I upturned my mouth and nodded thoughtfully, offering a frown and a head-tilt and all but adopting the pose of Rodin’s Thinker. A long ten seconds later: “I shall mull it over.”
Later that afternoon I heard from Seb, and we three conspirators, one for all, et cetera, agreed to assemble around a cosy Humbug table to synchronise metaphorical watches. Here I learned of the Bugle’s plans for the next week’s edition in detail, and they of the Archivist’s ideas. It was apparent that our fates were messily intertwined and that our only hope for success was to join with the Archivist and trust to his dark arts. And yes, we made all the wand jokes.
After merely one unhealthily soft drink, and to the protestations of Eddie who was I suspect more concerned about the evening’s bar takings than with me, I abandoned my two friends to return to college: I had preparations to make.
fourteen
The Innocent
“Here we are again, then,” I said to Seb after Spencer had toddled off. “Just the two of us. Bonding over a common enemy. Whispering sweet romantic conspiracies. Planning the downfall of an evil regime over cocktails and footsie. Your face fair lights up when you talk about the forty-nine different cuts you want to slice Geoff into, it’s so cute.”
We were sitting around a small circular table dotting the “i” of Humbug’s long chrome bar and pressing against a plate window. The music was still low, still back catalogue. It wasn’t busy yet: it’d be another hour or two before sales officially opened at the meat market. Quiff was in his vodka zone at the opposite end of the bar, of course, as honorary bar mascot. Eddie and his crew made themselves useful disinfecting tables from daytime kiddy juices but left the two of us alone.
Perhaps they thought it was a date. Perhaps it was. Two french martinis with extra fruit, after all.
“I want to apologise for earlier,” said Seb.
“There’s no need, I—”
“No, please,” he interrupted with a hand on mine, left only for a second and then yanked away as if burnt. “I have tried so hard not to let my heart take over. It is vital that I focus on the task in hand and not let my anger win. Anger makes poor decisions.”
“Don’t get all Yoda on my arse, Seb, it was only natural. Spencer got turned over, the rug got pulled, and you wanted to do something about it. Your fists would just bounce off Geoff’s gut, though, you know? He hires himself out as a bouncy castle on bank holidays. He’s not allowed in zoos in case someone thinks he’s an escaped elephant.”
Seb looked down at his drink, a sharp puddle of red in a shallow glass cone, and smiled softly.
“Believe me, there are more insults where that came from,” I said.
“I do not doubt it.” He took a sip. A wailing nineties ballad came over the sound system, at least until Eddie could lunge for the next track button.
“So don’t beat yourself up about it,” I said, gently batting a fist onto his arm. “Hey, it was good to see a bit of passion. A bit of fire in your eyes. You know what that tells me? You’re not doing this for fun. You’re not gonna do this hammy cackle after it’s all over and shoot off on a monorail to your submarine hidden in Jesus Lock. You’re doing this—”
“Because I want revenge.” He was still looking down.
“Because you want the truth to come out. Which happens to coincide with a little public career-ending humiliation for Fat Boy and Slim. And nobody’s gonna lose much sleep over that, are they?”
“I suppose.”
I downed what was left of my martini. I could drink those all night, which was far too dangerous a prospect to consider right then, with Manish due before too long. A clear head was required. Well, clearish. Seb and I had to work out how to deal with him, or at least how to make sure he didn’t screw everything up for us. But that could wait for a few more minutes.
“I suppose sounds like an agreement to me. Do you want to buy me another?” I waggled my empty glass. “You know how easy it makes me. Well, you don’t know, I keep telling you, and you keep taking no notice.”
He finally looked up, and across to the bar. He caught Eddie’s eye and signalled for two more of the same. “You are so relentlessly cheerful and optimistic.”
“The words you’re looking for are horny and desperate. And also thirsty and sober. Cheers.”
“Is that what drives you? Testosterone and alcohol? Is that why you are helping me?”
