The Alternative Hero

by Tim Thornton

  “Got it.”

  “And when I was about eight, I was a right little brat …”

  “As we all were.”

  “Yeah, I s’pose … but I was really stressing my mum out this one weekend, wanting this, wanting that, arguing with my sister and stuff … I dunno what happened, my mum probably had a word with my dad and told him to try and chill me out or something … He came into my bedroom with this toy. He’d never done anything like this before. He knelt down and said something like ‘Well, son, here’s a toy I had when I was a boy,’ and he showed me how it worked—and bless his cotton socks, it’s a toy for four-year-olds probably, but it obviously meant loads to him … but all I could fucking say was, ‘Dad, it’s rubbish! It’s wooden and crap and …’—I dunno, probably that it hadn’t got any Space Invaders on it or something … and he just looked so heartbroken and picked up his toy and stomped off out the room … He never tried to do anything like that again … I can’t help thinking he was never really arsed with trying to get close to me after that, he’d reached out to me once and I basically told him to fuck off …”

  Poor old Webster is just gazing down into his tea, probably doesn’t know where the hell to look.

  “Anyway,” I conclude, “that was his toy up there.”

  Webster does a bit more of his solemn nodding, then:

  “I understand … wish I could help, y’know? But the truth is we must’ve all done stuff to our folks that we regret.”

  “You have, then?”

  “You’re kidding, aren’t you?” he gasps. “Come on, mate, I was a pop star. None of my family wanted to be anywhere near me for the best part of ten years, I was such a stuck-up, inconsiderate wanker.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course! I was a total knob.”

  I keep quiet, hoping he’ll elaborate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t.

  “No,” he sighs, “the only thing we can do is just hope they forgive, or forget. Preferably both. And for you—to be honest I wouldn’t worry about it. If you don’t mind my saying so, your old man sounds exactly like mine was: well-meaning, responsible and respectable, but totally set in his ways. Not changing for no one. He probably put that toy straight back in its cupboard and hasn’t given the incident a second’s thought since.”

  I study my cake and think this over. Then I think about Webster’s dad. He died of cancer in the late nineties: another blow in what must have been a chain of nightmares for Lance. Or Geoff. Or whoever.

  We’re silent for a good half a minute. A group of French people at the next table suddenly erupt with laughter at something. Makes me feel even worse, being this picture of misery in such a fun-oriented place.

  “God, this is ridiculous,” I sigh, breaking off a piece of cake. “What a way for you to spend your Saturday afternoon.”

  “Hey,” he counters, “I’m the one who suggested it. And don’t forget, my idea was to put you back in touch with your childhood—so, in fact, I’ve completely succeeded.”

  “That’s right. You’ve overperformed!”

  We laugh for a moment, then Webster ruins it by getting serious again.

  “But it’s good to feel these things, y’know, get ’em out there in the open. Don’t you feel a little bit better?”

  “Not really.”

  He frowns and looks straight at my forehead in his customary way. I’m kind of used to it now. But suddenly his eyebrows shoot up again.

  “Hang on a sec! I’ve got an idea.”

  He leaps up and skips over to the French table, whom he addresses in perfect-sounding French, prompting much surprised laughter and delighted smiles. One of the girls hands him their copy of Time Out. He glances at his watch and flicks through the magazine for a second, then hands it back, accompanied by yet more francophone witticisms and eyelash fluttering. The man really is a charm machine.

  Eventually he returns to boring old me.

  “One of my favourite artists has a new exhibition nearby,” he announces. “D’you fancy popping in? The works are to do with music, apparently—which I know you’re not that keen on—but it’s bound to cheer you up ’cos it won’t remind you of anything!”

  Oh joy. More lying. My favourite.

