The Pink and the Grey

by Anthony Camber

  The time went in a flash, buzzing and darting and fussing with an energy I hadn’t experienced before at the Bugle.

  Simon did almost all of the last-minute editing of the paper. Normally he and Geoff would share it, swearing back and forth at each other. This time Geoff sat back a little, nursing his injury and perhaps placing some plausibly deniable distance from his old friend should St Paul’s happen to inquire as to what the hell.

  And then it was finished, and sent to print, and Manish and I gave each other the what-have-we-done face.

  And Simon gathered us round, having apparently promoted himself. He said Manish and I had performed pretty decently under trying circumstances in the last week, and was sorry the other pieces lacerating St Paul’s had been sent to story heaven, the great holy spike where all shall be subbed and found to have ended a sentence with a preposition or some other toss nobody gives a shit about. About which nobody gives a shit. Whatever.

  And then he fired us.

  Gross misconduct, he said, as Geoff looked on with arms crossed and face ambiguous. Unethical behaviour, his finger wagged. Use of newspaper facilities for personal research with a view to freelance activities incompatible with our contracts. Section blah, subsection bollocks, paragraph shite (b), and about forty-nine other breached clauses. He showed us a printout of the GH Instruments searches we’d both done: all dutifully logged by the firewall, he said. None of it wiped by the Archivist’s little helpers, he didn’t say. Obviously a conspiracy between us, or a con-spy-racy, he said, complimenting Manish on the choice of headline.

  Under the circumstances, he told us with a thin smile, we would not be held to our notice periods and would instead be clearing our desks there and then. He would graciously donate a couple of bin bags. If we wanted to argue, he said, he would happily call security and we could be escorted out by their big dogs with freshly painted holes in our arses.

  I took it on the chin. Manish took it somewhere in the stomach, by the look of him. But we both knew that as soon as the paper hit the streets the next day and the full truth emerged then we’d have been ejected into the gutter in any case, along with the two of them. If anything, we were hauling our arses out of Dodge before whatever people got themselves out of Dodge for happened. I admit it did feel a little like jumping out of a diving, pinwheeling plane without a parachute, though.

  I thought about unleashing a volley of insults as I left the office for the final time. The truth is, I’d used them all up already. There was nothing left to say. As the door closed behind me I simply called out: “Good luck.”

  twenty-one

  The Speech

  Two front-page stories about St Paul’s in two weeks: college profile duly risen, and Amanda’s challenge accepted and gloriously, soundly defeated. In a certain fashion. Two piddling trifles desired a slight finesse, that was all: an authoritative refutation of the spy allegations that would be sufficiently nutcracking to close the newspaper and deliver large doses of ignominy to Burnett and Wantage, and the logistics of a couple of thousand runners with charity buckets.

  I learned the critical management technique of delegating in several directions simultaneously.

  I stayed dry.

  In the fragrant suburbs of the Admin dungeon the college switchboard sizzled and sparked with outrage, poutrage, uninformed media, and lawyers on the tout. The delicate administration staff, bless their dedicated college socks, overheated in short shifts and recited mantras to all callers from a script prepared by the Archivist: flat denials, sans detail; a universal unavailability for media of all denominations; and a reminder of great business regarding the Band on the Run event at which they would of course be treasured guests, along with their wallets.

  It was the day before the race. The day before all would be resolved, one way or another. The part of me desiring to pack up and run had been boxed into a corner by the endless things that overflowed my mind. I was reduced to a liaison machine: the vertical kind, for the avoidance of doubt. And gradually the jigsaw formed.

  I might still fail, crushed beneath a purple thumb or a media stampede or both. I might yet succumb to the fast-acting poisons of the college lasagne. Unus maltorum: one of many, nothing special. I would still try.

