Philippa remains alone in believing that Trevor translated, “I’m gonna say to Sandy …” into, “I did say to Sandy.” She asserts that, “Sandy knew. Before he left.” The evidence is against her. Bambi Ballard insists, “She certainly didn’t know that Trevor was leaving. And I did. Trevor had intimated at some point over the phone … He said, I’ve reached the end of the line, [that] sort of thing.”
Bruce Rowland seems to have been the only other person who definitely knew that Trevor was leaving, prior to any calls from the airport (of which there were a couple), and that he intended to take Georgia with him.
Bruce Rowland: [Trevor] was a complete bastard – with a conscience. He had good energy to spare, and you can’t make any judgement as to why not enough of it was going into his marriage. But he phoned me up one night, and I think he must have got wind of the incident where Georgia was in the car, or similar events. Trevor had to come to terms with the fact that he couldn’t have it both ways. He couldn’t go off and leave [Sandy] on her own, without making some kind of provision, and by that time everybody was getting short of cash to cover a succession of people to keep her together. He phoned me up and said, “Look, I’m thinking of taking the baby.” I didn’t know quite what he meant by that. And I said, “And what?” He said, “Going back to Australia.” I said, “Without Sandy?” He said, “Yes.” My first thought was he wasn’t brave enough to do it. And he said, “What do you think?” I said, “If you do that, you’re really gonna hear for it, but if you do do it, you do it with my blessing, for whatever that’s worth.” … So he did it. He skipped … It was five days [later] because he hadn’t got the money to go, and his father sent him the money, and that’s how long it took to get it organized … He phoned me when he got to Melbourne and said, “Just keep an eye on things.” … The next thing I had to do was call him in Melbourne and tell him Sandy was on a life support.
No-one seems to agree about whether Trevor planned to come back when Sandy shaped up, hoping but hardly expecting that she would, or had simply had enough and wanted out. However, he only purchased a one-way ticket and when the time came to play face the consequences, he would have to borrow a further return fare off of his father. That Sandy had alienated a man to whom, in Jerry Donahue’s words, “she was the greatest thing ever,” suggested just how greatly she had tried the patience of those who loved her. However cowardly Trevor’s method, few could argue with the decision.
Dave Swarbrick: Trevor was concerned. He’d have to be. We were all concerned … Trevor did the same thing to me that he did to Miranda. He phoned me up on the morning. There honestly didn’t seem a lot of choice at that time.
Sandy’s state of mind that final weekend remains a source of contention. Neil Denny said, shortly before his death, “I’m sure that she was drugged, because she never attempted to communicate with her mother, and that was unthinkable.” Bambi Ballard, who says she “spoke to her two days before she died [sic],” thinks that Sandy’s state of denial now extended to her husband’s whereabouts, “She didn’t know he’d gone [for good]. She didn’t say, he’s left me. She assumed he was coming back. She was quite relaxed about it. So Trevor had done the most cowardly thing. When she died, I thought, ‘Thank God she never knew that Trevor wasn’t coming back.’” Linda Thompson also thinks that whatever “cocktail of things” Sandy was taking, they made her less than wholly aware of what had gone down – that her husband had left her, flown to the other side of the world, and taken her only child with him.
Linda Thompson: I spoke to Sandy when she was staying [at Miranda’s] that weekend, when Trevor had gone, and she sounded mad. Just mad. Doo-lalley … She was a bit out of it, whether through shock or whatever … By that time it’s perfectly possible that she didn’t really know [Trevor had gone], that she was so far gone that it didn’t really register.
The only person who can really give an accurate indication as to her state of mind that final weekend is Miranda Ward, the old friend entrusted to look after her by Trevor, from a Heathrow terminal telephone kiosk, and the last person to see her alive in any meaningful sense. Miranda began to make some shorthand diary notes at some point on the Sunday or Monday, which gives her reminiscences an added air of authenticity. However, she also asserts that, contrary to all evidence, the 31-year-old Sandy was not a chronic alcoholic. Given that there was only a third of a decanter of Sandy’s favoured tipple, gin, in the house, Miranda asserts that, “if she’d been an alcoholic she’d have started on the whisky or the brandy or the vodka or the tequila. She never did that. [When] the gin was finished, she’d go and have a cup of tea.” In truth, any alcoholic as advanced as Sandy would never have entrusted their lines of supply to a third party. She must have arrived in Barnes with a stand-by cache of her own, which had run out by Monday morning, prompting her to drain the decanter of gin.
