“I’m going to be honest with you, Cindy.  The other girls and I don’t really want you around Cavendish if you can’t control yourself. After the other night—”

“It was the alcohol, that wasn’t me—“

“You just can’t act that way and be one of us. Paul trusts us. We have an understanding and a friendship. We don’t want someone there who could jeopardize all that.”

Cindy was losing out the battle to fight her tears. Margo’s normally pleasant countenance was surprisingly dark, and her eyes looked almost black in their severity.  I was cooking in the kitchen but their little ‘chat’ was probably audible even to the neighbors. 

Nathan and a mate of his were due for dinner within the next ten minutes… and things were telling me that it wasn’t going to be a very pleasant evening.

“Now, I promised the other girls that you were going to take a break from Cavendish Avenue—“

“But Margo!”

“Cindy, maybe you need to take some time away from Paul and focus a bit more on Nathan. He is your boyfriend, you know.”

And that was that: Margo had suspended Cindy’s Cavendish privileges precisely as Nathan and his mate Steven knocked on our front door.

She came out of Cindy’s bedroom. “Don’t worry Charley, I’ve got the door.”

“Margo,” I whispered urgently before she threw open the door, “what on earth is going on back there?”

Margo shook her head sadly. “I’ll tell you later.”

She opened the door and in walked Nathan, looking particularly groovy with a paisley scarf around his long black overcoat, followed by the hilarious, but rarely sober Steven Sanders. 

“It’s nasty out there! Took us half an hour to even get here, all that rain. But it’s already worth it: it smells sinful in here,” Nathan said with an eager rub of his hands. “I’m a sucker for curry!”

“Here, give us your coats,” I said.

“Curry?” said Steven blankly as he shed his mohair jacket. “I thought we were having Indian food.” 

I could smell the pot on the both of their coats, Steven’s in particular, and I had to laugh at him. “Glad to see you’re doing well, Steven. And hold all compliments about the food until after you’ve tasted it. I’ve never cooked curry before!”

“Uh-oh,” I heard them both say behind me as I brought their coats into my room.

I poked my head into Cindy’s bedroom on the way. “Cindy,” I said delicately, “Nathan and Steven are here…”

But Cindy was lying prostrate on her bed, her face buried into her pillow. Even though muffled, her crying was still quite visible by her shaking shoulders.

And my heart broke clear in half.

I closed the door behind me and carefully took up a seat on the edge of her bed. “Cindy?”

“Go away,” she managed to get out between her sobs.

“Cindy, no, don’t cry…”

“I said go away!” She raised her head to look at me, eyes bright red and her face splotched with running mascara. “I just want to be left alone—“

And as another fit of tears besieged her, I took hold of her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. Her chest heaved in and out against mine, fighting to breathe through her gasps.

“Shush now,” I said quietly, stroking her tangled hair. “Come now Cindy, no crying.”

“H-how c-can I h-help it,” she said. “D-did you h-hear what Margo s-said?”

“Yes.”

“H-how c-could she? She knows how much I love him! H-how c-could she pull me away from him?”

“Cindy… sweetie… have you stopped to think that maybe she’s right?”

Cindy’s crying halted almost immediately, and her blue orbs blinked at me, blankly.

“I’m not saying you can never go back to Cavendish, and neither is Margo. But I think we both agree that you need a rest to… well… to get your feet back on the ground. And Nathan is here now and… oh Cindy… don’t you think that he’s worth at least five Paul McCartney’s?”

She was silent. Something was brewing behind those eyes of hers, and it didn’t take long for me to find out what.

“Charley…” her voice was almost in an awed sort of whisper. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize it… but… you’re in love with Nathan, aren’t you.”

Holy fuck.

It was the very last thing I’d expected her to say, which meant that it took me several moments to find my words. I just couldn’t let her know the truth. So, I threw my head back into a laugh and gave Cindy a playful slug on the shoulder.

“No, darling. That’s your job.” I stood up from the bed, hoping to God that she couldn’t hear my heartbeat racing from the surprise punch she’d delivered. “Now get yourself together— dinner will be on in about ten minutes.”

It was actually more like twenty before Margo and I dished up the dinner plates.  It had been Nathan’s idea to get together for some curry and kebabs— only somehow he’d managed to change it from being an outing at an Indian restaurant to being a home cooked meal by us girls.

Cindy walked into the living room, Nathan springing up from his seat and enveloping her into his arms at the sight of her.  It was the first time he’d seen her since the Paul McCartney disaster two nights ago.

She sat next to Nathan at the table, smiling weakly at everything he said. Not so much out of disinterest, mind. But really, who feels like smiling when they’ve been denied the one thing they want more than anything else in the world?

“So how bad was it really, Margo? On a scale of one to ten.” Nathan was perfectly oblivious to Cindy’s state of despair, and was happily stuffing his gob with yet another helping of the curry rice.

Margo was smiling, and doing a very good job of acting pleasantly normal. “Ask Charley, she was there, not me.”

“I’d put it at a comfortable nine,” I said. “Coming from a town where the Royal Variety Show on Boxing Day is the year’s biggest event.”

“I would have paid anything to have seen Paul McCartney walking you out of that club,” said Margo with a genuine spark of amusement in her eye.

At that Cindy spoke up, a cut of ice definitely in her voice. “So would I,” she said. “But I’m sure Margo and Charley understand that I wasn’t myself that night.” She stared dead into Margo’s eyes. “I would never have done anything like that if I’d been sober.”

“But at least now you’ve got it all out of your system,” said Nathan, pulling Cindy close to him.

“Yes,” she said. “Sure.”

I looked up from my plate and caught Margo’s eye. The frown on her face confirmed that Nathan Sloane was living in a fool’s paradise.

***

Subsequently, therefore, Cindy didn’t even mention Paul unless Margo brought it up. That is, until the radio began broadcasting the release of the brand new Beatles single. From the minute we first heard in on BBC2, Hello Goodbye was in instant favorite amongst Cindy, Margo and I— and its flip side, I Am the Walrus, was even more captivating!

Nathan, in particular, thought that I Am the Walrus was one of the ‘grooviest’ things he’d ever heard. And when the BBC announced that they had banned the song from radio play because of John Lennon’s lyrics which had the word knickers (gasp) and pornographic (double gasp), Nathan upgraded his opinion of the song to be one of the best he’d heard in years, and went on to say that he felt it a greater song than anything found on Sgt. Pepper, and that he hoped that all of the songs on their new album was like that.

As it turns out, that particular Beatles single was the very first thing that I bought with the money from my new job. That’s right: job.

Work, of course, had become a necessity, and not even a fortnight after the incident at the club, I was back in the West End. This time, though, I was pushing through the congested Charing Cross Road to the ‘Hatchard’s Booksellers.’ Margo had meant what she said about doing me a favor for bailing her out back at the Premiere party, and she’d come through with helping me get a job as a sales attendant. Although Hatchard’s was one of the biggest chains in the book industry, this particular shop had a decidedly non-traditional feel to it. I would have loved to have found a small, very local bookshop to work in, but money was money and I was grateful for the job.

It was the holiday season (it had been since 1 October and would remain until 30 January) which meant that an awful lot of people walked in and out of the shop doors thanks to its central location. And on the off nights when the customers stayed away, I was in charge of keeping everything looking ‘festive.’

But the holidays didn’t just mean putting in long hours at Hatchard’s.  It meant family.  And I hadn’t spoken to mine since I left them at the start of term.

I’d done a good job of not thinking about it by throwing myself into my studies. I was wishing to God that I had my own studio in the flat, but since I didn’t I took to showing up early in the morning and staying late into the evening to paint. A lot of times, these sessions had nothing to do with my projects… they were simply fueled by the insatiable need to create.

