The Alternative Hero

SUGGESTED LISTENING: The Wonder Stuff, Hup (Polydor, 1989)

No one likes a
grown-up pop star

I’ve got to hand it to this Lance Webster bloke. He may be a rubbish drinker, a former womaniser, occasionally arrogant, selfish and frequently nasty to his audiences, but he’s really jolly good at making Clive Beresford cry. That’s four times in twenty years now, a record unmatched by anyone, even my first girlfriend.
Fortunately, unlike my performance in the toy museum, I do manage to control myself. We are in a major international airport, after all. It’s limited to a few tears leaking out and a couple of fulsome blows of my nose, and, to be fair, Webster is doing much the same. Then he scruffs up his hair, lets out a quick laugh and claps his hands.
“Yes, yes,” he sighs. “All the clichés. [Hollywood hero voice] ‘The day my world collapsed … I watched in terror, as my whole life caved in before my eyes.’ F*ck, man, I almost feel like a drink …”
“Well …”
“I said ‘almost,’ Clive. The sun is not over the yardarm.”
In truth, the thought of a drink doesn’t thrill me either, after all that. I study my notes, which are largely unintelligible, but I’ve a feeling I’m not going to forget much of what he’s said.
“You should get a Dictaphone,” he comments.
“I’ve got one. I just can’t find a shop that sells the tapes.”
“Tapes! Come on, Clive. Twenty-first century.”
I stir some sugar into my coffee, starting to feel a bit vague from lack of food.
“It’s good calling you Clive,” he notes. “I never really thought you looked like an Alan. Should have known it was all bullshit.”
I start to apologise, then stop myself. We’re silent for a while. After years spent frantically trying to envisage Webster’s final few hours as a relevant rock star, hearing their true contents at last seems to have blown a few of my fuses. But either I’m being a bit thick or he’s left a lot unexplained, and further questions seem tricky to pose without appearing vulgar.
“So,” I say, gingerly, “can I—”
“Yep, you got fifteen minutes, journo-boy, might as well use it.”
“How did you discover Persephone was lying?”
He bites his lip and leans back, while I hope to buggery that I’ve got the right end of the stick. Mercifully, it seems I have.
“It started to make sense over the next few weeks, I s’pose. I suddenly had lots of time to think, as you can imagine … No band, no girlfriend … no life, basically. I just sat in my flat ruminating, trying not to drink. Failing most of the time. But I kept going back to how Persephone told me the news … like I already knew Gloria was pregnant. I didn’t, though … she never said anything. But I knew Gloria so well … better than her own family did, probably … and I knew that, despite everything, she’d never ask them to tell me she’d lost a baby, not without first telling me there was one. So I made up my mind about that bit: Gloria never asked them to tell me a damn thing.”
“Why d’you think she even telegrammed them at all? I thought she wanted to get away from them?”
“Money,” he shrugs. “Not an awful lot of free health care for foreigners in Russia. She had no travel insurance, obviously. F*ck knows what she was thinking, going out there in her condition with no safety net. They wired some cash, sorted her out, then arranged for her to be flown to Tokyo, where a family friend lived. That’s where the baby was born. She’s bloody lucky her family are so rich. Otherwise she’d have probably died herself, let alone the baby.”
I frown hard, my mind returning to that afternoon in Webster’s flat: the framed photo of the little boy, the only flash of colour or emotion in his otherwise blank canvas of an abode. The child would be older than that, surely? But of course, the photo could be from a few years ago.
“So she left Russia for good?”
“Yup.”
“So …”
“Yeah,” he nods, following my thoughts. “Alison whatsit never did spot her in that café. Must’ve been some other nutter.”
“You read that?”
“Course I did. I read everything.”
He pours himself more coffee from the industrial-sized jug we ordered, exhaling heavily. I find it a little implausible, the idea of Lance Webster himself turning to a cheaply made fanzine called Things That Make Me Go Moo for information on the whereabouts of his closest friend—but then everything is starting to feel a little back to front today.
“F*cking idiots, her family,” he spits, with vintage bile. “The irony was, I hadn’t even thought of trying to find Gloria up ’til that point … I hadn’t the time, with the tour and everything. But I started looking bloody hard after that, I tell you. Precisely the f*cking opposite of what they hoped to achieve.”
“Bastards,” I whisper. “Why did they hate you so much?”
“Initially, because they’re a bunch of upper-class wankers. But as time went by their feelings became a little more … justified, shall we say.”
