The Alternative Hero

by Tim Thornton

  “Okay! Okay,” Craig says, holding his hands up in surrender and backing off.

  You’re getting all hot and hassled now, so you whip off your pith helmet. Aware that appearances need to be kept up, you tidy your hair, take a deep breath and walk at a more casual pace back towards the dressing room. Unfortunately, this is the wrong thing to do. Your reduced speed means you can clearly hear, at least five times as you cross the makeshift beer garden, different people saying the words “It’s all over.” Not wanting to look like a total, frantic fool, you ignore every single one of them. Then, just as you’ve reached the other side, a small female insect pounces.

  “Lance, hi! Mari Wechter, MTV Europe.” Here she is, with her beach-ball-sized microphone and her cameraman lurking behind. “Would now be a good time to have a few words? I’m sure viewers all over the continent would love to hear—”

  “Er … not such a good time right now, no.”

  “Oh, just for a minute. We’re very excited to see you and your band back on the festival circuit. Couldn’t you just—”

  “Sorry, Mari, can we make it slightly later, I need to—”

  “It’ll only take thirty seconds of your time. We can’t wait to see the—”

  “Not! Now!”

  It takes every molecule of willpower you possess to not grab her by the shoulders and shake all the slick, televisual enthusiasm out of her. She gets the message, coughs with surprise and turns back to the cameraman.

  “Maybe it is all over,” she mutters.

  Your patience exhausted, you sprint the rest of the way back to the dressing room, where thankfully a different security guard awaits. This is a big guy, reassuringly older, perhaps in his mid-forties, with short blond hair and a slight beer belly.

  “Hello, Lance,” he says, warmly holding out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m going to be doing your dressing room security for the rest of the day.”

  “Ah. And your name is … ?”

  “John,” he replies. “Great to be working here. I’ve been a big fan of yours since Lovely Youth.”

  “Oh … right! Well, nice one, John.” West Berkshire accent, you note, just like your mum and dad. You gesture towards the hut. “Anyone home?”

  “Yes, I think your young lady is, as a matter of fact.”

  You find yourself a little caught out by his friendliness. However, your initial character appraisal says there’s something sincere about him; perhaps not the most interesting man in the world, maybe a slight jobsworth, but he seems trustworthy, which must go a long way in the security business.

  “Listen … John,” you confide, leaning in slightly, “do me a favour, will you? If … if anyone tries to give you anything, like a bribe or anything like that … will you let me know?”

  “A bribe?” he frowns.

  “It’s just that … there’s been some weird stuff happening today. I don’t know if you’ve seen anything … have you?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well, anyway … be sure to tell me if anything untoward occurs.”

  “I’ll do that, Lance.”

  “Thanks,” you smile, patting him on the shoulder. “Oh, and whatever they offer you, I’ll double it,” you chuckle.

  He looks confused for a second, then laughs awkwardly as you hop up the steps of the hut.

  Katie is inside, managing to smoke, nurse a glass of wine, talk on her phone and apply some after-sun lotion to her sunburnt shoulders all at the same time.

  “Hang on, he’s here,” she mutters. “I’ll call you back … Baby! Where’ve you been?”

  “Oh, about,” you sigh, flopping down on the sofa next to her.

  “I heard,” she begins, kissing you on the forehead, “that someone lost their rag at the press conference.”

  “Oh, yeah? You heard wrong.”

  “Well, that’s what Dan told me,” Katie adds. “He said you told all the journos to fuck off and then stormed out.”

  “Oh, Christ!” you exclaim, standing up again and opening the fridge. “Where the fuck is everyone’s sense of humour? I was joking the whole way through that conference, just like I’ve always done, but everyone’s so stuffed up their own tight arses at the moment. I don’t understand it!”

  “God, just take it easy, babe, will you?”

  “I’ve been trying to take it easy all fucking day,” you reply, banging your fist on the toilet door, “but there’s some sort of fucking vendetta going on!”

