How I Left the National Grid

by Guy Mankowski

  This is it, he thought. The end.

  Sam frantically tore panels of cardboard from the box by the bin and tried to patch the windows up. When he sensed neighbours watching him he ran upstairs to check that nothing had been stolen. His shoulders dropped when he saw that his laptop, and Elsa’s jewellery were still there. He circled the bedroom for a while, pushing his hand through his hair and cursing, before calling the glazier. He knew it was stupid to leave the house unsecured but he couldn’t be expected to stay here now, he thought. Not with the intruder at large, and clearly after him.

  14

  Sam felt ridiculous driving to meet Nataly, through the drizzle and occasional bursts of violent rain, given the situation he was leaving in his wake. But she had offered answers, after all. Given how insane his life had become he was starting to grimly, determinedly, crave them.

  The tall, solemn house she had given as an address looked empty. It was whitewashed, with a turret at one corner. Sam noticed through the window very few decorations in her living room as he knocked.

  He heard a response inside the house, and felt himself tense.

  Nataly seemed thinner than he’d remembered, the aquiline profile more pronounced in this clear ocean air. She smiled faintly in greeting, with lips the colour of dried blood. For a moment he was reluctant to go inside. The bags under the eyes and the mouth that drooped downwards even when smiling unnerved him. As he stepped over the threshold Sam saw that she was wearing an oversized white shirt, the top button done up. It faintly resembled a cassock.

  ‘I had some trouble finding your house,’ Sam started.

  ‘I don’t like to make myself too accessible.’ He noticed how readily her body hunched.

  The hallway was dimly lit. There was a vast print of the cover of The National Grid’s album on the wall.

  ‘Do you like it?’ she asked, in a small voice.

  He nodded.

  ‘I think it’s the most important thing I own. Let’s sit in here,’ she said.

  Sam was directed into the front living room that overlooked the sea. A large white cube that reminded him of an Edward Hopper painting. There were photos on the wall, blurred shots from The National Grid’s first tour. I was on that tour, he thought. But I don’t remember her.

  ‘You mentioned that you knew Robert, that you might be able to help me find him. Judging from the lack of clutter I’d presume he’s not a housemate then?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  He was unable to believe how casually she made the remark. People had been speculating Wardner’s every movement for years and yet she seemed so matter-of-fact. His fingers fumbled to roll the tape in his jacket pocket.

  ‘When did you live with him? Can you shed any light on where he’s been for twenty five years?’

  ‘Yes. First, I should get you a drink.’

  Nataly turned in the doorway.

  ‘A cup of tea, please,’ he said, too loud. His voice echoed with a glacial reverberation. This home isn’t used to volume, Sam thought. It’s used to reflection. Picking over the graveyard of the past. Turning over stones in it, which should be left to rot.

  He barely had time to take in the pictures on the wall, each blurred and evocative, before she returned. She gently handed him the drink.

  ‘He was like a mentor to me,’ she said.

  ‘Did Robert take the pictures on the wall?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When did he give them to you?’

  ‘He posted them to me gradually, over the course of the last twenty five years.’

  ‘After he vanished?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you see him during that time?’

  ‘No. But they weren’t all he sent me.’

  ‘Perhaps we should begin at the start.’ Sam sipped quickly as he sat in a wooden chair opposite her.

  ‘I wrote to him as a fellow musician,’ she began. ‘We struck up a correspondence and he insisted on coming to see me play live. I was in a band called Rosary.’

  ‘You were in Rosary? I owned one of your EPs!’

  She looked surprised. As she smoothed her hair he remembered the vibrant, demonstrative singer he had seen pictured in NME. With so much more blood and intensity than the wan, spectral vision opposite.

  ‘I loved your record. It was so…uncompromising.’

  She smiled. ‘Yes. That was me. Robert came to live with me the first time he went missing. It wasn’t long before he disappeared for good and even I didn’t know where he was.’

  ‘Did he explain to you why he wanted to run away?’

  ‘No. I didn’t ask then, he was too fragile. I think that he needed to get away from all distractions. The fight with his label…and one or two other parts of his life that were not going so well.’

  ‘Did he come straight to you?’

  ‘He phoned not long after he went missing. He had been travelling by train. Asked if he could stay.’

  ‘It was November when he went missing. So around then?’

  ‘Yes. Winter.’

  This is amazing, Sam thought, sitting up. A big piece of the jigsaw has fallen into place. ‘So was he with you for long?’

  ‘A few months. I tried to keep him there, safe, but after a while he left.’

  Sam blew at his tea.

  ‘What did he do for that whole time?’

  ‘Very little. At first he was like a damaged bird. I’d built up this private little world in which I’d begun to create, and until then he’d helped me. Given me confidence. But when he moved in it was payback time. I had to drop everything. My work, my art, just to keep him alive. How to get him to change his clothes, eat his meals. I went from barely knowing this guy, idolising him, to practically changing his nappy. Whilst getting better, he took and he took and he took. I didn’t realise how much he’d taken from me until he left. The intensity of that time, and the way he deserted me after I’d nourished him…it was overpowering. I was spent after that. I found it hard to get back on my feet. Very hard.’

