Wylding Hall

Chapter 3

Will

The house was a glorious wreck. Like some drunken grande dame who’s lost everything except the clothes and jewels she’s wearing and refuses to leave the after-party. I’ve known a few of those girls.

It wasn’t immense. It wasn’t Hogwarts or Manderley or Downton Abbey. But it was big and sprawling, and it was ancient. The oldest parts were pre-Norman — by “parts,” I mean a few ruined brick walls out by the garden. Julian said there’d been an ancient Bronze Age settlement on the grounds, and he would know — that was Julian’s thing: arcane knowledge. A lot of it was total bollocks, crystal pendulums and incense and tarot cards, all that crap he was into back then.

Ashton gives me such a goddamned hard time — he thinks I’m superstitious. And okay, yes, I’ll touch wood, and I won’t name the Scottish play in a theater. But mostly I’m just respectful of old ways. I believe things for a reason, and in the old days they did things for a reason. And if you don’t understand why — well, you might end up opening a few doors better left closed. That’s all.

Julian never met a door he didn’t try to open. He was quite knowledgeable about prehistory — studied at Cambridge for two terms. A very bright lad; you can understand why everyone makes such a fuss about his surname. I don’t know if he’d researched Wylding Hall and that part of Hampshire before we arrived, or if he found some old book in the library, or what.

But he was the one knew its history. From the moment we arrived, he seemed to know his way around the house. “This is the Tudor Wing, this part’s Norman, this was added after the Civil War, this is the crap Victorian addition.” He just swanned in and began showing us around like he’d grown up there.

It was very odd, I have to say. I even asked him, have you been here before? He just shook his head and said, “No.” He could just tell, he said.

That’s why it’s so strange that he didn’t know about the barrow — the superstitions and whatnot. I don’t know how he found it — if it was on the ordnance survey or he simply came upon it during one of his jaunts in the wood. The rest of us never knew it existed — we scarcely left the house some days, practicing. But Julian was always wandering off in the middle of the night or before the rest of us woke. He was always an early riser; when we were boys he’d be up before dawn.

“The best part of the day,” he’d say. “Before it’s had a chance to get broken.” But everything gets broken eventually.

Tom

The oldest extant parts of the house were Tudor. An entire small Elizabethan-era manor tucked off to the back, surrounded by yew trees. Very lovely but dark — the trees were hundreds and hundreds of years old and overshadowed everything. A thousand years, maybe. Do trees live to be that old? You reached that part of the house by a narrow passage, very dim, with oak paneling. There was a long, narrow hall with a minstrel’s gallery, stone flags on the floor. On the upper floors, there were any number of rooms. I couldn’t tell you how many, because I only had a very cursory look when the estate agent showed me around. But what I saw was marvelous. Lovely carved paneling, small leaded windows. Beautiful National Heritage stuff. But very dark — not a lot of windows, and most of them deeply set into the walls.

Nobody slept in the oldest part of the house, though Les says she thinks that’s where Julian and the girl went that first night, before going to his room. And Les was kind of stalking them, so she’d know. I suspect they wanted privacy, off on their own where no one could hear them. Julian — so well-mannered, quite gallant. Old-fashioned. I’m sure he thought he was doing the others a favor, quietly disappearing into the shadows with his lady-love. But it had the opposite effect, as such things do, especially when you’re young and living in close quarters. It made everyone suspicious. A real daisy chain: everyone in love with the wrong person! The only ones who got what they wanted were Julian and the girl. I can’t think of a single commune from those days that survived. All those utopias undone by sexual rivalry, and who didn’t do the washing up!

So no, everyone pretty much stayed in the main part of Wylding Hall, which was more like a farmhouse and quite lovely. Slate floors, a high-ceilinged, whitewashed central hall with the original oak beams and fireplace, windows that looked out across the overgrown lawns to the Downs and woods beyond. That became the rehearsal room. They’d all meet there whenever they woke and stay there all night, sometimes, playing. Electricity had been brought in after the war. It hadn’t been updated and was a bit dicey, but it did for the amps and guitars. Down the hall was an enormous old kitchen with an ancient gas cooker, a long trestle table, mismatched chairs. Gas refrigerator that wobbled whenever you opened it. I’d checked everything out before I rented it to make sure it worked. Which it did, barely.