Sandy doubtless also brought her usual supply of pills, having asked Miranda not to be mad at her for taking two Valiums prior to her arrival at Byfield. Sandy’s Valium supply had run out by the end of the weekend, when she was forced to turn to Miranda’s own bathroom cabinet for painkillers and Diazepam (though only after Miranda had okayed it with her trusted doctor, with whom she arranged a Monday afternoon appointment for Sandy, who was presumably hoping to restore her own prescription supplies).
That all-important diary provides both a snapshot version of those last few days and a first-hand account of her charge’s mood swings. On the Friday evening, Miranda’s commonplace book states that they sat up talking and “Sandy [was] very good; talked about [the] psychology [of drinking] and long-term [prospects]. Also where Trevor was.” Miranda recalls that Sandy was determined not to plead with her husband to take her back, and talked positively about the future, whilst facing up to the fact that even her best friend thought Georgia was better off with Trevor. Sandy also asked Miranda not to phone Trevor’s sister, Marion, in case she was unaware of her brother’s disappearing act. She also seemed to finally accept that Miranda had no real idea where Trevor had taken their daughter. According to Miranda’s notes, they had a sherry at six and a large brandy and soda at nine, before Sandy went to bed. Unable to sleep, she came back down and they talked some more.
By Saturday night, though, Sandy was no longer exuding positivity. Indeed, the diary says, “Sandy very down. We talked for a while. She attempted to cook a meal – went to bed.” The entry for Sunday also mentions in passing that they had discussed the possibility of going down to Casualty on Saturday night. Evidently, Sandy had brought up the headaches, and, though Miranda does not remember it, she presumably related the circumstances of the fall at her parents. Miranda now says, “Sandy told me … about the fall … but it didn’t register it had been as severe. I mean, we did talk about going upto the hospital, and also she had run out of Diazepam, and I was going to take her down to [my] doctor.” The persistent headaches had now become quite bad, such that on Sunday morning Sandy awoke Miranda, asking for some paracetamol, after which she returned to bed.
By the time she awoke again, Sandy felt better, prompting another “long talk, much more positive.” Sandy again asked about Miranda’s doctor, and whether he might be able to suggest anything for these headaches. That afternoon, whilst out purchasing some necessary supplies, Miranda went round to see her doctor, who was also something of a family friend, and spoke to him about Sandy’s headaches. He advised her to bring Sandy to the surgery the following afternoon, rather than taking her down to Casualty.
On Sunday evening, Miranda had another long talk with Sandy that addressed not only the disappearance of Trevor but her drinking problem. Sandy was finally prepared to admit to someone, for the very first time, that “once she started [drinking] she found it very difficult to stop.” Miranda’s note in her diary reads, “She was hopeful about Doctor, wanted to try, I said I could only help her to help herself. She agreed and said she wanted to try.” It seemed that the shock of Trevor’s departure had started Sandy thinking along lines that
might yet have saved her – if only she could find a way to get shot of these damn headaches! At some point during the evening, David Denny called, Miranda having left a message for him in Texas the previous day. They had a long talk before Sandy sloped off to bed, at which point Miranda called David back, feeling “very low and inadequate.”
All of Miranda’s endeavours had failed to yield up a husband. Philippa Clare had called Sunday morning and suggested Australia, “but claimed no proof.” Trevor’s sister phoned later, to say that she had called Australia and they didn’t know Trevor’s whereabouts. For a man who had supposedly advised Sandy of where he was going, Trevor was putting up a mighty smokescreen of misinformation. From this point on, the shorthand in Miranda’s commonplace book becomes increasingly terse, as if every word requires some extraordinary effort, beginning with another wake-up call from a Sandy bouncing off the walls:
“6.00 am
Sandy woke me. Wanted Painocil – v. bad headache had woken her.
