Paul McCartney (105 page)

She claimed that, from being a millionairess when she met Paul, her earning capacity was now zero, thanks to the ‘vilification’ she had suffered in the media. She had attempted a return to public speaking, at which she claimed once to have earned £10–25,000 per hour, but found no takers. Her current assets amounted to some £7.8 million and were shrinking rapidly; in recent months, she’d spent £184,463 just on private planes and helicopters.

Her closest cross-examination of Paul thus concerned the exact size of his fortune, which independent accountants had estimated at around £400 million but which she continued to maintain was more than double that. He said his art collection of works by Picasso, Renoir, de Kooning and many other masters was worth around £25 million. She then tried to read out a report she’d commissioned from a firm of art-valuers which appraised it at £70 million. When Mostyn objected that no prior permission for the report had been given, the judge disallowed it, but she continued–as lawyers say–to ‘press’ him on the subject. He told the judge that the collection had been acquired before he met Heather and he wanted to keep all of it.

There was a further clash over the 30 of his own artworks he’d hung in their Hove love-nest, Angel’s Rest, where Heather now lived alone. She claimed them as hers but he wanted them back–all but two that he’d given her, ‘the flower photographs’ and ‘the Isle of Man stamp design’–in order to leave them in trust for Beatrice and his other children.

If Heather accused him of fiscal fibbing, he accused her of something rather more serious. Evidence was given that on 2 November 2005, she had emailed MPL’s financial director, Paul Winn, about the riverside apartment at Thames Reach, west London, that Paul had enabled her to acquire as an office. The e-mail asked for £480,000 to be paid into her bank account ‘to clear the amount outstanding on the [Thames Reach] mortgage’, which Winn refused to do without proof that such a mortgage existed. Under cross-examination, Heather admitted there never had been a mortgage on the property, saying she must have got into a muddle and confused it with another one. Paul’s counsel was having none of this and accused her of ‘a fraudulent attempt’ to extract money from MPL.

Her claim of £542,000 per year for security for Beatrice and herself contrasted with what Paul had spent on his own protection in 2005–£125,908 in the UK and £264,000 in America. In an affidavit, he said that before their marriage, he’d generally had a ‘limited, low-key’ security presence. ‘There were never any bodyguards at Peasmarsh. The general farm employees kept a look-out for anything suspicious. There was virtually no security at Cavendish Avenue. At the office complex in New York, there would be one guard on the door… There was an off-duty police officer who provided night cover when I was in Long Island and on trips to and from the airport. There was no permanent close protection during this period… unless I was on tour or attending high-profile events. That was how I had lived with my first wife and our four children.’

But after Beatrice’s birth, Heather had begun ‘demanding increasingly stridently far more security to protect her from what she regarded as press intrusion. She did not suggest she needed [it] for her or Beatrice’s personal safety. Rather, her aim was to erect a barrier between her and the photographers…’ In essence, he said she had the same attitude to the paparazzi as Princess Diana and many other celebrities less battle-hardened than himself, basking in the camera-flashes at one moment, complaining of ‘intrusion’ the next.

Since their separation, he continued, ‘I have, to my great relief, been able to revert to the security arrangements which were in force for most of my “celebrity” life… There are no bodyguards. The only person with me on a permanent basis is my PA, John Hammel, who has been with me for 30 years. The court will be aware that Heather now maintains several members of staff including a driver and a personal trainer. Mr Hammel is with me only during the day or when I am working in the evenings. I am alone at night (apart from when Beatrice is with me).’

His real concern in resisting ‘Heather’s demands for bodyguards 24 hours a day is our daughter. Unless on tour, my older children had very little security. They all attended state schools. It is not healthy for a child to have security 24/7. It sets them apart from their peers and makes them an object of curiosity and, at times, ridicule. Such children live in gilded cages. I do not want this for Beatrice. She needs as normal an upbringing as possible.’

The hearing did not end on Friday, 15 February, as scheduled, but had to continue into a second week. When the court rose that afternoon, a middle-aged fan named Joe approached Paul, asking him to autograph a copy of the Beatles’ White Album, but was refused. On persisting with his request, he was turned away by… security.

