The Alternative Hero

by Tim Thornton

  SUGGESTED LISTENING: Jane’s Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual (Warner Bros, 1990)

  Now, that name

  rings a bell.

  Remind me who

  they were?

  Okay. It’s 1:30 a.m. after one of the more unusual days in my life, and there are five things to report. Some good, some bad.

  Webster showed up (good).

  I’ve had more interesting conversations with my toilet seat (bad).

  I think his cat’s on the way out (bad).

  I’ve just been out on a date with the Other Vet (good).

  She just left (bad).

  Blame Snow Patrol for that last one. And Coldplay And possibly Keane, although I can’t really remember now. And, in a roundabout sort of way, Lance Webster.

  I’ll try to race through the day’s more mundane elements. Picking up the vet’s van on Sunday night was a relative doddle, for I had the genius idea to call my mother and suggest an impromptu Sunday lunch visit (“Oh, darling! What a lovely idea! It’s not like you to actually volunteer to come round”), then announced to my dad halfway through my second helping of pudding that I needed a lift to Stanmore. Even the most cursory of glances at the map had baldly displayed Jackie’s woeful understatement with regard to Van Man’s house being twenty minutes’ walk from the tube station. It took virtually twenty minutes to get there by car. The other thing she had neglected to fully describe was how much of an utter nightmare this boxer dog Nigel was. “Frisky” my arse. I’m usually all right with animals, having harboured a few in my time, but fucking hell. He spends most of his time trying to walk on his hind legs, “affectionately” biting everything in sight. He’d eaten almost all my jumper by the time the pets were in the vehicle. On a previous jaunt he apparently managed to undo a cage door and swallow a whole chinchilla, so now he has to ride up front with the driver. He did most of the steering on the motorway. I decided to stop at Alan’s house for a break, also to tell him the good news about my impending meeting (“Sod off and don’t come back ’til you’ve got something proper to tell me”)—when I returned to the van Nigel had chewed the road atlas to shreds, changed the channel on the radio and taken off the handbrake; the van had rolled backwards and was resting perilously against the bumper of Alan’s Mini. That Alan didn’t notice is a bloody miracle.

  It’s also somewhat miraculous that I was able to safely transfer the various creatures into the back room of the surgery, inexpertly shove some food in their direction and take up my position at the front desk before Lance Webster himself strode through the door at ten to eleven. Trust the contrary bastard to be early. I was hot and sweaty from my exertions and had damn near forgotten what I was there for in the first place. He was looking shabbier today, unshaven, wore a pretty hideous striped granddad shirt that suggested a rather ill-advised purchase from Marks & Spencer, and eyed me with a look of distrust that made my body temperature drop about ten degrees.

  “Where’s Jackie?”

  “Jackie?”

  “The usual assistant,” he responded crisply.

  “Oh, Jackie. Well, she …”

  I froze midsentence. He was doing it again! Narrowing his eyes at me strangely! He’s exactly the same. With shorter hair. I might as well have been sixteen and back at the Harlow Square. What is it with that look?

  “She’s picking up her mother. I’m the … um …”

  “Well, I’ve got a cat to pick up: Jessica.”

  He fiddled about in his pocket and gave me a handwritten chit, which I studied blankly. My eyes were doing that annoying thing they do when I’m really nervous, which is water, basically. I could vaguely make out “Jessica—Webster” and the date. Not that it mattered.

  “Is she back?”

  “Um, yeah, I’ll go and get her,” I spluttered, and hurried off down the corridor. Weird. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but he seemed … rude. Without actually being rude. The best that could be said for the whole thing so far was it proved I’d not been tripping and that it actually was him. Oh, the hilarity, if the chit had said “McAllister” or whatever.

  I unlocked the back-room door and was greeted with a gargantuan lick from the perpetually upright Nigel. I’d tied his lead to the handle of a filing cabinet in the far corner, which he’d pulled right across the room.

