The Pink And The Grey Part 9

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 la.s.soed 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 a.s.sured 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 doc.u.ment, 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sumed she would hover and skulk and interfere like Beelzebub's kitten mas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+t-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 p.i.s.sing 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 b.o.l.l.o.c.king, a double-s.c.r.o.t.e. 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 fis.h.i.+ng."

"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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d. 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 ch.o.r.e 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 a.r.s.eholes 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. "n.o.body wants to hear about how much of the Limpopo river some dead toff swam up in 1842."

I didn't take offence. n.o.body who took offence could last long there. "This is an actual story, Geoff. Actual news. They're organising a charity race across town for Sat.u.r.day week. I spoke to the guy in charge. He's an a.r.s.ehole, of course. Wants a big splash from us to kick off the publicity." All these things were true, especially the a.r.s.ehole part.

"Sat.u.r.day 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 antic.i.p.atory 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, G.o.d 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-s.h.i.+rts 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? b.o.o.bs in the air. You'll see." He mimed a smiley face with cupped b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

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-s.h.i.+rts! 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Geoff. Some of my best friends are b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I'll do it. Manish is barely out of school-"

"I'll get him thinking about a headline then. Starter for ten: b.o.o.bs On The Run. No! Toff t.i.tties."

"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 pa.s.s 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 b.o.n.e.r, 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 swis.h.i.+ly 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 pa.s.sed along the paths and through the stone archways of the college I saw whispered conversations behind the backs of hands from twosomes and threesomes rus.h.i.+ng 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 shallow 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 cla.s.sicist 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Conor. There are, of course, ladies here, and they are fully equipped, I imagine. I would hazard- without wis.h.i.+ng 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 heteros.e.xual persons of the opposite gender. We are an inclusive establishment, regardless of the popular sentiment."

"Great! Can't we get those together and do a big b.o.o.b jump or something?" I found myself miming it, as Geoff had, and felt my face flush.

Spencer looked at me distastefully as he lifted his cup. "I see all journalists are cut from the same cloth, notwithstanding the st.i.tching."

"I'm sorry. You need this front page, though, don't you?" He did, we all did - it would set us up nicely for the big one the following week - though I couldn't say any of that with the eye in the corner. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, apparently, but I wasn't sure what Spencer had was what I'd call freedom. More like trading today's privacy for tomorrow's security. But I suppose it wasn't all that different from CCTV on the streets - except these cameras were exposed to a little more of the spice of life. The sofa felt suddenly less comfortable.

Spencer took a gulp of tea and set the cup down. "There is one possibility, though. a.s.suming the editor doesn't want anything too racy, too explicit."

"It's a page one story, not a page three."

"In which case I believe I might have a solution. Drink up," he said, and reached across the desk for his phone.

Half an hour later we were in another part of college - Spencer called it Top Court, with an ironic smile - in a small room tucked alongside the dining hall. I could only describe it as bright brown: wood panelling varnished to s.h.i.+te, below ochre walls and a bronze-coloured ceiling. One wall was covered completely in mirrors tiled top to bottom. The whole room s.h.i.+mmered with specks of glitter. We were in a kind of dog-s.h.i.+t disco.

And with us were four students, undergrads by the look of them: still with a fierce, knowing innocence and cheekbones that could slice cheese. Barely a muscle between them, and certainly not an ounce of blubber. Spencer had called them here. He lined them up and introduced them individually, and then, with a flourish: "And together, they're Cream of the Crop Top." The guys bowed and curtsied elaborately.

It was a student f.u.c.king drag act.

"Jeez, due respect, I'm sure it's great, but... Geoff will have my hide. We can't do this."

Spencer was dismissive. "You have yet to see them. It is a sight indeed to behold. I promise you, Geoff won't only not notice, he'll be positively overcome with desire."

The act busied themselves noisily with bags and clothing and equipment.

"It's madness! I've never seen a drag act you couldn't tell from a mile away! I'm gonna be laughed out of the c.o.c.king paper! Are you sure we can't lure a couple of lesbians here with a kitten and a copy of Sporting Life?"

"Trust me." He patted my arm. "These boys know what they're doing."

And they were doing it fast. I gave them that, it was a well practised setup. They were shaved gla.s.s-smooth already - face, arms, chest and legs always ready for a bit of action - and they dressed quickly, tucking and padding and slapping on the make-up like a wh.o.r.e in a hurry.

Ten minutes after arriving, the wigs were on and adjusted and we were good to go.

It was an impressive transformation, I had to admit. Close-up, you could tell. You could feel the b.r.e.a.s.t.s weren't right, you could spot the unavoidable physical differences. But, say, from a dozen feet, when they were jumping up in the air? The only ones who could tell would be the ones who would never tell.

The leader of the gang called herself Cody. Bright blue eyes, determined. Hungry, even: a man-eater. A pout of steel. Brash, confident, never short of a snappy response. Out of uniform, she'd been a mousey geographer called Jonathan.

Cody led the group out into the court and straight onto the gra.s.s. Even I, an outsider scurrying behind, knew that an undergraduate violating the turf was some kind of sacrilegious act.

"Cody, I don't think-" Spencer started to object, and Cody gave him a glare that stopped him like stone.

The rest of the Cream gathered beside her, all four girls with legs apart and hands on hips. Like a group of superheroes: The XX Men, perhaps. The rain, gentler now, almost a mist, dappled their luxurious real-hair wigs and their light t-s.h.i.+rts and college-pink shorts. I could already see a few faces popping up at windows around Top Court as Spencer fussed me along.

I hurried to sort out my camera. It was important not to let the girls become too damp: although the editor might have wanted a wet t-s.h.i.+rt line-up, the wetter this lot got the less female they appeared. I scurried around to make sure the light, such as it was, was behind me.

There was a whistle from somewhere high up, echoing across the court. One of the girls waved. Then chanting began: Co-dy, Co-dy, Co-dy, and she waved too, to cheers.

I was ready. I called them back into position, a not-so-straight line of four, and counted down: three, two, one, jump snap. A second shot, and a third. I got the girls adopting different poses mid-air, with whoops and hollering and yelling all around, people banging on window frames, clapping, calling out names. I felt like I was taking photos of a girl band: a beautiful, successful, powerful girl band everybody had heard of except me. I felt like- I felt like my father.

Except, of course.

"Have we finished?" asked Spencer. "Only, the girls are getting rather rained upon." The mist was coalescing back into small raindrops.