The Pink and the Grey

by Anthony Camber

  “Might there be anything with which I can help you with?”

  I could think of many things, none of them pleasant.

  She continued: “Perhaps in respect of our— friends at the Bugle?”

  I laughed. “If you could arrange for them to drop this week’s stories, that would be simply magnificent.”

  “Is not that, as it were, in hand?”

  “We are having a good stab, Master. A thrust here, a slice there, the occasional pirouette.”

  A hesitation. More quietly: “We, Dr Flowers? We?”

  “In the royal sense. I am—”

  “I have the eyes, Spencer.”

  I had slipped, and she knew it.

  Perhaps this was the source of her apparent malaise, I thought. She still retained her limited access to the Archivist’s systems to view cameras around college: a simple monitoring, a broad overview, with none of the Archivist’s whistles and bells. She had undoubtedly seen me visiting him. I hoped she had not seen Seb, or at least not connected him to the growing conspiracy.

  “The Archivist and his team are assisting in their usual capacity,” I said, saying nothing.

  “In regard of which?”

  “In regard of… it is perhaps best I say no more. For pl—”

  “In regard of which, Dr Flowers?” Her voice hardened. Her grip tightened.

  “I should not say. There are aspects—”

  “Aspects? Which aspects?” The gentle stroll changed up to a march.

  I began to worry. “You know better than I how the Archivist works, Master. Please— would you mind awfully excusing yourself from my limb?”

  Her elbow stiffened closer to her body, pinning me. I smiled and wrenched as pleasantly as I could given our location, in full view of chunks of college. An undergraduate dawdled a few paces ahead, another across the court. There would be faces within glancing distance of windows. She parried my wrench with an inverse wriggle and an unladylike jiggle.

  “This is requiring of utmost discussion, Dr Flowers.” Her volume rose with her temper. “Please, tell me your actions. This I do here command a response.”

  I stopped, whether she wanted to or not. She tried to pull me along. I resisted. “I am not a child, Amanda.”

  “Then why so do you act? I ask of you one item.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to know.”

  “Why?”

  “I am the Master. Of further ‘why’ there is no need, let me say simply. My request demands an immediacy of response.”

  “I refuse to tell you.”

  “Why?” It was her turn.

  “You do not need to know.”

  “Why?”

  All my instincts clamoured for me to say because you are a part of all this, but I resisted. In that brief moment of thought, I heard something: a quiet, strange, familiar warbling on the air.

  Uh-meh-meh-onna-OW-puh-yuh-air-onna-OW.

  What was it? Where was it coming from?

  She heard it too, and scrambled in her jacket pocket with her free arm.

  OW-um-on-aah-OW.

  “Oh,” she said, confused.

  OW-um-on-aah-OW.

  “Is that you? It’s coming from— Is that— Is that Lulu?”

  “Nothing. No matter. The singer, having sung, moves on.” She fumbled with something, and it went silent.

  “Show me that,” I said firmly. “What is it? What are you doing?”

  “Inconsequential.”

  Proprieties be damned, I thought, and broke free with a most impolite wrench that left her staggering. I grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face me, looking angrily into her eyes. Then I plunged my hand outrageously into her pocket.

  I pulled out an ancient recording device with a miniature tape within: a dictating machine from the stone age.

  “Were you recording me?” I demanded.

  “No, I—”

  “Let us see, shall we?” I inspected the device quickly. “Well. Assuming I can make it rewind. Ah.”

  I hefted the appropriate buttons. Very shortly I heard the latter part of our conversation, ending at her imperial command to tell me my actions — when I presumed the jolt of my stopping had disrupted its function and inflicted an ancient, younger Lulu upon us.

  I thought rapidly. I could only assume she had intended to take whatever I had revealed to the Bugle as incriminating evidence. But to what end? To sacrifice me to save the college? The newspaper could not be allowed to hear what I had said, of course. That much was easy to achieve. Less trivial: how to deal with Little Miss Scattershot herself.

