The Pink and the Grey (20 page)

Naturally, I told them about Conor, and about Seb and his family history, and how this monstrosity had all come about simply because I believed I could help right an old wrong. And this led to the germ of an idea: to be precise, the flowering of an existing one.

It was decided that to counter the truths, the near-truths and the speculation, we would revisit Seb and Conor’s concept and broaden it and tweak it. There would be no great libel sold to the paper about Amanda, or a famous name with deep pockets: but there were other options. It would be a lie great enough to switch the points and reroute the
Bugle
’s investigation, and yet demonstrably and obviously false to ensure the overdue demise of their journalistic careers. It was Seb and Conor’s idea revisited, on a grander scale.

But what would the lie be?

Once we had agreed all we could without the active involvement of Conor and Seb, the Archivist and his team began to prepare. One of the elves, a tired-eyed statistician awaiting the end of a shift so he could prepare for an evening recalculating his averages, escorted me from the Archivist’s domain into the light and the air.

It was the afternoon, I discovered, though it seemed a different day, a different world. Despair still pricked at my heart but now I also felt hope. And guilt too, of course, and I had little doubt that emotion would stay with me a while. The tussles in my head showed no sign of concluding, albeit no longer alcohol-derived.
Ah well
, I thought:
fac fortia et patere
,
do brave deeds and endure
. Or as I’d heard it many years before:
once you’ve kissed a boy, you fear nothing
. Less succinct but more actionable, I think.

It was, I suppose, for the likes of the statistical elf and his friends that I hadn’t immediately packed up my belongings in a tottering pile and headed for a hermit’s life in the Lakes, or perhaps cut out the tediums of middle age and swan-dived under one of the never-ending streams of sightseeing buses that stalked the city. I still had those options open to me if this latest plan failed, as despite the hope I knew it very well could.

Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish paper. Today’s disgraced academic is tomorrow’s case study, dissertation, cautionary tale, comedian’s punchline, and reality show contestant.

It sometimes seemed that the only people permitted to make more than one mistake in life were journalists, and the people who — directly or indirectly — paid them.

The temptation to succumb to the booze was strong and violent, but I had a deal of work ahead. Yet not true, proper work, the work I was paid to do. Although I had a further supervision scheduled for later that afternoon, I had first to descend once again to the dread monster, the purple-eyed Gorgon, and her talismanic biros.

It was, I thought as I knocked on her door, a week since she had summoned me here to thrash and berate me and curse me with her committee. I entered with a steely heart and frisky bowels.

“Dr Flowers,” she said, looking up from some redlined document. “I had been meaning, a chat, to organise.” It was coherent, if excessively teutonic in grammatical tone.

“I felt I should report back to you regarding the newspaper
contretemps
you witnessed yesterday afternoon,” I countered with a little French and a littler smile, taking the unoffered chair. I did not include
cheerfulness
in my current emotional
milieu
but on the whole it seemed wise not to slit my throat there and then.

“Ah. Yes.” Her calmness was unnerving.

“I am sorry to say it did not entirely go according to plan, as you might have detected.”

“So quite.”

“I do not— know how you located us in that room,” I said, generating a rather pleasing double negative with the pause, “but that is no matter. I had no intention to risk the Archivist in person. The information was all faked, forged, concocted. An attempt to deceive Mr Wantage and his newspaper, which was unsuccessful.”

“Please allow me therefore and hereto understand your point.” The biro began to flex and whip between her purple-tipped fingers.

I looked to my feet. “It was an utter failure. I can scarcely imagine worse. Entirely my fault, and mine alone. Consequently, after many hours of careful deliberation, I would like to offer you my immediate resignation.” I lifted my head and met her mildly steaming spectacles.

The biro stopped. “Immediate, Dr Flowers?
Immediate?
”

“Immediate, Professor Chatteris.
Immediate
.”

“I see.”

“I do, of course, wish you every success. Especially with your endeavours next week and beyond.”

She removed her spectacles and wiped them absently on her purple blouse. “Your crypticism favours you not. I am permanently endeavouring. Please increase your specificity to a more acceptable dosage.”