  By the end of the next hour, I’ve told so many lies that it’s actually starting to affect my digestive system. I lurch into the loo of the little gallery, pale-faced and breaking into an unhealthy sweat, bolt the door and settle myself on the crapper, where I bury my head between my legs and try to breathe evenly. This is all getting far too much for me: first an emotional breakdown in a public museum, combined now with this ridiculous performance of perpetual musical ignorance, which I’m certain Webster is seeing through like cling film. I’ve had enough of being someone I’m not, pretending to know nothing about the thing I love most. I feel an unadulterated charlatan with this watery, featureless persona I’ve adopted, and I’m minutes away from jacking the whole thing in, coming out of the men’s room with my hands up: “Hey, Lance—it was fun while it lasted, tell your roadies I said hi … Oh, and by the way, that saxophone part at the end of ‘Bad Little Secret’ sucks.”

  When Webster told me the exhibition was “to do with music,” it could have meant anything: it could have been a sound installation featuring recordings of an assortment of buskers from Vancouver, or a collection of classical composers’ portraits done in the style of Banksy, or an exploration of the design similarities between Scottish bagpipes and Mongolian nose-flutes. But no. It was none of those things, nor the several billion other things it might have been. It was, in fact—ta-daaa!—seven multicoloured, densely decorated “shrines,” each one complete with garlands, effigies, trinkets, various memorabilia, and the idol itself: an oil painting of a deceased, usually alternative, pop star.

  Each of these wretched items presented a new and woefully dicey challenge for me. It ended up like playing some crazy reverse pub quiz where you try to get as many questions wrong as possible, but are then required to justify why you don’t know the correct answer. To make matters sizeably worse, Webster insisted on helpfully guiding me round the place, making sure I appreciated the finer points of each work, and, of course, who the featured musical icon was. In truth, I probably massively overdid it, as the majority have wormed their way into mainstream popular culture anyway—but I had my reasons, which I present for your inspection as follows:

  Ian Curtis (teacups, return train tickets to Macclesfield, a couple of old radios, a seven-inch of “Transmission” broken in two, etc.). I suppose this was the “flagship” work of the exhibition, positioned right by the desk at the entrance. In retrospect it would have been totally safe for me to know who this was, but Webster caught me off guard by asking, “You heard of this guy?”—and I actually thought he was referring to the artist, so I said no, heralding the first of Webster’s unbearably playpen descriptions (“Well, at the end of the seventies, there was a band called Joy Division”—oh, the humiliation!).

  Kurt Cobain (cut-up plaid shirts, broken guitar strings, dollar bills on hooks, etc.). A no-brainer, you might say. But the bastard has based his painting on that photo session from summer ’92, when a short-haired Cobain had taken to wearing black-rimmed glasses, thus rendering himself near-unrecognisable to anyone but a music-press reader, so I mumbled some twaddle about him “ringing a bell.” “It’s Kurt Cobain!” exclaimed Webster, with a hint of exasperation. “Met him once, nice bloke,” he added breezily, as if discussing Dennis Waterman.

  Syd Barrett. Remembering his appearance in the dream I had at the beginning of this sorry saga, I greeted this “shrine” with a gasp—which Webster interpreted as appreciation of the predictable psychedelic bunting which accompanied the image of the man. “Amazing, isn’t it?” he sighed, and thankfully moved on to the next piece without further enquiry.

  Richey Manic (ripped-up pages from philosophy readers, various Holy Bible-era, military-chic clothing items, “4 REAL” carved in red across the top of his portrait, etc.). “Ah,
the odd one out,” smiled Webster as he approached. “Why’s that?” replied bonehead over here without really thinking properly, prompting yet another punchable explanation: “Well, there’s a rock band from Wales called the Manic Street Preachers, and before they became really popular they had a fourth member called Richey, who disappeared one day.” Argghh! The frustration! Perhaps he should write children’s books.

  Nick Drake (five large, pressed autumn leaves, various cannabis-related paraphernalia, a sepia-tinted photograph of a—presumably fruit—tree, etc.). Too obscure, I calculated, for a non-music enthusiast to know about; then I remembered that Webster is a massive fan. Too late. The ensuing rundown of facts I was already aware of took almost ten minutes, during which the only words I spoke were “Oh, right” and “Ah.” Just two more to go, thank God.