  “Right, I’m off,” Katie announces, gathering up her things. “You’re stressing me out.”

  “That’s the fucking thing about dressing rooms,” you declare, glugging your drink. “People love to come back and hang out, be in with the fucking so-called in-crowd, admitted to the inner sanctum or whatever … but then, they don’t like it as soon as there’s a little bit of tension. Don’t they ever remember it’s actually a workspace? This is where we bloody prepare for a performance! Why doesn’t anyone ever fucking remember that?”

  “All right, that’s enough,” she instructs. “I’m not just ‘people,’ if you don’t mind—I’m your girlfriend. Tell me what’s wrong. There is something, isn’t there?”

  “Yes,” you nod.

  So you tell her. You tell her everything: how someone appears to be laughing at you and the band, vandalising the gear, giving out fake passes, slagging you off onstage, telling everyone to mutter “It’s all over” as you walk by. Katie listens sympathetically, but it’s this last bit she can’t believe.

  “How would I be imagining that?” you scream at her.

  “Will you stop fucking shouting at me!”

  You stop.

  “And give that a rest for a while,” she instructs, grabbing your beer away.

  “Okay,” you begin, more quietly. “Do me a favour. Come with me. Let’s go and have a little walk around. Listen out, and I guarantee someone will say it.”

  Realising you’re in no mood to back down, Katie agrees.

  You leave the dressing room, wink at John the guard, and wander off arm in arm into the main enclosure, past the bar, across the sea of white plastic garden chairs, where the drinkers catch the last of the evening sun, over to the side of the main stage (you spend a couple of minutes watching Gene, who you must admit are pretty good) then back to the enclosure, through the public arena and back into the VIP bit … and of course, no one says a damn thing. Quite the contrary. People are nice to you. They smile. The guards are all polite. The journos nod. Even fucking Tony Gloster has the gall to come up and say, “All’s fair in love and indie pop, eh?”—at which you grudgingly shake his hand. And with every new person you pass, you feel Katie’s mood plummeting further down. When she’s finally had enough of walking, just as you’re passing the ladies’ loos for the third time, she turns to you and gives you one of her serious looks.

  “Lance, honey, I hate to say it, but you’ve got some sort of problem.”

  “No …”

  “Baby, listen to me, you have—”

  “No! Katie, I swear.”

  “Sweetness, all you need to do is go and have a lie down, chill out. I’ll find you a private space. I think all this is getting too much for you …”

  “Lance!” squeaks a female voice.

  You both whirl around. It’s Petra.

  “Lance,” she chirps, “Craig says to tell you all the gear’s okay, and Stan’s in there guarding it.”

  “Ah! Thank God,” you gasp, at this most rare piece of good news. You’re so relieved, in fact, you can’t help giving Petra a little hug.

  “Oh, you arsehole!” screams Katie, driving her fists between the two of you. “You complete shit! I was going out of my way to be nice to you, and you can’t even respect me enough to keep your fucking hands off her in front of me!”

  “But, Katie …”

  “No, you just fuck off,” she cries, holding up an angry warning finger. “You can drown in your little fucking paranoid and miserable world, and take her with you. I
damn well hope you’re happy.”

  And with that, she is off.

  Petra’s bottom lip trembles.

  “Sorry, Lance,” she blurts, and dashes off.

  Exhausted, you turn around to the beer garden, where once again an amused audience watches. Setting your controls for the heart of the dressing room, and specifically the alcohol rider, you decide the only possible solution to your woes is to immediately get as drunk as possible.

  You’ve been drunk for gigs before. Actually, you’ve been paralytic before; you’ve passed out, people have had to slap you and splash cold water over your face in order to bring a shred of consciousness back to your sozzled body. And you’ve always managed to perform, and perform well: singing almost note perfect, your guitar playing rhythmic and strong. Only experts would notice the difference. Strange, really, but everyone has their good points. You’re sure that if John McEnroe downed five pints of lager and a bottle of wine, he’d still be fairly good at tennis.

