Wylding Hall (8 page)

Chapter 10

Nancy

I wish Lesley had told me what was going on with Julian. Eventually, she did, but it was months later. I know that they all scoff at what I do, but Julian didn’t. I was the only one who might have been able to talk to him—we were on a similar wavelength, we shared a lot of the same interests. Not the occult so much as arcana—antiquarian books, medieval grimoires, Dr. Dee. Books of knowledge. Things like that. If I’d had a better sense of what he was up to, I might have done something to help, especially after that night on the floor when we heard the voice.

As it was, next morning he and I took a long walk in the woods, very early. Everyone else was passed out. I couldn’t sleep because Will was snoring—he was a terrible snorer. I kept kicking him, but he wouldn’t budge, so I finally gave up and went downstairs to make some tea.

Julian was the only one up. I don’t think he’d even been asleep—Lesley told me later that some nights he’d only sleep for an hour or two before he’d go off into the wood.

But now he seemed wide awake, in good spirits, but quiet. Thoughtful. We didn’t talk about what had happened the night before, when I’d flashed into whatever it was he’d summoned up. We didn’t need to. I knew he knew, and he knew I did. It happens like that. Not often, but sometimes.

We had tea and eggs, he had a smoke, then asked if I’d like to go for a walk. I wasn’t really dressed for a hike, long skirt and suede boots, but in those days I didn’t care about things like that.

It was a perfect summer morning, daisies and campion in bloom, skylarks singing. Butterflies everywhere, wood nymphs and orange tips. Even though it was warm, Julian had on his old corduroy jacket, the one you see in all the pictures. The air had that sweet green smell you get before the leaves begin their turn toward autumn. Dew on the ground, everything shone and dazzled. Like walking inside a kaleidoscope—every shade of green you can imagine, and blue sky beyond, tiny birds hopping everywhere.

Julian was singing to himself, “Thrice Tosse These Oaken Ashes.” It was the first time I’d ever heard it—this was months before the album came out. He’d set it to his own music, though there were echoes of that eerie melody we’d heard the night before.

Or, not echoes: more like an absence of sound. As though he’d taken all the silences in a piece of music and strung them together.

It was beautiful, but chilling. Much more so than the version on the album. If things had turned out differently, if they’d been able to record more than one take of Julian’s voice—maybe then you’d have a true sense of how it was supposed to sound. It made the hairs on my neck stand up.

That was when I remembered what the farmer had said.
He should stay away from the wood. All of them …

But it was broad daylight, and there were two of us—if me or Julian had fallen or turned an ankle, we’d have been able to manage. Still, that singing unnerved me, and I was glad when he stopped.

There was a path through the wood, not too overgrown. I think deer must have used it; there were red deer in Hampshire then. That was the direction we took. I asked Julian if he’d been that way before, and he said yes.

“There’s some ruins.” He seemed excited. His face was flushed, and he started laughing. “Wait till you see, it’s brilliant.”

“Have any of the others been here?”

“Not yet. I wanted to—well, I wanted to keep it secret.” He sounded a bit embarrassed. “I know that’s childish, but it’s such a beautiful place, I didn’t want everyone stamping over it. Having a party and leaving their bottles everywhere.”

Which sounded sensible enough to me.

“It’s just up here,” he said after a few minutes. We walked more slowly now. He no longer seemed excited, not reluctant, exactly, but slightly hesitant. I wondered if he was sorry that he’d decided to share his secret with me.

Ahead of us, the woods thinned out. There was a copse of alders, odd I thought—alders usually grow near water, and I hadn’t seen any streams or ponds since we’d started. Alders and hazel and rowan. As we drew nearer, I saw that they were arranged in a long oval, and in the center of the oval was a mound—a long barrow. Like a gigantic egg half-buried in the earth, maybe twenty feet long and eight feet high, all overgrown with ferns and wildflowers. Julian stopped a few yards away and gazed up at it.

“Here it is,” he said softly.

He turned and held out his hand. And that was unheard of for Julian—the one thing I knew about him, other than that he was supposed to be a brilliant musician, was that he didn’t like to be touched. I flattered myself by thinking maybe he fancied me.
Uh oh
, I thought,
now there’ll be trouble with Will and Lesley both
.