“Well, naturally, the race organisation. I am sure you can identify another SPAIN committee member to crown as chair. The upcoming newspaper exposé you will undoubtedly take pains to focus
yourself
upon, I am sure.”

The biro ticking began, splat splat splat on the blotter, battering and bloodying an abstract kitten drawn upon it. I kept her gaze. I even ventured a smile. She remained in control, mirroring the smile as best she could approximate, her blinking frequency increasing hesitantly and lumpily. Were I very lucky she might froth from the mouth and slip slowly under her massive desk into a pool of her own distended grammar.

“Let me be absolutely at no risk of unclarity, Dr Flowers,” she said after some dozen seconds of perverted cogitation. “In whole and in part, in sickness and in health, I do reject, deny and disclaim your resignation.”

“You… I’m sorry?” I affected confusion, because I could. I knew the Archivist would be watching.

“I desire your persistence, Dr Flowers. Unhand me your resignation.”

Despite my various shortcomings I have few regrets in life. Occasionally one seeks or is sought by a gentleman who proves uninterested or uninteresting, or one chooses a dark path hiding a thief, and one regrets it when the inevitable emptiness occurs — but only for a short while. I do though most sincerely regret not taking with me into this meeting my own red biro, to tap upon the chair arm while I pretended to consider her request.

I upturned my mouth and nodded thoughtfully, offering a frown and a head-tilt and all but adopting the pose of Rodin’s
Thinker
. A long ten seconds later: “I shall mull it over.”

Later that afternoon I heard from Seb, and we three conspirators, one for all,
et cetera
, agreed to assemble around a cosy Humbug table to synchronise metaphorical watches. Here I learned of the
Bugle
’s plans for the next week’s edition in detail, and they of the Archivist’s ideas. It was apparent that our fates were messily intertwined and that our only hope for success was to join with the Archivist and trust to his dark arts. And yes, we made all the wand jokes.

After merely one unhealthily soft drink, and to the protestations of Eddie who was I suspect more concerned about the evening’s bar takings than with me, I abandoned my two friends to return to college: I had preparations to make.

“Here we are again, then,” I said to Seb after Spencer had toddled off. “Just the two of us. Bonding over a common enemy. Whispering sweet romantic conspiracies. Planning the downfall of an evil regime over cocktails and footsie. Your face fair lights up when you talk about the forty-nine different cuts you want to slice Geoff into, it’s so cute.”

We were sitting around a small circular table dotting the “i” of Humbug’s long chrome bar and pressing against a plate window. The music was still low, still back catalogue. It wasn’t busy yet: it’d be another hour or two before sales officially opened at the meat market. Quiff was in his vodka zone at the opposite end of the bar, of course, as honorary bar mascot. Eddie and his crew made themselves useful disinfecting tables from daytime kiddy juices but left the two of us alone.

Perhaps they thought it was a date. Perhaps it was. Two french martinis with extra fruit, after all.

“I want to apologise for earlier,” said Seb.

“There’s no need, I—”

“No, please,” he interrupted with a hand on mine, left only for a second and then yanked away as if burnt. “I have tried so hard not to let my heart take over. It is vital that I focus on the task in hand and not let my anger win. Anger makes poor decisions.”

“Don’t get all Yoda on my arse, Seb, it was only natural. Spencer got turned over, the rug got pulled, and you wanted to do something about it. Your fists would just bounce off Geoff’s gut, though, you know? He hires himself out as a bouncy castle on bank holidays. He’s not allowed in zoos in case someone thinks he’s an escaped elephant.”

Seb looked down at his drink, a sharp puddle of red in a shallow glass cone, and smiled softly.
 

“Believe me, there are more insults where that came from,” I said.

“I do not doubt it.” He took a sip. A wailing nineties ballad came over the sound system, at least until Eddie could lunge for the
next track
button.

