February 1969
Paul

EMI after midnight was the best. It was guaranteed to be quiet, but not eerily so. Just enough activity to know that others were also focused on getting the perfect take or fiddling with the soundboard or just night owls. But not enough people in the building where I felt like my every move was being watched and chronicled.

I'd popped by to say hi to The Kinks, not meaning to stay long at all, but it has been such a shit day that I allowed myself to get sucked into the music. They were working on a bloody good song, and I'd ended up playing a tambourine on the final two takes. 

I stood in front of the studio door, debating whether to go home and face the music or get a drink an one of my usual haunts. I was so caught up in my indecision that I neglected to hear the footsteps approaching.

"The girls outside would cream themselves if they knew two Beatles were here."

I flinched involuntarily at the unexpected voice behind me, then straightened and whirled around. Geoff Emerick leaned casually against a wall with a knowing look on his face. His lanky frame was clad in a button-down shirt and corduroys. He'd grown a bit of a stubble, which transformed his face from the usual boyishness to something slightly more mysterious.

"Oh, hey," I said, trying to pretend like he hadn't taken me off-guard. He tilted his head toward the studio from which I'd just exited.

"Are they still at it?"

I nodded and scrubbed a hand over my face. "Yeah, just popped by, y'know... ended up overstaying my welcome, maybe."

His eyes lit up. "Did they play the one about the woman who's a man? They were noodling around with it last night."

I shook my head. "No, they--" I paused as his earlier words sunk in. "Did you say two Beatles? Who else is here?"

He pushed himself off the wall and nodded his head toward Studio 3, which was the smallest in the building. We'd never recorded in it, but we'd smoked quite a lot of grass there over the years. The red light above the door flickered on, then off, then on again like whoever was at the desk couldn't decide what was happening.

I looked at Geoff, waiting for him to reveal which of my bandmates was there. When he didn't, I shook my head impatiently.

"So... is it a secret or something?"

He leaned closer, his voice dropping like it was, in fact, a secret. "John showed up around 9. Told Nancy at the desk that he needed to get a dream out into the world. The lads from Deep Purple were meant to be recording tonight, but he bumped them and he's been doing the same bit over and over ever since."

"Huh," I said, furrowing my brow. John hated to do the same bit over and over. That was more my bag than his. "Is it any good? The bit, I mean."

Geoff ignored my question and leaned even closer as if the walls had ears. "And get this..." He paused for dramatic effect. "He's on his own."

I paused and then shook my head slightly. "...How do you mean?"

"On his own."

"There's no engineer in the booth, you mean?" I glanced back at the red light, which was still blinking off and in intermittently. I imagined the tape deck starting and stopping at random, little bits of magnetic tape whirring back and forth.

Geoff shook his head. "Ken's in there with him. Jerry was there earlier, but John ordered him out after he couldn't come up with a rhyme for 'pamplemousse'."

Reaching up to run a hand through my hair, I stared at the ceiling for a moment. "Recluse, abuse, masseuse... lemon juice if you're being cheeky about it... alright, so... who's in the studio? Why are you looking at me like a fucking Cheshire cat?"

And then it dawned on me.

"Yoko's not with him?"

Geoff shook his head, and I tried to remember the last time I'd seen John without her in the same room. It had been at least a year. Alice had managed to corner him in the corridor at Apple just before we went on the roof, but I hadn't been there.

"Huh," I finally replied to Geoff. "Why are you here, anyway? Didn't think you stayed this late except under duress."

He shrugged. "Needs must."

"Yeah, alright, well..."

He knew I was blowing him off before I even realized it myself and was halfway down the corridor before I could formulate the words to express it. I watched him walk toward the lobby before I turned back toward Studio 3.

Part of me really wanted to see John on his own just for the novelty of it. Another part of me panicked because what was I supposed to say? I'd become both resentful but accustomed to the buffering effect of Yoko's presence, and it seemed mad that we could have a chat without an intermediary. Did we even know how to do that anymore?

Plus, I was fucking pissed off about the meeting we'd had the day before. For the first time in the long and storied history of The Beatles, I'd been outvoted. I didn't even know it was possible to be outvoted, but I supposed a lot had changed since '62. So we now had a new manager, an overweight, overbearing, crook of a man called Allen Klein. John had taken a fancy to him and George and Ringo hadn't been arsed to argue, so I was fucking outvoted.

