How I Left the National Grid (21 page)

He turned the volume down and tore into the contents of the mini-bar. He could not remember going to sleep, but when he awoke in the morning he was surrounded by small, empty bottles. The jolt of pain in his head indicated that he had probably slept for too long to catch his train.

What was I going back to anyway, he wondered?

The acid sense of disappointment trickled into his consciousness, like violence, remembered from television images. Focusing on the clock by the bed he was surprised to see it was only 8.02. He had never taken the prior’s offer of breakfast seriously but amidst the mental fog of morning it suddenly occurred to him. He could still make it.

The Prior had asked Sam to knock, at nine, on the red-doored cottage at the foot of the valley. But this morning the cottages weren’t even visible. Although each blade of grass underfoot looked pin-sharp, the horizon was an impenetrable bar of silver mist. It concealed his destination, and was softened only by the sunlight that illuminated its slender margins.

Sam felt as if he was walking into another realm, moving into that mysterious haze which kept its contents hidden. In the distance, now only just visible through the fog, were a couple of partially thatched cottages. He assumed one of them was the prior’s.

It was a small, modest affair just off the mud track. A tiny worn path revealed the way there. It sat in the crook where the valley swiftly became high hills. Though from a distance the cottage looked unkempt, abandoned even, Sam saw that up close it had a well-loved air.

Sam passed the first two houses, both seemingly deserted. Instead of a front garden they had small, well-kept graveyards. He found the red door to be ajar, and the prior welcomed him inside with a keen shout of his name.

Sam found himself on a small, frayed patch of carpet in front of a roaring fire, a kettle singing in the kitchen. Through the back windows, against the sudden hills, gardeners were beginning work on what appeared to be a chaotic allotment. They moved in and out of each other, rakes and spades slung over broad shoulders. The prior gestured for Sam to make himself comfortable at a table holding piles of books.

‘I am so pleased you decided to see me before going, Sam,’ he said, with open arms.

He was not dressed in a robe, but in a tattered blue overall. ‘I must admit, I still feel rather guilty about the hostile reception you received when you first came here. I blame it on enthusiastic young members of our brethren.’

‘Please don’t,’ Sam said. ‘I feel so embarrassed by my little speech.’

The prior stood over him for a moment, before admiring the fog through the back window. ‘Not desperate Sam, driven. Determined.’ He clenched his fist with a small smile. ‘Sheer gumption. God put that inside your heart for a reason, Sam. Allow it to guide you.’

Sam tried to smile.

‘The coffee will be ready in a moment. Tell me, Sam, are you a man of faith?’

The sound of the bristling fire eased his nausea. He considered it, as the kettle whistled itself to the boil. The prior moved into the kitchen to pour, the white wisps of hair above his ears lit for a moment by sudden sunlight through the windows. As he returned Sam saw that his hands were worn and slightly scarred, as if they had given themselves over to the earth long ago.

‘I used to have faith, certainly.’

Sam received the mug and took a sip.

‘Used to? And yet yesterday, you seemed surprised by your own desperation.’

The coffee warmed Sam’s lips, smoothed out the pain in his temple. The prior moved in front of him, blocking the glow. ‘Forgive me. We don’t get the chance to converse with too many outsiders. But your quest intrigued me.’

‘You think it was pointless?’

‘The interesting question is why you think this journey will address your sense of absence.’

‘I don’t know. I suppose Richard Wardner has come to represent something to me.’

‘A symbol perhaps? A symbol of what is missing from your life?’

‘Yes,’ Sam said, leaning towards him. ‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘Yet I am sure you know, a symbol is just that. It only means what you want it to.’

‘That’s true.’

‘I do wonder if the modern world,’ he said, straightening his collar, ‘creates these desperations for you. It makes you crave products you don’t want. It places its imperatives in front of religion, faith. It employs certain people for its cause. Celebrities, singers, musicians. When you conclude that the material world is disappointing you look to these figures for answers, as they sit just beyond the array. You hunt these figures down, like they are wise men. If they vanish from your life you imbue them as symbols with even greater potency. But really it is what you project onto them that’s interesting.’

The prior weaved his fingers together, as toast popped up behind him. ‘Jam, butter?’

Sam shrugged.

