The Pink and the Grey

by Anthony Camber

  “What’s going on?” I said. “Who’s missing?”

  Spencer spat back: “Amanda. Amanda!” Arms flapping about in full-on fart dispersal. “All this surveillance, all this monitoring, and she vanishes from beneath the Archivist’s nose.”

  He pointed angrily at the short guy: grey, owl-eyes, Einstein hair. So that was the Archivist, I thought. I was relieved to discover it wasn’t Quiff after all — that would’ve been a bit of a cheese grater to the head. To be honest though I’d expected the Archivist to be someone with greater presence, a bit more oomph. A Christopher Lee type with a hatful of sparks. Instead he was more of a pale old gonk. The great-grandfather of all the gonks, maybe, his hair without its synthetic sheen after all those years in dark rooms underground being blasted by TV screens.

  “Some kind of malfunction, I suspect,” he said to Spencer, barely acknowledging us. “Not entirely uncommon — we do have a number of interrelated systems and every system has its teething troubles and ongoing issues. Occasionally the connections break down, or there are incompatible protocols, or rats.”

  “Bit convenient, though, isn’t it?” I said. “For her, right now.”

  “Where has she gone?” said Seb.

  The Archivist finally turned to us. “Mr Geraghty, Mr Greatsholme. Please. With respect, this is college business.”

  I cocked my head and found myself bristling. “College business? Hey, like it or not, buddy, we’re tied up in all this,” I said. “I’ve just lost my crappy little job as part of this game of Risk for Toffs youse all seem to be playing. I think you’ll find college business is my business. Well, it’s not, but it sounded a hell of a good line in my head. Listen, I apologise for using the word buddy. It was either that or Albert. It’s the hair.”

  Seb touched my arm to silence me, about a minute too late. “How can we help?” he said.

  The Archivist looked at us both, probably weighing us up from our TV highlights, our best bits. “The last confirmed sighting was at the back gate, a few minutes ago.”

  “Escaping? Where to?” said Seb.

  I knew. “She’s gonna go straight for Geoff and Simon.”

  “My conclusion also,” said the Archivist.

  “And so how do we counter?” said Spencer.

  “Spencer,” I said. “You stay here and deal with the race. Seb and I will track her down. All is in hand, as your man there once said. What’s she wearing?”

  Purple, the pair said simultaneously.

  “Purple what?”

  Purple everything.

  Right, I thought. Easy enough. She might have had a head start but she’d be taking the long way round, and even with the streets full of fancy dress I was sure we could spot a purple dragon lady.

  Seb and I went back onto St Andrew’s Street. There were still racers passing slowly by, with the little old Acting Master guy shouting at them over the mike. Peeking through the dais and around his legs I could see Simon over in the press box but I couldn’t make out Geoff.

  “Do you see Geoff anywhere?” I said to Seb. “He’s probably standing behind a cake.”

  “You never stop joking, do you?” he replied evenly. “Even now.”

  “I’m not giving you my knock knock collection, if that’s what you want. He might’ve trundled off for a different camera angle, I suppose.” I kept hunting for the editor in the crowds opposite while also scanning left and right for the Master.

  Seb said nothing.

  “It’s what I do, OK? Think of it as a coping mechanism for life. It was either this or holy orders, and I couldn’t have handled all that sex. Is it a problem? Are you looking? Keep looking. I know you can’t take your eyes off me, but keep looking.”

  “I have an idea. If you track Burnett, I will lure Wantage out. Attract his fire.” Seb pulled his hood down and took off his sunglasses, fully exposing the face that was on the front of the Bugle the previous morning. “You know, I think I could do with a jog.”

  He vaulted the spectators’ barrier onto the tarmac of St Andrew’s Street and quickly stretched his calf muscles. Then he jinked through the fag-end competitors over to the press box and acted suspiciously for a few seconds, untying and tying his shoelaces.

  It didn’t take long for Simon to spot him, and to draw Geoff out. Seb did a decent impression of a startled sheep when he realised he’d been rumbled and darted into the crowd of competitors ahead. Simon barged through a squealing mass of spectators and a gap in the barrier to haul himself onto the road in pursuit, camera flapping around his neck. Unless he had some marathon-running skills I hadn’t heard of, I knew I wouldn’t see him for a while.

