There was uproar behind as the correct team did whatever it was they were supposed to do. Such are the different tribes of man. Together and yet apart, with and without. Travelling a common path to an unknown future, decided by a boot or a racquet or a bat or a brain, or simply upon a coin toss.
I shook the gentleman’s hand.
Over the course of the next few hours — and the several gins that Conor kindly let me revert to, which Seb, as he wished to be known, generously subsidised — I learned what had happened to Seb’s family, and how the pair hoped to extract some form of reparation via the medium of revenge. Gradually I became aware that this was not simply a mutual opening of kimonos: not some collective unburdening, a bloodletting or soixante-neuf intellectuel. Should I care to scratch their backs, they would be generous enough to attend to mine. I emphasised the reach and intensity of my particular itch and was reassured that even if Seb couldn’t deal with it personally, his father could apply a topical cream of some ferocity.
It was a tempting prospect, becoming ever more so as the senses dulled. We groped and argued our way to a plan not without risk, and indeed overflowing with danger and foolhardiness. I was persuaded ultimately, my arm twisted that way and this, that the potential rewards would benefit college greatly in many aspects.
I began to feel in my somewhat gin-enhanced way the hand of our college founder, Drybutter, upon my buttock. I pictured him making, in Kipling’s words, one heap of all his winnings and risking it on one turn of pitch-and-toss — a turn without which, perhaps, St Paul’s would not have existed. Might this be my turn? Two centuries on, a chance of renewal? Might New Court one day be renamed Flowers’ Court in my memory, my portrait on a wall? As long as I did not follow too closely in Drybutter’s syphilitic footsteps I would not object greatly.
The agreed plan: we would forge a number of documents incriminating someone provably of good standing and, pretending they originated from the unimpeachable source of gossip at St Paul’s, leak those documents to the editor of the Bugle. They would undoubtedly be shown quickly as false and lead to the downfall and calamitous ruin of the editor.
In return, Seb — backed by his father — would gratefully underwrite the costs of our charity event and also make a substantial donation to the college for use however we saw fit.
The plan as it stood had a number of what might charitably be called unknowns. In particular, which person to select to be libelled by the forgery. I, of course, immediately volunteered Amanda. This would diminish the risk for the college, I argued: if by some happenstance some aspect of the libel held and the falling skittles included both the Bugle’s editor and Amanda, this would indeed be a grand day for Cambridge and St Paul’s.
But there was also the issue of the Archivist’s reputation to consider: it was critical to avoid unduly tarnishing his good if unknown name.
The plan needed some application and refinement, we agreed, and we would labour over those issues while proceeding at pace with the Band on the Run event.
I had one question for Seb. “Why, might I ask, does your father not simply expose the editor? He has money, he has influence. Is that not a simpler and more sensible route?”
He was unequivocal. “Those who live by the sword, Spencer.”
I promised the pair that I would sleep on it and give them a decision the next morning. When that came, dark and wet and pricked by the mildest of hangovers, I had determined to join their scurrilous adventure. There was no other route to fund the event, and despite the significant risk the opportunity to save the college, and to eject Amanda, was too great to pass up. I let Conor know that their conspiracy had a new member.
Amanda scowled as I entered her dungeon office at a skip an hour or so later. “My dear Master,” I said, crossing the dirty grey carpet to her outsize desk. “I have some wonderful news for you.”
She lowered her laptop lid, set down her mug of instant frog’s legs and flicked off a low-intensity Lulu track. “Really, Dr Flowers? Really?”
Scandalously I sat before the chair of doom was offered. “I have located a very generous sponsor for Band on the Run. An anonymous sponsor.” The three of us conspirators agreed I should not mention the separate donation to college funds in case Amanda promptly lassoed that and cancelled the race forthwith.
“I hope that this heralds not a Wednesday of my discontent, Dr Flowers. I informed you barely Monday of my negativity.” I felt her yearning for a sweet caress of the biro pot. “Am I understanding that you have been, as it were, behind my rear?”