I stood there like a deer in the headlights, paralyzed by indecision, until a junior engineer turned the corner and spotted me. He paused slightly as if gathering his wits about him and then visibly adopted an overly casual, overly cool swagger.

"Hey, man," he said as he passed.

"Hey, man," I replied half-heartedly as I decided that I needed to either go into the studio or go home.

But Alice was at home, and she wouldn't be waiting for me with a hot, homemade dinner. If I was lucky, she'd continue our argument from before. If I was unlucky, she'd give me the silent treatment, which was demonstrably worse than just shouting it out.

The red light above the studio continued to turn on and off for short periods, and that finally piqued my interest.

I slipped into the control room and closed the door softly behind me, standing in the one corner of the room that was invisible to the studio below.

"--a clangy sort of sound, you know?" John's voice came over the PA. "Sort of a Western-y, banjo-y thing... but not as reedy as a banjo..."

The engineer stared helplessly at the mic in front of him, almost like he was hoping it would conjure up the perfect instrument for exactly what John was asking for. He looked like he was 16 years old, and I couldn't imagine what plonker had sent him in to work on John's session.

"Combine an acoustic and a resonator guitar," I said in a stage whisper, causing the engineer to startle slightly. He glanced wildly at me as recognition and a look of relief set in as his shoulders relaxed.

"What about--" he spoke into the mic, making a big show of glancing around like he was really wracking his brain for an a-ha moment. "What if we combined an acoustic and a resonator? Would that work, do you think?"

There was a long pause. The engineer turned to look at me and I shrugged. The silence dragged on for several more seconds before the door separating the control booth and studio burst open and John's face popped through the opening.

"I fucking knew it!" he exclaimed triumphantly, pointing at me. "No one with half a brain would think to combine those two things, which means it'll bloody work. Alright, then, come on down."

He motioned for me to follow, then disappeared and I heard his footsteps descending the staircase. The engineer looked at me again.

"Does he want me to go find a resonator now?" he asked in a voice so low it was nearly a whisper. I could practically see his brain struggling to process the request paired with the late hour, and I struggled not to chuckle.

"Off you go, mate."

When I reached the studio, John was sprawled on a metal chair in the middle of the room. As always, his round wire-rimmed glasses framed his face, but now a scraggly beard surrounded his mouth and jaw. He wore a loose-fitting gray t-shirt with a brown leather vest thrown over it. His bottom half was clad in faded, flared jeans and he'd kicked off his canvas trainers.

I paused for a moment, trying to sense the energy in the room. Were we going to rehash the Klein thing? Pretend like it never happened? The meeting had been tense. I'd been genuinely confused why no one could see through the lawyer's bullshit. It was like common sense had left the room. And I'd been pissed off -- and yes, a bit humiliated -- that no one took my opinion seriously.

"Are you just gonna stand there all night?" John asked, motioning to three standard-issue wooden chairs leaning against the wall. I walked over and grabbed one, dragging it over so it was a few feet away from John.

"Where's Yoko?" I asked, sitting in the chair and wondering -- not for the first time -- why EMI couldn't get more comfortable seating.

It felt odd to be the only two people in the room, and I felt an emotion that felt uncomfortably like bashfulness. Which was silly, because I knew John better than I knew anyone. Or used to, anyway. I couldn't existing in the world without him, and yet I felt inexplicably tongue-tied.

It's possible he felt the same way because he strummed his guitar idly and stared down at his fingers moving over the strings.

"Not feeling her best," he said casually as if she hadn't been by his side every bloody day for a year despite how she was or wasn't feeling that day.

"And we had a bit of a row," he continued, still staring at the strings.

I glanced around the room, wishing there were another instrument -- any instrument! -- that I could pick up. But there wasn't, so I settled for tapping a beat against my knee.

"I'm also avoiding home," I admitted.

At this, he looked up. "Trouble in paradise? Already, man? It's been barely five minutes since your hippie commune wedding and already you're working late?"

I smirked. "I wish I were working late. Just dropped by to see Ray and Dave and all of them. Ran into them at Mary's thing earlier."

