Into My Life

Chapter 6

The next morning was crazy. I rushed to get us both dressed, John's exercises done, suitcases packed, carry-on bag with essentials sorted out. Lots of laughing and horseplay went on as the others were in and out. We had only a minute to grab a bite to eat, and then we were out the door. After a mob scene in the parking lot, limos and police escort to the airport, and one more turn with the reporters, we finally had a moment of relative quiet waiting in a room for the other passengers to board. I had never given any thought as to how the Beatles traveled while on tour, but apparently it wasn't on commercial flights. They were all grumbling about not having the plane to themselves. "It's just a few hours to New York," Mal kept saying. "You'll be in first class and I'll make sure no one bothers you."

After all the other passengers were on board we were given the go-ahead to board. The fans behind the fence and were screaming as soon as we were spotted stepping out of the terminal and heading out onto the tarmac. The sound was distant but still there. I hadn't been outdoors without hearing screams since we left the hospital. John managed the stairs up into the plane without too much difficulty. I hadn't even thought of trying him out on some steps at the hotel so I was really relieved that it wasn't a big problem.

Once on board I saw that the little curtain between first class and coach was pulled shut. The four other passengers already in first-class all sat open mouthed as we joined them. Ringo did an elaborate pantomime of tiptoeing to his seat, holding a finger to his lips and saying "Shhhh" as he pointed to the coach section.

I got John situated in an aisle seat so he could stretch out his leg, then took the window seat next to him. I think the fact that I actually listened to the stewardess as she went through her oxygen, emergency exit, seat cushion routine is what gave away the fact that I had never flown before. John was grinning at me. I smiled weakly back. We taxied out on the runway and he took my hand in his. Even with the hard cast that extended partway onto his hand and looped around his thumb, it felt good. For all the times I had touched his hands to check his circulation and such, this felt different. It was nothing more than an offer of a friendly hand to hold on my first airplane ride, but I couldn't help the little side trip my mind took.

The engines revved up and my goofy daydream about walking along a beach holding John's hand disappeared. The plane was lumbering down the runway, picking up speed, but enough speed to make us airborne? It didn't feel like it! As the plane left the ground I was probably doing more harm to the circulation in John's hand than the cast ever had. Improbable as a huge flying hunk of metal seemed to me, it did continue to climb. I stared out the window, not sure if doing so would make me airsick or not, but unable to resist watching Minneapolis unfold below me. We left the city behind and a patchwork of farmland spread for as far as I could see below us. It wasn't until the captain came on to welcome us that I realized I was still holding John's hand. I let go reluctantly and watched the country pass underneath us until it disappeared in haze.

John's head was hurting worse than usual, probably aggravated by the changing altitude and the steady noise of the plane. I gave him a pill as early as I could. The stewardess served lunch around twelve. It was airline food, but it was also another meal I didn't have to pay for so I enjoyed it. After lunch, John put his seat back and fell into an uncomfortable sleep. I tried to read, but that made me queasy. I tried to sleep, but that was impossible.

Paul was sitting behind us. He got up to get something out of his carry-on (a blue TWA bag!) in the overhead storage and saw that John was sleeping. "Wonderful traveling companion," he said. "Here, I'll kick Neil out and you can sit with me."

"Or I could kick Paul out so you could sit with me," Neil said. Paul gave him a laughing, surprised look that also asked if he was sure he wanted to try that.

"But, I need my job," Neil laughed and got up.

Paul helped me to climb over John's leg, and John opened his eyes just long enough to see what was going on and say, "Behave yourselves, it's a public conveyance." I turned off the light and pulled the window shade down so John could sleep, then settled in the seat next to Paul.

When he asked what I wanted to see while in England, I named the usual sightseeing things and then told him that what I really wanted to see was the English countryside, the heath and moors I had only read about.

"Jane Eyre?" he asked, grinning.

"And Return of the Native"

"Ech! I hated that book!"

"I loved it! Maybe because Mr. Zimmerman, my English teacher, helped us see all the symbolism, not just the story. Or maybe because I had a crush on that teacher!"

"Maybe that was what was missing for me! I just could not take seriously a book with a character named Diggory Venn the Reddleman." The way he said the name, almost singing it, made me laugh.