There was a toilet room and a bath downstairs, and upstairs a number of bedrooms — seven, I think, in that wing. The furnishings were rather sparse, but everyone had a bed. Some of the rooms had a desk; some had a wardrobe or chest of drawers. One had a great, huge chair that was almost a throne — Jonno took that one. Julian’s room had a proper desk looking out a window, with a beautiful view of the Downs to the west.

That’s where he wrote “Windhover Morn”—you can see the photograph on the gatefold sleeve of his desk, with his notebook and that mess of music sheets and pens and pencils and his guitar on the bed. Such a beautiful view that was.

Ashton

My favorite part of the house was definitely the rehearsal room. That’s where everything came down. We’d wander in by ones and twos; everyone was usually up before noon. Then we’d jam or listen to whatever song Les or Julian had been working on. Some days, we’d get so caught up in playing that we’d forget to eat. Didn’t forget to drink, especially Will. We had all our equipment set up in there: little PA system and all our guitars. Will’s mandolin and sitar and god knows what. He even taught himself to play the viole de gambols, a true sign of a man with too much time on his hands. Jonno’s drum kit. There was a beat-up old upright piano pushed into a corner. First thing we did was drag that out into the room. Julian used to play it: “Greensleeves” and John Dowland, songs that weren’t composed for piano, but Julian played beautifully.

And you know, that piano was tuned perfectly. From the very beginning, I thought that was weird. Had someone come in to tune it? That would have been extremely odd, considering that absolutely nothing else had been done to the house to keep it up.

There were other weird things, too. Like the house always smelled of woodsmoke — fresh woodsmoke, like someone had a fire going in it somewhere. We’d been warned against doing that, as the chimneys hadn’t been cleaned in decades. At any rate, it was summer and far too warm for a fire. We’d open windows, burn joss sticks — no matter what we did, it still smelled of woodsmoke. The rehearsal room less so than the rest of the house.

And there was the Bird Room: this little corner room in the back of the house, near the old wing. Not much bigger than a closet, with an eyebrow window high up, facing west. I was looking for a loo early one morning, just a few days after we arrived. Will always took forever in the loo, and I got tired of waiting. I think that’s where he taught himself to play the fucking viole.

None of us had really explored the place yet, so I wandered down this back corridor in my stocking feet, trying doors to see if I could find a toilet. The knobs were hard to turn, and a few were locked, so I never did see what was inside. But most opened onto empty rooms, or rooms filled with old furniture mashed up against the walls, or just piled on top of each other. Carven tables, chairs, wardrobes, settles — it was like Antiques Roadshow gone mad. Finally, I reached the end of the hall, and there was just one door left that I hadn’t tried.

It opened right up. I barely touched the knob, but it turned like it was greased. I stepped in and immediately covered my mouth with my sleeve. The air smelled bad — truly foul. Not like a dead mouse or rat, not really like anything dead at all. Not like a clogged drain, either. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever encountered. It smelled thick, like I was breathing in some kind of vapor: marsh gas or something like that, though I’ve spent time in the Fens and I’ve never smelled something like that, not even close.

For a moment I thought I’d be sick, but I fought it off. I was wearing a bandanna — I had long hair then — so I covered my face with that. The room wasn’t empty, but I couldn’t clearly see what was there, just dark things sort of heaped on the floor. Rolled-up carpets, I thought — there were old oriental carpets everywhere. There was only a single small window high up in the far wall, all covered with dust and cobwebs, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust.

It wasn’t rolled-up carpets on the floor. It was birds, hundreds of birds, maybe thousands. I yelped and jumped backwards and bashed myself against the door. But the birds didn’t move.

They were all dead. Little birds, wrens or sparrows — I didn’t know from birds. These were tiny, small enough to fit in your hand, and brown, with twisted tiny black claws, all piled atop each other like they’d been shoveled there. Some of them — a lot of them — were missing their beaks.