  That left Geoff, who in the excitement I almost lost again: he was waddling along the pavement past the bus stops, perhaps thinking he could cut across town and roll into King’s Parade to form a kind of dam to stop Seb getting any further.

  I figured my best bet, since I couldn’t see Amanda, was to keep Geoff in my sights. If I could keep him in view then I could spot if the purple woman was anywhere nearby and I could do something that I hadn’t quite figured out yet, and which wouldn’t involve my own personal injury, to avoid the two meeting and the universe exploding or whatever was going to happen when her anti-matter met his enormous great sphere of matter.

  Excusing my way through some undergrads holding up a dirty banner I found a policed gap in the barriers and sweet-talked the steward into letting me across the road by showing him my press card and my dimples. I didn’t do vaulting. Vaulting is like sport, and sport is something masochists do — like dieting and budgeting. I didn’t need to hurry that much: Geoff was not one of life’s sprinters. The only danger of me losing my breath was if he saw a BOGOF on jammy doughnuts.

  My guess about his tactics was right: he followed the line of the crowds for a while then turned up Petty Cury towards the market, planning to bypass a great chunk of the race route. And that’s when I spotted the flaw in my own plan. If I followed him that way and the Master hadn’t yet seen him, we might never find her. And if I didn’t follow him and she had seen him, then she’d find him, and he might intercept Seb. Stupid plan, who thought this one up? We should’ve just got the new Master to broadcast a bounty on her head, or something, make it part of the event. Hunt the purple monster and win an undergraduate.

  I was trying to figure out whether to follow Geoff or not when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was one of the St Paul’s students I’d met before, one of the elves as Spencer called them — the all is in hand elf who wouldn’t let us visit the Archivist when I wanted him to hack out the suspicious log entries for Manish and me, not that he did, the git.

  “Jeez, what do you want,” I said. “Are you gonna tell me it’s all in hand again? You must have, like, forty-nine hands or something.”

  “Sir, the Archivist did send me, it’s true,” he said, “but only to say we’ve had a sighting. Heading for Bar Humbug, sir. I suggest we—”

  With the elf in tow I changed direction and sped towards Humbug. “Doesn’t he have a phone?” I said. “He’s hardly a technophobe. I bet he has a Mission Impossible ring tone, doesn’t he?”

  “He believed you might need some assistance with the Master.”

  “Did he now. Are you like the horse-whisperer? Are you a Master-whisperer? Do you, like blow up her nose?”

  We’d gone about ten seconds through the shoppers and the race-watchers towards Humbug when my phone rang. I nearly didn’t notice — there was far too much noise and vibration going on to notice the noise and vibration. I slowed to answer it. It was Spencer.

  “Conor,” he said urgently. “There is a fox in the hen house. All is in hand. He never uttered those words. The Archivist never uttered those words.”

  “What do you mean? What does that matter?”

  “He never uttered those words and he never despatched Beardsley to intercept us. It seems the malfunctions in the Archivist’s systems extended from the technical and on to the personal. You must be on your guard.”


  “Right. Shit.” I slowed further at some Peruvian buskers having a bad day for a large number of reasons. “So if I were to say I were on my way to Humbug…”

  “Why are you going to that place? Not her milk of magnesia by a long stretch.”

  Dead stop.

  Spencer twigged. “Am I to understand that you are currently, as it were, with company?”

  “That’s a bit personal now. Yeah, I am, but I wouldn’t go out and buy a hat just yet, you know?” The blond elf looked on, confused. I turned away from him and the buskers. “Well, that explains a lot.”

  The elf grabbed my arm and tried to twist me around. “We must get to Humbug,” he said.

  “You go on ahead,” I said to him and shook free. “I have a thing with a thing about a—”

  I started running back to Petty Cury, as fast as I could through the crowds, to catch up with Geoff.