"But Diggory was wonderful! True and steadfast in his love for Thomasina!"

"And so pure that he never made a move on her. Not very realistic or interesting. I preferred Lady Chatterly's Lover."

"You read that in school?" I asked, shocked.

"It wasn't required reading," he laughed. "But one of my teachers suggested it as important literature of the period and of course we all read it just for that reason!"

"Oh, sure!" I laughed.

"Actually, we did discuss it in class."

"Where did you get a copy of it?"

He looked puzzled at my question. "The school library, I guess. I don't recall. We passed it round a bit."

"I don't think our public library had a copy of it, much less the school library!"

"I suppose not," he said. "It was banned in the States last I heard."

"I don't know if it still is. One of the girls in my nursing class had a copy of it. We passed it around too!"

We laughed at that and he asked, "What did you think of it?"

"All that garbage about social class and playing stupid games with her husband? I finally gave up and just read the dirty parts!"

He laughed delightedly. "And it was better than anything in Return of the Native!" I knew I was blushing, but this was a literary discussion.

"No, I still liked Return of the Native better. Lady Chatterly is more explicit, but I didn't like any of the people in the book. And I loved Hardy's line about Eustacia; "To be loved to madness was her one desire."

"Is that what girls want ? Is that what you want?" Still a smile but something more in his eyes.

"Yes!. . .No!. . . Loved to madness and then married and live happily ever after!"

"And a bunch of kids and a house in the suburbs?"

"Kids definitely, suburbs I don't know about. I like living in the city now but I hate to think of raising kids in town. I grew up with woods to explore and creeks to wade in. In the city all a kid has is sidewalks and traffic and little tiny yards. Yuck."

Paul was listening with an amused look and I remembered I was talking to not just a city boy but one from a big city that I visualized as being industrial and grim. I stuttered "But of course city kids can . . . ah . . ." At that moment I couldn't think of a single advantage to growing up in town even though I had spent most of my school years being jealous of city kids.

"City kids can lift ciggies and sneak into the movies," Paul said with a grin. "Pick up deplorable habits and grow up to be rock ‘n rollers!"

"A mother's nightmare," I laughed, realizing he was teasing me.

"And what do little country girls grow up to be?"

"Crazy about the bad city boys!"

"A father's nightmare -- and with good reason!"

We laughed together and then Paul said "So a house in the country a brood of barefoot little woodsprites? That's your dream life?" John would have said that with a challenging note but Paul was simply curious and added a touch of whimsy, not sarcasm, with the woodsprites.

"Yeah, something like that. Boring, huh?"

"Not with the right person." I looked at him with some surprise. I was tempted to ask if that was what he wanted, and if it had been John I would have felt free to ask a question like that. But Paul looked away and changed the subject. I thought about his broken engagement to Jane and wondered.

"My mother was a nurse," he was saying. "She was in home health. Delivered babies. Couldn't walk down the street without someone with a baby in a pram coming up and showing Mom how little Alfie had grown. And always the ugly little buggers! What do you say for politeness when precious little Alfie lookslike a gargoyle?"

I was laughing, partly at the image, but also because Paul looked so serious. He really didn't want to offend little Alfie's mother.

"So what kind of nursing do you want to do?" he asked. I wasn't sure. Not pediatrics -- too sad, I explained. Not obstetrics, at least not until I had kids myself or I would probably never get up the nerve to have any. Maybe orthopedics. This bone connects to that bone. I could understand that. Not like lungs and brains, and pancreases. "And not psychiatric nursing."

"Why?"

"Well, I like the book stuff. Sociology, psychology stuff --"

"Freud and Pavlov?"

"Yeah. It's fascinating to read about things like schizophrenia, but to see it --ugh! It is so scary to think that you can have a whole reality in your mind that isn't true."

"Sounds like an LSD trip." LSD had just come on to the scene. Although I knew that when John had mentioned tripping, he meant LSD, all I had heard about it was that it involved vivid hallucinations and jumping out of windows.

"Have you. . .?"

"No, I haven't." Slight emphasis on the "I".

I already knew about John and wondered if it meant Paul was the only one of the four who hadn't tried it. What was it John had said the other night about Paul not being too keen on the new? Was that about his not taking LSD? Paul was saying, "But they say it is incredible. They say it makes things more real somehow."