“But this is what I don’t get,” I interrupt. “It was hardly your fault Gloria was so stubborn about the whole destiny thing. I mean, you guys were in love … It must have been bloody difficult for you …”
“Not as hard as you’d imagine,” he counters. “Don’t forget, I had my own reasons for not wanting to be tied down to her. I was young, stupid and incredibly vain … Gloria was attractive, but she wouldn’t have exactly been a status symbol. Particularly not during the whole Bruise Unit thing, when I had people on my arm like Camilla McBriar and Sally Chester … Both ended up being models, which unfortunately meant a lot to me at the age of twenty-five. It wasn’t until the end, when Gloria really started to get sick, that I remembered I loved her. Sounds f*cking crazy, I know, but what can I tell you? I was an idiot.”
“So what did you do?”
He puffs and places his head on the table for a second, each word of his confession clearly a considerable effort. I feel painfully guilty pressing him further, but I guess if he didn’t want to continue, he wouldn’t.
“Well, I started trying to convince her we should just say f*ck it, and be together. This would be … autumn of ninety-four, I think. Told her I was prepared to take the risk, and if the whole bloody cosmos came crashing down around us, or whatever she believed, then so be it. And you’ve got to understand … she really did believe it. Man, you should have seen what she started to do to herself when we tried to release that stupid song as an A-side …”
I brace myself for some graphic description of unprecedented hideousness—which thankfully he doesn’t bother with.
“Anyway, I said I’d make huge changes for her … give up the other women … even the band, if it came to it. Sod it, I’d made enough money, and The Social Traps recording sessions were … well, far from a paradise of creativity. But of course she didn’t buy it. So then we had this one stupid night when it finally went too far … and that was it. I don’t think I saw her again after that. A few months later she was gone.”
My body shudders involuntarily. I remember my video footage of the 1995 Brit Awards, Gloria clearly seen lurking in the background. I glance furtively around the restaurant, not really sure what I’m expecting to see … Tony Gloster, perhaps, secreted in a distant booth, taking notes. All I see is a large man in an Arsenal top, irritably trying to persuade staff to give him a steak knife made of something other than plastic. The trials of air travel in the twenty-first century.
I turn back to Webster, who is gazing forlornly at his mobile phone.
“So,” I ask gently, “did you … um … did you find her, in the end?”
“I didn’t. She wrote to me. Sometime around Christmas ninety-five. Didn’t mention the baby straightaway. She just said … she knew her family had been lying to me, but didn’t specify what about. I still didn’t even know where in the world she was, I had to send my letters via an intermediary for … oh, months. Then after about a year she started to mention she’d been ‘looking after a child.’”
He shakes his head and stares into the middle distance, exhausted by the complexity of his own life. After a minute or so he shakes himself out of it, looks back at me and laughs.
“Well, there you are. That’s the long answer to the question ‘Why was the Aylesbury gig so shit?’ Is that acceptable?”
“Yeah,” I smile, still scribbling on my pad. “I think so.”
“How close were you, then?”
“I’m sorry?”
“To the stage. At the gig.”
“Oh … right down the front, as usual.”
“Did you feel like shooting me?”
“Um … no. Alan was the angry one. I think it finally killed his career as an indie kid.”
“Shit, really?”
“Afraid so,” I reply, toying with the idea of showing him the “black” page from Alan’s scrapbook. “But I think I was a little more philosophical about it. I was completely off my face anyway. Plus … well, I was used to you being, um, a bit rude.”
“Thank you!” he cries, jumping up and banging on the table. “I said this at the time to anyone who’d listen, but no one believed me, no one remembered! We used to be ridiculously rude to our audiences. Used to tell ’em to f*ck off, called them cunts, everything! And they loved it!”
“Totally,” I concur. “Which is why I was so perplexed by the reaction it got.”
“Well, everything had got so bloody clean by ninety-five.”
“That’s right. And ‘moshing’ beat ‘rucking.’”
“You what?” he frowns.
“When me and Alan started out, we ‘rucked’ to gigs. Now everyone ‘moshes,’ which used to be just a heavy-metal thing. Pisses me off.”
“Ah, well … we used to call it ‘pogoing,’ so I can’t really help you with that one.”
“But … the whole business of you being rude … I remember my first-ever Magpies gig—”
“Which was?”
“Brixton, spring ’89.”
“Ah … the ‘What If Everyone Goes Mad?’ tour,” he smiles, looking a bit misty-eyed. “Not bad, if I remember. Had a row with Martin before the encore. Played the cover of ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ for the first time.”
“That’s right. And you screamed at someone for chanting ‘You fat bastard.’”