“With respect, Master,” I said, attempting humility, “you assured me you would read the proposal. Given the compressed timescales it was apparent I must not delay preparations. Have you had the opportunity to reconsider and possibly repolarise your negativity?”
She pointed to my document, which lay on her desk, and neither confirmed nor denied. “I require one answer.”
“Of course.”
Imagine a long syllable, and double it: “Who?” It was like a barn owl, high in a tree, spotting a mouse and preparing to dive.
“The sponsor? I am afraid I am not at liberty to say.”
“Dr Flowers—”
“Professor Chatteris, I must insist. The sponsor has agreed to underwrite the race on the sole and unbreakable condition of absolute anonymity. Even to college authorities.”
My boldness unsettled her. It unsettled me.
She took a deep, rattling breath. “This is dilemmic, Dr Flowers. For how, tell pray, should we be receiving of the money? Via a darkened cash launderette?”
“We should, uh, be receiving of the items themselves, as purchased or otherwise obtained by the sponsor. I will inform the sponsor of our needs.”
“I see. And then whom should I be tirelessly thanking upon my victory speech?”
I frowned in confusion. “Victory—?”
“Speech, speech, come the finishing elastic and the glorious crowning coronation.” Arms raised in supplication to the ground floor. “When I might extend the bosom of the college around whomsoever and whatnot.”
I had not considered that Amanda might want to deliver a speech. I had naturally assumed she would hover and skulk and interfere like Beelzebub’s kitten mashing upon a keyboard, but, well, I’d thought I might appoint myself as Master of Ceremonies. In any case, in the ideal scenario she’d have been booted out of college in disgrace by then.
“We can… consider that in detail later, perhaps when SPAIN next convenes. But I am delighted to say that any speech you… or I might care to make will be blessed with a surfeit of press coverage, as will the race itself. I have elicited the support of a young reporter at the Bugle. I have hopes for a high-profile announcement in Friday’s edition.”
“I see.”
There was no tapping biro, no steaming nostrils: just brooding, percolating silence — more unnerving by far. Waiting for the whistle in the trenches to send you over the top. Waiting for the jury to return its verdict. Waiting for the “but” after a boy says “I like you”.
Amanda’s face suddenly brightened. “Well done, Dr Flowers. You have well done.”
It felt as if I had passed an examination of which I had been hitherto unaware. Cautiously: “Am I therefore to understand that you now approve the proposal?”
Above and away, I heard a distant rumble of thunder. “Yes, Dr Flowers. Yes.”
ten
The Change
Despite the rain and a threatening storm I bounced past Colin on security and upstairs into the subdued Bugle office with my usual level of witty charm, or so I thought. As I sat at my desk dripping and steaming, takeaway coffee similar, Manish leaned over and came straight to the point: “You seeing him again?”
“Seeing who?”
“Whoever it was put that shit-eating grin on your face.” He did an impersonation of my smile, all teeth and wide eyes, with both index fingers pointing towards his face like neon signs. “You’re not usually this happy.”
I
powered on my screen and logged in to the computer system, which whirred and chirruped, and like everything that old it took its time. My sweater doubled up as a towel on days like this: I wiped down my face and beard, and rubbed it quickly over my hair. “Of course I’m happy. It’s a Wednesday. Middle of the week. Over the hump.”
“It’s pissing down outside and you’re on green ink duty.”
“I can think of no greater task on this fabulous morning-stroke-evening.” I gestured to the gathering darkness outside. Green ink duty meant it was my turn that week to separate readers’ letters into piles marked sensible, funny, fawning, ranting, swivel-eyed, dangerous, libellous and Thora Hird. That last one was all the letters from the old dears writing to us like we were their grandchildren, making sure we were eating properly. Geoff would throw away the sensible, the libellous and the Thoras and select a couple from each of the other piles, which I’d then have the joy of editing and laying out for greatest amusement value all round. The Star Letter was always, without exception, from the swivel-eyed pile — this was to encourage more letters. The Letters page was the paper-and-ink version of a hydrogen bomb, basically.