"I don't know. . . but imagine a trip that lasts for years and gets weirder all the time while you are trying to live in a world that operates with different laws of physics." I told him about my experience at the state mental hospital where we spent several days as part of our Mental Health training. We were supposed to practice the ‘therapeutic conversation' principles we had been studying; active listening, confirming, restating. To do so, we had to interview a patient. I ended up with a seventeen year old schizophrenic who told me how the world and people were all mechanically controlled in some way that was perfectly clear to him, but I couldn't follow his explanation even when he drew me a diagram. I couldn't even understand the basics of his reality much less the way it felt to him and yet his belief in it was total. It was like opening a door and looking into a Salvador Dali world. Frightening. Paul listened intently. (I loved the way he listened!)

"Bad trip forever!" he said when I had finished.

"Yes. I couldn't deal with that."

"Well, I don't think LSD is that bizarre. It is more a visual thing. Colors and all that. But even that . . . You've got to wonder if it doesn't leave something permanent behind. All the flashbacks . . ." He shrugged. "Well, I can see where seeing a kid like that would turn you off working in psychiatry."

I nodded. "And the rest of it, the simpler cases . . . I'm afraid that after a while I would lose patience and just tell the patient to shape up and get on with it!"

He laughed. "Soldier on! Stiff upper lip!"

"Right!" I said, laughing with him. More seriously, I added "Bad things happen but somewhere along the line we have to pick up the pieces and move on."

"And getting on doesn't mean you don't care," Paul said quietly, looking away for a moment.

"Or that it doesn't still hurt," I said, wondering if he was thinking of when his mom died. He looked back at me, studying me for a moment, then smiled.

On to talking about my roommates, his "roommates". He and John were both really bad about picking up after themselves. George and Ringo not much better but eventually they would at least shove stuff into a corner. It had never really mattered though. They lived in dumps when they were together in Hamburg, and one hotel after another after that. We compared notes on living on a shoestring. A steady diet of cornflakes in Hamburg and food "care packages" from home in Minneapolis. Spending money we couldn't afford to spend on nursing books and new guitars. On to family -- my brother and sisters, his brother Michael and new five year old stepsister Ruth. We both had lots of aunts and laughed to find that we both had one known for gossip, a pretty one, a crabby one, a family matriarch one. Aunties are universal.

New York came way too soon. Or maybe too late. I didn't want to do anything for the rest of my life but sit there next to Paul. But I wasn't here for fun, I was working. I moved up to sit next to John and managed to climb over him without waking him. I looked at his sleeping face, the strong features that were such a contrast to Paul's and thought that I had stumbled into some kind of gold mine. They were both incredible, and from the time I had spent with George and Ringo, I had a feeling that if I sat next to either of them on the next part of the trip, I would be split three ways, not two.

John, under the influence of Darvon, had slept through the captain's first announcement of our upcoming landing, but when the captain came back on with chatter about the weather in New York, John woke up.

"New York already?" he said.

"Yeah, here, let me fasten your seat belt."

"I trust you had a good flight."

Something about that made me stop and look at him. He was smiling at me. "'Loved to madness?' You wanton hussy. Here, give an old man a thrill and hold my . . ." He stopped to look meaningfully down at his lap. "Hand," he said in his best lecherous old geezer voice.

I clicked the seat belt into place and grinned at him. "Hold your own hand!" I lasted until the plane was nearly on the ground. At that point where it feels like they throw the engines in reverse and the plane feels like it is hanging in mid-air for that final, fatal plunge to the ground, I grabbed his hand.

We got off the plane, into a private waiting room, then out to the limos without any problem, and I got a look at New York as we sped off to the hotel. John laughed at me as I craned my neck trying to see what I could of the Big Apple. "And just think," he said to Mal and George who were in the limo with us, "She'll get to see the same freeway only in reverse on the way back to the airport in the morning!" They laughed heartily and I began to get a feel for the "A train and a room and a room and a car and a room" line from A Hard Days Night.

The hotel was classic New York with its canopy, red carpet, and doorman and the reception was classic Beatlemania. "I thought tonight would be different," George grumbled. "Just in and out of the city to change planes."

