The Alternative Hero (38 page)

Not acquainted with anyone else whose name begins with L and who’d send me something like this, my heart starts thumping and I
frantically review my options. There aren’t any. I make a breathless phone call to my office (despite being a crap liar I am the world heavyweight champion at pulling sickies) and race over to the other bus stop, the one that goes to the tube station. I’m still panting with anticipation, pinching myself and, more cynically, congratulating Webster on abandoning this “Geoff” nonsense (though that
is
his real name, the poor man), when the karma comes hurtling back at me and my phone bleeps again.

“Buy a ticket somewhere? What the fuck do you mean, ‘buy a ticket somewhere’? Are you fucking out of your
mind?
Where? Where does terminal three
go?
Do you think I actually have
money?”

I’m so incensed, all of the above is said out loud to the assorted bods gathered around the stop. With beer on my suit and profanities on my tongue, I’m one can of Carlsberg Special Brew away from the kind of nutter everyone moves away from. Lacking further bright ideas, I hurry off in the direction of home.

“I don’t understand,” ponders Polly five minutes later, in between drags of her cigarette. “Why would he be on the other side of security?”

“God knows! He’s fucking with me!”

“Mmm … maybe he’s on a massive stopover?”

“From where?”

“I dunno,” she frowns. “Like he’s flying from Mexico City to … um, Warsaw?”

“Ah, yes. That commonly travelled route.”

“Well, anywhere you have to change in London, really.”

“Why would he be doing that?
He’s from
London.”

“Clive, I really don’t know. Sometimes people make odd trips. Might be work-related.”

“But he’d be able to
leave
security … wouldn’t he? I mean, he’s British.”

“I don’t suppose you fancy texting back to ask why?”

I consider this for a second, but any of the phrases I might use (“Is there any particular reason you can’t meet me in the public area?”) sound pretty pathetic in the face of what he’s offering me. Polly pulls her dressing gown around her and exhales elegantly, producing a plume of smoke that hovers above our kitchen table for almost half a minute. We both stare, as if it’s about to morph into a genie. Which would be quite useful, in fact. Instead, Polly bangs her coffee cup down on the fridge and strides off to fetch the next best thing: her laptop. She plonks it on the table and starts looking at the Heathrow website.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ve expended too much energy on this bilge to bugger it up now,” she mutters.

“And?”

“So I’m finding out where terminal three goes, and we’re going to get you in there.”

“But Polly, I haven’t got any—”

“Clive, be silent. I’ve had quite enough of this cocking about.”

“But you can’t seriously be suggesting we buy a whole airline ticket just to get me the other side of—”

“Shush! Here we go. Terminal three. Canada. China. Air India. American Airlines. Mauritius.”

“Nice of him to pick the budget one.”

“New Zealand, Emirates, Egypt, Japan …”

“Maybe we could just do it over the phone?”

“Balls,” Polly counters. “Malaysia … lots of Middle Eastern places … Korea … ah, here you are … Turkey … Scandinavia. That’s better.”

But the day-of-travel ticket prices are all astronomical. A couple of one-way tickets to Stockholm and Copenhagen for seventy-ish look promising, until we notice they go at ten o’clock (just over ninety minutes away and I’m still at the wrong end of the Piccadilly line). Later this afternoon the fares shoot up to two sixty.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Polly yells at her machine. “Why isn’t there a flight to Guernsey or somewhere?”

Time is racing on and I’m pacing up and down the kitchen; the best bet seems to be Stavanger in Norway for two twenty-five, but then Polly has a brainwave.

“Air India fly to JFK,” she remembers, hammering on her keyboard. “I bet they’re … yes! Look! Two hundred!”

“You mean New York?”

“What other fucking JFKs do you know?” she snaps, pulling her purse from her handbag.

“Um … New York’s a bit far, isn’t it?”

“You’re not bloody
going
there, Clive, you moron. There you go, two hundred including everything. Not bad. Who’d have thought?”

“Okay,” I sigh. “Let’s do it.”

Polly whips out her credit card and a few moments later I am heading back out the door. I turn round and give her a smile. She’s a mad old fish but she has her moments. On Thursday she works from home, you see. At least, that’s what she tells her employers.

