” The tent where the ceremony would take place wasn't being put up until Friday morning, so our only choice had been to squeeze the rehearsal into Friday afternoon. Brian wouldn't be there yet, but even Sandy had agreed that the man who managed the Beatles could manage to be a groomsman without a rehearsal.

At noon on Friday, Sandy, Brenda, and I had staged a departure from the apartment designed to look as though we were headed separate ways at separate times. The Citizens for Decency didn't seem to be around but with schools letting out for the summer, the number of fans had picked up. I had gone to the motel to pick up Paul, Sandy picked up Jim and Mike, Brenda picked up Mark and Father Mike, and we all met at a gas station on the edge of town and proceeded to my parents home.

While my family met Paul's family, Sandy had assigned dressing rooms, staging areas, reserved workspace for the florist, and posted a schedule that would have us all in the right place in the right clothes at 7:00 p.m. the next night. In high heels and blue jeans, Anne, Brenda, Sandy and I practiced walking across the grass to the “chapel,” gathering at the staging area, marching down the aisle, while Jim stood in for Brian as groomsman along with Mike and Steve.

I hadn't expected any problems with the actual rehearsal of the ceremony. The Church gave us a choice of three sets of wording for the ceremony and Paul and I had already picked the one we wanted. Father Mike had gone through the logistics of where to stand, when to hand my bouquet to Anne, and had shown us how to exchange rings so that they ended up on our left hands. When he got to the “I do” part, Paul had suddenly looked shocked.

“We say ‘'I do'?” he had asked.

Mike had burst out laughing. “That's the whole point of the event, Paulie,” he had said.

Paul looked flustered. “No. I mean, can't we say ‘I will' instead?”

Father Mike had replied, “Yes, I suppose. I'll just have to remember to say ‘Will you James Paul McCartney' instead of ‘Do you'.”

“Could you make a note of that, then? It's quite important,” Paul had said.

I had looked at him, realizing suddenly why a piano had been delivered to the garage reception hall the day before.

“You are going to sing it at the reception!” I said, thrilled.

He had smiled at me and had said mysteriously, “Maybe you'll be amazed.”

After the rehearsal, I had attended Anne's graduation with my family while everyone else went back to Minneapolis. That evening, the Mafia delivered Paul, Jim, and Mike to Brian's suite at the Radisson for a bachelor party. I didn't get to see Paul until the next day but heard all about the party from him. He admitted to having gotten quite drunk. (He couldn't deny it since he had a nice hangover!) The highlight of the evening had been Mark, frustrated by the need for secrecy preventing him from hiring a stripper to jump out of a cake, doing his version of a bump and grind—in pasties, tassels, and a g-string worn over swim trunks! Mark was not prepared for and never really understood the reaction of Brian, Paul, Mike, and Jim. He knew it would be funny, but he thought they were going to croak laughing.

“Brian was still chuckling about it when we left at 1:00 a.m.,” Paul told me, “and once Mike and I got out to the car, we howled!”

Amazingly, our secret plans had remained secret until Friday when someone delivering plants from the florist recognized the set up as being more than a bit extreme for a graduation party, and seeing the Martin name on the delivery address, made the connection. Luckily he was a lot more interested in telling his friends than the press so it took a while for it to leak to them.

I had gotten to Mom and Dad's by noon today, Saturday, and Dad reported a suspicious increase in the number of cars of fans creeping down the drive and watching from the turn. The rest of the wedding party had been ferried in by trusted drivers by 2:00 p.m., and by then it was clear our cover was blown. Fans had begun arriving in growing numbers. The Macca Mafia had gone out to keep them back and Dad made the phone call to the Sheriff's department that we had decided weeks ago would be our best option if a leak occurred. They responded promptly with a deputy and the Sheriff himself followed with two more officers. The Sheriff had not been at all pleased that he had not been notified of our plans in advance but Brian stepped in and quickly and politely but firmly squelched any discussion of how things should have been done in favor of formulating a plan to keep things under control. Watching Brian work with the Sheriff was an instant lesson in How To Get Things Done.

Within a few minutes, all cars had been moved back to the county road. Fans

and the first of the reporters to arrive hiked back to the house from there, a three-quarter-mile trek, and were intercepted at the turn of the drive by deputies making strongly threatening comments about private property, trespassing, and arrests. They'd had no choice but to turn around and walk back to their cars with only a few hastily snapped photos of the house as souvenirs.