“You’re a freak,” said Manish, still teasing me about the smile. “I bet it’s about what Simon said to you. I bet you were lying. Have you got a pay rise? Or maybe it was a proper full-on bollocking, a double-scrote. Can I have your chair when you’re fired?”
I met Manish’s eyes and gave him a smouldering look. “My, you’re a handsome little fella when you’re confused and fishing.”
“Sod off, ginger.” He turned back to his computer screen. Worked every time, a squirt of the old flirt-repellent. He loved it really.
“Twiglet.”
Last night’s mental three-way with Seb and Spencer, and Spencer’s confirmation this morning, had left me buzzing and a little hyper. That was the real reason for the smile. I needed to cool it down a little, especially since Manish’s spider-sense was tingling like a bastard. I waited half an hour, enough time for me to dry out and to catch up with the overnight news and for the eager beaver alongside to become absorbed by the week’s selection of kitten photos or whatever chore he’d been lumbered with. Then I snuck up to the editor with my usual subtle approach.
“Hey boss, I got the scoop of the century for you.” I slouched on an old plastic chair beside him, crossing my legs in a big 4.
He didn’t look up from his laptop. “Oh, yeah, ginge? Is it Top Ten Cambridge Arseholes again? Some guff you got off the internet about lesbian traffic lights?”
“It’s about St Paul’s College.”
“Look, kid,” he said, clicking his mouse a couple of times. “Nobody wants to hear about how much of the Limpopo river some dead toff swam up in 1842.”
I didn’t take offence. Nobody who took offence could last long there. “This is an actual story, Geoff. Actual news. They’re organising a charity race across town for Saturday week. I spoke to the guy in charge. He’s an arsehole, of course. Wants a big splash from us to kick off the publicity.” All these things were true, especially the arsehole part.
“Saturday bleedin’ week? Another bleedin’ famine, is there? What’s the hurry?” He was typing now, an email. His little fat fingers hammered over the keyboard in a race against the red squiggly line showing up his typos.
I shrugged. “Academics, eh? Probably something to do with prime numbers. And I think the Latin Olympics might be coming up soon.” These things were not true. “Oh, it has a Beatles theme. Maybe it’s to do with that. Is there an anniversary or something?”
I suppose I’d describe his next expression as Young Churchill farting on an angry wasp, a kind of anticipatory relief and confusion, and he finally looked up from the computer and turned to me. “Aren’t The Beatles a little avant sodding garde for that lot? Sure he didn’t say Bach or Beethoven? Or some Russian pillock?”
I outlined the concept behind the race, keeping it rough and sceptical and throwing in a few ritual insults, and he nodded along. I left out the names: no Professor Chatteris, no Spencer. I didn’t want to display too much knowledge. Which was unusual for me, I admit.
“OK, ginge,” he said almost in defeat, “you can do the story, god help us. If it’s gonna clog up the bleedin’ streets all day we might as well let people know. I might even give you the front page, unless there’s a broken window in Debenhams or a photo of a cyclist stopped at a red light. One condition.” He held up a finger.
“Just the one?”
“Big photo. Busty blondes, t-shirts and shorts, jumping in the air.”
I realised to a distant clap of thunder that he didn’t know a great deal about St Paul’s. I tried not to smile. “I— I really don’t think it’s that sort of college, boss.”
“That’s my condition. I bet you they’ll be queueing up for the photo. Front page? Boobs in the air. You’ll see.” He mimed a smiley face with cupped breasts.
I held onto my jaw in case I lost it on the floor somewhere. “It’s pretty grim out there today, they might not—”
“Even better! Wet t-shirts! Might be an experience for you, ginge. Might turn you yet. Maybe I should send Manish instead, eh?”
Now that I didn’t want. “I’m perfectly comfortable with breasts, Geoff. Some of my best friends are breasts. I’ll do it. Manish is barely out of school—”
“I’ll get him thinking about a headline then. Starter for ten: Boobs On The Run. No! Toff Titties.”
“That’s— that’s— I’d better be going.”
