Wylding Hall Read Online Free PDF Page B

whole time we were there.
    I know: to you lot it sounds like hell, but to us it was heavenly.
    Still, even in heaven, you want a change from boiled eggs and plonk. So one day, I fired up the van and drove me and Les into town. Understand that I mean “town” only in the sense that there was a road running through it. A pub and half-a-dozen houses, chickens in the street.
    But the Wren was a proper pub with a regular clientele. Les charmed the barman into giving us something to eat: ploughman’s lunch. Big slabs of white bread and ham and good cheddar and pickles. And great ale—it was a free house, so the ale was brewed only a few miles off. We drank a few rounds, then stood the barman for a few, by which time he was ready to take Lesley straight to bed. His name was Reg, good old Reg. Died some years back. He was feeling quite jolly when Les asked if we could sing later in the evening.
    “What, are you a nightingale? I thought you were a peacock!” He leaned across the bar to tug at her scarf: it was printed with peacock feathers, and she had on earrings made from peacock feathers.
    “Peacocks scream. This bird sings like an angel.” I put my arm around her, but Les pushed me away and turned back to Reg.
    “I do,” she said. “I sing like an angel. In London people pay a lot of money to hear me sing. But for you, Reg— just you —I will make an exception.”
    Then she grabbed him and kissed him on the cheek, and that was all it took. Neither of us had a guitar with us, and I certainly wasn’t lugging around my bass, so we just … sang. That’s how we used to do it at the basement of Trois Freres at those all-night gigs, when anyone could stand up in the room and sing three songs. That’s if they could still stand. But Lesley had a hollow leg in those days and so did I. Drink is what kept us standing.
    We sang “Cloud Prince” and “Unquiet Grave.” I remember because Will had just taught us “Unquiet Grave” our first day at Wylding Hall. You know that one?
My lips they are as cold as clay my breath smells earthy strong
And if you kiss my cold lips your days won’t be long
Go fetch me water from the desert and blood from a stone
Go fetch me milk from a maid’s breast that man’s never known.
    The punters loved it. Reg shouted out to everyone that we were very special singers down from London, and Lesley was the next Dusty Springfield. Some shite like that.
    They loved it—loved her. She was the first American they’d ever seen, some of them, and that might have been the first time they’d seen anyone looked like her, those leather boots and wild blond hair and peacock glory. What a sight she was! Pissed as a bloody newt, of course—she was purely slap happy when we finally finished singing. The lads shouted for another song, but she just laughed and said she’d be back with more of her friends.
    “We don’t want your friends!” some bloke yelled. “You’re woman enough for all of us!”
    We got seven quid that night. Hundred pounds that’d be worth now, almost a hundred and fifty dollars. Enough for a few bottles of wine and some chocolate cake and sweets and bananas, whiskey and fags. Not bad for three songs.
    Will
     
    One of the songs they sang that night was “Unquiet Grave.” I wasn’t there, but Ashton told me when they got home. I’d found it amongst the Child Ballads at Cecil Sharp House back in London. A very old ballad, very grim.
    “Why’d you choose that one?” I asked him. I thought it was strange. Usually Ashton went for the jigs and dance songs, the old knees-up. He said he wanted to hear Lesley sing it in front of an audience.
    I wouldn’t have chosen that song. Not for a first time out, there in the country. It’s a warning, that song. The way some old songs or nursery rhymes are ways of memorizing recipes, or history, or directions to a place? “Unquiet Grave” is like that. It’s a warning.
    No, I don’t blame Ashton for what happened. But I do think it was