I took his hand and clambered up after him. Almost immediately I regretted it—the mound was much steeper than it appeared. From ground level, it seemed barely taller than the trees, and some of the bigger ones, oaks and beech, towered above it.

Yet the instant I began climbing, I started to slide backwards. My long skirt made it worse. It took two or three tries before I got any momentum, and if Julian hadn’t been holding on to me, I don’t think I could have done it. The turf was ankle-high, very soft but slick as glass, with bluebells and narcissus peeking out of it, even though the season for bluebells was long gone. The grass smelled sweet where we crushed it, and everywhere wrens darted out from their nests in the brush. There must have been a hundred of them. Wrens don’t fly very high, so they skimmed all around us, singing then disappearing into the tangle underfoot. I’ve never seen so many birds.

It took a good five minutes to reach the top. When we did, I was so out of breath, I couldn’t say a word. Julian immediately let go of my hand.

“Look at this!” He sounded giddy, spinning in a circle with his arms out. “You can see for miles!”

I looked around and gasped.

Everywhere I turned, there was the countryside. Fields and woods and roadways, villages like clusters of acorns and green hills vanishing off into the clouds, with here and there a church spire, all beneath a sky bright as bluebells. I could see ancient field systems clearer than I ever had, and to the west, another mound like this one, with people standing on it. Then I realized they weren’t people, but a stone circle, or trees.

And closer than that, like a mirage, Wylding Hall’s towers rose above the greenery, all golden in the sun.

Yet it was impossible that I could see any of this from where we stood. The mound wasn’t that high. A wood surrounded it. Beyond that there were more woods that hid the village. I looked for those trees I’d seen, the ring of alders and rowan and hazel.

And yes, there they were, but now they were
below
us: I looked down on a canopy of leaves.

I turned to Julian. “This is crazy.”

He laughed. “I know.”

“Was there something in that tea you made?”

“Of course not!” He walked to the edge of the mound, the narrow end of the egg, crouched down and stared out across the woods and fields to the hill with the standing stones. “Not that I know of, anyway.”

“What is it, then? An optical illusion? A mirage?”

Julian shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care, either. Does it really matter? Isn’t it enough that it’s all there, and we can see it?”

I should have been more frightened; that came later. It was just too lovely to be scared. Pale green butterflies the size of my thumbnail fed in the bluebells and filled the air like snow. I was afraid I’d step on them, but they seemed to sense where my foot would fall and flew off before it touched the ground. I watched a skylark circle up and up until it disappeared into the blue. Everywhere, little wrens rustled in the grass.

We must have stayed there for an hour. I don’t think we spoke another word to each other. Julian remained where he was, staring out into the blue. I walked the perimeter of the mound, then crossed it back and forth. Quartering it. At one point I sat in the grass and searched around, looking for rocks, a flint or coin—the kind of thing you read about people discovering in old burial mounds.

I didn’t find anything. I thought of the farmer who’d given me a ride and wondered if he ever ploughed up ancient coins, or anything else. I’m certain he must have. I wish now I’d gone over to his place and asked him, but of course I would never have dreamed of doing such a thing when I was twenty. Given what they’re finding there now at the dig, it might have been useful knowledge.

Finally, Julian scrambled back to his feet. He stood for a few more minutes and I could hear him singing under his breath; the same two verses, it sounded like, though I couldn’t make out any words. Chanting, almost. I was just learning my craft then, otherwise I might have been more alarmed. Cognizant, at any rate, that he was up to something and in way over his head.

“We’d better go,” he said at last, and turned to me. He looked … different. Calm, but also expectant. “I have a song I want to get down. I want to go over it with Ashton before we begin rehearsing it.”

And that was the end of it. He scrambled back down the hill—no holding hands this time. I had to call out to him to wait for me before he raced off into the woods. It was easier going down than up. Julian waited for me at the edge of the copse, looking very impatient.

I turned to gaze back at the mound. It was no higher than it had first appeared. I saw an old oak tree that absolutely towered above it.

