Chapter Text
December 1969
In hindsight, the very first clue should have been that it was George Martin who asked them into Klein's office. Klein's never used lackeys before—has seemed to take perverse joy, in fact, from insinuating himself into the studio wherever possible. Paul can just about remember when The Studio—any studio, any sitting room, any place of music-making—had this mythical quality, ground sanctified by the effort of creation. An oasis drawn up from the bedrock; a place the real world couldn't touch. That quality has long since been drained from EMI.
Stamping up to the roof to smoke, Paul thinks that it's like one of those karmic things, that this metaphorical botched contract has been followed so swiftly by real buggered-up paperwork. The messy entanglement is just the sort of thing the Maharishi would have a field day with, waxing on about how it's fated and balanced and the snake biting its own tail. Paul's hands shake as he tries to strike a match. He can sympathise with the snake, really—he's not that far off hitting his head against a wall, himself.
He finally manages to get a flame going. One hand cupped protectively around it, he catches the end of the cig in his mouth. The smoke hits his lungs; he relaxes in stages.
The first clue should have been that George Martin instigated the breaking of the news, because never in a million years would Klein outsource that thrilling anticipatory moment of asking the band into his office for a quick word and watching Paul turn green. He'd only ever send someone else, let alone someone as familiar and senior as George Martin, if whatever he had to say was so awful and so unfixable that the blow needed softening.
The second clue probably should have been that, as they filed through the doorway past George, he stopped Paul for a second with a brief hand on his shoulder. The intent didn't seem to be to make Paul stop short but he did, blinking up at George in confusion. There was a sort of pity in the man's face when he looked, and if that wasn't that second clue coming back round with a mallet to really make itself known, Paul doesn't know what was.
Of late, though, he's being looked at with vague pity more and more—and he was sort of half-asleep anyway, moving around in a dream, no closer to being in his body than anyone else was—so he just moved on.
They trickled into Klein's office. Paul's eyes caught on John, standing at his closest approximation of attention, and the omnipresent sinking feeling swelled in his chest. It still didn't feel right for John to be this hunched, skinny creature with his eyes on the floor. At least he was free of his shadow, Yoko having been persuaded to wait outside after a whispered conversation with Klein in the hallway. Paul would pretend it was that distance that was making John shy, but John has spent so much of his life without Yoko. Why need her now?
He's already forgotten the words surrounding it. He was listening at the time, but after he realised what Klein was saying everything else trickled out of his head. Another album, he said, you'll have to record another album. Dimly Paul wondered if it wasn't too late to join the Army, go get shot at in some distant territory. It couldn't feel that different.
I'm sure you can manage that, Klein said, almost apologetic. Just another record and that will be that.
It was some contract cock-up, is the gist of it, as far as Paul can remember. Some phrasing about record sales or pressings or whatever that the various entities involved in distribution—the New York branch of Apple, the manufacturers, all that sort—weren't letting go. Klein claimed to have engaged in some back-and-forth, trying to negotiate, but given how much money he'd be making off the whole thing Paul doesn't quite believe him.
Just another record. God, like it's easy. They've been at his throat the past year, George snarking and John ignoring him and Ringo just fading into the background, quiet, like a hurt dog hoping to be forgotten about.
It's difficult to believe that he was in Scotland just last week. This is a whole different world, claustrophobic and noisy, stiflingly warm even standing on the roof. It's odd but most of all he misses the give of turf under his boots. Like a sailor back on land, he is, trying to make peace with the concrete.
He tosses the cigarette, spent, to the ground, and grinds it out with his heel. Takes the stairs as slowly as he can manage but knows he's only prolonging it, really.
Something of a group huddle is taking place when Paul slithers back into the studio. George and Ringo are seated—George perched on the edge of a chair like he's ready to leave at any moment; Ritchie slumped back like he's melted. John is standing, chewing on his nails. Yoko is, in a way that only makes Paul angrier, sitting serenely on a drum stool. Christ. At least it's not an amp.
“That's, what, fifteen songs?” John says, barely looking up as Paul enters.
“Thereabouts,” George replies. He's always sounded a little terse—since he was a kid; that's just how he is—but there's a note of real annoyance in his voice now that makes Paul want to go home. He takes a couple deep breaths instead, metering his words.
“We don't have to write them together,” Paul reasons. “I've got a few songs that I've done myself.”
He intended it to be something of a reassurance but George's expression doesn't shift. “We're aware,” he says—more curt, if anything. “We've been recording them.”
“Right,” Paul says at length, as there is nothing else to say, really. If there's anyone George should be annoyed at for Paul's recent habit of bringing in finished and almost-finished songs rather than ideas, like he used to, it's John. John's the one cold-shouldering Paul, not turning up to sessions, spending all his time in a bloody bag with Yoko.
“If we get a couple of long ones in we don't need that many,” Ritchie says with a bit of a slur. “Just jam for a bit on one of ’em.”
“Let's do that,” John says. He's got his eyes on the floor but it's like he's staring through it, not at it. Paul's chest clenches.
There's still Let It Be to finish—the record and the film, though one entails the other—so they pencil the new things in for the middle of January. Paul notes it in his diary with the painstaking slowness of a man well aware he cannot dodge fate, only let it catch up to him. The ballpoint presses ghosts of the letters into the page below.
Outside, his breath mists in the air. A girl—a young woman, really—waves at him from across the street. The proper thing to do would be go say hello, let her meet a Beatle, shake her hand or sign something. He knows this, and he nods wordlessly anyway, and keeps walking.