He reached up to rub his collarbone. "Was that the record launch party? Fuck, man, I thought it was next week. It was in my diary and everything. How'd it go?"

I shrugged. It had gone swimmingly to the rest of the world. How could it not, a groovy party on the revolving 34th floor of a tower with all of London below and Jimi Hendrix holding court in the corner? All the journalists had lapped it up and we'd all been suitably jolly, and no one seemed to notice that Alice and I were very much not speaking or standing anywhere near each other.

Before I could reply, John's expression brightened. "Did they play you the cross-dresser song? Ray and Dave, I mean. What a fucking groove."

He started to strum his guitar, singing L-O-L-O-Looooola... la-la-la Loooooola.

Then, just as quickly, he stopped playing and leaned closer. "Do you have a smoke?"

"A smoke or a smoke?"

"Either, but especially the latter."

I dug around in my pockets and produced a crumpled, half-smoked joint. I'd shared it with Mick earlier as I tried to pump him for information on Klein. He didn't exactly warn me off him, but his response -- "He's all right if you like that kind of thing, I guess" -- wasn't exactly reassuring and I once again internally railed about the fact that I'd been fucking outvoted.

John eyed the sloppily-rolled joint. "What, did you run out of time to finish it? Get bored with it? I've never seen you not finish a spliff, man."

I gave him a look. "Mick."

The Stones' frontman was well-known for never smoking more than half a joint, despite the druggy image he loved to project to the world. Mick Jagger, rock 'n roll's bad boy who had only tripped once and had a penchant for social climbing.

John's laugh echoed through the studio, and something about it seemed to normalize the fact that we were sitting around together like we had so many times in the past. Scooting my chair closer to his, I handed him the joint and watched as he lit it and took a drag.

"Heard that you're trying to rhyme with 'pamplemousse'," I said as I exhaled a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. He shook his head and put a hand out for the joint.

"On the loose," he replied, taking another drag.

"Overproduce."

"Mother fucking Goose."

We grinned at each other as he pulled out his notebook and showed me the scrawled half-lyrics he'd been trying to put to music. It felt eerily familiar and yet not at all, and I wanted to take this sudden ease between us and bottle it up so I could prove to myself later that it still existed.

We worked on the song for another half-hour, handing the guitar back and forth as we experimented with different cords. The terrified junior engineer reappeared at some point to admit he couldn't find a resonator guitar and was quickly dispatched to procure more grass from The Kinks. Another half-smoked joint appeared and we laughed about how this was just our lot in life.

By 3am, we were exuberant and silly, wheeling an upright piano into the studio. It barely fit through the door, causing fits of laughter as we experimented with various angles and finally managed to cram it in. We pulled the two metal chairs up to the piano and continued to work on the song from there until, an hour later, we'd finally finished it.

"Do you wanna get it on tape?" I asked. The engineer was long gone, but I knew my way around the soundboard. Enough to do a simple recording, anyway, and not fuck up the mix too much.

He shook his head lazily, as if he'd expended all his energy and inertia was kicking in. "If it's any good, I'll remember it tomorrow... or, you'll remember it tomorrow. It'll have to be you, man, because I can't remember shit. So if you wake up and it's still in your brain and then it's still there next time we're in the studio, we'll get it on tape."

Hunger kicked in and we raided the EMI canteen, something we'd had Mal do many times on our behalf. We took our haul -- digestive biscuits and a sad hunk of cheese -- back to the studio and sat on the floor eating.

"So what'd the Viscountess do to make you mad?" he asked with his mouth half-full. 

I groaned and ran a hand through my hair. "She's... she's so... ugh... you know what I mean?"

He nodded. "Women. Can live without them, but can't live with them."

"Exactly."

"So, what happened, then?" he asked as he leaned back on his elbows, his long legs sprawled in front of him as he looked at me expectantly.

"I got summoned to her dad's office today... summoned like a bloody serf--"

"Bet you're counting down the days til his term is over," John interjected.

"42 days and 13 hours," I replied with a nod. "So he sends his chauffeur to fetch me... and before you say anything, the man's a chauffeur. Your driver-- he's a driver. This man is a chauffeur. All patent leather visor and a black suit and indifference. Alice says he's the biggest softie in the world, but I'm not having it. Oh-- and his name is James."

