How I Left the National Grid

by Guy Mankowski

  I’ll never do it, I told myself.

  Then one night, three months after they put the album out, something snapped. That morning I’d got a letter from Cunningham saying he was suing me, for the expenses of re-recording the album.

  Just two days ago he had said he would reconsider it.

  How cowardly is that, to give you false hope?

  I went for a quiet drink off Oldham Street, with Simon and Nicola. The War Committee. No Frankie. Despite what she’d promised in her wedding vows, she made herself scarce when it got difficult.

  In the pub there was the same bloke in the grey mac. He was sitting at the jukebox, by himself when I walked in. As I waited for the bar man he called out to me. ‘Out for a quiet pint?’ he shouted. I turned and faced him. ‘Here’s to some alone time!’ he roared.

  I gritted my teeth, looked at the optics. Kept gritting them. Until Simon arrived.

  Soon he came, flapping his hands against his coat. Nicola behind him, looking as if she’d pulled out her curlers at the last minute. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘The bloke by the jukebox,’ I said. ‘He’s been following me.’

  Simon turned. ‘There is no bloke at the jukebox. What are you drinking?’

  ‘Guinness.’

  He waved a crumpled fiver at the barmaid. She had on velvet gloves up to her elbows.

  ‘Must be tricky washing the pint glasses with those gloves.’ She smiled. ‘I miss the old jukebox,’ he said. ‘No one gives a shit about these new haircut bands.’

  I could leave all this behind, I thought.

  ‘I’ve got to play you The Cure’s last record, Rob. They’re starting to do it. Make soundscapes with keyboards. All the things we’ve talked about.’

  ‘We never found an end-point when we did that. Soundscapes, keyboard drones. We’ll end up like Yes. You remember The Smiths at The Hacienda? That’s the future. Building a connection, one-by-one, with every member of the audience. Being a different band for each one of them.’

  ‘I can’t see you with gladioli down your trousers, Rob.’

  ‘I’ve got bigger fish to fry at the moment, mate.’

  ‘Cunningham won’t really sue you,’ Simon said, his Guinness settling. ‘Think about it, Rob, how the hell would that work? They paid you an advance, agreed to fund you making the record, then went back on it and forced one out. How can he sue you for that? He’s just pissed off about the car.’

  ‘At least I got to him,’ I said.

  ‘You got to him too much though. His car was his pride and joy. So now he’s thinking, what’s Robert’s? His music. But he’s chucking about threats he can’t back up.’

  ‘What do we know about solicitors though? We’re just a couple of dickheads with synthesisers. I can’t fight him by myself.’

  Nicola looked at Simon, nodded encouragingly. ‘What?’ Simon said.

  ‘Tell him.’

  Simon looked at me, hands deep in pockets. ‘We’ll stick with you, mate. We’ve got a bit saved. We’ll use it to fight them.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  Nicola crossed her legs. Sequins, dimly sparkling under the bar lights.

  ‘Well what options have this lot got without you, Rob? Theo will end up as a male hairdresser. Or worse, a full-time DJ. We didn’t form your band because we had too many options.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know it, from how Theo and Jack are carrying on,’ I said.

  ‘They’re not really quitting the band,’ Simon said. ‘They just said that because of that stuff with Cunningham’s car. Personally, I’m glad you smashed his shit motor. It’s proper rock star behaviour, that. We’ll make another record.’

  ‘But the album, Si. We put years into it. It could have really been good.’

  Touched a nerve there.

  ‘Well, what can I say, Rob?’

  ‘You thought Vicente cracked it, didn’t you? You thought it was done?’

  ‘Let’s not get into it. Let’s get smashed.’

  ‘Nah. Not tonight.’

  After that, Simon would barely leave my side. I must have looked a right mess.

  ‘Where’s Frankie?’ Nicola asked. ‘I was hoping we would get to catch up.’

  ‘Don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘You had a falling out?’

  ‘Worse.’

  I forced myself to stay in their company. However much I drank, my thinking was that if I was with others then it wasn’t too bad. Nicola kept saying ‘Are you alright?’ and I’d nod, but the light had gone out. When the two of them left me alone at the bar I felt crushed. No Frankie, no band, no money, no future.

