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 smalclass="underline" 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.