John nearly spit out the half-eaten biscuit. "As in--" he put on a posh voice -- "Home, James!"

I nodded. "Yeah, exactly like that. So I'm with James the chauffeur in the Edwards family car going to the Edwards family home--"

Pot tended to make made me ramble, and I was fully aware that I was doing so but John didn't seem to mind.

"So we get there and her old man made me cool my heels for at least a quarter-hour. Like I have nothing better to do! So I'm sitting there, y'know, thinking of lyrics--"

"Any good ones?"

"Lord Edwards, oh, sir! You've caused quite a stir! Everything's so hazy that I'm feeling a bit crazy!"

John tilted his head like he was considering the merits of the song and then waved his hand in the air for me to continue.

"So he comes in all, y'know, three-piece suit and elegant gray hair and that plummy upper-crust accent. He refused to call me Paul... it was all Mr. McCartney this and Mr. McCartney that, even though we're family... a fact that he still seems to be coming to terms with--"

"It was a hippie commune wedding," John interjected. "I bet you two were stoned, weren't you?"

I gave him a look as if to say what a ridiculous thing! But also, yes, we were, but only just a bit.

"It was fucking great, man," I continued. "You would've loved it."

We were both silent for a moment, perhaps pondering the fact that we'd let shit get so far that I'd gotten married without my best mate by my side.

"So," I plowed on. "Turns out that Lord Edwards called me all the way there to tell me that he'd written to the headmaster of Harrow--"

"The school?"

"The school," I affirmed. "Turns out every Edwards male for the past two millennia has attended."

"You're having a boy?"

I smirked. "Depends if you believe the mad gypsy fortune teller... and anyway, our baby won't be an Edwards male, he'll be a McCartney male... or female... whatever it is, it'll be a McCartney.... not an Edwards."

By this time, I was pacing around the small room, incensed at the memory of it all. John sat in the middle of the room, watching me bemusedly as he nibbled on a biscuit.

"Not sure you're meant to be referring to the baby as 'it'," John noted.

"So Lord Edwards has written the headmaster to ensure, I dunno, that our unborn possibly male child will have a spot in the lardy-dardy, Tory school, which no child of mine will ever attend--"

"Moss is growing, Macca, while you take your fucking time getting to the part that really matters."

I gestured wildly. "So I went home and told Alice about it-- and of course, she thought the whole school thing was daft because it's fucking daft. But you know what she casually mentioned?"

I paused and pivoted toward him so the following part would be more dramatic.

"That she's been interviewing nannies. Nannies!"

The word echoed through the room and I couldn't decide if it made it sound more dramatic or more ridiculous. Likely a bit of both.

But John understood. He was a ride-or-die sort of person, and he knew exactly why I had an aversion to a caretaker when my child would have two perfectly capable parents.

"She didn't!" He said, somehow managing not to sound like he was taking the piss. "But the baby will have two perfectly capable parents."

"Exactly!" I said flooded with relief that I wasn't being ridiculous.

"Well, except... when is this baby due? It McCartney? When's it making an appearance, 'cause meant to be recording a record soon. And, no offense, I'm sure the wee little thing will be cute as a button, but I don't want a shitting and crying baby in the studio all day."

I was about to reply when he tilted his head and rubbed his chin thoughtfully as if pondering the mysteries of the world. "And Alice does have Zarby to worry about. She's not giving that all up, is she?"

I blanched. "She'd rather give me up, I think."

He nodded sagely, something about the gesture reminding me of the Maharishi. "Well, it sounds like you'll both have loads of time to be with the little lord or lady-- will they be titled, by the way?"

I shook my head. "God, no, and fuck you for pointing out that I'm in the wrong."

His eyes widened. "No, man, why would you pay money for something when you could do it for yourself? I'm personally not keen on nappies and bottles... but to each his own, man."           

"A nanny, though!" I said, still outraged.

John finally burst out laughing and lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling with his hands tucked under his head. "Toppermost of the Poppermost," he said. "Toppermost of the fucking Poppermost."

Feeling slightly deflated, I went to sit next to him and folded my knees toward his chest.

"You never had nannies," I pointed out.

He shrugged. "Cyn wanted to do it all. You think I didn't offer? I sure as fuck didn't want to deal with it. Anyway, Dot helped with a lot of that. It's really not that bad, having someone help out."

