Elizabeth Hand: Wylding Hall

But you know, it was like he could barely stand to be touched — he’d almost flinch if you came too close to him. Not just me — I was used to guys not wanting to be too close to other blokes — but everyone. I’m sure that’s what happened with Arianna; she thought they were in a relationship, and here he could barely stand to touch her. That’s why it was so strange about the girl.

If she had a name, I never knew it. She was the only girl — the only person — I ever saw Julian with, physically. Not that I was perving on them, that’s not what I mean; just that she was the only human creature I ever saw him willingly touch, or kiss. If in fact that’s what she was.

Ashton

It was me, Will, and Jonno in the van. We arrived around noon. I was driving — I was the only one had a license, besides Julian. What a bunch of fucking slackers. You take the A-31 to Farnham, then it’s pretty much nothing but winding lanes and little villages. Used to be, anyway. Heart of Hampshire, Wind of the Willows landscapes. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Probably all developed and paved over now; I’ve never had the heart to go back.

No? Well, that’s a mercy. But I still won’t be back.

I can still remember the first glimpse I had of Wylding Hall. There was no signpost, only a great boulder with the name carved on it — must have been five hundred years old. Absolutely ancient. The road between the hedgerows was so narrow that the branches poked in the windows on both sides, like they wanted to grab us. One scratched my cheek so badly it left a scar — see there? Fucking oak tree did that! I was bleeding all over the windscreen. It got infected, too.

So, we drove and drove, and drove and drove and drove, and finally the hedgerows dropped back so we could see where the woods had been cleared a bit, and you could see into the distance. Pastures, ancient field systems marked by stone walls — a thousand years old some of them, maybe older. There was a prehistoric barrow there as well, though we didn’t know that yet. I’m not superstitious, but Will is. He’s the one spends all his time at Cecil Sharp House, digging through the archives for old murder ballads—“The Hangman’s Kiss Upon My Cold Eyes”: he found that one. If he’d known there was a barrow a stone’s pitch from where we’d be sleeping, he would have stayed in Crouch End. What a fucking nutter. He’s the one started all those rumors.

Look, I love Will — I’ll kill anyone raises an eyebrow at him. But he’s taken every pill and smoked every spliff and drunk every pint ever laid in front of him. He’s done none of us any favors with his crazy theories. Same with Jonno. You can print that just as I spoke it.

Then what do I think happened? I don’t have a fucking clue, but I’m not afraid to say I don’t understand everything there is to know in this world.

She was the most beautiful young girl I’ve ever seen. I’ll say that, too. I’ve been married five times, and every one of them was a beautiful woman. But there was no one you ever saw looked like her. Looking at her made you want to claw your heart out, it ached so much. We all thought so, except for Les. I think she wanted to tear out the girl’s heart instead.

Tom

Wylding Hall was remote, but that was part of its charm. For me, anyway — I wanted them as far from London as possible. Even now, you can’t get a mobile signal out there. I don’t know how the new owners manage. Maybe they like it that way.

No distractions — that’s what I wanted for the band. They needed to recover from Arianna’s death. They were all traumatized to some degree, and Jon had just lost his mother to cancer. Just kids — they were all just kids, remember, especially Les. She’d been orphaned a few years earlier: lived with her alcoholic sister and her kids in some council flat in the East End before taking off to sleep rough in the streets. She’s a tough old soul, Lesley. Even then, as a girl, you could see it. She was tough as a nut.

Anyway, that was my cunning plan: to spirit them all away to remotest Hampshire, have them live together in a sort of musical commune and see what happens. I mean, people do that, right? Young people, and we were all young, it seems like the most wonderful thing in the world: off on your own, remaking the world, if you will. Sort of a utopian ideal. Hey, it was the seventies.

And it did bear fruit in that album, even if it took years for people to catch on. Progressive folk music was having its day in the sun, and Windhollow’s first album fit that model. But Wylding Hall changed the game for that kind of music, and everything that came after as well. I’m very proud of it, and I know the others are, too. Brilliant work — not a duff song in there.

Not that Windhollow’s first album was shabby. A few twee songs, like “Miss Marnie I Miss You” and “Another Fool in the Dark”—they hadn’t gotten their stride, and Will was still going for those fiddle-dee-dee arrangements; I hadn’t pounded that out of him yet.

And the band’s name, of course, I thought that was hopelessly twee. Windhollow Faire. Turns out that’s where Ashton pulled his first girl — someplace in Oxfordshire. I’ve always wondered if she ever made the connection. Whoever she was.

But that second album — it was all a sort of amazing chemistry. Alchemy, Julian called it. He was into all that kind of thing — magick with a K , astrology, god knows what else. Palmistry, reading the bumps on your head. Casting spells. He wanted the album itself to be a kind of spell. An enchantment. You’d listen to it and without knowing it, you’d be changed. “Ensorcelled.” That’s his word, not mine! Back then, Julian believed in that kind of thing.

But you know, given the influence and power that album’s had over the years, I can almost believe it, especially when you consider the shit storm of bad luck when it was first released.

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.