It wasn’t an accusation as such, more a jokey aside. But it stung a little. Probably because there was a decent slab of truth in it somewhere. A salty frosting on the cocktail glass.
“I’d be lying if I sat here and told you I’d be doing this even if you were a one-eyed, toothless, haddock-faced, teetotal old biddy with halitosis,” I said. “But mainly because if you were we’d probably never have got any further than hello and goodbye. Once I’d dragged you back here and wrung the story out of you, you got me hooked. Even though my career’s hanging on the line here with me, and there are a couple of rough old sharks on my tail. I’m not sure that analogy totally works, but it’ll do. You know what I mean.”
Seb finished his martini just as Eddie brought across the replacements, with a flourish and fluttering eyes and a cheesy grin, and left with delicate pats on our shoulders as if in encouragement.
I made a start on the new drink. “I’m helping you because you need help, and it’s the right thing to do, and I like you. I don’t have little hearts for irises or chubby little angels with bows and arrows floating around my head, if that’s what you’re worried about. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t, do I? Jeez, how embarrassing would that be?”
He studied my eyes and scanned above my head. “Nothing I can see,” he said, and smiled.
I looked away.
“Of course,” I said, “if either of us has the hots for the other, it’s you for me. I know that much for sure.”
“Is that so?” he said. “How do you make that out?”
Something modern and trancey-dancey came on the sound system, and Eddie turned the volume up a couple of notches. The evening was beginning its protracted, steady build-up. Before long a few of the regular faces would start to arrive, shirts tight against gym-slim or chip-fat bodies, faces eager for booze and boys. The bar would pack out, and conversations would become loud and raucous and spill out into the alleyways.
“Simple,” I said, taking another mouthful of martini. “You stalked me for god knows how long to see if I could be trusted, and you didn’t run away screaming. I take that as a sign.”
He laughed and shook his head, but it wasn’t a denial.
Ah, the wide-eyed innocence of a straight boy in a gay bar for the first time. It’s a sight to behold. One of the seven wonders of the modern world, I’d say, up there with internet pornography and internet pornography.
I was glad I was there before Manish arrived — I didn’t want anyone to pounce on the poor unsuspecting kid and put him in a cock-lock. I caught sight of him through the window beside the table, walking along the alleyway attempting casual manliness. He was strutting like a rookie cop disguised as a seventies pimp.
Straight over the threshold, hit by the heat and light and noise of the Friday night crowd, his journalistic aloofness evaporated. I went to meet him and cheekily stuck my hand into the small of his back to lead him to Eddie at the bar.
“You’re popular today, dear,” Eddie said.
“Work colleague,” I replied. “Go easy on him, it’s his first time.”
“Aww,” he said to Manish, stroking his face sympathetically. “My advice, darling? Plenty of lube.”
Manish laughed like an escapee. “No, I’m not gay, it’s—”
“The number of times I’ve heard that one, dear. What are you boys drinking?”
I stayed on the martinis, and Manish ordered the manliest beer he could find. Eddie threw in an umbrella for good measure. I took him back to my table: it was a prime slot to view the comings and goings of the usuals and the unusuals, and I could highlight a few
of the characters without looking like a tour guide. Quiff, of course, still remained clamped in his usual spot with a queue of vodkas waiting patiently. I carefully failed to mention the person chatting casually to him: Seb.
The two of us had closely choreographed the evening. Half an hour or so for Manish’s nerves to settle and for the drink to kick in. Then I’d tell him Spencer wouldn’t be in the bar that night, despite what I’d promised at the office earlier, and Seb would walk over with a tray of the finest mojitos and a big smile and an official invitation to join the extended conspiracy.