“Come on,” said Julian.

Without waiting for me, he strode back into the woods. It was only that afternoon, when I went to take a bath, that I found one of those tiny green butterflies had gotten trapped in the folds of my long skirt.

“Look at you,” I said, shaking it free, and watched it flutter off into the house.

Chapter 11

Ashton

Tom was an incredibly innovative producer. He didn’t just manage his bands—he produced their albums as well. He was one of the first who had a mobile recording unit, which meant a band didn’t have to go into London to lay down tracks in a studio. The studio could come to you. It was an old delivery lorry that he’d gutted and tricked up with recording decks, tape players, and playback machines and amplifiers. It was absolutely state-of-the-art for the time. Richard Branson had one as well—he’d just bought Shipton Manor and was setting up what became the Virgin Records studio. He got the idea for all of that from us and Tom.

Now, of course, everyone has his own mobile unit, in your laptop or iPhone or whatever. But in those days you were tied to a studio, unless you were fortunate enough to have someone like Tom Haring, who could drive the rig down to Hampshire. And thank god he did, because otherwise there would have been no
Wylding Hall
album, no record whatsoever of what we did that summer.

See, those were never intended to be anything but rough cuts. Tom came down on a lark; he’d just finished kitting out the lorry, and he wanted to show it off. Give it a test drive, on the road and with all of us. Course it wasn’t on the road much. I think it got about ten miles to the gallon.

I’m not sure who had the idea that we should record outdoors. Jonno? That was the day Billy Thomas was there with his camera, so maybe it was him. Whoever it was, it turned out to be a brilliant idea. We dragged all our instruments out into what used to be the garden. It was all overgrown: flowers everywhere, roses twining up the stone walls and trees covered with wisteria, a carpet of yellow cowslips. Flowers out of season, Lesley said, but they looked wonderful. It all smelled of roses and hashish—Julian broke out his magic box. Grass knee-high and butterflies and grasshoppers dancing through the air. Birds swooping back and forth, and a goshawk circling overhead. It was heaven.

So that’s where we set up—in a little English country wilderness. Tom drove the lorry right into the middle of it. Plugged into the house and trailed the electric cords through the grass so we could mike the instruments.

I can’t recall how it came about that Billy was there, but however it was, Billy helped with the equipment. We laughed and told him he could sign on as our roadie. I didn’t even realize he owned a camera till that afternoon.

Of course, the sound quality wasn’t anywhere close to what you’d get in a proper studio. But again, we assumed we’d just do that at the end of the summer. This was only for fun, a chance to show off for Tom and give the mobile unit a trial run. You can hear on the album that we were outdoors—the wind in the long grass, bees humming, wrens hopping about. At one point, you can hear a plane flying by overhead.

It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. It was all live, pretty much a single take. No overdubs. Julian did do an extra take for “Windhover Morn.” He was always such a perfectionist.

It was a perfect day, in every way. Weather, happiness. The songs were new and we couldn’t get enough of playing them. Tom was flush; he had a hit that summer with “Girl on a String” by the Bullfrogs. One hit wonder, they turned out to be. He rang us that morning and said we weren’t to leave; he’d be arriving around noon with a surprise. And so he did, and so it was.

Lesley

That was a magical day. I was having a smoke with Julian when Jonno gave us the news.

“Tom just rang and said he’ll be here in a few hours with a surprise. So don’t go wandering off, Julian. Keep an eye on him, will you, Les?”

After he went off to tell the others, I turned to Julian. “What do you think the surprise is?”

He shrugged. “Drugs?”

I laughed. There was no way it would be anything like drugs, not with Tom. Never in a million years. He might smoke a bit now and then, and I know he dropped acid at least once, ’cause I was with him. But he was nervous about anything stronger than that, and he was absolutely terrified of any scandal having to do with drugs. There wasn’t really a heavy drug scene with folk music, except up in Scotland. Glasgow, that was a tough place. Careers got killed that way—even a few tokes could get you put away in prison for a year. It was still early days for Tom as a producer, and he couldn’t afford to lose one of his musicians, especially after the tragedy with Arianna. That was enough scandal to last all of us for a while.