“Any plans for today, then?” I ask.

“Jamie’s coming round in an hour, there’s a bottle of Stoli in the freezer and my legs need waxing,” she shrugs.

“Sounds like fun. Thanks, Polly.”

“Go on,” she nods. “Fuck off.”

˙  ˙  ˙

Of course, going to Heathrow on the tube is a journey longer than most flights, so there’s plenty of time to review this incredibly odd place at which I’ve arrived. Exactly what’s come over the man, I really cannot guess. As the train trundles past the familiar stops-King’s Cross, Green Park, South Kensington, Earl’s Court, Hammersmith, Acton Town—I become more confused and more nervous. It’s pretty far from how I imagined I’d feel, on the way to receive this most precious of explanations. At Northfields I start worrying it’ll be the anticlimax Billy Flushing suspected: simply a bad day, too much booze and the distinct impression his career was heading toilet-wards. I require nothing short of Armageddon: at least four deaths of close family members, perhaps the revelation that Gloria Feathers had been male all along, and an alien visiting him in his dressing room before the show. Deep inside, I know I’m going to be disappointed. I’m also wondering how much of this “burying the past” I’m obliged to help him with in return, and what it could possibly entail in a Heathrow departure lounge. As the train halts between Boston Manor and Osterley I look at my watch and realise that, whatever it is, we haven’t got long to do it: a little less than two and a half hours. At Hounslow East I’m starting to sweat, and another text arrives.

Are you fucking coming or not?

It’s funny, his swear count has gone zooming up since he’s become Lance again. I fire an optimistic one back (“Yes, am ten minutes away”) and wonder what sort of moody ex-rock star awaits at the other end. As we creep through Hatton Cross I find myself worrying that perhaps this is all an elaborate and expensive windup (which I may well deserve), a punishment for stringing him along with the whole “Alan the writing coach” charade. At the very least, I suspect he’ll be a little cold and uncooperative. Finally we roll up at
Heathrow 123. I pelt down the long corridor (the travolator is conveniently broken), sprint into the packed departure hall, a nice lady checks me in … and then I discover the most likely reason for Webster’s reluctance to come back out to the public area.

The queue for security is of
biblical
proportions. It’s an epic. They’ve made entire Hollywood films about it. First I think it’s a joke, or they’re actually waiting for Richard Branson’s autograph, or something. But no. It starts from a point irritatingly close to the barriers, then loops around the entire building, presided over by incongruously smiley airport staff, until it returns to its original source. It winds past three airport information desks, several bureaux de change, countless check-in areas, umpteen shops and no less than twenty-five branches of Costa. Occasionally an announcement is made, along the lines of “If you’re on such-and-such a shortly departing flight, go to the front of the queue,” but as it’s only ten past ten and my flight doesn’t leave until after one, I’m not going
anywhere
. Once again my woollen suit is providing me with my own private sauna, and I’d kill for a coffee. Something must be done.

I leave the queue (I’ve moved a whole two feet since joining it) and wander over to the barriers. It’s the usual bedlam of various airline employees ordering people about, arguments over the rules about carrying liquid, folks trying to push in and then being told to sod off by fluorescent-yellow-waistcoat-wearing Heathrow bods. I stick around for a moment to see exactly what occurs when passengers are legitimately allowed to barge through. A soon-to-leave Dubai flight is called, prompting a flurry of people flocking to the barrier from whatever distant corner of the terminal they’d reached. I watch carefully: a female airport official looks at the boarding pass of the first person, then unhooks part of the metal fence which holds the line of punters together, allowing the lucky few to walk down the side and straight past the hundreds of passengers shuffling along in
the amusement-park-style internal queuing system until they reach the short line of people waiting their turn to put bags and jackets on the X-ray belt. The official at the gate only bothers to look at about one in three passes, whereas the bloke by the X-ray belt itself will look at every one of them, but by that stage in the process all he’ll care about is that your boarding pass is valid, not how soon your flight leaves. I glance at my watch, then at the terminal-straddling queue. By the time I reach the front, it’s certain that Lance Webster will be gone, up in the sky, off to wherever the hell he’s going, leaving me with no story, no two hundred pounds and, as Alan would probably say, no
closure
. It’s blatantly obvious what I should do.