If we could get Manish onside we’d have a much better chance of controlling the narrative as Seb had put it, since it looked like I’d be lashed to Simon for the duration. Manish was supposed to be writing a standard hatchet job on Spencer: unearth a few vicious, snarling exes with axes or one-nighters, add a couple of accurate but context-free quotes from the poor man himself, sprinkle with unsubstantiated innuendo and gossip from unattributed “friends”, serve with a highly selective personal history, and drizzle with fresh spite. Best served cold. If we could bring Manish into the fold, then even if the Archivist’s grand plan didn’t come off, whatever it was, we could fill the piece with plausible nonsense that would never stick. We could give him an unlikely history as a womaniser and get his home town or his middle name wrong, and hope that Geoff and Simon would be too preoccupied tossing each other off to do anything other than trust Manish’s big, brown, imploring, innocent eyes. With any luck they’d give the piece no more than a cursory glance, a sniff up and down, before taking his name off it — which they were guaranteed to do.
If they did check it, of course, our heads would be mounted on pikes outside the office for generations to come as a warning to others.
When the mojito moment arrived, Manish’s eyes popped. He couldn’t spit out the questions quickly enough, raising his hand and jiggling like a five-year-old needing a piss. I told him that with my superior journalistic experience I’d asked those questions a full week ago, and he told me to sod off, as was the ritual.
Seb explained everything patiently, including all the embarrassing details of the week and the slightest hint of a plan to come — keeping the few details we knew firmly to our attractive chests — and we pretty much begged him to join us, or at least not to blab everything to the barrow boys.
And then Seb had to run off: he had other crucially important business to attend to.
After Seb left us I saw Manish relax a little. He came out of journalist mode and began to speak more freely, a mate in a bar rather than on a job.
“Right, ginge,” he said. I knew what was coming. “It kind of makes sense with Seb, all honourable and shit, all that justice stuff. I’m not too sure about this Flowers guy and the toffs, but OK, I’ll take your word. But — you’re mad, you know that? Because if it goes wrong, you’re out of a job. And if it goes right, you’re out of a job.”
“This is true,” I replied with a curt nod.
“You want revenge on Geoff and Simon for old lies told in an old paper by telling new lies in a new paper. And those old lies weren’t even anything to do with you.”
“This is also true. You are very perceptive, my young apprentice.”
“So, you’re doing it for love, are you? Seb got you under his thumb?” He crushed his thumb onto the chrome.
“Bollocks,” I said. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t. He’s a good-looking fella. Loaded too, not that that makes a difference.”
“Which it does.”
“Which it does,” I nodded. “Getting a smile out of him’s like picking food out of your teeth with your tongue. You work away at it, niggle, niggle, and eventually it comes loose and you relax and rest your tongue for a few seconds, and then you feel another bit of food and it all starts again.”
“You could just use your toothbrush.” Manish mimed a brushing action, mockingly.
“Where’s the fun in that? And that doesn’t even make sense. What does it even mean?”
“I dunno. Maybe you could tickle him or something.”
“Tickle him? He’s not eight. I’m just saying, he can be hard work, but he seems worth it and I still would. But I’m doing this because it’s right, not because I want his babies. Not entirely because I want his babies.”
He held up his hands, almost pleading with me. “But isn’t it all madness? Total ginger Irish madness? When you’re out of work, either because you’ve won or because you’ve lost, what are you going to do? Nobody’s gonna touch you. You won’t get another job in the papers. And if I sign up to this, I won’t either.”
“Well, I’ve thought about that a little,” I said, leaning in. “If no other paper would employ me, I’d just have to start my own. After all, if it all works out, that’s the end of the Bugle, so there’d be a decent, handy gap in the market. I’m sure Seb would throw in a couple of quid, you know, as thanks. He could be the media mogul and you could be my deputy. Now how’s that for an enticing offer in a gay bar?”
fifteen
The Secret
My offer to the Master was of course designed in conjunction with the Archivist and his team to attempt to quiet the delightful old lady’s efforts to unseat me: a light psychological tinkering to impress upon her that, should I voluntarily self-defenestrate, she herself would be required to juggle the flaming clubs in my stead. I knew she would rather bury herself in her college coffin in her purple shroud of Lulu, resurrecting purely to burble nonsense and receive all the plaudits and bouquets should by some miracle the college ultimately triumph.