Later, he also approached Heather, who had no hesitation in writing ‘To Joe, lots of love, Heather Mills’ in the proffered autograph-book. The small PR victory was rounded off when she heard what had just happened with Paul. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said, making sure her voice carried as far as possible. ‘You’re the sort of person who has made him what he is today.’

Mr Justice Bennett’s judgement, covering 58 pages, was emailed to both parties in advance–more than likely by Apple computer–then read out in the High Court in their presence on Monday 18 February. It began on a highly positive note for Heather, calling her ‘a strong-willed and determined [but] kindly person, devoted to her charitable causes [who had] conducted her own case with a steely yet courteous determination’. But there the compliments ended.

Paul, on the other hand, received only praise for the ‘balanced’ way he had given evidence. He had expressed himself ‘moderately, though at times with justifiable irritation’, Bennett observed. He had been ‘consistent, accurate and honest’.

But the same could not be said of Heather. ‘Having watched and listened to her give evidence, having studied the documents and given in her favour every allowance for the enormous strain she must have been under (and in conducting her own case), I am driven to the conclusion that much of her evidence, both written and oral, was not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid. Overall, she was a less than impressive witness.’

The judge described her claim of having been worth £2–3 million when she met Paul as ‘wholly exaggerated’. Her tax returns showed that in that year, 1999, her gross turnover from modelling and acting had been £42,000 and from public speaking, £6000. Far from ‘losing business opportunities’ after they got together, her income as Paul McCartney’s girlfriend, then fiancée, then wife had substantially increased.

The judgement quoted instances where Paul had been ‘supportive of or furthered’ her career and also cited ‘compelling evidence that no one tells her what to do’. He had not ‘dragged her on his tours’; she had gone of her own free will because she liked the excitement and attention, but had not made any artistic contribution to them. For her to suggest she had been his business partner was ‘make believe’. To claim she had been his ‘psychologist’, giving him back his confidence and motivation to perform, was ‘typical of her make believe’.

The harshest words were reserved for her e-mail to MPL’s finance director, requesting £480,000 to ‘clear the mortgage’ on an unmortgaged apartment in Thames Reach that Paul had provided for her. While not using the word ‘fraudulent’, like Paul’s QC, the judge said her explanation had ‘a hollow ring’ and the episode was ‘distinctly distasteful’ and damaging to her overall credibility.

He ruled Paul’s fortune to be around £400 million, that the couple had begun cohabiting in 2002, not 2000, and that the wealth Paul had built up between then and now amounted to approximately £39.6 million. On that basis, he awarded Heather a lump sum of £14 million plus £2.5 million to buy a London home to help rebuild her professional life (which he expressed confidence she could do by adopting ‘a less confrontational attitude to the media’).

That made £16.5 million, just above what Paul had offered prior to the hearing. Taking her two existing homes into account, she would have assets of around £23.4 million, or more than £700 for every hour she had spent with him. He would also pay £35,000 a year for Beatrice’s expenses over and above her education and childcare.

The judgement ended with a warning to other litigants who might feel tempted to represent themselves as Heather had: ‘This case is a paradigm example of an applicant failing to put a rational and logical case and failing to assist the court in its quasi-inquisitorial role to reach a fair result.’

Throughout the hearing, Paul had shown very obvious regard for Fiona Shackleton, the solicitor masterminding his case. Known among her male colleagues as ‘the Steel Magnolia’, she was a highly attractive woman with a blonde mane very like Princess Diana’s which, fortunately, never had to be dulled by a barrister’s grey wig.

Well before winning him such a favourable result–in cash terms, less than her former client the Prince of Wales paid Diana–Shackleton had aroused Heather’s ire. Now as the proceeding broke up, she seized one of the courtroom’s full water-jugs and tipped it over the solicitor’s golden head. The gesture rather misfired, for Shackleton laughed it off and (like Diana) looked just as good with water-slicked hair as with a coiffure.

Having cut the most conventional of figures to this point, Mr Justice Bennett made a highly novel proposal: that rather than remain confidential in the usual way, his judgement should appear in full on the Royal Courts of Justice website. Paul agreed at once, even though it would reveal the most intimate details of his private life and finances. Of far more importance to him was the vindication it contained.

