Dialogue: A brief encounter with a real hero

By JOE BENNET

The other day I was asked to name my hero. I said I knew who he was, but I couldn't name him.

Hero worship is close cousin to envy. In many cases our heroes are our heroes because they have done what we would like to do. If Todd Blackadder is our hero, it is because we aspire to lead the All Blacks. If Shakespeare is our hero, it is because we want to be read.

That we can rarely match the feats of our heroes perhaps explains why we are hard on them, although the claim that New Zealand is especially hard on heroes does not bear scrutiny. It was, for example, a British pornographic newspaper which exposed Mark Todd rather than a New Zealand one. Smashing idols has been a popular pastime the world over since the first ape stood erect.

With my own hero I spent a night on a foreign railway station some 20 years ago, but to make sense of the story I need to go back.

The only career decision I ever made was not to be a teacher. In the end I taught for 20 years and loved it. But when one day in the bar at university, just before I was due to venture out into the wide world armed with an impressive overdraft and an unimpressive degree, a friend called Steve drew my attention to a personal advertisement in the paper saying "English graduates wanted to teach English in Spain." I snorted.

In emphatic terms I told Steve that I spoke no Spanish, I had no desire to go to Spain, and under no circumstances would I ever teach. Then I bought him a beer for being thoughtful.

Two weeks later I received a letter inviting me to interview for the job.

Steve had not only applied on my behalf, he had even snipped my face from a rugby team photo to accompany the application. I would not have gone to the interview but it was in London where I wanted to attend a party and the interview offered to pay expenses. I hitched there and claimed the train fare.

The interviewer was a scrawny, bearded man. Within two minutes he had told me he played first five for the Spanish national team. Within five minutes he and I were passing a paper weight between us. Within 10 minutes he had convinced me that I would play halfback for Spain and I had accepted the job. We didn't discuss teaching at all.

Some weeks later, after 48 hours of sleepless travel, I arrived at Zaragoza railway station. I rang the number on my letter of appointment. I got an angry monolingual Spaniard. I tried again. The same Spaniard, only angrier.

I went to the station bar, drank a thoughtful beer, then rang the number once more. The phone was off the hook. It was 11 o'clock at night. It was only then that I realised that the whole thing was a hoax. No job existed.

Steve had brilliantly marooned me in Spain with no job, no money, no return ticket, no Spanish beyond "yes," "no" and "beer" and, as I was rapidly discovering, no spine. On Zaragoza railway station I sat down and wept.

And it was then on that station forecourt, deserted but for drunks sheltering from the cold, that my hero entered on cue, tapping an umbrella as he walked.

He was English, 65 years old and dressed in a pepper-and-salt suit. By profession he played poker. Whenever he won a wad of money he went hitchhiking round Europe. He commandeered lifts with his umbrella and went where the whim took him. In his little hold-all he carried spare underwear, a clean shirt and a metal detector. He liked to hunt for Roman coins, he said, but had found very few.

I told him my tale. He laughed. And he made me laugh. We talked till 2 in the morning then slept side by side on the bench.

The cafeteria opened at 6. The old man bought me an omelette and a coffee with brandy in it, then left. As I type this I can see him now, his umbrella tapping on the steps leading out of the station, and beyond him dawn rising over a country I didn't know.

Why my hero? For his disdain of conventional wisdom, his bloody-minded independence, his courage, his light-heartedness, his grace under pressure, but above all for the way he made me feel that all things were possible. He gave me strength.

Two decades later he still does. I think that's what a hero should do.

The job, by the way, did exist. The school had changed its phone number.