Brian and Paul then negotiated with the Sheriff on behalf of the fans. The Sheriff had wanted to take a tough line with them but Paul especially wanted things to be kept as mellow as possible. The compromise was to let them stay and resort to an arrest only if they tried to move closer.

As guests began arriving around 6:00 p.m., a screening committee had been requested by the deputies. Representatives from both sides of my family and a friend from school had been hastily assembled and sent out to make certain only invited guests were allowed through the roadblock. The Macca Mafia had been put to work, patrolling the guests, making certain no one infiltrated by slipping in across the fields. That would not be easy as the crops were only inches high, but we had learned never to underestimate the determination of fans or reporters.

An outburst of laughter from down the hall brings me back to the present. Paul and the groomsmen are getting dressed too. I wonder if he is nervous. I wonder if I am nervous! As has been the case for the last four weeks, there is no time for thoughtful reflections. Anne bursts into the room, last to get dressed because she had to be outside greeting the guests and raking in the booty at her graduation party. Another flurry of lavender-pink and now Sandy is buttoning Anne into her dress, a simplified imitation of mine. Brenda is fastening the flowers and ribbon headpiece on her head.

Mom has been in and out, amazingly calm now that the things are underway, and she is back yet again, getting all teary-eyed at the sight of me in the bridal gown. Afraid she'll get me crying and ruin my makeup, she settles for a quick hug and disappears back downstairs.

It is almost time. Out the front window, I can see the cars parked in the pasture across the driveway. A car of late arrivals slips through the group of fans and reporters at the turn of the drive. I laugh and wonder what the bewildered relatives inside are thinking at this point. I watch as they are directed where to park. Uncle Bud and Aunt Vera, disembark along with two excited female cousins whose body language leaves no doubt that they know who is here, if not why!

I watch as they walk the rest of the way down the drive and join the crowd in the garage. Through the big open doors, I can see the tables with snowy white tablecloths and floral centerpieces, huge potted plants softening the corners of the room and white bunting and trailing ivy on the rafters. Now, Jan and two of my aunts, recruited to help and let in on the conspiracy as they arrived, are moving through the guests directing them to go to the big tent in the back yard. If our guests had any doubts that they were here for something besides a graduation party, or wondered where the entire family had disappeared to thirty minutes ago, their questions are being answered as they step into what is unmistakably the setting for a wedding.

I turn to smile at Sandy. “You did it, Sandy! It is going to be perfect!”

She grins back. “Of course!”

Now Sandy slips out the door to resume her duties as wedding coordinator, making certain the groom and groomsmen are on schedule. Brenda is reloading her camera, having used up a full roll on the bridal party getting dressed. Out in the hall, I hear Mike McCartney's voice, suspiciously loud and close to my door.

“Sandy, Luv, Paul won't come out of the loo. You'll have to talk to him. I am afraid the poor boy is about to back out.”

I hear Paul's laughter and the sound of a thump and scuffle as Paul brings his little brother into line.

“We need to get going,” Sandy is telling them. “Downstairs, let's get your boutonnieres on.”

The groomsmen head downstairs, but there is a gentle tap at my door. “Tess?” Paul calls to me.

Brenda shrieks and rushes to barricade the door. “You can't see her now, Paul! It's bad luck!”

“I just want to tell her that the fact that her dad is standing here with a shotgun has nothing to do with why I am going through with this.”

I start to laugh and cross the room to talk to him through the door. “And the fact that I am six months gone preggers isn't influencing me!”

Sandy calls up the stairs, “Paul! Now!”

“Tess?” Paul says again, softly now.

“What?”

“We haven't had a minute alone all day and it seems like I ought to be finding a moment to say something ... I dunno. Something rather profound and meaningful!”

“I know what you mean. I keep thinking the same thing. Have you come up with anything?”

“Not a profound thought in me head, I'm afraid.” he laughs. “You?”

“None here either,” I admit.

“Will you settle for ‘I love you?'” he asks softly.

“Yes!”

Brenda, too far away to hear the conversation, is laughing at me. “Look at that! The Mercury Effect even with a door between them!”