  Layne Staley shouldn’t really have been a problem. It would be perfectly possible for even the most respectable music fan to be stumped by this shade-wearing, pink-haired B-list grunge-rocker, although by now I was so bored of saying no that I was tempted to say yes, giving some improvised explanation that an ex-girlfriend ran the UK branch of the Alice in Chains fan club or something—but my brain was numb, I needed water and the rather gory syringe-related decoration had already kick-started my descent into the land of nausea.

  Michael Hutchence. Another no-brainer; but again, greeted by this lurid concoction of blond wigs, empty cans of Victoria beer and photos of the Charles Bridge in Prague (all surrounded, pretty tastelessly I thought, by a thick leather belt), I was tempted to go against the grain and shake my head again. Sense prevailed, however. “Oh, that’s the bloke from INXS,” I chirped, to a frown from Webster. “Can’t believe he’s the only one you knew,” he despaired. “Just going to the toilet,” I replied.

  So here I am. I must confess, I really have no idea how this ridiculous afternoon is going to finish. I’m sorely tempted to either tell all and bugger the consequences, or try to climb out this back window and leg it. There’d be little lost from doing that, and not much chance of comeback from Webster—he doesn’t even have my phone number. But after coughing up a small amount of bile, I summon my final reserves of patience and strength, and stride back into the main room, where I see, through the large front windows, an interesting little scene taking place on the street outside. Webster is being asked for an autograph.

  The two girls who’ve accosted him don’t look English—perhaps Spanish?—and they weren’t in the gallery beforehand, so perhaps they’ve followed us here from the museum; this being a little side street in the East End’s former industrial area, random passersby are few. They certainly look suitably flustered and adoring. Unable to resist, I venture outside to catch a bit of the conversation.

  “Oh, yeah?” Webster is saying. “Which one was that?”

  “Feile, in Cork,” one of the girls answers (Irish—I was close). “Must have been ninety-four, or ninety-five?”

  “Ah,” comes the response. “Our third from last gig.”

  Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now two gigs away from Aylesbury. This could be interesting.

  “No kidding?”

  “Yep,” he smiles sheepishly. “Just one in Amsterdam, then it was all over bar the drinking.”

  They all roar with laughter. I’m madly studying Webster’s face for any signs of … anything. But there are only smiles as he autographs a little notebook, then a dog-eared copy of the Lonely Planet guide to London belonging to the shyer, prettier one of the pair.

  “It was a deadly gig,” she offers, blushing as he hands the book back.

  “Yeah? Well, thanks. We’d been going ten years at that point, so we were probably quite good by then.”

  More laughter at the mock-modesty of the man. Then—as simple as a sunny day in August:

  “Why d’y’all jack it in?”

  Oh, you Irish beauty. You direct, perfectly charming asker of blissfully baggage-less questions. I’ll meet you in a parallel universe and buy you a crate of Guinness.

  I settle back in my metaphorical armchair and prepare myself for Webster’s answer.

  “Oh, we ran out of steam,” he breezes. “Ah, Alan! Girls, this is my friend Alan. We’re collaborating on a writing project.”

  I rise again from my metaphorical armchair, put on my best smile and step forward to shake their hands.

  Despite Webster’s wagon claims, I convince him we should close our afternoon with a quick visit to a particularly nice nearby boozer with an awesome selection of Belgian beers. He’s never been to the place and is duly impressed, ordering himself something dark and strong. We settle in. Feeling much more comfortable on this familiar turf and having witnessed a pop-star incident firsthand, I decide to risk a pop-star question.

  “Does it happen often, then, being recognised?”

  He bites his lip and flashes a quick look around the pub. “Y’know, it’s odd. For years it didn’t happen at all in this country. Recently, it’s happening more again—dunno why. It’s the cycle of things, I guess. But it’s always happened abroad. Never stopped.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nods.

  “What was the name of the band you were in?”

  He grins and rolls his eyes, but doesn’t answer.

  “What?”

  He takes a sip of his drink and looks away, shaking his head.

  “Have I said something wrong?”

  He exhales. “No … nothing.”

  He looks, for about thirty seconds, like he’s about to confess to a particularly sordid crime from a past life. Then, finally:

  “Thieving Magpies. Or ‘The’ Thieving Magpies, depending on how much of a hurry you’re in.”