Despite the kerfuffle with Amanda and the Bugle struggling for brain-space I could not ignore the charity event — it would go ahead whether the next edition of the paper savaged me and St Paul’s or not. I had assigned a college administrative officer to handle inquiries from press and public and to process applications from prospective competitors. She was gratifyingly eager and dreadfully efficient. She indicated to me that, at close of play on Friday — the day the Bugle announced the race with such drag-based fanfare — there had been much traffic into and out of her systems, and firm registrations for the race were in the high tens.
With the event only a week away it was time to begin actively promoting and publicising it. A small, trusted team had been charged with an idea and a selection of large denomination notes supplied by Seb, and were nearing readiness. Early on Friday evening, upon word, sent by old-fashioned and yet rather exciting walkie-talkie, I dashed from my college room to the front gate on St Andrew’s Street. Here I met Seb — straight from Humbug and in good cheer — and team member Bryce, a lanky man-child from Exeter who had gleefully informed me how his grandparents had heard dimly of The Beatles, thus causing my avoidance of mirrors for half a day.
Bryce led us across the road, threading our way through bus queues and into the deserted, cavernous interior of Cambridge’s Grand Arcade capitalistic emporium. Then via a Staff Only doorway we climbed to a set of management offices overlooking St Paul’s and the front gate. From these windows we saw the beginnings of the usual Friday crowds, gathering and pawing their way haphazardly between drinking establishments.
St Paul’s was impressive: I had never seen it from this angle except in photographs. Three graceful Georgian storeys of creamy Portland stone, full of deep and multiple symmetries and mathematically quite tingling. At least, that was Bottom Court. To the left in the direction of Christ’s College was New Court: its own facade was prim Victorian brick, discouraging the eye, careful to reveal not even a delicate ankle of mortar lest the public become wildly unstable with such muscular emotions as like or disinterest. Of New Court, we cared little.
Bryce and another student made last-minute tinkerings with their equipment, whispering and pointing at a laptop screen I could not see.
“I am looking forward to this,” said Seb to me. “You must be excited.”
I gave him an anxious look. “The week has gone frightfully poorly so far. I dare not become excited. I shal
l be glad to get through the evening with my head still on my shoulders.”
“Well, I am excited.”
This was not, I have to say, immediately apparent from his demeanour. Seb had a Vulcan expression, a Spock-like regard telling nothing and everything. The universe is empty space, at first approximation, and empty space is a quantum fizz, a broil of nothingness grazing the meniscus of reality. Seb was remarkably similar.
He attempted to reassure me. “This will set the tide turning back in your favour, Spencer, I am sure of it. Tell me, is this equipment all from college or newly bought?”
Bryce answered, face lifting briefly from the laptop screen. “New, sir. Thanks to our mystery donor.” It was unclear from his smile whether Bryce suspected Seb to be the money supply or merely a gentleman friend of mine, as it were, tagging along.
“Ah, excellent. Are we nearly ready?” asked Seb.
Bryce pressed a series of keys and dabbed expertly at the touchpad, and the light on his face shifted in tone. A momentary frown disappeared. “We are now.”
A crackle on the walkie-talkie and a static-enhanced voice confirmed the St John’s half of the team was also set fair and awaiting the up-thumb. They were similarly ensconced in a room opposite that college’s front gate.
I glanced at Seb for encouragement and took a breath. “Well then,” I said, thrusting out a hand. “Engage.” One rarely has the opportunity to issue an order as Jean-Luc Picard. It would have been such a shame to waste it.
The instruction was relayed over the airwaves to St John’s, and both teams pressed their respective buttons. Seb and I watched as the lights illuminating Bottom Court’s facade dimmed to darkness and the newly purchased projector beside us shone a new image, large and bright upon the stone. Faces and voices on the street below turned and exclaimed, with scatterings of applause.
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