  On the phone to Spencer: “Always the cute ones, dammit. Can you send reinforcements? Does that Archivist fella have an army of elves or gonks or something he can dispatch? A squadron would do. Elf ninjas? Petty Cury, heading up to King’s Parade.”

  I hung up. I had no idea whether the elf was following me. I just had to get back onto Geoff’s slimy little trail before Amanda grabbed him.

  The crowds were harder to force through in this direction, against the flow of the competitors. I was briefly in the slipstream of a strident young mum with a snow-plough buggy that sliced a path through anything or anyone that didn’t jump out of the way quickly enough, until she peeled off elsewhere. And then I was nearly bowled over by a git on a bike trying to cycle his way along the pavement with music coming from a plastic bag hanging from his handlebars like the shittiest ice cream van you can think of.

  Progress got easier when I turned back on to Petty Cury and it wasn’t long before I picked out Geoff again: his fastest speed was amble and he was being distracted by a chocolate shop.

  And there, head to toe in purple, sights set and course laid in, was Amanda. With her long, flowing dress hiding what I assumed were purple legs, it was like she was hovering in his direction like a Geoff-seeking missile.

  I scrabbled through the middle of a flock of French schoolchildren with bright yellow backpacks perfecting their moody misery and dancing around a fresh pack of Gauloise.

  “Excusez-moi, je suis homosexuel,” I said, and they scattered.

  She was about a dozen metres or so behind Geoff and gaining fast.

  I’d reached sniffing distance, Ralgex with undertones of TCP, when the elf finally caught up and dragged me to a stop, pinning my arm in both of his.

  “You must not interfere,” he said, out of breath. “It is the Master’s right.”

  “I’m doing this for your college, you arsehole,” I said, struggling.

  “She will tell only the truth.”

  I looked him in the eye. “Sometimes, kid, the truth isn’t good for you. Watch out for the elves at your six.”

  “I’m not an idiot—”

  A six-pack of elves pounced and grabbed him and muffled his cries and quickly carried him away, aloft, like ants wrangling a twig. Nobody paid them any attention: student town, see. These things happen.

  I settled in behind Amanda just a few paces this side of Geoff and — my turn — tapped her on the shoulder.

  She swung round, the long skirt following at its leisure. “What of it?”

  “That’s some outfit you’ve got on there, Professor.”

  “Of which concern is it of yours?”

  I waited a second as Geoff receded. Then, best reporter’s bollocks. “Geoff has asked me to interview you for the Bugle. We’ve heard you’ve got an amazing story for us. We’re thinking like a double-page spread, maybe with a fashion special. Amanda Chatteris Reveals All kind of a thing. The St Paul’s Diet, which from what I’ve heard would be two square meals a day in the canteen. I wonder if you could just come with me?”

  “This Geoff walks there.” She pointed towards him, ambling into the distance. “Am I not to speak directly upon him?”

  I put a hand on her elbow and started walking her slowly back towards college. “You see, about that. He’s a bit undercover at the moment. I know, you wouldn’t know it to look at him. That’s the beauty of it. He’s actually a great fan of purple. Doesn’t wear it often, it makes him look like a bowling ball. So how’s your day been?”

  After the second elf death squad, or whatever the collective noun is, had found me and taken charge of Amanda, I went off in search of Geoff again. He was still the loose cannonball. I could maybe still throw myself in front of him to stop him throwing himself in front of Seb. But he was nowhere to be seen, which to say the least was unusual for him. He’d managed to fade into the crowds like a chubby ghost, or maybe he’d found a fellow cockney somewhere and was reminiscing over a plate of apples and pears. In pie form, probably.

  I know, enough with the fat jokes. In truth it’s a defence mechanism. At school it was kill or be killed and by the time I’d hit puberty I had the holy trinity: fat, ginger and queer. I fought the flab mostly by fighting the kids who were ripping the shit. The other two weren’t so easy. I could’ve dyed my hair black and gone all freckle-me-emo but I could never pull off all the tears and the cutting. And going out with girls? Jeez, I had to draw a line somewhere.

  That was all long gone, much like my job at the Bugle. And I’d begun to realise that one thing schools and newspapers had in common was bullying. The difference was, at the newspaper the bullies were the ones paying the wages.