  I remember looking at the glass, forgetting how to drink from it. How many gulps you took in one go. How to even hold it.

  Simon and Nicola walked part of the way home with me, and at the end of my street watched me move into the horizon.

  I remember as I took the last few steps, I had this funny feeling. I could imagine Simon looking at the back of my head and taking in details he never had before. About how I walked, what I wore.

  Saving what I looked like, trying to hold onto it.

  That was the moment all the ambitions of our youth were left behind. I could imagine Nicola pulling him back home, telling him I’d be fine.

  At that moment our world was being silently torn open. In the twenty five years that followed the tear got bigger, letting in everything dark and twisted the universe had to offer.

  I was a few paces from my door when I turned and saw the man in the grey mac stood there. Smoking.

  Now he knew where I lived.

  I ran the rest of the way.

  When I got inside, there was a court summons waiting for me.

  That was when I decided. I had to get out of there. Leave a gap where I once was.

  I had the place to myself. I had a bit of room to work out what to do.

  I pulled the box out from under the bed, put on the clothes in it and stashed the notes in my pockets. Went to the pub next door, ordered a taxi from outside a house a few streets away. It was November, and winter had muscled in quickly. It was starting to get icy cold, but that just made me act faster. I had to make it look as if perhaps I hadn’t made it home so I didn’t take photos, toothbrushes, food. Just those few things people didn’t know I owned. And Nataly’s phone number, on that receipt.

  Kept my hood up in the taxi. ‘Bit late to be going to the station, isn’t it?’

  They always want to know your story, taxi drivers. It helps them to carry on being right about everything.

  ‘Got an early morning meeting,’ I said.

  ‘Meeting?’

  I could see him look me over in the mirror.

  In that state of mind, you don’t want people asking you questions. You try and mind your own business and everyone wants to know what you had for breakfast. But when you’re crying out for someone to turn to, no one wants to know.

  All the way there I fingered the receipt.

  At Piccadilly I called the number. ‘Nataly,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

  She sounded unbelievably tired. I pictured her scribbling away in her room. ‘Robert? How you doing, you alright?’

  ‘I’m coming to London.’

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Everything alright with you and Francesca?’

  I watched the football crowd spill out the pub opposite. They threw their arms around each other and cheered. ‘She doesn’t know I’m coming.’

  Nataly sighed.

  ‘I don’t want to get involved, Robert.’

  ‘No one knows I’m coming to you. And you won’t tell anyone. Will you, Nataly?’

  What if Nataly said that in fact she would, I thought. What if she said, don’t do this, Rob. I don’t want to say it, but go back to your wife. Go back to your career. It’s not too bad, you’ve got a record in the shops. They paid you some money, a decent deal for people new on the scene
. People round town know your face. You’ve made something out of this ridiculous circus. Don’t blow it.

  What would happen if you were at your lowest ebb, and the person you’d decided would be there told you to forget it?

  It’s the river for you, if that happens.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘Good. Because I’ve got nowhere else to go. You’re not going to let me down, are you?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Robert, I’m here.’

  ‘That had better be true. Is there someone there?’

  ‘No. There’s no one here. When are you getting in?’

  I wouldn’t see Frankie again. I wouldn’t get to be the husband she deserved. Build a life as a normal man. I wouldn’t press my body against her any more.

  ‘I don’t know. Can we meet tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Course. I’m working from eleven. But I can get you set up before then. I’ll be home again for you in the evening.’

  Silence.

  ‘The train’s here.’

  I had until tomorrow to get as far as I could. By midday, Bonny would be making calls. My parents. Simon, Nicola. Why did you let him drink, if he was like that?

  It was a quiet pint, Simon would say.

  Well, where is he? She’d ask around.

  Nataly’s number wouldn’t be on her list.

  I got on the train, found a quiet carriage, with only a couple of men in oil rig uniforms, dozing.

  The reflection in the window gave an uncensored version of myself. I was unable to meet my eye, ashamed of what it would give off.

  Thought about what I was going to do when I got to London.

  Whether Nataly could really offer me a way out.