School – I was v. late. Somehow couldn’t leave but did.
Couldn’t call as I didn’t want to wake her.
Ma came over [to my classroom].
Jon had found S[andy] unconscious in hall.
Ambulance on its way.
Went straight to Mrs. M. [headteacher]
Having called Jon to call Dr. G[eorge] B[rown]
Mrs M kind, time off if nec., no pay but her discretion to give support.
Got home. Jon there.
Police arrived 5 mins later. Gave details.
PC David Davies took me to Hosp[ital].
Frightened.”
What exactly happened the morning of April 17, 1978, has never been satisfactorily resolved, in part because the parties concerned went to great pains to cover up the fact that Trevor had left his wife and fled all the way to Australia. Though Trevor was called to give evidence at the inquest into Sandy’s death, despite being on the opposite side of the world at the time she collapsed, the coroner agreed in advance not to call Miranda, the last person to see her compos mentis, sharing a general concern that the tabloids might have a field day if some of the more salacious details came out, and convinced on the basis of a police report that there were no suspicious circumstances. Sandy was alone when she died. It is unlikely that Miranda’s presence would have made any difference to the outcome, unless Sandy’s draining a third of a decanter of gin that morning in some way precipitated that all-too-final black-out.
The story that was made to fit the facts, and then given at the inquest and to the press, was that Sandy Denny died of a mid-brain trauma, the direct result of a fall at Miranda Ward’s flat. This soon became the Authorised Version. In fact, there was no way that Sandy – who was found slumped across the toilet door, on Miranda’s landing, at the foot of a set of stairs – could have fallen down the winding stairway. Miranda’s books would certainly have broken her fall, as the man who found her comatosed body confirms.
Jon Cole: Those upper stairs were wickedly narrow, and the piles of books on each stair made navigation perilous; but I don’t remember seeing books disturbed by a fall. On the other hand, the loo door was closed, and she had fallen across it. It looked to me that she must have collapsed or fallen either coming down the last steps of the stairs or having emerged from the loo, closed the door, and immediately [collapsed], when setting off for the living room or heading up the stairs.
The most logical scenario is that Sandy had been suffering from internal bleeding for some weeks, after the serious fall earlier at her parents’ – hence the headaches – and she had finally blacked out from an untreated subdural hematoma. Her life had been slowly but surely ticking away ever since her mother refused to escort her to Casualty for an X-ray that might have saved her life.
Miranda Ward: The one thing that I cannot express how much it hurts is to keep reading ‘died as a result of falling down stairs whilst staying with a friend.’ She didn’t fall down the stairs … [though] outside the toilet sounds so bloody decrepit … There’s no way she could have fallen down the stairs ‘cause there were too many obstacles, it was an obstacle course in itself … Because something was hidden, everyone thought it was something dire. If I’d had my statement read out [at the inquest], or I had been called to the stand, Trevor would have been charged with perjury … [And] I could just see the tabloid headings, TRAGIC DEATH OF SINGER DESERTED BY HUSBAND AND CHILD.
Miranda spent most of Monday evening phoning round friends and family, informing them that Sandy was in a coma. At this point there still seemed to be hope, and a point to summoning the recalcitrant husband from Melbourne and the distraught brother from L.A. By the time David and Trevor arrived, though, on the Wednesday evening and Friday morning respectively, Sandy had been transferred from Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton to the Atkinson-Morley, which specialised in brain injuries, and where on Wednesday evening a surgeon had unsuccessfully operated on the singer.
Linda Thompson had come over to Miranda’s on the Wednesday afternoon, having responded to her initial phone-call by snapping, “Oh, what’s Sandy done now?” Informed she was in a coma, she suddenly sensed that her best friend was not long for this world. The pair of them traipsed over to Queen Mary’s, and then the Atkinson-Morley. Linda still recalls how “she looked better than she had in years. She looked fantastic. All the lines had gone from her face. Her complexion was clear. She was wrapped in silver foil. I sat and talked to her, the way you do with people in a coma.”
