Wylding Hall (3 page)

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.

Chapter 4

Ashton

The village pub was called The Wren. It’s still there; I think Windhollow’s fans have given it a good business over the years. Tom gave us a group allowance for food, most of which went for booze. Jon was always trying out some special way of eating: horrible miso soup and brown rice. Just about made me puke every time I saw him digging into it. The rest of us survived on bacon and eggs, the occasional lamb stew. It was all very
Withnail and I
, only without Uncle Monty. Only I wasn’t up to drinking the paint thinner. Not yet, anyway.

There was a local farmer who we bought from: Silas Thomas, a wretched old man like a character from a Hardy novel. He was always warning us off wandering the Downs after dark or getting lost in the woods. Warning Julian, mostly; he was the only one who did things like that. Tom must’ve paid him off, Silas, as he brought food round a couple days a week. Milk and eggs and rashers, brown bread he must have made himself. I don’t think he had a wife. If he did, I never saw her.

But sometimes, you know, the body needs something more. Different food, different faces. Les and I were the ones first ventured down to the Wren. She was a good girl for holding her drink, and I quite fancied her. Not as thin as she’s gotten since the cancer.

In those days, she cut a striking figure. Crazy blond hair and those big blue eyes. She dressed sharp, too—long skirts and dresses, lace-up boots and flowy scarves, all kinds of shiny bits and bobs. Hippie royalty, we were. Not like you wankers with your black hoodies and earbuds.

Probably Tom should have thought it out better. Four blokes and Les the only girl—you could see how that might become a troublesome equation. I was furious when I realized Les and Julian were doing more than practice up in their bedrooms—murderously jealous, but only for a few weeks. Once the girl came on the scene, that put an end to Les and Julian’s great romance.

It was a Friday night when we first went down there, Les and me. We decided we were going to busk at the pub and make a bit of dosh. We were skint, all of us, we’d run through whatever money Tom had left us. If Old Man Silas hadn’t been coming by, we would’ve starved. Tom was supposed to drive down for a weekend to fill our coffers, but that hadn’t happened yet. The whole point of us being at Wylding Hall was
not
to have visitors, even our manager.

And we didn’t really want any. Odd as that sounds to you—really, can you imagine being totally cut off, no mobiles, no interwebs? We couldn’t even use the phone except in emergencies—it cost the earth.

So did petrol. We’d filled the van’s tank before we first arrived, but it was half-empty by now, and we were very cautious about taking it anyplace. It was held together with bits of string and old tin cans, and I was always terrified it would die and that would be it: we’d be stranded in darkest fucking Hampshire. As far as I know, Julian’s car never moved the whole time we were there.

I know: to you lot it sounds like hell, but to us it was heavenly.

Still, even in heaven, you want a change from boiled eggs and plonk. So one day, I fired up the van and drove me and Les into town. Understand that I mean “town” only in the sense that there was a road running through it. A pub and half-a-dozen houses, chickens in the street.

But the Wren was a proper pub with a regular clientele. Les charmed the barman into giving us something to eat: ploughman’s lunch. Big slabs of white bread and ham and good cheddar and pickles. And great ale—it was a free house, so the ale was brewed only a few miles off. We drank a few rounds, then stood the barman for a few, by which time he was ready to take Lesley straight to bed. His name was Reg, good old Reg. Died some years back. He was feeling quite jolly when Les asked if we could sing later in the evening.

“What, are you a nightingale? I thought you were a peacock!” He leaned across the bar to tug at her scarf: it was printed with peacock feathers, and she had on earrings made from peacock feathers.

“Peacocks scream. This bird sings like an angel.” I put my arm around her, but Les pushed me away and turned back to Reg.

“I do,” she said. “I sing like an angel. In London people pay a lot of money to hear me sing. But for you, Reg—
just you
—I will make an exception.”

Then she grabbed him and kissed him on the cheek, and that was all it took. Neither of us had a guitar with us, and I certainly wasn’t lugging around my bass, so we just … sang. That’s how we used to do it at the basement of Trois Freres at those all-night gigs, when anyone could stand up in the room and sing three songs. That’s if they could still stand. But Lesley had a hollow leg in those days and so did I. Drink is what kept us standing.