The general consensus from my art professors was that I showed ‘promise’ but needed ‘direction’ in my composition.  But I’d seen Magritte, and was head over heels in love with the Surrealists so it naturally reflected in my work… which was not the professor’s cup of tea, to say the least.

Now, Nathan and Steven were often at our flat during those long, freezing winter evenings, and it wasn’t rare for Margo, Cindy and I to drop by Nathan’s cramped dormitory unannounced.

On one such occasion, I actually had reason to come by his dorm all by my lonesome.  Nathan had swung by the art studio, knowing I was always the last one there, and asked me if I would please meet him at his flat after I’d finished because he had something he wanted to tell me.

The idea of an invitation to Nathan’s flat alone was mind-boggling, and I was in a frenzied state of anxious apprehension when I climbed the unsavory-smelling hallway and knocked on his door.

He was dressed in light blue jeans and a white t-shirt that, as I immediately took note of, clung quite comfortably to his torso.

Don’t stare, Charley! What’s wrong with you!

He gave me a hug and told me to ‘set meself down’ on his sofa.

It was certainly a bachelor’s pad: I counted at least three empty cereal bowls, an empty bottle of Whitney’s Ale, and four separate pairs of trousers, turned inside out, thrown over the side of the sofa. Nothing in the way of niceties— not even a nice coffee table book. Just lots of old journals, tatty books and magazines.

“The mind boggles at what’s growing in here,” I said with feigned disgust.

“Ah, shurrup,” he said, plopping down on the sofa, painfully close to me. He lifted his bare feet onto the coffee table, and his left arm casually rested against mine.  “Here, ever seen this?”

He held out a small business card which read: The Indica Gallery. 6 Mason Yard SW1. John Dunbar and Barry Miles, Proprietors.

I shrugged. “No. Why?”

He was smiling. “Steve and I met a couple blokes the other night down the pub in Piccadilly, the literary sort. Come to find out they were familiar with some of my work and invited Steve and me to a party at a flat over on Hanson Street. So we went, got to talking with a lot of the people there, and I met a bloke who runs this art gallery in the west end called The Indica.”

My attention was rapt. “Go on…”

Nathan was beaming by this point. “So I told him that a good friend of mine was an artist, or at least an art student, and that her work was misunderstood by her art professors. And this bloke, Miles is his name, said to me, ‘Brilliant! Just the sort of art we specialize in!’”

I gasped. “Nathan…”

“And he tells me that you’re welcome to ring him up and drop by the gallery with some of your work.”

“Nathan!”

“So I did some asking about because, you know, when it comes to the art scene I’m something of a novice, and it turns out this Indica Gallery is a very big deal here in the city. I guess you could call it the premiere underground in-spot. Luv, if you get a piece of your work put up in there… you’ve got a foot in the door!”

It wasn’t possible! How could something so wonderful be possible!

“You… you actually told them about me?”

“’Course I did! And I think that it’s just the place for you! So anyway, his number is on the card and he’s expecting your call.”

It was just bloody unbelievable. This man, for whom I cared so much already, had gone and done something so very extraordinary for me. I could not help myself: I threw my arms around him and closed my eyes, thanking him endlessly.

He was laughing. “Don’t mention it, luv. I only got you the phone number. It’s up to you to get your work in there!”

Nathan’s body felt so wonderful against mine and I would have held him in my arms for eternity, but propriety took over and I let go of him.  His eyes were smiling at me, thoroughly unaware of just how much I loved him.

“Can you imagine it? Me! Charlotte Gooding of Bedford… a bloody London artist!”

“Bet your Mum and Dad are going to be thrilled when they hear the news. When you go home for Christmas, you’ll be going home a success!”

My smile faltered. Even such wondrous news as this, and being in the close company with the man of my wildest dreams, was spoiled by the words ‘Mum and Dad.’

“I’m not going home for Christmas,” I finally answered, unable to shield the bitterness in my voice. “And they wouldn’t care one way or the other if I get my work admitted to a gallery.”

“What do you mean, you’re not going home for Christmas?”

“I mean just that. They’ve not rung me up, not even once.

“But… you’ve phoned them, haven’t you?”

I looked up in surprise. “Of course not! Why should I?”

He slowly brought his lips close to my ear, sending a shiver up my back not just because he was so dangerously close to me, but because of what he said.

“Then… perhaps they feel the same way? Maybe they feel you should make the first move?”

It was a valid point that did make me stop and think.  But then I shook my head sadly. “You don’t understand, Nathan. My family doesn’t care. They told me so, in so many words. I could be elected Prime Minister, and they would have nothing to do with me.”

Nathan folded his arms. “Now that is just ridiculous, and you know it.” And then, his eyes brightened. “Call them.”

I laughed. “What, now? You are mad.”

“Since I’m the one who will probably be responsible for giving the new generation its greatest artist, you owe me a favor. And I want you to ring them up.”

“Ring them up,” I repeated, and snapped my fingers. “Just like that? Well, maybe your family operates normally, but the Goodings’ take on family life is somewhat skewered.”

 “At least present them with the opportunity to invite you home. That way nothing is on your head— you tried to keep up your relationship with them.” His voice was serious now. “Trust me, Charley. You’ll never forgive yourself in the long run… if you turn your back on your family.”

I would just as soon have forgotten they existed altogether.

But I would willingly do anything that Nathan asked me… so when he handed me the telephone, I dialed the number.

My stomach was twisting in knots as the buzzer rang… Please don’t be home, oh please don’t be home…

“Hello?”

Damn.

“Hi, Mum? It’s me, Charlotte.”

The silence lasted about an extra three seconds which felt more like three lifetimes.

“Charlotte? Not our daughter Charlotte, it can’t be, surely.”

“Yeah, it’s been a while.”

“Yes, well I’m sure you’ve so many important things to do in London that it’s understandable, your not phoning.”

I wasn’t going to walk into an argument, not with Nathan right in front of me.

“So how is everyone? Katie and the kids?”

“Oh Katie is just fine. The kids are too.”

That was it.

“Good… er…. How are they doing in school? Is Ally still have trouble with maths?”

“No.”

“Oh. Good…” I turned my back to Nathan, wishing to God he would leave. “And… are they gonna stay with you and Dad for Christmas like they did last year?”

“Yes.”

This was a big, big mistake. Mother didn’t want to talk to me anymore than I did her.

Nathan tapped my shoulder. His large eyes were now soft and sensitive. “Ask her if there’s room for you,” he whispered urgently.

“So… is my old room all ready for me then?”

“Ready for what?”

Here it comes…

“For me of course,” I said, sounding as phony as I felt.  “Christmas is less than a month away, you know.”

“I’m well aware what date Christmas falls on, but I was not aware that you intended to come home for Christmas.”

“Of c-course, I t-told you before left for school that I’d be back.” It was true, after all.

Mum didn’t speak again, and the silence was murder.

“I’m sure you’ve an awful lot of homework during the holidays. And Katie’s in-laws are coming up from Bournemouth and we promised them rooms of their own.”

Her voice was even. Cold. Final.

And a golf ball was rising up my throat…

“Oh, so Katie’s in-laws will be in my old bedroom…” I looked up at Nathan.  His cerulean were now shadowed in with a black sadness that only weakened my fight against my tears.

Don’t let Mum hear it in your voice. Hang up before she hears it… just hang up…

“Well, I’m sure it’ll be fun,” I said quickly. “And I’ll send your presents in the post. Tell Dad and Katie hello for me, all right? I’ll… I’ll talk to you later. Ta.”