He left the court through the rear entrance, accompanied by a dampened but smiling Steel Magnolia, shouting to journalists, ‘All will be revealed.’ Then Heather emerged from the front door into thickets of microphones to announce she would appeal against making the judgement public; it would compromise Beatrice’s safety by disclosing things like the name of her school, and was ‘against everything to do with human rights’.

While hailing the result as ‘incredible’ for her, she claimed to have faced prejudice for conducting her own case, that the judge’s mind had been made up in advance and Fiona Shackleton had handled Paul’s case ‘in the worst manner you could ever imagine… She called me many, many names before meeting me, when I was in a wheelchair… she is not a very nice person’. The £35,000 per year for Beatrice outside education and childcare was cited as very much less than ‘incredible’. ‘She is obviously meant to travel B-class while her father travels A-class.’

Both parties had been legally bound not to speak publicly about the case without permission from the other. Heather now rehashed parts of it nonetheless, still insisting that Paul was worth £850 not £400 million, that they’d cohabited for six years not four, and that, apart from one interview with GMTV, she’d already ‘stayed quiet’ for 18 months (Hello! magazine, the Extra TV show and a second GMTV appearance having evidently slipped her mind). She even dragged in their former log cabin love-nest at Peasmarsh, which she accused him of demolishing from spite, although it had been by order of the local planning authority.

Her loyal sister Fiona also spoke to reporters, claiming that all the negative stories about her had been orchestrated by Paul and adding, ‘I can’t believe a man could be so low.’ For corroboration, she jogged the hacks’ memory about the litigation he’d brought to this same place in 1971 to dissolve the Beatles’ partnership: ‘He sued his three best friends, remember.’

The next day, three judges in the Court of Appeal supported Mr Justice Bennett’s decision to make his judgement public on the court website (where it remains for the edification of posterity). Four months hence, a decree nisi would be granted in the case of McCartney vs. McCartney, allowing headline-writers throughout the English-speaking world to say it had been a long and winding road through the divorce courts, but they’d finally agreed to let it be.

Paul’s relief at finally reaching the end of the tunnel was tempered by sadness, both for himself and someone he had come to care about. On 3 March, Nancy Shevell’s brother, Jon, a fellow executive in the family trucking firm, was found dead in his room at the Beverly Hills Hotel, apparently from a drugs overdose, aged 50.

And on 24 March, Neil Aspinall died in New York, aged 66. Tragically soon after laying aside his Apple burden, he had been diagnosed with lung cancer that proved terminal. Paul had paid for him to have the best available medical care and, despite the pressures of the divorce, had flown over to see him and, just once more, say ‘Ta, la’.

‘There’s always that moment of “Can I do it?”’

The stories of musical superstars tend to be harrowingly tragic, witness Judy Garland, Charlie Parker, Edith Piaf, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Maria Callas, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix–and John Lennon. But Paul McCartney, whose superstardom passes all known limits, seems on course for a happy ending.

His wedding to Nancy Shevell took place on 9 October 2011 at Marylebone Town Hall in central London, where he’d married Linda 42 years earlier, the assembled crowds now cheering and clapping rather than weeping and keening in anguish. The bride wore an ivory knee-length Stella McCartney dress and the official wedding photo was taken by Mary McCartney–proof of how both approved of the match. Paul’s seven-year-old daughter Beatrice was bridesmaid and, for a third time, his brother Michael was his best man.

To the vast public which still took a proprietorial interest in his affairs, Nancy seemed a perfect choice; elegant, discreet, independently wealthy and devoid of either competitive ego or over-possessiveness. In other words, the someone he’d wanted to be waiting each night when he came offstage and to say ‘You were wonderful, darling.’

Few couples marrying at their age–69 and 51–are fortunate enough to merge lives so unproblematically. As a long-time friend of Linda, Nancy was known and liked by Paul’s Eastman in-laws, to whom he remained close, particularly his brother-in-law and attorney, John. Her 20-year marriage to Bruce Blakeman, over well before she met Paul, had left no lingering acrimony and he easily forged a rapport with their 18-year-old son, Arlen.