  New Court began to echo with the crump and pop of nested buckets on grass. They arrived by lorry, by back gate and by chain gang, groups of eager student volunteers sacrificing their Friday afternoon naps for a trace of physical exercise. The multiple snakes of bucket-conveyors rippled along the gossip and news in the traditional fashion: that is to say, with mutations toward the vulgar. I encouraged instead a rousing work song, which transmuted rapidly into an impromptu performance of HMS Pinafore. I had not seen such a buzz around the college since the last Gaga.

  Dennis came to inspect progress in a brief respite from tongue-lashings by harassed University officials unhappy with the day’s headlines. The poor man was not used to such limelight either within or without college, as his face rather demonstrated: caffeinated eyes with arctic eyebrows, and a smile pasted from Hello magazine. He exchanged uplifting words with one or two of the students, selecting the more olive-skinned, I noted. It was like a minor royal working a parade of ball boys at Wimbledon.

  “What a spectacle, my lad, what a spectacle,” he said finally, approaching me on the lawn beside the fountain. We watched a while as the boys cheerfully sailed the ocean blue, crying Ahoy, Ahoy as the buckets passed along the rows.

  Dennis continued: “Man and bucket in perfect harmony. Is Mr Greatsholme here to see his doings?”

  I shook my head. “He is in deep hiding, by order of the Archivist. An inadvertent sighting today would be, as it were, maximally unhelpful.”

  “Shame, shame. It is rare that one is emotionally moved by buckets. And yet…”

  “It is the scale, Dennis.” I swept my hand across the court. “A king inspires an army and the army, in turn, inspires the king.”

  “Is that me, is it? King of all the buckets?” he said, with a wired chuckle.

  “Acting king of all the buckets.”

  He knew I meant it kindly and applauded me lightly on the shoulder. “Or perhaps, more fitting, Acting Ruler of the Queen’s Navy. Regardless, this temporary monarch has an appointment on his temporary throne, so I shall leave you and the army and navy to your duties.”

  He left me and picked his way through a writhing snake of buckets. “Keep it up, lads, keep it up,” he called out. Then he spun back to me and wagged a finger. “And Dr Flowers: don’t forget your speech.”

  I had forgotten my speech.

  Race day at last, the day of reckoning.

  The final few hours before the event passed in a smear. I danced on a lit hob from place to place, verifying and validating and vomiting.

  Amanda remained caged. Seb remained hidden. Conor and his colleague Manish lay low somewhere thereabouts. Dennis rested, after yesterday’s exertions, until he was ceremonially required. The counting machines and tellers were primed. The Archivist watched.

  All other available hands pitched in with Helen to register arriving competitors and assign numbers and buckets, via a scenic queue through college (“Keep off the Grass. We accept donations via PayPal”). My attempts to enlist Claire in Helen’s team had produced the perfect excuse: she was a competitor herself. Her husband Ken’s spirit was willing but his flesh was Greek, attending a mop symposium in Athens.

  Also taking part, I was rather moved to learn, was Seb’s sister Pamela: another of the family here to seek closure for the terrible deeds enacted in the name of fish paper and in the hunt for profit. I hoped to meet her. The events of her youth, her dice with death, were still undoubtedly raw despite the passing of the years.

  Another turn of the screw of pressure, then. A fresh injection of laxative.

  A long wooden dais had been raised beside the closed road by the college front gate, at the race’s start line, and draped in college colours. Barriers had been erected in strategic positions alo
ng the course to ensure passage. High-visibility jobsworths were posted where required.

  The race would begin at noon, by the Yankee Doodle chime of the college clock. It was a fine day for autumn: bursts of sunshine under hasty clouds, with a danger of light showers much later. An overnight drizzle had brought a fresh, earthy smell to the fore.

  Multi-coloured competitors swarmed along St Andrew’s Street toward Emmanuel College, teasing muscles into warmth. It was not, of course, a timed race, though the generally accepted belief was that you must avoid wallet fatigue and keep at least in distant view of the leading positions. Others felt a slower pace and an elaborate costume might better tempt the givers. The race might ultimately be won by tortoise or hare.