I hung up the phone, and lowered my head in defeat.  My anger was coursing through my veins… and the man I loved was the only person nearby to take it out on.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I said, my voice struggling over my tears, “I told you they didn’t want me around, and you fucking made me make a fool of myself…”  But the tears were welling and my anger shattered into a million pieces.

Nathan pulled me into a hug and I buried my head into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” I said into his shirt, through clenched teeth. “I’m sorry, Nathan, I didn’t mean it, I—“

“I know, luv. I know. And I’m sorry I made you. I… didn’t understand…”

He lifted up my chin, just as I’d wanted him to do again since our first walk alone together. “Remember I told you Bollocks to Bedford?”

I laughed and nodded, wiping my shameful tears.

“Well, let’s really make it happen.” He picked up the Indica business card and placed it into my open hand. “Let’s say bollocks to anyone and anything that doesn’t let you have what you want. Deal?”

I laughed again and tucked the card into my jacket pocket.

“Deal.”

***

The dilemma of what to present to the Indica Gallery was easily solved. 

It was Nathan’s love of the philosopher Nietzsche that gave me the needed inspiration.  He’d been reading from a library book to us one day at the Pub, and I appeared to be the only one interested.  The concept of a metaphysical universe was certainly intriguing, and I was very sincerely impressed by the selections Nathan chose to read… such as “what is this our life, a boat that swims at sea and all one knows for certain is that one day it will capsize,”

In the end, what stuck with me most was the quote that “in this reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed.”  So… during the long, drawn out minutes of my history class, I remembered those words and out of a completely blank mind, began to sketch in my notebook.  By the time my studio art class came around, I was eagerly going over my idea with my instructor.  His admission that he did not entirely understand what I was going for was a sign to me that I was on the right track.

I spent the better part of a fortnight on it: a huge two by four canvas drenched in cherry red acrylic. White negative space was to create the side profile of a woman’s naked body, and then in her train, a maze of dark shadows.

‘Secrets,’ I would call the piece.

It took up practically ever hour of my life from the day that I first heard about the Indica, to the next day when I phoned the Gallery and spoke with the man Nathan had met, Barry Miles, to the 10^th of December, the day we’d arranged for me to stop by.

I had never, never been so nervous as I was that day. Margo had said she’d heard about the Indica and advised me to dress ‘funky’—something I attempted to do by donning a pair of calf-length black boots and a black skirt that Dad would have skinned me for wearing. (Especially, he would have doubtless said, because of my ‘chicken legs.’)

It was a difficult process in getting to the Indica with my portfolio and my ‘Mean Reds’ piece. That day Nathan had a meeting with a publisher in Fleet Street about a collection of stories he was trying desperately to publish, so he couldn’t help, and neither could Steve. (Not that I would have trusted him with my prized possessions.)

Margo, bless her always, had got permission for the Price family to allow her the use of their Renault for the afternoon, and the two of us heaved my canvases and portfolio into the back seat and, miraculously, they fit.

9 Mason Yard was next door to the posh Scotch of St. James Club, and looked like a thoroughly respectable business building with a white-painted Georgian façade guarded by a wrought iron fence, and the words “Indica Gallery” in large black lettering over the front door whose window had been whitewashed.  Inside, however, was a world 180 degrees from its outer façade. 

The Gallery was just one large room, and my feet stepped onto an area rug with dramatic Germanic (Hessian, if I wasn’t mistaken) patterns in black, the walls were a russet brown and were home to the most bizarre collection of items I’d ever beheld: the paintings were mostly acrylic, wild, loud, blaring colors that ran together and made the head spin if looked at for too long, lumps of cement and machinery were fused together to create displays that bordered on frightening, sculptures of screaming faces and obscene gestures, and then just your random bric-a-brac: a toilet brush being what stood out to me the most. It was all very dark, this curious world, lit by equally as curious luminaries.

From up the basement stairs, came a man of short stature, looking considerably wan, whose smile was the biggest thing about him.

“I’m Barry Miles,” he said, taking my hand. “You must be Charley?”

“Yes sir, Charley Gooding. And, er, may I present my friend Margo.”

“Pleasure,” he said, shaking both our hands. “Well! What do you have for me?”

“Think you could help me unload the trunk?”

He led the way to the sidewalk and the three of us brought in my work.

“Now what do we have here?” he said, and I explained to him about the idea of hidden realities as he pressed his nose up to the canvas to see the actual paintings. He then went to the back of the room, to get a long view of it, and when he came back to study it up close again, my heart soared at the sight of a smile on his face.

“Fascinating,” he said, almost in a whisper.

Margo grabbed hold of my arm and squeezed it.  I was trying not to shout with excitement.

“Charley, this might just be…”  He stepped back from the canvas and turned to me. “After the new year is when we’re having our next show. I’ll still need to speak with John, my partner, but I’m almost certain we’d love to have this as an addition.”

I was thoroughly ignorant as to the way these things worked and I tried to act as though it was all old hat to me as he gave me his spiel about the consent forms I’d need to sign and then there was the bit about the cost of wall space: ten pounds per three feet, however since he liked my work so much he would charge the ten pounds for the whole piece.

“And trust me, Charley, once your works are sold, and I daresay they will be, you’ll get that ten pounds back tenfold.”

It didn’t matter to me and I shook his hand feverishly. “I can’t thank you enough, really, for even giving me the opportunity.”

“Not at all,” he said, amused at my sincerity, and walked to the corner of the room to his desk, which was covered with art posters. “Let me have your number. John should be in later this afternoon so I’ll ring you up this evening with the final decision. Then we’ll go about all the rest of the paperwork and such. Oy! Paul, meet our newest find!”

I turned around to see the owner of the footsteps that had been barging up from the basement staircase. Dressed terrifically trendy in brown corduroy that matched his enormous brown eyes… and that mop of brown hair…

“Now really, Margo, how in the hell did you know I was here!”

“I-I didn’t,” I heard her say behind me. “I’m just along for the ride.”

“Oh, do you all know each other?” Miles stood up from his desk and came to my side with questioning eyes.

Paul McCartney’s were flashing in amusement. “I would say that I know Margo here very well.”

Margo blushed violently.

His brown eyes fell on me and his eyebrow arched, just as I’d seen it do so often in magazines. “And… I know you…”

Now I was blushing.

“The Blue Room,” I said helpfully. “At the premiere party for How I Won the War.”

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s right: you’re the normal one with the crazy friend?”

I nodded my head in an amicable hello.

“And… you and Margo know each other?”

Margo smiled. “That crazy friend from the party is a friend of both of ours.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he said, and joined Miles’ side. “What brings you here?”

“Charley here,” said Miles, “is going to be in our next show.”

Paul’s already large eyes rounded even more. “Get on…”

Miles seemed all too happy to show Paul my piece and I wanted to die of embarrassment. I wasn’t at all used to public viewing… let alone by someone like Paul McCartney.

Margo pulled me close to her and whispered, “I can’t bloody believe this.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Charley,” Miles was saying, “explain to Paul the idea behind it again? I’ve gotten it all wrong.”

I cleared my throat, took a breath, and stood next to a squinting Paul McCartney to give him a bit of insight.

And you could have literally knocked me over with a feather when he nodded his head and finished my sentence for me.

“’Another and altogether different reality lies concealed,’” he said approvingly. “Oh yeah, I definitely can see that in this painting.”  He straightened back up (making me feel ever so small) and pointed to one of the shadows on the left.

“This one right here,” he said, “It reminds me of something a favorite painter of mine would have done… the way gravity is almost suspended.”

I smiled, suddenly not caring that he was Paul McCartney, and concerned only with the fact that I knew exactly who he was talking about.

“Magritte?”

Paul’s eyes darted down to me. “Yes,” he said with a grin. “Exactly. Which makes perfect sense since Magritte was into Metaphysics as well.”