"Forget the chair," John said as we got out. I thought he meant he didn't want to use the wheelchair in front of the crowd, but I quickly realized that there wouldn't be time to get it out. Paul and Ringo had gotten out of the limo ahead of us, and the crowd was pushing at the barricades, screaming for John as if they wouldn't believe he was all right until they saw him with their own eyes. Mal and George got John out of the limo and into the lobby faster than I would have thought John could move.

The lobby was marble and brass and the elevator alone was fancier than any room in any house I had ever been in. Upstairs John and I were given connecting rooms. Our rooms were very nice, but not suites like we had at the Radisson. Apparently that luxury was more the result of the Radisson wishing to avoid a law suit than expensive tastes on the part of the Beatles. Brian announced that the record company and the promoters were throwing a big party in their honor up in the ballroom that evening, but first things first. John's stitches were supposed to come out, and the tape on his ribs could come off. We had an audience for the occasion. I snipped the sutures, and tugged them out with no problem. They were disappointed, but hoped the tape removal would be more interesting. It was. Even though the acetone helped, John furthered my vocabulary in case I should ever play cuss word scrabble. No wonder. The tape left red burns along the edges and underneath, where gauze padded his skin, the skin was indented with the wrinkles and lines of the padding. The bruises on his ribs were purple-black and everyone was suitably impressed.

He begged to take a real bath, and we compromised with a shower. I got a patio chair from the balcony and put it in the tub, then called room service and got a plastic bag to tape up over his cast. Handy thing, room service! I washed his back and shampooed his hair, then got him out, dried him off, used the blow dryer on his hair, did his exercises and got him dressed. He was ready and eager for a big evening and I was sopping wet and tired out. I turned him over to Neil, then retreated to the bathroom for a long soak myself.

I took my time getting my hair dried, make up on and put on my most fashionable dress. Well, Sandy's most fashionable dress. It was pale blue, with sheer sleeves that were soft and full, a high waist, and a scoop neckline that although not low by Hollywood standards was a new low for me. Since Sandy was shorter than me the hem was a new high for me too. I looked in the mirror at a stranger. I never wore anything like this. Soft and innocent . . . and sexy! I took a deep breath and opened the door. There was a full room waiting for me; John, Paul, George, Ringo, Brian, Neil, Mal, Terry. I had never felt so self conscious as I did walking into that room. They all stared at me and, to a man, gave me a top to bottom once over. And smiled. Instant self confidence!

It was time to go so I pulled the wheelchair over for John. Predictably, he refused to use it. There were going to be reporters and he was walking in on his own. He had done well coming up to the room, so I figured he would be fine without it as long as I stayed close.

I was walking with John to the door when he stopped cold and said "Nobody move!"

I was bewildered. Everyone else groaned and when I turned around they were all carefully getting down on their knees.

"Christ, John," George said. "Shagcarpet!"

They were now crawling around on hands and knees, searching the floor, grumbling.

"Every damn floor in every damn city in every damn country in the world."

"How come you can't walk across a room without losing them but you could dive off that ledge and keep them in?"

"Call the maid. This rug is filthy."

"Tell me again. What the hell is wrong with glasses?"

"And he looks quite lovely in glasses."

"Studious."

"Intellectual."

"What does he need to see anyway? You've seen one hotel, you've seen 'em all."

"Found it!" Ringo got up and handed the contact lens over to John while the others got up and brushed off their knees. "Very well trained," I said admiringly to John.

The party was a blur. New York models, rich record company executives, fast talking promoters, businessmen and hustlers. Aside from someone from Buffalo Springfield and Joan Baez, the music industry was represented by businessmen, not artists. There were plenty of other celebrities present however. Woody Allen, Johnny Carson, Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, and the mayor of New York, John Lindsay. Lots of gossip columnists followed this crowd. Aside from Johnny Carson, the Beatles were not too impressed, but I certainly was. Later, Bob Dylan and Peter Fonda showed up together. In spite of the presence of the show biz crowd, it was a very different party from the "after-concert/ pre-orgy party" of a few nights ago. A live band played unobtrusive elevator music and champagne and canapes were served by circulating waiters. There was a definite feeling that this was as much business as pleasure. Attendees would be listed in the gossip columns in the morning, and if your name wasn't there, you were not part of the "in" group. And who knows what a social contact could mean down the line? I listened to million dollars record contracts being discussed, and, following Neil who offered to introduce me to Dylan and Fonda, I heard Peter Fonda tell George and Paul he "could get them some" if they wanted. That conversation abruptly ceased when he realized I was right behind Neil. I talked briefly to them, having little to say to Fonda who I knew only as "Henry's son," this being pre-Easy Rider. I mentioned to Dylan that I was also from Minnesota, a fact that impressed him not at all. I excused myself and went to check out what trouble John was getting into. None it appeared. No alcohol, regular cigarette. I moved on, got some punch and watched as Paul and Joan Baez settled down on one of the half dozen small sofas in the room, deep in conversation.