  “Not now,” I growled, pushing him away and grabbing the yellow cat carrier which contained Jessica. But then I stopped for a second and took a few deep breaths, marvelling at the surreal position I’d squeezed myself into. I reflected that if it all ended now, at least I’d have done this. At least I’d have returned an ailing cat in a yellow box to my all-time musical hero. All was suddenly quiet. Even Nigel was momentarily still. I let Lance Webster (yes!) wait for a few seconds longer, then pushed open the door.

  He was alternately glancing at one of those information posters (“Is your pet overweight?”) and texting someone when I reached the waiting room. One of the two activities must have cheered him up a bit, as his manner was appreciably different.

  “Ahh …” he smiled, upon seeing his moggie. “How’s she been?”

  Oh, no. Please don’t start asking me technical questions.

  “Okay,” I replied. “She’s, um, eaten some breakfast.”

  “Good.” He poked a finger through the mesh door of the carrier, which Jessica acknowledged with a sniff. “It’s just prolonging the inevitable, of course, but …”

  “Ah.”

  He sighed, sadly. “Yes. Mind you, it would help if the other one wasn’t terrorising her the whole time. Actually, while I think of it … have you got any of that hormonal stuff that you spray to stop them urinating everywhere?”

  Thank God I once owned a cat.

  “Feliway? Yeah, I think so …” I looked at the products stacked up on the shelf and located a little purple box. I then tried to hand it to him, but he was still busy with his creature, so I was left standing awkwardly with my arm out for a few seconds. I was going to say, “Here’s your spray,” but that sounded peculiar, so I settled for a cough.

  “Oh! Sorry!” he exclaimed, took the box, looked up and then treated me to a full-strength, 1991-style Lance Webster grin, dimples and everything. Blimey. Christ knows what sort of look I must have given him in return. I fear that my eyes probably widened, my mouth opened slightly, as if I’d just been injected with something. We held this tableau for what seemed like about five minutes, then Webster himself coughed.

  “So … are you going to take some money off me?”

  “Oh, shit! Yes.” I moved round to the other side of the desk and sifted through the bills that Jackie had clipped together. “That’s … wow, five hundred and fifty.”

  “Plus this?” he asked, waving the spray.

  “Ah. Sorry. I’m, um … new here. Has it got a price on it?”

  “No, not that I can see.”

  “Right.” I fought the temptation to say “Hey!—have it on the house. Have an operation, get the pissing spray free.” Instead, boringly, I settled for phoning Jackie. Webster didn’t seem to mind. He sat down while I rang, busying himself with his chequebook. Finally she answered and gave me the correct price.

  Thinking back now, from the vantage point of lying on my bed in the small hours drinking the last of a bottle of leftover wine, it seems hard to accept there was nothing I could have done to take more advantage of the situation, but I’m afraid it’s probably true. I’d like to be able to say it was enough, just as it was with Björn from ABBA, to share the company of musical brilliance for a few fleeting minutes and, in this case, at least to talk about something; but I don’t think I can. I was pretty pissed off as he left—bearing his doomed animal, still grinning, admittedly a far cry from the curt so-and-so who’d entered the building five minutes before—although of course I didn’t show it. I even managed a proper smile. I toyed with the idea of saying “Thanks, Mr. Webster” just for a laugh, but thought better of it. I shut the door behind him and then took a look at his cheque
. HSBC. Reading Broad Street branch. Funny, you don’t expect people like him to bank in normal places—but I suppose that’s just silly. His writing was a mess. “Five-six-seven-fifty.” How strange. He writes cheque amounts like Ron at work. Now I think about it, his dad was an accountant. That must be it. Then I eyed his signature. Mr. G. W. Webster. Funny; I thought he’d changed his name to Lance by deed poll. Clearly not.