  The ingredient that dramatically alters, however, is how you treat the audience. Stone-cold sober, which only happens very occasionally: you’re a bit moody and monosyllabic, only really warming up by the end. A little tipsy: you start getting cheeky and the banter flows. But moderately drunk, you believe, is when you’re at your best. Nicely antagonistic, a couple of insults fly, sometimes something controversial like throwing out a lairy audience member, arguing with a bouncer, maybe shouting at a roadie. Keeps everyone on their toes. When you smile at the end of the show and advise everyone to get home safely, that’s the payoff; it’s so much more effective than if you’d been pleasant all evening. Drunker than that: you start quarrelling with the band and ignoring the crowd, although you still hurl abuse at the little fuckers when they shout out song requests. Again, it keeps people in a nice state of alertness, but perhaps it shouldn’t happen more than once per tour. Recently, you have to admit, it’s been happening a lot. Thirty-two shows since The Social Trap was wheeled out in May: for perhaps half of those you’ve been smashed. It’s been a tough year.

  The upshot of this drinking record is that no one is particularly concerned at the state you’re getting yourself into tonight at Aylesbury Craig makes a few comments, mostly because he saw the frenzy you were in earlier, but Martin’s been totally ignoring you since the press conference and Dan, judging by the near-empty bottle of rum next to him, isn’t an awful long way behind you. Bob comes in to do his usual schoolteacherly routine at around eight thirty (“Now, gents, remember what we’re all here for—keep a little bit back for the celebration afterwards”) and Petra looks perpetually worried, but that’s probably because she’s expecting an ice pick in her back from Katie at any moment.

  Nine o’clock approaches, and Heidi cheerfully arrives to escort you to the backstage bar for the Radio One interview. It’s at this point that your powers of speech vanish, and all you can do is shake your head.

  “Come on, Lance. Perhaps a little of that old sparkle, to make up for earlier?”

  “Sparkle,” laughs Martin. “You’ll get more sparkle out of a dead badger right now.”

  “Well, someone’s got to do it,” Heidi insists. “Dan? Martin?”

  “I ain’t going anywhere,” growls Dan.

  Martin sighs and goes into his standard martyr routine.

  “Oh, all right, I guess I’ll have to do it.”

  “Hero,” comments Heidi, giving him a peck on the cheek.

  “As long as Craig comes.”

  “Whassat?” mumbles Craig, who’s been deeply occupied with his Pratchett novel.

  “Come on, Spalding,” says Heidi, cheekily kicking at one of his trainers. “Remember, you’re in a rock band? Yeah? About to play to, ooh … fifty thousand people?”

  “It’s a bloody good book,” he sighs, sticking his bookmark in and mooching off with Martin.

  “Uh, I’ll go too,” adds Petra, following Heidi out, understandably not wishing to breathe in the poisonous atmosphere remaining between the two drunk boys.

  For a good while neither you nor Dan say a thing; you’re too busy nursing your glass of Jack, and Dan his rum, while absentmindedly plucking at his acoustic bass. But suddenly Dan looks up, frowns, and speaks with a comically slow slur.

  “Oh … shit. I forgot … to tell you. Per … seph … on … ee … she called. Earlier. On the phone.”

  “Uh?”

  “You know. Per … seph-on-ee. Gloria’s … sister.”

  “Who … whose ph-phone?”

  “Yours.”

  You actually do own a mobile phone, a lumbering, bricklike device which doesn’t fit into any of your pockets, so you tend not to carry it around. You haven’t even looked at it since yesterday evening. You drag yourself up off the sofa and stagger to where you dumped your bag. The conversation proceeds with all the energy of two dying criminals at the end of a Tarantino film.

  “D-did she … s-say … anyth-thing?”

  “Yeah … to call … back.”

  “Nothing … else?”

  “Er … no.”