  I took her arm and contrived a smile. “Come with me,” I said, with a degree of force and two degrees of butch.

  The Archivist was waiting for us underground at his outer door. He was mid-shift and his hair showed signs of biscuits — perhaps he had been napping. He told us his elves had quickly alerted him to the unsightly fracas.

  He took us through hurriedly to the plain room in which Dennis and I had met him a week before: the room with no secrets proudly on display, no plush carpet. A worried elf brought sufficient chairs and met nobody’s gaze before scurrying away.

  The Archivist paced to and fro silently, his hair bobbing like a conductor’s arm. I indicated to the Master to sit, and thankfully she acquiesced mutely. I was too enraged to join her, bouncing on my toes and boggling repeatedly at the obsolescent recording device I held before my face.

  “We cannot allow—” I began, pushing it towards the Archivist.

  He wafted me to silence. “Professor Sauvage will be here shortly,” he said. “Nothing can begin until he is here. And until he is here, neither of us can leave.”

  “Deniability,” I said, and he nodded. “But are we not currently monitored, recorded?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, his stride unwavering. “But everything can be falsified given sufficient inclination. One trail of evidence is necessary, but not always sufficient.” He stopped, and glared witheringly at me. “I thought by now you might have learned that lesson, Dr Flowers.”

  I looked to the floor, desperate for a hole into which to cast myself.

  It was four or five excruciating minutes before Dennis was shown in. He was pale and out of breath, and I fussed him quickly into a chair.

  “Dear jeebus, at my age, at my age,” he said, mopping his face with a light blue handkerchief from his left rear trouser pocket.

  The elf returned once more with water, pounced upon eagerly by Dennis, and then left us in peace: perhaps to watch whatever was to happen next on the screens in the Hub, or perhaps to wind up the organ of gossip and transmit updates by jungle drum to the far corners.

  My stomach began to cartwheel. I felt the fart of history upon me.

  The Archivist brought Dennis — and everyone watching — up to speed. There had been a gross and unprecedented betrayal of trust, he said, and glanced at me before looking more fiercely upon the drawn, purple, mouldering face of Amanda. He explained how the college was in the midst of a great crisis, how its very future was in doubt, and that we must all work together to ensure its continuation. The Pink and the Grey had lasted two centuries, he cried, and while breath remained in his body he would make it last another two. It was a stirring, passionate political manifesto sprinkled with flashing knives and vaguely homoerotic imagery and had undoubtedly been circulating around his head for the previous several years.

  The Archivist was relishing this chance to finally say his piece, and he laid into Amanda with some abandon.

  “And so we have no alternative,” he said finally. “We must, for the enduring good of the Holy and Glorious College of St Paul, for all that is right and true, for the pre—”

  “Might I mitigate?” said Amanda quietly but firmly, her warble cutting through the Archivist’s waffle.

  His ranting red face halted, arm aloft in splendid oratory, spittle frozen mid-arc.

  Dennis had recovered sufficiently and regained what remained of his colour. “It wou
ld only be fair, Archivist,” he said.

  The Archivist’s arm dropped and reluctantly waved her to speak. He retreated to lean against a wall, his hair splaying out behind him.

  “I thank. I speak trepidatally in fear of made-up minds. Yet speak I must, and heard be I must.” She rose slowly as to confront the Archivist. “I am aware of my dispopularity, amongst the here and the there. It is impossible so to dispute. I have the screens, as does the Archivist. Yet these screens he may record and database without punity. I may, as it were, not. A simple action of dictaphone and the heft is upon me and all a-blister. How dare I! Betrayal! Such nuclear wording!”

  “She rather has a point,” I said. “Well, a fuzzy blob. The Archivist keeps records. Why cannot she?”

  “It is my job!” said the Archivist. “Enshrined in our rules: a separation of concerns. I act purely in the future interests of our college.”

  “Do I not?” said the Master. “Do I work against such interests?”

  “I do not claim that, Master. The fact remains that you have not explained your reason for this recording.”

  “Master,” I said, “you wanted information about my dealings with the Archivist. Regarding the Bugle business.”

