Chapter Two

The atmosphere is of a time that cannot be recaptured—the taste of air, the photonic quality of light itself, this sixties thing. The energetic shift made real or surreal through the vibrant music of ‘Sergeant Pepper’ playing on the teak Stereo system, reverberating around the great hall of Hunterswood, is a tangible evocative force. Raf has just bought the record, the first day of its availability, from Wright’s Records in Brixham. The Beatles’ music is speaking to him directly, and genetically. There is a vague sense of uncurling lost parts of the great story, the lost magic; it is a kind of code.

The large hall has a series of circular gilt framed paintings of angels, after Sabino Raphael, set in niches high in the arched ceiling; this is how Raf got his name. These paintings, purchased by his father in Lostwithiel from a vicarage sale, were catalogued as copies, which is true except for one that was an original—a seventeenth century minor Venetian master—representing at least two years’ worth of groceries.

Replaying this multi-dimensional music, Raf is dancing, mesmerised by one particular song, ‘A Day in the Life.’ It is appropriate, as the lyrics describe an accident, conveying to Raf the lost reality of his life prior to his accident, in contrast to what he is now experiencing. The atmosphere of this music is unbearably surreal, suggesting to Raf that he might actually be dead and somehow living on in a dream continuum. The song eventually winds up and crashes down with the final piano chord. He is playing it over and over. “He blew his mind out in a car …”

The family are out, Raf is alone with the spirits. It is only since the accident that the ghosts have shown interest in him, rather than his brother Jimmy. They are, though, merely colours moving through the sunbeams, and there are sparkles of energy, or hints in the form of thoughts he has never had before like—eat no meat, seek the teacher, sit in meditation, serve Shiva, find the centre. “What is all this?” He is speaking to the image of Archangel Michael, gowned in electric blue, framed in baroque gilt. Michael appears to shift his smile from indifference to compassion. Raf covers his eyes, overwhelm sets in again.

Raf slides off the Chesterfield onto the eighteenth century Feraghan Sarouk carpet. His father Joey, a dealer of art and antiques, had the ability to find things in unlikely places—like the old master Tintoretto he discovered in a farm sale near Bideford, which paid for a big chunk of Hunterswood, followed by the imperial yellow Ming vase he found in the lavatory in a house sale in Cornwall, which paid for the rest. It wasn’t always like that; there were months, maybe years, when nothing much happened in terms of discovery. However, when it did happen, it really happened.

Joey doesn’t own a tangible business, a shop, or warehouse, but works closely with other outlets in London who understand something about the mystery that is Joey. It is Glor who spotted Joey’s skill. She saw the Diviner’s aura knowing what it was—a gift of an ancient lineage to which she was connected; the Welsh relatives, druids and the like. It was she who showed Joey how to apply his skills, after he had been through a series of initiations.

“They were two halves of the same peach,” their enigmatic uncle Maurice, the ‘Bard’, had remarked once, adding, “Twin flames, as rare as imperial Ming.”

Raf and his twin brother Jimmy are subliminally aware of all this but are still mystified by their father and mother. Of course, they accept them just as they are; however, it is when they meet their friends’ families, they realize that their parents have no correlation to your regular mum and dad, circa 1967.

Then there is the Welsh connection, Gloria’s aunts and uncles, and an unlimited supply of cousins who appear from time to time, sitting for hours in the great hall while Raf and Jimmy are excluded.

There are the holidays in Wales with Uncle Maurice, who some refer to as the Master Bard. Uncle Maurice’s and Aunt Marge’s farm has a central tower, the only habitable remnant from a castle that was destroyed in one of the countless battles with the English. The rooms are filled with Jacobean furniture, books, antlers, huge amethyst geodes, paintings of bearded warriors or poetic types. The farm is a small holding, growing herbs, chickens, and goats; there are cats, dogs, and odd helpers. Uncle Maurice and Aunt Marge have an aura of power both intangible and magical and, to Raf at least, somewhat confronting. Unlike Jimmy, his brother, Raf hasn’t fully acknowledged the weirdness of the family heritage in his quest for some sort of normality. Uncle Maurice is a touring druid bard, producing plays and poems on all things Celtic. Aunt Marge is a passionate author, and lecturer of Celtic culture and its relationship to the pan-shamanic world cultures—which she believes, and demonstrates, were in contact with one another through the ages.