“Ha! Did I?”
“Yeah,” I laugh. “Then gobbed at a stage diver.”
“Ah, the gobbing thing. See? Good clean fun, all that. Never a word of complaint.”
“I suppose we weren’t used to you punching security guards, though.”
“No,” he concedes. “But it’s better than hurling bass guitars at them.”
“Nicky Wire,” I respond, catching his reference.
“Right,” he nods—then fixes me with a sudden glare. “F*cking hell, you’re full of shit, telling me you didn’t know anything about music.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t f*cking apologise.”
“Uh.”
“You’re a bloody fool. It made me so much more suspicious than I ever would’ve been. Can’t believe you made me go through all those stupid explanations when we were going round the art gallery.”
“Well,” I admit, “if it’s any consolation, it was pretty excruciating for me to listen to.”
“Thanks, arsehole,” he snaps. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
“I didn’t really know what else to do,” I mutter pathetically. “Didn’t want you to think I’d heard of you.”
He stands up again, grandly replaces his shades and announces: “There are some people in the world who’ve heard of Kurt Cobain, but who haven’t heard of me. They exist. But I can take it. I’m a big boy.”
I blink up at him, at a loss for further responses. Then he dashes off—to the loo, presumably.
I exhale and lean back in my chair. I feel pretty drained. His energy has multiplied tenfold compared to the times we sat discussing writing, and it’s hard to navigate his ups and downs. It’s a skill, I reflect: the feisty rock ’n’ roll interview. Every bit as important as singing or playing guitar. A certain amount of his former warmth has gone—the price I’ve paid, I suppose, for gleaning his darkest, grimmest secrets. There’s still heaps I want to ask him, not least about his kid, but I know I’m quite ridiculously privileged to have been told as much as I have. Not just because he’s Lance Webster, but simply because he’s a human being and I’m just … someone he doesn’t know terribly well. Which is still the oddest thing. Why the hell has he chosen to tell all this stuff to me? I suppose there might be some limited catharsis in getting it all off his chest, but surely he can pay a professional for that sort of thing? Not some weirdo who puts silly notes through his—
Silly notes through his door.
I scrabble around on the table but only find empty sugar packets, Alan’s scrapbook, Webster’s newspaper and his boarding pass. Then I spot what I’m looking for on the seat, poking out of his jacket pocket. I lean over, snatch up the scruffily folded piece of paper, take a deep breath and open it:


Webster has returned by the time I finish reading.
“You enjoying that?”
I toss it onto the table with distaste. “It’s … amazing.”
“I rather like it.”
“Why on earth did I lay it out like that?”
“Probably something primal,” he muses. “Like, that’s the shape your subconscious wants to write in. The Christmas tree of desperation, Freud might call it.”
I pick it up again. I feel like I’m examining my own drunkenness through a microscope. This could turn out to be more educational than expected. I’m astonished that the pissed me thinks this sort of thing is a good idea. Having said that, it’s not quite as bad as those roadies made out. In fact …
“Um … funny thing is … it’s embarrassing, desperate, and really rather sad, but it’s not … threatening at all, is it?”
“Not really,” he replies. “Just a bit creepy.”
“But I don’t understand. If it’s not threatening … then why did you send your stooges round to see me?”
“Ah. Well … I didn’t, really. That was Malcolm’s idea. He’s overcautious.”
“Oh my God! They told me what I’d written was hugely threatening, and to f*ck off, basically, insinuating they’d come back and break my legs if I didn’t!”
“Shit,” he chuckles. “Sorry. I guess they were nipping it in the bud. But I also wanted them to size you up, see what sort of, er … enthusiast we were dealing with. I’ve had a bit of trouble with that sort of thing, you know.”
“Um … yeah, I know.”
At this point he takes off his sunglasses again, revealing a face with a different tone—far more serious, heavy with intent. His eyes are bloodshot and I realise once again how emotional this must have been for him. But I couldn’t be less prepared for the gear change to come. He puts both elbows on the table, leans forwards and narrows his eyes slightly, as if composing himself for some complicated scientific explanation.
“I have to say,” he begins, “after they visited you, I was planning to get in touch.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, I really was. But to randomly show up at someone’s flat isn’t really my style, and as you’d forgotten to give me any other—”
“F*cking hell!” I gasp. “I never put my bloody email address on it!”
He shakes his head and sips his coffee.
“Then how the f*ck did you … ?”