I was talking with Neil when Mal came over and told him John wanted to speak with him. He excused himself, and he and Mal went into a brief huddle with John. After a minute, Neil helped John up and he limped over to me. He took my arm and steered me over to the big picture window overlooking the city. He wanted me to go out with Neil and see some of New York before it got any later. I was happy right here and didn't particularly want to go out. He saw the hesitation on my face.

"This is my third trip to New York, and this is all I've ever seen of it," he said quietly, looking out the window. He turned back to me. "I am fine -- and I won'tdrink. Go."

How could I refuse? I knew he wasn't kidding about the drinking and really wanted me to go. Neil was smiling broadly. "OK" I said.

Minutes later Neil and I were in a taxi headed for the Empire State building. We took in the view, then headed for the Statue of Liberty. We couldn't go inside at that hour but it was really impressive. We found a little restaurant and had something to eat, drove down through the bright lights of Broadway, and walked around Times Square. I asked him very straight forwardly if he was married, and he grinned. "John told me you asked him if I was."

"And he wouldn't give me a straight answer. So are you married or seeing someone?"

"No. I just hang around and comfort the birds who don't get to meet the Beatles," he laughed. "Tough job!"

We talked for a bit about how he had started out as a driver, hauling their equipment around for them back in Liverpool and ended up being a kind of personal assistant. Neither of us really wanted to go back to the party. Neil was enjoying his night off from the Beatles and I was enjoying Neil's company much more than I had the guests at the party. The next thing I knew I was in Central Park in a horse drawn carriage and Neil was kissing me.

I don't know which part was more unreal. Being in Central Park in New York City, taking a carriage ride with a guy was the most romantic thing I could ever imagine. The fact that guy was Neil Aspinall whose name was mentioned in every Beatles article I had ever read was just as unbelievable, probably more so. I hadn't dated much in the last two years, but I certainly had been kissed before and on my rating scale of good kissers, the guy was right at the top. It was a great ending to an incredible day, and I was really sorry when the carriage pulled up in front of the hotel. We headed back upstairs to what was left of the party. Only Dylan, Peter Fonda and a few others were still there and the band was packing up as Neil and I walked in. Paul looked up and saw that Neil was holding my hand. The look on his face was fleeting, but what I saw -- at least thought maybe, just possibly, I saw -- was yet another thrill. A frown. Just a little, fleeting forehead crunch of a frown, but it sent my imagination soaring.

We joined the group and as Mal pulled Neil aside to talk briefly to him, Ringo started asking me about where we had gone, what we had seen. Mal left and Neil came back to me. He put his arm around me as he talked about the view from the Empire State building. Paul was looking at me and I knew it and was having a hard time focusing on the conversation. It was several minutes before I realized John was not with them.

"Where is John?" I asked.

"He was tired. Turned in a bit ago," George said with a quick look at Neil.

I thought he would need a pain pill by now, so I said, "I'll go check on him."

"Let me," Neil said. "You are off duty this evening."

"It's OK," I said. "I'm ready to call it a day, anyway."

Neil looked strange. "I think--" He stopped abruptly as Mal came back into the room. Mal nodded at him as he walked in.

"John is fine," Mal said. "I gave him a pain pill and he is out like a light."

We stayed a bit longer but Neil suggested, "It is going to be another long day tomorrow, and it is getting late."

I agreed and he said quietly, "I'll take you up to your room."

I managed to avoid looking around for Paul as we left the room. Neil was so nice and I was expecting some good night kisses, so it wasn't that hard.