“Very true. And, well, I love most of the surrealists, but I’d have to say Magritte is one of my absolute favorites. I can’t help but nick ideas from him. Like they say, inspiration may be super conscious—“

“—or perhaps subconscious,” Paul finished with an approving nod of the head. “I believe that completely. It happens whether we’re an artist or a composer or a writer. We just—“

“Inspire each other,” I finished.

He held his stare on me briefly before winking. “Smart bird, you are.”

“Yes,” said Miles, “well whoever inspired it, I’m sure John is going to love it.”

“Oh aye, definitely,” said Paul. “Well congratulations, Miss.” He stuck out his hand and I gratefully shook it. “I’m sure we’ll see more of your work in the future. And I’m sure that I’ll be seeing you very soon,” he said, narrowing his eye on Margo.

She laughed. “No, not tonight. I’ve got to work.”

Paul laughed. “Good. I’ll be able to use the loo then without worrying about prying eyes. Thanks for the book, Miles, and I’ll ring you up later about Friday night. Ta-ra, all.”

He turned up the collar on his jacket and disappeared outside.

“Good lad,” said Miles with a nod of his head. “Very good lad, that one.” He held out his hand to us once more. “And ladies, it has indeed been a pleasure.”

We bade our adieus and in another instant we were back in the Price’s Renault, the both of us just short of squealing from excitement.  And, in an act of startling coincidence, Penny Lane was playing on the radio as we drove back towards Marylebone.

“Do you know,” I said, turning up the volume on the radio, “that Paul McCartney is one smart bloke.”

“What, just because he told you he thought your work was good?”

“No, because he knew a lot about art! I wouldn’t have expected that.”

Margo laughed. “Apparently you expected him to be a typical boozing rock star that can scarcely string together a coherent sentence?”

“You know, you really shouldn’t talk about Keith Richards that way.”

We laughed again— and my smile didn’t fade for several days afterwards.

***

Nathan Sloane was turning twenty-two on Boxing Day.  He would be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his own family in Kent, but would come back up to London for Boxing Day. That meant that my Christmas present had to be extra special since it would serve as a birthday present too.  And when I found at Hatchard’s, to my surprise, a beautiful oversized collection of Nietzsche’s letters and writings, I didn’t think twice about the thirteen pounds it cost and gladly took it home to wrap it.

I must stress to you, before I go on, that London is magical at Christmas. Outside, the days are bitter and cold breath hangs in the air, but the streets are spiced with curry and the chips in funneled newspaper are hot and steamy, just like the inside of the Carnaby pubs, gorged with yuletide frolickers— so many of them in fact that they are almost regurgitated out of those frosted windows. And then, when night becomes manifest, streaks of indigo blue and magenta race over the shopping hordes on Oxford street where the crowds paused in front of the HMV music store to catch the strains of the new Beatles LP streaming from the inside. And everyone smiles on the streets, faces lit up by the twinkling Christmas lights strewn across Carnaby and Regent Streets, arm in arm with the ones they love, or the ones they’d like to love.

Adding to it was my irrepressible excitement about The Indica. The new show was set for the 6^th of January and I’d nearly fallen flat on my face when Miles said the price tag would be three hundred pounds!  I don’t think I’d ever held three hundred pounds in my hand in my entire life! I was of course certain that it wouldn’t sell, not for such a gross amount of money, but I didn’t care about selling it. The fact is that it would be there! It was the ultimate Christmas present and it was all thanks to Nathan.

The week before Christmas, Margo phoned with some truly fantastic news. The family she worked for, The Prices, were going to be visiting family up north on Boxing Day, and they had given her permission to have some friends over to watch telly on their brand new colour television set.

It was fantastic! Margo and Cindy had been counting the days until the Beatles’ television special, and since my run-in with Mr. McCartney at the Indica I’d been just as excited as them. The idea of getting to see it in colour just fueled the excitement!

“Cindy, come on! Stop messing about or we’re gonna hit traffic on the way up to Hampstead!” I pulled open her door. “Margo is waiting in the car so—“

But my words stopped short because Cindy wasn’t dressed. She sat on her bed, in a white cotton nightgown, legs crossed.

“What’s all this about, then?”

Cindy pulled her knees up into her chest. “I’m… not gonna be able to make it.”

“What are you, mad? This isn’t funny, Margo is waiting and it’s bloody freezing out there—“

“I’m serious, Charley. Go on without me. Tell them all that I’m feeling ill, won’t you?”

“But… but it’s Nathan’s birthday!”

Her bottom lip trembled and without warning, she buried her face into her hands. “I know, I know it’s Nathan’s birthday, but I can’t face him because I didn’t remember it was his birthday until just this morning.”

“You must be joking.”

Of course she wasn’t.

“What about his Christmas present?”

“I normally just buy one present for both Christmas and his birthday since it’s on Boxing Day, but this year… I knew he’d be out of town on Christmas and Nathan never talks about himself, let alone his birthday, and I…”

“But how could you forget a his birthday when it falls on bloody Boxing Day! How could you not buy him a birthday present or a Christmas Present! Cindy, there’s just no excuse!”

She didn’t answer, but I’m sure I already knew the reason: because Boxing Day to Cindy meant Magical Mystery Tour. It meant Paul, not Nathan.

She threw herself down onto the pillow. I wanted to push that pillow down on her and suffocate her, I was so angry.

“Cindy,” I said with every ounce of restraint I could find, “You’d be bloody stupid to skip this altogether. Sure you forgot it, but Nathan loves you and you’ll hurt him ever so much more by not being there at all! Especially when Margo brings out the cake—“

“You’ve got a cake?”

“We decided a week back when you and Nathan were out to dinner.  It’s waiting in the Prices’ refrigerator.”

Cindy was shaking her head. “I can’t show without a gift, I just can’t.  I’ve spent all my money on… on so many other things and I didn’t have time to remember him? Oh this is bad, Charley, he’s been through a lot already this year with me, and now this?”

She had a point.  Nathan had some serious insecurities about Cindy’s affection, this was common knowledge. And Cindy forgetting his birthday might just well crush him…

And maybe he’ll call things off with her? Charlotte, this could be a brilliant stroke of luck for you! Maybe this will set Nathan free from Cindy and then you can…

What, then I could have him?

Charlotte, you selfish cow.  Nathan is love with Cindy. You would never want to see him hurt or upset, how can you connive that way?

“All right, Cindy. You calm yourself down, all right? Put your clothes on and be bloody quick about it. I’m going to work things out…” I was hurrying towards her bedroom door when I stopped.

“But first… I want to ask you something.” I turned around and steadied her gaze. “How much do you love Nathan?”

She was quiet, obviously stunned into silence. She opened her mouth to speak, but I quickly spoke over her.

“And I mean deeply, and truly love him.”

Cindy took a breath. “I… I love him very much.”

I was feeling ill. I wanted to throw up right there… I wanted to cry…

I went out into the living room and picked up the gift-wrapped book I’d bought him.  It felt so very heavy in my hands— perhaps telling me I was making a mistake. The gift had been important to me: it would show Nathan how much I really cared.  And I was about to throw it away on someone who would rather buy a Beatles record than her boyfriend’s birthday present.

“Here,” I said to Cindy, who was fastening up a white blouse.  “Give him this.”

She blinked stupidly.

“Like you said, you can’t go empty-handed.”

She picked it up. “W-what is it?”

“An anthology of essays by Nietzsche.”

“Right,” she said and nodded slowly. “And… Nathan likes N-Nee—“

“Nee-chee. And yes, he does.  Now get moving— I’ll be waiting in the car with Margo.”

