The Pink And The Grey Part 22

There was a moment of silence, during which I tried desperately not to do the smug face or the smug dance. I couldn't say anything: they had to shovel themselves down into this hole all by themselves.

"We have to print it," said Simon. "It's either a defection, or the college is importing spies on student visas. Either way, it's a story. We have to. Spies, Cambridge, queers - not like it's unheard of. Maybe - maybe - all that from the fifties never stopped. Maybe this is the biggest story of our careers."

Simon's eyes started to fill with dollar signs. I bet he was thinking of Watergate, of movie adaptations, of the pair of them played by Brad Pitt and Danny DeVito. More like Laurel and Hardy, long into retirement.

Geoff sat for a fair while, spinning back and forth in his chair, blinking rapidly and rubbing his bad wrist. His thoughts were plain as day to me: head down, or head up? Be intimidated out of printing and save his own a.r.s.e, or print and hope the story and the college explodes before it brings him down? I knew, somewhere deep inside the Churchillian rolls of flesh that jellied before me, there was a spark that couldn't be stamped out. The cold, mechanical, beating heart of the journalist. The desire for, if not the truth, then the story.

"I'm too old for this s.h.i.t," he said. "f.u.c.k it. Print it."

I breathed out in relief as quietly as I could. I imagined a room full of people in St Paul's jumping about six feet in the air.

A few hours later came the weedy shout across the office from Simon that I had been expecting. "Twiglet, you done with that story? Send it across and I'll give it the once-over."

That was code for: "I'm about to make a few trivial changes and rewrite the intro and put my name at the top." And for once, Manish couldn't wait to be rid of it. He polished a few pars and topped it with some rubbish for Simon to replace and then washed his hands of the whole thing.

"I've got a headline for you," he said, almost as an afterthought. "The Spy Who b.u.mmed Me. Can we use that?"

"No," Simon replied. "What else have you got?"

"The p.o.r.n Ident.i.ty."

"No."

"Con-spy-racy. You know, like conspiracy but with spy in red. And you get con and racy for free."

"Hmm." That was about as close to a Yes as we were going to get.

The headline worked for me. A decent trigger word to draw in the punters with a nice scary commie red. All it needed was a s.h.i.tty pun and we were sorted.

"Oh, and a subhead: Student? St Paul the other one."

That got a groan from Geoff, which made it a dead cert. Either that or he'd tried to flex his wrist again.

We wrapped up the rest of the paper in a flurry of activity, having devoted far too much time to spiked stories.

Curiously, all of the photos in that edition seemed to magically take up twice as much s.p.a.ce as in a typical issue, and all the headlines and subheads grew a couple of points. We all became beard-scratchers about the importance of white s.p.a.ce - especially in stories without enough copy.

There was one sad accident. The never-popular, award-losing Cat of the Week feature somehow managed to double its allocation of mangy old p.u.s.s.ies as several dozen unfortunate slips of the mouse and the keyboard caused a bunch of cats from several weeks ago to find themselves stars for a second time. We knew there'd be letters about that, because the people who write letters are generally the people who write letters about that.

I managed to squeeze a full page out of the week's ancient photo of Cambridge, a very popular s.p.a.ce-filler, on the grounds that it included two boatered toffs leaning up against the St Paul's college front gate paying absolutely and suspiciously no attention to a pa.s.ser-by in a huge hooped dress and a flowery hat. Manish dared me to Photoshop in a small Chinese boy. It wouldn't have been the first time. I didn't, though: the letters, again.

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 h.e.l.l.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 n.o.body gives a s.h.i.t about. About which n.o.body gives a s.h.i.t. 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 b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, paragraph s.h.i.te (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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.r.s.es.

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 a.r.s.es 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 succ.u.mb 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 gra.s.s. 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 trans.m.u.ted 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 hara.s.sed 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 h.e.l.lo 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 compet.i.tors and a.s.sign numbers and buckets, via a scenic queue through college ("Keep off the Gra.s.s. We accept donations via PayPal"). My attempts to enlist Claire in Helen's team had produced the perfect excuse: she was a compet.i.tor 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 pa.s.sing 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 along the course to ensure pa.s.sage. 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 compet.i.tors 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 facade, 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 gla.s.s somewhere above us.

I climbed the dais with Dennis and representatives from the three other partic.i.p.ating colleges, and of course the city council, always on the sniff for a s.n.a.t.c.h of publicity. To my left, the writhing ma.s.s of partic.i.p.ants. 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 Dryb.u.t.ter: 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 a.s.sistance 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 compet.i.tors, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstances, 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. "b.u.g.g.e.r 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 ma.s.se 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 compet.i.tors pa.s.sed 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 faint 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.