Paul Rees - The Ox

Q uarwood was resplendent on summer afternoons such as this in June 2002. With its Gothic edifices of Cotswold stone and its many windows cast in an amber sunlight, the grand old Victorian rectory house appeared truly baronial, regal even. The impression was strengthened by the immediate surroundings. Laid out in front of the house was a sweeping, immaculate croquet lawn of vivid, dappled green. Off to the rear was a verdant expanse of woodland and, beyond that, a vista of dimpled hills that rolled gently to the horizon. All of this was so wondrous that one might overlook the tell-tale signs of decay that were dotted about the fifty-five-room house and its forty acres of land. Chipped masonry, flaked paintwork, or even the dilapidated pool house, the pool itself cracked and drained of water.

On this particular day, the self-styled lord of the manor these past twenty-six years rose from his bed around noon. He was still recovering from a recent bout of flu, which had laid him up for several days. Also, he was likely bleary-eyed and thick-headed from indulging too much the night before, which these days was all too often the case. Lisa Pritchett-Johnson, his American girlfriend, might have invited a gaggle of folk up to the house from their local pub in the nearby town of Stow-on-the-Wold. He would have hardly even known most of their names, but all of them would have raided the fully stocked bar he kept downstairs and helped themselves to his drugs. Like pigs at a trough, they might have gone on gorging till dawn with Lisa cajoling them, always one drink and a line ahead of everyone else. He could not have cared less for any of them, but he would have joined in regardless. It never was his style to be a bystander at a party and especially not one of his own.

Lisa would be left to sleep off her own hangover. He knew full well that if she was not, she would be in a foul mood all the rest of the day and be itching to pick a fight. Not that there had to be a reason anymore for the two of them to start with each other. These bouts would escalate until they became vicious, spiteful and destructive, their raised voices and the bangs and crashes that resulted echoing around the halls and staircases.

Once he was up, he followed a well-established routine; he dressed in a crisp cowboy shirt, fresh-pressed jeans and a pair of moccasins, which would be changed for Cuban heel boots whenever he left the house. Not a crease in sight, or a hair out of place. Hung around his neck on a silver chain was a jeweled spider, gleaming with ruby-red eyes.

From his bedroom suite on the first floor, he walked down the cantilevered staircase and the length of the ground floor to the vast kitchen. Sat there, alone at a long, wooden table, a television silently flickering in one corner, he drank tea from a double-sized mug emblazoned with the image of a medieval knight and into which he dunked one, two, three chocolate biscuits. In between, he smoked a couple of cigarettes and otherwise passed the time poring over the crossword in his daily newspaper.

It was according to this precise order of things that John Entwistle began virtually every day at Quarwood. There was, though, a variation in the usual routine today, brought about by a more eccentric aspect of his nature. He was prone to have whimsical, and usually grandiose, notions pop into his head and would then be compelled to act upon them. On this occasion, he had on impulse thought about planting a Chilean monkey puzzle tree in front of the house. With him being so willfully extravagant, a potted sapling, such as one that could be picked up from the local garden center, simply would not do. No, he had determined instead to plant a mighty specimen on his land, one three feet wide at its base and that towered fifteen, sixteen hell, maybe even twenty feet tall. The kind of tree, in fact, that would have to be transported by a team of workmen, a flat-bed truck and a crane.

As just this combination rumbled up the half-mile driveway that wound toward the main house, Entwistle sprang into action. Bounding outdoors, he made clear his intention to assist with the planting and this was entirely out of character. At fifty-seven, besides walking his Irish Wolfhound and Rottweiler dogs, he had not undertaken any kind of strenuous physical exercise since running the hundred-yard dash at Acton County Grammar School in the distant 1950s. Even when he was onstage with his band, The Who, where singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend and former drummer Keith Moon had jumped, lurched, windmilled and generally thrown themselves about, he stood stock still as their statuesque bassist. Whats more, long after the others had sworn offor, in the case of Moon, succumbed toexcesses of booze and drugs, he roistered on. Nightly, he drank copious quantities of fine brandies and vintage red wines and he was systematically blowing his way through thousands of pounds a month on cocaine. Added to that, he chain-smoked and had a terrible diet, principally made up of red meat and deep-fried food.

Doubtless, the workmen that early afternoon could sense that he was vulnerable. When the time came for the tree to be lowered into the ground and Entwistle moved to steady it in place, in unison they exhorted him to step out of the way. He paid them no mind, or actually didnt hear them, since years of playing extremely loud rock music had rendered him all but deaf. Either way, he still stood there, legs splayed, when the crane jerked and pitched. The tree went with it, and a single great branch, leaf spikes as sharp as needle points, was sent jack-knifing up into his crotch, near enough lifting him off his feet. Looking on was Entwistles grown-up, first-born and only son, Christopher, who had also been commandeered to help with the task. Dad swore, threw a couple of things and then stomped back into the house, he recalls. The rest of us carried on and finished the job off without him.

The planting of the monkey puzzle tree is one of the final memories that Christopher has of his father. It was, too, the last of Entwistles grand gestures at Quarwood and an altogether fitting one. In all of its over-reaching and haphazardness, it was entirely reflective of how the twilight years of his rollercoaster life had panned out.