the trees. Everything looked golden. Everything felt golden. Like anything could happen.
Wylding Hall intensified all that. It was like a lens: you focus the light through it, ordinary sunlight, but the lens intensifies it, makes it strong enough to start a fire.
We had a game we’d play sometimes at Wylding Hall, after we’d have a good day and night of rehearsing and smoked a few spliffs—Julian got very good hash from a bloke in Notting Hill. We’d all hold our hands and shut our eyes. Then, without speaking, we’d drop our hands, and one at a time we’d open our eyes. All without talking. We thought that maybe, just maybe, if we did it at the right moment, in the right place, with the right people, we’d open your eyes and we’d be somewhere else.
I don’t know where. Just someplace we’d never been. Some impossible place. It never worked. Not with me, anyway. I was never that stoned. Sometimes I wish I had been.
Will
I think what it was, Julian and Nance were the canaries in the coal mine for that place. They were sensitives—not sensitive , though they were that, but sensitives: people who can sense things that other people don’t. Psychics, I guess you’d call them, though that’s probably not the right term, either. Julian was certainly very conscious of any kind of emotional distress or tension between all of us in the band, especially once we were at Wylding Hall.
There was a sort of balance we tried to maintain, consciously or not, and I respect Tom for doing what he did, arranging for us to have that place to ourselves for three months. In retrospect, it wasn’t a good thing. It was a disaster.
But we weren’t to know that. And I don’t think anyone can be blamed, certainly not Nance. She does have a gift, whatever you choose to call it. She was very strong, much stronger than Julian. So if the two of them were the canaries in the coal mine, she was perhaps the one who felt it first, but she got out quickly—she was only there that one weekend.
Julian withstood it much longer. People forget that the colliers didn’t just bring the canaries into the mines to warn them against the poisonous gases. They took them down because they sang so beautifully, even in the dark.
Lesley
She had a seizure of some kind. I was looking right at her when it happened. Silas Thomas had picked her up hitchhiking and given her a ride. The boys all ran to see what he’d brought for us, and I was rushing over to Nancy. We’d met a couple of times and hit it off, and I was craving female companionship. A fortnight in the woods with only lads takes it out of you.
Really, I was just looking forward to having a laugh, the two of us gossiping and catching up on what was going on back in London. She tumbled out of the truck, looked around smiling—it was a gorgeous day; that whole summer I don’t think it rained once. She just stood there, staring into the air and smiling, the way you do when you first arrive from the city and breathe in country air, kind of blissed out.
Then she let out this blood-curdling scream. Truly blood-curdling—it was like she was being murdered right there in front of us.
I just about jumped out of my skin and took off running, that’s how scared I was. But Nancy only stood there, screaming with her eyes wide open.
She looked like she was asleep. Have you ever seen someone who’s having a night terror? Not a nightmare—a night terror is when you think you’re awake. Your eyes are open and you see things that aren’t there. Will has them sometimes, ever since that summer.
Nancy looked like that. But she wasn’t asleep. It was middle of the afternoon and she was as wide awake as I am now. I ran over and grabbed her and brought her inside, sat her down in the hall. Will got her something to drink. I held her hands and kept talking to her, the way you do a spooked horse.
Her hands were freezing—so cold that when I touched her, it hurt. Burned, the way that cold iron
Wylding Hall intensified all that. It was like a lens: you focus the light through it, ordinary sunlight, but the lens intensifies it, makes it strong enough to start a fire.
We had a game we’d play sometimes at Wylding Hall, after we’d have a good day and night of rehearsing and smoked a few spliffs—Julian got very good hash from a bloke in Notting Hill. We’d all hold our hands and shut our eyes. Then, without speaking, we’d drop our hands, and one at a time we’d open our eyes. All without talking. We thought that maybe, just maybe, if we did it at the right moment, in the right place, with the right people, we’d open your eyes and we’d be somewhere else.
I don’t know where. Just someplace we’d never been. Some impossible place. It never worked. Not with me, anyway. I was never that stoned. Sometimes I wish I had been.
Will
I think what it was, Julian and Nance were the canaries in the coal mine for that place. They were sensitives—not sensitive , though they were that, but sensitives: people who can sense things that other people don’t. Psychics, I guess you’d call them, though that’s probably not the right term, either. Julian was certainly very conscious of any kind of emotional distress or tension between all of us in the band, especially once we were at Wylding Hall.
There was a sort of balance we tried to maintain, consciously or not, and I respect Tom for doing what he did, arranging for us to have that place to ourselves for three months. In retrospect, it wasn’t a good thing. It was a disaster.
But we weren’t to know that. And I don’t think anyone can be blamed, certainly not Nance. She does have a gift, whatever you choose to call it. She was very strong, much stronger than Julian. So if the two of them were the canaries in the coal mine, she was perhaps the one who felt it first, but she got out quickly—she was only there that one weekend.
Julian withstood it much longer. People forget that the colliers didn’t just bring the canaries into the mines to warn them against the poisonous gases. They took them down because they sang so beautifully, even in the dark.
Lesley
She had a seizure of some kind. I was looking right at her when it happened. Silas Thomas had picked her up hitchhiking and given her a ride. The boys all ran to see what he’d brought for us, and I was rushing over to Nancy. We’d met a couple of times and hit it off, and I was craving female companionship. A fortnight in the woods with only lads takes it out of you.
Really, I was just looking forward to having a laugh, the two of us gossiping and catching up on what was going on back in London. She tumbled out of the truck, looked around smiling—it was a gorgeous day; that whole summer I don’t think it rained once. She just stood there, staring into the air and smiling, the way you do when you first arrive from the city and breathe in country air, kind of blissed out.
Then she let out this blood-curdling scream. Truly blood-curdling—it was like she was being murdered right there in front of us.
I just about jumped out of my skin and took off running, that’s how scared I was. But Nancy only stood there, screaming with her eyes wide open.
She looked like she was asleep. Have you ever seen someone who’s having a night terror? Not a nightmare—a night terror is when you think you’re awake. Your eyes are open and you see things that aren’t there. Will has them sometimes, ever since that summer.
Nancy looked like that. But she wasn’t asleep. It was middle of the afternoon and she was as wide awake as I am now. I ran over and grabbed her and brought her inside, sat her down in the hall. Will got her something to drink. I held her hands and kept talking to her, the way you do a spooked horse.
Her hands were freezing—so cold that when I touched her, it hurt. Burned, the way that cold iron
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