Free The Pink and the Grey by Anthony Camber Page A

laughed.
    “St John’s, St Paul’s, St George’s, St Ringo’s. Yes. That’s it. And we’re getting all four of them along, except the lookalikes. No, except the— hang on. No. Which one’s St Ringo’s again? Is it the little fiddly one by Darwin?”
    “He’s joking with you, Spencer,” said Laurie. Rather kindly, I thought. “There’s no St George’s, no St Ringo’s. You should probably go home now, I think you’ve had enough to drink.”
    “Yes, we should go back to mine. I have a bed and everything—”
    “No. Sorry. I have a boyfriend. Go home, drink plenty of water, sleep it off.”
    He gave me what I could only interpret as a go thither look.
    My crest fell, shattering into a hundred and one pieces to be lost in the crowd along with my dignity. I attempted a blurred smile, nodded, muttered an inconsequence, and withdrew. Curtsey to the sovereign and retire, and do not turn your back . Self-destruct sequence initiated.
    I decided to call it a night.

    My autopilot set me on course at half impulse power from the bar to my room in college. At this level of alcohol consumption my flat half-way across town, with its proper bed, and hot and cold running water, and curtains that successfully blocked the light, was light years beyond sensor range. The tiny part of my consciousness still battling against the onrushing booze knew this and lamented that I would awake in a small number of hours thumping and banging and in a foul mood ready to heft skywards through the window any undergraduate presenting the slightest of grammatical squeaks. As chance would have it — well, no, as careful planning had it — I kept Saturday’s diary always mercifully free of such unfortunate potential.
    I have no idea what time it was when with the usual grudging assistance of the night porter I tumbled through the college gate on St Andrew’s Street into Drybutter’s Court. Colloquially and commonly, Drybutter’s Court was known as Bottom Court, in contrast to its northerly neighbour Top Court, properly Prince Albert’s Court. West of these two lay my room in New Court, which spanned the remaining half of the larger rectangle that made up the college as a whole. New Court’s unofficially assigned nickname, Versatile Court, had sadly yet to catch on.
    Bottom Court was the earliest part of the college: a cosy, almost claustrophobic enclosure of three-storey late-Georgian architecture in pale Portland stone, edged with cobbles and deep, tempting flower beds. Its central lawn, as ever, was impeccably tidy. Prince Albert’s Court to the north had a more Victorian feel to it, as one might imagine: a pompous curtain of fussy, neo-gothic stonework around a much larger rectangle of grass. New Court was a dull late-Victorian addition, prim and proper but with a saucy fountain at its core daring undergraduates to cross the forbidden greenery for a closer, more educational examination.
    Unlike many other colleges we had no adjoining grassland outside the rectangle, no sprawling playing fields. We shared sporting facilities with other colleges and generally kept ourselves to ourselves. The college was always closed to tourists, at least these days. One main gate, on St Andrew’s Street, and one wider maintenance gate around the rear. Secure, private, monitored.
    As was my habit upon returning from Bar Humbug I urinated freely and copiously in the flower beds I perceived to be most directly above Amanda’s office in the Admin dungeon, below Bottom Court. There were, of course, toilet facilities near my room, had I cared to use them, but I did not.
    Humming drunkenly through the low archway linking Bottom and New Courts, I nearly ploughed directly into the poor Praelector, who recoiled in aged fright.
    “Heavens above, Flowers, have a care, have a care,” he said.
    “Praelector! Dennis! I’m not in the bushes tonight, sorry!” He was the chap who’d discovered me with Scott — git and landed me in Amanda’s bubbling pot. He