Have you ever seen a bird without its beak? Horrible, just tiny dead eyes and a hole in its face.

I whirled around to get into back into the hall and something stabbed my foot — I thought I’d stepped on a nail, it hurt like hell but I didn’t stop, slammed the door behind me and hobbled fast as I could to the main hall. Will had finally gotten out of the loo by then, so I went inside and locked the door. Last thing I wanted was for Will to see how worked up I was. I never told him or anyone else.

My foot was bleeding hard, but when I pulled off my sock, it wasn’t a nail stuck there but a bird’s beak, black and no bigger than a thorn. It must’ve taken me five minutes to work it out of my foot. How the hell it could have gotten in so deep, I have no idea — it slid right through my sock. I stanched the cut best I could, tore up a wash towel and washed it, and still it bled. I still have a scar there. See?

Lesley

My room was next to Julian’s. It was a lovely room. I had a beautiful four-poster bed, and Tom had bought some very nice bed linens for me at Portabello Road: beautiful old French linen sheets and a pillowcase. There was also a big wardrobe and a very large mirror. Because I was the girl, I suppose.

I loved it — it was by far the best room I’d ever lived in. Still is, probably. I’d sit in that big bed and write songs all day long. When we weren’t playing together, I mean. I was reading a lot of poetry — John Clare, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. There weren’t a lot of women songwriters then.

I was determined to change that.

The boys were down the hall: Will and Ashton and Jonno — Jonno, I remember, had the most ridiculous throne in his bedroom; he’d just lounge in it and listen to the same King Crimson record over and over again on his stereo. For, like, three hours at a stretch. Then he’d come down and grab something to eat, and we’d all play together in the big room.

Jon

It’s true. I think I was stoned twenty out of twenty four hours back then. Me and Will. Ashton was more of a boozer; him and Les would go off to the pub some days. They were the only ones got to know the locals.

Will

No, I don’t drink anymore. I’ve been sober for thirty-seven years now, longer than you’ve been alive. Back then, I could pack it away. Occupational hazard of the folksinger in those days. Rock and rollers, too. Les, she still does — you can see that on her face. Don’t print that. She has her reasons.

A typical day? Hmm, hard to say. I’m not sure if a typical day would start with the day or with the night. Night, probably.

All right: for the purposes of the documentary, I’ll say day. Julian would be up at daybreak no matter how little sleep he’d got, but the rest of us rose a bit later, say nine or ten. That sounds early to you? Well, youngster, it felt that way to me, too!

But there was a feeling we all had that we were in a magic place, and we wanted to make the most of it. And we were young, so our powers of recovery were remarkable. We could drink all night, smoke till the house was spinning, do the odd bit of windowpane or blotter, busk at the pub if we needed a bit of ready cash for groceries, and still pop up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and hop down to the living room, strap on our mighty axes, and get to work.

Still—“typical day”?

I don’t think those were typical days. Truly. They were halcyon days.

What does that mean? It’s from a myth told by Ovid. Alcyone is the original name — the daughter of the wind god. Her lover Ceyx was a king and the son of the morning star. Against Alcyone’s wishes, he set sail on a long journey across the sea. A terrible storm rose up, and he was drowned, along with everyone on board his ship. Weeks later, Alcyone discovered his body washed up on shore, and her grief was so great, she drowned herself.

But the gods took pity on her — on both of them — and turned them into birds. Kingfishers. So every summer there’s six or seven days of perfect calm, perfect sun. They call those halcyon days, in memory of Alcyone.

That’s how we lived at Wylding Hall: kingfisher days and golden nights. There was an enchantment on us; you can hear it in the music on the record. But the magic on that record is only a shadow of what we experienced then, playing together.

Yeah, okay, “shadow” doesn’t really work, does it? Mixing metaphors.

An echo — that’s what you hear on the album. An echo of what we created when we were all in that room together, Julian and Les and Ashton and me, mad Jon bashing away at his drum kit and the sun in those great windows like they were gold, not glass. We’d play for hours, until Julian broke a string or Tom rang on the phone. We’d all take a break for a slash or a smoke, and then back to it.