I spun around before I could change my mind— and before she could see that I was only moments from breaking into tears.  Thank goodness the air outside was blistering cold, because it was raw against my face and froze my tears before they escaped down my cheeks. 

“Where’s Cindy?”

Margo was bundled in thick gray wool, and her breath hung in front of her thanks to the still cold inside of her car.

“She overslept, she’ll be right down.” I promptly turned my gaze out the window.

Margo did not question me further, as I was dearly hoping she wouldn’t, and the twenty-five minute drive up to Hampstead was done so in delicate silence.

Nathan was fashionably late— surely thanks to Steve, who looked just shy of being sober.

“Can you believe it,” said Nathan after kissing us all hello, “there was actually a Market open on the High street! Indian, though.” He held up a brown paper bag. “Kebabs and patties for everyone.”

There were no complaints, since the only other food we had were boring old chips, crisps and beer.

Margo turned on the telly and the five of us settled on the living room floor.

“Before the show starts, Mr. Birthday Boy, we’ve got a bit of something for you!”

Nathan flushed pink and Margo hopped up from the floor and hurried to the kitchen.

“Wot you girls up to, then?”

Margo hollered to me from the kitchen to ‘kill the lights’, which I did, and she soon appeared into the living room with a small round cake, lit by one candle.

“All right,” I said, “everyone on the count of three: one, two, three!”

We sang and clapped and whistled.  Nathan blew out his candle before telling us to ‘sod off’, and then proceeded to happily cut himself a slice of the sweet confection.

I switched on the radio, fumbling for some sort of suitable background music, finally resting on the BBC1, which was playing Never My Love, by the Association— a favorite of everyone’s.

“Open mine first, mate,” said Steve.

“Ah… mate, you didn’t have to get me…” Nathan paused. “Er… well, it’s a postcard, isn’t it.”

“That’s right,” said Steve. “Of Dublin.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Er… thanks, mate.”

“Sure thing. I figure I’ll give you this postcard now and then take you up there next weekend.”

“You serious?” Nathan slugged Steve’s shoulder. “That’ll be a gas, mate, cheers!”

Steve looked thoroughly pleased with himself and nodded to me. “Go on then, Charley. Wot you get the scruff?”

I stirred unpleasantly, hating Steve for being so eager.

“Oh, well, Nathan…” I fought to bring my eyes of to his. “Er… I am sorry, but—“

He laughed. “Don’t fret, love.  Don’t worry: I’m not upset that you forgot my birthday.”

I laughed. “I didn’t forget… not for a second.” I cleared my throat. “And neither did Cindy. Go on, Cindy.”

She laughed, albeit nervously, and handed Nathan the gift.

He ripped it open and…

“Shit.” His eyes were stuck on the unwrapped book in his lap.   “Cindy…” he looked up. “I… I’m actually speechless.”

My stomach knotted again.

“Yeah, well, you know… I saw it and I thought of you straight away.”

He was turning the pages in awe.  “I can’t believe it… I never thought you actually listened when I talked about him.”

Cindy laughed. “’Course I did.”

He was smiling at her, and then those eyes inched towards me. “Aren’t you jealous, Charley? That I’ve got it and you haven’t? You like him just as much as I do—“ his words cracked at the last, and a strange shadow befell his eyes… they were burning right through me, reading me, exposing me…

And then the moment shattered when Margo clapped her hands.  “All right, then! It’s gonna be on in just a minute! Enough of Nathan now, eh?”

Nathan laughed good-naturedly, as did all of us, and thankfully the topic was changed from Nathan’s birthday to the telly commercials.

One hour later, the only sound in the room was that of the Lloyd’s of London commercial jingle from the television.

“I’ll tell you lot one thing,” said Steve. “I need to get a hold of whatever it is those blokes are on.  I’ve been on the wrong bloody train. What the bloody hell was all that about?”

“No idea,” said Nathan. “Which is probably the whole point. It was…” he paused, searching for the words and finally settled with “creative” and “arty.”

“Yes,” I said. “And who says that art always has to make sense?  You can make of it what you please— which I’d wager was probably a big point of the film.”

Margo nodded. “Yes... but… don’t you think you’d loose some of the flavor of… let’s say… a Dali painting if it were a reproduction in monotone gray?  We saw this on a colour telly: what do you think the other ninety-eight percent of the population will think of it in black and white?”

Bloody good point.

And she turned out to be only too right:  the country thoroughly rejected the film and, so it seemed, hated it.

At least, that’s what the press said the following morning. Although the papers had a wealth of other adjectives they put to remarkable use. Margo’s favorite was the Daily Express and their article ‘Magic Leaves Beatles With Mighty FLOP!’

“Listen to this,” she said. “’Well, the bigger they come the harder they fall. And what a fall it was when the Beatles introduced their first effort at film making on TV last night.  I cannot ever remember seeing such blatant rubbish.  But such is the reputation of this obviously over-rated quartet that this film they made for 40,000 will make them at least a million.”

I smiled. “That’s actually nicer than what the other paper said.” I pulled out the Daily Mail. “’This witless home movie scathes the myth of their genius for good and all.’” I laughed. “Damn. Guess it’s time for them to pack it in now that the Daily Mail says it’s all over.”

It was like that for the whole of the day. All the news talked about was Magical Mystery Tour this and Magical Mystery Tour that— what were the boys thinking? What on earth was it all about? They’d gone too far, etc., etc., on and on. They interviewed people on the streets, endless interviews, just endless, and I didn’t catch any comments that were any too complimentary.  It seemed they were almost delighted, the press were, at being able to announce the Beatles’ first, undeniable flop.

This being the case, it was with great interest that Cindy, Margo and I watched the David Frost Show that night, since Paul making an appearance. Surely to stick up for the negative onslaught of the press.  He looked very cool and relaxed, and was in considerable good humor given the fact that the nation was in the midst of a full on bashing campaign against him.

The ever so likeable David Frost was very gracious, and his casual, good-natured humor was certainly rubbing off on Paul and the audience, all of whom spent a good deal of time laughing together.

“Did you have a point in mind,” said David, “some point to get across at all when you did this?”

Paul, who’d been biting his thumbnail, sat straight up in his seat. “No, see that’s the trouble: you gotta do everything with a point or aim. But we tried this one with no point and no aim.  It’s like when we make a record album— all the songs don’t necessarily have to fit in with each other, they’re just a selection of songs.  But when you go to make a film, I dunno, you seem to have to have a thread to pull it all together.”

“Then what’s the difference between what you were trying to do here and, say, what you were trying to do with the Magical Mystery Tour EP?”

“That’s the thing, you know, there’s no real difference between it. Except that we had real people in a kaleidoscope and things were happening. And… if you watch it a second time it does grow on you, and this is one thing we forgot: when you make a record, a lot of people listen and say ‘well I don’t like that one.’ But the second time around they say, ‘not bad.’ And then after a few plays they say, ‘hey…’”

David jumped in, grinning wildly. “Well now, the BBC is going to show it seventeen times, all you have to do is sign!”

We laughed along with the telly audience.

“So would you call it a success or a failure today,” asked David.

 “Er… it’s both, you know: A Success Failure.” He laughed. “You can’t say it’s a success because the papers didn’t like it. And the papers seem to be what people read to find out what’s a success.”

“What is success, then? How would you define that?”

“I dunno and I wouldn’t try. I don’t know how many people liked it who saw it.”

“How many people here liked it?” asked David, and both he and Paul fell into laughter.

“Oh,” said Paul, “just a few. It wasn’t much of a success, then.”

David and the audience were laughing again. “They like you much more than they liked it, you see.” He turned to the audience. “You all better watch it again and again on BBC.”

“Yeah,” said Paul. “Seventeen times.”