“Do you know who they are? Don’t you get it?” Jimmy, who today would register on the autistic scale, had often remarked. Jimmy knew things, strange things about herbs and plants, nature spirits, fairies, elves, and potions designed to alter consciousness. He worked closely with his mother, and also at Deedas Gardens, across the road from Hunterswood on the estate of Phillipa Nicholson. When he wasn’t working, he would visit his girlfriend, a Martial arts instructor in Torquay, or sit in the garden writing in his journal. Joey used to call him the Poet Warrior Gardener. Raf and Jimmy also hold, deep within them, a secret—which is their variable ability to know what the other is doing, thinking, feeling; wherever they might be. Although this may be common enough with twins, with Raf and Jimmy it was uncanny—to the degree that it was rarely spoken about openly.

What a family, was Raf’s vague internal refrain. For sure he was curious about the Celtic and druid heritage but, at the same time, intent upon his youthful life of pubs and rolling in the hay with the girls from Churston riding stables.

In a world which has abandoned mystery in favour of materialism, their mother’s alternative medicines, homeopathic remedies, and father’s dealings in the arts, are something that the two brothers are discouraged from talking about in wider circles, let alone with their extended family. “The world isn’t ready,” Gloria would say.

Joey had worked at Hunterswood as a boy, with his father, a gardener on the Raleigh estates, when they were still owned by minor aristocracy. “I knew then that somehow, someway, I would live here in this place,” Joey had told the boys one Christmas.

The ground is so fertile that the green fingers of Gloria produce endless vegetables, herbs, and flowers, not normally associated with the moist and cool climate of Southern England. Both Father and Mother love this place as if it were a living part of them.

Hunterswood is inextricably linked to who they are—the garden, the forest, the river, the outhouses, the remoteness. Joey had, Glor explained, been alerted by a relative that Hunterswood was available, and he had driven directly here twenty-five years ago only to find that the place was for sale. The offer he made was accepted, even though he didn’t have the money to pay for it. Somehow or other he cobbled together a deposit, borrowing from a wealthy cousin. Six months later he’d found the Tintoretto.

Gloria was proud of her Celtic lineage; she also had access to memories of a past life as a healer priestess in Egypt. When the twins were young, she jokingly referred to herself as a dragon—and in that moment Raf saw something in her eyes that caused him, as a young child, to believe her. In this life she was a gardener of such earthy connections that if she stood still long enough, you’d suppose she was a tree. She and her family, the druids and magicians from the Welsh hills, were apart from the world of middle England which they awkwardly occupied.

At the top of Joey’s tower, the old chapel, is a pyramid constructed by a shaman from Hawaii who had turned up one day, out of the blue, and put together a copper framed pyramid filled with crystals which apparently connected to a world ‘grid.’ Raf had never quite understood what a shaman was exactly, some sort of wizard, or drum beating ethnic tribal elder. These sorts of events were not unusual in the family and as a child he had innocently accepted this. As he’d grown up and met other children’s families, he’d realized—yep, they were different alright.

Glor also placed her homeopathic remedies under the pyramid, which had the effect of doubling their potency. The pyramid, Raf had recently learned, created a vortex energy for health, connection to the sacred geometry of the area and beyond, as well as particular information that worked with Joey’s divining skills. And so, Joey would sit under the apex—when guided—until he got the call. Then he’d appear wearing his peaked cap with a certain fixated look, and get into the turquoise Volvo estate, with its silver Unicorn mascot, and disappear for a week or so doing the rounds; returning with objects gleaned from auctions, dealers, and markets.

Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset were a repository of retired colonials who had sacked the world and then some. These estates were coming up for sale as their owners died, and the world was awakening to the potential monetary value of art and antiques. However, Joey’s role was also altruistic, in that he had a mission to return certain sacred objects to very specific sacred places in the world.

There is a face on the cover of Sergeant Pepper, it stands out...