He moved back into the kitchen. ‘You feel that if you find this Wardner, then with him you find the answer?’

‘That might be it.’

‘So, if you found him would you feel as if you had come to the end of your journey?’

There was a hint of mischief playing around the prior’s lips as he returned, with a pile of toast, jam jars balancing on top of it.

‘No,’ Sam said.

The prior waved a finger at Sam. ‘No you wouldn’t. Because your quest is spiritual. You seek to fill the void, don’t you?’

‘That void will always exist though.’ Sam spooned jam onto a slice, and took a bite. ‘Until I succeed at something.’

‘I see.’ He looked through the window. ‘Now, I must show you the grounds. Here, bring your coffee.’

The sunlight was just starting to break over the hills behind them, lighting up the rectangular allotment on which men bustled. Sam sipped the cooling coffee as he followed the prior. ‘With a spiritual retreat comes the opportunity to learn new skills,’ he said. ‘To put something back into the earth.’

Sam eyed the rows of marrows and radishes.

‘You can take these straight out of the ground and into the pan?’

‘There is only one way to address your scepticism.’

‘I’m not sure I can carry a bunch of marrows on the train,’ Sam said.

The prior laughed.

‘See what you think of this.’

They moved over to the small patch of turf near the back gate, where a man was bent double, concerning himself with something laid on the soil.

‘There’s nothing here,’ Sam said.

‘Not yet, but there will be soon, won’t there?’

The prior wasn’t addressing Sam, but the man at his feet. As Sam moved to ask him what he was growing he found himself looking straight into the face of Robert Wardner.

The singer was visibly aged, the faint lines that Sam had seen
in so many photographs now deep crevices. Despite his position in the bright sunlight Wardner looked ravaged, a sinewy man in a camouflage jacket, his hair hacked short. His shaking fingers quivering through the dirt. He was indistinguishable from it, a whisper through the looming pines. He was part of something invigorating, and yet he looked as if he was barely of this realm.

The prior stooped to address him.

‘I’m afraid our visitor isn’t convinced about what we are trying to do out here.’

Wardner looked slowly up at Sam.

‘Perhaps we should tell our visitor,’ Wardner said, ‘that these days people don’t understand work.’

His voice was gruffer than Sam had expected, barely recognisable from the songs and interviews.

The prior stepped back, placed his hands on his hips. ‘Be my guest,’ he said.

Sam decided to speak first. ‘I’m not saying it won’t grow. I’m just thinking it’s a lot of effort for a few vegetables. Isn’t it?’

Wardner’s eyes passed over Sam, with a chemical blankness that Sam had never seen before. Slowly, he opened his mouth.

‘Where you come from, my friend, people only work at things if they can leave their mark on it. They don’t care about vegetables, because they don’t come with a credit. But down here,’ his trembling hands pointed into the earth, ‘work is about making something that sustains. That doesn’t have a stamp.’

The prior nodded.

Sam’s eyes traced over Wardner’s tattoos, unable to believe who he was talking to. Yet the evidence was all there. That line from Hamlet, still in faint black ink on his left arm.

The prior could pull me away at any moment, Sam thought. I’ve got to seize this chance.

‘But what about art?’ Sam said. ‘Art can help others, and move your career forward too can’t it?’

Wardner’s lips began to move again, with a curl of bitterness
edging into them. ‘So you know who I am.’

‘I think you can help him, Robert,’ the prior said.

Wardner nodded deferentially, his glazed eyes slowly moving back to Sam.

‘Art will collapse, son, because the internet screwed your generation over. Everyone can have a go at making something and putting it on the web.’

Wardner stood up, and straightened. ‘But it’s not art,’ he continued. ‘It’s just noise, made by people trying to shout loudest. There’ll be so much of it one day it’ll all collapse.’

His hands moved, slender as autumn leaves, as he spoke. Sam could only equate the feeling it provoked with the one he experienced walking along the beach, when it all got too much in his youth.

‘So all that work will be lost?’

Wardner looked to the hills, as if addressing the sprawl that lay beyond it. ‘Someone will own it. But it won’t be you.’

Sam felt the wind around him, the heat of it energising him. He pulled his coat tighter around himself. ‘So you’re saying I shouldn’t believe in art?’