I didn't reply, instead unfolding my legs so that I could stretch them out in front of me. John glanced up, and I could tell that he knew this was all about my discomfort with money and everything that had happened with my mum.

I leaned back on my elbows and stared up. The lights were too bright and I shut my eyes, wondering why they couldn't have lighting conducive to making music. We'd asked so many times for something to mellow out the space, and all they'd done was get some joss sticks.

There was a long silence as we both stared blankly ahead, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when John spoke.

"Yeah, so... the thing is... I shouldn't have told her."

I was stoned enough that it took me a moment to process the words.

"Told who what?" I asked.

"Alice," he replied. "I shouldn't have done it."

It was as close to an apology as I'd ever gotten from him, and I was gobsmacked that I was getting one now.

"Why did you?" I asked, still staring at the ceiling. Why did you try to ruin my fucking life?

"Dunno," he replied. "I was... dunno. It wasn't my best moment, was it."

"I thought it was a gate bird," I said in a half-whisper. "For a fucking year, I thought it was Suzie. You let me believe it was Suzie."

I saw him nod in my peripheral vision. "Yeah."

I exhaled heavily and sunk to the floor so that I was lying parallel to him with the two wooden chairs in between us. "Were you trying to... I dunno, keep us apart? Worried I wouldn't focus on the band...?"

I'd been through this more times than I cared to admit, and nothing had made sense.

He sighed heavily as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. "I dunno, man."

I'd barely even begun to formulate what I wanted to say when a bell high up in the studio started to ring angrily. We both sat up and looked around wildly.

"The fuck is that?"

"Fire alarm?"

"Jesus fucking Christ."

We stumbled into the corridor at the same time that The Kinks' producer, Shel Talmy, exited from Studio 2. He saw us and shrugged apologetically. "It was us, lads, it was us."

Grumbling, we went back into the studio, wincing at the harsh sound until, blessedly, someone managed to shut it off. We stood in the middle of the room under the overly harsh lights and stared at each other for a moment.

"I've gotta--"

"I told Yoko I'd--"

We both mumbled excuses as John hurriedly picked up his notebook and shoved his guitar into its case. The moment had been broken, and I knew we'd never discuss it again, or even acknowledge that it had happened.

--

Alice was waiting up when I got home, her eyes widening subtly when she realized how high I was. She looked like a dream in a silk dressing gown that bulged gloriously over the baby bump. She regularly complained about how hideous and giant she'd become, but I loved every bit of it.

"Have fun at the studio?" she asked from her perch on the settee as she watched me hang my coat.

"How was the rest of the party?" I asked, ignoring her question.

She shrugged. "I'm not sure revolving restaurants and pregnancy go hand-in-hand. Donovan said to tell you hello, and Marianne stopped by toward the end."

I paused. Marianne had had an awful go of things -- she'd miscarried the year before and I'd gotten the impression that things weren't going well with Mick. Add in all the drugs and I feared she was struggling mightily.

"How is she?" I asked.

Alice shrugged again, something about the gesture seeming defeated on behalf of her friend. "She's been better."

"We should have them round for dinner," I said, walking into the living room and making a beeline for the oversized chaise across from her. "Mick and Marianne, I mean."

"That would be an awkward dinner," she replied. "Since they're not really speaking much. Much like it's awkward how you're pretending that our fight earlier didn't happen."

I sighed and leaned back until my head hit the back of the chair. "I know it happened, Liss, but I'm tired of thinking about it. It doesn't matter what I think anyway, you'll do what you're going to do."

"That's not true," she replied, sounding mildly offended.

I raised my head to give her a look, and she arched an eyebrow.

"John was at the studio," I said, letting my head fall backward. "Alone."

"Alone?" Alice asked. "Where was Yoko?"

It occurred to me for the first time that John had let me go on and about the bollocks about the nanny but had neglected to say why his ever-present girlfriend was absent.

"Dunno," I replied.

I could feel Alice watching me, but didn't want to talk about it anymore. I was too bloody knackered and couldn't make sense of it anyway.

"He says he offered to hire a nanny for Julian," I offered.

Alice made a scoffing sound. "Cynthia would have hated that. And anyway, Dot helped out."

