Elizabeth Hand - Wylding Hall

Billy and I got to talking; he was a real babe in the woods, very innocent. A true country lad. I asked him up to my room to listen to some albums. He was raving about Lindisfarne and “Fog on the Tyne,” which I thought was utter crap. That was the year folk-rock made the charts, Steeleye Span and the rest of them. We all hated that we’d get lumped in with them whenever anyone talked about Windhollow Faire.

I had recently heard about Transformer , and Tom brought it down from London for me. That’s what me and Billy listened to. “Andy’s Chest” and “Perfect Day.” We started out on the floor, but ended up lying side by side in my bed. I kissed him and we snogged, but that was all. Fell asleep that way.

When I woke up in the morning, he wasn’t there — he’d caught a ride back to the village with Tom. In the autumn, I saw the photographs he’d taken, but I didn’t see Billy again for about ten years. We’re good mates now.

Tom

I thought we had accomplished something breathtaking with that session, and I believed it was a harbinger of great things to come. The beginning of something wonderful for Windhollow Faire, when in fact it was the opposite.

Will

About a week after we laid down those rough cuts in the garden, we all decided to go down to the pub and have another go at busking. Julian wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I reminded him we’d been practicing “Lost Tuesdays” all week and this would be a good place to debut it for an audience other than ourselves. We’d run out of booze, too.

It was Saturday, a rainy day; might have been the only time it rained that whole summer. I think it actually was. We’d been on our own all week: Tom was long gone, and we’d decided not to invite anyone else down. We just wanted to focus on the music.

You forget now, how strange and original those songs were for their time. When you got tagged as a folk band, especially a trad band like we were, supposedly — well, you were supposed to play traditional songs, weren’t you, acoustic guitar and all the rest, and traditional arrangements.

We weren’t having none of that. Especially me. I’d made an electric fiddle, hooking my own up to the innards of an old Hoover. Julian had written “Darkling Sea” for him and Ashton to play on acoustic guitar and upright bass, but I bulled my way into it, as is my wont. Les and Julian had worked out these gorgeous harmonies; you’d hear them singing first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Something had happened between them, I never figured out what. I thought maybe Nancy and Julian had gone off together during the notorious non-orgy, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case. Hard to imagine the two of them in a passionate embrace, but stranger things have happened.

Whatever it was, there was still a bit of a chill between Lesley and Julian. Odd thing was, their singing was brilliant. You learn to do that if you’re in a band — put aside whatever it is comes between you the rest of the time. Sex, drink, politics, marriage, whatever it is. If you can’t do that, well, that’s when it all falls apart.

Jon

I drove the van that night. I wanted to keep a clear head, which is why I’m the one whose account you should trust. We’d all been boozing it up pretty steadily, Les and Will especially. Me and Julian mostly just smoked, though that week I finished an entire bottle of Jameson all by myself. Ashton kept to beer most of the time. I always wondered if he found some way to secretly pop down to the Wren. Probably he did.

Something changed after that weekend when Will’s girlfriend Nancy came to visit. I don’t think it had anything to do with her. It was like the dynamic within the group shifted into some stranger, higher gear. Emphasis on “higher.”

No, not really. But there was that one night when we all lay around in the dark and felt — something. I think it only happens when you’re young. This weird sense of possibility; a kind of knowledge. You know there’s a door, and even if you can’t see it, you can sense it opening, and if you’re quick enough, you can slip inside.

Will and Les and I used to talk about it. Ashton thought it was all bollocks, but me and Will and Les, we thought, you know, maybe it could happen. Maybe it did.

It didn’t take too much to convince Julian to come down to the pub. He was shy, but he wasn’t that shy about performing. He was self-conscious. Will or Ashton are good at banter, and Lesley, she’ll trip over her own feet and make a joke of it. The audience loved her.

Julian wasn’t like that, but he didn’t freeze up in front of a crowd. I know that’s the accepted wisdom, but it’s wrong. He was more like me. I get behind my kit and hide there. Unless you’re Keith Moon or John Bonham, no one’s looking at the drummer.

Once he got settled, Julian would just focus on his singing and his guitar. He had incredible powers of concentration — the whole time we were at Wylding Hall, if he wasn’t playing with the rest of us downstairs, he was up in his room, studying transcendental meditation or some mystic shite.

Only with him it wasn’t really shite — he really could go into kind of a trance when he played. We’ve all been there, catching a groove, but this was different. Uncanny. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how it’d go over at the pub.

Lesley

I have no clue what went on between Julian and Nancy, but something did. I know that. He was different after that weekend, not just different towards me but … changed, somehow. Back then you’d meet people who got involved with cults. Jesus freaks or swami so-and-so. Julian never joined a cult that I knew of, but he had that same glittery look in the eye, like he’d seen something amazing but was going to keep it secret because, you know, the rest of us weren’t worthy.

Nancy wasn’t exactly like that, but she was a self-professed witch. And she does have a gift. She sees things others can’t. I don’t think she’s making it up, either. She may be slightly deluded, but she’s not lying. That weekend she stayed with us, I think she inadvertently encouraged Julian in whatever fixation he’d developed.

Wylding Hall didn’t help, either. The whole time we were there, it was like being in a dream. Everything conspired to keep us from waking up. The weather and drugs and alcohol, the occult talk and crazy books and sexual tensions.

And that house — you could just get lost in it. Whenever I explored the old Tudor wing by myself, I’d find locked doors that wouldn’t open; then the next time, they would. No one had a key. One of the rooms had been a ballroom — shredded tapestries on the walls, floor covered with dust. Overlooking it was a minstrel gallery with an amazing oak screen, carved with all kinds of strange things. Birds with human faces. People with wings like dragonflies or wasps.

I used to stare up at the minstrel gallery, but no matter how hard I looked, I could never find the way in. No stairs, no ladder. There must’ve been a secret passage somewhere, but I never found it.

Jon

There were maybe forty people at the pub that night. Will said he counted thirty-seven, but I think he left out the barman. Call it forty. That pub was tiny, so it felt more crowded, but it wasn’t what you’d call standing room only. It was Saturday night and all the regulars were there — I guess they were regulars; I didn’t know them from Adam. The barman was a good bloke; he said we could set up and play in a corner.

We went acoustic — none of us wanted to lug amps and electric guitars and a PA. I just had my tambour and some shakers and an African drum a friend brought back from Tangiers. Very low-tech.