  ‘I keep wondering…why did you do so much for him?’

  ‘Times when I was teetering, he pulled me back. I had to give him refuge.’

  ‘So why have you kept this quiet? Fear of your relationship being misinterpreted?’

  ‘No. People could not have understood it anyway. We didn’t have a traditional boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, but it was close. He had been teaching me to mine my own inner world, and to be disciplined about it. To create bizarre rituals that allow it to make sense to me.’

  She leant back, a triangle of dark hair falling over one eye. She left it there, pursing her pale lips.

  ‘You said there were things that urgently needed to be said?’

  ‘Yes. It was Bonny who first put me in touch with him. When Robert revealed to her that he was alive, after so many years, he must have mentioned that I had taken him in, as he needed some space from his wife. Bonny was apparently angry with me. Furious that I had harboured him after all she had done to put him on the map. But it wasn’t only him that had become well-known. I was starting to become known as an artist myself; but after Robert went, I had to drop all that. Seeing how unhinged he was, how far he had come undone, left a mark. I left my job, my home, and ran away to the coast. People had seen the two of us getting closer and closer and so they assumed I’d vanished too.’

  ‘So with you and Robert going missing at the same time, people wondered if…’

  She nodded. ‘Word started to spread that he had been taken in by an over-zealous fan who asked too much of him. Rumours built that he had eventually driven her down to the sea and…’

  ‘Murdered her.’

  ‘It was Bonny who distorted the truth. Robert was always scared of how brilliantly manipulative she could be. I think in her mind Bonny thought, ‘Robert has abandoned me. But if people think he is guilty of even more than that, I will be getting my own back’.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And by casting me as the obse
ssive fan, she also gave me a neat little kick in the teeth too.’

  ‘How do you know she did that?’

  ‘At the gallery, in London. At the end of the night, she couldn’t resist taking me to one side and boasting about what she’d done. Said it would make the band’s comeback the biggest in history. Kept going on about how it would secure her fame, as an artist, and finally be payback for all the investment Robert took from her.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘There’s more. Let me show you something, Sam. It’s the correspondence I’ve received from Robert since he disappeared. I’ve never shown it to anyone.’

  She went out, and returned with a sheaf of postcards.

  ‘I believe these shed light on where he is now. They offer answers on where he has been, for all these years.’

  Sam took them reverently.

  ‘But the puzzle only fits together for me, as I sent him the postcards which provoked these responses. So only I hold all the pieces.’

  ‘Why do you want to help me?’

  ‘I know a lot of the fans are saying that if he wants to stay missing, you should respect that. I have heard about them giving you a hard time.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘Exactly. If the mystery isn’t solved soon, these rumours will continue to build and someone is going to get badly hurt.’

  ‘So you say Robert started sending these after he disappeared?’

  She nodded. ‘The first came through at the end of 1981, when no one had any idea where he was.’

  He looked up at her. ‘And you didn’t want to share it with his family? Or his wife?’

  Her expression tightened. The colour fell from her face. ‘Certainly not. Robert and I had a relationship deeper than anyone could understand. Because I was there for him when things went wrong.’ She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Francesca wasn’t.’

  Sam began to flick through them.

  ‘They came once every few years,’

  The first was a postcard of what appeared to be a field. On the back, in Robert’s distinct scrawl, were the words ‘I hope you are still writing. Take care, R.’

  The ‘g’, Sam noted, was looped. Just like on the postcards online.

  ‘This field could be anywhere,’ Sam said.

  ‘I know. But it’s the next one that got me thinking.’

  ‘But how do you know these are from Robert?’

  ‘These postcards are the reason I haven’t moved from here in twenty-five years. He set me a mission he wanted me to see through. I can’t leave until he’s found.’

  ‘You could have had the post redirected?’

  ‘What if he needed me again?’

  ‘It is one hell of a sacrifice.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Sam. Robert saved my life. I was going mad until he came along.’

  ‘But you said yourself, he took you to the brink.’

  ‘Perhaps loyalty can sometimes be misplaced.’

  The second postcard was of what looked like a white stone, French or perhaps Belgian hotel. It was simply signed, ‘Love, R.’ In the third postcard, a whitewashed building with pillars was set back from a courtyard and in faint pencil Sam could see one window of it had been circled. Sam looked on the back of them. The postmarks on the first few were too blurred to read, but the last ones were clearly marked ‘Antwerp.’

  ‘1987, that one. They show where he was staying at the time.’

  ‘It doesn’t mention anything about you keeping them to yourself though,’ Sam said.

  ‘At that point they were too vague to warrant a journey. I spoke to people who know Antwerp, and both said this hotel looked more seaside than city. Ostend was mentioned at one point, particularly with regards to the next few.’

  Sam flicked through a few postcards of European street scenes.

  ‘My guess was that he had sent me the postcards so I knew he was okay, as he was passing through. By the time I’d worked out where he was, he’d have moved. I’d always be behind. The press were dying to know where he was, but for the wrong reasons. If he was moving I figured he obviously didn’t want to be found yet. But he wanted the people he was closest to to know he was alive.’