Neil and I took the elevator upstairs and he walked me to my door. "I had a great time tonight, Neil," I said. He smiled and kissed me and it wasn't his Central Park carriage ride kiss. This was a "don't leave me standing here outside your door" kiss. Any thoughts of Paul, or John, disappeared. Neil was here, and Neil was definitely worth thinking about. If I had been at home, I would have invited him up to the apartment and we would have spent some time necking on the sofa before I sent him home, but asking him into a hotel room furnished primarily with a bed was a whole different thing. I was trying to think of how to send him on his way without discouraging him from trying again later and finally said, "It really is late, Neil, and I am dead tired."

He accepted that with an understanding smile and said he was going to spend some time with his parents in Liverpool, but asked if he could call me when he got back to London.

"I'd like that," I said happily, and this time his kiss was a gentle goodnight kiss.

In my room, I undressed and got ready for bed, trying to be quiet and not wake John. I opened the connecting door between our rooms just a little so I would hear him if he needed anything and went to bed. Once in my bed I was wide awake. Even when you are used to sleeping alone, there is nothing like a sterile, impossibly neat hotel room with cold sheets to keep you awake. Besides, my head was full of men. John who fascinated me. Paul, to whom I was finally reacting with my head and not just my hormones. Neil who was not only appealing in his own right but somehow seemed the most suitable -- part of the hired help like me! I laughed at myself, lying here juggling the images of the three of them in my head. Well, at least I left George and Ringo alone because they were married. As soon as I said that to myself, I realized that John was married too but somehow that didn't stop me from thinking about him. Disturbing thought! With that, I decided to check on John anyway.

He was sprawled on the bed, sheets tangled around him. No shoulder splint on, no leg brace, no tape covering most of his chest -- and no underwear. I had seen him naked just hours before, scrubbed his back, toweled him off but then he was a patient, someone who needed assistance with a bath. I was standing here looking at a naked, beautiful male body on a rumpled bed in a room where the scent of perfume mixed with another scent. It was an unfamiliar one, but one I recognized instinctively. I slipped out of the room and back to mine and got into my big, cold bed alone. "Nobody is married on tour," I thought without much surprise but with a little sadness for the wife I had yet to meet.

There was another thought, one that was a little silly since I wouldn't have done it anyway, but it was there nonetheless. I wished he would have invited me into his bed instead of sending me off with Neil. I was a virgin and because of my school and work demands probably behind other young women my age in experience, so I wouldn't have done it anyway, but it would have been wonderful to have been asked! Although I was far from conceited, neither did I have an inferiority complex. At least not a major one. I rejected the idea that he found me repulsive in favor of "I'm not his type," or "He knows I wouldn't have done it," or "He thought it might get a little awkward with him taking me home to Cyn after." It was another night of restless dreams.

Neil had John up already when I woke up the next morning, ostensibly to let me sleep in, but I figured it was really just to make sure there was no evidence of the real reason John had wanted me out of the hotel last night. I played dumb and we got ready to go. The airplane for the flight across the Atlantic, the big, wide, deep, wet, cold Atlantic, looked ridiculously small. The others were impressed. Somehow Brian had gotten someone to loan the use of a private Lear Jet. "The only way to travel!" John said. Lear Jet or not, it looked small. Once inside, I was impressed though. It had roomy seats that really reclined, not the token tilt of airliners, and a comfortable sitting area at the back, complete with a bar. But it was still small.

Take off was smooth, and in minutes we were out over the ocean. The big, wide, deep, etc. ocean. In case you haven't noticed, I do not like water. We settled in for the long trip. George and Neil started up a card game in the back and I went back to watch. Paul came and sat next to me on the sofa and we talked. The card game broke up but Paul and I weren't paying much attention. Lunch was served and we ate and talked. Someone started up the in-flight movie. Paul and I watched, whispering comments to each other and laughing. Afterwards everyone else went back to their seats and settled in for a nap. We talked.

How could I have ever thought this guy was nothing but another pretty face? OK, so that wasn't all I had been attracted to . . . I know it sounds stupid, but just talking to him was warm, and comfortable and exciting at the same time. Something new and different at every turn of the conversation and when I talked, he listened, really listened. Like John, Paul was great with quick, funny answers, but his sense of humor was more low key, almost whimsical, poking gentle fun at things John would rip apart. Unlike John, Paul was easy to talk to. I always felt I had to be on my toes around John but Paul was easy going. Time went by and somewhere along the line he put his arm across the back of the sofa, and now his arm was touching my shoulders, his fingertips resting lightly on my arm. He was turned toward me, talking, and I was absolutely lost. I'd have spent the rest of my life over the big, cold, deep, wet Atlantic if he had promised to stay that close.