We sang “Cloud Prince” and “Unquiet Grave.” I remember because Will had just taught us “Unquiet Grave” our first day at Wylding Hall. You know that one?

My lips they are as cold as clay my breath smells earthy strong

And if you kiss my cold lips your days won’t be long

Go fetch me water from the desert and blood from a stone

Go fetch me milk from a maid’s breast that man’s never known.

The punters loved it. Reg shouted out to everyone that we were very special singers down from London, and Lesley was the next Dusty Springfield. Some shite like that.

They loved it—loved her. She was the first American they’d ever seen, some of them, and that might have been the first time they’d seen anyone looked like her, those leather boots and wild blond hair and peacock glory. What a sight she was! Pissed as a bloody newt, of course—she was purely slap happy when we finally finished singing. The lads shouted for another song, but she just laughed and said she’d be back with more of her friends.

“We don’t want your friends!” some bloke yelled. “You’re woman enough for all of us!”

We got seven quid that night. Hundred pounds that’d be worth now, almost a hundred and fifty dollars. Enough for a few bottles of wine and some chocolate cake and sweets and bananas, whiskey and fags. Not bad for three songs.

Will

One of the songs they sang that night was “Unquiet Grave.” I wasn’t there, but Ashton told me when they got home. I’d found it amongst the Child Ballads at Cecil Sharp House back in London. A very old ballad, very grim.

“Why’d you choose that one?” I asked him. I thought it was strange. Usually Ashton went for the jigs and dance songs, the old knees-up. He said he wanted to hear Lesley sing it in front of an audience.

I wouldn’t have chosen that song. Not for a first time out, there in the country. It’s a warning, that song. The way some old songs or nursery rhymes are ways of memorizing recipes, or history, or directions to a place? “Unquiet Grave” is like that. It’s a warning.

No, I don’t blame Ashton for what happened. But I do think it was a bit of bad fortune, to choose that particular song.

I wish I’d gone with them to the Wren that first night. I was the only one in the band actually knew something about folk music. Ashton and Jon, they had more of a rock and roll background. They had no trouble picking up the songs and the instrumentation, but until we went to Wylding Hall, they’d never done anything in the way of research into old music. They’d just pick up whatever song was making the rounds and try to put a stamp on it.

Julian was different. He had a better idea than anyone, even me, as to exactly what those songs were about and what they meant. But I wasn’t aware of that at the time.

And Les is American. Today, she knows just as much about folk songs as I do, but back then she picked it up because that’s what you did—if you weren’t going to be in a rock and roll band, you’d sing folk songs. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, they all did riffs on English folk. Lesley had the voice for it. More soulful than someone like Grace Slick, and Les didn’t sound like she was giving you a lecture, the way Joan Baez did.

Les had a magical voice. She was just starting to write her own songs, so she’d pretty much sing whatever you handed to her. I would never have expected her to recognize the photos in the Wren, but I might have thought that Ashton would mention them. He knew how caught up I was with folklore and ritual. Then again, maybe that’s why he
didn’t
mention them. Or maybe he was just too pissed to notice them.

I went up to the pub by myself a few days later. I was in the mood for a walk, and sometimes it felt like such a pressure cooker at Wylding Hall. I could hear Julian and Lesley going at it in Julian’s room. Les, mostly: I never heard much out of Julian. He wasn’t what you called hot-blooded, not until the girl showed up.

Still, him and Les were in the throes of an affair, even if it was mostly one-sided. Made me miss my girlfriend, Nancy. Jonno—well, I wasn’t sure what Jonno got up to. He didn’t tell the rest of us he was gay till that autumn. I’m pretty sure he told me some story about a girl back in Chelsea.

But I missed Nancy terribly. Spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself in my room, playing mournful songs.