It's creeping into evening by the time he gets a key in the door. Martha sets off barking, comes to greet him in a flurry of wool, licks all over his hands. At least someone is glad to see me, he thinks, then feels guilty for it as Linda appears in the hallway.
“Hello,” she says, smiling at him and Martha. “I've got dinner going.”
He notices it, having been told. It's a hearty, savoury smell; probably roast pumpkin and potato. A proper meal for winter, now that they're finally getting there.
“Thanks,” he says. Martha calms down a bit once he gets his coat off and crouches down to give her a proper scratch. Linda sobers as well. He's sure she can see through him—not to the floor, looking past him like John, but to the heart of him, to all the snarled mess in there. Something in her expression tightens.
He looks away. “Where's our little lady?”
“Drawing at the table.”
Paul nods. Linda stays for a moment, like she's waiting for him to do something with that information. Then she disappears.
There are two major upsides to having far too many rooms in one's house. The first is to do with hosting, as all the best house parties have places to squirrel oneself away with a joint or a partner, and an excess of rooms means plenty of places. The other—which is quickly becoming the only relevant one, as having a small child in the house does slightly complicate parties—is that there's places to squirrel oneself away with a tape recorder.
Shrugging out of his jacket as he goes, Paul makes his way upstairs to his home studio. It's slapdash—just a four-track and a microphone, no mixing desk—but that's enough to do quite a lot. Or it should be, at least.
An acoustic guitar is propped up in the corner of the room. He takes it by the neck, swings it into his lap, and starts to play.
When Paul went to Paris with Robert Fraser they went to all sorts of art galleries. In one of them there was a wall of sketches. They were just ink lines with some splashes of watercolour, and on closer inspection there were hardly any details, but if he stood far enough away the images resolved themselves and the idea was clear. That's all this recording needs to be, so that's all it is. He sings it with the guitar once, then adds some bass, another guitar. Sits back and listens to it.
It's nice. Quite nice, actually, albeit rough. There's something charming about the low fidelity, the loose time, how casual it all is. It could be a couple musicians in a barn singing a folk song, not a Beatle alone in a spare room.
He decides he rather likes that. Likes not having to go through session musicians and producers and band members to execute an idea. Likes being able to say ‘that's good enough’ when it is good enough.
It's not quite done, though. It needs something rhythmic, some percussion. He brings the mic over to the drum kit, unspooling a few lengths of its cable as he goes.
He's nearly made it through the track on the kick drum, practising along before committing to a line, when the door creaks open.
“I'm recording,” he snaps. He's not actively rolling the mic, of course, but he could have been. She should know better by now.
“Oh,” Linda says placidly. “Sorry. Just letting you know that dinner is ready.”
He stares at the drum skins as the tape finishes. “Ta.”
She leaves.
The food is good, of course—Linda's cooking always is—but the bright trill of Heather's voice and Linda's attempts to make friendly conversation quickly become grating.
“Not really,” he says, to an overly cheerful question about his day, and finally Linda falls silent.
Paul busies himself with his meal instead of looking up. Nobody speaks. Then Heather, trying to cut her green beans, scrapes the tines of her fork against her plate, and Linda slips back into her role as though she'd never left it, showing Heather how to use her cutlery properly.
Christmas is a quiet affair. Paul usually visits his father over the holidays but he doesn't feel at all up to the drive, especially not with a child in the car. So they stay home, eating Linda's cooking and doing very little of note. He calls Jim the morning of, says hello to Mike and Angie and little Ruth, then makes his excuses and retreats to the sitting room.
Over the past year he's accumulated some little presents for Heather that haven't quite made it to their intended recipient. He gives her a few of them now, wrapped in silver paper: a set of soft pastels, a book with smooth off-white paper to draw in, and a glass figurine of a pony to put on her windowsill or shelf. She unwraps them with the painstaking care of a very excited child, beaming up at him when she sees what's inside.
He gives her a smile back—a strained, tired thing—and glances at Linda. He knows this whole thing is foreign to her, being Jewish, but doesn't quite expect the flash of melancholy he catches before she brightens.
“You next,” he says, nodding to another package under the tree. It's a real tree this year; Rose arranged for it to be brought in from some farm. If they'd extended their stay in Scotland he could have felled a small pine of his own.
Linda takes her present and hefts it, trying to get an idea of what's under the paper. “A blanket?”
“Not quite.”
“Open it,” Heather says, somewhat imperiously for a six-year-old.
“Open it please,” Linda corrects absentmindedly, already working on the ribbon. “Maybe it's a puppy.”
“That's way too small for a puppy,” Heather decides. “Or it's a flat puppy.”
At this point Paul would usually join in, riffing on flat puppies and gently teasing Heather and making Linda giggle, but the familiar spark of silly energy doesn't come. He leans back and lets Linda take the lead instead.
“I don't think they make them flat,” Linda says. “Aha!”
The paper falls away to reveal a cream woollen jacket. It's excellent quality—heavy felt, beautiful tortoiseshell buttons, and lined with pale blue silk. “Welsh wool,” Paul explains.
Linda holds it up to get a better look; Heather cranes in to see, too. Whatever Linda sees, it satisfies her, and she smiles appreciatively at Paul. “This is very nice. Thank you.”
The right thing to do would be to sweep her up in an embrace, smile and give her a kiss, tell her how good she'll look in it. That energy doesn't come, either. Paul gives the same sort of tight smile he'd give to a driver yielding for him at a pedestrian crossing. Linda's gaze lingers on him a moment too long. He looks away.