You don’t know what it’s like, making music like that—I didn’t, I couldn’t have imagined it, until Wylding Hall. Julian was writing these songs: every morning he’d come up with something new or a new version of one he’d just written. He’d grab his guitar and start picking out the melody and begin to sing in that whispery voice. After a minute, Les would pick it up and join in. I’d follow them, and Ashton, and Jonno would suddenly erupt on the drums. And we’d just … play.

I’ve never known anything like it. Music, it’s always hard to describe, isn’t it? You can describe what it’s like to hear a song, how it makes you feel, what you were doing when you first heard it. And you can describe what it’s like to write it, technically, and how to play it — the chord changes, slow down here, pick it up here. A Minor 7, C Major.

But this — this was different. It’s a cliché to say something’s like a shared dream, like a movie or a concert — you know, “We got wasted and stayed till the lights went up and then we stumbled home and it was all like a dream.”

This wasn’t like a dream. It was like being lost: not in the dark, but in the light. Blinding sun through the windows and that fug of smoke from cigs and spliffs, motes in the air like something alive, atoms or insects all silver in the smoke. You couldn’t see to find your way; we couldn’t even see each other’s faces, it was so bright and so much smoke. You could only hear the music, and so you followed that. Lesley’s deep voice and Julian’s sweet one, Jon grabbing the edge of his cymbal so you could only hear this thin, silvery sound. Ashton’s bass. Me and that mandolin I built from a kit; Les wailing until she nearly passed out.

Julian’s guitar. You couldn’t see him at all — he stood at the very back where it was dark, farthest from the window. I swear, I can still hear him. There was a song by Davey Graham, “Anji,” very famous guitar tune, very difficult to play. Every kid who picked up a guitar would try to master it, and let me tell you, it was hell to play. No YouTube videos or guitar school to teach you, no Jimmy Page master class. But Julian figured it out back when we were still at school. I remember I was amazed, but also so jealous, I was just about sick.

I swear to god, he played it better than Graham did. Better than anyone. He tuned that Gibson to some scale only he could hear; you couldn’t mistake it for anything else. The rest of us just followed it, like a thread through the maze.

I always thought the rehearsal room was the one space that didn’t feel like it had a history attached to it. There wasn’t the bizarre sense that we were intruding there, like I got in other parts of Wylding Hall. Whatever history that room had, it was our history. We laid it down, made our mark upon the place. Sometimes, I feel like we might still be there, all of us playing together, if it hadn’t been for what happened.

Lesley

Julian gave me a book to read that summer. It was when we first got involved, a week or so after we arrived at Wylding Hall. He could be so shy. He didn’t much like to be touched. The first time he kissed me, I thought I might pass out. Or he would.

But when it came to things he was really interested in, he was like a kid, he’d get so excited. In a quiet way — he never raised his voice, but he’d laugh. He’d sound almost delirious when he laughed: it was like it was some huge release for him, like an orgasm or a sneeze. He’d get breathless.

We were in his room, in bed — the first time we slept together. It was wonderful. Early morning, the sun just coming in the window — that lovely window he had, you could see for miles on end, over the forest and Downs to where the hills turned lavender, they were so far off.

But at the same time, you could see a church spire in the village and the roof of the pub, and this ruined tower that we were never able to find, though it was quite close by, in a copse not far from the barrow, though we hadn’t found that yet, either. Like looking into the wrong end of a telescope and the right end, both at the same time. It was a very strange window.

We were lying in bed, and I was thinking I might get up to take a leak and see about something to eat. I started to get out of bed when Julian stopped me.

“Hold on,” he said, and leaned over the side. It was a high four-poster bed like mine: you could have hidden another person under it. He kept all kinds of things there: books, mostly, and records — not the ones he was playing, the ones he was looking at. Album art back then was so fantastic. You’d get stoned, put on a record, then listen to it endlessly while you stared at the album cover.

Ah, the things you’re forced to do without Wi-Fi.

He had stacks and stacks of books under there. Carlos Castaneda, Paul Bowles. A deck of tarot cards. He’d discovered Wylding Hall’s library tucked away in the oldest part of the house. I hadn’t ventured there yet.