  The sheer incongruity of the phone call is what shakes you from your stupor. The last time Persephone Amhurst communicated with you was through a solicitor, when you were curtly instructed not to even attempt making contact with Gloria again, or legal proceedings, restraining orders and all manner of other seriousness would ensue. To now be called directly, on your mobile phone, on the day of your biggest British gig in years, seems alarmingly peculiar to say the very least. You open your bag and extract the stout black gadget. You’re sure there’s a function somewhere for seeing who called last, but it’s hard to locate even at the soberest of times.

  “Thanks … Dan …” you splutter, heading out the door.

  “Yeah,” he murmurs.

  John the security chap still patiently waits where he’s been all evening, now puffing on a cigarette in the rapidly fading light.

  “Off out, Lance?”

  “Yeah … need to m-make a … phone call.”

  “Oooh, dear, you’d better take it easy on the old booze, hadn’t you? Big show coming up and all …”

  “Don’t w-worry about m-me,” you drawl. “I was probably more p-pissed than this the last t-time you saw us.”

  “Hmm,” John thinks, as you begin to dial Persephone’s number. “That would’ve been Langley Park, ninety-three. I was working on the sound desk, as I recall—”

  “Sorry, s’cuse me.”

  You duck behind one of the tents while the phone rings. That’s the trouble with being friendly to the staff: then they think they’re your mate, and …

  “Hello?”

  “Persephone.”

  “Ah. It’s you.”

  She’s always referred to you as “you,” even for the brief five minutes back in 1985 when you were both making a strained effort to like each other.

  “Yes. How … are you?”

  “Look,” she snaps. “I’m not going to pretend this is anything other than a message service … Frankly, I’ve no interest in how you are, so I can’t believe you’ve any concern for my well-being. Had a telegram from Rosamund. She’s had a car accident in Russia. She’s recovering but she’s lost the baby. She requested that the family tell you, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  She hangs up without waiting for a response.

  Which is just as well, really, for it’s another ten minutes before you regain the ability to form a sentence, and this time it has nothing to do with the alcohol.

  In the weeks and months that follow, you’ll come to realise that all is not quite as it seems. With her usual blend of stupidity and arrogance, Persephone has managed to both under- and overestimate your relationship with Gloria, and the true details of her crash will eventually emerge. But for now, the multilayered news hits you so hard, it’s like you’ve been kicked. Four times. In the balls, the stomach, the heart and the head. By someone with very strong legs. Just, presumably, as the Amhurst family intended. They could equally have sent someone round
to beat you up; but then, they’d hardly consider that a respectable form of terror. You cling onto a guy rope in the darkness and reacquaint the contents of your stomach with the outside world: a deliberately violent action with all the follow-through you can muster. You feel such utter, desperate, rock-bottom loathing for yourself and your stupid, worthless little life that you strongly consider lying down and rolling around in the vomit, soaking your hair, soiling your pants and then impaling yourself with an industrial tent pole. There are only two factors which stop you from doing this. One is that there’s now comparatively less alcohol inside you and, ironically, you’ve started to sober up a bit. The other thing is more complicated, but goes something like this: you created another human life, which brings with it certain responsibilities, none of which you’ve been able to fulfil. Now you believe that life is over, and you suppose the spirit of that life can probably witness your every action, so—put simply—what would it think if it could see you rolling around in your own vomit? Would it be proud of its father? Then you’d have failed it in death as well as life. Years later, you’ll come to recognise this moment as the genesis of the paternal instinct that grew so profoundly over the next decade, but right now all it means is you keep your hair and clothes clean. You’ve also got a show to perform. Although absurd and perverse at this juncture, you suddenly feel a rush of enthusiasm. Yes. This is what I can do. I’ve fucked up everything else, but I can at least play guitar and sing rather well. Remember that?

  You’ll also look back in days to come and speculate that everything would’ve been okay from then on—had Dan not decided to lock the dressing room door.

  “Dan, are you in there?”