‘If you’ve got no loved ones, it’s not a bad place to look for answers. Artists are better visionaries than celebrities, who they’re often confused with. But if you can find people who care about you, don’t neglect them for art. Look to sustaining others, rather than yourself.’

‘No one ever advises us to do that.’

‘Culture always tells you to look to illusions for answers. ‘Look at me’, it says, ‘I’ve worked it all out’. Celebrities grow too powerful because people mistake their colour for content. They allow them to create a hole at the heart of our culture, in which they then flourish.’

‘Is that why you’re out here then? You’ve had enough of that culture?’

There seemed a change in the wind.

‘I have to be here. Unlike you, I don’t have a choice.’

Wardner’s eyes, flecked with grey, flickered.

‘I’m a journalist who wrote about your music, Mr Wardner. I know that the rumours about you killing that young fan aren’t true. Nataly told me what is true.’

Wardner widened his eyes. At that moment, a small sparrow alighted on the fence behind him. Wardner watched it preen itself.

‘Nataly,’ he said. ‘So Nataly gave me away.’

‘I don’t think she gave you away. I think she’s perhaps offered you your freedom, to be honest. You see, she told me that Bonny created that rumour. But I know there’s nothing in it. The police aren’t after you, and you can return home. I know why she told me you had killed a man too. To scare me off finding you.’

Wardner stood up straight, the effort seemingly paining him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not true. Nataly would never play games like that. The truth is, I did kill a man.’

‘Robert?’ The prior’s voice had dropped to a whisper, as he placed his hand on Wardner’s shoulder.

‘It was an accident,’ he answered. ‘His name was Andrew Cunningham, and he was the head of our record label. We were having a bitter fight about our album. I had been devoted to recording it for years. Cunningham wanted to rush it out before we were ready. I was a younger man then, prior, with a short fuse. We both said a few vicious things, and our manager had to hold me back. I threatened…’ He stopped, and coughed for a moment.

‘It’s alright,’ the prior said.

‘I threatened to strangle him. It was only once Bonny had calmed me down that I saw him, collapsed on the floor. The heart attack killed him instantly.’

‘That’s not murder,’ the prior said.

‘He’s right,’ echoed Sam. ‘And I have seen the coroner’s report. It didn’t implicate you in any way.’

Wardner coughed. A hacking, unhinged cough that built until
it threatened to send him into spasms.

The prior lowered his voice, drawing Sam away. ‘Let’s discuss this another time. It isn’t fair to put all this on Robert.’

Wardner shook his head. ‘I knew that Cunningham had a weak heart. At various points I encouraged Simon, my guitarist, to give him ecstasy. I joked that it would send his ticker into overdrive. I didn’t want him to die, much as I hated him. I was just showing off. But I know it is only a matter of time until someone asks Simon about it under oath and I’ll be done for. Subconsciously, I think I provoked Cunningham knowing that it would kill him.’

‘That’s still not murder,’ Sam said.

‘That’s enough,’ the prior said. ‘We should leave Robert alone now.’

Sam felt guilty at having taken so much out of the singer with his questions. It was as if each of Wardner’s expressions had cost Wardner another chunk of his flesh. Until now he was a husk, assimilated by wind and earth, which crept from the hills and seeped through the soil, pulling him prematurely into their fortified cycles. Sam and the prior drew away.

‘When he arrived here,’ the prior said, ‘he was close to death. We are in the early stages of trying to claw him back. We give him only light duties.’

He placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. ‘Sam, just as I have respected your journey in bringing it to a close, you must also respect his and not give away his place of rest.’

Sam nodded slowly. ‘I just can’t believe it.’

‘Your train,’ the prior said. ‘You will miss your train.’

Sam pressed a palm to his head. ‘I don’t know how I can thank you. Even if I can’t use this, it means the world to me…’

‘Thank me by honouring what I asked of you. I am putting my faith in you.’

19

Camille eased into her chair on the terrace, the straps of her black summer dress falling around her shoulders. She peered through the hanging baskets, down to the bustling city below. As Sam opened the door to come onto the terrace the sound of a piano from inside filtered out to Camille. As he moved into her vision she pulled off her sunglasses and smiled up at him.