From his shoulder bag he fishes out a tatty-looking coloured booklet. A rather familiar booklet, with a poorly printed picture of what looks like Belle and Sebastian on the cover. I reach out to take it. And bugger me with a pitchfork, it’s a copy of Definitely Not. One of the final few copies of Definitely Not, from May 1998 (interview with Cable, review of the second Garbage album). I flick straight to the last page, and there it is: my email address, which I must’ve had for all of two months.
“Where the f*ck did you get this?”
“Gloria gave it to me.”
“Gloria gave it to you? How did Gloria get it?”
“Gloria was on the mailing list.”
I gape at him for a few astonished moments, then absentmindedly flick through the pages. This isn’t one of the issues I kept, so it’s strange to see the various features again, the editorial, the letters, the appalling photos … but to be honest, I’m busier wondering how the hell I could’ve missed Gloria Feathers among the two-hundred-odd names I sent the rag to every quarter.
“Gloria was a complete fanzine hound,” he continues. “You surely knew that?”
“Yeah, but …”
I notice one of my rambling discourses about Webster himself and snap the booklet shut.
“You used to send it to a Lucille Sanson in Lyon, France.”
“Um … perhaps, yes—I do remember sending a couple abroad …”
“She’s one of Gloria’s school friends.”
“No!”
“Yup. She sent stuff on for Gloria … to wherever she was.”
I’m flummoxed. I’ve a feeling I should be realising something important, but my brain’s processors are too jammed to function properly. Does this mean Gloria gave it to Webster recently, or … back then?
“That’s who I had to send all my letters to,” he explains, “until Gloria told me where she really was.”
This is too bizarre. I gulp some coffee, praying it’ll have some sort of untangling effect on my brain.
“Which page were you on?” he asks.
“Oh … nothing, just some feature about—”
“It’s the editorial, isn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Go on, read it,” he instructs.
I open the fanzine again. Dear oh dear, the thought that he’s seen all this nonsense is acutely embarrassing. But he has seen my note, so we’ve kind of hit the bottom of that particular barrel already …
I’d like to thank Mary Ryder in Norwich for her letter of last week, in which she put my thoughts into words perfectly regarding Webster’s latest incident. He is indeed not a man who should be mocked. He’s trying, in his own heartbroken way, to say many things to a world which will no longer listen. He’s attempting to warn us of the dangers ahead for the alternative music world, when sales figures and chart positions will kill new bands before they’ve even had a chance to break into their stride. Music will cease to be about passion, intelligence, humour and warmth, but will be governed by the likelihood of a certain song being used in a car advertisement, or by what designer jeans a so-called indie group are sporting on the cover of the NME. We’ll be surrounded by faceless, charmless dullards with nothing to say and no decent music to say it to. Webster’s own wrenching experiences of the last few years should speak volumes to us, but everyone’s decided to ignore him or laugh at him instead.
“F*ck me,” I wince. “What a pile of earnest bollocks!”
“Read the last paragraph,” says Webster. “Out loud.”
“Oh, God, do I really have to?”
“Read it,” he commands.
I look down, hot and exasperated. Perhaps this is what he means by burying the past: getting Clive Beresford to read the past aloud to him in the middle of an airport terminal. Each to their own.
“Uh … it just says, ‘I’m going to close the correspondence regarding Webster for a while now, but I’d like to finish by saying, to him, wherever he is, remember all that you’ve achieved, and don’t ever forget that no matter what the music press or anyone else says, you’ve composed and played music which has enriched the lives of thousands of confused, frustrated and lonely young people around the world, played gigs that have sent legions of punters home ecstatically happy, and written lyrics that will remain permanently lodged in the head of anyone with an ear for a good line and a spark of wit. You’re fragile right now, and you deserve to give yourself a break. Hear it from someone who’s been with you since the autumn of 1988: you don’t need to fight anymore. Take it easy zeitgeist man, you’ll always be our alternative hero.’”
I quickly close the booklet and knock back the last of my coffee. I’m nervous again and I can feel myself blushing. Webster’s put his shades back on—his standard interview punctuation mark, I’m now realising—so I’m quite literally in the dark as to his point of view. The sight of those impossibly black lenses on his impassive, featureless face reminds me of something, but I’m presently too frazzled to place it. By the fact he hasn’t said anything, I’d almost guess he’s angry. Perhaps because I made him sound like such a casualty. He’s not known for being nice to interviewers who point out his weaknesses, so I grip the edge of my chair and clench my teeth for the ride.
“So, d’you think I liked seeing all this stuff, at the time?” he asks flatly.
“I, um, dunno … I guess I was a little bit passionate about the whole thing.”