“So don’t beat yourself up about it,” I said, gently batting a fist onto his arm. “Hey, it was good to see a bit of passion. A bit of fire in your eyes. You know what that tells me? You’re not doing this for fun. You’re not gonna do this hammy cackle after it’s all over and shoot off on a monorail to your submarine hidden in Jesus Lock. You’re doing this—”

“Because I want revenge.” He was still looking down.

“Because you want the truth to come out. Which happens to coincide with a little public career-ending humiliation for Fat Boy and Slim. And nobody’s gonna lose much sleep over that, are they?”

“I suppose.”

I downed what was left of my martini. I could drink those all night, which was far too dangerous a prospect to consider right then, with Manish due before too long. A clear head was required. Well, clearish. Seb and I had to work out how to deal with him, or at least how to make sure he didn’t screw everything up for us. But that could wait for a few more minutes.

“
I suppose
sounds like an agreement to me. Do you want to buy me another?” I waggled my empty glass. “You know how easy it makes me. Well, you don’t
know
, I keep telling you, and you keep taking no notice.”

He finally looked up, and across to the bar. He caught Eddie’s eye and signalled for two more of the same. “You are so relentlessly cheerful and optimistic.”

“The words you’re looking for are
horny
and
desperate
. And also
thirsty
and
sober
. Cheers.”

“Is that what drives you? Testosterone and alcohol? Is that why you are helping me?”

It wasn’t an accusation as such, more a jokey aside. But it stung a little. Probably because there was a decent slab of truth in it somewhere. A salty frosting on the cocktail glass.

“I’d be lying if I sat here and told you I’d be doing this even if you were a one-eyed, toothless, haddock-faced, teetotal old biddy with halitosis,” I said. “But mainly because if you were we’d probably never have got any further than hello and goodbye. Once I’d dragged you back here and wrung the story out of you, you got me hooked. Even though my career’s hanging on the line here with me, and there are a couple of rough old sharks on my tail. I’m not sure that analogy totally works, but it’ll do. You know what I mean.”

Seb finished his martini just as Eddie brought across the replacements, with a flourish and fluttering eyes and a cheesy grin, and left with delicate pats on our shoulders as if in encouragement.

I made a start on the new drink. “I’m helping you because you need help, and it’s the right thing to do, and I like you. I don’t have little hearts for irises or chubby little angels with bows and arrows floating around my head, if that’s what you’re worried about. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t, do I? Jeez, how embarrassing would that be?”

He studied my eyes and scanned above my head. “Nothing I can see,” he said, and smiled.

I looked away.

“Of course,” I said, “if either of us has the hots for the other, it’s you for me. I know that much for sure.”

“Is that so?” he said. “How do you make that out?”

Something modern and trancey-dancey came on the sound system, and Eddie turned the volume up a couple of notches. The evening was beginning its protracted, steady build-up. Before long a few of the regular faces would start to arrive, shirts tight against gym-slim or chip-fat bodies, faces eager for booze and boys. The bar would pack out, and conversations would become loud and raucous and spill out into the alleyways.

“Simple,” I said, taking another mouthful of martini. “You stalked me for god knows how long to see if I could be trusted, and you didn’t run away screaming. I take that as a sign.”

He laughed and shook his head, but it wasn’t a denial.

Ah, the wide-eyed innocence of a straight boy in a gay bar for the first time. It’s a sight to behold. One of the seven wonders of the modern world, I’d say, up there with internet pornography and internet pornography.

I was glad I was there before Manish arrived — I didn’t want anyone to pounce on the poor unsuspecting kid and put him in a cock-lock. I caught sight of him through the window beside the table, walking along the alleyway attempting casual manliness. He was strutting like a rookie cop disguised as a seventies pimp.

Straight over the threshold, hit by the heat and light and noise of the Friday night crowd, his journalistic aloofness evaporated. I went to meet him and cheekily stuck my hand into the small of his back to lead him to Eddie at the bar.

“You’re popular today, dear,” Eddie said.

“Work colleague,” I replied. “Go easy on him, it’s his first time.”

“Aww,” he said to Manish, stroking his face sympathetically. “My advice, darling? Plenty of lube.”

Manish laughed like an escapee. “No, I’m not gay, it’s—”