So, that was wishful thinking on Julian’s part. He had his own little stash of hash in a little enameled silver box. A beautiful thing—I have no idea where he got it—about as big as the palm of your hand; it looked like something you’d find in a medieval castle. He kept a block of hash inside and would shave away at it with a penknife. The box’s lid was amazing. There was a tree painted on it, in the most remarkable detail—tiny oak leaves, gold and green and yellow, on golden branches no bigger than a blade of grass. The bluest sky you ever saw, peeking through the leaves.

What was most extraordinary was a tiny jeweled bird perched in the tree, no bigger than your pinkie nail. Yet you could see every feather, tiny flecks of emerald and ruby and gold, and a wee little golden beak.

And sapphire eyes—you could only see one eye, its head was cocked, but that eye was a sapphire, I’m sure of it. When it caught the light, it winked at you.

It must have been worth a pretty penny, that box. More than any of us earned in a year, all put together. Whenever I asked Julian where it came from, he was always very evasive.

“Someone gave it to me,” he said once, but he wouldn’t tell me who. “I forgot,” he said.

Like you would ever forget whoever gave you a gift like that. Another time, he told me he inherited it. I asked his mother once, and she just gave me a blank look.

“A jeweled box? I don’t think so. I would have remembered it. Wherever would he have come by something like that?”

Ashton

I remember that box. He kept pills in it. Mandrax, whatever he had. Pot. I looked it up online once. That kind of enamel work, it dates from the fourteenth century. I always assumed he’d found it at Wylding Hall and nicked it.

We used to joke about discovering treasure, the odd golden mace or grail. Never did, though. We looked once or twice: me and Jonno got lost wandering through the old wing. There was a passage on the second floor, I think it was a priest-hole. We found it when we pushed aside a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. I don’t think anyone had stepped in that room in two hundred years. We must have walked for ten minutes in the dark—we had a torch, but the battery was going. Jonno got spooked and we turned back. I wanted to keep on, but he was dead set against being lost in the dark.

Later, I tried to find that passage again, but I never could. I couldn’t remember what room it was. None of them ever looked right.

Jonno

After I told Les and Julian, I found the others. None of us had any idea what Tom had in store, so when Julian pulled out his hash, we all tucked in. Will made breakfast, and we all sat together at that big trestle table in the kitchen and ate. Usually we weren’t all up at the same time, so we didn’t eat together. But that day we did and it was lovely. Everyone laughing and joking, the windows open so the sun came in and warmed the flagstones. I was always barefoot, so I remember that detail.

I also remember when the lorry pulled up. A Ford transit box van; it looked like a milk truck. Tom hopped out, and then this boy. Sturdy lad, dark hair and ruddy face, wearing a work shirt and dungarees.

Well, aren’t you nice
, I thought. He was a few years younger than me, sixteen. Silas Thomas’s grandson. Tom had brought him to help with lugging the sound equipment, which was especially fortuitous when we ended up recording outside. It was fortuitous for me, too, though for a different reason.

Billy Thomas, photographer

Silas Thomas was my grandfather. My family owns the farm next to his. Actually, it’s all one farm since he died. I don’t live there now, but my partner and I have a cottage not too far off, so we can visit my mum. My father died about ten years ago.

I can’t remember exactly when Silas died. I’d left home by then. Maybe five or six years after? Maybe longer. I should remember; I was broke up about it. But I don’t.

He told me about the hippies living at Wylding Hall. They hired him to bring them groceries every week. He liked them, as far as I knew. He thought they were harmless. Only thing he worried about was one of them went off into the woods by himself, up to the rath. That’s what he called the hill fort. It’s an Irish word; his mother was Irish, and when she married my great-grandfather and moved here in the eighteen hundreds, that’s what she called it.

So my grandfather said, anyway. He was very superstitious. So was everyone else in the village. None of us was ever supposed to go off playing on our own in the woods, especially not anywhere near the rath. If you did, you’d get a hiding when your folks found out. Julian Blake was the one used to go up there.

