The Pink and the Grey (33 page)

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 kitchen 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.”

I nodded. This was either sage advice requiring great consideration or Dennis’s hearing aid was rebroadcasting the weather forecast on Radio 4.

I had begun to formulate a reply when an exclamation came from a teller, a noise like the truculent squeak of a forty-a-day supermarket trolley. She held up a piece of paper extracted from a bucket: not a banknote, plainly. It had the size and proportions of a cheque. As her neighbouring tellers caught sight the squeak rippled through the ranks. Faces at the windows shuffled and bounced. Helen rushed across and inspected the cheque, and her eyes and mouth snapped into O shapes that mirrored, I quickly gathered, the trailing and non-decimal zeroes written thereupon.

“Dennis, Spencer,” the Bursar said, not altogether calmly, a distinct vibrato in her voice. “I believe we have our winner.”

Dennis tapped a finger upon the dais microphone to verify its function. “If I might have your attention, your attention,” he said to the expectant crowd.

I stood beside him. The many hundreds of competitors, reunited with their audited and resealed buckets, were arrayed before us in their costumes and with their friends and family. College staff and many students and the tellers and auditors and others such as Conor and Seb gathered to one side and behind in anticipation. The press crowded opposite in their raised box of lenses, the walled camera garden.
 

Silence fell.

“We should now like to award the prize to the winner.”

A buzz of anticipation and cheers, hijacked by Wantage. “Bring out the spy first! He was here earlier, I saw him. Where’s the spy?” he called out.

“Goodness, such noise, such noise. I must say the—”

Another journalist joined in. “Where’s Wang Ming? Why are you hiding a spy?”

The crowd became jittery and restless, some swivelling to the source of the interruption. One person, competitor or not I couldn’t say, called for silence from the press box. Others agreed, and still more disagreed.

Dennis looked ill at ease. This was transparently unfair on him: he was not responsible for any of what had happened. I touched him lightly on the arm and offered myself as a substitute. He gladly stepped aside and I gulped out a smile.

“Please, gentlemen, ladies,” I said, holding up my hands in peace. “I shall remove all doubts that might even now be simmering.”

“Bring him out!” cried Wantage.

“Mr Wantage, please, I fear the ambulance might not reach you through the crowds should you suffer an emergency illness with your present language.”

There was laughter, not all of it at his expense. He continued with his heckling. I turned from the microphone, cleared my throat and shook away the cobwebs.

“Do shut up, dear,” I said. Stronger laughter. Wantage quietened.

“You are all aware of the press coverage. Of the allegations against us. That we harbour a spy. Preposterous. I tell you now and here, preposterous. Why, I was discussing over afternoon tea with Professors Hitler and Stalin only the other day—” I paused for further generous laughter, which nearly came.

“We do accommodate, this much is true. Our undergraduates pride themselves on their abilities to bunk up to make room for one more. And occasionally these visitors will play under a different flag. We teach them our ways. We guide them through the intricacies of our common etiquette, whether they drive right or left, whether they bat under the North Star or the Southern Cross or, indeed, equatorially.

“But a spy, ladies and gentlemen? No. St Paul’s hides no spy. The
Bugle
is mistaken. The article is wrong. Its writer, Mr Simon Wantage, has, I fear, a most vivid imagination. And I shall now not only rebut his and his paper’s allegation, I shall refute it. There is indeed a person, a guest, within college, but he is not this hypothetical Wang Ming of whom Mr Wantage wrote. This guest is responsible for making today happen. This guest is our sponsor. Without him none of you would be here. Without him none of your charities would benefit. He is no spy.”

I turned and located the familiar face of Seb beside Conor amongst the college staff. I beckoned him to the dais. “Ladies and gentlemen, our sponsor.”

There was applause: polite and slightly confused. Seb squeezed past people to the rear of the dais then jumped, red-faced, into the limelight and forced a small embarrassed wave.

Wantage called out: “We have proof! Documentary evidence in black and white!”

There is no black, there is no white
, I thought.

I returned to the microphone. “
Quid est veritas
, Mr Wantage.
Caveat navigatrum
. Might I respectfully suggest that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.” This brought scattered laughter and applause. “Let me say that had I believed everything I had read or seen on the internet regarding certain Hollywood actors I might at this moment be languishing under several rather merciless restraining orders. I suggest and recommend you take an equally cynical view.

“And now I want to return to our scheduled programme, unless Mr Wantage would care to make a further fool of himself? Good.”

I paused for a second, not wishing to rush straight into happier announcements while a foul mood still hung about the street.

“Tell us about the Archivist!” The moment roused Geoff at last from his long silence, and yet even this was half-hearted: the final syllable withered away in a sudden regret, strangled at birth.

