How I Left the National Grid Read online

  WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT

  HOW I LEFT THE NATIONAL GRID

  This book is the epitome of cool. A cross between Twenty Four Hour Party People and Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, written by Julian Barnes. It contains a narrative as spiky as a punk set, a whole symphony of ideas composed by Mankowski within a few subtle bars of text. A brilliantly written literary treat.

  AJ Kirby, reviewer for The New York Journal of Books

  Anyone who remembers Melody Maker, or who attended indie nights in clubs strewn with snakebite, will fall in love with this book immediately. Mankowski captures brilliantly the psychology of ‘fan obsession’. Those of us who marvelled at ‘The Secret History’ or ‘A Passage To India’ are sure to find it enthralling.

  Matthew Phillips, Huffington Post

  Already recognised as a major rising talent, Mankowski here establishes himself as a significant voice in British fiction with a novel that will raise knowing smiles from the rock cognoscenti, plaudits from literary critics, and will captivate readers every-where. This is clearly a writer of great talent.

  Andrew Crumey, author of Pfitz and Sputnik Caledonia, longlisted for The Man Booker Prize

  Mankowski creates a very convincing band and history. The novel has a lot of classic story lines – the search for the missing hero, the last chance at dreams and ideals, the tension between a ‘real’ job and an artistic life – along with a thriller element. It’s funny too, at times I laughed out loud. With the character of Robert Wardner I felt he was channeling The Manic Street Preachers’ Richey Edwards, The Fall’s Mark E Smith and Joy Division’s Ian Curtis simultaneously. Very powerful. There’s so much about this book that people would enjoy. I really enjoyed it.

  Lyn Lockwood, Chief Examiner for A Level Creative Writing, AQA

  Guy Mankowski’s latest novel, How I Left The National Grid, showcases the rich research, scintillating prose, and psycho-logical depth that characterised his earlier books. Here, though, those qualities are used to bring to life a potent and still vital place and time in British culture: post-punk Manchester. Set in the present, but reflecting on the past, How I Left The National Grid reveals that so much of where we are now grew from who we were then. Flashbacks and corrupt memories flesh out the ambitions of a band formed in those past moments, in vivid, haunting, and haunted scenes. But readers can also experience the thrill of the chase to find people who do not want to be found in the present. In doing so, we are forced to ask: what becomes of our dreams? Mankowski’s original and captivating alternative history depicts the conflicted start of a turbulent era when we were told there was ‘no alternative’, and thereby perhaps sketches a different landscape for the future.

  Dr. Adam Hansen, editor of Litpop: Writing and Popular Music and author of Shakespeare and Popular Music

  First published by Roundfire Books, 2015

  Roundfire Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

  [email protected]

  www.johnhuntpublishing.com

  www.roundfire-books.com

  For distributor details and how to order please visit the ‘Ordering’ section on our website.

  Text copyright: Guy Mankowski 2014

  ISBN: 978 1 78279 896 5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014954852

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

  The rights of Guy Mankowski as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Design: Lee Nash

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

  ROBERT WARDNER

  It’s hard to remember what it was like being onstage on Top Of The Pops. However bright and emotional and vivid it was, it becomes kind of inert. I can remember certain neurons being fired in my brain though. Pleasure impulses I’d not experienced before, or since.

  In 1981 we were properly famous. Schoolchildren saw me as ‘that alien bloke off Top Of The Pops.’ My mother got hassle off chippy journalists coming into her salon and asking if it were true that I’d been sent from the future. And she would say no, it wasn’t, because she distinctly remembered giving birth to me in a bathtub in Hulme, in 1955.

  It just happened suddenly. It was weird, because overnight all the ideas I’d scrawled in my notebook, which would have got thrown away if I’d left them on the bus, were suddenly a source of massive speculation. It was as if by being on the front of magazines and on TV I’d cracked something and now I had all the answers. No wonder it seemed as if we were from the future. Our single, ‘The Commuter Belt’, was released with the record company hoping for no more than it might chart. It went to number 4. Daydreams about what I would do if I got on TV had to become a reality in a matter of days.

  First thing, we got some money off the label and went to a military surplus store in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens. I wanted us dressed in urban camouflage when we went on TV, like we’d been fighting guerrilla warfare. But they only had four of these black security guard outfits so we had to make do with them. They had badges on, saying ‘I’m…and I’m here to serve.’ I ripped them off, so we definitely wouldn’t look like traffic wardens.

  Regardless, I was going to make an impact. Millions of people would be watching, and I was about to do something that would scorch my face on their retinas. I didn’t know what, but I knew I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity.

  Bonny put the four of us on a bus to BBC Studios. Jack nervously drummed against my seat the whole way there, Theo kept saying, ‘We’ve got to do something outrageous. Television is the only way to teach people how to behave these days.’ I just drank my whisky and told him to stop twisting about. Simon knew I was working on a plan.

  I’d been preparing for this for almost ten years.