But Julian had. That’s how we got together. He was sitting outside beneath one of those massive oak trees, reading some massive book. I pretended to grab at it and he got very stroppy, so I apologized immediately. I was still getting to know all of them — I was still very much the new girl. Very conscious of being wrong-footed.

Julian couldn’t have been sweeter, though: said he hadn’t meant to lash out at me. Just it was a very old book he’d found, something from the old Tudor library, and he wasn’t even sure we were meant to go in there. Apparently, he’d found the library the second day, on one of his pre-dawn rambles, and had been taking some of the books back to his bedroom to read.

He was impressed when I told him I’d been reading Rimbaud and John Clare. You don’t know Clare? The mad poet who slept in hedgerows?

And little Wren that many a time hath sought

Shelter from showers in huts where I did dwell

In early spring the tennant of the plain

Tenting my sheep and still they come to tell

The happy stories of the past again.”

I could quote him from memory. I think that’s when Julian decided he’d take me seriously.

He had some ancient-looking volumes under his bed. Leather-bound. Some of them were quite small: the size of your hand. I remember feeling excited, thinking he was going to show me some weird esoteric thing he’d discovered, like an incunabulum or something like that.

But it was just a paperback by Mircea Eliade. The Sacred and Profane.

“Do you know this?” He held it in those big hands as though it were a butterfly he’d caught. “It’s brilliant. There’s two kinds of time, he says — sacred time and profane time. The outside, everyday world — you know, where you go to work, go to school, sort of thing — that’s profane time.

“But things like Christmas or holidays, any kind of religious ritual or shared experience, like performing together, or a play — those take place in sacred time. It’s like this—”

He grabbed a pen and drew on the inside cover of the paperback. A little Venn diagram: two intersecting circles.

“—a circle within a circle. Do you see? This big circle is profane time. This one’s sacred time. The two coexist, but we only step into sacred time when we intentionally make space for it — like at Christmas, or the Jewish High Holy Days — or if something extraordinary happens. You know that feeling you get, that time is passing faster or slower? Well, it really is moving differently. When you step into sacred time, you’re actually moving sideways into a different space that’s inside the normal world. It’s folded in. Do you see?”

I stared at him and shook my head. “No,” I said, then sniffed at his hair. “You been smoking already, Julian?”

He frowned. He didn’t like it when you got on him about drugs. “Not yet. All right, what about this …”

He scrabbled at his desk for a blank sheet of paper, and I just watched him. You’ve seen the photos, so you know how beautiful he was when he was young. But really, they barely captured him. He stooped so much of the time, you never saw how tall he actually was.

He wasn’t a sylph — he was big-boned, long, lanky arms and legs, and that marvelous hair. Thick and straight and glossy: it felt like honey pouring through your fingers. He always wore the same brown corduroy jacket, a little short in the arms, so you could see his wrists. And his wristwatch: an old-fashioned watch that you had to wind every day. Expensive — I think he’d received it when he graduated from secondary school. Lots of fancy dials and second hands — is there something smaller than a second? If there is, Julian’s watch had a hand that measured that. He was always checking it, and I was always checking him. I could have stared at him all day. I did stare at him all day, sometimes, when we were rehearsing.

Eventually he found a piece of white paper, drew something on it and folded it, like a fan.

“Now look at this.” He held it up: a narrow, folded rectangle of blank paper. “This is us, now. Profane time.”

I felt a bit of a stab at that. Because we’d just spent the night together, and for me, that had been sacred time. But I only nodded.

“Okay then. Taa daa—”

He unfolded the paper so I could see what he’d drawn — a simple landscape: hills and trees, sun coming up on the horizon. “Here’s what’s inside — a whole other world! Well, it’s a bit bigger than this,” he added, and laughed. “But that’s what it’s like …”

For the next few minutes, he sat and slowly folded and unfolded the paper, staring at it intently: almost as though he were meditating or seeing something there that I couldn’t. At the time, I thought he probably was just stoned: grabbed a few hits while I was in the loo. Now I’m not so sure.