A smile crept slowly across my face as various figures on and off the dais tensed. “Oh, Mr Burnett,” I said calmly. “The Archivist is the college record keeper. He has many stories to tell. I look forward to his autobiography: don’t you?”

Answer came there none.

I reintroduced Dennis to the microphone for the remaining announcements and shuffled alongside Seb.

“Why did you invite me up here?” he whispered to me.

I shushed him, nodding towards Dennis.

“Goodness, we must make some progress now, some progress, or it shall be Christmas. So, to our winner. The person who collected the greatest sum for his, or indeed her, designated charity. All of you have been rather magnificent, of course. But I must say we have a clear winner, a clear winner, courtesy of a large individual donation submitted quite fairly, I must assure you, within the bucket.

“The winner, to be celebrated for the upcoming year as our honorary Fifth Beatle, joining St Paul, St John, St Ringo, St Ringo and St George, is…”

He paused.

“You know, I don’t watch those dreadful talent shows, but we must have a delay, a delay, mustn’t we. The winner is: Pamela Pedrosa. A lady, I surmise. Pamela Pedrosa.”

I heard a shriek and a small cheer from the crowd, and the winner swam through the faces to claim her crown.

Seb leaned to me and whispered: “Ah, that’s why.”

My grin was unconfined. It was an unusual feeling.

Pamela found her way to a gap in the barrier and onto the dais, passing Seb and I with a quick smile. The crowd applauded unselfishly as Dennis presented her with a trophy — a gold-plated halo on a stick, embedded into an engraved base — and invited her, if she would like, to say a few words perhaps about her selected charity.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said. “Such an honour, thank you Master. My name is Pamela Pedrosa. I would like to tell you a short story, a story about why I chose to support this particular charity. The story begins long before I was married, when I was a girl, and my name was Pamela Greatsholme…”

Seb watched proudly as his sister spoke.

The unused buckets dotting New Court had been pushed to the sides and open marquees erected around the fountain, under which college dignitaries and undergraduates and special guests swooned over tables laden with food neither concocted nor dredged up by our kitchen, and thus edible.

I saw Jonathan clinking glasses with his friends from
Cream
, and a few admirers. Hints of Cody leaked into his body language: he had a certain confidence about him, a poise, absent before.

The skies above the north range, although cast orange by the bus terminal beyond, sparkled blue and green and red and not purple with the crack and fizz of fireworks supplied, of course, by Seb.

His sister Pamela had spoken movingly to the crowd of what had happened to her in her youth, and to her family, and who had perpetrated it. Burnett and Wantage had attempted to slink silently away unnoticed, but had already been sufficiently clamorous to make such a getaway impossible. Various fit and healthy members of the crowd, and their smartphones, assured that. The TV coverage they had themselves triggered proved their final undoing, and it was apparent to all that the
Bugle
had tootled its last Last Post.

Pamela and Seb were chatting together, catching up away from tedious drunken interruptions by well-meaning sycophants such as myself — although I was still not daring to admit alcohol into my bloodstream, lest I dive clothed or unclothed into the fountain
again
. Alas, I had no company with which to dive, in any case. I stood by myself, possibly exuding a beatific glow, holding a plate of identifiable food and a glass of an exotic formulation apparently called an
orange juice
. I felt sure it would be unlikely to catch on.

Helen approached with Conor’s former colleague, Manish, at her elbow. I reconfigured the contents of my hands so we could shake, and I thanked him for his noble sacrifice and promised assistance to find him new employment.

“On a related topic,” said Helen, “I have some rather good news. The college is already attracting an increased level of interest from potential students. Our supply of college prospecti is dropping to dangerous levels. Even our page on the Wikipedia has seen some activity. And I was thinking…”

“I’m retiring from SPAIN with immediate effect, you should know that,” I said.

“Good! Excellent! I mean, we’ll need someone new focused upon these matters, which fits entirely with my plan. And my plan is standing here with us.”

I looked at Manish brightly.

“I’d like to join the college, be a press and publicity guy,” he said. “I know I’m not exactly your usual type. But, you owe me big time. And you can’t turn me down because I’m straight — it’s the law.”

“Very true,” I said. “There will need to be formalities, of course. All by the book. Helen has mastery of the book. I doubt my opinion is relevant but I have no objection. Perhaps you should speak to Dennis — he is about here somewhere.”

They agreed and set off in search.

I returned to savouring the delights of unreconstructed chicken. Who knew it had a texture? Such wonders.

I heard Conor’s voice across the court. He had earlier dashed off mysteriously, claiming an unspecified
scoop
which seemed rather unlikely under the circumstances. I had suspected this was his way of telling us he had some form of a date, as yet unidentified, and we might or might not see him that evening. I turned to greet him.

“Hey Spencer,” he said. “You know that scoop I was telling you about?”