When the others began to stir, we were talking about how we ended up doing what we were doing, being a rock and roll star and being a nursing student. Roads not taken kind of thing. The others wandered back to sit with us, to get drinks from the bar, use the bathroom. I was soon telling them stories about all the jobs I'd had in the last few years to earn money for school. They were all laughing because I'd had more different jobs than the four of them put together! None of them had stuck to a job for more than a few weeks, and John had never had a real job. "At least none of us ever sunk as low as you have, Tess," George teased. "A reporter!"

I wasn't looking at Paul, but I knew something was wrong before he ever spoke. Something in the touch of his hand, his arm across my shoulder.

"What is he talking about?" he asked and it was there in his voice too.

"The job Brian arranged for me with Tony Barrow," I said, turning to look at him.

"I thought you were going to work in the office?"

"Not exactly," I said, unsure what the problem was and not knowing what to say to the frowning face. Not entirely a puzzled frown.

To my relief, Brian spoke up and explained it. "She is going to write a few pieces for the fan magazine. The reporters are already after her. This way she'll earn some money and Tony will have control over her story."

"It's the only way I could afford to come," I said. If it came out sounding like pleading for understanding, it was. He turned back to look at me, looking upset, even angry, but as he caught the dismay on my face his look softened.

"Come on, Paul. It's just a few stories for the fan mag." Brian said.

"It's not you she'll be writing about, now is it Brian?" Paul snapped at him, no softened look or words for him.

"No, it's me," John said. "And I don't have a problem with it."

Paul looked at him, John looked back, daring him to push it.

"OK," Paul said finally. "Anyone else want a drink?" he asked as he got up to go to the bar. The awkward moment passed. When he sat down again, he didn't put his arm back around me. The spell was broken, and after a few minutes, I got up to help John into the bathroom. When I got him settled again, they were talking about their plans for the next few months. A few weeks vacation was all anyone would commit to. Ringo was taking Maureen to Greece. George and Pattie were going to India.

As we talked, the weather got bad. The plane began to do unfunny little shudders and lurches. The pilot came on and informed us we were headed into "a spot of weather" and instructed us to return to our seats until the weather cleared. We got John back into his seat. Mal told me to sit with Paul and took my place next to John. Without being told, I knew Mal was thinking that in case of trouble someone stronger than I needed to be next to John to help him. I moved up the aisle with Paul behind me. The plane did a roller coaster dip and he caught me and put me in the seat. I was so flat out terrified, I wasn't even aware of his touch as he grabbed me and steadied me. He helped me fasten my seat belt as the plane shuddered its way back into level flight. I hadn't been airsick at all before, but between the lurching of the plane and the fear, I was wondering where the paper bag was. I was so scared I didn't even think about the fact that I would be barfing in front of Paul McCartney. He smiled and chatted reassuringly about how this was typical weather off the coast. The plane bounced again and he buckled himself in. Then he pried my white knuckles from the arm rest and held my hand in his. He was telling me that they had been through worse flights than this when there was another big lurch and shudder of the plane. And then as the plane righted itself again, from behind us came the voice of Buddy Holly.

"Peggy Sue, oh Peggy, my Peggy Su-ah-u-ah-ue."

Pillows, paperbacks and half eaten sandwiches flew through the air in the direction of John's seat.

"Shurrup, you bloody idiot!" George yelled.

"Lennon, you are a sick man!"

"Shut your gob, John!"

"Mal, shut him up!"

John laughed like a maniac. "If it's good enough for Buddy, it's good enough for the lot of you!" He followed up with the sound effects of an airplane in a death dive and exploding as it crashed. I was about to go to a watery grave in the icy North Atlantic but I was laughing like crazy. Invoking the name of Buddy Holly seemed to help. The weather eased abruptly as the plane began its descent to London and I managed not to throw up. And this time I got to hold Paul's hand as we landed.

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