“Mmm, it seems so.” He stares back at me, inclining his head slightly. “And can I ask … what exactly were you trying to achieve by writing all that?”
“Well … I was trying to … y’know. I was angry. At the way you’d been treated. I wanted to, er … defend you.”
“You thought I needed defending.”
“Um … er … well, not exactly defending … I guess it was more … redressing the balance. Trying to blow the lid on some of the … um … the nonsense that was being written.”
“And you’re still trying. Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I nod. “I suppose I am. That’s what I mean when I say I’m after vindication.”
“For me or for you?”
That bloody question again. I shift uneasily in my seat, aware that my sodden shirt is now sticking to my back.
“Well, for you mainly. But it’s been difficult … not having the full story.”
“And now you’ve got it,” he states sternly. “Haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I squeak.
He leans back and folds his arms.
“So. What are you going to do with it now, then?”
I’ve been dreading this. It’s going to sound so unfathomably mercenary. How I wish he’d take those f*cking sunglasses off.
“Um … well, I suppose I’ll …”
“Huh?”
“Well, I’ll start by writing it up, y’know … properly … so it can be read by people other than just me, and then I’ll …”
His black lenses are saying nothing. They seem to be getting even darker, but that must be my imagination.
“Then I suppose I’ll try to interest some people in it. You know, people who’ll appreciate what it all means, and so on …”
“Like who?”
“Um … y’know … the usual … I’ll start with Q perhaps. They might like to do a retrospective feature.”
“Possibly.”
Then it hits me. The video for “Bad Little Secret.” He wore shades throughout the whole bloody clip, staring straight at the camera, mouthing the words as if in some sort of zombie trance. Their shittest video. Doubtless he decided looking cold, blank and detached would perform wonders with the American market. It worked. And he’s using the same tactic to freak me out. It’s working now, too. What a f*cker.
“Um,” I continue desperately, “then there’s Mojo and Uncut, they sometimes—”
“Know any of the editors there?”
“No, but I—”
“Anywhere else?”
“Um … ah, yes, a friend told me you’re still fairly well-known in the States, so maybe I’ll try …”
He’s shaking his head already. Oh shit.
“… Rolling Stone,” I conclude pathetically, Alan’s words from eighteen years ago leaping into my head: “You’ve got to have your strategy worked out, man.”
Webster drums his fingers on the table and looks away, directing his pair of black voids towards the centre of the restaurant.
“And you think these people will be interested in all this bullshit, do you?”
“Well, I would be, if I were—”
“And you imagine they’d actually pay for it?”
I let out a rather large sigh.
“Look, Lance—”
“Geoff.”
“Sorry: Geoff … Look, it sounds bloody awful, I know … It’s your life. But really, the whole point of me doing it is so you can be vindicated, and …”
Here I run out of steam. Arse. He’s got me.
Silence.
“I know someone who’d buy it,” he announces.
“Uh?”
He’s still looking over at the bar, perhaps eyeing up one of the waitresses.
“Who?”
“Someone who’d make really good use of it, and make it worth your while, too.”
“Who do you mean?” I demand, tired of this tortuous exchange.
He turns and looks straight back in my direction.
“Me.”
I snigger disappointedly.
“You what?”
“I’m serious.”
“No, sorry … what are you saying?”
“I’ll buy it from you,” he insists. “Exclusive rights, of course.”
I’ve run out of ways to ask what the hell he’s talking about, so I stay quiet.
“I’ve told you what you wanted to hear … now here’s your side of the bargain. I’ll buy it off you for ten grand.”
Oh God. He’s gone bonkers again. Next he’ll be shaving off his hair and putting on his white suit.
“Um …”
“Ten grand. Sterling,” he adds.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “I’m totally confused.”
Now he’s even getting his bloody chequebook out.
“Wait, hang on,” I protest, trying to grab his pen. “What are you doing?”
He drops the pen and again takes off his shades.
“Listen, Clive … I don’t mean to patronise you, but you’re being really na?ve. I’ll be totally honest: you’re not going to get much out of this story. No one will care. Screw any false modesty: who really gives a f*ck about me? You might get one of those silly half-page ‘where are they now’ pieces, if you’re lucky. As for any money, forget it.”
“But that’s not the point, it’s …”
“And frankly, I don’t want everyone knowing all this stuff. I’m not going to be around much anymore, but … my family’s still here, a few friends … They’d find it … well, difficult.”
“So why the hell have you told me?”
“Because you deserved to know.”
I study his face for a moment. I see no humour—and very little of anything else, in fact.
“Is that it?”