  I only managed a couple of hours’ kip. I felt a bit better for every minute I travelled, knowing I was inching further away. I looked out at cold, grey England and thought about the life I’d left, in some corner of the North.

  I thought of the days spent kicking footballs against walls, waiting for my Mum to warn me Dad was on his way home. I thought of desolate teenage wastelands, played out in cubicles and against sinks. I thought of Simon and me clambering up rubble, looking for the future on building sites. Dancing in nightclubs, skirting portals that looked into the meaning of the city. The first time I showed Simon some lyrics in his bedroom. The first cigarette Frankie and I shared, tucking the stub from the pictures inside my sock after. Just knowing. I thought of when I proposed to her, as we shared a bag of chips and watched the cranes rebuild our city. The sparkle in her eyes as she said yes, before she hugged me.

  I pressed my face against the sticky glass. Closed my eyes. Tried not to think about it all.

  In London I found a hotel for the night, turfing thoughts out my mind with all my remaining energy. I had dreams about swimming in a dark channel, grey sludge pouring in my mouth. Woke up covered in sweat, feeling cornered. In the morning the past clamoured to get in with the winter sun.

  In the early light the city looked brittle. I didn’t find the glass buildings ugly. They were new surfaces I could find a new face in. The slate had been wiped clean.

  I called Nataly. Agreed to meet her outside The British Library before her shift.

  Started to wonder if I’d done the right thing. Without your friends, without your partner, the world is harsh.

  I bought a coffee from a kiosk and sat on a concrete bollard in the square off Euston Road. Amongst that clear morning light it was like a sandblasted utopia. That square glowed with an almost religious quality. Sun rose over the skyscrapers, lighting the square gradually, making the buildings look internally ablaze. The glossy windows framed this fresh white light, and I felt as new as the edifices around me. They hid the ugly past of the city, and amongst this cleansing light I felt I had buried my past.

  Outside the sombre café a bearded bloke in a hunting cap lingered by the bin. A policeman chased him along and he went, reluctantly. I knew there were hostels in Spitalfields and Whitechapel, for homeless men. Was that me, now?

  I wondered if she would even come, or if I’d have to go home. Face up to it all.

  At that moment, Nataly was the only person in my new life.

  She was early, and walked towards me quickly. I was glad I hadn’t rung when she was in a hole. She stood at a distance as she greeted me. Her hair longer now, shot through with a red strand.

  ‘What is going on?’ she said. Something twitching in her eyes.

  ‘I know it’s weird, turning up like this.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’m glad you thought of me.’

  ‘Why?’

  She wasn’t having it. ‘You look like you need a good meal, Robert.’

  We walked to her flat. It wasn’t far off Holborn. I didn’t say much on the way there, just looked at the skeletal trees. It was like ancient London round there. Another world. Nataly lived in an upstairs apartment, overlooking this tree-lined square. Her parents had money, that much was obvious. Everything was beige, brown shutters on windows. Charcoal self-portraits everywhere. Her in her undies, or with veins popping out of her arms.

  ‘Do you live alone?’ I asked, as she boiled the kettle.

  She pursed her lips. She’d wondered when it’d come up.

  ‘My boyfriend’s gone to Canada.’

  ‘He still your boyfriend?’

  ‘No. He’s working there. Most of his stuff is out.’

  She took our drinks into the living room. Canvases on the floor, most of them turned to the wall. A mannequin wrapped in her mum’s chocolate-brown fur coat. Degas postcards, prints from Fellini films. That world she’d sketched out in her letters, laid out in front of me.

  I could walk amongst it.

  Frankie never had any of that, I thought. Just mild curiosity. But Nataly’s got this whole world, pushed under the surface. Vibrant. Richer than mine.

  I want to live in it, I thought. No one’s given it the time of day and she keeps it in here, behind these shutters. It’s not like mine. Tattered, badly thought out. Her world is clear, crystalline. It has its own landscape that only she knows. She’ll make it.

  If I don’t stop her.

  She had a funny look on her face. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve just realized something. The landlord’s left. His son has taken over since Mike’s been away.’

  ‘Mike is your boyfriend?’

  ‘Ex.’

  ‘So why are you smiling?’