I nonchalantly amble away from the gate, pretending to be on the phone. The further away I get, the slower I walk. I’ve travelled fifty metres or so when a new announcement is made.

A Virgin flight. To JFK.

One out of two ain’t bad.

I turn around. All along the queue, people are ducking out and marching up to the barrier. I dash up the outside and spy a suitably chaotic family by the gate: a dad, a mum, a teenage boy, a nine- or ten-year-old girl and a toddler of indeterminate gender. I take a deep breath and sandwich myself between the woman and the teenager, smiling cheerily.

“Thank God for that, eh? Thought we were gonna miss it.”

“Oh, it’s just madness,” replies the mum. “Daniel, look after your sister. Jason, stop pulling on that gentleman’s jacket!”

“Flying with kids, eh?” I smile at the dad. “Nightmare.”

“We tried to leave ’em at home.” He winks. “Rumbled at the last minute.”

“Been to New York before?”

And so, chatting away, we push our way along. As regular as
clockwork, the airport official looks at mum and dad’s boarding passes. Then everyone gets distracted by the toddler. The mum rushes back to fetch him. The teenager shows his own pass, then the girl and I walk through together. Finally the mum returns carrying the toddler, apologising profusely to the official. I’m just a slightly older cousin, or maybe the mum’s much younger brother. But suddenly:

“Sorry, where are you going?” the official asks, pointing at me.

The whole terminal seems to screech to a halt.

“New York!” I beam, waving my boarding pass and risking a familial hand on the toddler’s head. “With this lot!”

“Okay,” she smiles.

Phew! Good old Uncle Clive. We’re all one big, crazy holidaying family. We rush past the poor bastards snaking round the queuing fences and reach the X-ray belt in no time, where the nice man studies my passport and boarding pass and rods me through. My shoulder bag goes onto the belt, jacket goes in the tray. I skip through the metal detector and … I’ve done it. Three minutes. Fuck. It worked. I can breathe again.

And not before bloody time, because my phone is ringing. It’s him.

“All right, all right, I’m here,” I puff. “Where are you?”

“The Bistro, at the back.”

“Do they serve coffee?”

“Of course. Get your arse over here—I’m leaving in an hour.”

“An hour!” I yell, but he’s hung up already.

Okay. So he’s an impatient rock star again. Fun lies ahead.

I worm my way through the quagmire of shops, overpriced fooderies, tables, chairs and people, finally spotting the place he’s at. I can see him in there, face wrapped in his damn shades, sitting at a table
next to a frosted window. I’m sure he’s seen me, but he’s not smiling. I clear my throat, put my phone on silent and stride over.

“That was a very long ten minutes,” he begins.

“Have you seen the bloody queue?”

“No,” he says. “I’m in first class.”

“Of course you are.”

“Hey. That doesn’t stop my flight from being delayed by five fucking hours.”

“Five hours? Who the hell are you flying with?”

“Don’t ask.”

He puts his newspaper away while I order my coffee. Once the waitress has departed he sits back, folding his arms.

“So.”

“So,” I reply, in a slightly more hesitant, questioning tone. His next statement is a curveball.

“You’ve been dreaming about me.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s what it says here,” he explains, extracting a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket. “‘Dear Lance, I’ve been dreaming about you.’”

“Oh, God,” I gasp, the penny dropping.

“‘I feel you are looking for vindication,’” he continues, one of his crafty smiles forming, “‘and I can help you.’”

“Just give me that bloody thing, will you?”

“Ah, na-na-na-na … not so fast, writer boy,” he commands, whipping the note out of my reach as I try to grab it. Bastard. He
is
enjoying this.

“So you kept it, then,” I blush.

“Course I kept it. I keep everything. What do you think ‘Disposal’ is all about?”

“Hmm, yeah,” I nod, trawling through the lyric section of the old
cranium. “‘
I’ve got expanding cupboard space, for every word, every kiss, every punch in the face…’”

“Well done,” he says, either impressed or being sarcastic, I can’t really tell with his shades on.

“I’m afraid I’m a bit of a fan,” I venture, rather pitifully.