***

The Indica was gallery was full of chat about the movie the night of the art show on the 6^th. Margo came with me (certainly hoping for a glimpse of a certain Cavendish resident) and we were thankful to find that our choice of dramatic black high heeled boots, turtlenecks and eye-liner was in perfect keeping with the decorum of the other guests.  The event was actually more mingling than anything else. People stood in front of the pieces of art, occasionally studied them, but seemed more interested in listening to the Velvet Underground’s All Tomorrow’s Parties and chatting about things in general than on the actual gallery pieces.  Margo and I had, unwittingly, found ourselves in the middle of a high society London do.

There were a considerable number of Pseudo Chelsea Intellectualists present who insisted on breaking the film down into tiny analytical pieces. After a while it became comical, those superfluous speculations on the ‘rich textures’ that comprised the film and its ‘underlying thematic gems’. Such as the Fool on the Hill sequence, which, so they said, was a segment flowing with metaphysical ideas… an assessment to which I could not help but laugh.

“There was nothing at all metaphysical about the Fool on the Hill sequence,” I said, feeling strangely confident surely thanks to my glass of warm Guinness.  “Indeed, if the lyrics themselves suggest anything, then it’s that of an entirely existentialist experience.”

“Well,” said a man with a goatee, “perhaps on the surface, yes, but below that—“

“To be honest, I don’t think there is another level to it,” I said flatly. “I mean… it’s all quite possible that the film crew went out to a beautiful hillside and Paul said ‘just film me mucking about’. And now here we are tearing it apart for its supposed hidden meanings.” I shrugged. “Sometimes a rose is a rose is a rose."

Margo raised her glass to me. “Well said, my dear.”

“Indeed. I must say that it’s nice to hear the film being discussed without any nasty indicatives.”

He'd appeared out of nowhere, Paul had, and it gave me a considerable start to suddenly be met with such large warm eyes smiling into mine. Smiling at me: Charlotte Gooding from Bedfordshire!

Of course, he was immediately beset by the smug Chelsea charlatans, through which Miles successfully broke in and grabbed Paul's hand heartily.

“You missed it,” said Miles. “It was brilliant-- we spent half the evening ripping apart that film of yours.”

Paul's smile didn't even flinch as I'd feared it might-- in fact his eyes only sharpened in clarity as they smiled. "Yes, it's a past time that's fast becoming the life of every party."

“Don’t worry mate, next week the papers will be on to something else, you know how critics are. What’re you drinking, Scotch and coke?”

“Cheers— oh, hang on a minute mate, I’ll go with you.”

He and Miles edged towards the swanky space-age style bar, and I very happily focused back on my painting… which to my surprise was currently being nosed by the Chelsea charlatans.

I would have killed to know what they were saying about it, but my numbing insecurities wouldn’t allow me to eavesdrop. I dropped my gaze to the floor and began to try and fill my mind with something, anything, to keep from hearing whatever it was they were saying about it.  Even though I thought them full of hot air, I could not bear to hear the sorts of things they might well have been saying: their crowd hated everything.

“It’s Charley, isn’t it?”

For the second time in ten minutes he’d given me a start and once again I was looking directly up into the prettiest brown eyes I’d ever seen.  Even in my heeled boots he was still so much taller than I, and I was shocked when he folded his arms and leaned against the wall: the mark of someone settling in for a conversation.

I nodded graciously, “Mr. McCartney.”

A strange smile graced his lips. “A Guinness girl, are yer?”

“Yes. And I don’t care if it’s not fashionable.”

“Well I’ll let you in on a secret: the sort of lot that’s here tonight are so impressionable that you could very easily start a new fashion.” He nodded towards the group of pretty young things I’d been speaking with earlier. “I noticed them hangin’ about your painting earlier— looked rather interested in it. Any buyers so far as you know?”

 “What, are you joking?” I said. “Just having it here is enough. Besides, their interest in anything is to see how much they can tear it down. No, I fully expect to come home with my painting tonight. Which is all right, because I’m rather fond of it: I’m hoping that no one will buy it.”

“Damn,” he said, “then you’re probably going to hate me because I’ve done just that.”

I nearly lost the grip on my Guinness and the stuttering began.

“Y-y-you?”

He nodded.

“You m-mean that y-you’ve just spent three hundred---“

“Nah,” he said with a breezy wave of his hand. “Miles put it down to one seventy five for me.”

Impossible… simply impossible…

“You… you must forgive me if… if I don’t believe you.”

“Suit yourself. But I felt it my duty to buy it, especially when those scabs over there started analyzing it.  That and the fact that when I saw it the other week I honestly bloody liked it.”

He wasn’t making it up! This was really happening!

“Jesus… I can’t… thank you, Mr. Mc—“

“And if you call me ‘Mr. McCartney again, I’ll have to ask Miles to cancel the transaction!”

 I laughed. “Thank you. Paul.”

He nodded his head amicably, and I relaxed. After the initial shock of his presence, it was much like talking to any other fella.  Which is singularly remarkable, because I wasn’t terribly used to talking with fellas in general (outside of Nathan, of course).

“So! Miles said that I just missed a great show of you shutting up scabby lot over there about our movie?”

“Miles said that, did he? He’s exaggerating: all I did was tell them that the movie was obviously experimental and I feel very artistic too. But people like them who feel there simply must be a meaning hidden behind every piece of art and go off on… verbose tangents really cheese me off.”

Paul took a quick sip from his glass. “Oh aye, absolutely. You’re the one who likes Magritte, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing precisely where he was going. “Just like Magritte: he always said he hated people who tried to analyze the meaning behind his work.”

“Exactly. He said that people could see whatever they wanted in his work. It was purely relative.” He took another sip. “Aye, all that cheeses me off too. People do the same thing with our music. I mean, granted, there are times when we are being purposefully metaphoric and all that, but sometimes maybe it’s not meant to have some deeper profound meaning.  I mean, some bloody reporter once told me ‘I understand that Day Tripper is about a Transvestite and that Eleanor Rigby is about a homosexual. What were you really trying to say in those songs?’”

“You’re joking! What did you tell him?”

“I told him that we were trying to write songs about transvestites and homosexuals.”

My head fell backwards in laughter. “I’ll drink to that,” I said and rose my glass in the air, which he met with a clink.

“Margo is a mate of yours, said Paul, “so does that mean that you’re one of the birds outside me front gate as well?”

“Good lord, no! I didn’t even know people did things like that until I met her. I adore Margo— she’s an absolute doll— but she has the strangest hobby I’ve ever heard of in my life.”

“Then you’re the normal one of the lot, then.”

“Well, normalcy is rather relative, don’t you think? And Margo really is a lovely girl, despite her strange tastes in after-work pursuits. However, on the other hand, next to my flat mate Cindy, I do believe I am the normal one.”

“Oh Paul!”

I was literally pushed aside by a brunette with a decidedly out of style hair-flip. “You’ve been hiding!”

“Apparently not well enough,” said Paul with a disinterest that the girl chose not to acknowledge. “Charley, this is Jen.”

Jen gave me a very insincere ‘arright’ before turning her back squarely on me.

It didn’t bother me, this intrusion. It was expected: after all, I was talking with one of the most famous men on the face of the planet. I did not feel like fighting my way back into the conversation so I gave Paul a quick wave ‘goodbye’ and pushed ahead through the hanging, heavy smoke, searching through the beautiful faces for Margo’s.

She was, not surprisingly, gazing up into the eyes of a striking stranger— or was it he who was held captive by her gaze?  At any rate, I didn’t want to disrupt their very private party, so I simply took up residence near the bar and asked for another drink— this time a cocktail— glad to have a quiet moment to listen to the fantastic etherealness of The Wind Cries Mary and to focus my attention on that painting opposite me… my painting… which I’d just sold… and of all patrons…

“Ready, Charley?”