  As the ceremonies approached, an elastic barrier decorated in — of course — short stripes of pink and grey was drawn across the road. The limbering runners made final preparations, practising bucket-rattling and affixing numbers and home-made charity identifiers. It was a column of babble, of shared tactics and jokes, of groans and shrieks and wishes of good luck from families waving and chivvying from the sidelines. The excitement rose. Various deodorants and aftershaves and perfumes mingled in my nostrils like an evacuated chemistry lab.

  The projector in the management office high opposite once again shone the Band on the Run image onto the college façade, visible only dimly in the sunlight. It was almost a subconscious reminder, as with the Archivist’s cameras above the gate and elsewhere, and the knowledge that Amanda was secreted behind glass somewhere above us.

  I climbed the dais with Dennis and representatives from the three other participating colleges, and of course the city council, always on the sniff for a snatch of publicity. To my left, the writhing mass of participants. Ahead by the Grand Arcade gateway a phalanx of cameras and press, with the scandal bringing the national TV news scurrying to our doorstep. To my right, an empty road toward Christ’s and beyond, lined along both sides two or three deep with locals and tourists and cash.

  Five minutes until the race, and I discovered myself standing before an open microphone, all faces toward me, gripping tightly onto my hastily written speech and onto my bowels. I wore a smile like a choppy sea.

  Before I had uttered a word, the cry “Where’s the spy, Spencer?” came from the press box and I very nearly Shatnered myself. I recognised the caller: it was Wantage from the Bugle, there alongside his editor. Another cry came, a similar retort, then a third. I raised my hand, and there was a tense silence. I cleared my throat, thankfully not into the microphone.

  “Acting Master, distinguished guests, fellow Paulines,” I began and was momentarily disoriented by my own echo, a foreign voice mocking my words. “My Lords, as we have one or two, Ladies, fewer, and gentlemen. I stand here upon this dais, beside this fine college, before you all, beneath some fashion of a cloud. I hazard to identify it meteorologically as a Bugulonimbus.” There was scattered laughter.

  “It has precipitated somewhat, and moistened us with its onion tears of outrage. We stand dampened and dripping with disreputable allegations, denied mendaciously the opportunity and chance to inflate the umbrella of truth, or to don the wax jacket of justice.

  “And yet, ladies and gentlemen, today brings sunshine.” As if on cue a cloud drew back, and I heard a single cheer. “Sunshine dries the ground, and with the furnace of our internal fire dries the skin. Sunshine brings light to the dark and gloomy niches, where lies do plot and huddle and conspire. Sunshine, ladies and gentlemen, brings the glory of truth.

  “I admit freely to you, at this time, at this place, that none of us, neither student nor staff, within the Holy and Glorious College of St Paul, pretends perfection. I have glanced at the low-slung trouser of temptation. I have taken succour from the intimate company of gin. Who here can claim otherwise? Vodka drinkers, perhaps, but let us speak no more of them.

  “Let us not forget that this college, too, is sainted but not saintly. Our founder James Drybutter: vilified, ostracised. And yet we persist. We have seen bad times before, and yet we persist. We have nothing if not stamina, ladies and gentlemen.

  “History shall favour our words, my friends. You shall see. Enough of that for now.

  “To the race. St Paul’s, St John’s, St George’s in the guise of Corpus Christi, St Ringo in the guise of Downing, and back to this line. Let me here now thank those three other colleges, in fact all four, for their assistance and encouragement.” Generous applause.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, remember that the race is how much, not how fast. Stamina, you see? But please also remember that you must return here with your buckets by three o’clock or the police will be banging upon our door with truncheons raised. We have seen this before, too.

  “I should also like to extend gracious thanks to our sponsor, who I know stands anonymously somewhere amongst us. He gave generously so that you might give generously, and so that goodness in all its pleasant and many forms shall ultimately vanquish a suitably large subset of ills.

  “And finally I thank you, our competitors, for your efforts this afternoon. I wish you all great luck. Please do your best to fill both your buckets and your boots. Do not forget there is an award and great honour for the one amongst you who collects the greatest amount, which shall be presented here upon this dais once the counting is concluded.