The hardest moment, though, was yet to come. Neil Denny would take to his grave the image of the moment, “when the surgeon came in and said Sandy would die and there was no way [out] – David said, ‘Was there any way we could pay for treatment?’ But there was nothing [that could be done]. Poor old David just dissolved – he couldn’t stand it.” NHS formalities required the next of kin’s consent to switch off the life-support machine. It was finally agreed that this would be done at eight o’clock on the evening of Friday the 21st. Sandy, though, spared Trevor that one last guilt-trip, for which he was ill-prepared. She died peacefully in her sleep, just ten minutes before they were due to pull the plug, barely thirty-one years of age, with a lifetime of songs not yet sung. For Trevor, there was little solace in her lyrics and poems, many unfinished, in her notebooks, most of which still resonated through all the avenues she’d travelled, searching for the truth at the heart of her songs – the art of forgiveness begins within thyself:
“I beg that some who said they loved me before
May search their hearts to find not love – but more
A feeling we must learn to harbour often
Sometimes, though we are wronged, we have the grace to soften,
All is well when all again becomes a whole,
Forgive the erring character who’s blemished none but [their] own soul.”
– an undated ms.
Sandy’s father, RAF pilot Neil Denny
Sandy’s mother, Sgt Edna Jones
Sandy aged 5
Sandy and brother David on a family holiday
Sandy and David at Worple Road, Raynes Park
Sandy as a teenager in Trafalgar Square
Early Sandy promo shot
Fairport Convention
Sandy and David
Sandy takes time out in Denver to relax during the mixed experience of her first US tour
Sandy and Trevor at the Cambridge Folk Festival, 1973
Trevor and Sandy marry at Fulham Registry office
David Denny takes care of Watson while Sandy poses for more wedding pictures
A&M promo shot
Sandy in the 70s
*The official CD of the show, Gold Dust, issued in 1998, bears no resemblance to the actual concert running-order, nor to the original sound of the band.
Epilogue:
FLOWERS OF THE FOREST
“It would have seemed weird to try and help Sandy, ‘cause she had a very clear picture of where she was going. Like Nick [Drake], she didn’t expe
ct to make old bones.”
Linda Thompson
The first intimation your biographer had that something had stilled that voice, the voice I knew from ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’ and little else, came that Friday evening in April 1978, at 10 p.m., when John Peel began his nightly Radio One show not with the clarion call of the latest wannabe three chord wonders, as had become his wont in the past eighteen months, but with three consecutive, uninterrupted recordings of that clear, crystal voice, at its Fairport and Fotheringay peaks. Afterwards, Peel simply announced the death of his old friend Sandy Denny before beginning the show proper.
Colin Irwin was in the Melody Maker office on the Friday afternoon, when Philippa Clare called and said that Sandy Denny had fallen down the stairs and was in a coma. When she phoned on the Monday to tell him that Sandy had died, Irwin and then-editor Ray Coleman took the snap decision to make it that week’s cover story, as much a tribute to Sandy’s personal hold upon the magazine’s old guard journos as for its newsworthiness. It may not have seemed like the end of an era, but it certainly felt like someone was drawing a line beneath a whole genre of possibilities. As Maddy Prior says, “It was like some reference point was gone, and you could never achieve certain things because of that.” Maddy was just one of a number of Sandy’s musician friends prompted to write veiled epitaphs-in-song to their favourite songstress.
The funeral, the following Thursday, took place with “the wind whipp[ing] across Putney Vale cemetery, blowing the noise of the nearby dual carriageway away in gusts of sudden silence, as a gathering of family and friends gathered to say goodbye to Sandy Denny, shivering in the cold.” So Karl Dallas wrote later in a Melody Maker tribute. What most everyone who attended remembers was that lone piper who, after the vicar had read Sandy’s favourite psalm – the 23rd [‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’] – played an ancient air commemorating the fallen at Flodden Field. As that desolate refrain from ‘The Flowres of the Forreste’ – “the flowers of the forest are a’ wede away” – rang in all the mourners’ mind, it finally brought home that this sense of loss could never be made good.
No More Sad Refrains: The Life and Times of Sandy Denny Page 29