Margo was smiling, minus her beguiling friend.

“Yes, but I thought you were busy.”

“I was… and I got what I wanted.” She held up a piece of paper with a phone number scribbled in smudged red lipstick. “And anyway, you looked like you’d had enough.”

I nodded and set down my glass, motioning for her to follow.

We said goodbye to Miles, and I thanked him again for, well, for everything! It was doubtful that he really understood just how much it meant to someone like myself. I felt important and grown up— really for the first time in my life!

“And congratulations,” he said with bright eyes. “Now that you’re an asset to the gallery, we’ll be seeing a lot more of you and your work! We hope at least!”

I thanked him again, and we were soon back out on the cold dark pavement, climbing into Margo’s car. “What did he mean, ‘asset to the gallery’?”

“I… I sold my painting!”

Margo turned on the ignition and stared at me. “You sold it? You really sold it?”

I nodded.

“For three hundred pounds?”

“Well… Miles brought it down to 175, which is 175 more than I expected!”

“Do you know who bought it?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

I hesitated. “Paul did.”

“Paul? As in… Paul?”

“The same.”

Margo let out a scream, which made me do the same, and she threw her arms around me. “Charley! I can’t— that’s just— I mean— bloody hell!”

I was laughing, reveling in her reaction. 

“Maybe you should be the one taking Martha.”

“Sorry?”

“Paul is going to be out of town this weekend and he asked me to walk Martha, his sheepdog.” Margo laughed. “Jesus Christ, you do realize that Cindy is going to flip her wig.”

But Cindy did more than flip her wig.  She flipped out completely.

She calmed down, eventually, and was given to a long bout of incomplete half thoughts.

“Oh I just… I wish that I could have been there! Oh why couldn’t I…” tears were in her eyes, and I was suddenly alarmed. 

She apparently sensed this because she wiped her tears and turned to face me. “It’s not what you’re thinking. I just wish…” she shrugged. “I just wanted to be able to be around him.”

“I thought you’d got Paul out of your system,” said Margo sternly.

“I… I have. I’ve tried, anyway.  But… I’ve been in love with him for four whole years, it’s not like can exactly forget all about him at once.”

Margo took a breath. “What would you say if… if I let you walk Martha?”

Cindy’s eyes rounded in disbelief.

So did mine.

“Paul is going to be out of town this weekend,” she said.

“You… you mean… you’d let me? You’d let me walk Martha?”

“He wouldn’t be there of course.”

“I know! And I wouldn’t care! Just being there! Oh, that would be enough to last a lifetime!”

Margo’s stare was unflinching. “You mean that?”

“I do.”

I caught right on to what Margo was doing.  “Do you think this will be enough to finally let you movie on?”

Cindy was adamant. “I do. I really do.”

“Okay,” said Margo. “You’ve got it. Martha is yours tomorrow night.”

***

Oh, but how fickle fate can be.

An opportunity that Cindy Stanley had pined after for four solid years, was finally pounding at her door.  Cindy, of course, had sprinted to open the door… only to find it locked:

She awoke the next morning without a voice, a terribly high fever and claimed that her entire body was aching, head to toe.  I dutifully nursed her through the better portion of the day, doing my best to help her feel somewhat better: she was determined to walk Martha even if it killed her.

But come three o’clock and with it threatening rain outside, I told her that if she went through with walking Martha, she might very well get her wish.

Her reply was a painful cough that made me wince. She buried her face into a wad of tissue paper, heaved for a good few moments, before finally falling backwards onto her bed. Both her eyes and nose were raw red, and she could scarcely manage the words she was trying to desperately to say.

“It’s… not… fair… all I wanted…”

“Shush,” I said softly, genuinely moved by the wrenching pain in her voice and on her face. “You don’t have to say a word, Cindy. I know exactly how upset you are about this.” I sighed. “I’ll call Margo and tell her that she’ll have to walk Martha herself.”

Cindy nodded, and then her hand reached for mine. “Charley… you go…”

I raised my brow. “You want me to walk Martha?”

Cindy nodded her head, with great effort, and then pointed her finger towards her bedside table upon which sat her Pentax camera. “Margo… would kill me for…” Cindy coughed feebly. “… for taking pictures…”

“Cindy! You were going to take pictures?”

She looked at me as though I should have known this. “Please Charley… for me… it’s all I want… that’s all…”

I frowned at the camera, and then gave an equally scornful frown to Cindy.

She was coughing again. “Don’t worry… all I want is to finish my collection…” she pointed at the binders on her armoire. “I really am over him… I promise.”

“You promise?”

She nodded pitifully, and I resigned. For two reasons: the first being that she looked like death itself, and it was nearly impossible to say no to someone is such obvious pain.  And the second being the biggest reason: this was the girl who made Nathan happy… and Nathan’s happiness was everything to me…

Like clockwork, the temperamental afternoon temperatures plunged bitterly moment I stepped out from the tube onto the city pavement.

It didn’t seem possible that I was actually on my way to Cavendish Avenue to walk Paul’s dog… and I was thanking God that no one, except for Cindy, knew what I was about to do. And I’d sworn her not to breathe a word of it to anyone, not even Margo, because the notion of sneaking inside Paul’s house to take pictures of his pad was nothing sort of embarrassing.

Paul’s home on Cavendish was hardly visibly underneath the onslaught of heavy fog, and only the diffused orange glow of his Victorian streetlamp told me I was indeed in the right place.

There was an intercom at the gate, and I buzzed it.  When no one answered, I unlatched the side gate, just as Cindy had instructed me to, and crossed the grass to the back door.

Martha came barking up to me with a playful, wagging tail.

“Hello. girl!” Martha barked and ran about in an excited circle before finally rubbing up against my leg, panting and begging for some attention. “Ready for a walk?”

She was.

A light rain fell over Regent’s Park, softening the fog and sweetening the air.  The lake was absent of its normal boaters, and the water sat quiet and sullen and brooding beneath the guarding weeping willows.   The weather meant sludgy grass which, apparently, didn’t suit Martha’s taste, and she stuck with me on the walk path, bursting ahead into sprints, and then galloping back, red tongue wagging and panting.

“You silly girl,” I chided, and as though she’d understood my words, she planted me with a slobbery lick.  The rain was starting to fall with a bit more persistence, turning Martha’s coat from a white sheen to murky brown. “Come on,’ I said. “It’s time to get you back home.” 

Martha struggled with me before finally giving in to going inside the house.  

Paul’s house… it was… both eclectic and elegant. I certainly hadn’t expected to find a rock star’s house to look the way his did. A long bookcase dead-ended into a huge open fireplace, and the walls were adorned with framed paintings by Magritte, and one framed picture of a Ludwig drum face reading “The Beatles.” There were French windows, exotic instruments, a grand dining table set with such finery that the queen could have eaten upon it, and still just next to it were huge stereos and record players.

Margo’s paws scurried across the tiled kitchen floor and, knowing exactly what to do, disappeared within seconds through her doggie door. I laughed, and turned around to head out of the front door.

And I paused.

Cindy’s camera was still in my purse. 

She’d pleaded with me to take a picture. It would make her ever so happy… and after all, Paul was out of town… and really, was it so very ethically wrong? You knew him, right? He wouldn’t mind, would he?

Even if he did, he’d never know about it!

So I turned back around and removed the camera. Throwing a quick look behind my shoulder, I took a snap of the sprawling white living room.

And then… my eyes lingered down the corridor… towards the staircase

What if… surely it couldn’t hurt just to take a quick peek upstairs… one of the rooms is his…

And it was quite obvious which one was his.