  “And now may I introduce our dear Acting Master, Professor Dennis Sauvage, to, as it were, get you off.”

  I receded from the microphone with vigour and to kind and loud applause. The press box remained silent, knowing it had a further opportunity to ask questions after the race, where I was unlikely to be allowed to exercise my rhetoric in quite so unrestrained a fashion.

  Dennis shook my hand warmly before he took his amplified turn. The minute hand teetered on the cusp. “Thank you, Spencer. Fine words, fine words, from a fine fellow, a fine fellow. I apologise for my internal echo, do not adjust your sets, your sets.”

  I heard a rattle behind and above, as a window began to be opened.

  Dennis continued: “The chimes begin any moment. The old Yank, as we call it. I once knew an old yank. Frightful fellow, frightful fellow. All rather — what’s the expression — in your face. Anyhow. On the first bong, I think, the first bong, we shall set you free.”

  There were more rattles. Dennis peered back and up and moistened a lip nervously. I looked too. It seemed to be a window in Amanda’s apartments. A growing inch or two of space through which she could perhaps bellow.

  I nodded at Dennis and encouraged him to speak on.

  “Though, I think we might be a fraction, a fraction early. Longer speech next time, I propose. What, uh, what lovely weather.”

  The clock hand remained stubbornly unmoved, the chimes absent without exeat. Each second languished.

  A panic stabbed me: Amanda did, after all, have her supporters within college. Might they have smuggled in a screwdriver to unlock the window? And sabotaged the clock? She could under no circumstances, by crook or hook, be allowed to interfere. My own watch claimed high noon: time to act.

  “Dennis: begin the race,” I hissed urgently.

  “I might say—” came Amanda’s warble through the gap.

  Dennis jumped at the microphone, which shrieked along the street. “Bugger this for a soldier,” he cried. “On your marks, get set, get set, go!”

  The retaining elastic sprang back violently and the runners surged to cheers and laughter from the crowd that drowned out any contribution Amanda might have wished to make. I hoped the TV news reporters were now too occupied apologising for Dennis’s choice of words to inquire as to the who, what and why regarding our window heckler.

  I also hoped the Archivist was now dispatching elves en grande masse to reseal the gap. Although legs and brain wished it I could not leave the dais to rage into the Hub. My duties until the competitors passed were to smile and wave and point at strangers as if I knew them. I hogged the microphone and bleated encouragement whenever I could make out fain
t words of the opposite behind me. I did in a risky moment venture one glance up to the window only to see two purple eyes glare and spit down at me through this devil’s letterbox. I spun back forward, swallowing down the bile and redoubling my concentration upon the race.

  I was glad to do so. Despite my early misgivings about the task and despite the grief and upheaval I had inflicted upon my beloved St Paul’s, we were unequivocally doing good these three bucketing hours. The batty old woman attempting to wrench her way back into the limelight had somehow injected verdant new life into me while simultaneously heaving at the rug upon which I stood. A curious and unrecommended form of leadership, I concluded, waving and pointing at a pantomime horse.

  I began almost to relax. It was at this inopportune moment that I was tapped on the shoulder by the Archivist.

  twenty-two

  The Race

  I watched the blood drain from Spencer’s face as if the little short guy who’d tapped him on the shoulder had pulled out a plug in his neck. His jaw clanged to the floor. The guy quickly dragged him stumbling off the dais and through the gate into the sanctuary of the college.

  Seb and I had been watching discreetly from the corner, where the college turned down Emmanuel Street — Seb was wearing a dark blue branded hoody and sunglasses, turning him from a Chinese spy into a twat-faced rapper. We decided that whatever was happening now meant it was time for us to join the party. Arthur on the gate took one look at us and waved us through. He must’ve been fed up with the sight of us by then.

  We found the two men arguing behind the porters’ lodge, well out of sight of the street. I caught the word “missing” and barged into the conversation like a proper journalist.