  I fished around in my bag for Alan’s scrapbook, which I’d brought along for moral support. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. Please excuse the fact that Alan is going through his “interesting handwriting” period and seems to have abandoned the use of most uppercase letters:

  FRIDAY 24 AUGUST 1990

  mega city 4, mudhoney, MAGPIES, faith no more

  fucking brilliant only gonna be breif cos the pens running out, what a cracking day. janes adiction pulled out which was a right pisser but megas were amazing, mudhoney good stuff although had to pick clive up about 4 times because we’d had about three bottles of mendip each, some shit irish band came on and nick cave was well boring so we just drank more then MAGPIES who were absolutely splendid, lance on good form, he did this brilliant thing before look who’s laughing cos there were loads of rockers showed up to see FNM. he made all the rockers put their hands up, then all the indie fans, then got the indie fans to go to the rockers and say “good evening, welcome to reading festival, this is our festival now but thank you for coming anyway, this is the thieving magpies who are from reading and they’re about to do one of their top ten hits”—it was well funny, the bloke I said it to was okay but clive’s told him to piss off after about five words, I reckon there must have been some fights. then FNM played who were great but their sound was shocking, patton finished hanging off the scaffolding, didn’t bother with the cramps but went and found a magpies bootleg and lisened by the tent with more mendip but the BEST THING WAS that I met LANCE BY THE TOILET after FNM and got his autograph, all right it’s a bit [word I can’t make out, but I think it’s probably “unco,” i.e., uncool] but I was laddered and couldn’t be arsed to think of anything good to say. READING IS AMAZING … neds tomorrow

  You can imagine what Alan’s entries were like when he wasn’t being “breif.”

  Stapled to the page is a label from one of the bottles of “mendip” (full name actually Mendip Magic, a strong cider we had bought in bulk from a crustie) which Alan had hastily ripped off and presented to the passing Webster. I remember being obscenely jealous of this. Alan had a knack for spotting members of bands while out and about, often for striking up relaxed banter with them. I never spotted them, apart from that one time in Harlow. But Alan was constantly seeing the fuckers, like he had a sixth sense for it. And in the most incongruous places. He once saw Carl McCoy from Fields of the Nephilim in Boots. Barry Mooncult from Flowered Up in (honestly) a florist’s. Andy whatsit from New Fast Automatic Daffodils on a platform at Manchester Piccadilly station (he even claims they went for a pint together). I remember wandering around Reading that year desperately trying to spy my own exciting crop of indie celebs, but to little avail (I think the best I managed was Jonathon, the indie DJ at Camden Palace, but you saw him everywhere). So, anyway—Webster’s autograph is just a scribble and the originally black ink has turned browny-green over the years, but I held up his cheque and compared the two scribbles, made under such wildly different circumstances, and I have to admit the similarity sent a little tingle down my spine.

  I sat back in the vet’s now silent waiting room (apart from the occasional muffled whimper from the perpetually vocal Nigel) and my mood plummeted. Not only had Lance Webster already been and gone, leaving me with bewilderingly few options for taking the matter further, but I still had a day’s arsing around with animals to get through. For free. I glanced at my watch and, to be frank, the idea of fucking off occurred to me. The Other Vet would be arriving any minute. If I just left the keys on the desk and snuck out the door, letting it lock behind me, that wouldn’t be too bad, would it? The animals would only be alone for, what, two minutes. I’d helped them out with the day’s most important and arduous task; they could surely manage the rest of the day? I mean, what would they have done if I hadn’t offered? I gathered up my belongings and stood up, giving myself a last-minute karma check. Was this okay?

  But by the time eleven o’clock had struck, two things had magically happened: one, I had been transformed into a selfless hero of the hour, possessed of endless public spirit and generosity, sensitive, thoroughly modern, masculine and (perhaps) attractive; two, I had decided to rub along through the day after all. The power of women, eh?

  All right, bearing in mind that our fourteen-hour relationship has just come to an abrupt and fairly acrimonious end, by which I must be slightly influenced, I can still say that she wasn’t that attractive. I think it was more the initial shock of her bursting through the door (carrying her bike), actually being female and close to my age, then the fact that she spent the next five minutes telling me how wonderful I was for giving up a whole day and how much she’d heard about me from Jackie (eh?), all the time flashing her eyes and doing that tactile thing. I mean, I suppose it’s just nice to be flirted with, and complimented and stuff, because to be frank (and I don’t mean the violins to come out here) it’s been a while. So when she finally put on her white tunic and disappeared inside the consulting room, I was gasping a bit. Okay, I’m being unfair. It’s also because she’s … you know. Pretty. An ingredient not lost on me when, some eight (nonetheless knackering) hours later, she (yes, she) suggested we go for a drink.