I have to laugh too. I am leaning against the door, hands flat against it, body pressed to it, feeling his presence on the other side.

Sandy is calling Paul again. “McCartney! Chicken out now and you are a dead man!”

I hear Paul's chuckle on the other side. “I have to go now, love,” he says.

“I love you!” I tell him.

“That's all I need to hear,” he says softly. Then, with a laugh, he announces loudly, “Well, let's have done then! We mustn't be late. The Actors Guild will demand overtime!”

Brenda and I are laughing, but she has to explain the story of how close we came to faking the priest to Anne. I listen to Paul whistling as he heads down the stairs.

Anne puts a Beatle album on the record player and sets it to play “It Won't Be Long.” I feel that odd, disjointed, out of step with reality sensation I always get when something reminds me that the guy I love is one of those gods in gray collarless jackets and tight pants.

Brenda is fussing with my headpiece and it is only minutes until Sandy calls us downstairs.

The groom and groomsmen are gone, the caterers are busy moving the parts of the wedding cake out to the garage for final assembly, and the kitchen is full of workers preparing for the reception. Someone from the florist shop helps Brenda add the wreath of tiny flowers to my headpiece, then hands me my bouquet of pale pink and white rosebuds, stephanotis, a bit of blooming heather for deep lavender-pink color, and trailing English Ivy to fill it out. The bridesmaids get their bouquets, and the florist gives us last minute instruction on how to carry them. I realize I am indeed nervous when she has to tell me for the third time to hold it low in front of me. My arms want to tighten up and clutch it to my chest.

The signal comes from outside that everyone is in place and we move out the door. There is a roar from the fans down the driveway as they catch sight of the final confirmation that this is no ordinary graduation party. A reporter yells, “Look over here, Tess!”

We walk around to the far side of the house and assemble on the lawn outside the big tent. Dad is there waiting to walk me down the aisle. He looks overwhelmed at the sight of his oldest daughter in a wedding dress. I smile at him and get a smile in return. There is the sound of organ music and the murmur of the crowd of guests. In a church, they would have been silent except for an occasional rustle of movement or a cough, but here they feel free to talk excitedly among themselves. The photographer snaps a couple of pictures of us as we line up for the entry march.

Dad takes his place at my side and says quietly, a little awkwardly, “I still have reservations about you going to England and about who he is, but Terry, I have to admit I like the guy and it is pretty clear that he loves you. You know your mother and I only want you to be happy and if you ever need us, we'll be here for you.”

It's a vote of confidence packaged with a big parachute, just what parents are supposed to offer. I smile and hug him tight and we move across the lawn to the open end of the tent.

Inside, it is like a scene out of a movie wedding. White chairs are on either side of a center aisle that leads to an open area with a pair of church kneelers in front of a white table. Behind it, the wall is a trellis covered with ivy and banked by plants and floral arrangements.

Standing at the front of this chapel are Father Michael and the groomsmen, but all I see is Paul. In a tuxedo, he looks more like the dressed up Beatle than the guy in blue jeans that I fell in love with, a look reinforced by the absence of the mustache. I take a conscious breath to break that spell.

He is looking at me, his expression just what a grooms should be when his bride appears; a little startled to see the transformation that a wedding dress causes, then a smile. Paul adds a little hint of mouthing the word “Wow!”

The guests follow his gaze and begin looking back to see the female half of the bridal party. The music changes and the first bridesmaid moves down the aisle. I have only a few seconds for the reflective thoughts I should have seen to over the past two weeks. Is this what I want? Am I ready to get married? Is he Mr. Right?

This whole wedding thing has been rushed, too fast, too soon. I am not crazy about moving to England, and I am worried about the response I am going to get there. Fans there have not been pleased with our engagement and they are not going to like this at all. There are all the worries about living in the Beatle goldfish bowl.

The real question is not whether I love him, it is whether I love him enough to take all the risks, the pressure, the insanity. “For richer, for poorer, for fame and for failure, in sickness and in health, in my country

and in yours, in the eye of the media and amid jealous fans, until death do us part?”

Dad squeezes my arm and I look at Paul, waiting there for me. Our eyes meet and I have an urge to drop all the formality and run down the aisle. I smile at him and take the first step to him. That is where I want to be. With this man, always.

The End