  “This did I,” Amanda said, nodding. “Of this am I not entitled? Is it… secret from me?”

  I looked away.

  “I see,” she continued. “Then perhaps I was right to record.” She sat once more, her point I thought well and truly made, and not a biro in the vicinity.

  “But to what end!” cried the Archivist. “Why would you think to do so? Is there a third party pressuring you? Have you begun your memoirs?”

  “In my future interest, Archivist,” she said with some intensity. “My future interest.”

  The Archivist could only huff uselessly at that. He went to the Praelector and muttered darkly to him. Dennis nodded and replied, and his face paled again. I could not hear what was said.

  “These are pressing times,” the Archivist began finally, “and I hope it is plain that we must all work together to ensure the continuation of St Paul’s. Any conflicts between us work against that goal. The Master has made some valid points, I willingly concede. But now is not the time for this debate. The external forces upon us are too great, too immediate, to allow for the niceties of a constitutional subcommittee. That is for a better time, when the crisis is resolved and we may attend properly and respectfully to all matters arising. For now, under present circumstances, Professor Sauvage and I are agreed that we must declare, in common parlance, a temporary state of emergency.”

  I felt a ripple of events wash over me and begin to expand.

  “You coup me?” the Master said, unbelieving. “Throw me over?”

  “We do not, Master. We are placing you under temporary Lodge Arrest. Study leave, you might say, and we shall. Until this crisis is averted. You shall have no contact with the outside world.”

  “We do not do this lightly, Amanda,” said Dennis.

  “For the duration of the emergency Professor Sauvage, as Vice Master, shall take on the Master’s duties to the best of his abilities.”

  “Bar Lulu, Lulu,” he said, unwisely attempting a joke.

  Amanda began electric verbal exchanges of some vigour that led only to a rapid exit in the company of some trusted and toned elves and in the direction of her apartments, grandly called the Master’s Lodge, on the St Andrew’s Street side of Bottom Court. Here, I was told, she would be watched closely by cameras and eyes, and would not be allowed phones or computers. She would be isolated, for the good of the college.

  It seemed to me a drastic step and I felt almost sorry for her. Dennis murmured in duplicated agreement, but believed we had no real choice. “She is a loose cannon, a loose cannon, my dear Spencer. We are already holed well below the waterline.”

  “Indeed, Dennis, indeed,” I replied. “We flounder, sails askew, wheel spinning, at a dangerous list, low on rations, high on scurvy, pirates on our tail, sandbanks tickling our keel, and guided only by a faulty moral compass.”

  He laughed grimly and grabbed my arm. I helped him to his feet.

  “You must excuse me, young man,” he said, leaning in with a conspiratorial twinkle. “I believe it is time for me to walk the plank.”

  I watched him leave, hoping his words were neither prediction nor euphemism.

  At around six that evening, with college still fizzing at the day’s events, I received a text from Conor. He was coming to see me on a matter of urgency.

  My nerves were by then a boxed, plastic-wrapped thousand-piece jigsaw under the sofa bed and I had rather begun to top up my levels of adrenalin from the gin bottle as I relayed the news — in only the most circumspect of terms — to Claire on the phone.

  I attempted to bat Conor away at least until the morning’s grey blast. He persisted, abusing exclamation marks like a twelve-year-old, and ultimately I gave way: I never could resist a ginger.

  I met him at the front gate with, I hoped, a sober air.

  “Jeez, pie-eyed already, Spencer?” he said before even a hello.

  “It has been a day of some stress, which I hope fervently shall not be added to.” I laid a hand on the curl of his shoulder and let it drift marginally south. “Gin? The bar will be—”

  “No, please, no booze. I need your help. The Archivist’s help. I know youse lot have been in the office.”

  I failed to fake surprise. In my enhanced form I could merely affect a cartoonish goggle that I imagine should have been accompanied by a throaty klaxon sound effect from an animated cartoon.

  “We have a situation,” he said. “A shitty situation. A shituation. Can I see the Archivist?”