When I’d heard of St Paul’s College, I’d thought it must be all rainbows and croissants and skinny dipping — you’d pass through the front gate into a palace of testosterone. And to be fair it was a tiny bit like that. It still had the stuffiness of the university and a Latin boner, but all the suits fitted, and deodorant wasn’t a radical new invention that needed another ten years of fragrant dead rabbits before human trials.
The first time I’d seen inside the college was soon after I’d arrived in the city a year before. Back then it was very early in the autumn term, what the toffs call Michaelmas term, and I was lured back to the college for a late-night party by a couple of postgrads who knew a couple of undergrads who knew about forty-nine other undergrads, as it turned out. We’d packed into some function room in some poncey court or other and danced in airless proximity for a couple of hours. It was like being vacuum-packed into a Sahara sauna. They’d called it The Old Curiosity Bop and I suspect a few guys had their curiosity well and truly satisfied by the end of that night. I’d left before then — it got all too rah-rah and oops-a-daisy for me. There’d been a guy wearing a top hat, and I’d wanted to toss a loose cobble at it and send it spinning, then dance on a roof with a chimney sweep from Malibu.
I presented myself at the porters’ lodge just inside the gate on St Andrew’s Street and signed in with a frazzled old gent behind a desk who introduced himself as Arthur and called me darling. He had shaped eyebrows and a dodgy wig and looked like the star turn at the Chelsea Pensioners’ cabaret night. With a couple of biro sweeps on a photocopied map he directed me swishily to Spencer’s room in the laughably named New Court, and then sent word ahead to let him know I was there. He used the phone rather than a carrier pigeon or a dirt-faced young urchin, I was glad to see.
When I’d skipped out of the Bugle office I’d co-opted the newspaper umbrella — the only one — which had a Bugle logo, and as I passed along the paths and through the stone archways of the college I saw whispered conversations behind the backs of hands from twosomes and threesomes rushing past me through the rain. I didn’t think I was especially welcome, and I didn’t blame them. I don’t know, maybe they thought I was wearing the wrong cut of trouser for a Wednesday.
Spencer held a flimsy, ill-fitting door open for me at the bottom of his set of stairs. Off to the right a bunch of names, including his, were painted onto the stone wall under a heavily-serifed letter T, the name of this little block of rooms. And carved roughly into a shal
low arc above the door were the words ex glande quercus.
I nodded a greeting and hurried through, shaking the umbrella back outside through the doorway and dropping it in a convenient stand. The stairwell smelled of chlorine, wet stone and a cloying smugness, and was being watched by a red-lit camera in a high corner. I knew I had to watch what I said: we’d be monitored.
“What’s with the Latin over the door?” I asked.
“You must be new to Cambridge,” he said with a mild sarcasm. “College motto, I’m afraid. From acorn to oak.”
He led me up the stairs.
“It’s carved throughout college, almost randomly,” he continued. “We suspect a drunken classicist ran amok with a chisel in the dim and distant. It happens on occasion. The tripos, the boys — you know how it goes. Adds character, I think.”
Two flights up Spencer took me along a corridor my brain told me was listing at several degrees, and opened a door into his… room? Office? Lair? It felt claustrophobic and oppressive: dry and dusty, wallpapered in books, and liable to crackle into unquenchable flame if a bell-end with a pipe merely thought about crossing the threshold.
Over a cup of Lady Grey tea — very much not my usual tipple — and sitting on a sofa I tried not to look at too closely, I explained what the editor wanted. Spencer, sitting at his desk, rubbed a hand over his near-bald head and didn’t look happy.
“I’m afraid we don’t really do breasts, Conor. There are, of course, ladies here, and they are fully equipped, I imagine. I would hazard— without wishing unduly to stereotype, you understand— I would hazard it unlikely in the extreme that any would agree to this request.”
“There must be, you know, feminine ladies. Ones who don’t play pool.”
“Of course, of course. We do not discriminate. Modulo the limitations of the Data Protection Act I believe I can also confirm we have resident one or two heterosexual persons of the opposite gender. We are an inclusive establishment, regardless of the popular sentiment.”
The Pink and the Grey Page 11