“Look at it this way okay? I’ve been living with this shit for years, and gradually I’ve managed to patch up a few old wounds. But the one thing I’ve never done is say sorry, and explain … to someone who was there.”
“At Aylesbury?”
“Yeah. And the couple of years after that.”
“But that’s just it,” I persist. “If I write this thing, you’ll be able to apologise and explain it to everyone…”
“No,” he frowns. “Not in the way you’re hoping. Oh, a few people might say, All right, well, fair enough, then’—and instantly forget about it. But it’ll just mean more embarrassment for me, and the whole thing’ll rise to the surface again.”
“But …”
“And there are others involved.”
It’s this last bit that shuts me up. Call me slow on the uptake, but for the first time I have the slightest idea where he’s going after all this.
“But you,” he states, pointing at me, “are probably one of the only people left who it genuinely means something to.”
He opens his chequebook again, and starts to write.
“Look, Lance—”
“Geoff,” he corrects me again, not looking up.
“Sorry, Geoff … I don’t think I can—”
“Clive, listen to me. One of the old songs just got licensed for a big advert in America. Ten grand is roughly what I’ll get, and it may sound insane, but that’s ten grand I don’t want. It’ll be a reminder of a past life, hanging around like a bad smell. And also … well, there are other reasons why I don’t want it. It’s a single R in Beresford, isn’t it?”
“Um … yeah, but …”
“Plus, you have earned it,” he nods, “running around like a twat for the last few months, listening to me prattle on today. Oh, and the work you did on Sainsbury Sid, and who knows what’ll happen with that?”
Bloody hell, Sid the fly. I’d almost completely forgotten.
“So … you take this,” he breezes, flinging over the mammoth cheque, “and you bloody well sort yourself out. You’re a f*cking good writer. You should be doing something with it … other than hankering after ex-indie pop stars.”
I gaze down at the row of zeros in the box, and look back up at him.
“I still don’t understand why you’re giving me this.”
“For f*ck’s sake, Clive, don’t make me spell it out to you—I’ll miss my bloody plane.”
I can’t help but continue to wordlessly gape at him.
“You don’t get it, do you? Cast your mind back. I was at my f*cking wits’ end in ninety-six. My career was f*cked, my girl was thousands of miles away with a child I hadn’t even met … didn’t even know what gender it was … my bloody dad was dying of cancer and I was surrounded by people laughing at me and calling me a cock. It often felt like you were the only person on my side.”
I try to respond, but only a feeble croak emerges.
“Gloria started to send me cuttings. Bits and pieces you were doing, a word of encouragement, a letter of support. The way you asked people to write in with their thoughts, gig memories, favourite B-sides … it all reached me. Yours was the only British review of Commercial Suicide that understood what I was trying to do, and appreciated the f*cking state I was in … I was almost ready to give up songwriting entirely before I saw that. Then when things really started to deteriorate … well, man, you practically pulled me in from the edge of a building. The things you shouted to me at BFM … this may sound unbelievable, but … f*ck it, they actually calmed me. No way was I going quietly into that police van before you appeared!”
If I wasn’t sitting down I probably would’ve fallen over. I’m waiting for the moment when he says, “Nah, only winding you up,” and rips the cheque in two.
“But how did you know that was me?” is all I manage to ask.
“Well … that’s the strange thing. I didn’t actually know it was Clive Beresford for years, until your note came through the door. That line you wrote at the bottom,” he says, opening the scrap of paper again, “‘You’ve done so much.’”
“Ugh. Cheesy.”
“Maybe,” he concedes. “But distinctive.”
I look back at him, a cocktail of nausea and butterflies careering around within my torso. I need an extra hour with him, plus a secretary to transcribe all this hair-raising stuff just in case I convince myself I’ve dreamed it. And I need a drink. A waitress passes with a couple of beers and I seriously consider lunging for one of them.
“So then this note shows up,” Webster continues, “at a time like this …”
“A time like what?”
“A time when I’m making some major changes to my life,” he responds, in a manner that forbids further prying. “The note comes through the door, and I realise there’s some unfinished business.”
“Are you seriously telling me,” I frown, “that if I’d simply walked up to you on the high street and said, ‘Hi, I’m Clive Beresford. Can we talk?’—you would have said yes?”
He sighs.
“Probably.”
I let out a little moan and bury my face in my hands, marvelling at the untold pointlessness of everything that’s happened to me since that Saturday in April. The time, the expense, the job, the stress, the lies. Some of which aren’t directly connected to Webster, of course, but it certainly feels like it’s all part of the same sorry spiral. I look up after a minute, and to my amazement he’s actually laughing.