The old ways, no one remembers them today. The Wren’s a gastropub now; Barry and me quite like it.

I’d heard about the commune in the old manor from my granddad. Someone told me they were musicians, a rock group. Of course, I’d never seen a rock group. I didn’t even have a phonograph. We had a radio, so I’d listen to BBC’s Radio 1 and John Peel on Saturday nights. That was my connection to the outside world.

I had no thought whatsoever about becoming a rock photographer. I didn’t know such a thing existed. I did have a camera, an Instamatic I saved for and bought earlier that summer. I was very proud of it. There was a camera club at my secondary school and I wanted to join. So, of course, I needed a camera.

I didn’t go to Wylding Hall that day with any thought of snapping photographs. Tom Haring rang up my grandfather and asked if he knew someone could help carry boxes back and forth from the lorry. Cables, things like that. My grandfather volunteered me.

“Make sure you get paid,” he said, but I didn’t care about that. I was excited to go to Wylding Hall and to see the hippies.

At the last minute, I thought of bringing my camera along. I’d bought a roll of film and loaded it, but hadn’t taken any pictures yet. I must have thought this would be a good opportunity to take some photographs. It was, and then some.

Tom Haring came by the house and picked me up. He was very nice, very professional. Introduced himself to my mother—my father was out in the field.

Then we drove on to Wylding Hall. He asked me if I’d ever heard of Windhollow Faire. I lied and said yes. I had no idea who they were. We got there and he introduced me around to everyone. Ashton Moorehouse was the only one really looked like a proper rock and roller—he had a beard and long hair and the full hippie regalia, high boots and pirate shirt.

The others had long hair but they seemed normal. Just a few years older than me, very friendly and ordinary. Which was reassuring, but a bit of a disappointment. Lesley Stansall, the girl singer, she seemed a bit larger than life. Loud voice and always waving her hands around, making a lot of noise. But friendly.

The only one seemed a bit peculiar was Julian Blake. To me he seemed snobbish, though probably he was just stoned.

And I was intimidated by how good-looking he was. I was all mixed up about boys and girls—I was attracted to boys, but that was such a horrible thing I couldn’t even
think
it. I’d never heard the word “homosexual,” and every other word that described it was awful.

So, when Julian came shambling into the kitchen and said, “Hi,” I just mumbled and stared at the floor. The place had a funny smell, like church incense. It wasn’t until that night, with Jonathan, that I found out it was hashish. I was such an innocent.

Lesley

I was the one who suggested we record outdoors. It just seemed so obvious to me, although Ashton and Will thought we should do it inside, in the rehearsal room. Which was also an obvious choice. 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 this weird 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. I hope it stayed there.

But it was such a gorgeous day, it seemed a shame to be indoors. The garden was in full bloom—such a magical spot that was! Like something out of a book. Old apple trees and blossoming cherry, stock, and delphiniums and primroses. Even some narcissus, and they were long out of season. The garden seemed to have its own climate. Things bloomed whenever they wanted, I think. There was a low brick wall around it, very old; the bricks had crumbled so that the back opened out onto the lawn, which was even more overgrown than the garden. Ashton and Will found old-fashioned scythes in one of the outbuildings, and they cut away some of the tall grass so we could put our instruments out there, and the microphones. They looked like they’d stepped out of the middle ages. I wish we had photographs of that.

Ashton

It took a few hours to get everything set up in the garden. First, we had to hack away at the brush. Then we had to bring in all the cables and power cords and amplifiers and microphones, all of us tripping over brambles and rosebushes. Chairs from the kitchen and the piano stool for Julian. We were all stoned out of our minds, which didn’t help matters. But finally, it was all done, and we settled down and played.

I won’t go into it again—you have the album. But it was like an enchantment, that one afternoon. We played till the sun was low in the sky, but it was still daylight, golden light. Magic hour, film people call it. Tom had brought a teenager from the village, a boy named Billy Thomas. I didn’t know he had a camera until he got it from the lorry and came running back through the grass. He shot an entire roll of film, mostly after we’d finished playing and were goofing about or standing around doing nothing.