  “You don’t like talking about it?”

  Another sip. “Sorry,” he says, “I reckoned you would have Googled it by now, or something.”

  I shake my head, taking my own sip.

  “It’s funny,” he muses, “how I seem to turn to my computer for everything these days, every single thing I want to know. I lost my keys the other day, and I swear I got halfway to the computer to Google ‘my keys.’ How bloody ridiculous is that?”

  We laugh, then stop.

  “But no,” he continues, perhaps realising he can’t avoid “it” forever. “You’re right, I don’t always like talking about it. Sometimes I do. I’ll bang on and on about it like you wouldn’t believe. Depends who’s asking, a lot of the time. But you and I … no offence, but we’ve always talked about other things, so it just seems … wrong.”

  “Okay.”

  “But there are things you don’t like talking about as well, I suppose? Like earlier.”

  “Er … yeah.”

  “Emotions don’t seem to be your favourite.”

  I shrug. “Good ones are okay.”

  “They’re all good, though. Feeling sad, feeling angry, it’s all completely necessary. Especially if you’re gonna be a writer. You can’t just wander around with a drunken grin on your face. I mean, when I write songs, they’re not all happy. It’d be duller than fuck if they were.”

  I nod, trying to ignore the four hundred questions instantly racked up in my mental outbox. I feel like I’m studying the eating habits of a particularly rare bird, and that it’s standing in front of me right now, chomping away. One move and I’ll scare it off.

  “And the best stuff I ever wrote,” he concludes, “was when I was feeling like utter shit every day. It’s horrible at the time, I wouldn’t recommend it, but you know—you gotta go through it.”

  This nugget digested, we move on to other topics. Yes, I could try to press him more. But frankly, I’m exhausted. And the unavoidable fact is we’re getting on well, but every time the talk goes anywhere near his music we take a nosedive into a steaming heap of conversational manure. “Just try and enjoy it for what it is,” instructed Alan (the real one) on the phone earlier. “Be a bit grateful.” So, in one of my rare instances of following Alan’s advice, I do. And in fact, miraculously, I start to enjoy m
yself. We finish that drink, then have another. We talk some more about Sainsbury Sid. We talk about my “project” and how it could perhaps develop. We talk about each other’s parents, a bit more about childhood, a little about school and teenage years. Then, finally, we return to Sid.

  “Well, I think you should go for it,” I state confidently. “Don’t worry about what I say. I’m just a miserable git who reads a lot of Iain Banks.”

  “He’s fantastic,” comments Webster.

  “Of course,” I concur, “but hardly the type of thing that would put you in the mood for a kids’ book. No, I reckon you’re onto a good thing, and with those illustrations I think it’ll be a lot of fun.”

  “Wow, Alan. You’re actually starting to sound relatively optimistic.”

  “Thanks,” I reply, with a guilty smile. “But it needs some work still, I think … to bring it up to the standard of the illustrations.”

  “All right then, Mr. Expert. How about this? I’m going away in a week’s time. Until then I’ve got quite a bit of production work to do, so what if … we reserved an entire afternoon of mucking about, properly, at my computer, on my stuff—and some of yours, if you want—get it into a shape where I think it’s fun and you don’t think it’s crap. Then we’ll go have some nosh in a pub.”

  The pair of trappist ales I’ve consumed leave me so delighted with this idea, which I assume means a visit to his flat, that in my rush to accept I don’t think to ask him where he’s going. But then, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

  After we’ve drained our beers and said goodbye (he’s going onwards to town in another taxi), I board the bus and feel something approaching contentment. It’s perhaps on the same rugby pitch as that rush of pleasure I received all those years ago, at the Harlow Square, frugging away, not five yards from Lance Webster, feeling that you’re genuinely where the action is; that the best of life is occurring right there, and that you’re not merely looking at it through a frosty window, vicariously trying to catch whatever scraps you can. I may not have my award-winning story of the last days of the Thieving Magpies, but in a funny, roundabout sort of way, I have become good friends with their lead singer.