“But hey,” he grins. “It was so much more fun doing it this way … wasn’t it?”
Once again, words have deserted me.
We sit there for a while longer, batting the various absurdities of the last couple of months to and fro. I’d be quite content to remain here for the rest of the day, but I’m suddenly all too aware that my final seconds with Lance Webster are approaching. That age-old “if you were stuck in a lift with anyone” rubbish pops into my head, and I rack my brains for something I might spend the next few years regretting I’d missed my chance to ask. Finally, he stands to go.
“One last question,” I demand.
“You’re getting your money’s worth, aren’t you? Okay, hurry.”
“Why d’you think they all turned on you?”
He looks up at the ceiling, gives a quick hoot of laughter and claps his hands.
“Oh, f*ck it, Clive, I dunno. It was our time. We were stubborn, we weren’t going away. I think every journo and industry knob expected The Social Trap to bomb, and when it didn’t … they all just thought enough was enough. We simply didn’t fit with what was going on. And also … oh, I suppose I’d made some enemies over the years. Said the wrong thing, slagged the wrong band, insulted the wrong writer, f*cked the wrong girl. So I guess it was a multitude of revenges. But I’m over it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah … just. Listen, man, gotta go.”
I wave the cheque at him feebly.
“You know, I’m really not sure I can take this.”
“Don’t be a pillock,” he snaps. “Take it. To be frank, it’s either you or the Inland f*cking Revenue. But remember—exclusive rights. Not a soul.”
“Okay,” I respond, feeling that only a total moron would argue with a deal like this. “Thanks,” I add unsteadily.
“Fine,” he smiles. “Don’t do anything stupid with it. And get your f*cking shit together, will you? Quit drinking so much.”
“I’ll try.”
“And email me an invoice.”
“Okay.” Ever the businessman.
“Oh, and I guess you can probably tell this crap to your mate Alan.”
“Ha! Well, maybe. Not sure he deserves to know right now.”
“Whatever.”
He slings on his shoulder bag and gathers his paperwork.
“I suppose I’m not permitted to ask where it is you’re going now, then.”
“Hey, man …” he answers, putting his shades back on. “I said I’d tell you about August the twelfth, not the future. You’re gonna have to work that one out for yourself. But you guys seem to be fairly good at that,” he sighs, nodding at Alan’s scrapbook.
We shake hands. It all seems rather formal—but oddly appropriate.
“Well,” he says. “It’s been … different.”
“Alternative?” I suggest.
“Pah,” he responds. “Always hated that word. Made us sound like poor cousins.”
“Independent.”
“Even worse,” he frowns. “Right. Better get going. Don’t want to get in trouble for holding up the plane, five hours later.”
“Keep away from any cute girls,” I offer, as he departs.
“Ha! Fat chance,” he scoffs. “You know what they say.”
“What’s that?”
“No one likes a grown-up pop star.”
He delivers a final trademark Webster grin and bounces off towards his gate.
I remain standing next to the table for a minute, blindly fingering the cheque with something approaching mild dementia. My instinct is to instantly rush out and find a bank, but instead I sit for a while, a strange but not entirely unpleasant daze engulfing me, as I consider what a strange man my benefactor is. But although Webster’s certainly got a loose screw or two, the cheque itself is signed, dated and unarguably sane. Of course, in the grand global stadium of rock ’n’ roll, people often get bigger cheques for doing far less, while in my tiny little pub venue of an existence the notion that I’ve truly earned this money seems a little far-fetched. But if Lance Webster wants me to have ten big ones, then bugger it, who am I to protest? My short-term plans remain swathed in their usual fog of uncertainty, however. I have my priceless information—the story it feels like I’ve spent a lifetime pursuing—but nothing to do with it. It’s time to think of something else to write about. A situation I’ve been in many times before; only this time I’ve got slightly more money.
“Anything else, sir?” asks the passing waitress, and inevitably the thought of a drink enters my head. But something stops me, and the words “No, thank you, just the bill” emerge from my mouth almost automatically. Weird.
I pay and amble out among the hurrying passengers and duty-free shoppers, suppressing another instinct when I spy one of the flight-information monitors. I start towards it, hoping to see which badly delayed flight is at last about to depart. But no. That’s what I would have done a month ago. Now things are slightly different. Just let him go. Wherever it is he’s going. Bangkok, Mumbai, Cape Town, S?o Paulo, San Francisco. He had a friend in New Zealand he used to Skype with, didn’t he? Perhaps. Or he may just be going on an extended holiday. Or maybe he’s going to see Gloria, or Rosamund, as she now might be known again, to finally be the partner and dad he’s longed to be. I have a suspicion this might be too straightforward, but then … twelve years of long-distance forgiving and forgetting could hardly be described as straightforward. And after all, he’s no longer a rock star, so they’ve actually become cosmically compatible. Ha! But who knows? Let it go, Clive.