I looked up hopefully. "Maybe Mrs. B could pitch in? You know, for the odd night or two?"

Alice looked at me for a long moment before slumping further into the sofa. For the first time since I walked into the door, I noticed how exhausted she looked.

"Liss--"

"How many times was John out at the clubs and Cynthia was home with Julian?" she interrupted. "Every time I saw him, I'd ask if she was joining and it was always a surprised sort of, oh no, why would she be here in the man's world? She's busy being in the woman's world at home with her apron on!"

I shrugged, "Oh, c'mon, love, you know Cyn has never been into--"

"I can't sit at home all day and night, Paul," she interrupted again. "It's not who I am. I don't even have an apron."

"So why have a fucking baby?" I muttered, knowing that we were headed right back to the enormous row we'd had just before the party. "What's the fucking point if you don't want to spend time with it?"

She paused like she was doing the counting-to-10 thing.

"Or," she said in a measured, almost patronizing voice. "We could be like normal people and hire a qualified nanny--"

"Qualified? What does that mean? Some sort of starched-collar governess from the agency? Maybe we could just rent out the baby-- you know, we'll go out for the night and give him to another family."

"This is ridiculous," she muttered. "You already got me to move into your house with the ridiculous girls outside at all hours and all the ridiculous knick-knacks covering every surface--"

"They make it homey!" I protested, hating the fact that it had been such an effort to get her to move in with me again. She'd finally relented, mostly because she'd decided to rent her house to Cynthia and Julian for nearly nothing, a fact that John would angrily throw in my face months later when he said he was quitting the band.

"What's ridiculous," I continued in as calm a voice as I could muster. "Is having a baby and then not bothering to look after it properly!"

She stood -- which took some maneuvering given her size -- and walked over to loom over me. "My governess was called Sarah and she was my favorite person in the world."

I jabbed a finger in her direction. "Exactly! Don't we want our child to think we're his favorite people?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'd like to think we'll be more loving and attentive than my parents were. It's more like bringing in someone else to the family, not replacing us."

I didn't reply because one on hand, this felt so inherently wrong to me. But, like John had pointed out, it's not like we could both continue on as before if we had a baby in tow all the time.

"Is it possible you're taking out your ire about the Klein situation on me? You know, transferring the rage?"

"No!" I insisted. "I'm fucking annoyed that you didn't think to ask me if I was okay with you hiring a nanny."

She let out an exasperated sigh before retreating back to the settee. "It didn't even occur to me that you wouldn't think it's a good idea, because it's a good idea. I have to go back to Zarby at some point and no one will take me seriously if I have a baby with me all day."

"Well, what do you want me to fucking do, Liss? No one listens to me. Not you, not the lads... no one fucking listens."

There was a long silence and I heard the tell-tale creak of the settee as Alice once again hoisted herself up. A moment later she appeared next to me and sat gingerly on the side of the chair. We stared at each other for a moment before I sighed and repositioned myself so she could nestle in next to me.

"I'll squish you," she complained as I pulled her closer.

"You won't."

She lay her head against my chest for a long while, and I thought she'd fallen asleep when I heard her speak.

"Don't worry about them," she said, her words partially muffled. "They're being short-sighted."

I ran a hand through her hair as I stared at the blank TV screen across the room. "It's obscene, the amount he wants to take... we're not some two-bit band looking for their big break... it's fucking absurd. He's fucking absurd."

"But he knew John and Yoko would want a macrobiotic dinner, so he might be alright," Alice commented sarcastically.

"It's like I don't matter.," I muttered.

Alice sighed and tightened her arm around me. "You matter to me. And this little one... once he's here, you'll be his entire world. Even if we have help looking after him. You'll see, love."

I exhaled heavily and buried my face against her head, trying desperately to ground myself.

"We'll make it through it all," Alice continued softly.

I nodded. "You and I will, yeah. But the lads... I dunno."

There was a pause and then her hand reached up to cup my cheek, and I looked down at her.

"Do you really think it's come to that?" she asked, and I shrugged. I didn't fucking know anymore. The last meeting had been a veritable shitshow, but tonight with John... that had been alright.

"Dunno," I finally replied dejectedly. "Guess there's nothing left but to wait and see.