  So my grand idea to launch a new paper once the Bugle had lost its horn wasn’t feeling quite so attractive right then. I didn’t want to turn into a bully. The world had enough of those.

  I made my way back to St Paul’s. It was about half way through the three hours of the race, and the first buckets were crossing the finish line carried by scarlet and steaming bodies with double-length arms. Every finisher was awarded a medal in college colours — a lot cheaper than it looked, Seb had told me — and the bucket was labelled and sealed and carted off to be counted and audited.

  I’d watched the competitors streaming in for a few minutes when I saw Seb himself jog easily over the finish line, barely puffing, and with no sign of Simon. He refused a medal with a shake of the head and a smile.

  “You forgot to take a bucket,” I called out to him in the queue of finishers.

  He turned out his pockets to show a decent few coins and notes. “I did OK, I think. Not everyone reads the Bugle.”

  He distributed the cash between the buckets of a few people before and after him, with a wink, and skipped out of the queue to join me. I gave him a hug. He was hot and clammy and smelled of man.

  “I’m sorry, I lost Geoff,” I said. “Shit happened. Did he give you any trouble?”

  “I waved at him as he was attempting to force his way onto the course. He seemed a little distraught that a policeman would not let him do whatever he wanted. Oh: did you get her?”

  “All is in hand,” I said.

  twenty-three

  The End

  The buckets of donations began their tireless march through Helen’s magnificent system in the dining hall, watched by many student faces pressed against the windows. The tellers recruited by our dear Bursar, all of whom were of the lady persuasion, processed and counted the monies via the machines wherever possible. They double-checked and triple-checked under the protective but lightly manic gaze of Helen herself and two rather stern-looking gentlemen sans hair and avec clipboard, independently auditing. Two pearl accountants rolling within a cash and teller oyster.

  Dennis and I were inside the hall officially assessing progress, but mentally as excited as the window-pressers. One of the clipboards instructed us at the tip of his pencil not to pass beyond a crude line of benches — a rudimentary infection control barrier of sorts.

  I said that such a barrier might be of considerable assistance during those worrying times in which the college ki
tchen was in full operation, and the acting Master revealed to me in delight that improving college cuisine was high upon his list, his list.

  Amanda’s escape and subsequent recapture, as it were, had revealed a small cell of undesirables within the Archivist’s circle: a Romulan cabal on Vulcan, perhaps. The Archivist was at that moment undertaking a purge, an elf pogrom: young Beardsley, who had so nearly misdirected Conor, had swiftly capitulated and blabbed without significant prodding, aware how his college and career prospects were rebalancing unfavourably before his traitorous eyes.

  The purple lady herself was returned to her quarters with a fresh detail on guard. She would, I was told, be dealt with presently in an unspecified manner. I confess the thought rather unnerved me.

  “The snow falls heavily upon Amanda,” said Dennis as we watched the tellers at work. “I fear she is lost in a blizzard, a blizzard.”

  I remembered the explanation Dennis and the Archivist had given me before: an obsession with the screens, an overpowering need to know, an overwhelmingness of raw data, an inability to comprehend.

  “Do you not feel… responsible? At least in some measure?” I said, kindly. “You and the Archivist might have assisted her. Given her some fashion of umbrella against the weather, or at least a warm fire and a mug of your finest peppermint tea.”

  He removed his spectacles and wiped them upon his gown. I doubted this did more than redistribute the dirt and grease. “My boy, you are right, of course.”

  “I mean no deep criticism.”

  “No, no.” He waved his hand and smiled. “Wood and trees, my lad, wood and trees. When the ground is hard and dry the rain slips off, yet the fault is neither the ground’s nor the rain’s, but the sun’s.”

  “I am not entirely convinced I follow.”

  “Let me put it another way, another way. There is no black, there is no white—”

  “—All is grey, above, below and beyond,” I finished with him. I suspected that was the closest to an explanation I would receive.

  “It has been snowing on Amanda for many years, many years. Be careful which clouds you stand beneath, my boy.”