It was most certainly his bedroom. Larger than the whole of my entire flat. Pristine white sheets and a fluffy white shag area rug were offset by occasional splashes of earthy browns and sandy mustards. Not to mention three large black framed platinum records over the head of his bed.

God Almighty: Paul McCartney’s bed!  Any girl, regardless if she liked the Beatles or not, would have died at the mere sight of it. And adding to it all was the small pile of clothes that lay at the foot of the bed… including a pair of cleanly folded white boxer shorts…

Right there, within inches from my grasp.

For the love of God, Charley, don’t do it! 

But imagine how thrilled Cindy would be! She’d be happy and that would make Nathan happy…

It doesn’t matter! Charley! You’re mad, just take the picture and get the hell out of here!

Why is it we never listen to ourselves?

And it was so very easiy. I picked up the boxers and placed them into my purse and snapped it shut. That was it: simple.

“THIEF!”

Okay, maybe not so simple after all.

I spun around and a pudgy woman in an apron stood behind me in the doorway, face twisted in shocked fear.

“Wait! Youdon’tunderstand,” I said, my words running together, “I’mnotathiefI’monly—“

“THIEF!” She pointed a finger and once again screamed the only word I believe she was capable of:  

“THIEF!!!”

And in a flurry of movement, she’d slammed the door in my face and I heard a frantic rustling of keys, and then, a lock.

She’s locked me in!

“Hey! Hey, open this door!”  I pulled on the doorknob, and twisted, yanked and pushed it. “You don’t understand!”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” she screamed back.  I could hear the rotary dial outside the door. “Hello, police?”

Fuck!

“Yes, hello! This is Mrs. Kelly, housekeeper for the McCartney home, number seven Cavendish Avenue! We have an intruder!”

“No!” My heart leapt into my throat, “Please! I’m not! Listen to me, I— I’m a friend of Paul’s—”

But the woman had already placed the call and informed me, from the other side of the door, that the cops were on their way.

 I was in some serious, serious shit.

The bedroom had exactly one window and I ran for it, pulling it open with all my might… to be met with a two-story drop below.  I could climb down the trellis… if it were close enough… but it wasn’t. What was I supposed to do, jump? And hope to God that I could run faster than the police? 

Gruff voices were barreling down the hallway, and with an unexpected crash, the bedroom door flew open.  About four policemen were almost immediately right on top of me, grabbing hold of my arms and pulling them behind my back.

One phone call, that’s all, one stupid bloody phone call.  Who the hell ever thought of that rule?

I’d thought of ringing Mum and Dad— but my pride wouldn’t allow it. Calling them from prison? Knowing I’d been officially booked and charged for breaking and entering?  No.

So instead I rang up the flat.  After thirty rings, it became apparent that no one was going to pick up. Which meant that I was, in a word, fucked.

The policemen had been especially rough, in my opinion. But then again, I was a criminal in their eyes. And oh, the field day they had when they searched me and found a pair of boxer shorts in my purse.  I’d told them the shorts belonged to my boyfriend.

“What’s your boyfriend’s name, then?”

“N-Nathan.”

“Then why are the initials “PM” on them?”

Fuck it, Paul! Who the hell monograms their boxer shorts!

So, humiliated, crestfallen, and exactly two hundred forty-seven pounds short of the two hundred fifty pound bail, I cried into my hands, silently, alone in my cell.

Cell! Jesus Christ, Charlotte, you are about to spend a night in prison for fucking walking a dog! Seriously now, pinching a pair of underwear isn’t worth all this nonsense! I’m sure Paul has a lot more where those came from— one pair for each day of the year, I’d reckon.

“Charlotte Gooding?”

I lifted my head and looked up at the squarely massive Officer who stood, akimbo, outside the cell.  He placed a key into the gate. “Right, then.” The doors slid open. “You’re free to go, Miss.”

“I’m free to go? How—“

But my answer came soon enough.

Paul McCartney was strolling towards the open cell, bundled up in a thick black wool coat, a half smile on his face, arms folded.

“And I thought you were the normal one.”

I sprang to my feet, certainly thrilled to see him and at the same time, duly embarrassed. 

“Would you believe it if I said it wasn’t for me?”

“Gladly. I’d love to think that my first impression was right, they normally are. Of course… I do need to know one thing.”

I waited.

“My boxers?”

I smiled. “Can you think of a better memento?”

“Point made.” He nodded his head. “Come on, then.”

“You mean… you’ve paid for my bail?”

“Do you think I’d let you languish in jail? Besides, no bail was necessary.  I merely told them they’d made a mistake and that my made overreacted.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I know only one girl named Charley. And besides, I saw their photograph of you.”

We stepped out of the police station and into the raw night air.  My trembling wasn’t just a result of the cold: it was the whole crazy evening catching up with me.

A very new, very stylish and very mini Mini was parked at the curb. “Here we are,” said Paul and he opened the door for me. “Where to?”

“Number ninety-seven Baker Street…”  I was paused, momentarily, with the wonderment that he was able to fit into such a tiny vehicle. But the rumble of the ignition snapped me back to the moment. “You… you understand that I’ll never be able to thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

Paul’s face was lit up by a choirboy grin. “I know.”

I laughed and tried to focus on calming the trembling in my hands before Paul noticed.

But he noticed.  “You’re shaking.”

“Yeah, well, it was my first time in prison, you know.”

“Glad to know you’re not a repeat offender…” he paused. “I must ask you, Charley.  Since you didn’t take my unmentionables for your own private collection— which I’m ever so relieved to know— who did you do it for? Was it Margo?”

No. That nutty roommate of mine. Cindy.”

“Ahh,” Paul breathed. “Her. But… why her?”

And, without any warning at all, Paul felt just as normal as he had that night at the Indica, and I had no reservations about telling him. Everything. About my feelings for Cindy’s boyfriend and that I’d do anything to keep him happy, even if it meant helping his relationship with Cindy work because I knew she was the love of his life.

Paul was silent for quite some time. “You’re serious,” he finally asked. “You’re seriously willing to try to help their relationship work, even though—“

“Even though it’s my dream to have him all to myself? Yes.”

Paul whistled. “His happiness means that much to you? Shit. You must really care for this Nathan.”

“I… I love him.”

Paul pulled the car to a stop.  We were in front of my apartment building, but Paul didn’t move to get out.  His eyes were black in the darkness of the car and I could feel them burning right through me.

“You do realize how serious a word that is.”

I nodded. “Especially to someone like me that’s never felt it before.”

“If I may be honest: he’s a fool not to notice you…” and then he smiled. “Although there is a cure for our stupidity. Sometimes a bloke doesn’t know what he had until he doesn’t have it anymore.”

“Meaning?”

“Bring another bloke into the picture.”

“You mean a boyfriend?” I threw my head back into laughter. “Right, Paul.  I’ve never had a fella in my life. Where am I gonna get one.”

He bowed. “At your service, Mum.”

I laughed again. “You, sir, are off your chump.”

“I’m very serious, luv.”

My laughter faded, and I quite forgot how to breathe.

  Part Four Coming Soon!

Elizabeth Darcy lives in southern California. She absolutely loves to travel (an expensive but rewarding hobby) write (mostly historical fiction) paint (portraits, mainly) and of course spend as much time as humanly possible listening to/dreaming of/thinking about the Beatles.  And speaking of the Beatles, she feels that they are the only subject she is going to expound on in this ‘bio’ because it’s probably the only thing you’ll find interesting. She has been a Beatles fan since November 1995, with the release of the Beatles Anthology and hasn’t been the same ever since.  Their influence is the biggest one in her life, hands down. She shudders to think how cold and empty her life would be if it hadn’t been for those four lads and their music—the music that in effect, saved her life.

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