The Alternative Hero (12 page)

But on a personal level, we knew next to nothing of Webster. He’d seemed pleasant enough when we spoke to him, but privately, who had any idea? He’d once memorably described himself as an “arrogant, overbearing and selfish tosser”—which at the very least seemed likely to be an exaggeration—but any reports reaching us suggested a rounded character whose only crime was an occasional inability to hold his drink. He was certainly an expert in self-promotion, developing Morrissey-like notoriety for giving incredibly good interviews, often for publications that had little interest in his music but that were simply after a few choice bon mots and a spark of controversy. I often forget, when rereading these, how insanely young he was at the time; that he was so unapologetically self-assured still strikes me as bloody impressive, especially remembering what a clueless little fart I myself was at the age of twenty-three.

But was he really happy? An odd thought, perhaps, but one I feel the need to address on the eve of meeting him again, some seventeen years later, his life so profoundly different. And yes, I know I’m only going to be serving him in a vet’s surgery, but still. Imagine I’m not. Imagine I’m actually going to be sitting down, tape recorder and all,
for a proper interview. What would I ask him? Where would I start? Having scaled such heights, he’s now living in a small flat in a boring north-London suburb, and no one knows who the fuck he is. Having sold a good seven or eight million records over the course of his career, he’s now arguing with traffic wardens about eighty quid. Am I being hopelessly naïve, or is he likely to be really,
seriously
pissed off about this state of affairs? And, as Noel Gallagher once charmlessly scribbled, where—why—
how
—did it all go so fucking wrong?

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.

1. Webster showed up (good).
   

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

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

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

5. 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:

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?