That particular day, I decided to really feel sorry for myself and tromped off to the pub. Took the better part of an hour to get there on foot, and I was thirsty when I arrived. Had a pint of good ale, sat off by myself. There were only a few geezers there, and they left me alone. Fine by me.

After a while, I got a second pint and was starting on a third when I decided to take a slash. Heading back from the bog, I noticed several photos on the wall. Old photographs, black and white, cheap frames. The kind of thing you see in every pub in England—the local rugby team, or someone’s brother with the goalie from Manchester United, or the great granddad of the proprietor.

But these were different. At first I thought they were very old, early nineteen hundreds, maybe even older. Because of the subject matter. All that time I spent at Cecil Sharp House, poring through their archives and old books—well, I recognized these photos. Not the exact photos, but the subject matter.

They showed a group of boys in ragamuffin finery—old frockcoats too big for them, knee-high boots or soft leather shoes, top hats or workmen’s caps stuck with sprigs of ivy and evergreen. It was wintertime, a few inches of snow on the ground. One of the photos showed the boys knocking at the door of a cottage. In another, they stood all in a row, each of them holding what looked like a walking stick, and staring at the camera with that strange grim look you see in old photos. Like they’d been told, “Whatever you do,
don’t smile
.” The last photograph, they stood atop a little hill in a half-circle.

You’re thinking, So what?

Well, here’s the thing: in every photo, one boy held what looked like a cage covered with more greenery. It wasn’t a proper cage, though, but two hoops made of stripped willow branches, placed one inside the other, then strung with ivy and holly. Something was suspended from the spot where the two branches crossed at the top. I could barely make it out in the picture that showed them at the cottage door, but it showed more clearly in the other two.

In the first photo—the one taken on the hill—the cage was empty, and it sat at the feet of the smallest boy. In the second photo, where they stood all together with the trees behind them, the same boy had the willow cage, held out in front of him as though it were a lantern. This was more of a close-up, so I could see what was hung inside the willow round: a dead bird, strung up by one foot. Not a grouse or partridge or pheasant, something you might hunt to eat, but a tiny bird, so small that it wouldn’t make more than a mouthful.

But they weren’t going to eat it. I knew because I’d seen pictures of the same sort of thing at Cecil Sharp House. All the sport was in the hunting, and then the door-to-door in the village, displaying the dead bird and singing.

Away to the wood, says Dick to John,

Away to the woods, says every one!

And what do ye there, ye merry men?

We hunt to the death the wicked witch-wren.

It’s an ancient carol, sung on the day after Christmas—Boxing Day, St. Stephen’s Day. You don’t celebrate it here in the United States.

But way back when those photos were taken, all the boys and men of a village would walk out armed with cudgels and harry the wrens out of the underbrush, then club them out of the air. Wrens don’t fly very high.

Yes, I know, it sounds barbaric. It
is
barbaric. But this was the only time you were allowed to kill a wren—all sorts of terrible things happen if you kill it out of season. I think in some places it might even have been illegal.

Once upon a time, they did this all across the British Isles, England and Ireland, and Scotland and Wales. There are all kinds of songs about it—“The Cutty Wren,” that’s the one I just sang, and “Please to see the King.” Christmas carols, but they’re really quite ancient songs. You’d kill your wren, then parade it around the village. It represented the old year sacrificed so that the new year could rise from its ashes.

That’s how some of the songs go. Others say that the wren’s a wicked creature, a fairy woman. You still see the wren on Christmas cards here in England, though everyone’s forgotten what it represents. It’s all a bit
Wicker Man
. And the name of the pub—that should have been a clue, right?

Well, I was terribly excited by this discovery. From what I’d read, the wren hunt had died out everywhere except the Isle of Man, and even there it’s been turned into a tourist holiday, like the Padstow Hobby Horse.

Yet the photos in the pub were all dated 1947. Even if the ritual hadn’t been performed a single time since then, it was the most recent survival of the wren hunt in England that I’d ever heard of.

I walked over to ask the barman what he knew about it. Not a thing, he said; he was from Canterbury and had only moved to the village after he married a local girl. He told me to ask some of the old timers.