  That was the first time I went onstage as Clive Douglas, not as Robert Wardner. For years I’d been thinking about Clive. Some worker drone trapped in a power plant, on a shift that refused to end. Thinking about what he would do if he ever got the chance to show the world how he felt. That night, I’d perform as him. Twitchy, black-eyed, desperate. Starved of sunlight, bewildered by technology. Flailing about, spiralling into panic. Just behind me onstage, like a watchful supervisor, Simon would be playing guitar.

  All the other bands were asking the girls in the makeup department to make them look tanned, though I doubted they’d ever been anywhere hotter than the Isle Of Wight. Singers in those days usually requested the wardrobe girls find them sweaters to put over their shoulders, so it looked like they’d just come off a yacht. They weren’t used to being asked to make them as white as possible, like I did.

  I wanted us to look like we were no longer human. I wanted to make the point that the most alien amongst is the most familiar. That a human being, gradually messed up by night shifts and low pay, could eventually look as if they’d fallen from Mars.

  The makeup girl used thick, sharp lines of dark paint under our eyes to make them more pronounced. Theo was the only one who broke our uniform code. He wore his younger sisters’ undersized black leather jacket, complete with this ridiculous fur trimming. We couldn’t have predicted that soon everyone would be wearing an exact copy of it.

  The studio was dowdier than I’d ever imagined. Small and badly-lit, but s
till that feeling in my stomach wouldn’t settle. As the moment for us to go onstage neared everything sped up. Some bloke with elbow patches, who looked like he’d just come off University Challenge, came into the dressing room and told us to listen closely for onstage instructions. Play the game, he said, you’re lucky to be here. I asked him when we would get to check the sound levels, and he stared down his crooked nose and said, ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, son, no one is going to be listening to you.’ The rest of the band looked at the floor but I slowly clenched my fists.

  ‘I’ll make sure they catch every second,’ I thought.

  We were given various orders, all of which we solemnly accepted and straight away ignored. I wasn’t going to get pushed about by Henry Kelly. He abandoned us the minute The Human League came flouncing round the corner. Their singer, with his long black hair pulled back over a diamond earring, looked Theo up and down and shuddered. Then all these young girls started screaming when a Latino woman in a red flamenco dress came round the corner with a clipboard, showing Julio Iglesias the way to the stage. Simon looked at his healthy face and deep leather tan, then looked and me and said ‘I think you’d better start taking some vitamins, Rob.’

  As Iglesias’ entourage came past us they pushed Simon out of the way, his guitar dropped to the floor and a string broke, seconds before we were due to go on. Iglesias didn’t even apologise. He was a love-god, and we were dirty guttersnipes from Manchester. That was the picture. I thought, right, that’s it.

  Bonny told us to focus. There was steel in her eyes, then, hard as the cut of her bob. I think she saw in us a way to make her mark on the world. Prove to herself she could be a figure other women looked up to. Sometimes we needed her ferocity. I remember them lining us up in the wings before we went onstage and the look on her face was just unforgettable. Even she thought this wouldn’t happen so soon. ‘Don’t blow it, Rob,’ she kept saying. ‘Remember what we’ve all given to get you to this point.’

  We were cooped up in the corridor, and through a crack in the door I could see aimless young girls going into the studio, all oversized sweaters and white dinner jackets. Jimmy Savile was giving them party hats and streamers to chuck about, getting some of them to drape them over him. He was like this manic jester in the middle of it, a bit unhinged. There was this feeling building in the air, this tightening of the moments that I’d never known before. Every inch of clothing you had on, every expression you gave was being carefully scrutinized. As the room filled with young bodies, clutching their chests and looking around them, I realized that with one gesture I could cause an explosion. With one statement, one movement, one act, I could sweep away all the polystyrene and lights and make everyone at home sit forward. But I still didn’t know what I’d do.

  The pressure to conform was incredible. You felt yourself doubting everything about you, especially when elbow patches told us we wouldn’t get to practice being onstage, because Iglesias had taken our spot. I rallied the four of us together in that little corridor, skinny limbs in black against this sea of white casual day-wear. I told the boys nothing was going to shake us off course, this was our chance. We were going to blow the roof off the place and we were going to do it our way. Forget all the party poppers and bunting, I said. Let’s introduce something real here. Show the world what a charade this all is.

  Simon was shaking as the girl pointed us to the stage. The stage was a small black square, set amongst a background of grey plastic cubes and dry ice. The lights were down, in seconds they were going to go up.

  When we went through those doors we looked like we’d crawled out of the underworld.

  We were pushed onstage, into a bath of boiling light. Jack squirmed onto his drumming stool, Theo squinted out at the waiting crowd. Simon looked as if he’d forgotten how to hold a guitar, but seconds later he was grasping its neck as if his life depended on it. Already, the makeup was starting to run down our faces. I stood on the edge of the stage, looked out at the sea of silhouettes and tensed.

  A second later Savile stepped into the crowd and introduced us. He made some joke about us being the runts of the litter and then I heard our keyboards blast through the speakers, thinner than usual, but growing louder. The lights went onto us. I grabbed the microphone.