  She looked me square in the eyes. ‘Because his son will think you’re Mike, won’t he?’

  I looked at the records.

  ‘Don’t you see, Rob? That’ll help with you trying to keep a low profile.’

  I looked at the records. Low, The Scream, Faith. All perfectly preserved in aspic. Pillars in her world.

  I could live here.

  I took the drink. ‘What makes you think I want to?’ I asked.

  She sat on the sofa. ‘I’ve seen you in better states.’

  She tucked her legs under herself. Muscular, caramel-coloured. ‘You going to talk to me then, Robert? What’s going on?’

  I put the coffee down, watched it cool.

  I’ll ruin this place, I thought.

  I stayed at Nataly’s a few months longer than I should have done. She left me to my own devices in the day, and once I’d grown a bit of a beard I started walking round the frozen suburbs. I walked round and round them as if, bit by bit, I could tread off my problems. The suburbs seemed to have their own sense of loss, and I left something in them. I learnt them as if they were my own set of prayers. Walking eased the tension in my mind. Even in rain, sleet and snow I pressed my problems into the pavement and left them to hum down there.

  I knew I’d lost weight, but I was still glad no one recognised me.

  Gradually, this new Robert emerged from the ashes. In my mind I had got so battered that I’d eventually been forced out of one life and into another realm. That was what it felt like, Nataly’s. Like this netherworld I
’d slipped into, where my concerns couldn’t reach me. The legal battle with Exit Discs, the problems with Frankie and the band, they were like night terrors that I’d managed to almost forget. I felt like going back to my previous life would be as stupid as attempting to relive a nightmare. Nataly gave me access to the bank account Mike had left, and I started drawing money out of it. With those few possessions Nataly was able to give me, I started again.

  It is amazing how little you need to get by. How much one person’s benediction can sustain you. After a few weeks Nataly stopped looking at me with fear in her eyes. She picked up on this new calm in me, and I sensed a plan coming together in her head. One windy afternoon, while the gusts shook the window frames in her kitchen, she brought out her acoustic guitar. When she offered it to me I held it like it was someone else’s baby. While I ran my hands up and down it she showed me her notebooks, with these ideas for songs sketched out in them. ‘A lot of this is unfinished,’ she said, looking at them like a doctor with a prescription pad. In small italics, there were lyrics on one page, mirrored by details about production on the other.

  She performed each, on the edge of her bed, in a husky voice, miles away from the commanding tone she’d had on stage. Occasionally pain would be writ on her face as she’d hint at some coda. In her stay-pressed white shirt, her hair pinned up, it was strange to see some office worker putting across such a vortex of emotion. It took me a while to realise what she was doing. She was giving me a banquet to feast on, by slowly encouraging me to step into my own imagination once again.

  I could see why she had closed the blinds for so long. Even how she crashed from time to time. Her inner world was so strong, so detailed, I think she’d have felt it indecent to spend too long with the outside world, and all its dead alleys. These sketches that she then played to me were almost ready to be introduced to the world. At that moment in time she was a minor musician, but one who was gradually gaining more and more attention. The world knew of maybe five or six songs she had written, and I knew even they had taken years to write. But Nataly had so much more than that to hit them with. That afternoon I learnt that in her red spiral-bound notebooks whole albums were sketched out. Not one album she was pouring it all into, like me, but a whole sequence. She walked me through their brittle landscapes, hesitantly at first. She used female characters for her songs. Catherine De Barra and Becky Sharp were two of her favourite mouthpieces. Through them the anger she felt, at all the sexism, apathy and corruption, was expressed. These characters gave her, three verses at a time, new territories on which she could map the unspoken. One song in particular made my heart stop, showed me the real Nataly. ‘White Tiles’ expressed, in a few minor chords, this hidden bathroom culture she’d felt trapped in as a teenager. Self-harming to let out mental pressure whilst schoolgirls giggled in the toilet mirror. In another, ‘The Gale Through The Trees’, she recast herself as a widow, living in a spectral house on top of a hill. Drawing freezing water from a well every day and spending the nights praying for forgiveness. This was Nataly doing what only a true artist can. Seizing her phantoms, one by one, and trapping them in songs.