  But not his wife? Sam didn’t feel bold enough to ask the question.

  The next one, though cut to be the same shape as a postcard, was a photo. It depicted a country scene, with wet grass and trees, but this time somewhere very English-looking. In the background of the photo, slightly out of focus, Sam could just about make out a range of hills.

  ‘This one was sent very recently. Look at the note on the back,’ Nataly implored.

  “Everyone must come out of exile in their own way,’ Martin Buber,’ Sam read.

  ‘One of his favourite philosophers. I remember he once talked about him. You see, in that note Robert is telling me that he’s deciding to come out of hiding. And look at the last one,’ Nataly continued, leaning further in. Her neck bones threatened to burst through her shirt.

  Sam looked at the picture of the last postcard. It was a shot of what seemed the base of a series of hills, and in one corner of it was a small, white building. ‘And the quote,’ Nataly said.

  Sam read the words out loud. ‘NATALY. I COULD NEVER BE FAR FROM MANCHESTER, NOT FOR LONG.’ Then, in a clumsy attempt at italics, was written, ‘Come live with me and be my love / And we will all the pleasures prove / That valleys, groves, hills, and fields / Woods or steepy mountain yields.’

  ‘Marlowe was one of his favourite playwrights,’ she said. ‘You see? The last postcard is the final clue. He’s asking me to find him. The last two are clearly somewhere in Northern England, out in the country. He talks of mountains, and opens with the statement that he could never be far from Manchester. And what mountain range starts in Greater Manchester?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Pennines?’ Sam said.

  ‘The Pennines,’ Nataly echoed, with a smile. ‘That’s the second to last time I’ve heard from him.’

  ‘And the last?’

  ‘A phone call. Late at night, not long ago at all. I was in such a deep sleep I almost thought it was a dream.’

  ‘You’re sure it was him?’

  ‘Yes. I asked where he was. He said ‘I’ve finally found my home. I’m staying in a monastery’.’

  ‘Somewhere in the Pennine region.’

  ‘If one exists.’

  And if you’re not a fantasist, Sam thought. He was unable to take his eyes off the postcards. So many answers, tied up on those tattered pieces of paper. Answers he had given so much to hear. Yet the links between them seemed too disparate to be credible.

  ‘If he wants you to find him,’ Sam asked ‘why doesn’t he just tell you that directly?’

  ‘He isn’t that straightforward a person. I sometimes wonder if he is even aware of the direction he pulls people in. He seems to need to test people. Get them to prove their devotion to him, for some reason.’

  ‘I have got a sense of that.’

  ‘I hope you don’t find this too strange but…I would rather keep hold of these cards,’ she said.

  ‘No, of course. I understand.’

  Suddenly, she clutched the side of her stomach.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Sam asked.

  ‘It’s fine, it’s only cramp. It’s since that damn operation.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘I just need to take something,’ she said, wincing. ‘I won’t be a moment.’

  As soon as she had left the room Sam pulled his phone out of his bag and, listening carefully for the sound of her movements, shakily started to take pictures of the other cards.

  He cursed himself for his unsteady hand and was trying to position the camera for more focused shots of the final postcards when he heard Nataly returning.

  She came in, still wincing.

  ‘Do you feel any better?’ he asked.

  She nodded, and reached out for the pictures.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ she
smiled weakly.

  ‘I think you’re right. He is leading you to him.’

  ‘I know. There’s no way I can go to him, not in this state. You don’t need to, but at least you can use your book to put these rumours to bed. Answer the questions about where he is and where he’s been. It would be enough to settle all this agitation.’

  ‘Sure. But if I’m honest, I don’t think that would be enough for me,’ Sam said.

  ‘Sam,’ she answered. ‘Just because he didn’t kill me, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have something to hide.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She shifted, fingering the corner of a photo.

  ‘When I spoke to him I didn’t know that Bonny was behind those rumours. I asked him, ‘Why don’t you come back? Why don’t you resume your life?’ He told me he couldn’t. He has a lot of guilt. He thinks he’s a murderer.’

  ‘Are you sure he was being literal?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a big part of why he’s stayed hidden.’

  Sam had the same feeling as when someone had broken into his house. That same low, chilling buzz. ‘Who did he kill?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me. He said he didn’t want to drag me into his darkness any more.’

  Sam wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘I suppose that would be the real answer to the mystery,’ he said.

  ‘But it also means that he isn’t safe to go after, Sam. Leave him where he is. There is a reason he has gone to the monastery. He seeks absolution, from whatever he did. He clearly does not want anyone but me going after him.’

  ‘My commission was to find him, to get the story from him. Anything less feels like a failure.’

  She shook her head, her mouth twisting for a second as if she was holding back tears. ‘It’s not worth the risk.’

  ROBERT WARDNER

  Tottenham Court Road is the start of the apocalypse. I’m on the escalator on the way up, hugging myself. Last night gargoyles came out of the woodwork and they cackled and spat. They swirled in my room. You look at them and they dissolve in the dark. I couldn’t work out where the mirror ended and the chair began and you think about it until they become a new person.