  I could just about make out all these young girls with hands on their hips. I had never seen them at our gigs before and yet the moment the track started they were screaming. It was almost as if their whole lives had been lived in preparation for seeing us play. I knew they would soon stop screaming when they heard our song.

  I’ll never forget that sense of seizing the moment. You have to make it out of absolutely nothing. It felt reckless and dangerous and there was genuinely no sense of what it might lead to.

  Jack’s drum-beat instantly connected with the crowd, made them move. Then that rich synth line filled the air and the audience cheered. Simon, visibly shaking, began miming energetically on his guitar. I felt my body crackle and twitch and I opened my mouth. I knew I would be singing over my own voice, but I wanted to do it with heart, and for people to see that. There was one sensational moment, like the moment a woman gives you as you pin her to the bed, when the whole audience looked up to me.

  I tore into the song. I had laboured over every line, every last vowel and consonant, and I wanted to mainline it straight into every living room in the country. When it came to the bridge, where the band suddenly sped up, something took over my arms and I felt possessed by the need to make the band create a sound so huge and overpowering that the audience were permanently altered. The sheer force of the first chorus overwhelmed me, my voice urging its way through this thick storm to enhance the recorded vocals, stick onto the contours of every note and bury that damned hook in the mind of every terrified kid dreading school the next day, every dead-eyed office drone working for managers they loathed, every housewife longing for the visions of the future sent to her in adverts through the letter-box daily. Now is the time for revolution, I thought. I’ll be the spark.

  As the song reached its climax I tried to move to the front of the stage, and the whole of the front row moved forward to touch me. In the last verse, as I sang the refrain ‘wind the commuter belt around your neck,’ I lifted the microphone lead up to my throat. I decided in a split second what my one act of defiance would be.

  I could see elbow patches watching from the wings. He met my eye as I stopped singing, and slowly shook his head. I could see all the smiles on the faces of the young girls as they sang along to this weird hit on Top Of The Pops. I could feel the sheer fear this one movement was provoking in the studio. Was he going to try choke himself with the mike lead on air? Elbow patches held a finger to his throat. The audience looked up at me, transfixed by my sudden lack of movement, my voice still audible even though my mouth was shut. As Simon sliced into the outro I threw the cord around my neck and pulled, hard. The air was forced out of my throat and I choked into the mike, which dropped to the floor with a loud bang. The audience gave off a huge, icy gasp. I fell onto my knees, putting my foot onto the lead to get some leverage, and then I yanked it hard. I don’t know what came over me, but at that moment I sincerely wanted to do it. Choke myself to death, on live television. My eyes bulged, and I saw my knuckles turn white.

  Elbow patches stormed over to Bonny, who was already smiling. He gestured at the stage, and she shrugged, a smile on her face. He pointed at the sound desk, and a moment later, the backing track stopped.

  The audience were no longer dancing. The sound faded, as I writhed on stage, winding the cord round and round my neck, my free hand clawing for air. I looked up, and my vision started to narrow. Every single girl in the audience was looking at me, confused, and I was slowly blacking out. But the one set of eyes I met, over by a pillar, were Bonny’s. She looked back at me and nodded, calmly, as she folded her arms.

  It took two security guards to pull me from the stage. As they unravelled the cord, the crowd drew back like closing blinds. Elb
ow patches ran up to me. ‘You will never, ever play on this show again,’ he said, spittle flying onto my face.

  I got up, and shook my head. In the distance I could hear muted cheers. I gulped, and as she came closer Bonny held her arms out.

  She and I both knew it would be all over the press the next day, that every playground and office would be buzzing with what I’d done. Every housewife would be terrified that their kids would buy our record.

  That was exactly what happened.

  1

  ‘I think you deserve this treat,’ Sam said, stepping ahead of Elsa and dramatically opening the door to the restaurant.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, her eyes narrowing.

  Sam watched the sunlight race over the windows, reflecting the silvery hue of the river beside them. He was still trying to find his way through this new world of bright, polished surfaces. He felt that for years he had lived amongst damp corners, in the dank atmosphere of bedsits. But taking in the sparkling cutlery, and the elegant dresses around him, he felt like he was finally stepping into the light. A blistering modern light, that blasted away the squalor of his past.

  He looked at Elsa, who was taking in the hubbub. He considered her elfin, Gallic look, which still attracted so much male attention. Her floral summer dress displayed flashes of her legs that were a little too slim.

  A waiter swept them to their upstairs table with a hearty wave. He seated them at a table close to the window, which overlooked a quayside blooming with sun. The river played upon the windows of the surrounding offices like a distant mirage.

  Elsa loved these displays of chivalry from Sam. In the early days he would take her for dinner even when he evidently couldn’t afford it. Once or twice an extra drink had been too much, and he’d had to offer to wash up, but he’d been useless even at that. But this time she suspected there was more to it than just generosity. He kept pulling the slightly dirty curtains of his Mowgli-style hair out of his large, blue eyes.