  Now, before you start worrying that this is all getting perilously close to the Nick Hornby zone, there’s a good reason for telling you all this. Here we have, or had, a fairly standard thirty-year-old London-dwelling Englishwoman. Born in Kent, I think, normal school, studied to be a vet in London. Likes doing normal London things: drinking, partying, eating out, going to the cinema. Clearly—although we didn’t discuss it properly until much later—enjoys music, as she mentioned she had tickets to this year’s Glastonbury But halfway through the evening, which was going very nicely, thank you (a few pints in, chat flowing, the pub buzzing but not too crazy), the following exchange occurred.

  “Well, at least you only have to talk to them on the phone,” she was despairing, on the subject of the general public. “I actually have to meet the fuckers. Tell ’em what’s wrong with their bloody pets.”

  “You don’t enjoy it?”

  “I love the animal part.”

  “You love animals’ parts?”

  “Silly,” she laughed. “I love the actual vet bit. It’s the bloody public-relations bit I can’t bear.”

  “Right.”

  “You know what I wish?” she began, playing with an empty crisp packet. “I wish it could be a vet drive-through. They drop the animals off at a kiosk, bugger off and wait in the car park. Then they get called over the loudspeaker when I’ve finished, drive to a second kiosk where they get their pet back and a printout of what’s wrong with them.”

  “That’s a great idea. I should think they’ve got those already in America.”

  “Probably.”

  “But you do get relatively interesting characters in your place,” I suggested, deciding the time was right.

  “Like?”

  “Well, the guy today, who picked up Jessica the cat. Just before you arrived.”

  “Jessica? That old tabby with lymphoma?”

  “Lymphoma,” I winced. “That’s like cancer, yeah?”

  “It is cancer. Poor thing.” She drew her index finger sharply across her neck and shrugged.

  “Curtains?”

  “Weeks, I’m afraid. Maybe less. The guy’s heartbroken, though. He keeps taking her in for pointless treatment. Seems to not care too much about the cost.”

  (Ah. So maybe he has got a few bob stashed away somewhere.)

  “Well,” I confided, “you know who that guy is, don’t you?”

 
; “His name is … um … Webster.”

  “Yeah,” I smiled, patiently. “Lance Webster.”

  “Okay,” she nodded, still expecting something more.

  “Lance Webster,” I repeated. “Used to be the singer with Thieving Magpies?”

  She frowned and swallowed a mouthful of beer.

  “Now, that name rings a bell. Remind me who they were?”

  There it is.

  I mean, I ask you. This kind of bloody thing happens all the time. Remind me who they were.

  Usually, depending on who has said it and how much I’ve had to drink, such a comment heralds the arrival of a rather large argument. Not because I’m offended, you understand—it’s just that I’m genuinely confused. Nah, bewildered. Flabbergasted. I just can’t understand it. It doesn’t compute with the way my brain operates.

  Who were they? Only the biggest British alternative band in the world, between the years 1991 and 1995. With the arguable exceptions of The Cure and Depeche Mode. Oh, and maybe New Order. “Bad Little Secret,” their biggest UK hit (although far from my favourite song of theirs, as it happens), held the number-two position on the singles chart for three weeks (only kept from the top spot by that stupid “Please Don’t Go” song). Bruise Unit, the 1992 album that propelled them into the same arenas around the planet as the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and REM, shifted four million copies. Between 1989 and 1995, the Thieving Magpies sold out Brixton Academy a record-breaking twenty-five times, including three four-night runs. In addition to goodness knows how many NECs, G-MEXs and festival-headlining slots. But no one ever remembers all this. They just have vague memories of a band who were kinda fun down at the student disco, but who were ultimately forgettable. Or, if a music journalist is talking, an outfit who represent quite how bad indie music managed to get, before Britpop came along and, by the grace of its fucking hairdo, corduroy jacket and afternoon drink at the Good Mixer, saved us all.