As I get back to the place where the passengers stream into the departure lounge after their long wait, I find myself laughing, as it occurs to me that he never said why he couldn’t come to the other side of security. Maybe he couldn’t be arsed to move. Or maybe it was another test: to see how much I wanted his story. Who can guess? But on a more practical note, I’m not entirely sure how one gets out of here again. Not many people needing to go the other way. A pair of pretty girls stroll by, one of them lamenting to the other that she’s “only got half an hour to shop” before her flight leaves. What’s the world coming to? When someone actually seems more excited about their shopping experience than going to a wonderful, far-off place …
Like New York.
It’s the old cartoon lightbulb, the whack of the iron bar on the head, the Zane Lowe interview moment. “My whole life changed … the dry cleaner’s … just be honest … what if I actually did go to New York?”
Well, what if I did?
I look in my jacket pocket. There’s my boarding pass, handily tucked into my passport. The flight leaves in forty-five minutes. I look at a departure monitor: it’s on time. “Go to gate,” in fact. Not much hard currency, no change of clothes, no laptop, not even a toothbrush. But a cheque for ten thousand pounds. It’s a Friday tomorrow. All I need is an envelope and stamp, to send it to my bank manager (who’ll probably fall off his chair). Perhaps a quick call to my folks to let them know I’ll be away for a bit, and to ask if they can transfer me a hundred quid or so until tomorrow, when my (ahem) ten grand comes in. If I beg them hard enough, they’ll agree. Especially if going abroad is involved—always makes my mother nervous. She’ll instantly start to worry I’ve taken up drug trafficking. Maybe a text to Polly, to tell her I’ll be paying back the cash for the plane ticket sooner than expected, but that I’ll be gone for a few days and she can use the kitchen for whatever foul, depraved activity she likes. I check my phone for Billy Flushing’s US number. Could I drop him a line now, to let him know I’m on my way? No, I should surprise him.
I really could do this.
New York in the summertime. I walk slowly in the general direction of the flight gate, even spotting an “I heart NY” mug in a souvenir shop (although who would buy this at a London airport is a mystery). Okay, so I didn’t fully “heart” NY on my first trip, but I’ve heard it improves with each visit. I could saunter down the avenues and along the streets, snooze in Central Park, perhaps amble over a bridge or two, browse in the bookshops, stop in the cafés, couple of pints of … Whoa, remember what Webster said. Take it easy. Maybe, just for once, I should be a little careful. If Flushing is to be believed, there could be an army of useful people out there. They’d like to see Clive Beresford the writer, not Clive Beresford the filing-clerk piss-head. Let’s set the yardarm for slightly later in the day, shall we? There’ll be plenty of time. All the time in the world.
I locate a few cursory items for the flight, post my cheque, call my parents and send my message to Polly, then mount the travolator for the short ride to the gate, a little smile forming at the ends of my lips. I can see the planes taxiing about outside in the sunshine, weaving their way among the baggage buggies and the traffic controllers, everything slightly out of focus through the clouds of exhaust. In the distance, a jumbo rockets into the sky. Perhaps it’s Mr. Webster, zooming off to whatever awaits at the other end. Lance Webster, the man who crawled through a river of indie filth, to emerge on the other side, battered, bruised and a little torn around the edges, but clean, in one piece, and without the bailiffs hammering at his door. And although my mind is still in too much of a muddle to really believe it, it’s a tale of survival in which I seem to have played a small supporting role. I give a little nod to the rapidly ascending plane, then turn back towards my own onwards journey.
As I spot my flight gate in the distance, I take my phone from my pocket one last time and, with a final mischievous thought, hammer out the following:
Hello boy. Hope all good. Just to say I’ll be away for a bit. But also: I got the whole story from Webster. Every last bit of it. I’ll tell you soon. Have a lovely weekend x
I press send, and—picturing Alan’s astonished gasp, his abrupt exit from a meeting to immediately phone me back, and his frustration at being greeted only by my voice mail for a good few days to come—turn my phone off.
I reach the end of my ride, step lightly off the belt and stroll towards my waiting plane.


a cognizant original v5 release october 07 2010