  I brought him through briskly into the poorly illuminated Bottom Court where passers by might not hear the A-word.

  “I suspect he might not be in the appropriate mind for a meeting,” I said, and related the tale of the day with the strongest counsel regarding its sensitive nature.

  He absorbed the news showing no surprise or shock. I supposed that once you’d attended a meeting of the Women’s Institute you were incapable of such emotions.

  “My turn,” he said. “Manish saw your camp old porter at the Bugle office, pretending to be a maintenance man. We reckon he was adding some network doohickey, are we right?”

  I nodded reluctantly and began to explain. He held up a hand to stop me.

  “Now,” he continued, “Manish was in the office that morning to set the Googles on our mutual friend. To find out whether he was all he cracked up to be. And when I did that, Geoff’s deputy Simon found out somehow or other and I damn near got a fist up me. If Simon sees that Manish has done the same thing…” He trailed off.

  “I understand,” I said. “I am sure the Archivist can assist in some fashion.”

  I took him the few metres to the Archivist’s ground floor entrance on the east range of Bottom Court. This was A Staircase: that is, the staircase labelled A, rather than merely a capitalised indefinite. Through the doors we descended the stone steps, slightly bowed through use, toward the restricted area, the all-seeing basement of knowledge.

  Not half-way, yet already more than a few degrees warmer, we were met by an elf. It was Jay, the fresher I had seen frequently in the Hub in the last week.

  “Mr Beardsley,” I said. “Going up for some air?”

  “Still on shift, sir. I am here to turn you both away, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, but—”

  “We must see the Archivist urgently.”

  The lad’s gaze never raised above the nipple. “The Archivist says all is in hand, sir.”

  “This concerns the Bugle affair,” I said, not wishing to say any more.

  “Yes, he said all is in hand,” Jay repeated in an apologetic tone. His arms were outstretched, barring further descent.

  “Runs a tight little ship, does your Archivist,” said Conor. “Do I have to beg on my hands and knees? I can be good at that.”

  Jay chanced a smile.
“I’ll bear that in mind, sir. It’s unnecessary in this case.”

  “Am I given that the Archivist was, as it were, tuned in to our conversation a moment ago?” I said.

  “I can tell you nothing else, Dr Flowers. It is all in hand.”

  “That’s three hands it’s in,” said Conor. “Is it me, am I unclean? Do I smell of journalist? Do I need to be scrubbed down with antiseptic before I’m allowed in? The red doesn’t come off, you know.”

  “All I can do is repeat the message, sir. Four hands now.” The boy blushed shyly, perhaps unsure whether he was allowed to joke with us.

  “I believe we are wasting our precious, Conor. The Archivist is a busy man. He will set his elves upon the problem. A swift drink and then you can be on your way.”

  I led Conor back outside so the four-handed elf might return to his duties.

  “Is it like that all the time?” Conor asked as we stood beside the lawn under orange light-polluted clouds. “Do you get half-way through a sentence and some poor undergrad runs up with the rest of it on a bit of parchment? Jeez, I hope you boys don’t have a quiz night here. He must win every week. Question one: what is— and he’ll shout out pomegranate and everyone will tut and moan.”

  “It is not quite as awful as that,” I replied, a foot straightening the edge of grass. “In normal times, such as these most definitively are not, we go about our business with hardly a thought as to what occurs below ground. On occasion one might spot the blinking of a red eye in a public or private corner, a gentle prod to the cerebellum. I dare say it does not alter behaviour greatly. I scarcely believe there can be anything the Archivist has not already seen, in some variant or another, in some multiplication, and you must admit that some gentlemen even find the concept… attractive. On the whole we feel the value outweighs the cost. Technically, of course, it’s a great achievement and something the college is terribly proud of, in private that is.”

  Conor was thoughtful and about to respond when the Archivist’s double doors burst open and the same blond elf appeared once more.

  “He has another message,” said Jay, marginally breathless. “He doesn’t enjoy quizzes or pomegranates.”